I woke up this morning and scanned some of the reactions to FIFA’s shocking decision yesterday to suspend the suspension of Folarin Balogun, the United States men’s national team’s star forward, who was sent off in the game against Bosnia and Herzegovina. By rule, Balogun was automatically suspended from tonight’s match with Belgium, and FIFA’s leadership was very clear that the decision could not be appealed. And then on Sunday, FIFA’s leadership announced it had changed its mind.

Most of the takes were predictable, but one from The Athletic struck me as quite annoying. Amid a roundup of World Cup news, they asked the question, Should the USMNT feel bad about Balogun?

That’s, um, the wrong question to ask.

The problem with this question is that it seems to stem from a peculiar strain of thought lurking in our culture today. The thinking has two parts: 1) objecting to injustice is tantamount to thinking someone should feel bad about benefiting from the injustice, and 2) thinking people should feel bad is itself bad (and probably even worse than the injustice itself).

Thus, instead of writing an article about the fairness or unfairness of FIFA’s decision, what it means for the game or for the USMNT, The Athletic invents the idea that some people might consider the USMNT players or coaches themselves to be culpable for FIFA’s decision, and then The Athletic rushes in to assert that these poor fellows have nothing to be ashamed of.

O…..k…..

As you might have guessed by now, this is something of a pet peeve of mine. It frustrates me because it amounts to a type of personal responsibility shell game. When something uncomfortable, shameful, or embarrassing occurs, those who don’t want to reckon with it will often try to obscure the issue by focusing on tangentially related third parties and treating any objection to the wrong action as some kind of implicit or explicit attack on the third party.

These days we see this kind of approach in politics, history, popular culture, middle school classrooms… seemingly everywhere.

The truth is, the responsibility tree is not complicated.

• The responsibility for the action that led to the red card lies with Balogun. Even if you think the action did not warrant a red card—that at worst he was a bit careless—he still is responsible for his own carelessness.

• The responsibility for punishing Balogun with a red card lies with the referee. Right or wrong, he is the one that made the decision.

• If there was political interference (and multiple outlets suggest there was), then the responsibility for that interference lies with those who interfered.

• If FIFA did not follow its own rules or interpreted its rules in ways that were influenced by factors other than the integrity of the game, then the responsibility for those actions lies with FIFA.

None of the above should be complicated. And yet, articles like The Athletic’s make it seem that way. What’s worse, though, is that it distracts from the underlying point: the decision mars what could be an incredible run by our national team.

A much better article came from a different writer at The Athletic. In his commentary, Nick Miller outlines how FIFA’s decision “damages the integrity” of the World Cup. By making the decision it made, and by doing so without offering any kind of justification or explanation, FIFA is creating the impression that the USMNT might be getting special treatment. A World Cup that has been almost universally lauded as spectacular on the pitch now has a shadow cast over it.

It’s also bad for the USMNT, in particular. As others have pointed out, the US had become a favorite of many disinterested third parties, owing in part to its underdog status and in part to the goodwill generated by the host cities. Now, though, the team has become politicized in a way that will be difficult to overcome. What if we beat Belgium thanks to a Balogun goal?

FIFA just appended an asterisk to any USMNT victory tonight. It doesn’t make me feel bad, but it does not feel good, either.

“Father of the Bride” does not have a happy ending.

I know it’s a romantic comedy, and thus by definition it should. But it doesn’t. And you can’t change my mind.

Allow me to explain.

In one of my proudest parenting maneuvers, I somehow tricked my two kids into a tradition of watching 1990s-era family movies whenever my wife is out of town. Over the years, we’ve gone through all the greatest hits: “Mrs. Doubtfire,” “The Parent Trap,” “The Mighty Ducks,” “Cool Runnings,” and “Blank Check.”

Last night, though, we turned to "Father of the Bride.” The 1991 film has a talented cast including Diane Keaton, Martin Short, and Keiran Culkin, but the heart of the story is the relationship between the father, played by Steve Martin, and his 22-year-old daughter, played by Kimberly Williams.

Williams’ character, Annie, returns home from studying abroad to announce that she has met the love of her life—Bryan, played by George Newbern—and is engaged to marry him. Martin’s character, George, proceeds to lose his mind over everything from the cost of the wedding to the annoying way hot dogs are sold in packs of eight while buns are sold in packs of 12. The main thing that drives him bonkers, though, is the very premise that his daughter is getting married in the first place.

The movie is funny and heartfelt. There are plenty of classic Steve Martin hijinks, and Short adds an almost-too-weird level of comic absurdity as the bizarrely accented wedding planner, Franck. George alienates his family by complaining too much and trying too hard to cut costs (perhaps some guests can be told not to eat, he suggests). Annie and Bryan get into a fight that leaves Annie wanting to call the whole thing off. George saves the engagement after finally realizing that Bryan is actually a good guy and a good match. Then comes the wedding itself, which Franck pulls off without a hitch, despite George skimping on the number of parking attendants. Annie and Bryan go on their honeymoon to live happily ever after.

But the movie doesn’t have a happy ending.

