In this special episode of The Late Dialogues, David welcomes three giants of football, reimagined for our time: Later Vince Lombardi, Later John Madden, and Later Jim Brown. Together they wrestle with the soul of the game — from the huddle as a republic, to the price of glory on players’ bodies, to the casino creeping into broadcasts, to what “winning” really means. Along the way, they even call the 2025 NFL season and make their bold Super Bowl LX predictions.
About the Late Dialogues
We speak often of the past as if it were a museum, a quiet gallery of resolved meanings. But what if the past isn’t still? What if it hums underfoot, murmurs through our language, lingers in the metaphors we didn’t choose but inherited?The past is not past. It is prologue, as Shakespeare wrote—a beginning disguised as an ending. Not a script to be followed, but a cue to enter. It is from this intuition that The Late Dialogues emerged.
They are a simple proposition, and a complex undertaking: what if some of the world’s great thinkers, artists, and rebels—those whose thoughts shaped the weather systems of history—had lived on? Not as museum pieces. Not embalmed in quotation. But as living, thinking, evolving minds. As people who read the 20th and 21st centuries. Who saw the rise of fascism, feminism, nuclear power, algorithms, TikTok. Who had their faiths tested, their theories undone, their hearts broken anew. What would they make of us?