Episode 152: Baseball's Opening Day, WNBA's Kia Nurse, and fitness during Covid-19
This week, the gang’s back! We talk about women's sports affected by the novel coronavirus and baseball's Opening Day. Then, Shireen interviews WNBA basketball player Kia Nurse about the Olympics postponement [27:45]. Brenda sits down with Dr. Natalia Mehlman Petrzela to discuss fitness and neoliberalism during Covid-19 [47:35].
Of course you’ll hear the Burn Pile [1:07:15], our Bad Ass Woman of the Week [1:20:50], and what is good in our worlds [1:22:46.]
Links
Covid-19 could devastate women's sports. Here's how we can fight back: https://www.powerplays.news/p/covid-19-could-devastate-womens-sports
FA preparing for possibility top women's teams will fold because of coronavirus: https://www.theguardian.com/football/2020/mar/26/fa-preparing-for-possibility-top-womens-teams-will-fold-because-of-coronavirus
FIFA Races Toward a Plan to Help Soccer Clubs Survive Shutdown: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/26/sports/soccer/fifa-coronavirus-transfer-windows.html
COVID-19 crisis forces postponement of 2020 Canada Women's Sevens: https://www.thechronicleherald.ca/sports/hockey/covid-19-crisis-forces-postponement-of-2020-canada-womens-sevens-427786/
COVID-19 exposing thin financial margins of Canada's Olympic athletes: https://www.cbc.ca/sports/olympics/canadian-olympian-finances-1.5511289
W.N.B.A. Will Hold ‘Virtual’ Draft in April: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/26/sports/basketball/coronavirus-wnba-draft.html
Rapid rise of women’s sport at risk of being halted by Covid-19 outbreak: https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2020/mar/19/rapid-rise-of-womens-sport-at-risk-of-being-halted-by-covid-19-outbreak
How COVID-19 is Affecting Female Athletes, Women's Sports Leagues: https://www.si.com/sports-illustrated/2020/03/26/coronavirus-impact-women-sports-leagues
USOPC asked for $200 million in the coronavirus stimulus bill to ‘sustain American athletes’: https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2020/03/26/usopc-asked-200-million-federal-stimulus-money/
The I.O.C. Let an Olympic Boxing Qualifier Happen Despite Virus Warnings: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/27/sports/olympics/coronavirus-ioc-boxing.html
The UFC’s defiance of the coronavirus outbreak is reckless and irresponsible: https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2020/mar/15/ufc-coronavirus-pandemic-dana-white-trump
Part-time Bruins, TD Garden employees laid off amid coronavirus pandemic: https://www.wcvb.com/article/part-time-boston-bruins-td-garden-employees-laid-off-amid-coronavirus-pandemic/31921198
FOX SPORTS PUNDIT CLAY TRAVIS IS SPREADING THE WORST POSSIBLE CORONAVIRUS ADVICE: https://theoutline.com/post/8857/clay-travis-coronavirus-fox-sports-reasonable-men?zd=2&zi=2iorwyny
Jordanian trio bid emotional farewell to football: https://www.fifa.com/who-we-are/news/three-jordanian-stars-farewell-3069289?_branch_match_id=630816280930874311
SYDNEY TO HOST FIBA WOMEN’S BASKETBALL WORLD CUP 2022: https://australia.basketball/blog/2020/03/27/sydney-to-host-fiba-womens-basketball-world-cup-2022/
Dawn Staley named AP National Coach of the Year: https://www.wistv.com/2020/03/23/staley-named-ap-national-coach-year/
UConn commit Paige Bueckers wins Gatorade Player of the Year award: https://www.espn.com/womens-college-basketball/story/_/id/28871873/uconn-commit-paige-bueckers-wins-gatorade-player-year-award
Spain's female football referees on frontline of coronavirus fight: https://sports.yahoo.com/spains-female-football-referees-frontline-coronavirus-fight-132728332--sow.html
Transcript
Shireen: Welcome to this week’s episode of Burn It All Down – it’s the feminist sports podcast you need. During this COVID-19, we at Burn It All Down are extending our love and solidarity with those who are on the front lines of every sectors, those who cannot stay home, those who are working from home, those staying in, caretakers, parents, animal lovers, folks in every community providing support systems online and where you can. Also, to those missing sports, feeling isolated, or trapped: we hope this show gives you something to think of, to laugh about, and, well, burn.
I’m Shireen Ahmed, freelance writer and sports activist in Toronto, Canada, and leading the toxic femininity charge today. On this week’s panel we are all here, and we have fiery, brilliant Dr. Amira Rose Davis, forever escape room champion and assistant professor of history and African American studies at Penn State; Jessica Luther, weightlifter extraordinarie, my fav PhD candidate/croissant maker, and co-author of the forthcoming book Loving Sports When They Don’t Love You Back, and she’s in Austin, Texas; Dr. Brenda Elsey, president of the Feminists for Leo Messi fan club, undeniable genius, and associate professor of history at Hofstra University in New York; and the indomitable and brilliant Lindsay Gibbs, with the most beautiful laugh and the mightiest pen, freelance sports reporter and creator of the Power Plays newsletter – sign up at powerplays.news – she’s in DC.
Before I start, I’d like to thank our patrons for their generous support and to remind our new flamethrowers about our Patreon campaign. You pledge a certain amount monthly, as low as $2 and as high as you want, to become an official patron of the podcast. In exchange for your monthly contribution you get access to special rewards: with the price of a latte a month you can get access to extra segments of the podcast, a monthly vlog, and an opportunity to record on the burn pile only available to those in our Patreon community. So far we have been able to solidify funding for proper editing, transcripts, our social media guru Shelby, and, drumroll….Our new producer, Kinsey Clarke. Kinsey Clarke is a writer and podcast producer in Brooklyn, New York, whose love of sports extends from cheering on the Michigan State Spartans to celebrating the annual Puppy Bowl. We are so, so excited that she’s joining our show, and her mastery in audio production has us thrilled and sounding better than ever.
Amira: Woo!
Shireen: Burn It All Down is a labor of love and we all believe in this podcast, and we’re so grateful for your support, and happy–
Amira: Woo!
Shireen: –that our flamethrowing family is growing.
Amira: When can I cheer!?
[laughter]
Shireen: Cheer! Sorry, cheer!
Brenda: Yay!
Lindsay: We all really need something to cheer about.
Jessica: Woo!
Shireen: We have a kickass show for you this week: a discussion on women’s sports and how they’re being affected by this global pandemic, I have an interview with my fav WNBA basketball player Kia Nurse on the postponement of the Olympics, and Brenda interviews Dr. Natalia Mehlmen Petrzela on fitness and neoliberalism during the COVID-19 pandemic. Before we get started, let's talk a little bit about opening day in baseball. Amira?
Amira: No. Um…No. I mean, so…
Lindsay: [laughing]
Amira: Friend of the pod Shakeia Taylor had a great tweet about wearing baseball jerseys to recognize opening day even though there was no baseball games playing, and it was a wonderful thread. A lot of people posted in their jerseys, and I was totally gonna participate, and then I had my Red Sox jersey and it was Mookie’s jersey and I just cried instead.
Jessica: Aww.
Amira: Then between Mookie leaving and Dave leaving and the pending investigation and Cora’s ouster, I’m just not super ready for this baseball season, I’m not hype about it…
Lindsay: I have good news for you, Amira!
Amira: I’m mostly just frustrated. And I’d been distracted by all this other stuff that I hadn’t really ruminated on the fact that my favorite players were traded away until opening day. So, the answer to your question is no.
Lindsay: Well the good news, Amira, is baseball is cancelled.
Shireen: Jessica?
Jessica: Anyone who listens to this podcast for any amount of time knows I’m not a baseball person, so I don’t have any personal feelings, but man, Amira, there’s not even live sports and they’re breaking your heart!
Amira: I know!
Lindsay: I know. I’m dying, like…
Jessica: How! Aw, man…
Lindsay: For once though, Amira, you don’t want it to happen and guess what? It’s not. [laughs] That’s the good news.
Amira: I will say, the silver lining is that I did get…I collect Pop bobble heads, and I did get the Mookie one for like $5 just because he left the team. So there you go.
Jessica: There you go, there you go. Okay.
Shireen: Okay, onto the show. Jessica, can you get us started on our first segment, please.
Jessica: Yeah, of course. So COVID-19 continues to spread throughout the world. Lots of countries are on some version of lockdown. Last time I checked, which was Saturday evening, March 28th, over 660,000 people have been infected around the world and nearly 31,000 people have died from the virus. Of course, that’s with limited testing in a lot of places, so months in we still don’t have an accurate understanding of how widespread this virus is. While lots of places are on lockdowns, economies are stretched thin, workers are being furloughed and laid off, people are struggling. Sports are not exempt from this. As we are all well aware, there have been almost no live sports over the last 2 weeks, and it's not clear when a lot of leagues and teams are going to resume. This last week we finally finally finally got word that the International Olympic Committee is postponing the 2020 Summer Games that were to take place in Japan. They postponed them until the summer of 2021. You can hear Shireen’s interview with Canadian basketball player Kia Nurse later in the show about this.
