INTERVIEW: ESPN’s ’30 for 30′ podcast returns with unbelievable story of Chilean football
Image courtesy of ESPN / Provided by Sunshine Sachs with permission.
ESPN’s 30 for 30 phenomenon has been going strong and growing exponentially for a decade. The successful documentary series has highlighted a number of important sports stories on television, and the show has made many inroads in the podcast world as well.
The 30 for 30 podcast recently returned with its sixth season, consisting of four episodes, each focusing on a unique branch of sports. For example, the episode releasing Tuesday, Nov. 26, will cover the 1980s football rivalry between Chile and Brazil, and the flare that allegedly hit player Roberto “El Condor” Rojas. The season finale looks at the Superdome, the home of the New Orleans Saints, and how the structure has played a pivotal role in the resurgence and rebirth of the great city in Louisiana.
To put each episode together can take anywhere from four months to more than a year. At the center of the narrative storm is Jody Avirgan, host and producer of the podcast.
“I will say that it’s a range,” Avirgan said. “There are some episodes that we can knock out in four to five months, and that feels like when everything is clicking. And some things take a really long time. We’ve done some other seasons that are one story told in five parts, and those have taken about a year and a half, to be perfectly honest.”
One story that was recently released is dubbed “Out of the Woods” and details the unbelievably scary story of Kari Swenson, who, according to press notes, survived a kidnapping in the mountains near Big Sky, Montana. Her training as a biathlon athlete helped her through the hellish ordeal, which saw her being shot through the chest and left bleeding in the forest near the body of a volunteer rescuer who was killed.
“The story that just came out this week by Kari Swenson was one that was in literally our first-ever ideas meeting,” Avirgan said. “So it took us almost two years just to get a yes from her in the development phase, and then it took us … almost a year to actually produce it.”
Avirgan said he is extremely happy that ESPN gives the podcast team the time and resources to tell their stories the right away. He sees each episode as a short film, and that means there needs to be a lot of dedication and commitment to give the story justice.
“We should think of these as stuff that takes a lot of time, takes a lot of resources, takes a lot of editorial input, and just being couched in the film world, where the notion of spending a year and a half on something does not spook people, has been really helpful to us,” he said.
There is a team of people at ESPN who are tasked with finding and developing potential stories for the podcast. This, Avirgan said, is an amazing luxury that is not always afforded podcasts.
“But with any 30 for 30, whether it’s a film or a podcast, yes, it has sports as its lens, but it’s got to say something more about society, about politics, about a person’s life,” he said. “Our mantra is kind of, so what? Why do we care? What does it mean in a larger sense? Yes, we’re a sport series, but sometimes I feel like we’re barely about sports. And sports is our particular lens, and I think that it’s as good a lens as any. But ultimately I feel like we’re telling stories about people and conflict and society and all the other kinds of things that good documentaries get at, so it has to have those larger ripple effects.”
Both the style and approach of 30 for 30 are story-centered. That means the narrator for the podcast tries to stay out of the way of a good story. In fact, Avirgan believes the podcast is at its best when the narrative can take over.
“So I really look for a story that has all the stuff contained in it, where you wouldn’t have to do a lot of work to create the drama or to make the larger theme obvious,” the producer said. “There’s a ton of great work out there from people who can pick a small story and bring the idea to bear in this amazing marriage between those two. For us, it’s really like we’ve got to find a story that goes A to B to C to D and is totally riveting and has clear, big themes, and everything is contained in the story itself.”
He added: “You just need characters who can give you good tape, and it sounds obvious, but you need people who can talk in a way that is captivating, has clear memories of what they went through, both specific memories of what happened and also emotional memory of how they felt and what it meant, so that we can have people’s voices really carry it through. We don’t have some of the tools that a film has in terms of creating a moment, so we really have to rely on the people and their voices to carry the day.”
One of the stories that fits this bill is “The Fall of the Condor,” which Avirgan described as a “holy-crap story” with great archival audio. In particular, the podcast producer is excited for listeners to check out the story because he doesn’t believe many Americans know what happened between Chile and Brazil in the 1980s, and the particular incident involving The Condor is unbelievable (don’t Google it!).
“I’m really excited to tell this story because I think it’s a story that people in the United States did not know,” he said. “People in Chile certainly know it. It has tons of crazy twists and turns. … Once you get on the train of this story, it’s all there. So you’re job is to just wind it up.”
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
ESPN’s 30 for 30 podcasts, hosted and produced by Jody Avirgan, is currently airing its sixth season of episodes. Click here for more information.
