Some people are fans of the Detroit Lions. But many, many more people are NOT fans of the Detroit Lions. This 2026 Defector NFL team preview is for those in the latter group. Read all the previews so far here.

Your team: Detroit Irritable Bowel Syndrome.

Quick, what number did Jayden Daniels wear when he was at LSU? If you had to think about that for even a second, you might want to lock your doors. Because it's very possible that someone from Daniels's inner circle is on the way to your house to kick your ass. I issue thi...

In my personal mental masthead for Defector, there are bureaus representing the places where my co-workers live. Philadelphia you know about. New York, for better and worse, is implied. Minneapolis, where no Defector staffers currently live, is more complicated. But we have ...

It’s hard to imagine now—like imagining an era when man did not know the sun was huge, hot, and bright—but there was a time when we did not yet understand Russell Westbrook as a basketball player. Slow to hit his growth spurt, Westbrook didn’t dunk until his senior year of h...

When the Seattle SuperSonics drafted Russell Westbrook fourth overall in 2008, around six weeks before they officially became the Oklahoma City Thunder, the league had no idea what to do with such an athletic and violent point guard. Westbrook, who announced his retirement t...

This piece was originally published in The Small Bow on Aug. 7. If you like it, consider subscribing. He was always referring to himself as a “guy like me,” in a baffled sort of way, like how the fuck did a guy like me pull this whole thing off? And part of what James Ga...

Some people are fans of the Indianapolis Colts. But many, many more people are NOT fans of the Indianapolis Colts. This 2026 Defector NFL team preview is for those in the latter group. Read all the previews so far here.

Your team: The Mayonnaise City Colts

Your 2025 record: 8-9, but that only hints at the story of the 2025 Colts, who were 8-2 going into their bye and 0-7 after it. I’ve seen SpaceX rockets with better trajectories. 

Welcome to Listening Habits, a column where I share the music and musical topics I’ve been fixated on recently.

Music's AI revolution has arrived, somewhat... maybe. And naturally, it has come for rap first. This isn't the kind of trumped up thing like what has been foretold in the like 100 weirdly written profiles about "AI actress" Tilly Norwood, a thing you've probably already forgotten about if you ever even heard about it in the first place. No, AI has been implemented in music production software and it has officially gotten a real foot in the door of pop culture thanks to a very strange, very viral new hit song.

https://youtu.be/qsKSfCCxrnk?si=MJMil-Fc9FD025Ht

For many years, I’ve held a pet theory that cultural consumers can be grouped into two broad categories: Primary Source People and Secondary Source People. The former are the book lovers, cinephiles, archive perusers, and history buffs who grew to love their areas of study b...

"On one hand I resent it," Tim Layana told a reporter from the South Florida Sun-Sentinel while watching a 44-year-old Steve Carlton throw a bullpen session at Yankees spring training in 1989. Layana, who was then 25 and had just reached Triple-A, would pitch in three big-le...

It is not news to you that the West Sacramento Athletics are deeply un-good. Even when they led the American League West in April and May, they somehow managed to do so while maintaining a solidly negative run differential. But since their last day at .500, on June 19, they ...

Out of nowhere, and after only a few short days of negotiation, Joshua Kushner and Bob Iger have agreed to buy the Los Angeles Lakers from Mark Walter for a reported record price of $12.5 billion. Every part of that sentence is wild, especially given the recent financial man...

All of us have that one friend who fully commits to the bit. And frankly, there is no better time in your life for taking new hijinks for an extended walk than the college years. But what if the bit was ancient Nordic weaponry? 

Our friend of a friend today sets off to college with the axe of her dreams in hand—we do mean an actual axe—and together they forge an extravagant bond. She find community and minor fame, even love. But her boyfriend’s fondness for her axe quickly becomes excessive, and the cracks in their relationship only grow from there. Axe-boyfriend has a nice ring to it, don’t you think? 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=anhHsMxIu68

Welcome back to Minor Dilemmas, where a member of Defector's Parents Council will answer your questions on surviving family life. Have a question? Email us at minordilemmas@defector.com. 

Today, Ray tackles a question about the merits of having an only child.

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This week on Nothing But Respect, we welcomed back Maya Goldberg-Safir, one of my favorite WNBA writers and thinkers. Maya runs Rough Notes and has written a handful of amazing Defector stories, and I consider her to be the best person covering the history of women's basketball.

