The laughter permitted podcast is brought to you by Ally. Do it right. Hello. Welcome to laughter permitted. I'm Julie Fowdy.

I'm Lenozawe and season eight is upon us. Julie and I are thrilled to be back with our dope village.

And we are especially grateful to be with our community to have important conversations around women's sports.

The timing of the launch of season eight coincides with major news from the world of women's soccer. And we are going to start the season right there.

Some context for our dope village on October 3rd, an investigative report done by former US deputy attorney general Sally Yates was released and uncovered that the National Women's Soccer League and US soccer failed to take action against abusive behavior and sexual misconduct.

The following is from the summary of the Sally Yates report quote, our investigation has revealed a league in which abuse and misconduct verbal and emotional abuse and sexual misconduct had become systemic spanning multiple teams, coaches and victims.

Beyond that, abuse and NWSL is rooted in a deeper culture in women's soccer beginning in youth leagues that normalizes verbally abusive coaching and blurs boundaries between players and coaches.

To discuss the Sally Yates report and state of women's soccer, our guest is Meg Linahan. She's a senior writer for the athletic covering the US Women's National Team and NWSL.

Just over a year ago on September 30th, 2021, Meg broke a story in which two NWSL players, Monashim and Shnade Farley, came forward to expose abusive behavior they experienced from NWSL coach Paul Riley.

And that story led US soccer to commission the Sally Yates investigation. The 319 page report focuses on Paul Riley and two other NWSL coaches, Rory Dames and Kristi Hawley.

We encourage you to read Meg's article from the athletic and the full Sally Yates report, both of which are linked in our description of this episode.

But before we get to this episode, it's important for me to share that I am a co-owner of an NWSL team, Angel City FC, and my husband of 27 years coached me in soccer.

That being said, I would never advocate a coach player relationship for my own daughter, any player or any supervisor subordinate. I do understand the power imbalance present and so many of those relationships.

And with that, let's bring in the woman who's excellent reporting started soccer's long overdue reckoning. We sat down with Meg on Sunday, October 9th, and here is that interview.

Hey there, dope village. It's been so much fun to watch women's sports just crush it on so many fronts over these past few years, especially. But did you know even though 84% of fans are interested in watching women's sports,

female athletes receive only a fraction of media coverage.

Our friends and allies believe when we invest in women's sports, we invest in women's futures. So this year they launched their watch the game, change the game movement, with a commitment to equal investment. Yes, you heard that right. Equal investment in women's sports media.

Not sure if you've seen allies most recent big move, but they help get the NWSL championship game upgraded to prime time on CBS for the first time in history. Yes, this is disruption. This has impact for generations to come. So join the movement and be part of that change.

If you want to learn more, check out watch to change.com because we're all better off with an ally. Meg, thank you so much for joining us. Given all your reporting in this space and how close you are to it.

I've been wanting to know what was your reaction to the report.

Reading the executive summary, I think it was the first part of it. There's always a small part of you as a reporter to see your work kind of confirmed. There is a sense of relief of, okay, it's not that I doubted anything that we had written and it went through so many different levels of vetting, but I think to see it confirmed by a former deputy attorney general.

There is a sense of, we knew that there was a problem here and that has been not just confirmed but affirmed and in such a huge big way.

...