Talking Sports Books – Details, episodes & analysis

Podcast details

Technical and general information from the podcast's RSS feed.

Talking Sports Books

TIM CAPLE

News

Frequency: 1 episode/26d. Total Eps: 100

Talking Sports Books with Tim Caple The sports book review and author interview show dedicated to the world of sports literature. Established in 2019, Talking Sports Books brings you reviews, author interviews, new-release features and discussions about the best sports books from the UK, USA and around the world. For more than seven years, Tim Caple has been talking to authors, journalists, broadcasters and sporting personalities about the stories behind the books — from football and boxing to golf, cricket, motorsport and the wider world of sport.

Read moreCollapse

Site

RSS

Apple

Data updated on 20/10/2026

Recent rankings

Latest chart positions across Apple Podcasts and Spotify rankings.

Apple Podcasts

🇬🇧 Great Britain - Sport News
24/10/2026
#99
🇬🇧 Great Britain - Sport News
23/10/2026
#81
🇬🇧 Great Britain - Sport News
22/10/2026
#59
🇬🇧 Great Britain - Sport News
21/10/2026
#55
🇬🇧 Great Britain - Sport News
20/10/2026
#39
🇬🇧 Great Britain - Sport News
28/09/2026
#100
🇬🇧 Great Britain - Sport News
25/09/2026
#100
🇬🇧 Great Britain - Sport News
24/09/2026
#75
🇬🇧 Great Britain - Sport News
23/09/2026
#56
🇬🇧 Great Britain - Sport News
22/09/2026
#85

Spotify

No recent rankings available

Shared links between episodes and podcasts

Links found in episode descriptions and other podcasts that share them.

See all

https://amzn.to/3LGbclL
1 share

RSS feed quality and score

Technical evaluation of the podcast's RSS feed quality and structure.

See all

RSS feed quality

To improve

Score global : 38%

Publication history

Monthly episode publishing history over the past years.

Year

Latest published episodes

Recent episodes with titles, durations, and descriptions.

See all

"Inside The Business Of Sport" With Andrew Brandt

Monday, October 12, 2026 • Duration 01:06:58

Welcome to the new edition of "Talking Sports Books" The final score tells you who won. The contract tells you how the sport actually works.That is the territory Andrew Brandt has spent four decades mapping. He has worked as a player agent, sat inside an NFL front office, helped steer the Green Bay Packers through one of the franchise’s defining transitions, taught sports law, advised athletic departments, and explained the business of sport to a public that increasingly knows a salary cap from a hard cap.His book, Smarter About Sports, promises more than a collection of locker-room anecdotes. It is a tour of the machinery behind the spectacle, where money, law, ego, leverage, timing, and public pressure all fight for the same yardage and if you had a dream of being involved in this world and becoming a success and think that you can do it on a budget of long lunches and sitting in an exec box at the stadium then think on as you are about to find out why it takes a certain kind of person to succeed here and sorry to be blunt about this but for 99% of you it's not you and never will be.

Read moreCollapse

Referee "The Impossible Job" The Truly Unbelievable World Of Football Referee's

Monday, September 14, 2026 • Duration 01:07:29

Ever thought about becoming a referee ? well this book reveals what it s really like from an author who decided the best way to find out what it was really like was to become one which he did,he also got access to elite level referees to talk to them about what life is like not only on the pitch but off it as well

Every football fan knows the feeling. A whistle goes, an arm points, and half the stadium erupts. The other half feels robbed. Within seconds, the referee has become the story.

William Ralston’s The Impossible Job asks a sharper question than the usual post-match argument: what if most of us are watching officials with confidence, but without real understanding?

This is a book about referees, but it is also about pressure, judgement, fear, authority, technology, and the strange way football turns human decisions into public trials. Ralston follows officials from grassroots matches to the elite game, including access around UEFA, FIFA, and PGMO circles, and builds a portrait of a role most people see every week but rarely understand.

Read moreCollapse

"Stories From the Summits of Sport" with ESPN's Seth Wickersham

Thursday, August 27, 2026 • Duration 41:45

Great sportswriting does more than explain who won. It asks why the contest mattered, what it cost, and what the people inside it were really chasing.

That is the territory Seth Wickersham has made his own. Across more than two decades at ESPN, he has reported from locker rooms, family homes, private conversations, NFL power centres, and the edges of obsession quite literally. His new collection gathers 26 essays that show the full range of that work, from Tom Brady and Patrick Mahomes to Kobe Bryant, Alex Honnold, NASCAR, football’s violence, and the strange cultural afterlife of “We Will Rock You”.

Coming up on the TALKING SPORTS BOOKS SHOW this month ,this is the kind of book that invites a richer conversation than a standard sports biography. It is about winners, yes. It is also about ambition, loneliness, control, risk, memory, and the human need to turn performance into meaning.

Coming up then we talk about a Kenyan runner who had both feet amputated, the story behind the most played piece of music in US stadiums and arenas, we look into some of the most lonely roles in sport with the vet's responsible for euthanising injured horses at racetracks and the young DA thrust into the global limelight when he took on the role of prosecutor going up against NBA icon Kobe Bryant .

