Photo-Illustration: Vulture; Photos: Amy Sussman/Getty Images
While ESPN journalist Mina Kimes is best known for her analysis on the network’s flagship show, NFL Live, or her football podcast, The Mina Kimes Show Featuring Lenny, she regularly crosses into the entertainment orbit thanks to her love of pop culture and television. And while these details surely signal the profile of a nerd (complimentary), Kimes is also something of a competition junkie, making frequent appearances in celebrity editions of game shows like The Great American Baking Show. Last month, Kimes returned to Celebrity Jeopardy! after months of training and left a champion.
Kimes and I spoke the weekend after the airing of that Celebrity Jeopardy! win and before her broadcasting gig for the Scripps National Spelling Bee. Kimes’ win went viral across social media not only for her victory but also for her meticulous breakdowns of her wagering strategy and intense training regimen, which included months of studying, practicing with the buzzer, and scrimmaging with former Jeopardy! champions. “I think folks really like understanding how stuff works. In the same way I talk about football on television, my goal is to explore the how.”
Kimes’s dedication to mastering the game caught the eye of Celebrity Jeopardy! producers, who were producing the Scripps National Spelling Bee for the first time. “I think in that process, producer Michael Davies learned how passionate I am about learning and academics and how I think the principles that the spelling bee celebrates are ones worth celebrating in a bigger way on a national stage.” Kimes brought the same level of rigor and giddiness to the Bee broadcast that she does to an NFL game. “I think both elite sports and an event like the spelling bee stress, not only the greatness of human potential when preparation meets opportunity, to use a sports cliché, but also the limits of something like artificial intelligence,” she said ahead of the broadcast. “You can look up any answer in the world, but no one can teach you how to actually do the thinking on your own. The Spelling Bee is a great display of why the human mind can never be replaced.”
And with the NFL season and her own personal championship run behind her, Kimes is entering her prime reading season. “Covering the NFL is almost like a school schedule. Very intense, and then in the summer it’s extremely chill, and that’s when I read fiction. I read a lot of contemporary fiction from May through July,” she told me as she prepared to host the Scripps National Spelling Bee. Currently, she’s reading Commonwealth in preparation for Ann Patchett’s latest novel, Whistler. “It’s from 2016. So, if you’re looking for book recommendations from ten years ago, I got you,” she says with a hint of self-deprecation.
Bill Simmons reigns supreme for me. I like to listen to basketball talk, and he’s probably the No. 1 place where I listen to basketball talk. I’ve always loved Zach Lowe, who I got to work with for a long time, and I love it when he’s a guest, but there’s just something about listening to Bill Simmons and Joe House. That’s like eating a meal I’ve had 100 times and I still know I’m going to order at the restaurant every time because I know it’s good. Bill talks about sports in a way that is both educated but deeply approachable, and it doesn’t feel like homework, frankly. I could do a better job of that myself.
I’ve listened to most episodes of The Ezra Klein Show. I find that he’s interested in the same things I’m interested in. Obviously he talks a lot about politics and international news, but he’ll also do deep dives into topics like artificial intelligence and GLP-1s. I think he asks really good questions and has really interesting and sometimes unexpected guests.
My friends Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald have a show called The Watch. I will embarrass Chris Ryan: I genuinely believe you could put him on literally any podcast on Earth, whether it is a random NBA podcast for a team or anything in entertainment or even politics, and he really could make it better. He is my friend, but I think he’s one of our greatest living podcasters. I’ve probably known him for almost 20 years, but I just think he is just so naturally funny and smart, and those two have a very funny dynamic. I’ve gotten to go on with them a few times to talk about TV. I love the way they speak, it’s somehow very intellectual without being pretentious.
I would have to give a shout to my friend Pablo Torre’s show. Obviously he’s gotten a lot of deserved acclaim, including winning a Pulitzer Prize, which is so cool for the work he did on the Clippers. But I like a lot of his weirder episodes. I think what’s so funny about his show and why it works for so many people is he applies the same level of rigorous reporting to a Pulitzer Prize–winning investigation that he does to a breakdown on how a magician’s doing his tricks recently.
Photo: Apple TV
I knew very little about the show going into it, which I think is the perfect way to watch the show. It’s crazy to me that a show that is an amalgamation of so many genres works. It’s a comedy, it’s a scary show, it’s a mystery. Pulling all of that off, I think, from a writing perspective, is such a high-wire act. Creator Katie Dippold worked on Parks and Recreation, and it’s Parks and Rec meets Twin Peaks. My friend Alan, who actually worked with Dippold, pointed out to me that she was responsible for the single greatest tweet of all time. When he brought it up in our group chat, I was like, that tweet itself is a perfect distillation of the show.
Photo: Ben Symons/Peacock
Love Island is back. I would contend that in order to understand modern media, you have to watch some Love Island to really get all of the good, and mostly bad, things about entertainment in 2026 in terms of the parasocial and tribal nature of fandom. How television and content in general has become a funhouse mirror for that fandom. Context collapses as the discussion around the show migrates around the internet in horrifying ways. I just think it is the closest thing we have on TV to a monoculture other than the NFL.
Photo: Harper
I just read Kin by Tayari Jones, which was as good as everybody says it is. At the moment I’m reading a book that’s not new, but Ann Patchett has a new book, and I realized I’d never read her other books, so I picked up Commonwealth. I’m obsessed with this book. It’s about family dynamics across generations. Parts of it take place in Los Angeles, where I live, which is great. Her writing is very, I would describe it as kind of deceptively simple, and the characters are just so well fleshed out and morally complex. It is a book that sneaks up on you, until you’re about two-thirds through and you realize that it’s a masterpiece.
It’s a very biased pick, but I’m constantly listening to “Pop Pop” by Channel Tres, who is a guy from Compton who I’ve known since the beginning of his career. I have to disclose that my husband is his longtime producer. He produced this song and has produced a lot of his music, but I would recommend it regardless. He has an album, Enigma, coming out in a few months. The song is kind of like house music meets West Coast rap. He has this voice that sounds like if Barry White and Ol’ Dirty Bastard had a baby. It’s just a great summer song. It’s kind of dirty in the right ways.
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