The End of Sport Podcast

Episode 154: Football is Killing US School Kids

In this episode, Nathan is joined by John 'Jabo' Burrow and Kathleen Bachynski to talk about the horrific run of football-related deaths at US schools. Nathan explains what has transpired before jumping in with Jabo to discuss his reactions and how they relate to his own experiences in and observations of football. Then Kathleen joins to help relate the current issue to her research in No Game For Boys To Play about the history of youth football and public health. The three then try to dig deeper into the social, cultural, and political implications.
John “Jabo” Burrow is a former offensive lineman at Vanderbilt University who retired during his successful career as a starter due to the consequences of head injury and incredibly astute analyst of the harms of football. Kathleen Bachynski is Assistant Professor of Public Health at Muhlenberg College and author of the definitive book on the history of public health and youth football: No Game For Boys To Play: The History of Youth Football and the Origins of a Public Health Crisis.
 
The End of Sport Podcast is a proud member of the Harbinger Media Network, your left podcast community. Find us in great company with over 60 other shows at Harbinger Media Network. As always, if you’re enjoying the show, please feel free to subscribe on your favorite podcasting platform and, please, leave us a five-star review as those always help us read a wider audience.

Episode 153: Olympic Depravities with Dave Zirin and Jules Boykoff

Dave Zirin and Jules Boykoff return to the show to discuss the experience of covering one of the most eventful Olympics ever. We discuss their most lasting takeaways from the Games, things you had to be there to understand, how these Olympics compared to past experiences, and all of the other newsworthy stories you might imagine, from questions of Palestine solidarity to the triumph of Imane Khelif and everything else in between.
Dave Zirin is sports editor at The Nation, host of The Edge of Sports podcast, and author of eleven books including The Kaepernick Effect, Brazil's Dance with the Devil, and Welcome to the Terror Dome. Jules Boykoff is Professor of Politics and Government at Pacific University and author of six books about the Olympics including most recently What are the Olympics For?, The 1936 Berlin Olympics, NOlympians, and Power Games.
 
The End of Sport Podcast is a proud member of the Harbinger Media Network, your left podcast community. Find us in great company with over 60 other shows at Harbinger Media Network. As always, if you’re enjoying the show, please feel free to subscribe on your favorite podcasting platform and, please, leave us a five-star review as those always help us read a wider audience.

Episode 152: The Wide World of Concussions with Stephen Casper

Stephen Casper joins Derek and Nathan to explore the history of concussion and interrogate the various conflicts of interest and ethical permutations that allow a particular form of health harm that has been largely understood for a century to nevertheless continuously be framed as uncertain.
 
Check out this New Yorker story drawing on Stephen's research about the history of head injury in sport here. For Stephen and Nathan's letter sent to Illinois here. Also check out what Stephen and Nathan wrote with Jay Smith on college athlete academic freedom here. Finally, read what Stephen and Nathan wrote with Jay Smith on the history of amateurism in college sport here.
 
Stephen's article on how the sports world learned to ignore head injury here. Stephen's co-authored article on gender, violence, and head injury here. Stephen's article on the vernacular history of head injury here.
 
The End of Sport Podcast is a proud member of the Harbinger Media Network, your left podcast community. Find us in great company with over 60 other shows at Harbinger Media Network. As always, if you’re enjoying the show, please feel free to subscribe on your favorite podcasting platform and, please, leave us a five-star review as those always help us read a wider audience.

Episode 151: Olympic 'Gender Verification' Meltdown

In this emergency episode, Nathan is joined by friend and colleague Celeste Orr (in person!) to deconstruct the rightwing meltdown over the defeat of Italian welterweight boxer Angela Carini by Algerian Imane Khelif. The discussion situates the controversy by tracing the history of gender verification, delving into the science of sex, gender, and sport, and recounting the similarly racist treatment of Caster Semanya. We then move on to explore why the incident proved so 'controversial' in the current context of surging global fascism and what the implications are both politically and for the experiences of trans people.Celeste Orr is an Assistant Professor of Sociology and Wendy J. Robbins Professor in Gender and Women’s Studies at the University of New Brunswick. Their research focuses on intersex studies, disability studies, and queer studies, among other broad areas, and they are the author of the 2022 book Cripping Intersex with UBC Press.
 
The End of Sport Podcast is a proud member of the Harbinger Media Network, your left podcast community. Find us in great company with over 60 other shows at Harbinger Media Network. As always, if you’re enjoying the show, please feel free to subscribe on your favorite podcasting platform and, please, leave us a five-star review as those always help us read a wider audience.

