This week on The Deep Dive: What asterisks in sports and the boogeyman have in common, the most repeated answer to the most repeated question asked on Love Island, esports could’ve been the next NFL if it weren’t for those meddling VCs, how driverless cars ended up parking themselves in the first place, and the 1970s weird-girl muse with a 2024 it-girl look.

SPORTS

asterisks in sports by hydn (26:58)

Ask any sports fan about asterisks, and you’ll be inundated with a flood of opinions around championship wins and world records, including but not limited to Barry Bonds, The Houston Astros, Wayne Gretzky, and who knows what else. The concept of the asterisk looms over athletes and their legacies, whether they were in control of the circumstances or not, even whether an asterisk ended up being issued or not. In this video, hydn dives deep into the lore of the sports asterisk and the so-called cheaters whose careers are forever marked with them. But where is the line between the asterisks and non-asterisks? And who keeps the records that hold the asterisks?

MEDIA

Tall, Dark and Racially Ambiguous by Princess Weekes (40:04)

We hear it all the time, from characters in our favorite literature to descriptions of contestants’ type on Love Island, but who gets to be “tall, dark, and handsome?” Regardless of what writers initially imagine when using the word “dark” to describe a character’s physical appearance, in a Euro-centric culture that has a history of minimizing the experiences of Black and Brown people, dark can mean anything but dark. In this video, Princess Weekes analyzes the meaning of whiteness, how mainstream media represents characters described as having “dark features,” and why it all matters – from Jon Snow to Jo March to Katniss Everdeen to Ben Affleck, I guess. What was behind the racism toward Rue from The Hunger Games? And would audiences have identified with the story differently if Katniss was less…white?