COUNTERATTACK Part 6: The Comeback
Telling their stories opens the door for Sinead Farelly and Mana Shim — and the NWSL itself — to undergo radical transformations.
Jun 15, 2023•31 min•Season 4Ep. 6
ROS Presents: Counterattack
ROS Presents is home to Religion of Sports’ most ambitious and engaging audio storytelling, existing at the intersection of sports and society.
We are now in our fourth season with Counterattack, which follows the journey of Sinead Farrelly from hometown soccer star to league whistleblower to comeback kid. Sinead’s experiences in professional soccer and her brave decision to speak out ignited the revolution taking place in professional women’s soccer today. She and her fellow players are continuing a long tradition of sisterhood in women’s soccer. They are changing the game and forging a new path forward—for themselves, for their league, and for the next generation of little girls with big soccer dreams.
Our first season, Crushed, presented a fresh take on legacy the home run race of ’98 and baseball’s steroid era.
Season 2, the award-winning series False Idol, examined the murder of Reeva Steenkamp and the myths surrounding her killer, Oscar Pistorius.
Season 3, Roughhousing, took listeners inside America’s locker rooms to explore hazing in high school sports today — why we do it, what it says about us, and whether change is possible.
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Episodes
COUNTERATTACK Part 5: The Reckoning
Sinead Farrelly and Mana Shim go public with their stories of abuse and coverup in the NWSL and, in doing so, inspire a reckoning across women’s soccer.
Jun 08, 2023•29 min•Season 4Ep. 5
COUNTERATTACK Part 4: The Awakening
The creation of Angel City FC, a new NWSL team owned and operated by women, promises the kind of culture players have long envisioned for the league. But Sinead Farelly is deeply concerned that the league and its players will never reach their potential with coaches like Paul Riley still in positions of power. So, she decides it’s time to finally tell her story.
Jun 01, 2023•23 min•Season 4Ep. 4
COUNTERATTACK Part 3: The Whistleblower
The National Women’s Soccer league launches, creating new opportunities for elite female soccer players, including Sinead Farrelly, Michelle Betos and newcomer Mana Shim. But the imbalance of power and lack of oversight that defined previous leagues persists; coaches remain powerful and unaccountable gatekeepers. Sinead vows to take her and Paul’s secret to the grave, but it leads her down a path of self-destruction. At the same time, Paul pulls the same moves on a new player — but she has no in...
May 25, 2023•36 min•Season 4Ep. 3
COUNTERATTACK Part 2: The Reality
Sinead Farrelly leaves college early to go pro. But when she arrives, it’s not all it’s cracked up to be. Abysmal pay, poor conditions, and league instability create a culture in which players have little protection or power. But her coach, Paul Riley, is a soccer legend. He pushes her to play her best—but he also pushes beyond her personal boundaries. At first, she laughs off his inappropriate comments, but eventually his advances cross the line. This episode brings listeners inside the culture...
May 18, 2023•28 min•Season 4Ep. 2
COUNTERATTACK Part 1: The Dream
The US Women’s National Team’s historic World Cup win in 1999 changed the narrative for female athletes everywhere and inspired a generation of soccer-loving kids like Sinead Farrelly, a little girl in small-town Pennsylvania with big soccer dreams. Host and goalkeeper Briana Scurry relives that iconic summer and reflects on the legacy of activism, organizing and sisterhood in women’s soccer in this inaugural episode of Counterattack. She also traces the orgin story of Sinead Farrelly, whose exp...
May 11, 2023•25 min•Season 4Ep. 1
COUNTERATTACK: Trailer
World Cup champion goalkeeper Briana Scurry follows the journey of Sinead Farrelly from young soccer phenom to league whistleblower to comeback kid in Counterattack, launching May 11. Sinead’s experiences in professional soccer and her brave decision to speak out ignited the revolution taking place in professional women’s soccer today. Through determination and collective action, she and her fellow players are continuing a long tradition of sisterhood in women’s soccer. They are changing the gam...
May 04, 2023•2 min
ROS Presents: Elena Delle Donne on In The Moment with David Greene
Two-time MVP Elena Delle Donne is considered one of the best to ever play in the WNBA. In 2019, she led the Washington Mystics to their first WNBA championship in franchise history. Playing through three herniated discs, a broken nose and a knee injury, Delle Donne managed to dominate in the winner-takes-all Game 5 putting up 21 points, 10 rebounds and five assists. “I was given all the warnings. I was told, like, this isn't the greatest way to go about this,” Delle Donne told In the Moment’s Da...