Let’s examine the closing scenes. With the wedding complete and the reception nearing its end, George takes a moment to catch his breath and allows himself a smile at how well everything turned out. Then the emcee announces that Annie is about to toss her bouquet, after which she and Bryan will immediately depart on their honeymoon.

“This, I was not going to miss,” says George, the film’s narrator.

To get to the staircase where Annie will toss the flowers, though, George needs to make his way across a crowded room. He decides to take a shortcut. Predictably, his shortcut backfires and he arrives in the foyer just in time to see the door close behind the newlyweds.

“She was gone. My Annie was gone, and I was too late to say goodbye,” George narrates.

Later that evening, as George and his wife recount the day, they lament the missed connection.

Then the phone rings. It’s Annie, calling from an airport pay phone.

“Our plane’s about to take off, but I couldn’t leave without saying goodbye,” she says.

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Because it’s a rom-com, you knew the movie would not end without George getting his goodbye. The phone call is satisfying to the viewer. Yet, as George hangs up the phone, he can only muster a fake half-smile.

“Father of the Bride” is a story of transition, but more than that, it’s a story of loss. George has always had a certain relationship, a certain stature, with his daughter, and now all of that’s changing. And it won’t change back.

No matter how normal or necessary George’s loss is, it nonetheless remains a loss.

And that’s what makes this movie so perfect, and so timeless. At every point, the movie resists the temptation to make it all alright. Normally, the sign of a well-drawn character is that the character changes over time. He grows and develops. What makes George a well-drawn character, though, is that he doesn’t change.

Mid-way through the movie, George discovers Annie asleep on the sofa with a magazine splayed open across her chest. He picks it up and sees that she’s been reading an article about how to have a wedding on a small budget. The tips include sacrifices like hiring a tailor to copy a designer dress and making the wedding cake yourself. George realizes his negative attitude is ruining his daughter’s big day.

“From that point on, I decided to shut my mouth and go with the flow,” our narrator declares.

And perhaps it’s true that he bites his tongue a bit more after that, but he doesn’t change. He’s still a curmudgeon. He still gets visibly annoyed at every exorbitant expense. At every perceived slight. He still kicks and screams as he’s dragged inexorably toward the fate that he only ever accepts because he knows he cannot avoid it. The movie is not about George changing; it’s about changes happening around George whether he likes it or not.

Which brings us to that phone call at the end of the film. Sure, it’s seems like the happy ending, but it’s more like a consolation prize.

Think about it: The father, harried and exhausted after equally traumatic wedding bells and wedding bills, sprints through what he thinks will be the fastest route to seeing his daughter throw her wedding bouquet, only to completely miss her. She doesn’t wait for him. Doesn’t turn back as she walks out the door. Doesn’t stop the car as they’re driving down the road and then run down the street to hug her dad. She does none of that.

And of course she doesn’t. She’s wrapped up in her own wedding, in her new life. She’s thankful to her father and she calls him to tell him so. But she cannot and will not pause her wedding day just because her father is having a hard time processing it all. That’s not how life works.

It’s not uncommon these days for films to leave the viewer with an unnerving twist or an unhappy ending. Sentimental is out; unsettling is in. What makes “Father of the Bride” so timeless is that it succeeds at depicting an unsettling moment in life while still maintaining its sentimentality. It stares straight into the face of something both good and hard and refuses to diminish either its goodness or its difficulty.

It’s a very good movie with a very good ending.

But it’s not a happy ending.

New Jerseyans are used to being ignored, but that does not mean they like it.

The New York Jets play in… New Jersey.

The New York Giants play in… New Jersey.

The New York Red Bulls play in New Jersey, as does the awkwardly named “NJ/NY Gotham FC.” The logo for Gotham FC features the crown of the Statue of Liberty, which itself is located on an island surrounded by New Jersey waters, but which, for reasons likely related to the above-mentioned New York chauvinism, technically belongs to New York.

All of this is a helpful backdrop for another frustration of northern New Jerseyans: WWOR. The station is technically based out of Secaucus, New Jersey, and it is currently branded as “My9 New Jersey.”

However, it has long drawn the ire of politicians in New Jersey because, despite its location, and despite a 1982 law specifically requiring the station to “serve the people of New Jersey” as a condition of its broadcast license renewal, the station largely ignores the Garden State. If you click on the “NJ News” link at the top of the station’s website, you find a grand total of four news stories from all of 2025. Indeed, as recently as 2007, the station branded itself as “My 9 New York.”

Things came to a head in 2013 when the station shuttered its New Jersey local news program in favor of a TMZ-style infotainment program helmed by a comedian and radio talk-show host. Still, the station retained its license, as it does to this day.

‘National’ is not local

I lived in New Jersey when the WWOR controversy was boiling over, and the memory of that time returned to me recently because my current media market is facing a similar situation, albeit without much attention from lawmakers or even the general public.

Three years ago, Sinclair Inc., the third-largest local TV station owner in the United States, dropped local news programming in several markets, including my own market of Sioux City, Iowa. In its place, the company’s Sioux City stations—a CBS affiliate and a Fox affiliate—began airing “The National News Desk,” a national newscast that looks and feels like a small-market local newscast (in some good, but mostly bad, ways).