All of this has us here at Burn It All Down concerned about the future of women’s sports as they have historically been and are presently being under resourced and underfunded. They were in a precarious position before this global pandemic. So I’m gonna kick this segment off about women’s sports by holding my nose and talking about the Olympics in a positive way. I think one thing the Olympics does that matters a lot is it gives women’s sports a showcase on an international level. I don’t necessarily believe that that payoff is worth it, but I do think we have to acknowledge that the loss for women's sports in particular with the push back of the Olympics, I keep thinking about how at least if the Games were going to happen, the momentum that the World Cup gave women’s soccer last year would be sustained a year later in part by the lead-up to the Olympics and the Olympics themselves. We’ve talked repeatedly on this show about the way in which the US women’s national team knew that to bolster their lawsuit, which is ridiculous but still, bolster their lawsuit against US Soccer, playing and winning the World Cup would help them because of the international attention on the sport. There are a lot of athletes whose efforts are funded by their participation in the Games or their sponsorship deals are tied into the fact that they will be appearing on television.
And don’t forget, it was only a year ago, not even, right, that we learned that Nike, the biggest one out there with all the money, was willing to drop top female athletes – including Allyson Felix! – because they got pregnant. So I’m very worried about the ripple effects from this postponement for women, even as I think that postponement was absolutely the right thing to do. It’s more that I don't trust the Olympic committees and national governing boards and companies who sponsor athletes to be equitable in their responses to this. Shireen.
Shireen: Yeah, thanks so much for that, Jess. I’m just gonna sort of mention, I read in Lindsay’s newsletter this week – and thank you so much for that incredible work, Linz – in Power Plays, and interview you had with Gwen Berry who’s also a guest on this show, Amira had interviewed her a couple of episodes back. What she said, and this is a direct quote from Gwen Berry, “It's impacting me a lot financially, because I think a lot of the sponsors have pulled out because a lot of sponsors sponsor athletes only for the Olympic Games. For me, a lot of my sponsors pulled out. Also there's no competitions, and track and field athletes rely on those competitions for income. So with no competitions, no Olympic Games for the exposure, we have nothing. We literally have no income. So a lot of athletes will go back to work. I probably will be one. I have to look for another job here in Houston. I used to work at Dick's Sporting Goods, and I used to do Postmates, so I'll probably find something else to do that will hold me over until the end of the year at least.”
There's another article that I wanted to highlight: Lori Ewing, friend of the show, and Donna Spencer co-wrote this for CBC and it was talking about the thin financial margins of Canada’s Olympic athletes, and it specifically talks a lot about women because women are usually on the shorter end of the stick anyway. This was featuring Sarah Pavan and Melissa Humana-Parades, who are beach volleyball players, and even their volleyball season was cut totally short, and Humana-Parades said that this is the majority of her income, she doesn’t really know what she’s gonna do, and they haven’t even qualified to get to the Olympics yet, although they’re ranked quite high. She said, “Prize money from tournaments was my main source of income, and we no longer have them. So hopefully some of them will get postponed to a later time this year. But again, there's so many unknowns and I think everyone's just in a financial pinch.” So, they’re all feeling that. Amira?
Amira: Yeah, I just wanted to piggyback on this point that you’re talking with Gwen’s wonderful quote – that you for that newsletter, Lindsay. A lot of people have planned for the financial benefits that were coming this year, and when you plan your life out in a four-year increment, one year for us might seem like, okay, we have to wait a year to watch this, but it’s really been disruptive. My friend Kamali who was a prospective fencer for the Olympic team, we went to college together. She’s both a medical student and was training for the Olympics, so she actually put medical school on hold to train in this way, and one of the things that’s happened is what do you do for the year? Do you keep training? Do you juggle your studies? The whole apparatus is disrupted. I was talking with Gwen, and she’s like, “I don’t know what else to do other than take it day by day.” I think that’s such an important point to really double down on, the extreme disruption it did for people in terms of planning their lives but also their financial stability.
Shireen: For sure. Linz?
Lindsay: Yeah. So, for the newsletter I tried to talk to just a bunch of athletes from across the sports world as well as…It’s not just female athletes that are impacted, it’s women in sports broadcasting, women who are in the media, journalism, college, so it’s just amazing how much this impacts everyone and how much, for women, family is just such a bigger part of their decision than men. Men don’t have to think about family, but for women family planning and family care obviously disproportionately impact women, those in women’s sports, so even sports reporters who are planning on traveling this year, this being their big travel year, but then maybe next year they were planning on having a family, and now they’re thinking, will I get these opportunities to travel again? It’s just been really eye-opening for me to look at how much I think this will really hurt women in sports, and we’re already seeing it
Obviously there’s the financial bit to it with the Olympics being cancelled, and that’s a direct thing. Or with seasons being cancelled, Elizabeth Williams who’ll be on a special episode that has already been posted that you all will be able to hear, Elizabeth Williams from the WNBA talking, she said this is a time when a lot of players overseas in women’s basketball are getting their big playoff bonuses, or getting bonuses for being the MVP, or All Stars, all those things. Of course, those bonuses won’t come. Honestly, a lot of players are probably going to have to fight through FIBA, the international basketball association, just to get paid, period. In England we’re already seeing the Football Association telling struggling women's Super League and women’s championship teams that there’s no financial support available, and so the league is kind of on hold though August right now – it’s said it has to be completed by August, or it won’t be completed. These are the top 2 tiers for women in the FA and it’s unfortunately up to these individual clubs, they’re not being given individual support, so the ones that are backed by the big-name men’s teams will probably be able to sustain the hit and continue to pay its players, but the others are probably gonna have to fold their teams altogether.
The FA also completely cancelled the…I’m gonna be very American here and say I don’t understand the tier system as much as I should, but they have cancelled the tiers 3-7 of the women’s game without any talk or any discussion with ANY of the clubs. They just cancelled it. So this is really gonna impact the depth of women’s football, it’s gonna impact the stability and sustainability of a sport that is…We’re creeping up a hill – we’ve got enough momentum right now to glide up the hill, if everything keeps going, but it’s not like there's a fucking engine fueling us. The women have been pushing themselves up the hill, and now it's like everything’s been taken away, and it’s scary.
Shireen: Brenda?
Brenda: Yeah, I don’t think there’s enough momentum to go up that hill, really, in most of the world. This isn’t to be negative but it's to recognize how much fundamentally structures are stacked against women’s football. Some of the rules that have made it possible for those women to make some traction are things like FIFA demanding or CONMEBOL demanding certain things. For example, CONMEBOL which governs all of South American football, made it necessary for every team that wanted to compete in the regional club competition for men to have a women’s side, okay? So that change came four years ago, and it was absolutely fundamental. Now what they’re saying, what FIFA and what all the governing bodies are saying, and this was featured in the New York Times and beyond, that they’re gonna have to make regulatory changes to help men’s football recover financially. So we have to be very vigilant and careful about what changes they’re gonna slip into things. And when you say, Linz, and it was such a good point and I’m so glad that you explained it, when you said that they’re doing this without any consultation, people are finding out about this on the internet or whatever, not only will this be done without consultation, it will be done so that we don’t even know. It will be like fine-printed all the way though. I know how these structures work.
One of the things that FIFA’s saying is they’re going to change the transfer window, the way transfers are done, because there’s a restriction on when and how you can do it and it accounts for about $7 billion every time it happens, and when it happens everybody gets a cut, and so those are the types of things they’re thinking about that’s unprecedented, that’s never happened that they’ve changed or said that they’re gonna change this, because they regulate it so hard. So look for those regulatory changes to mean things like, “Oh, we’re gonna loosen up how development money gets spent,” you know? Because of coronavirus. So, now we used to say, okay, this is the first year that women have to have it earmarked, now look for them do to things like ease up on those things. Which…we’re trying to get them, as Linz said, up that hill. Right? And then the final thing I just wanna say, and this should make us all…I’m sorry because I don’t want to make people more upset during this pandemic, but if you can believe it FIFA said, actually, to the top 20 European clubs, that FIFA may have to dip into its reserves to help the clubs.
Lindsay: Oh. Oh. How horrible!
Jessica: With their billions of dollars?
Brenda: Are you kidding me? You’ve never had money to help a single women’s professional club and you’re going to help the wealthiest clubs?! It’s preposterous, it’s outrageous. So anyway, those are the types of things…I think we need to say, if FIFA can reach into its pockets to find ways to help multi-billion dollar owners in Europe they should be able to find a way to help women’s football to not die on the vine.
Shireen: It never fails to strike me how quickly, whenever we talk about FIFA, it definitely transitions into a pseudo-burn-pile. Amira?