Apr 27, 2023•35 min
ROS Presents: Carli Lloyd on In The Moment with David Greene
In the 2011 FIFA Women’s World Cup final, the USWNT suffered a devastating loss to Japan after the 2-2 match went to penalty kicks. In 2015, the two teams faced each other again in the final and this time, Carli Lloyd and the USWNT had something to prove. Lloyd went on to become the first woman in FIFA World Cup history to record a hat trick in a final in their 5-2 win over Japan. Lloyd sat down with David Greene for a special live taping of In the Moment to relive her historic hat trick....
Apr 06, 2023•33 min
ROUGHHOUSING Part 6: F*ck Closure
The trauma from violent hazing can lodge itself inside the victim, metastasizing in the years that follow. In our final episode, we’ll find out how Rodney, as well as other people who have more distance from their hazing incidents, have dealt with it years down the road.
Mar 30, 2023•33 min•Season 3Ep. 6
ROUGHHOUSING Part 5: The Good Fight
When a violent hazing occurs, the natural impulse is to search for ways to make sure it doesn’t happen again. This effort to stop hazing has been going on in the U.S. for decades. But how effective has it been? And is it even possible to change something so ingrained in our culture?
Mar 23, 2023•34 min•Season 3Ep. 5
ROUGHHOUSING Part 4: The Snitch
We’ve all heard that ‘snitches get stitches.' It’s a rule on the streets but also on many sports teams. So what happens when kids speak out about being hazed in high school?
Mar 16, 2023•37 min•Season 3Ep. 4
ROUGHHOUSING Part 3: The Coach
What role do coaches and other school leaders have in a hazing incident? And how much oversight can parents expect when their kids participate in school sports? We look at Rodney’s coach, his background, and ask what, if anything, could have been done differently.
Mar 09, 2023•32 min•Season 3Ep. 3
ROUGHHOUSING Part 2: The Line
What if the person being hazed is kinda having fun? Is all hazing a bad thing? A lot of guys on Rodney’s team say the locker room “tussling” just went too far in Rodney’s case. In this episode, host Iggy Monda looks at the range of hazing in U.S. culture, as well as in his own past, to try to find the line between horseplay and abuse.
Mar 02, 2023•32 min•Season 3Ep. 2
ROUGHHOUSING Part 1: Hell Week
What does hazing look like in high school sports today? Our series begins in Mobile, Alabama, where Rodney Kim, Jr. was a freshman with dreams of making the varsity football team. But a brutal locker room initiation changed everything.
Feb 23, 2023•35 min•Season 3Ep. 1
ROUGHHOUSING: Trailer
Roughhousing is a new narrative series examining hazing culture in high school sports today. Host Iggy Monda takes listeners inside locker rooms to hear deeply personal stories from kids who have been hazed, parents who have fought for accountability, people who have hazed others, and coaches who are afraid of what their players might do when they’re not looking. Ultimately, he asks why hazing is so ingrained in American culture and what it says about us. From Religion of Sports and PRX, Rough H...
Feb 16, 2023•3 min
ROS Presents: NFL Great Larry Fitzgerald on In the Moment with David Greene (and an announcement...)
Larry Fitzgerald is considered one of the best wide receivers of all time, and is expected to be a first ballot NFL Hall of Famer. He’s also executive chair for the Arizona Super Bowl LVII Host Committee. In his 17 seasons with the Arizona Cardinals, he made it to the Super Bowl just once. In 2009, the Cardinals were the underdogs against the Pittsburgh Steelers. They were behind Pittsburgh most of the game until the last few minutes of the fourth quarter. That’s when Arizona quarterback Kurt Wa...
Feb 09, 2023•35 min
ROS Presents: MLB Hall of Famer Pedro Martínez relives "Who's Your Daddy" rivalry on In the Moment with David Greene
When the Yankees lost the ALCS to the Astros this week, Hall of Famer Pedro Martínez turned an old insult back on the Yankees and their fans. "I have one question for all of New York: New York, who’s your daddy now?" he said. The former Red Sox ace was calling back to the 2004 ALCS when Yankees fans mercilessly chanted that phrase at him. This week, we share an exclusive interview from In the Moment with David Greene. Martínez talks to Greene about that historic season and how he was able to dra...
Oct 25, 2022•7 min
CRUSHED Bonus Episode: The New Steroid Problem
Joan Niesen, the host of Crushed, is back with a bonus episode exploring baseball’s latest steroid controversy. Find the entire seven-part series in season one of this feed. Today, on the rare occasion that a pro baseball player tests positive for anabolic steroids, it’s widely assumed that he’s a cheater and few people ever pause to consider that there might be more to the story. But, is there? What if testing has gotten too good, and MLB policy has gotten too rigid? And what if innocent player...