Big companies rarely just come out and state their reasons for layoffs, and so when Sinclair was asked about the decision back in 2023, they implied that replacing local news with a national newscast was good for local viewers:

“We’re changing the way we produce news in these markets to ensure their long-term success,” the company said, in a statement to a trade publication.

Translation: it’s no longer profitable to produce local news by employing local reporters, and so instead they’re going to… not do that.

Ironically, while “The National News Desk” features local reporting from around the country, that reporting is reliant upon local reporters. Most of the things that happen in a market like Sioux City do not rise to the level of importance that would land them on an out-of-market newscast, and thus the replacement of local news with “The National News Desk” represents an essential deletion of Sioux City news from Sinclair’s broadcasts.

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It’s not too hard to see the impact. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC), which grants licenses to local TV and radio stations, requires stations to “air programming that is responsive to the needs and problems of its local community of license.” (Hence all the Garden State frustration with Secaucus-licensed WWOR.)

To demonstrate compliance with that and other requirements, stations are obliged to file quarterly reports offering evidence of how they responded to local issues. Those files must be made available for public inspection. Here’s a portion of the report filed by KMEG—one of Sinclair’s Sioux City stations—in the first quarter of 2022, shortly before Sinclair axed the station’s local news team.

As you can see, the news is hyper-local: a new small-town restaurant, some school news, and a community giveaway.

Now look at the same station’s report from the fourth quarter of last year. The difference is hard to miss:

The above is just an excerpt. In total, five segments are listed in the document, all from “The National News Desk.” None of the stories selected as evidence of the station’s responsiveness to local issues mentions Iowa (or neighboring Nebraska and South Dakota, for that matter). In fact, all five segments have to do with national politics or Congress. It’s also worth noting that the person who filed this report did not seem to think it was even necessary to use complete sentences, spell the President’s name correctly, or even get the name of the news program right. (The show debuted as “The National Desk,” but rebranded as “The National News Desk,” in 2024, a full year before this report was filed.)

Who owns these airwaves anyway?

One could certainly argue that the decisions by Sinclair and similar media conglomerates to shut down less-than-profitable local newsrooms is simply a reflection of a deteriorating market for local journalism. Local newspapers have long been in decline, and even some of the core functions of local TV stations—such as urgent weather reporting—have been supplanted by a mix of weather apps and Facebook-based weather streamers.

Yet, it’s worth remembering exactly why local stations have to file quarterly reports on their responsiveness to issues of local concern: it’s a condition of their being given exclusive access to airwaves that fundamentally belong to the public. The internet has made it possible for anyone to become a publisher, or a YouTuber, or a podcaster, or a TikToker. But what the internet has not done—what it cannot do—is turn anyone into a broadcaster.

With a bunch of batteries, an antenna, and a battery-operated TV or radio, I can access broadcast stations, even if the electricity is out or the internet is down. It may not be a lucrative business, but broadcast media remains an important public service.

When companies petition our government seeking the right to control and profit from part of the limited broadcast spectrum, it is only fair for the public to demand that the companies provide something to the public in return. If media companies do not want to be forced to produce programming that benefits the public, they have every right to use other platforms to transmit their programs. However, they should not get the benefit of public broadcast spectrum if they are not providing a public benefit.

Imagine if the FCC actually scrutinized the quarterly reports filed by stations like KMEG. Imagine if they told Sinclair to either provide substantial local news or forfeit the license. There’s a significant chance Sinclair might forfeit the license, and it is not clear whether someone else would step into the gap to take over KMEG’s portion of the spectrum.

I say: So what?

The Sioux City media market is not getting any benefit from its CBS and Fox affiliates, so local residents would not miss much. Arrangements with further afield affiliates could be made to ensure major sporting and cultural events would still be available. The former Sinclair stations’ positions on the broadcast spectrum would once again be available to be used for the public’s benefit should anyone ever decide to provide such a service. Indeed, part of holding the government accountable is demanding that the custodians of public assets steward those assets in a way that aligns with the needs of the public.

People need to know what is going on in their community, regardless of whether providing such information is profitable from a business perspective. The public airwaves provide a unique space to provide such information. We should demand that the airwaves be reserved for entities that are willing to be of service.

Incidentally, anyone can inspect the files of FCC-licensed local broadcasters. Just search for the station here.

The year was 1994. In what would become a seminal moment in the fight to curb tobacco use, seven chief executives from the powerful tobacco industry were called to Washington, D.C., to testify before the House Committee on Energy and Commerce’s Subcommittee on Health and the Environment. During the hearing, each executive was asked under oath whether they believed nicotine—a naturally occurring compound in tobacco and a key ingredient in a wide range of tobacco products—was addictive.

“Yes or no: do you believe nicotine is not addictive?” asked then-Representative Ron Wyden of Oregon.

One by one, the executives went down the line, handing off the microphones, and testifying that they did not, in fact, believe that nicotine was addictive.

