Interesting episode I do like how nobody remembered why Alicia Silverstone became a thing. She was in three Aerosmith videos when they had their comeback, including one with Liv Tyler. So, she was the next upcoming star for a bit, until she wasn't.

Turning existing works into musicals is a time honored tradition. Who can forget how the cynical play Pygmalion became My Fair Lady, over the creator's dead body (Shaw refused to sell the rights, so they just waited until he died). Now you have Broadway musicals based on Ghost, 9 to 5, The Producers, etc. There's even a Last Starfighter musical. Results with these adaptations, naturally, vary

I was able to get it by going to the iTunes store and manually download it, but it had a date of 2001 so showed up at the bottom of the list. I tried to download it to my iPad at work today to listen to it again, and there seemed to be a problem. So, something is/was up.

Everything looks completely normal for me in iTunes on both feeds. I have to assume it's something on their end.

Re: baseball rules... If you grew up outside America, it's nearly impossible to figure them out. For most Europeans, baseball is just as inscrutable (and just as alien) as quidditch (which is a deliberate satire).

(To be fair, most sports use the "because he MUST" justification.)

John Hodgman had a really interesting take on sports on one Judge John Hodgman podcast. He eventually realized that he, like other nerds, missed out on the major advantages of sports: the rules provide a way of deciding for sure who is the winner and enable young people to practice physical, real-life conflict resolution. And when you lose (and you definitely sometimes will), you have a coach and teammates who will tell you to change your stance, practice your moves, try again, and don't give up.

So that's the point of any sport, I suppose. Actual board games and such don't have those things. (Whereas they do have strategy, turn-taking, rule-following, and so on).

LOL. Baseball is the easiest sport...followed by 8.5 lines of explanation!

It's interesting that baseball seems an easy sport to understand because people often say that it's one of the hardest to play well--hitting a round ball with a round bat is harder than it looks. At the elite level, hitting a major league pitcher's fastball is definitely one of the hardest tasks in sports.

Outside of team sports, fighting sports are the easiest to "get" if someone hasn't seen them before. One person is trying to kick the other person's ass. Pretty basic. Whatever the rules might be, the point of the contest is trivially obvious to the onlooker.

But, yeah, Blast from the Past.

Agreed, but I was going off of Mike's use of "..something to DO when you're bored."  If he's referring to simply watching, then sure.  But again, movies have no more inherit worth than anything else you watch.  Even if the opinion of the value is universal, it's all still subjective. 

As for the value of sports only coming from having a winner, some of my best performances in Jiu Jitsu, where I was absolutely at my best, was when I lost.  I once caught a guy in 20 some odd seconds in a somewhat fancy leg lock.  That had far less value than the match I lost where I nailed a guillotine to triangle to moo plata combo, but ended up losing on points.

Anyway, this is getting all very hair splitting.  I think we all agree more than we don't.

UPDATE:  On further thought, I actually disagree that the value of watching sports is somehow objectively less than film.  On an individual basis based on preference, fine.  Whatever.  But when I think of athletic performances in combat sports by guys like Genki Sudo, Muhammed Ali, Ernesto Hoost, I see pure art.  Not everyone will, just like I will not necessarily see the same thing in a Pollack painting that others would, but I don't deny that there is a level of expression there, even if I am not prepared to comprehend all of it.  Again, I give no fucks about 95% of sports, but that doesn't mean that artistry isn't present there to be observed.