The Book is titled "Be On That Hill" it is available 9/22/26

Read moreCollapse

"Tom Coyne "A Course Called Home"

Friday, July 24, 2026 • Duration 53:31

Tom Coyne opened an email one day and his life changed

when he decided owning a golf course was a good idea.

Golf often conjures images of pristine fairways, elite players, and exclusive clubs. Yet, Tom Coyne’s latest book, A Course Called Home, invites readers to explore a different side of the game—one rooted in community, resilience, and the love of a local course that many might overlook. Coyne, a New York Times bestselling author known for his deep research into golf culture, takes us on a personal journey that reveals how golf can be about more than just the game itself.

Read moreCollapse

Sports Greatest Books

Friday, July 10, 2026 • Duration 06:03

Beginning this month we will be looking at the greatest ever books on sport and we begin with not only the greatest ever book on boxing but one of the greatest ever books on sport .

Norman Mailers "The Fight"

Read moreCollapse

Killing Maradona Part 2 From Napoli to his Final Days

Tuesday, June 9, 2026 • Duration 36:55

In part 2 of "Killing Maradona" author David Arrowsmith returns to look at the years from joining Napoli to his tragic final days .

Killing Maradona Part1 + World Football Food

Tuesday, May 26, 2026 • Duration 51:00

David Arrowsmith joins me to talk about his new book Killing Maradona how cocaine the camora and crime corrupted footballs greatest talent and with the World Cup almost here Will Gray has released a book "The World Football Food" book a collection of recipes inspired by the 48 nations taking part in this summers tournament.

Read moreCollapse

World Cup Brazil "The Glorious Failure"

Tuesday, April 28, 2026 • Duration 27:10

The World Cup is almost upon us so we are looking back at some of the great World Cup stories we have featured since "Talking Sports Books" began and we go back to "Brazil 1982 The Glorious Failure" with author Stu Horsfield they were the team that had it all the team everyone thought would win the world cup yet on July 5 82 Italy destroyed the dream .

Read moreCollapse

"We Need To Talk About Roy Keane" The Keanifacation of Modern Ireland

Thursday, April 16, 2026 • Duration 01:01:42

Dave Hannigan joins us today to talk about his new book "We Need To Talk About Roy"

None has had more of substance to say for himself. Across nearly four tumultuous decades, from callow teen prospect to grey bearded influencer, Roy Keane has transcended sport, redefined the parameters of fame and captivated the nation. Our hopes, dreams and sometimes our despair have been wrapped up in him, his exploits and outbursts. Oscillating between national treasure and national argument, he put the manic in talismanic, bestriding Lansdowne Road one minute, getting booed there the next.

If the sporting heroes of every era offer a window into a society, We Need to Talk About Roy is a fascinating portrait of who and what we were in the age of Keane, showcasing our vices and virtues, our fortunes and foibles. The best of us, the worst of us. Drink. Religion. United. Begrudgery. The Celtic Tiger. Tabloidization. Saipan. Touching on all the major themes and teams, this remarkable book is a refreshing and entertaining look at how the life and times of our greatest footballer is the story of modern Ireland itself. His progress and pitfalls, revolutions and evolution uniquely intertwined with those of the country that made him.

He is of Ireland. Ireland is of him.

Read moreCollapse

Escape From Holland

Tuesday, March 24, 2026 • Duration 44:20

Welcome back to the new series of "Talking Sports Books" and on this edition we will hear from Tottenham Hotspur's record holding captain Steve Perryman about what happened to him and the club when they were last relegated to what was then division 2.

The main book featured this month is "Escape From Holland" Just before dawn on May 10, 1940, German parachute troops rain down on Holland. Watching from his home on the Dutch coast is former international footballer Billy Marsden. It is ten years to the day since the Germans saved his life in a Berlin hospital after he suffered a devastating injury while playing for England - and now it is the German invasion of Holland that is putting his life in jeopardy. In The Hague, Margot Fonteyn and the Sadler's Wells Ballet watch the dogfights from the roof of their hotel. In Amsterdam journalist David Woodward and his American wife, NBC war correspondent Margaret Rupli, are trying to find a way to file the story of the invasion, while young British diplomat Peers Carter attempts to organise an evacuation just eight months into the job.

Set across one weekend in May 1940, this is the story of how these people came together to escape with the last official boatload of British evacuees out of Holland before the country capitulated. This is not just the tale of their escape, but the story of why these fascinating characters were in Holland to begin with.

Read moreCollapse

Talking Sports Books – Details, episodes & analysis

Podcast details

Recent rankings

Apple Podcasts

Spotify

Shared links between episodes and podcasts

RSS feed quality and score

Publication history

Latest published episodes

Related Shows Based on Content Similarities

Related Shows Based on Content Similarities

Apple Podcasts

Spotify

Talking Sports Books – Details, episodes & analysis

Podcast details

Recent rankings

Apple Podcasts

Spotify

Shared links between episodes and podcasts

Amazon1

RSS feed quality and score

Publication history

Latest published episodes

Similar podcasts and content

Related Shows Based on Content Similarities

Related Shows Based on Content Similarities

Amazon1

Apple Podcasts

Spotify