I was reminded of this hearing this week as I read a New York Times piece about a lawsuit filed by more than 1,400 school districts against Meta, Snap, TikTok, and YouTube. Collectively, those companies account for the vast majority of the time teenagers spend online. The lawsuit alleges that the companies caused harm to students by adopting tactics purposely designed to keep students engaged on the platforms, even when the companies knew such engagement would directly interfere with students’ education.

Internal company documents uncovered in the discovery process show the companies were well aware that their products would have negative effects on students. Here is a selection of what the documents show, according to the Times.

• TikTok considered, but then chose against, turning off notifications during school hours. The reasons: it seemed difficult to accomplish and it would hurt their daily user metrics.

• YouTube’s algorithm can divert students away from schoolwork. In one example, watching a video about linear equations led to a recommendation to watch an unrelated Will Ferrell comedy video. Thus, even if kids go to YouTube for a valid educational purpose, it’s easy for them to get derailed.

• Snap actively tried to distract students from work, sending them prompts asking them to share about what they were doing in class, or photograph the contents of their backpacks.

To their credit, employees of the companies frequently raised concerns about the impacts their products might have on their customers’ learning. The responses from executives were generally apathetic. For instance, the Times notes that one TikTok employee objected to a feature in which users were prompted to post “within the next three minutes,” something that would almost certainly interrupt learning if the prompts were sent during the school day. Their manager was nonplussed.

“If we assume teens are going to do this anyway,” the manager responded, “we’d rather them be here on TikTok.”

The company removed the feature the following year.

It’s certainly not a novel idea to compare smartphone use to tobacco use. In both cases, there is little scientific dispute that the products—and particularly the excessive use of them—can have harmful effects on one’s mental and/or physical health. However, plenty of products can be harmful.

The reason Wyden’s question in that 1994 tobacco hearing stood the test of time is that people are particularly offended by the idea that a dangerous product might also be addictive. If a company markets a dangerous product, that’s one thing. But if a company markets a dangerous product and capitalizes on its addictiveness, the company is perceived to have crossed a line. It becomes unethical.

Yet, I want to focus on a different line being crossed. Rather than crossing a line from ethical to unethical behavior, I’d argue the line being crossed is one dividing the logic of love from the logic of the market.

The logic of the market indicates that one should have one exclusive aim: to make money. To be fair, many companies and business leaders curb that logic and act for altruistic reasons. However, nothing about the laws of the market demands that its participants act altruistically, and some would argue that diminishing profit in order to protect or improve the wellbeing of others is, in fact, bad.

The idea that a product is addictive—that is, that consumers cannot avoid wanting to purchase and repurchase the product—is not offensive to the logic of the market; it’s inherent to the logic of the market.

“But what if the product is harmful?” you might ask. Well, the logic of the market indicates that at some point people will become sufficiently fed up with or wary of the product and will stop buying it. If that does not happen, the logic of the market indicates that the product must simply not be harmful enough to cause its addicts to cease consumption of it.

The logic of love, however, approaches the situation very differently. When we act out of love, factors like profitability become moot. The profits of a social media company or a tobacco company have no value in a system of love; and therefore products that are harmful have no place there.

The Times article notes that many schools are revisiting the question of technology, not just in the sense of banning personal cell phones, but also in the broader sense. Many schools—including my own—are wondering whether technology has taken on an outsize role in the educational lives of students.

To be clear, no one is advocating that we eliminate technology from education. However, many school leaders are beginning to jettison the idea that technology automatically improves learning. Instead, they aim to be deliberate about separating the times and places where technology is helpful, such as when learning a new software will directly improve a student’s job prospects, from the times and places where it is not helpful, such as when students are reading material that requires deep focus. (In fact, the ability to focus deeply itself is a valuable job skill.)

The lawsuit by school districts against Big Tech marks an attempt to use market forces in the service of love. As the Times notes, tech companies have already settled with at least one school district. If that becomes a pattern, it could potentially have a significant impact on the companies’ bottom lines, which in turn might cause them to change their behavior. However, it is unlikely to cause them to reject the logic of the market. And the logic of the market is that consumption is good and more consumption is better. We cannot stop companies from wanting to make social media addictive, any more than we can stop nicotine from naturally occurring in tobacco. What we can do, however, is make our schools citadels of the logic of love. Most schools already do this. What that means is fighting to ensure all of a school’s decisions are based upon protecting the wellbeing of students and the improvement of society. Insofar as those goals align with market logic, all the better. But when the two value systems are at odds, schools must clearly pick a side.

It might be satisfying to line up Big Tech executives and ask them if their product is addictive. In fact, it’s already happened. And to be sure, we should hold technology companies to account when they harm children. However, we must also remember that “addicting” users is not a sneaky shortcut to achieving their goals; it’s a central facet of their goals. And it’s why those with other goals must remain ever vigilant.

A few weeks ago, I had some sort of customer service problem with a company. I don’t even remember what it was. I was annoyed and amped up at the perceived error on the part of the company. I went to their website to lodge my complaint, and ended up in a chat with a person who eventually resolved the issue. I was curt. The person on the other end was kind. When I finished the conversation, I was taken aback by the customer service agent’s response. I don’t remember the quote, but it was something like:

“Thank you so much for your kindness. This was truly the most pleasant interaction I’ve had all day. I hope you have a great rest of your day.”

