Slate’s sports podcast on the state of NBA stats, sports ticket economics, and Dennis Rodman’s trip to the DPRK.

Listen to "Hang Up and Listen" with Stefan Fatsis, Josh Levin, and Mike Pesca by clicking the arrow on the audio player below:

Subscribe in iTunes ∙ RSS feed ∙ Download ∙ Play in another tab

Become a fan of Hang Up and Listen on Facebook here:

Hang Up and Listen is brought to you by Stamps.com. Click on the radio microphone and enter HANGUP to get our $110 bonus offer.

Hang Up and Listen is also brought to you by Audible. Get a 30-day free trial by signing up at audiblepodcast.com/hangup. Our pick of the week is Tickets Still Available by Marc Maron.

In this week’s episode of Slate’s sports podcast Hang Up and Listen, Stefan Fatsis, Josh Levin, and Mike Pesca are joined by ESPN’s director of production analytics and basketball statistics pioneer Dean Oliver to discuss the state of advanced stats in the NBA. They also speak with economist Jeff Ely about “Purple Pricing,” Northwestern University’s new ticket pricing system. Lastly, they talk about Dennis Rodman’s bizarre trip to North Korea and other instances of sports diplomacy.

Here are links to some of the articles and other items mentioned on the show:

• Dean Oliver is the author of Basketball on Paper.
• In Slate, Jason Schwartz explains why competition is slowing down basketball’s analytics movement.
• Deadspin summarized four basketball research papers from the Sloan Sports Analytics Conference.
• MIT’s Jenna Wiens examined how crashing the boards impacts transition defense.
• Kirk Goldsberry’s research suggests Larry Sanders is a premier defensive player.
• Grantland’s Zach Lowe on the Houston Rockets’ analytics-friendly offense.
• NBA.com has a free advanced statistics database.
• Jeff Ely is an economics professor at Northwestern University.
• Ely helped Northwestern unveil its “Purple Pricing” ticket program last week.
• The Wikipedia entry for Dutch auction.
• An Economist article on ticket pricing game theory.
• Dennis Rodman’s interview with George Stephanopoulos on ABC.
• Rodman traveled to North Korea and met with Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un.
• Wrestling’s recent ouster from the Olympics brought the United States and Iran together.
• Pingpong diplomat Zhuang Zedong’s New York Times obituary.

Hang Up and Listen’s weekly Ris:

Mike’s Ri: Brainstorming sports-themed safe words in response to a New York Times article on BDSM.

Stefan’s Ri: It’s shocking what the Golden Goal game show did to the women on the Larvik HK handball team.

Josh’s Ri: The Oakland A’s hired astrologer Laurie Brady in 1976. Her predictions were not astoundingly accurate.

Podcast production and edit by Mike Vuolo. Our intern is Eric Goldwein.

You can email us at hangup@slate.com.