Post Reports26 Heinä 2025

Deep Reads: Chasing ghosts with Dale Earnhardt Jr.

In October 2023, Junior turned 49. That’s the same age his dad was in 2001, when, before the last turn on the last lap of the Daytona 500, Dale Earnhardt Sr.’s car bumped into Sterling Marlin’s, sending the iconic No. 3 careening into the wall at 160 mph.

Reporter Kent Babb was studying journalism in college in 2002 when his grandmother called. “They think he’s gone,” she said, referring to Babb’s father. His father’s heart had become enlarged, and while he was painting a house one day, it just stopped. His dad was 51.

Babb is 43 now, and since the day his dad died, there has been something unsettling to him about the idea of turning 51. This is common among people who’ve lost a parent young, or what is called an “off-time” death. Psychologists suggest these feelings of anxiety and fear, alongside a gradually intensifying urge to learn about your bloodline, are like a final stage of grief. And it’s one that most people, and in particular men, rarely talk about or explore.

Babb wanted to talk about it, preferably with someone who understood. And though he never took to NASCAR, Babb knew he and Junior belonged to the same unfortunate club. Babb wondered if he thought about it, if he dreaded turning 49, how he was coping as he approached the age his daddy was.

So, before his birthday in 2023, Babb asked if Earnhardt Jr. would be open to talking. He said yes.

This story traces Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s relationship with his father and who he has become after his father’s death.

Kent Babb reported, wrote and narrated the piece. Bishop Sand composed music and produced audio for the piece.

Subscribe to The Washington Post here.

Tämä jakso on lisätty Podme-palveluun avoimen RSS-syötteen kautta eikä se ole Podmen omaa tuotantoa. Siksi jakso saattaa sisältää mainontaa.

Jaksot(1939)

Goodbye from "Post Reports"

Just over seven years ago, we launched this daily news podcast from The Washington Post.Our goal was to bring you inside our newsroom, sharing our reporting with listeners to help make sense of what w...

6 Helmi 8min

A surprise Kennedy Center makeover

In his second term, President Donald Trump has gone on a mission to reinvent the Kennedy Center, the beloved performing arts venue in Washington, D.C.Trump promised to overhaul the center’s programmin...

3 Helmi 18min

A teddy bear, an ice skate: What remains from last year's deadly D.C. plane crash

In late January of last year, an American Eagle flight and a U.S. Army helicopter collided above the Potomac River, killing everyone aboard both aircraft. It was the deadliest flight disaster in the U...

2 Helmi 15min

Jason Rezaian, Iran and the costs of press freedom

Ten years ago this month, Washington Post journalist Jason Rezaian was freed from Iran’s Evin prison. He and his wife, Yeganeh, had been arrested at their home in Tehran and falsely accused of espiona...

31 Tammi 37min

Is Minneapolis a turning point in Trump's presidency?

Since the killing of Renée Good and Alex Pretti by federal agents in Minnesota, President Donald Trump and his administration are feeling the pressure — not only from Democrats, but also from members ...

30 Tammi 35min

The quest to ‘destructively scan’ all the world’s books

In early 2024, executives at artificial intelligence start-up Anthropic ramped up an ambitious project they sought to keep quiet. It was code-named Project Panama, and internal documents filed in cour...

29 Tammi 27min

Why smaller houses can make us happier

Houses in the United States keep getting bigger, but the people in bigger houses aren’t necessarily happier. Bigger homes often come with higher costs and more maintenance and can pull people further ...

28 Tammi 20min

How Kristi Noem transformed immigration enforcement

After both Renée Good and Alex Pretti were shot and killed by Department of Homeland Security officers in Minneapolis this month, the story from the agency’s secretary, Kristi L. Noem, was that these ...

27 Tammi 24min