It could have been sarcasm. But I don’t think so. Number one, I suspect companies frown upon their customer service agents being blatantly sarcastic with clients. Number two, though, even though I was frustrated, I was trying to hold myself in check. Brusque? Yes. Outright rude? I don’t think so.

If I am correct that the customer service agent was sincere, think about what that means: People who work in customer service spend their days dealing mostly with people who behave like jerks, such that even basic decency feels like a notable anomaly.

This morning I found myself with some extra time on my hands, and so I decided to entertain myself by picking a fight with Google Gemini. I asked it to appraise one of college sports’ villians du jour, and Gemini predictably responded with an amoral, both-sidesy jumble of nonsense. Paragraph after paragraph of meaningless verbiage. Again, though: I was bored. So I proceeded to argue with the chatbot until it accepted my point of view.

Even though I knew this conversation was stupid, I could feel my adrenaline rushing as I typed. I felt the same pace-around-the-room anxiety I would have felt were I engaged with a non-artifically intelligent person.

A short time later, I found myself unwillingly chatting with yet another bot. I had accidentally signed up for the wrong subscription for an app, and so I wanted to switch plans. There was no option to chat with a customer service agent, and so I had to send an email.

In response, I soon received a very detailed, mildly condescending, and completely unhelpful email listing off a bunch of things that ranged from pitifully obvious at worst to “things a typical user would already know” at best. You’re not going to believe this, but the response had been generated by AI.

Because, I guess, I had too much time on my hands. I responded to the email a couple of times, trying to guide the AI model to actually addressing my particular issue.

I failed.

It was annoying.

The AI chatbot indicated that, at some point, I would be graced with a response from an actual human being, but in the meantime I found myself left with the choice of continuing an increasingly frustrating back-and-forth with a poorly trained chatbot, or cutting my losses and waiting patiently for said human. I chose the latter.

What occurred to me as I was emailing back and forth with the shoddy chatbot is that, if a human were to suddenly enter the chat, my adrenaline and my level of annoyance would already be sky high. Thus, the chances of me being curt, or rude, or even mean to the human customer service agent would start out at a high level. Imagine working in customer service, and every single person you talk to has already spent 20 minutes being pushed around by ineffective chatbots. The person on the other end of the exchange would almost certainly start the conversation in an aggressive posture. The rates of abuse, I suspect, would be quite high.

We live in a world where the effects of de-humanizing language are impossible to ignore. Those of us in the United States live in a country in which people on the other side of the political spectrum are often treated as inherently evil, and inherently worthy of whatever harm comes their way.

Now consider what it means when people who are already awash in dehumanizing language begin to replace many of their human-to-human interactions with human-to-chatbot interactions. When we chat with chatbots, common courtesy seems unnecessary. Rank rudeness is also unnecessary, and yet human nature dictates that many of us (probably most of us) will resort to such language when interacting with ineffective or unhelpful AI. And if this becomes the norm—if screaming into the void of a mindless AI customer service text exchange becomes an everyday occurrence for us, how will we stop ourselves from letting that rudeness seep into our other interactions? More to the point, if we spend much of our time talking with non-humans, won’t this prime us to treat the actual human beings around us as if they, too, are less than human?

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Here’s where things get even weirder, though. One might choose to respond to this conundrum by simply adopting a rule that people should be polite even if they are chatting with a chatbot. I have some philosophical misgivings about applying a term like “polite” to interactions with a computer, but on the other hand, I think such a rule could have positive implications for society.

Yet, there is evidence that the large language models (LLMs) underlying chatbots actually reward rude behavior. A team of investigators from Penn State University constructed a set of 50 multiple-choice questions spanning a range of disciplines, and posed those questions to ChatGPT 4o using a variety of tones. The tones ranged from “very polite” to “very rude” with three gradients of politeness in between. The researchers found the accuracy of ChatGPT’s responses to generally be in the low-80% range. However, they found that the highest accuracy—84.8%—came when the user’s tone was “very rude.” By contrast, “very polite” users were rewarded with responses that were accurate 80.8% of the time. In short: being rude led to moderate increases in accuracy.

Be careful not to anthropromoprhize AI. The better responses are not because the chatbots felt bullied into trying harder. Chatbots, after all, cannot feel. The authors of the paper, Om Dobariya and Akhil Kumar, note that the reasons behind the differences in accuracy likely come down to things like the language the LLM was trained on or the length or complexity of the various prompts.

“After all, the politeness phrase is just a string of words to the LLM, and we don’t know if the emotional payload of the phrase matters to the LLM,” Dobriya and Kumar cautioned.

Indeed. However, perhaps we should be less worried with how the LLM was trained, and more worried about how it is training us. That emotional payload we are deploying may not have an impact on the chatbots with which we interact, but if such conversations train us to be jerks to the actual humans with whom we interact, the impacts can still be harmful and indeed, dangerous.