Amira: Yeah. I’m similarly focused on things that could be shut down and things that change, and the ways that institutions get cover from COVID-19 to do cuts that were already happening. In particular right now I’m paying a lot of attention to women’s athletic programs at historical Black colleges and universities. HBCUs are going to be hit very hard by COVID-19 and closures could come for a lot of these institutions that have been teetering in terms of stability and financial ability to keep running. One of the things we’ve seen already happen over the last few years is the ending of athletic programs and a lot of women’s teams have been included in these cuts that…It’s been interesting, the ways that they’ve cut women’s teams but tried to remain Title IX compliant in certain instances. So in the last few years alone North Carolina A&T dropped women’s swimming, Hampton dropped women’s bowling, North Carolina Central dropped women’s bowling again, and they’ve been able to do this by saying these are “fringe” sports, but this puts a lot of other sports and institutions on the chopping block.
We’re even seeing HBCUs that have historically been quite protected, like Howard, come under a microscope as other people use this as political football. In particular this week you saw arguments and discussions over the proposed stimulus bill and you saw a lot of Republican representatives single out Howard and part of the relief package that indicated that they were getting $13 million. They singled out Howard and said why does this need to go to Howard, this is not at all about COVID-19, and it completely ignored the fact that 1) Howard has a hospital, a hospital that’s one of DC’s treatment facilities, a hospital that’s 2 miles from the Capitol where a lot of these asinine people are making these arguments. And it’s a level-1 trauma center! Not only that, Howard is a federally-funded institution, because DC is not a state. #TaxationWithoutRepresentation, or whatever. But also because of that, Howard has historically been protected because the federal government is the one that’s giving it its appropriation, largely. And so you see now even Howard is kind of falling into this thing where their appropriation is being called into question, which is funny given the fact that other federally funded institutions in DC such as the school that is geared to the deaf and hard of hearing, nobody said anything about their appropriation. This is just political showmanship.
But this week we saw Howard’s women’s soccer team, for instance, do this fun video juggling toilet paper to each other, and so even sports at these institutions are really going to be squeezed and it particularly bothers me given the long history of women’s programs at historically Black colleges and universities. Obviously this is what I study, but we’re talking about institutions that were the first institutions to provide scholarships for women athletes, well before Title IX when no white university was doing this, they were creating these programs, competitive athletics, and funding them. So to see them particularly squeezed and what I fear will be permanent erasure is particularly troubling in this moment.
Shireen: Thanks, Amira. Just jumping off what Amira’s saying about squeezing and reducing programs potentially, the Canada women’s 7s was scheduled for May 2nd and 3rd, it’s a rugby tournament, and the only rugby tournament in the world outside of like a world series that’s held by World Rugby, and it’s women’s only. And the problem with this is that we see a lot…It’s not that it’s been postponed, it’s that we don’t know when it’ll be rescheduled. This affects the athletes themselves, they don't know if they can work, how do they train, and I get into a little bit of that in my interview with Kia, but just the point of…“Unprecedented” is the word we keep hearing and what that looks like, but there’s a huge amount of anxiety that arises here with that word “unprecedented” because people don’t know…There’s no policy for this. It can be really really stressful. I just wanted to recognize all the athletes out there – we see you, we hear you. Everyone’s super frustrated. Linz?
Lindsay: Yeah, and as we know, the NCAA is sending out all their money to schools and it’s gonna be about $350 million less than a lot of these schools were counting on, so once again as Brenda was saying, we’re just going to monitor every single thing about where these cuts are going to and how they’re impacting women. I know it’s something that we are gonna continue to do on this show, because there are not gonna be enough people monitoring this. I have a feeling people are gonna be much more concerned about the salaries, the millions of dollars that the men are making, but one thing I am excited about is the WNBA had decided to go forward with its draft on April 17th. It’s gonna be held completely virtually; it will be held live on ESPN, though it was originally scheduled for EPSN2 and there was about a 24 hour thing where everyone was like, umm…There are literally no live sports happening right now. [laughter]
I think Howard had a good point – Howard Megdal, friend of the show – where it was like, it wasn't necessarily even malicious, it’s just this hierarchy is so ingrained into things that people don’t even think to question it. There was undetermined movies scheduled to be aired on ESPN while the WNBA draft was happening! But anyways, there was some criticisms, we’re still waiting on some stuff with NCAA eligibility. Obviously we don’t even know what the WNBA season is going to look like, but for me this is a smart and savvy move by them. The league has a lot of momentum coming off its exciting CBA and free agency season. I know that there’s so many people really pumped, and there’s going to be nothing else live sports happening. This is something people can talk about and write about, and goodness…At Burn It All Down and Power Plays I’m making sure that they do. I think it’s really smart of the league, I’m excited to just have something that signals that there might be a future of sports one day, something hopeful to look forward to.
Amira: Well, Lindsay, if you want a future of sports do I have something for you. I don’t know if you guys all heard that the Big 3 is partnering with Big Brother to create a coronavirus reality TV basketball tournament?
Jessica: …No, I did not hear this.
Amira: Yes. Ice Cube and the Big 3–
Lindsay: I’m sorry, can you repeat phrase? It read as a Mad Lib to me.
Amira: Yes. The Big 3 is partnering with Big Brother to create a reality TV basketball tournament that is slated to go in May. This is Ice Cube and the Big 3, their proposal would be to take a certain number of people (it’s undecided) to make sure they’re all testing negative, first and foremost, and then what they would do after they all test negative is quarantine them together in a house that has a basketball court. This should would follow the basketball tournament, in teams of 3, but also the living and mingling together in the house. So, there’s that. But just in case this does happen and you do need a women’s sports fix, you’ll be please to know that there's talked of “possibly also including top women players in the tournament.” So, there’s that.
Shireen: I love Ice Cube.
Lindsay: I love that, even given all this, we still only get a “possibly, maybe.”
Amira: Possibly, maybe women!
Lindsay: [laughing]
Amira: The world is ending, so maybe they’ll be there!
Lindsay: Oh my god.
Shireen: Next up, my interview with Kia Nurse. Hello flamethrowers, it’s Shireen here, and I’m so happy to have one of my all-time favorite guests of Burn It All Down on again. Kia Nurse, welcome!
Kia: Thanks, I’m so glad to be back.
Shireen: Kia Nurse has risen to the top of the basketball world in short order: after four incredibly successful seasons with the University of Connecticut Huskies, whom I stan, Hamilton, Ontario’s Kia Nurse was picked 10th overall in the WNBA 2018 draft class by the New York Liberty, and after a college career which included 2 national titles in addition to several individual accomplishments, Kia’s highly anticipated pro career has already seen her named a WNBA All Star starter in only her second season. She also won the 2019 and 2020 WNBL championships with the University of Canberra Capitals in Australia, and was named the league’s MVP in the 2020 season, and you know that from shoutouts at Burn It All Down as well. Kia remains a staple in the backbone of the Canadian women’s basketball program, having made her first appearance at age 16. Now at 24, Kia has her sights set on the 2021 Olympics hopefully in Tokyo, and her amazing attitude on and off the court has definitely made her a fan favorite and a global superstar. Not to mention, she is a connoisseur of ketchup chips. Hello!
Kia: All of that was very right. [laughs]
Shireen: So yeah, no Tokyo this year. What was that like for you to hear? I know that you shared a tweet that you felt it was the best decision, what was that ride like?
Kia: Yeah, it was a very crazy 24 hours. We’re already in such a time of uncertainty, right? So to be adding extra levels of stress, unnecessary, but obviously with the COC and the decision that was made there, that was a really bold move and a huge step of leadership on the world stage from Canada and I think they took an athlete-centered view, and that’s something you want as an athlete and that’s a type of organization you want to play for. I think that moment, hearing that we weren’t going and just hearing it from social media, that was really really disheartening and obviously upsetting, because in that moment you’re thinking, alright, bigger picture: yes, there’s so many issues happening right now because of this pandemic and the health and the safety and the wellness of everybody is of the utmost priority, and we understand that and we know that. I don’t wanna put myself at risk because I don’t wanna put my family at risk either, and so it was the right decision in that sense – the Olympics and the IOC needed to come to that conclusion as well, and I think the toughest part about it was like, your fate, the fate of your Olympic dreams and hopes are now in the hands of the IOC.
I’ve never met anybody in the IOC, I don’t have much influence on them, it’s not like I can call them up like, hey, can you do this so we can play? That’s where it was super hard to deal with, but I think the 24 hours and them flipping it and saying they were just postponing it, I understand this causes a couple of complications scheduling-wise but certain athletes, maybe they can’t go another year to qualify because their bodies just aren't allowing them to do that at this point. So my heart hurts for them, but at the same time I’m grateful just to have the opportunity to know…We got through all those tournaments, we went through years of having to qualify for the Olympics, so we got guaranteed Tokyo. Then you took it away from us, and now you’re saying we can have it back? So that’s where you become a little bit more grateful. Yeah, it’s a year down the road, but we have an opportunity to still reach our Olympic dreams.
Shireen: Yeah, that’s really profound and important. So just based on what you're saying, and this is actually a question that Jessica wanted me to ask, how much do Canadian athletes actually know about the decision for the COC to not send athletes before it was made public? Did you all know it or did you really find out via social media?