Oct 26, 2021•28 min
FALSE IDOL Part 7: Culpability
Would Pistorius be convicted of murder? Finally, Judge Thokozile Masipa delivered her verdict, and it drew a visceral reaction from across South Africa. Afterward, how would the Steenkamp family, the prosecution team, and the Paralympic community move on?
Sep 30, 2021•34 min•Season 2Ep. 7
FALSE IDOL Part 6: Swart Gevaar
During his murder trial, Pistorius claimed he’d mistaken Reeva for an intruder, when he shot her in his home. He listed instances where he’d been the victim of crime. But for many South Africans, there was a coded message in Pistorius’ words –– the fear of black people invading white people’s homes. They even have a term for this fear: Swart Gevaar.
Sep 23, 2021•35 min•Season 2Ep. 6
FALSE IDOL Part 5: Ready to Run?
Pistorius was arrested and charged with murder, and prosecutors Gerrie Nel and Andrea Johnson took the case. Nel and Johnson reviewed the crime scene, the evidence, the witness testimony, and were of the opinion that Pistorius killed Reeva on purpose. They viewed this as a case of gender-based violence, in a country where such crimes are sadly common.
Sep 16, 2021•38 min•Season 2Ep. 5
FALSE IDOL Part 4: Reeva
In this episode, we remember the life of Reeva Steenkamp. She was an activist, a mentor, an aspiring lawyer, and a model whose career was about to take off. Her future was looking bright, when she met Pistorius in the Fall of 2012. Then three months later, he shot her dead in his home.
Sep 09, 2021•35 min•Season 2Ep. 4
FALSE IDOL Part 3: A Loaded Gun
As Pistorius rose to fame, the media began learning more about him, and some of the details seemed … troubling. He drove at excessive speeds. He had an obsession with guns. He crashed a boat into a jetty. And the details of his private life were worse. In hindsight, it’s easier to see the warning signs we missed, or chose to overlook, along the way.
Sep 02, 2021•37 min•Season 2Ep. 3
FALSE IDOL Part 2: Oscarmania
Pistorius was so dominant, he set his sights on a new goal: running against able-bodied athletes at the Olympic Games. Now he faced more questions, more scrutiny. Scientists wondered if the races would be fair, and Pistorius struggled to qualify. But he was buoyed by the support of his home country, South Africa, where he was considered a hero.
Aug 26, 2021•38 min•Season 2Ep. 2
FALSE IDOL Part 1: The Blade Runner
In the early 2000s, the Paralympics were headlined by star sprinters Marlon Shirley and Brian Frasure, when suddenly a new challenger emerged –– a teenager from South Africa named Oscar Pistorius. He immediately began dominating the sport, winning medals, setting records, and signing endorsement deals. But Shirley and Frasure had questions about how this newcomer was winning all these races.
Aug 26, 2021•44 min•Season 2Ep. 1
FALSE IDOL: Trailer
False Idol re-examines the rise and fall of Oscar Pistorius, the Paralympic sprinter who murdered his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp. Journalist Tim Rohan traces Pistorius’ path to infamy, deconstructs his heroic image, and remembers the life of Steenkamp, as he tries to understand how a tragedy like her death could have happened. Launching August 26th, 2021.
Aug 12, 2021•4 min
Introducing False Idol
Joan Niesen talks with Tim Rohan, host of False Idol, the latest narrative podcast from Religion of Sports and PRX. The new series re-examines the story of Oscar Pistorius, the Paralympic sprinter who killed his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp, on Valentine’s Day 2013. False Idol launches with two episodes in this feed on August 26th.
Aug 05, 2021•6 min
CRUSHED Bonus: The Sticky Solution
More than 100 years after banning pitchers from using foreign substances on balls, MLB is finally enforcing that rule in an effort to resurrect lagging offense. But is the league cracking down on the right culprit? In this bonus mini-episode, Joan explores the physics of ball doctoring and asks what baseball’s current scandal can tell us about the evolution of the game.
Jul 13, 2021•16 min
CRUSHED Part 7: The Fallout
Baseball still feels the aftershocks of the steroid era. Has it recovered, or has it just forgotten and moved on? And what happens when a sport that's built on nostalgia ignores its own history?
May 13, 2021•37 min•Season 1Ep. 7
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