In Netflix’s 2018 documentary series “Wild, Wild Country,” viewers get a history lesson that is unlikely to be found in any traditional school textbook. The series centers on a controversial Indian guru who, along with his flamboyantly abrasive enforcer, builds a compound in rural Oregon and soon tries to take over the local government. At the time this was happening in the 1980s, the culture clash between the religious group and its flabbergasted neighbors became national news (thanks in part to a poisoning conspiracy). Today, though, the controversy is largely lost to history.

And that’s why the series is so fun to watch. It gives viewers an otherwise impossible look into a wildly absurd—and wildly specific—place and time in history.

Many great documentaries perform a similar feat. Think Werner Herzog’s “Grizzly Man” or Errol Morris’ “Gates of Heaven.” Even documentaries like Laura Poitras’ “Citizen Four” are premised on the idea of taking the viewer—an outsider—into a place they could not otherwise go.

The new Oscar-nominated documentary “Mr. Nobody Against Putin,” takes a decidedly different approach. Yes, it transports the viewer into a place they could not otherwise visit—a Russian school at a time when government propaganda is beginning to intrude on the school’s curriculum. Yet, what makes the film so poignant is that it functions not so much as an inside look designed for outsiders, but rather as a meditation on its own co-director’s outward gaze.

Pavel Talankin was an event coordinator and videographer for a school in the Ural Mountain village of Karabash. As Russia’s invasion of Ukraine unfolds in 2022, the school is increasingly asked to promote the war through scripted lessons and patriotic ceremonies. Not only that, but Talankin is required to film the lessons and upload them to a server so that the government can (theoretically) verify that the school is performing its patriotic duties.

Talankin is scandalized by the requests. He finds them both absurd and horrendous. It is not lost on him that the reason schools are being targeted for this type of messaging is because the young people who graduate will soon be asked to don Russian uniforms and fight.

Talankin begins searching for ways to undermine the government’s efforts. He reaches out to a Russian TV producer looking for stories about how the Ukraine war is affecting the work lives of Russian citizens. The producer reads Talankin’s pitch, but instantly realizes it would never be allowd to air on Russian TV. However, he is intrigued enough to forward it to the American documentarian David Borenstein, who contacts Talankin and suggests they collaborate on a documentary based on Talankin’s footage.

The result is a unique directorial collaboration. Talankin regularly communicated with Borenstein, sending footage and discussing strategy. Given the circumstances, their strategy talks centered both on the structure of the film, and on the safety of its protagonist. In the film’s final moments, we see Talankin saying goodbye, both explicitly and implicitly. He has a final conversation with his mother, who also works at the school and does not realize he is leaving. He coordinates the school’s graduation ceremony, where students give heartfelt goodbyes to their classmates teachers, including Talankin. He takes down posters from his office walls and recounts all of the things he loves about his town. He loves “almost everything” about the town, he says. And then, he flees his homeland to safety.

“Mr. Nobody” is a moving portrait of a heroic dissenter, and an inside look at a country undergoing dramatic social and political change. Yet, the film works because it inverts the traditional outside-in dynamic. Yes, it takes the viewer inside a place the viewer could not otherwise go. But the poignancy of the film is that its insider—Talankin—is doing his work as a message to the outsider. It’s not about an outsider looking in; it’s about an insider looking out.

By connecting with Borenstein (and through Borenstein, the outside world), Talankin gains an audience who is in on the joke. When the school begins receiving lessons that not only script what the teacher teaches, but also the questions students ask, Talankin can look at the camera and know his audience thinks it’s as crazy as he does. When Talankin goes on the roof of the school and kicks over a stand holding the Russian flag, it’s not just a weird act of micro-protest; it’s a performance for a global audience.

It’s impossible to know whether Talankin would have carried out such antics had he not known the footage would eventually be seen by an international audience. However, without an audience of outsiders, the footage would certainly have lost its meaning. It would be lost to time or confiscated as evidence by Russian authorities. Maybe it would simply sit neglected on a Russian server for decades. Or perhaps it would have even found its way into Russian propaganda. In any of those cases, though, the footage would no longer be a protest; it would no longer serve as a wink to a knowing audience.

Moreover, whereas “Wild, Wild Country” is about people who chose to believe in a particular strain of religious ideas, “Mr. Nobody” is about a person who does not drink the proverbial Kool-Aid. He knows what is happening is absurd, and he knows his international audience realizes it’s absurd. Deep down, he hopes his friends and neighbors know this, too, but he also knows that the majority of the people in his hometown favor the war. They even hold a rally in support of it.

“Mr. Nobody Against Putin,” then, is ultimately a story about human connection. Yes, it’s a time capsule of a particular place and a particular time and a particular people and a particular political project. But mostly it’s about the idea that human connection can overcome isolation, even if that connection is only possible through the lens of a camera.

Recently, I got the chance to catch up on “Welcome to Wrexham,” the FX series that follows the actors Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney as they try to revive a storied Welsh soccer club that had been locked in the basement of the English soccer pyramid for more than a decade.