Kia: Personally I found out via social media, me and my teammates did. I think we got an email from Canada Basketball a couple of minutes before, but I’m not checking my email as frequently as some people do, that’s not my first way of looking at things, so had I actually opened the email notification on my phone I would’ve been a little bit more prepared! But yeah, for some of us and obviously for some other athletes which I’ve seen on social media as well, that was kind of the only way we knew, at that was a little bit tough. But at the same time, I understand when there’s an entire federation telling you what to do, it’s hard to keep that under wraps especially with something as big as this decision is, so there’s an understanding there too. But I would’ve liked not Twitter. [laughs]
Shireen: I appreciate you saying that about social media and knowing a little bit ahead of time. Would this have been your first Olympics?
Kia: No, this would’ve been my second. So I went to Rio in 2016, but the hardest part about being an Olympian is that because it’s such a four-year process and your have no idea if you’re gonna get past the first tournament, let alone all five or six that you have to get through to get to the Olympics, that’s where it gets…No matter who’s going through these Olympic trials, and if it’s your first time, I feel for those who if it’s your first time, or if it’s your last time then I really feel for those people, that’s probably super disheartening to hear news like that from not the word of mouth.
Shireen: Yeah, absolutely. I think that you said you had played all your tournaments, in addition to those that haven’t even had a chance to qualify…I know for beach volleyball, a lot of the players’s qualifying tournaments got postponed, but the Canadian women’s basketball team, you guys had already played everything, right?
Kia: Yeah, there was about 53% of Canadians who’ve qualified already in their sport, sports in general in the Olympics, and then there’s another 40-something percent that haven’t.
Shireen: So where were you before this came down, were you heading to camp or preparing to go to camp? What was happening in your life before this whole pandemic, really?
Kia: Yeah, I was actually in Australia and when we went to the Olympic qualifiers in Belgium in February I remember saying to my teammates…Some of them are on the Australian national team so they were going to France to qualify. And I remember saying to them, there’s a virus going on and I feel like we should be paying attention to the fact that we’re traveling – do I need a mask? Do I need this and that. I went out to the grocery store there and I bought wipes and I bought hand sanitizers. We had masks because we had the wildfires in Australia, so I’m like, do I need more masks?
Shireen: Okay. Wow. Okay.
Kia: They were kind of like, well, yeah, I understand what’s happening. One of my teammates who came back with the Australian team actually ended up getting sick. She was in quarantine when she came back, like, as soon as she got off the plane. And that was kind of scary in that sense, so then we played through the rest of our season, that was the start of playoffs, played through that, and then it was time to come home. It wasn't crazy when it was time to come home for me yet, I was probably a week before they started doing travel bans and whatnot, so I was okay just getting on my flights and having a lot of options to come home.
Shireen: Okay, so it’s not like you had to leave suddenly from Australia and then run home…
Kia: Yeah, I was ready to go – I was actually ready to go a couple of days earlier than that, but we had some team events and end of year ceremonies to finish off. When I got home I knew I was in self-quarantine when I got home, but then it kind of got a little bit crazier as I’ve been here.
Shireen: Right. Are you happy as an athlete, and also just as a Canadian, with what’s happening around you? It’s hard to say because, as someone who’s traveled in different places, you noting that the virus was there, did you notice vis à vis Australia vs Europe vs Canada what’s happening? Although, understandably, you were in different places at different stages of this pandemic, but have you noticed a difference in the way things were being handled?
Kia: Yeah, I have my friends in Australia that I still talk to on a daily basis and they’re asking me, well, what’s it look like there? Is everything shut down? We’re not allowed to be in the gyms; they have an offseason there that just got cancelled entirely, so we’ve kind of been having conversations there. Obviously I have my boyfriend, who’s in the States, and he's dealing with what’s going on there as well. I can see the differences, and at the same time I’m sitting here waiting for the WNBA which is based out of the US to tell me what they’re gonna do, and I’m looking at their numbers and what’s happening there, and I’m like, well this isn’t good, isn’t not going to be here anytime soon! So you kind of see what’s happening and you hear about it differently from the different people I’ve been around but I’m pretty happy with what Canada’s doing and understanding that we’re trying to take as many steps as possible to prevent as much as we can. I think we understand that this is gonna come, and it’s gonna come in a wave, but the more proactive that we are about it the less deafening that it can be for us. Obviously we’ve had issues with people understanding what social distancing is, but I think we’re trying our best to make sure that we’re protecting each other and we’re protecting the health and safety of everyone within Canada.
Shireen: Yeah, that’s super important.
Kia: Trudeau’s doing a good job speaking about it. I think there’s some interesting things that are happening…Ford’s surprising people, right? He’s doing some interesting things that I think are gonna help with the spread.
Shireen: Yeah, I did not expect that. Truth be told not a fan of that guy! For those that don’t know, Doug Ford is the premier of Ontario. He didn’t declare a state of emergency, but he shut down non-essential businesses in this province and what’s actually so wildly comforting is he’s deferring to public health specialists and doctors, which is so important right now and not what we see in other places in the world. So I was very shocked about that. It’s hard for me to say nice things about Doug Ford but I appreciate and I get what you’re saying. Just on the WNBA that you were talking about, this is also a question from Jessica: how does one prep for a potential WNBA season mentally and physically, when it’s not even clear that’ll be happening? What do you do to keep up?
Kia: It’s a lot of mental preparation, I would say. Obviously physical preparation as well, but I can only do so many sprints in my front yard and then do so many kettlebell swings and whatnot, right? I think what we’re trying to really remember as athletes is we’ve spent this whole time overseas or wherever you have been, physically building up your strength whether you were in season or out of season, your body is where it was when the season ends, right? It’s not gonna automatically go back to 3 years ago what you were. It’s just about maintaining the gains that we’ve had and the push forward we’ve had. You can do that a lot with body weight stuff and low-weight stuff or whatever low weight equipment you have at your house, I think that’s something that helps me mentally – I’m not gonna lose all the muscle that I just built up, I’m gonna just try and maintain it. It might be slower, I’m not gonna see at much difference, but my job here is to maintain so I can stay in shape and stay healthy, physically.
And then on the mental side it’s the longest waiting game on earth. Every aspect of life right now is the longest waiting game on earth. So you’re kind of sitting here like, well, health officials can’t give a definite date, so I understand. I’m just sitting here waiting. I think every email I’ve ever read in the last 3 months has been “We’re monitoring the situation, we’re monitoring…” And I’m like, yep, we are. We’re still monitoring here.
Shireen: Yeah, yeah.
Kia: And I think that’s important, as long as we’re having conversations and they’re keeping us in the loop of what they’re doing. Obviously we have the WNBA draft now being put on virtually, and that’s something that was told to us. That’s a step in the right direction, we’re still pushing towards a hope of this season going off, whether it be 2 or 3 months down the line, I think they just have contingency plans to keep pushing it further back to the point where, okay, we can’t have a season if it’s this far back.
Shireen: Yeah, just on that, another question I wanted to ask you about the hopefully new season post draft, and just about the draft being online. I remember you were a guest on episode 70, which is one of my favorite episodes, and you talked about how the experience was for you, and the draft class was so pivotal in your journey in professional basketball. It’s great that it’s online…Do you have any advice, can you commiserate with the athletes that are missing out on certain things? This isn’t on the same level, but I have a high school senior and she won't get to captain her soccer team because the season’s ended, the school’s done for the rest of the year. That’s hard for people, whether it’s a draft or their high school final season, whatever sport – prom’s being cancelled all over the place! Do you have any advice for these athletes that are out there?
Kia: My heart goes out, especially when the NCAA tournament went down. I was in college for four years, I know what it takes to even get to that point, and obviously that’s dreams and accomplishments which, for some people, that might've been it for them. Others would’ve been fortunate to keep going with their careers, but that’s not the case for everybody. So my heart goes out to everyone who’s had sporting events cancelled. I think I read something on Instagram today about a youth 13 girl’s team that were first in their league and they would’ve been playing for a championship this weekend. I know that’s tough. It’s really hard to think about it, but we’re all in the same sitaution. All of us have something that we’re sacrificing or that we’re not able to do because of what’s happening, but I would say to try not to think of it as a “last” or that this is never gonna happen-type thing, because this is really disheartening. I was the same way with being pulled out of the Olympics.
Try and find somewhere in it that there's gonna be a bigger picture, there’s a brighter picture at the end of this. I have no idea what it looks like now, and everybody’s brighter picture is gonna be different, but the universe kind of works itself out and what you've missed out on now I think will either be something that comes in a different way down the line or it might just be a blessing in disguise somehow. You’re getting more time to understand…I have to be myself not as a basketball player, I’m getting more time with her and trying to figure out what she would do if there was not sports in the world and what I like outside of that, right? There’s a bright side to things in trying to figure it out, but it’s not the end of the world. You're alive, you're healthy and you’re well, and that’s something that can't be taken for granted, especially at this time.
Shireen: Yeah, that’s so important, and your positivity is so enlightening and needed, and thank you so much for that. Lindsay wanted me to ask you one question: how excited are you for Sabrina Ionescu to get to the league?
