Only If You Get Caught

The simple story of the early-aughts baseball steroids scandal is that Congress caught a bunch of star players juicing. That’s mostly true, but that reading fails to properly place the scandal in the most relevant context: labor relations. You don’t get the steroid “crisis” without the 1994 strike, nor can you fully explain the insane public spectacle of congress making a show of criminalizing these guys without framing it within the past, present, and future of labor exploitation.Episode transcript: https://docs.google.com/document/d/10JmE5S9OfKupVjPAh_rOLCCywussI5wDr1mNqWZQq5o/edit?usp=sharingShow CreditsOnly If You Get Caught is written and hosted, by Patrick Redford. It’s produced by Alex Sujong Laughlin, with production support from Jae Towle Vieira. Editorial support from Tom Ley and Audrey Mardavich. Justin Ellis is Defector’s projects editor. Mixing by Samantha Gattsek  Show art by Jim Cooke. Jasper Wang and Sean Kuhn are Defector’s business guys. Thank you to the Defector staff. Defector Media is a collectively owned, subscriber based media company. Only If You Get Caught is a proud member of Radiotopia. If you like the show, the best way to help us is a five-star rating and review wherever you are listening right now.

The Las Vegas Aces and the New York Liberty have both had scandals around their owners paying or otherwise providing benefits to players under the table in an attempt to circumvent salary cap rules, right as women’s sports exploded in popularity. Maitreyi Anantharaman joins us to look at the state of the fight for wage equality in sports, and what the WNBA players are fighting for.Episode transcript: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1uX8kNeLpp4hyLiGxk7zmlsk0bSS4N4dSLo3B3M1zTJE/edit?usp=sharingYou can contribute to Radiotopia's fall fundraiser with a tax-deductible donation here! Show CreditsOnly If You Get Caught is written and hosted, by Patrick Redford. It’s produced by Alex Sujong Laughlin, with production support from Jae Towle Vieira. Editorial support from Tom Ley and Audrey Mardavich. Justin Ellis is Defector’s projects editor. Mixing by Samantha Gattsek  Show art by Jim Cooke. Jasper Wang and Sean Kuhn are Defector’s business guys. Thank you to the Defector staff. Defector Media is a collectively owned, subscriber based media company. Only If You Get Caught is a proud member of Radiotopia. If you like the show, the best way to help us is a five-star rating and review wherever you are listening right now. 

What does cheating look like on a reality show where the goal is to find love? In this episode, Emma Gray and Claire Fallon from Love to See It join us to talk through the fiction of "for the right reasons" on The Bachelor franchise. Episode transcript: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1GS4u1CpTtjs7hvdKroTnLZCLRNxd5etfg841_66Y1-8/edit?usp=sharingYou can contribute to Radiotopia's fall fundraiser with a tax-deductible donation here! Show CreditsOnly If You Get Caught is written and hosted, by Patrick Redford. It’s produced by Alex Sujong Laughlin, with production support from Jae Towle Vieira. Editorial support from Tom Ley and Audrey Mardavich. Justin Ellis is Defector’s projects editor. Mixing by Samantha Gattsek  Show art by Jim Cooke. Jasper Wang and Sean Kuhn are Defector’s business guys. Thank you to the Defector staff. Defector Media is a collectively owned, subscriber based media company. Only If You Get Caught is a proud member of Radiotopia. If you like the show, the best way to help us is a five-star rating and review wherever you are listening right now.

Lance Armstrong's rise and fall in the cycling world paved the way for a mythology about the "natural body" to proliferate in sports. Today, it's being used to argue for bans of trans athletes. Reo Eveleth of Tested joins us to talk about the unintended consequences of the natural body myth. Episode transcript: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1It-9UQv2oX1CP5nYFPOTs6sXsLCRdiUVaD2UcZlqHcM/edit?usp=sharingYou can contribute to Radiotopia's fall fundraiser with a tax-deductible donation here! Show CreditsOnly If You Get Caught is written and hosted, by Patrick Redford. It’s produced by Alex Sujong Laughlin, with production support from Jae Towle Vieira. Editorial support from Tom Ley and Audrey Mardavich. Justin Ellis is Defector’s projects editor. Mixing by Samantha Gattsek  Show art by Jim Cooke. Jasper Wang and Sean Kuhn are Defector’s business guys. Thank you to the Defector staff. Defector Media is a collectively owned, subscriber based media company. Only If You Get Caught is a proud member of Radiotopia. If you like the show, the best way to help us is a five-star rating and review wherever you are listening right now.

When chess exploded in popularity during the pandemic, it changed — and those changes brought about a new kind of player, and a very new kind of scandal. Joshua Robinson from the Wall Street Journal joins us for this story about cheating, the internet, and uh...receiving vibrating signals through a connected device that is not intended for chess. Episode transcript here.You can contribute to Radiotopia's fall fundraiser with a tax-deductible donation here! Show CreditsOnly If You Get Caught is written and hosted, by Patrick Redford. It’s produced by Alex Sujong Laughlin, with production support from Jae Towle Vieira. Editorial support from Tom Ley and Audrey Mardavich. Justin Ellis is Defector’s projects editor. Mixing by Samantha Gattsek  Show art by Jim Cooke. Jasper Wang and Sean Kuhn are Defector’s business guys. Thank you to the Defector staff. Defector Media is a collectively owned, subscriber based media company. Only If You Get Caught is a proud member of Radiotopia. If you like the show, the best way to help us is a five-star rating and review wherever you are listening right now.