The End of Sport Podcast

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.

Derek and Nathan are joined by former NFL player Chris Kluwe to delve into his heterodox perspectives on football, including his positions on gay rights and inclusion in the sport, athlete activism, and the inherent dangers of football as a sport, especially for young people.

Chris Kluwe is a former NFL punter who played for the Seattle Seahawks, eight years with the Minnesota Vikings where he set numerous team records, and Oakland Raiders. He also played for and attended UCLA for college. He is also the author of the collection Beautifully Unique Sparkleponies and the novel Otaku.

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.

Derek and Nathan speak to Dr. Steven Thrasher about his activism against the genocide in Gaza and the McCarthyist repression he has been subjected to in response by both the state and his employer. We also delve into his work on Covid and his newest book project.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.