The following podcast contains explicit language.

Hide your children.

Hi, I'm Josh Levine, Slate's national editor.

This is Hang Up and Listen for the week of August 30th, 2021.

On this week's show, I'm going to talk to Ben Rothenberg about his reporting on domestic abuse allegations against the tennis player Alexander Zverev.

Grant Wall will then join us to talk about Cristiano Ronaldo's move back to the club where he first became an international star, Manchester United.

And we'll discuss ESPN's move to pull Rachel Nichols off all of its NBA coverage,

part of the continuing fallout from a video where Nichols suggested that her then colleague

Maria Taylor was getting opportunities at the network because she's black. 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.,

Stefan Fatsis, author of the book's Word Freak, A Few Second of Panic, Wild and Outside. Hello, Stefan.

Hey, Josh. And with us, Slate Staff writer, host of Slow Burn, Season 3, and the upcoming Slow Burn, season

six, and the president of the Palo Alto fan club, the goalie Ed Balfour. It's Joel Anderson. Oh, I was like, where is this going? Just wanted to demonstrate that I listened to hang up and listen, even when I'm not. Yeah, do you listen so much that you pointed out that I made two errors in the Jeopardy segment? Great show, Stefan. Dot, dot, dot, dot. Yeah, thanks. Oh, I didn't even, I wasn't even aware of that. I said Alex Trebek was 87 when he died. And what I had done was I conflated the fact that he was 80 and he worked on, he hosted the show for 37 years. So that was number one. And Alex Trebek was 80 when he died. Number two was a little more

personal. I said I had been to two live sporting events post-pandemic or during the pandemic.

The Nats game and the ultimate frisbee game. Josh pointed out that he and I went to a tennis

tournament like two weeks ago. So yeah. Wow. Apparently meant nothing to Stefan, meant everything to me. Yeah, right. Clearly resonated. It must have clearly resonated. What was the tennis match? I don't even... It was the city open here in D.C. We saw Raffin-Aiddle. Yeah, Jack Sock and Raffield Dahl. I told you about that, Joel. Oh, you know what? I talked to you right before you went in. That's right. You saw Rafin Adolf. Yeah, Jack Sock and Raphael. No, I told you about that, Joel.

Oh, you know what? I talked to you right before you went in. That's right. You were on the phone right before you went in. Oh, man. Well, that's how much it meant to me, too. Well, I thought Stefan was a little bit mean about the trivia thing. But then I just kind of got my own dig-in. So maybe I have no

leg to stand on there. I actually think people should be impressed. I even know who the hell

Ed Balfour is. So, hey, who won that anyway? Did Howard win? No. Bimani won. That doesn't seem

fair. And somehow decided to call me out in his victory celebration.

And I'm like, I wasn't even in the final.

Like, why did my name come up?

...