The following podcast includes explicit language, not restricted to words beginning with F, S, B, and Q.

Hi, I'm Josh Levine, Slate's national editor, and this is Hang Up and Listen for the week of August 3rd, 2020.

On this week show, we'll discuss the first week inside the NBA bubble and Major League

Baseball's continued misadventures on the planet we call Earth. We'll also be joined by

UCLA football players Otito Obonia and Elisha Guididre, for a conversation about the We Are United

movement, which athletes from the Pac-12 are threatening not to play if the conference doesn't

listen to their demands for reform. Finally, we'll talk to our own Joel Anderson about his

peace on Liberty University's attempt to become a sports powerhouse and why black athletes have started

leaving the school. I'm the author of The Queen, the host of Slow Burn Season 4. I'm recording

myself on my phone in Washington, D.C. joining me is D.C. legend, Stefan Fatsis, author of the

book's Word Freak and a few seconds of panic. Hello, Stefan. Good get that Joel Anderson. How'd you pull that off, Josh? He was available. Yeah, I've made myself free on Monday mornings every night and again. Joel is with us from Palo Alto, California. It's a chore to get up on Monday mornings, but Joel does it because he loves us. He's the host of Slowburn,

season three, and the author of Slate's cover story this week. Hello, Joel. Hello. I just want to, before we move on, you said DC legend for Stefan. You didn't give me Palo Alto legend, but maybe I haven't been here long enough, so maybe I'm not a legend out here yet. No, you need to, you're already a Houston legend. You need to make you work for Palo Alto. But I have something before we move on.

I hope that I'm going to be able to be the one. No, you need to, you're already a Houston legend. You need to make you work for Palo Alto. But I have something before we move on.

I hope that I'm going to be able to be the one to break this to you, Joel, because it just came out this morning. Big, big XFL news. Oh, okay. Wow. Whoa. What is? You're tapping your sources again, Josh? The XFL's assets were purchased by a group, including Dwayne the Rock Johnson.

Whoa.

Yes.

All right.

So now what?

The XFL's fortunes have turned around.

Nothing that the Rock does has ever failed.

The Rock was involved in the original XFL.

All right. Well, maybe that failed. But nothing else that the Rock has ever done has failed. The Rock was involved in the original XFL. All right, well, maybe that failed,

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