On this episode, we talked about Maya's time at WNBA All-Star weekend in Chicago (which she wrote about for Bustle), the Sophie Cunningham situation, and the critical importance of understanding the past few decades of women's basketball history as a way into the controversies of today. We also did some trademark NBR meta-discourse and planned the Golden State Valkyries' championship parade.

Also! Next week, we are doing a special Broke Jumper Tip Line episode, so please send in any stories you have about anyone notable interacting with basketball in any way! (347) 380-6426!

Let me cut right to it: Why can’t I get curry fries over here? Look, I just got back from a work trip to Dublin (where everybody says "Look" to start a sentence), and curry fries are weighing heavy. The trip went as swell as possible. I not only got to cover an all-timer of...

Some people are fans of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. But many, many more people are NOT fans of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. This 2026 Defector NFL team preview is for those in the latter group. Read all the previews so far here.

Your team: Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

https://bsky.app/profile/profootballtalk.bsky.social/post/3mrurzuufhk2u

Professional tennis has a way of breeding misery. It begins with the dream of reaching the No. 1 ranking, but almost everybody falls short. Those who find the promised land feel puzzlingly empty once there. Familial and coaching roles blur. Prodigious children bear the respo...

Reading: What is it? Why does anyone do it? Can anyone at Axios do it? No. Maybe that is why they write like that. When you read a book, the stuff in the book goes into your mind, and your mind assembles all of the stuff into imagery and thoughts and feelings, and alchemize...

My name is Noelle and I'm a fan of the world's largest operating steam locomotive. I used to think this was a unique fact about me. But recently our tiny fandom has exploded. Big Boy, as he’s called—Christian name: Union Pacific No. 4014—retired in 1961 when diesel-electric ...

Your Team: The Baltimore Ravens

Your 2025 record: 8-9, with all that implies.

Your coach: Not John Harbaugh. For the first time in 18 years, Not John Harbaugh will lead the Baltimore Ravens to whatever the hell it is they're going to do. The presence of Not John Harbaugh at the helm marks a fundamental and radical departure from the past, primarily because the Ravens have had only two coaches in their last quarter century. They rather fancy themselves the Pittsburgh Steelers, who are coached by Not Mike Tomlin.

On Monday, Donald Trump doubled down on his weird and eugenic obsession with autism by signing an executive order calling to split up the MMR vaccine for children into three separate shots given in three separate appointments. "I wanna find what's going on with autism," Trum...

In the hypothetical situation in which a fan is attending a baseball game in person and has to wait for a video review to be completed, what is the length of time the review can last before she might turn murderous? Five minutes? Ten? The umpires in Monday night's game betwe...

SAN FRANCISCO — Charli XCX had a cold. You could only tell after five songs and one costume change, when the backup dancers and full backing band briefly disappeared so she could perform "Track 10," the furthest she reached into her back catalogue. Alone, she sounded a littl...

The band American Football released their fourth self-titled LP in May. They are no longer the band they were in the late '90s, when their debut EP and album somehow developed a cult status that has endured to this day. Today they are a middle-aged band making a much more ad...

The 1990s and 2000s were great decades for the sports idiot. Movies like Talladega Nights, Dodgeball, Kingpin, and others belong to this subset of the sports comedy, one that explores the unique problem of being good at sports and bad at everything else. With the help of an ...

Time for your weekly edition of the Defector Funbag. Got something on your mind? Email the Funbag. You can also read Drew over at SFGATE, and buy Drew’s books while you're at it. Today, we're talking about butter parties, severance packages, finding new hobbies, and more.

Before we go any further, I demand you give it up to Albert Burneko for so capably filling my shoes here a week ago. Truly, Bert is the king of kings.

Your letters:

Tom:

If you are a soccer fan of any real commitment, then surely you've seen last week's news that Real Madrid officially landed Ivorian winger (and former Florida high school student!) Yan Diomandé, prying him away from RB Leipzig with the considerable leverage exerted by €125 m...

For a month this spring, Melon was truly living up to her name. She had always been a round cat but never quite this gourd-like—small neck billowing out to a majestic corpulence. This sudden plump came with an attitude. She had abandoned her sweet old habits: sitting on the ...

Defector is proud to announce the addition of a new guy. Timothy Faust has joined us as our Director of Revenue. You might know Tim as a previous Defector contributor and the author of a legendary blog post, but in this role he will be entirely focused on data, revenue projections, and all sorts of…