Viewers who were scanning cable news on Tuesday might have thought they’d stumbled onto a sort of bizarro coverage of professional wrestling. “I got elbowed in the back, and it kind of caught me off guard, ’cause it was a clean shot to the kidneys. And I turned back and…there was Kevin,” the tan-jacketed man, […]
Matthew Spolar
Matthew Spolar is a Producer at Retro Report. He has covered a range of issues, from sports to genetics to politics, including web series looking back at the historic import of past political conventions and campaign ads. He previously covered state politics in Pennsylvania and New Hampshire.
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‘Another Player Down’: How Concern About Injuries Is Changing Sports
As concussions plague football, are there lessons from earlier concerns about boxing?
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The PGA-LIV Merger Was a Power Shift. It’s a Sports Story With a Modern Twist.
Golf, a sport long associated with lazy summer Sundays, has become the source of headline-grabbing controversy in the last year. In June of 2022, LIV Golf – a breakaway league that lured many of golf’s biggest stars from the established PGA Tour using massive cash payouts from Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund – livestreamed its […]
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Putin’s Nuclear Threats Evoke Cold War Tensions of the Cuban Missile Crisis
Russia’s recent nuclear threats have revived Cold War animosity with roots in the Cuban missile crisis. During a standoff in 1962, a tense confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union nearly resulted in a nuclear war.
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Theatrics in the House, Captured on Camera
As the process of electing a new speaker in the U.S. House of Representatives descended into chaos this month, one man was more attuned to the unwieldiness of America’s largest legislative body than most: Newt Gingrich. Gingrich, who rose to power in 1994 on a wave of conservative enthusiasm, had a tumultuous run as the […]
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The N.F.L. Still Has a Concussion Problem. Are There Lessons From Boxing?
The 20th-century Philadelphia pugilist Joe Frazier famously warned that in boxing, “you could get your brains shook, your money took and your name in the undertaker’s book.” This month, Americans have been forced to reckon once again with the brutal reality of the sport that dominates the country’s 21st-century consciousness: football. Two Sundays ago, Miami […]
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Midterm Elections: How 1966 Midterms Signaled an Era of Divisive Politics
Within Democratic President Lyndon Johnson’s landslide victory in 1964, there was a compelling regional story: many voters in the Deep South, long loyal to a conservative wing of the Democratic Party, voted for the Republican candidate. Two years later, the 1966 midterm elections would accelerate that trend, with voters across the South electing Republicans to […]
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Midterm Elections: How 1994 Midterms Set Off an Era of Divisive Politics
Midterm elections, often a referendum on the sitting president’s agenda, can set the stage for future policy debates. Economic and social issues with roots in the 1994 midterms are still being debated today.
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Overcoming Factions: How the Founders Sought to Unify a Nation
In November 1787, barely removed from the frenzied excitement around Independence Hall in Philadelphia, where a group of men had hammered out the Constitution of the United States, James Madison began to draft Federalist No. 10. On his mind was the issue of factions, an idea that resonates in today’s polarized political atmosphere. Over the […]
