The following podcast contains explicit language.

Hi, this is Josh Levine, and this is Slate's sports podcast, hang up and listen for the week of July 23, 2018.

On this week's show, Howard Bryant of ESPN, will be here to talk about the militarization of sports.

We'll also be joined by Slate's Christina Cotarucci to discuss U.S. soccer's decision to call up Jalene Hinkle,

who'd previously turned down a roster spot on the women's national team rather than wear a rainbow jersey during Pride Month.

And Deadspins Dom Costantino will be here for a conversation about whether flag football is the future of football.

Joining me from our DC studio is a man who is no longer in Iceland, the author of Word Freak and A Few Seconds of Panic, Mr. Stefan Fatsis.

Welcome back, Stefan. Thanks.

How's your trip? It's great. I'll talk about some of it in the afterball.

Should we not ruin it? Give us one one tidbit. I bought a team handball ball ball.

Is it like a special Iceland branded ball?

I couldn't find a special Iceland branded ball, but I think it's a Euro

championship's replica ball because like the, you know, the leather one is like 90 bucks.

So I went with the replica one.

Maybe I'll bring it in next week and we can toss it around.

It's heavier than I thought it would be. Did you? It's got some heft to the handball. Did you go to the penis museum? Did not walk by the penis museum. It was closed when we were walking by it, though. You know that they have a sculpture there that's like a mold of all of the penises of the team handball team. Yes, I remember that. We talked about it on this program, I believe. Worth another trip to Iceland, probably. All right. On that note, let us kick off the show. Stefan, do you have an intro that you want to read for us? So I was out of the country for baseball's all-star game, so I had to catch up on the festivities online.

There was a co-ed softball tournament featuring games from the five branches of the military called the All-Star Armed Services Classic, presented by T-Mobile.

29 Medal of Honor recipients were recognized on the field before the game, one of them throughout the first pitch. The national anthem was sung by a giant chorus, dressed and shaped

like the American flag, and five military jets screamed overhead afterward. In a piece for the

public radio show Only a Game this past weekend, our friend Howard Bryant, noted that the

All-Star game reminded him of an old joke with a new twist. I went to a military parade and a baseball

game broke out. Howard, of course, writes for ESPN, talks on NPR, and is the author of the new

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