Everyone loves stories: they love to tell them and they love to hear about them. For Stripes, our brand new podcast, we decided to do something different from what we do with Outliers or with The Long: we decided to tell stories about famous or even lesser-known athletes who are linked together by invisible strings (stripes, in fact) or important because their exploits are connected to historical events that marked their lives and then ours.
The stories bring us closer together and make us realize that we all have similar though different experiences. We all face challenges, we all want to succeed, we all resent injustice and fight our own personal battle that sometimes becomes something bigger, involving and meaningful to many more people, sometimes whole nations or humanity itself.
To tell these stories, we have chosen stories, men and women, sportsmen and women and athletes who are different in a thousand ways, yet always driven and motivated by the quest to overcome a limit. There are from the past and present, there are from all parts of the world and all kinds. Because sports-through experiences, history, culture-always become an expression and metaphor for life.
We begin with the stories of Peter and John. Two names that might seem generic to you, at least until you understand which Peter we are talking about (and John you can get to know and love by listening to the first episode): he is Mennea, one of the brightest glories of Italian and world athletics, long the fastest athlete on Earth in the 200 meters, whose tenth anniversary of his death, which occurred prematurely on March 21, 2013, is being commemorated these very days.
A thank you
Stripes is also the result of a collaboration with adidas that allowed us access to its archives to literally touch the shoes of records and documents that testify to the history of the sport over the past 100 years, of which adidas is an undisputed protagonist. Stripes is the outcome of a collective effort of research, writing, careful processing and sound design that was made possible through the commitment and dedication of many people. Whom we thank so much.
When and where
Stripes is a weekly podcast that you can listen to for free on all major podcast platforms. It comes out every Wednesday, although the first episode came out exceptionally last Saturday. The next date is for Wednesday, March 22, with another wonderful story.
You can listen to it:
- On Apple Podcasts
- On Google Podcasts
- On Spotify
- On Spreaker