Kia: Yeah! Super excited. Obviously I think she’s done so much for the game at the NCAA level, she’s brought a lot of attention and eyes to the women’s game and that’s huge, especially for us and what we’ve been trying to do over the last couple years. So that’s really exciting and what I’m hoping now is that as the WNBA continues or whenever our season starts, people start to follow their favorite college players or people they really loved in college into the WNBA to get their basketball fix in the summer when the NCAA isn’t on and the NBA isn’t on. I think that would be huge for us just in terms of visibility and continuing to grow our league. I think Sabrina has a unique ability to help with that because of how much attention she’s brought to the league and attention that she’s brought to the game, so that is very very exciting. I think she’ll do well. [laughs] I think she’ll come out…Obviously everybody has a learning curve and I think she has the toughest position in the game as a point guard to come into the WNBA, but I think if anybody's ready to take on that challenge it’s her.
Shireen: My last question for you is: I know you must miss your teammates on Canada Basketball so much – do you all have Google Hangouts? I’ve seen some, like the Canadian national women’s soccer team is doing something like that, some former players. I know that the Canadian women's softball team put out this really cute video on Instagram and on Twitter about them actually passing the ball to each other virtually, it was great. Are y’all doing that?
Kia: Well clearly we’re not as creative as these other teams. [laughs] We have a very active group chat on WhatsApp and it’s really random stuff. Sometimes I don’t even know…But people really enjoy a good meme, so if a good meme gets thrown in there or, I mean, we’ve been doing some team meetings with everybody, coaching staff included, so sometimes I feel like we have to be ourselves in the group chat but be serious when we’re in a Zoom meeting online [Shireen laughing] so that’s where it gets a little bit funny. Like with Instagram, we’re just watching everybody’s Instagrams, and I’m like, which ones of you are on TikTok, it’s a mess.
Shireen: That’s amazing. I had the good fortune of actually meeting Kayla Alexander recently and she was amazing, so I’m following her…And she's baking. Are you baking right now at all?
Kia: The only thing I baked was buffalo chicken dip, and that was fabulous.
Shireen: Oh, nice.
Kia: I’m not eating well right now, it’s not a good thing but…
Shireen: Is anybody, though!?
Kia: We’re all gonna look the same when this is done, so it’s fine.
Shireen: I wanted to thank you for being so candid and so sincere. I just adore you and I can’t wait to get up to see you in New York when this is done. One of my trips I actually had planned was a girl’s trip before this pandemic broke out was to try to see a Chicago vs New York game this summer!
Kia: Yeah.
Shireen: I would’ve loved to, I have your jersey, and also I’m pretty sure Kayla and Gabby are now both in Chicago and that just would’ve been wildly fun to see and to be there. I still hope that happens for me, that was definitely one of my bucket list things and hopefully it’ll happen and the season will come on at some point. There’s fans out there that miss the league so much and are really rooting for you and also Canada Basketball, so thank you so, so much for doing this.
Kia: Aww.
Shireen: And being your awesome self. You’re phenomenal, you know I adore you.
Kia: Aw, thank you. It’s always a pleasure! It’s so much fun coming on this one.
Shireen: [laughs] We’ll talk soon, anytime. Seriously girl, anytime.
Kia: Well, I have a lot of free time now. [laughs]
Shireen: Alright, we’ll take it. Talk to you soon, Kia.
Kia: Thank you.
Shireen: Bye.
Kia: Bye.
Shireen: Next up, Brenda’s interview with Dr. Natalia Petrzela.
Brenda: I am thrilled to finally welcome to Burn It All Down Dr. Natalia Mehlman Petrzela, who we have been sort of fan-womaning for the last few years since we met her at the Berks that were at Hofstra. She’s associate professor of history at the new school in New York and co-host of the fantastic Past Present pod. She’s author of Classroom Wars and a new book in progress called Fit Nation that is gonna come out at University of Chicago Press. Welcome to Burn It All Down, Natalia!
Natalia: Hi, thank you for having me! I’m so thrilled. I too have been fan-womaning you all since we met that fateful day at Hofstra a few years ago.
Brenda: So I have to ask as a historian, first of all – I feel like if a different co-host was doing this interview they would start off in a different place, but forgive me. As a historian, you’ve really researched intensely the relationship between healthcare, health and fitness, physical exercise and activity, gender…How do you look at this moment of the corona pandemic?
Natalia: Oh god, it is so complicated. One of the things that is sort of a key analytical thread of all those things you just described is that what I’m interested in is how America has become a nation obsessed with fitness and working out as a virtue. Like I always say when I tell people I’m writing a book about fitness culture, they immediately respond, “Ugh, I should work out” or “I’m gonna go tomorrow” or “I’m gonna be better about it.” Like, with this kind of moral guilt. Working out is a good thing, and I’m not writing a you-should-work-out-more kind of finger wagging book at all! What I’m interested in is the kind of rise and development with that obsession as America has actually evolved to not be a particularly fit place, as health and fitness has become another marker of inequality in our country. Not to give away a total spoiler, that has a lot to do like many things in our society with privatization, that even as we’ve come to celebrate working out as a virtue more and more, it’s essentially available only through private industry. Phys Ed is extremely defunded. Public recreation, community fitness also really stripped away as a public resource. So that's the context for everything that I’m looking at.
As for this coronavirus moment, I think in some ways its revealing some of those inequalities but also I’m hoping it’s an opportunity for us all to realize as a culture how important health, wellbeing, the opportunity to pursue fitness for yourself, how important that is as a human right, and how not available that is to a lot of Americans. Hopefully I think when so many of us, regardless of class or race or gender etc, feel our health so imperiled, hopefully this will be a moment to revisit some of the assumptions and some of these access issues.
Brenda: And from my perspective as well, with this particular pandemic, it seems to me one of those things that could prompt a national debate about healthcare because of how infectious it is and the importance of everyone having healthcare.
Natalia: Yeah, I think that’s a really important point and that's so much bigger in a crucial way than just talking about fitness, like whether you have access to a gym, right? The healthcare system is so right now up for debate because it’s so clear in a pandemic situation like this how sparse our coverage is and how hard it is to get good care and how ill-equipped we are, humiliatingly so for such a wealthy nation, how ill-equipped we are to take care of ourselves and each other. So yeah, that healthcare issue I actually think is way more important right now than whether your gym is closed or what kind of digital fitness you have access to, that’s really the big picture for my question that we should all be asking and pushing in an election year to be the central issue, I think.
Brenda: Absolutely but also on the daily as somebody who’s trying to teach and homeschool 3 children, that did have my gym taken from me, correctly, appropriately…You know, one of the things we talk a lot about on this show is the relationship between mental health and physical health and I just wanted to ask you, if people are struggling with one or the other but starting with mental health, how do you get up for it? How do you overcome that to start the program of fitness, to get yourself motivated?
Natalia: Right now in corona-time, or in general?
Brenda: Both? Either way.
Natalia: So, one of the things that I think is really jarring about the moment that we’re in right now, and I compare it to our very recent historical moment of the 2016 presidential election: right after Trump was elected, so many people were reeling emotionally, politically, and a very easy response to that was “Well, you wanna feel better? Get out of your head, get in your body, go to a yoga class, find community, go pound it out on the treadmill,”etc. And this whole fitness/wellness base actually assumed real importance in people’s lives beyond just getting thin or looking pretty or taking a selfie – it was really self-care in this most elevated sense. And for me, and it sounds like for you, I know as a runner, too, it was very very important and I can’t tell you how many interviews I did talking about the rise of those spaces in 2016.
In this corona-moment where people are also feeling scared and shocked and unmoored and terrified, one of the things that I find particularly disorienting, particularly having just experienced 2016, is that all of a sudden those spaces…Oh my god, a hot yoga class? They’re the most dangerous ones to go to!
We’re being told that actually that’s selfish of you to go somewhere like that when those places were still open a couple of weeks ago, and 2) that actually poses a huge danger to your own health and to those of others. For me, that was some real cognitive dissonance to say the least, right? I’m proud of the fact that I was going pretty late in the game to the gym, because for me my mental health is just such an important part of my life, and probably beyond the point that it was a smart move to do so from a public health perspective I was there with my wife who’s on the treadmill pounding it out at 8pm. So now to better answer your question, what am I doing now or what can people do, there’s no question right now that we should not be exercising in groups, as wonderful as the group is. I do think particularly in situations like you and me where we have children at home and families and are in it all the time, the power, if you’re in an area where this is still possible, of going outside by yourself…For me it’s been running recently, and I hate running in the winter, I don’t even like running that much. I’ve been out there for an hour, hour and a half, just to have that time in the fresh air and by myself. It’s less about the run and more about the solitude and the outdoors and I think that’s something super powerful.