Episode 150: Coercion and Agency in College Sport with Dr. Wayne Black

Dr. Wayne Black joins Derek and Nathan to discuss his research program studying college athletics and debate key questions around coercion, agency, and how to move beyond the current system of exploitation and harm.Dr. Wayne Black is an Assistant Professor of Sport Administration at the University of Cincinnati. His research centers on understanding athletics' role and meaning in United States higher education. His work has centered economic policy, needs security and athlete activism within the Division I college athletics setting. He competed on the wrestling team at Mount St. Joseph University where he earned NCAA Division 3 All-American status and finished 8th in the country in the 141 pound weight class.
 
The End of Sport Podcast is a proud member of the Harbinger Media Network, your left podcast community. Find us in great company with over 60 other shows at Harbinger Media Network. As always, if you’re enjoying the show, please feel free to subscribe on your favorite podcasting platform and, please, leave us a five-star review as those always help us read a wider audience.

Episode 149: What Are The Olympics For?

Jules Boykoff joins Derek and Nathan to discuss his new book What Are the Olympics For? The conversation delves into both the fundamental problems that beset the quadrennial athletic spectacle and the forms of resistance and protest that it is spawned, as well as how all of these issues manifest specifically in the context of the upcoming Paris Games.
Jules Boykoff is Professor and Chair of Politics & Government at Pacific University and is one of the preeminent public scholars of the Olympics. He is author of the books The 1936 Berlin Olympics: Race, Power, and Sportswashing, and Power Games, among countless others. What Are the Olympics For?, Boykoff's most recent book, offers a succinct primer that examines the evolution of the Olympics from its somewhat humble beginnings to its current globalized mega-event form. The digestible short-form book highlights the contentious challenges and harms that have accompanied this expansion, and the ways in which the racial capitalist structure of the Olympics has, and continues to, harm athletes and local communities while stimulating calls for radical reform.
 
The End of Sport Podcast is a proud member of the Harbinger Media Network, your left podcast community. Find us in great company with over 60 other shows at Harbinger Media Network. As always, if you’re enjoying the show, please feel free to subscribe on your favorite podcasting platform and, please, leave us a five-star review as those always help us read a wider audience.

Episode 148: Sports Media Complicity in Genocide

In this episode, Derek is joined by Leyla Hamed, a sports journalist and Editor in Chief at the The Athletic FC. As one of the very few pro-Palestinian advocates in sports media, I can’t think of many folks better than Leyla to talk about media complicity in this ongoing genocide and the role that sports media should be taking in putting pressure on sporting organizations like the IOC and FIFA to enact its policies when considering banning Israel from membership in those organizations and participation in international sporting events.
 
The End of Sport Podcast is a proud member of the Harbinger Media Network, your left podcast community. Find us in great company with over 60 other shows at Harbinger Media Network. As always, if you’re enjoying the show, please feel free to subscribe on your favorite podcasting platform and, please, leave us a five-star review as those always help us read a wider audience.

Episode 147: The End of College Football, Part II: Jabo Burrow

Former Vanderbilt offensive lineman John "Jabo" Burrow joins Nathan to candidly discuss how his experiences in college football connect to the themes of Nathan and Derek's forthcoming book The End of College Football: On the Human Cost of an All-American Game. This one's a banger.
 
You can preorder The End of College Football from UNC Press here and can receive 30% off using promo code 01SOCIAL30.
 
The End of Sport Podcast is a proud member of the Harbinger Media Network, your left podcast community. Find us in great company with over 60 other shows at Harbinger Media Network. As always, if you’re enjoying the show, please feel free to subscribe on your favorite podcasting platform and, please, leave us a five-star review as those always help us read a wider audience.

Episode 146: The End of College Football, Part I: Jabo Burrow

Former Vanderbilt offensive lineman John "Jabo" Burrow joins Nathan to candidly discuss how his experiences in college football connect to the themes of Nathan and Derek's forthcoming book The End of College Football: On the Human Cost of an All-American Game. This one's a banger.
 
You can preorder The End of College Football from UNC Press here and can receive 30% off using promo code 01SOCIAL30.
 
The End of Sport Podcast is a proud member of the Harbinger Media Network, your left podcast community. Find us in great company with over 60 other shows at Harbinger Media Network. As always, if you’re enjoying the show, please feel free to subscribe on your favorite podcasting platform and, please, leave us a five-star review as those always help us read a wider audience.

Episode 145: Sports Gambling with Joel Anderson

Slate columnist and award-winning Slow Burn host Joel Anderson joins to discuss the massive explosion of sports gambling, recent scandals involving Shohei Ohtani and Jontay Porter, and all the attendant harms.
Check out his prescient recent column here: https://slate.com/business/2024/02/sports-betting-huge-rise-whats-coming.html.
The End of Sport Podcast is a proud member of the Harbinger Media Network, your left podcast community. Find us in great company with over 60 other shows at Harbinger Media Network. As always, if you’re enjoying the show, please feel free to subscribe on your favorite podcasting platform and, please, leave us a five-star review as those always help us read a wider audience.