# The Throw

Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/i-believe-6610011/the-throw
Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/i-believe-6610011/the-throw.md
Podcast: [I Believe](https://stenobird.com/podcast/i-believe-6610011)
Published: 2026-03-17T06:00:00+00:00
Episode link: https://joelkdouglas.substack.com/p/the-throw
Audio file: https://api.substack.com/feed/podcast/190514567/ad97d913c14ab7c4774af2e2fa4a4fd7.mp3
Processing state: not_requested
JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/i-believe-6610011/episodes/the-throw
Duration seconds: 1482

## Resource

The day before we started bombing, Iran agreed to stop stockpiling nuclear material. The day before. We bombed them anyway. This is a piece about what strength actually means. And what we do now. Act I. The Playground The morning sun, warm on the blacktop. The yard smelled like cut grass and rubber. Beyond the kickball diamond, a basketball hoop with a chain net and monkey bars where the younger kids hung upside down. Row of swings with pebbles worn smooth underneath. The bases painted on the blacktop in faded white, and the outfield ran long to the fence where the grass was patchy from a thousand sneakers. It was the kind of yard where everything important happened in twenty minutes. The game was kickball. Rules whatever the kids said they were. No ref. No umpire. Just the blacktop and the chalk lines and the fence around the yard and twenty kids who wanted to play. Fair or foul, safe or out. They argued and settled it themselves. Someone would storm off. They always came back. The game was the thing that mattered, and everybody knew it. There was a big kid. When he was a 4th grader, his class had won the school kickball tournament. They had beaten even his sister’s 5th-grade class, and he would probably remind her forever. Now he was a 5th grader. He could kick the ball over the fence, and everybody knew it. He didn’t need to prove it every time. He just played. He knew that when the game was orderly, he got to play more. They only had a twenty-minute recess twice a day. There was no time for kids to both argue and play kickball. So he played straight. The game moved along. The teams stayed even and the little kids got their turns at the plate. He was the best player out there and the game was better because of him. Sometimes there was trouble. A kid would shove anot…

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## Transcript

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