Why We Fight

Boxers

Hermes Rivera (CC0) / Mark Riechers (TTBOOK)

Listen nowDownload file
Embed player
Original Air Date: 
August 10, 2019

What makes someone want to walk into a ring and hit someone? Choose to take a punch? Why men — and women — fight. And why so many of us like to watch.

boxing woman
Audio

Kate Sekules is a magazine editor, fiction and travel writer, restaurant reviewer and the last person who ever thought she’d find herself in a boxing ring. Until she did.

Length: 
13:52
cage fighter
Audio

Jonathan Gottschall is an English professor who trained for MMA – mixed martial arts – out of curiosity and wound up in the ring. Steve Paulson talked with him about why, and what it taught him about our relationship with violence.

Length: 
13:36
Ronda Rousey
Audio

At the peak of her fighting career, Ronda Rousey blew through her competition, winning nearly all of her fights in under a minute. She told Charles Monroe-Kane she’s been fighting as long as she can remember.

Length: 
26:13
Thomas Page McBee
Articles

Thomas Page McBee achieved a first recently – he became the first transgender man ever to box at Madison Square Garden. He talked to Angelo Bautista about what he learned about male violence and why men fight.

Length: 
9:06
Shields (left) vs. Yenebier Guillén Benítez, 2015
Audio

Claressa Shields has been boxing since she was 11 years old. Today she’s the world middleweight champion — earning gold medals in the 2012 and 2016 Olympics — and is the subject of the documentary “T-Rex.”

Length: 
8:08
Start of an amateur boxing match, Rayne, Louisiana. 1938. Photographer Lee Russell
Audio

In light of recent boxing tragedies, Charles and Steve are grappling with the ethics of boxing. It’s a debate that’s probably going on in a lot of places and will – unfortunately – continue.

Length: 
11:48
boxer
Articles

Producer Charles Monroe-Kane on how the boxing world has sidestepped brain injury in the ring.

Extras

Show Details 📻
Last modified: 
October 20, 2020