But again, not to give so much my scholarly perspective but that of just what I’m doing in my life, today there were 45 minutes when my children both had some sort of online learning commitment and it happened to be sunny out, and I just pulled up a workout on my phone and went in the backyard for 40 minutes, and just doing that changed my whole day. It’s so easy to think you don't have time for that, and I don’t always have time for 40 minutes, but I think making the time for 15, 20, 30 minutes of movement – sometimes even with my kids but preferably on my own. It is a real game changer. And I think it’s really good practice for ourselves. You don’t need to scroll Twitter for another 10 minutes, you don’t need to answer that email for another 15 or 20, but we tell ourselves that we have to and that it’s so urgent, but really that 15-20 minutes could make a big difference in our life if we committed it to movement. And I mean in the broadest sense of any sort, really, although these days I mean…Outside and on your own if you’re living in a crowded house is not a bad idea.
Brenda: What do you think will happen with gyms, kind of on a national level after this?
Natalia: Really good question, and I think on the one hand right now so many people are realizing, “God, I missed the gym” or “I like to go to the gym” or these few moments of working out digitally are actually so important or grounding for me. So, in some ways you can imagine a kind of boom happening after this, right? And people really getting re-energized to participate in those spaces. On the other hand, economically, the industry is a tough, tough space, particularly in expensive real estate markets, and I have no doubt that a lot of the smaller studios in expensive real estate markets are probably gonna fold because there’s no way that they can keep paying rent and paying their people and stay closed for possibly months on end. A lot of fitness trainers are really really having a hard time right now. They’re pivoting to online but so many businesses are doing free online programming, so it becomes kind of hard for a lot of people who are also financially struggling to say, well, I’m gonna keep paying a trainer 50 or 60 or $100 an hour for an online experience when there’s all this free online content, and that's a real conversation in the fitness community now.
I've seen both fitness professionals who I really really respecting saying, you know what, in this moment people are struggling and need what I’ve got to give, I’m creating all this really great free online content. I’ve seen other people I respect tremendously say: don’t give this all all away for free, I’ve just had all my clients not be able to meet with me, I’ve just had all the places I teach classes pull me from the schedule! And there are very few labor protections in those environments. “All I have is digital, why are you all giving this away for free? Nobody will sign up and keep this industry going.” And I really really see both sides of this and I think it’s extremely challenging and there are gonna be reverberations in that industry for a long time on the labor side, and that’s one that doesn’t get emphasized enough, I think, when we think about what fitness means in our culture, the people who do what I call the ‘work’ of working out: the instructors, the trainers, the managers, etc. A lot of them are in a real proletariat position and that doesn't often get recognized.
Brenda: Mm-hmm. There’s a whole discussion too just in general that might affect more working class contingent labor in fitness, which is the fact that the essential employees right now [laughs] besides the bankers are minimum wage employees!
Natalia: Yeah.
Brenda: What does that mean? What does that reveal about the real skeleton of society?
Natalia: Yeah, I think that’s right but I don’t think anybody is calling personal trainers essential workers right now, right?
Brenda: Oh no no no, no, but I mean the things that you miss, the things that you love, the things that you see as “essential” sort of lays bare what that is. And so it’ll be interesting to see as there’s kind of discussions about workers rights that hopefully stick around, how that might address the situation, the very precarious labor conditions of people working in gyms, working in fitness more broadly.
Natalia: Yeah, I think that’s right. There's this piece that I wrote a while ago in Public Seminar and one of the points that I made there about – and I've said this elsewhere too – about why there isn’t a lot of labor solidarity among fitness professionals, is it these two reasons: 1) It’s a pretty new field in terms of people seeing this as their profession. Like, when I do oral histories with people that made their careers in very big ways in the 1980s or 90s in this world, none of them really envisioned that they were gonna be fitness professionals – they kind of were auditioning for dance or other things and were teaching on the side, and then all of a sudden they’re on magazine covers and this is what they do, you know? It sort of happened in that way. That’s one reason, and that's beginning to change, but not entirely. It’s a bit of a side hustle for a lot of people, particularly women, whose labor is always devalued for many reasons we can discuss.
But then another reason is also that in the fitness world, often rebranded as the “wellness” world, so much a part of what you put out there and being successful is the image of living your best life, and so if you’re on social media all day and you’re in front of the studio and working with clients and you’re projecting “I’m healthy, I’m happy, I’m fulfilled, I’m balanced,” all those things, that’s part of the reason why people gravitate towards you: they think fitness is a path to all of those things. The minute you start saying “I feel sick, my joints hurt, I don’t have sick leave, I need to get up at 4 in the morning in my neighborhood and travel hours to teach a 6am class in an affluent neighborhood.” The minute they start point out all those very real struggles that they face, that begins to puncture the image of “Hey look at me, living my best life.” It’s a huge risk to take professionally, but on the other hand not taking that risk perpetuates this image of perfection which can undermine possibilities for real activism and solidarity, so it's a really really tough thing. I think that now I've seen actually some changes happening and more outspokenness about the precariousness of this kind of labor.
Just the other day someone tagged me on Instagram that Les Mills, which is a very big fitness company that has branded content in gyms all over the world. So if you go to a body pump class in London it’ll be the same body pump class pretty much you’d take in Kansas City, and that’s because it's branded group fitness. So, Les Mills and Zumba which I'm sure your listeners have heard of, they wrote a letter together to congress saying that fitness trainers and fitness professionals should be included in any kind of bailout because they are part of this precarious, contingent labor force. There hasn't been much of that kind of activism – yes, among some yoga instructors, but I think we might be in a new chapter and I think that is really awesome.
Brenda: Mm-hmm, that’s such an important analysis, and I appreciate it. Okay, couple fun questions to get away…just to end with a little lightness in the dark times. Shireen asks: have you had any pet faux-pas? Faux-paws?
Natalia: I have no pets, all I have…Oh, faux-paws, that’s really cute.
Brenda: [laughing]
Natalia: I have two children who make lots of Zoom appearances.
Brenda: Mine too.
Natalia: They would be very mad if I called them pets, but I think it’s actually okay. I’m teaching these YouTube Live fitness classes on Thursdays at noon eastern, if anyone wants to join me.
Brenda: Yeah!
Natalia: You know, usually when I do online content part of what you're trying to show is a professional environment: you’ve got the lighting and makeup and all these things, and I think right now real life is that we’ve got kids around, we’ve got life happening, and we’re all just trying to make it and we’re all just trying to do our best. I’m like, you know what, these are my kids, come in! You wanna do a few moves? It’s totally fine, because I actually think that’s what we’re living with and if we’re gonna wait for perfection it’s not gonna happen. You and I are talking, and we scheduled this when? When all our kids are in bed. I can still hear mine talking in the background, but you know what? It’s okay, because otherwise this wouldn’t happen. If I waited for that perfect moment to do my YouTube workout it would not happen, because there is no quiet right now, and that’s okay, you know? We’re just all trying to do our best and it really is enough, I think we gotta remember that.
Brenda: And I’d like to ask, because I am a big big outside runner, what are you listening to when you’re running right now?
Natalia: I just finished listening to this amazing podcast which is called Dying for Sex, have you listened to it?
Brenda: Not yet.
Natalia: Oh my god. I warn you, it’s a little dark for the times that we're in right now, but it’s really amazing. It’s a Wondery podcast about two women who are best friends and one gets diagnosed with stage four breast cancer and decides to go on these…Listen, she’s very funny about it, and she goes on all these sexual escapades to feel alive again, and so she’s telling all these funny stories, and it’s a really beautifully done podcast. I do think maybe you need something lighter in these moments than that podcast right now, but I just finished listening to it and it kept me going for a lot of miles so I do recommend it.
Brenda: That's very cool, we love other podcast recommendations. And finally is there anything we should be looking for that you’re working on right now, new stuff?
Natalia: Yes, between educating my children and being a janitor and lunch lady and all those things these days, I’m trying to finish this book Fit Nation which hopefully will still be out next year if I can just get it done. And then I also have been working on a brand new podcast with Niki and Neil, my co-hosts from Past Present, which I can’t say much about, but it's different! It's narrative history, it’s about the 80s, it’s frickin’ awesome. It should be out at the end of April – I say should because the whole world is up in the air right now, but yeah, definitely look for that.
Brenda: We sure will. Well, Natalia, thank you so much for coming on Burn It All Down.
Natalia: Thank you so much, I feel really honored. You guys always have great guests, so thank you.
Shireen: Onto our favorite part of the show, the burn pile. Lindsay, can you get us started on what you’re going to burn?
Lindsay: Of course! It’s our good friends at the US Olympic and Paralympic Committee. So, first of all a mini burn I guess goes to the IOC which might make another appearance on this burn pile, but Gwen Berry’s quote to me was she was complaining about how they waited so long to make this decision that it really impacted athletes’ lives. They kept waiting, she compared it to a toxic relationship, waiting for the IOC to make a decision on the Olympics this year, and it really threw everything off. Now a lot of athletes are trapped in places indefinitely where they can’t travel back to their families, because of the virus, whereas if this decision was made at an earlier date even just a few weeks ago they could’ve planned contingencies a lot better, so she was not happy with that. But also, the US Olympic and Paralympic Committee…This week there’s a huge stimulus bill that will mainly go to big corporations that the US congress passed this week, and Will Hobson reported at The Washington Post that one of the organizations trying to get a taste of the pie was the US Olympic and Paralympic Committee who requested $200 million from the stimulus package, sent a message to congress saying, “I know you guys are swamped, I’m just circling back…” [laughing] Which I just think is the funniest thing.