Reynolds and McElhenney bought Wrexham AFC in 2021 and soon began documenting their ownership journey with a film crew. Each season of the resulting television series focuses on a single Wrexham soccer season. Early on, the team was so obscure that one could watch the docuseries season without having any idea how the team had performed during the preceding season. That was a good thing for fans of the show. After all, Reynolds and McElhenney’s stated goal was to elevate the team out of the depths of English soccer, and thus the team’s performance each season became the central tension of the show. However, the American ownership duo has been so successful at their goal—the team now plays in the second-tier Championship league—that fans of the show are facing a peculiar problem. Now that the team plays in a league regularly televised live in the United States, Yankees like me must decide whether to watch matches live, or whether to try to avoid “spoilers” until the next season of “Welcome to Wrexham” comes out. In short: Do we want to be fans of the soccer club? Or fans of the TV show?

All of this got me thinking about another sports-related documentary series I watched recently, Netflix’s “Mr. McMahon,” which tells the story of the pro-wrestling company WWE and its longtime chief executive, Vince McMahon.

Those subjects—the WWE and McMahon—are two separate, but highly intertwined, stories. The McMahon side of the docuseries deals with important issues around McMahon’s alleged behavior and management style. However, in this post I want to focus on the WWE side of the documentary.

What the WWE story makes clear is that fans, and the wrestlers themselves, care passionately about the shows WWE puts on. Each WWE event is driven by a carefully orchestrated story line, even if the exact details of what happens in the ring are sometimes unplanned or unexpected.

Central to those story lines is the concept of “heels.” These are the characters who are chosen to be the villains, the “bad guys.” They make it possible for the good guys to triumph over evil, even though sometimes the good guys later end up becoming heels themselves.

As “Mr. McMahon” shows, wrestling became a major phenomenon in the American entertainment scene, but it has also faced a series of ups and downs. At the moment, the WWE is at a high point. It brought in a record $391.5 million in revenue in the first quarter of last year, which coincided with the debut of its flagship program, “WWE Raw,” on Netflix. In the third quarter of 2025, the WWE’s revenues topped $400 million.

What struck me about “Mr. McMahon” is how little time the series spends on the question that is probably most commonly raised with regard to WWE: Is it real? The docuseries takes for granted that fans of WWE know it’s staged.* The only people fixated on the “Is it real?” question are those who are not fans of the show, and who don’t understand why people watch it.

I remember in high school going to a friend’s house and watching professional wrestling with him and his family. His family loved it; I didn’t get it. I was hung up on “proving” it was fake, and so I missed the point entirely.

The point—what Vince McMahon understood earlier than most others—is that while the matches and their outcomes are important raw materials in producing entertaining sports-related programming, those raw materials can be greatly enhanced by focusing on story lines. It might be exciting for Wrestler A to throw Wrestler B out of the ring and onto a chair, but it is far more exciting if Wrestler A is the hero everyone is rooting for, and Wrestler B is the villain who is finally getting his comeuppance.

While the WWE has never openly advertised that its matches are staged, the league also knows that the means by which the outcomes of its matches are determined are far less important than the way its matches are presented; the story lines matter, the veracity of the matches does not.

The booming sports-media world has learned this lesson, too. It’s not just “Welcome to Wrexham.” Scroll through ESPN’s streaming library and you’ll find a long list of sports docuseries, not to mention an almost endless stream of sports talk shows that spend far more time on the human drama of sports than on strategy or game recaps.

I’ll leave it to the sports writers and TV critics to decide whether all of this is good or bad for sports. Instead, I want to focus on what all this says about sports as a commodity.

McMahon was certainly not the first person to realize that sports is a commodity. It is unlikely that sports broadcasting would have ever become a multitrillion-dollar industry if sports broadcasts were simply fact-based descriptions of on-field action.

However, McMahon was among the first to appreciate—and to exploit—just how cheap a commodity athletic endeavor could be. In his version of commodity exploitation, he took very strong men and women and had them play-act outlandish feats of strength on camera. And that’s all he needed. He did not need to have true fighting; he didn’t need true winners and losers. He just needed a whiff of competition from people who looked strong. From there, he could craft highly compelling television.

“Welcome to Wrexham” and the parade of similar sports docuseries perform a parallel act of resource exploitation, albeit by drilling the well of legitimate athletic competition. These shows invert the traditional sports broadcast: instead of showing all of the plays in a game and then garnishing the broadcast with color commentary and insider insights, these series focus on insider drama and season it with only the most consequential highlights from games. Instead of needing 90 minutes of match play to produce a program, they manage to build an entire sports program with just 3 or 4 minutes of actual play—and sometimes even less than that.

Should we care? Should we be offended? I don’t know. Maybe?

However, I think this helps explain one final phenomenon we are seeing: the rise of the sports influencer. Athletes have long been given lucrative sponsorship deals, but as it becomes clearer and clearer that sports is a cheap commodity, athletes are increasingly beginning to assert their right to exploit the commodity themselves. The most obvious example is college athletes finally demanding payment for the use of their names, images, and likenesses, but this also extends to athletes like the Kelce Brothers and Sophie Cunningham, who have each launched podcasts. Many will see the latter as simply an extension of influencer culture; and it certainly is that. However, what makes athlete influencers unique is that the resource they use to get their ventures off the ground is their high-profile athletic abilities. Like any business, their side careers will succeed or fail based on a variety of factors, including talent, grit, and business savvy; but their seed capital is their athletic performance.

