Megan Rapinoe is getting her own show.
Vox Media announced that Rapinoe will launch Why Are You Like This?, a weekly interview podcast premiering Aug. 6, featuring conversations with athletes, artists, activists, and what the network is calling “architects of culture.” Rapinoe will dig into what she describes as both the personal and professional sides of her guests, though she declined to name anyone lined up for the show’s early episodes beyond promising “some of the world’s most interesting people,” in an interview with Variety.
This is Rapinoe’s first solo audio project since A Touch More wound down earlier this year, the podcast she co-hosted with fiancée and longtime WNBA star Sue Bird. Rapinoe and Bird announced their breakup in April and confirmed in the same statement that they’d wind the show down, publishing six final “special” episodes before Rapinoe hosted a solo miniseries covering this summer’s men’s World Cup as the show’s send-off.
Rapinoe and Bird originally launched A Touch More as an Instagram Live series during the pandemic before relaunching it with Vox as a full production in 2024. That deal made A Touch More part of a growing roster of Vox Media podcasts fronted by athletes, one that has since expanded to include Bird’s own solo WNBA show and Cam Heyward’s Not Just Football. The whole network changed hands not long after, when James Murdoch’s Lupa Systems bought Vox.com, New York Magazine, and the Vox Media Podcast Network this spring in a deal reported north of $300 million, sweeping up Rapinoe’s old show months before she had a new one ready to announce.
Rapinoe’s new show puts her back in the Vox Media podcast lineup under her own name for the first time. Whether Why Are You Like This? draws from the same well of guests Rapinoe built through A Touch More and her production company’s other projects, including the in-development soccer romance series Cleat Cute, remains to be seen once the show premieres next month.
About Sam Neumann
Since the beginning of 2023, Sam has been a staff writer for Awful Announcing and The Comeback. A 2021 graduate of Temple University, Sam is a Charlotte native, who currently calls Greenville, South Carolina his home. He also has a love/hate relationship with the New York Mets and Jets.