So, of course athletes need assistance but $50 million of this requested help would’ve gone to the top aspiring athletes, where as the other $150 million would’ve gone to the national governing bodies, the non-profits that are all pretty corrupt, as we’ve discussed regularly on the show. While I do think we need to figure out a way to better help these athletes, obviously this was the wrong way to go about it, through lobbying efforts and through a group that's never been federally funded before. John Manly, who’s a leading attorney for a lot of the Nassar victims, said “This is not about athletes, this is about the blue-blazer white-shoe-wearing country club types of the USOC and these national governing bodies,” and I agree with him. This was just not the time and this was not the way to go about it, and so once again the US Olympic and Paralympic Committee is tone deaf and they don’t actually have the best interests of athletes in mind, they just wanna make sure they still get their corporate hotels comped. Burn.
All: Burn.
Shireen: Brenda?
Brenda: Okay, we can just stay on the Olympics. [Shireen laughing] Building off of Linz’s burn, I was really sad to read that at least 7 people have tested positive for the coronavirus that participated in an event that the IOC began on March 14th, a boxing event. Just let that sink in. Even the Premier League had already cancelled by that point, and they continued to hold this event, the Olympic Committee of Turkey, and this comes from the New York Times and other outlets like the BBC, so this made pretty major news that the Olympic Committee in Turkey believed that the 3 boxers and coach all caught it while participating in this boxing qualifying event. These boxers, precisely as Lindsay referred to, because the Olympics were not called off until so late, the boxers had absolutely no choice if they wanted to qualify but to participate in this qualifying tournament, and so I would like to burn everyone’s ridiculousness but particularly Thomas Bach, president of the IOC.
All: Burn.
Shireen: Burn. I’m up next, and I’m real mad about this. I’m mad about many things, and there’s many layers of my anger, but I’ll start with Dana White and the UFC. We all know he’s a terrible, terrible person, but what made me really angry and I wanna shout out the work of Zidan Karim, my friend, he’s a Vancouver-based sportswriter who focuses on martial arts and UFC stuff. He had written an article for the Guardian about how badly the UFC was handling the coronavirus pandemic, and this was March 15th. Just to top it off, I’m even more angry because a coupe of days ago Marc Raimondi of ESPN published an article about Khabib Nurmagomedov who is this world-famous UFC fighter, and the focus of his piece was on Ramadan. Okay – I, for one, like pieces that are well-written from different perspectives about athletes that are fasting in the holy month of Ramadan, which is a month for Muslims, but not right now! Not in a global pandemic. Like, I’m really not interested right now, especially when Muslim scholars in the entire world who never agree on anything agree that all mosques should actually be shut right now, when the holiest place for Muslims, like in Mecca, Kaaba, is closed, because of a global pandemic.
These people are actually talking about setting a fight, and they want to set it before Ramadan starts, which is end of April. So basically Nurmagomedov was like, “yes, I would really like the focus of my concentration to be Ramadan” – okay bruh, you wanna talk about survival of global pandemic virus that’s killing people? Save it for the fucking cage! The worst part is, Dana White is pushing for this fight to happen in April. He’s taking leadership from, my god, President Cheeto, and it’s like, terrible. All of this is terrible, terrible, because he's conflating his commitment to religion, which infuriates me when men use this for their own convenience, but also not paying attention to the lives and the welfare of so many people. It's all terrible, and in this article that Marc Raimondi did which I do appreciate, I would’ve appreciated more under different circumstances, ie. people not dying all over the world, was Belal Muhammad who's another UFC fighter who’s Muslim but who’s not the same level as Nurmagomedov. He talks about how he doesn't have the pull to be able to say I’m not gonna fight between this period and this period because of Ramadan. Belal Muhammad has to go fight for financial reasons, so there’s another layer of it being so shitty financially for some athletes who are not well known and don't feel like they have a choice. I hate all of this. I especially hate Dana White – you’re a jerk. You really are the highest order of twatwaffle. I can't fucking stand you, and you’re trying to literally organize a fight – nobody cares about your fucking fight, Dana, I hate you. Go to the burn pile, all of it. Burn.
All: Burn.
Lindsay: I can’t believe we pulled out the t-word. Oh my god. Whew, okay.
Shireen: I’m all fiery and mad. Amira.
Amira: Yeah, I’m here for it. I wanna burn Delaware North and Bruins owner Jeremy Jacobs…I’m so irritated. We've all talked about this burn a number of times, the way that owners have acted with their arena workers. So, Delaware North is the owner and operator of the TD Garden where both the Bruins and the Celtics play. So, the Bruins were the last team in the NHL to announce any sort of fund or relief or help towards their arena workers. They were so delayed that Massachusetts attorney general Maura Healey called them out very publicly, saying “Jeremy Jacobs is one of the richest people in the world. This is shameful.Workers should contact our office to ensure their rights are being protected throughout this. As a fan, I am deeply disappointed.” Me fucking too.
After being the last organization to announce their plans to support employees, their announcement itself was a bunch of bullshit. Basically Jacobs, who’s worth upwards of $3 billion said that him and his family established a $1.5 million fund for team employees and TD Garden workers, but – asterisk here – this fund would only be available if the Bruins’ six remaining regular games are not played. Meaning nothing can be accessed right now because he’s waiting to see what the league decides to do about these six remaining games, and that could take weeks! It could take months! And people don’t have that amount of time. You can’t tell your landlord, okay, weeks. When I get paid in two months from this fund then maybe you’ll get your rent. People can’t survive like that.
To top it all off, Delaware North who again owns TD Garden has now announced that starting as of April 1st all part-time employees – again, these arena workers – are completely laid off, all of them. In addition, 68 full time employees are on temporary leave, and another 82 full time employees have had their salaries reduced. So what you have here is Delaware North, Jeremy Jacobs, both combining to create an atmosphere for TD Garden workers where they have no pay, no recourse, no relief fund. The largest amount of money they have going to them was a crowdfunded gofundme, otherwise known in the United States as our biggest healthcare provider – a crowdfunded gofundme that Bruins players themselves are donating to. That is the only money that they have any access to because Jeremy Jacobs is so greedy that he puts strings on the fund to help people like he’s not worth billions of dollars! The greed in capitalism, it’s killing us! It’s fucking killing us. I don’t know. Burn it down.
All: Burn.
Shireen: Jess.
Jessica: Okay. Last and least, I wanna talk about the experts out here taking about stuff – this is my mini burn. I learned this morning that at some point in the last few days…What did you call Donald Trump, Shireen? Cheeto something?
Shireen: President Cheeto, yeah.
Jessica: Thank you. He reached out to former Yankee Alex Rodriguez for advice on the coronavirus response–
Amira: So dumb.
Lindsay: Talk about Mad Libs! Just like…
Jessica: So, mini burn there. But my main one is, I wanna throw on the burn pile metaphorically, as Brenda always says, Clay Travis. I don’t know how to describe him, and I thought about this a long time, I was like, dude…bro…I guess technically he’s a Fox Sports pundit. Samer Kalaf in a piece at Outline a month ago he wrote about Travis and COVID-19. He described Travis this way: “Travis is not an epidemiologist or a medical professional of any kind. He’s a Nashville-based radio host and the mush of a little-watched gambling show on Fox Sports 1.” Okay. Travis has built a career on telling anyone who thinks that sports and politics belong in the same conversation to instead “stick to sports.” Travis of course has made his whole career off of being a politically conservative talking head railing against the libs, all under the guise of talking sports. He has a book titled, Republicans Buy Sneakers Too: How the Left Is Ruining Sports with Politics and the cover is, I shit you not, Donald Trump dunking a basketball Michael Jordan-style over Colin Kaepernick.
Amira: Ew, ew, ew!
Brenda: Awful.
Jessica: To say the least, I’m not a Clay Travis fan, and now in this moment of global pandemic–
Shireen: Is anyone?
Jessica: Well, apparently! This is the problem.
Lindsay: Unfortunately, yes.
Jessica: And now in this moment of global pandemic Travis has apparently…I only know this because people screenshot him, I think I blocked him a long time ago. Travis has apparently continued to parrot Trump-led GOP talking points, so he’s gone from “I believe the coronavirus is overrated and we are overreacting to it because it is a new and novel fear. The flu happens every year and affects far more people than the coronavirus does” in late February, to saying things like, “Thankfully we are finally starting to have a conversation about balancing our health concerns with the state of our economy” earlier this week. He is literally Fox News doing sports I guess, so man, shut up! [Lindsay laughing] I assume people who love Travis are not listening to this podcast but just in case anyone is, I just feel like I need to say: don’t take medical or health advice from this person! Honestly, don’t take any advice from this person, but certainly not when it comes to people’s lives or their care or in terms of economics, my goodness. Travis should, dare I say it, stick to sports. [disgusted noise] Burn.
All: Burn.
Shireen: After all that fiery burning we are going to raise up some amazing people. Honorable mentions to Spain’s female football referees, many of whom are on the front line against the coronavirus as medical professionals – beautiful article in Yahoo! Sports this week about that.