There’s a mid-sized coffee chain here in the upper midwest that makes a variety of coffee-themed drinks, almost none of which contain the discernable taste of coffee. It’s very popular, though. I joke that it’s a coffee shop for coffee lovers that don’t actually like the taste of coffee.

As with WWE, since “Welcome to Wrexham” debuted, there have been plenty of news articles making archaeological attempts to discern which facets of the show are “real,” and which are contrived. However, such questions imply that, if it turned out that the behind-the-scenes conflicts or dramas depicted on the show were embellished, viewers might tune out. I don’t think that’s true.

Rather, “Welcome to Wrexham” is a reflection of the reality that sports media does not need to have much to do with sports in order to be profitable. “Welcome to Wrexham” is simply an example of a sports-themed television show that can attract “sports lovers,” even if those “sports lovers” don’t actually like watching sports.

*That’s not to say the physicality of the show is entirely scripted; the series makes clear that accidents do happen, people don’t always follow the script, and performers suffer real and serious injuries on a relatively frequent occasion.

When OceanGate’s Titan submersible imploded more than 3,000 meters below the surface of the Atlantic Ocean back in 2023, the tragedy was almost impossible to wrap one’s mind around. Yet, as subsequent news stories and a new Netflix documentary make clear, the story of the Titan’s failure is not particularly unique. It’s actually an age-old story: a hubristic would-be titan of industry just cannot bring himself to accept his limits. Eventually, the limits catch up with him. And in this case, with four of his passengers.

That’s essentially the plot of “Titan: The OceanGate Submersible Disaster,” which debuted on Neflix in June. The film was directed by Mark Monroe, who is perhaps best known for his work as a producer on the 2017 sports-doping documentary “Icarus.”

The film is powerful because of the firsthand accounts of several former OceanGate employees. Over and over again, they tell the story of a chief executive, Stockton Rush, who refused to acknowledge critical safety concerns, even as a parade of engineers and executives quit or were fired after warning Rush that the submersible was likely to fail.

The documentary begins in the most ominous way possible. Rush, along with the veteran submarine pilot Paul-Henri Nargeolet, and three paying “mission specialists” are bolted into the submarine, about to embark on their journey to explore the ruins of the Titanic. Before the hull is sealed, Rush warns his passengers that they might hear alarms as the ship descends. If they do, he says, they should not be, uh… alarmed.

“So, if you hear an alarm, just don’t worry about it,” he says. “The best thing you can do is don’t do anything.”

If Rush’s foolish disclaimer sets the tone for the documentary, the film’s heartbeat is the sound of carbon fibers popping on the ship’s hull, an ominous sign of the Titan’s looming destruction heard throughout the film. The ship’s hull was made of carbon fiber, a noel (and cheaper) material for such applications. Throughout the film, tests show that when the Titan (and models thereof) is lowered into the ocean, fibers start to snap, with a staccato mix of pops and blasts. The sound is audible because engineers installed an early warning system of sorts—a series of microphones around the hull that could sense breaks in the carbon fiber. The popping of one, two, or even 10 of the thin fibers was not necessarily a major concern. But the documentary shows how the popping got worse and worse as the submersible descended, foreshadowing its all-too-predictable demise.

I mentioned above that the paying passengers on the ship were referred to as “mission specialists,” a comically aggrandizing title for a passenger. The reason that term was used, a former staffer disclosed, is because marine regulations have strict rules for what passengers can and cannot be made to do; calling passengers “mission specialists” was Rush’s way around that regulation.

That’s not the only way Rush allegedly bypassed regulatory requirements. The submarine apparently was not flagged, theoretically putting it outside any country’s regulatory jurisdiction. It also was not “classed,” meaning it was not inspected by a third-party safety inspector. When a staff member quit and filed a whistleblower complaint, Rush allegedly told a colleague that it would be nothing for him to pay $50,000 to ruin the staffer’s life.

Rush, as we learn in the documentary, is born of generational wealth. It’s impossible to know how much Rush’s wealth influenced his’s leadership style, but the film makes a strong case that Rush loved the power associated with his wealth, and that he had insufficient faith in both safety regulations and in the laws of science itself. A Coast Guard report issued this summer after the film’s release lays the failure squarely at the feet of Rush, arguing that his management style and infidelity to safety protocols created a toxic—and ultimately deadly—workplace environment.

As easy as it is to fault Rush for his hubris, one must also acknolwedge that plenty of people with his same attitudes are, in fact, seen as successes in our society. The film suggests Rush wanted to be like Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk, and many of the criticisms leveled against Rush were similarly leveled against those two “titans.”

Yet, while Titan certainly takes Rush to task, it also highlights the dangers associated with a toxic work environment. Our society sometimes romanticizes the idea of the erratic, demanding boss; however, when an organization’s leadership is unwilling or unable to hear the concerns of its workers, its success will always be limited.