Loving the NFL When You Know It's Broken, with Christopher Harris

Christopher Harris is one of the most popular voices in fantasy football — but he's also five novels deep into a whole other life as a writer, and his newest, Pound Foolish, is a murder mystery set inside an NFL team. Nick sits down with him for a relaxed, wide-ranging hang that turns out to be about something bigger than football: how you keep loving something when you know exactly what's wrong with it. They get into why Chris built his own publishing company to put the book out, the con of getting fans to side with billionaire owners over players, and the tension at the heart of it all — as Chris puts it, you love this sport and it just doesn't love you back. From there it opens up to the thing this whole show circles: the NFL as maybe the last real "town square" we've got, why we stay fans of broken things, and how all of it rhymes with loving a country you're not always proud of. Plus fantasy talk, the "sin eater," and why meaning is where you make it. Pound Foolish is out now. Find the show at thelonelyliberal.com or @thelonelyliberal.