I’d like to mention Paige Bueckers, Gatorade High School Girls Player of the Year, congratulations to her.
South Carolina’s Dawn Staley is the AP Coach of the year, congratulations to Coach Staley.
Also, congratulations to Basketball Australia who announced this week that have won the bid to host the 2022 Basketball World Cup in Sydney, Australia.
We wish a happy retirement to three stalwarts of the Jordanian women’s football team that began in 2005: Yasmeen Khair and Shorouq Shazly and Captain Stephanie Al Naber. Al Naber is the most capped player in the team’s history with 128 appearances and now chairs the women’s committee in the Jordanian FA.
Congrats to all the university athletes, NCAA and NAIA, who won First Team All-American honours including Jincy Dunne of Ohio State women’s hockey, and Brittany Brewer of Texas Tech Basketball, Grace Berry of Concordia University Basketball, and Sydney Kopp of DePaul Basketball. Congratulations to you.
Can I get a drumroll please?
[drumroll]
Our badass woman of the week is Brazilian Futsal legend Amandinha who made history and has been named Player of the Year of her sport 6 times in a row: that’s more than anyone else EVER in football, futsal and beach football! Congratulations to you.
Whew. What’s good? Lindsay.
Lindsay: [laughing] Sorry, that’s just such a loaded question right now! Just like the past two days it’s been like, alright, okay, this is, uh…I’ve started to see that anyone who has a yard or a front porch, because I live in an apartment, so I pretty much hate every single person on earth right now when they’re posting their photos. But anyways, what is good though is Zoom calls with friends that have helped me – or FaceTime or Google Hangouts, always a crapshoot which one exactly, but this has been a good time to connect with my friends. It’s my mom’s 70th birthday, so even though she still has no idea what a podcast is I want to wish her a happy birthday. She still uses ‘podcast’ and ‘newsletter’ interchangeably when she’s talking to me about my work.
And speaking of newsletter, I might as well…Work is all I can think about these days, so adding freelancers to the mix. What I’ve decided to do is to use the money that I’d budgeted to do travel for Power Plays and instead I’m redirecting that to freelancers. That has been a big adjustment for me because I’m talking through pitches with people and editing and planning out a calendar. It’s a big adjustment but it’s very excited to be bringing some new voices to Power Plays. It’s exciting, it’s scary, and I think this week you’ll start to see the first few freelancer contributions coming in and yeah, we’ll see. That is exciting to me, it’s trying to figure out a different way to grow my business during this time and I can't think of any better way than in investing in other writers and investing in more writing about women’s sports, so that’s all happening at powerplays.news. That's exciting.
Shireen: Awesome, that’s awesome. Bren?
Brenda: I’m about to try really hard to sound genuine and positive…
Jessica: You can do it, Bren.
Brenda: Thank you. I’m grateful for my training in working alone. [laughs] Years of writing a PhD history dissertation, it’s very solitary. I will say that it’s been okay to work alone, that’s pretty good. What’s keeping me together is my students who are Zooming in, who are trying their best, who try to come to their Zoom university with a smile. I put Bad Bunny in a Pokemon outfit behind me, and then I line up my head so it looks like I’m in the Pokemon thing–
Amira: It’s epic.
Brenda: It was hilarious to see them log on and then spit out their coffee, and so I really appreciated them showing up, those who can. Of course my kids and all of Burn It All Down people that let me do things like send them pictures of me in bunny onesies in my Zoom.
Amira: Did you see his latest video, Bren? That would make you happy.
Brenda: It does make me happy. Bad Bunny always makes me happy, always makes me happy. And my kids and, Lindsay, please don’t hate me, the fact that I have a yard, I’m very grateful.
Lindsay: I’m sorry, I do, I don’t hate you, but I do, yes.
Brenda: I know. I’m so sorry.
Lindsay: Enjoy it. If you’re not enjoying it that’s even worse.
Brenda: I am, we’re playing a lot of soccer outside and doing our best and so that’s what's good.
Shireen: I love you Bren, and Bad Bunny. Brenda, we need to do a duo, that would make me really happy and be part of my what’s good. I am so bored in so many ways and I’m trying to entertain myself. I started doing fashion shows on Instagram of myself and whatever I’m wearing.
Jessica: It’s very good.
Shireen: Thank you. Whatever I’m wearing.
Lindsay: You all might be surprised, but she’s very committed to it. [laughing]
Shireen: My kids…I get eye rolls. I’ve done everything to wear on social media, my friend Bilqis Abdul-Qaadir texted me, she’s like, put your phone all the way down, specifically after I unintentionally or perhaps intentionally proposed to Serge Ibaka, and that tweet got quite a lot of attention. Which was like, oops. Again, I love my kids, they were just eye-rolling. The other thing that brought me a lot of joy this week was the Rotterdam Symphony Orchestra performing Ode to Joy, Beethoven’s Ode to Joy via Zoom. I mean, our team meetings for Burn It All Down are wild and there’s only 5 or 6 of us – they actually performed this beautiful piece of music via digital whatever. I’m not huge on Beethoven’s music, I prefer Vivaldi, but my point is that this particular piece just made me cry, the way it was done and their commitment to bringing that joy to the world, and I’m holding on tight to music and those happy things these days.
My kids are going to their dad’s, and we’ve adjusted the schedule so they’re gone for a little bit longer so it’s gonna be a tough two weeks for me, because that’s a really long time. But again, yay for digital stuff keeping us seeing the faces and hearing the voices of not just my Burn It All Down family but for all my digital family and friends, I love y’all very very much. I just wanted to shout out happy 14th birthday to my baby, Mustafa, I love you very much and your napkin-making creativity makes dinner so much better and so much more fun. I love you very much. Amira?
Amira: Yeah, so everybody it seems right now is making use of Instagram Live for DJing, parties, concerts – I just wanna highlight two that made me smile this week. One, Tori Kelly and JoJo combined and JoJo, who – Boston girl! – she is like middle school nostalgia for me. She’s really good at remixing songs like her cover of Marvin’s Room by Drake is like, my favorite thing. Anyways, she rewrote her first hit which was Leave, when they go “Get out!” – anyways, she remixed that to do a coronavirus one that was “Stay in” and I really appreciated that. So that made me happy. Then just last night Tamia and Deborah Cox, who are apparently Canadian, go Black Canadians…
Shireen: Deborah Cox, she’s from Toronto!
Amira: Yes, I discovered this. Shireen’s people. Anyways, they dueted a cover of Count On Me by Whitney Houston which was just phenomenal and vey soothing. I also watched Uncorked on Netflix which is new, it’s with Niecy Nash and Courtney Vance and a bunch of other newcomers, and it’s about the relationship between a Black father and son in Memphis and the son's desire to be a sommelier. I learned so much about what it takes to be in the wine business, it was fascinating. Then I just wanted to send a shoutout to one of my many moms, Nancy, who has been retired but is somehow also an essential employee right now, so not quite sure how she’s done this, but she’s basically working on a volunteer basis for the housing authority in our part of western Massachusetts. She’s part of the task force that deals with the emergency assistance and public health and homelessness and housing insecurity, and so she is still going to work as a volunteer multiple days a week to make sure everybody who needs housing during this time has that, as we all try to fight this pandemic. So I just want to shout her out. Also, I got really comfortable pants from Target. And that makes me happy.
Shireen: [laughs] Amazing. Jess?
Jessica: Yeah, this is a harder week, for sure. I guess my big thing is that we timed this all perfectly, we just screened in our back porch and we got a ping pong table for it, so we’ve been having family ping pong tournaments. It’s a little rough because Aaron is really good at ping pong and is really hard to beat, but yesterday I only lost by four points in one match, so I’m almost there.
Shireen: Really!
Jessica: He doesn’t let anybody win, that’s just not part of his ethos. I guess my quarantine goal is to beat Aaron. Literally yesterday we played and I won the first point in the match and I yelled “I’m winning” so loud that the entire neighborhood could probably have heard me. But that’s just been a lot of fun and that’s probably the best thing that's been going on right now.
Shireen: That’s it for this week in Burn It All Down. Although we are done for now, you can always burn all day and all night with our fabulous array of merchandise including mugs, pillows, tees, hoodies, bags – what better way to crush toxic patriarchy in sports and sports media and even surviving this stay at home by getting someone you love a pillow with our logo on it. Burn It All Down lives on Soundcloud, but can be found on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, Google Play, and TuneIn. We appreciate your reviews and feedback, so please subscribe and rate and let us know what we did well and how we can improve. You can find us on Facebook and Instagram @burnitalldownpod and on Twitter @burnitdownpod. You can email us at burnitalldownpod@gmail.com, check out our website at www.burnitalldownpod.com, where you will find previous episodes, transcripts, and a link to our Patreon. We would appreciate you subscribing, sharing, and rating the show which helps us do the work we love to do and keep burning what needs to be burned. We wish you safety and health and whatever joy you can muster during this chaotic and unprecedented time. As Brenda always says, burn on and not out.