Today I watched the latest installment of ESPN’s amazing documentary series, “30 for 30.”

The docs began airing last year as the network celebrates its 30th anniversary. Part of what makes them so great is that they tell very specific stories–instead of talking about basketball star Reggie Miller’s life, they did an hour on his relationship with his rival, the New York Knicks.

ESPN also took a smart approach by bringing in well-known directors to tackle each project. Barry Levinson (“Wag the Dog,” “Toys,” “Rain Man,” “The Natural”) directed a piece about the Baltimore Colts band. Peter Berg (“Friday Night Lights,” “Hancock”) tackled Wayne Gretzky’s trade from the Edmonton Oilers to the Los Angeles Kings. Steve James (“Hoop Dreams,” “Prefontaine”) told the story of Allen Iverson’s arrest and trial as a high school student in Virginia.

The latest doc, “June 17, 1994,” is the most groundbreaking to date. Director Brett Morgen brings a style that departs from the usual documentary template. Instead of having a narrator push along the story and rely on current interviews to tell the story of the past, he uses only period footage to present his narrative.

The result is gripping, a style that pulls the viewer into a deeper experience of feeling as if one is seeing something happen live.

June 17 was a Friday. It featured several big sporting events, including game five of the NBA Finals, a parade for the newly crowned Stanley Cup champion New York Rangers and the second round of the U.S. Open, which turned out to be the final one for golf legend Arnold Palmer.

It was also the day O.J. Simpson and Al Cowlings led police on a low-speed chase down a California highway as the nation watched on live television.

Morgen blends footage from all of those events to give a sense of what it was like to be sitting in front of a TV that day. In doing so, he also creates juxtapositions among the seemingly isolated events–the crowds at the Rangers parade vs. the crowds that lined the freeways during the infamous Ford Bronco chase, for example.

With no narrator and no after-the-fact analysis, the viewer is left to take in the coverage of various news outlets and broadcasts from the games and weave them into previously held thoughts about those events.

If you missed it, ESPN is showing it again June 30 at 11 p.m. on ESPN2. You can also find more about the film at the series website.

If you would rather hear something interesting about spaghetti sauce from best-selling author Malcom Gladwell, here’s a link to his TED talk about finding out what consumers really want no matter what they may say. It’s from 2005, but I just stumbled across it today. You may recall that I somewhat recently read two of his books–“Blink” and “The Tipping Point” both of which I would highly recommend.