The following podcast contains naughty language.

Hi, I'm Josh Levine, Slate's national editor, and this is Hang Up and Listen for the week of March 21st, 2022.

On this week's show, we're going to talk about the great and terrible scenes from the opening weekend of the men's NCAA tournament, including the rise of Cinderella St. Peter's and the defeats suffered by America's team.

Joel Anderson University.

The athletics, Chantel Jennings, will also be here to assess the opening rounds of the women's tournament

and whether the NCAA has actually made March Madness equitable.

And finally, we'll discuss the Cleveland Brown's decision to trade for Deshawn Watson

and sign him to a mega-bucks extension

despite 22 active sexual misconduct suits against the quarterback.

I'm in Washington, D.C., and I'm the author of The Queen and the host of the podcast One Year.

Also in D.C. is Stefan Fatsis. He's the author of Word Freak, A Few Seconds of Panic and Wild and Outside. Hello, Stefan.

Hey, Josh. Can we tell the listeners where you're going this week? Oh, yeah. I'm going to Mexico City

for the U.S. men's national soccer team game against Mexico. Critical final window of World Cup

qualifying. Very psyched. Mexico City, man, I've always wanted to go there. That's amazing. Yeah, it should be fun. So your assignment, Joel, is to watch the game so we can talk about it next week. I'm going to hold you to it. That's fine. I mean, this is another soccer game that has stakes, right? Like this time, it's really for real.

It's going to be determinative of where the U.S. men's team stands in the world standings. That's good. Okay. Maybe I'll make a sign that says Joel Anderson loves soccer and hold it up. Maybe that's... I'll be looking for it. I'll be looking for it. And with us from Palo Alto, California, wearing his Clint Dempsey jersey.

It's Joel Anderson.

He is the host, Slow Burn, Season 3 on Biggie and Tupac, and season 6 on the L.A. riots.

Joel. We love you, Joel. No matter what gets said in this next segment, we love you. Just know that.

You could have said that I was wearing an Eddie Lampkin jersey, but you passed on it.

But yeah, I'm still grieving. I'm not over it yet. I don't know why I care this much about TC basketball.

I haven't been watching it all season. And then here we are this morning.

Still a little morose. But I'm going to snap out of it in time for the show, I promise.

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