Playing Through Fire: Athletes in an Age of Reaction
Edge of Sports
Dave Zirin / The Nation
4.8 • 616 Ratings
🗓️ 9 September 2022
⏱️ 121 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Social movements tend to arise within the world of sports during periods of upsurge and upheaval. But what about times of authoritarianism, dictatorship, or even fascism? What is the social role of the athlete during periods of reaction?
I recently had the pleasure of giving a talk at the 2022 Socialism conference in Chicago, where I addressed all of these questions. This week's episode of the Edge of Sports podcast is a recording of that talk.
Subscribe to The Nation to support all of our podcasts: thenation.com/podcastsubscribe.
Zirin, Sue Bird Sets a Standard and Says Goodbye to the WNBA
https://www.thenation.com/article/society/sue-bird-retirement-wnba/
—
http://www.edgeofsportspodcast.com/ | http://twitter.com/EdgeOfSportsPod | http://fb.com/edgeofsportspod | email us: [email protected] | Edge of Sports hotline: 401-426-3343 (EDGE)
—
Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands
Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the Edge of Sports podcast. I'm Dave Ziron. This week we have a special show. It's basically me. I'm doing a talk called playing Through Fire, Athletes in an Age of Reaction, |
| 0:24.6 | where I talk about what it means to be an athlete during this particular political moment. |
| 0:30.6 | I hope you listen to it. I hope you dig it. And this talk was given at the conference |
| 0:35.6 | Socialism 2022. |
| 0:41.8 | If you want to see some of the other talks that went down that weekend, it was really inspiring, actually. |
| 0:43.4 | Go to we are many.org. |
| 0:46.6 | But for now, here's me at Socialism 2022 talking about playing through fire, athletes in a time of reaction. |
| 0:56.7 | Hello, conference. And first and foremost, before I say anything, I want to give a shout |
| 1:02.6 | out to everybody out in Zoom land. We have hundreds of people who've been through the Zoom |
| 1:06.8 | experience this weekend. Give a special shout out to Bill Keach and Sheila Emerson, my sister, |
| 1:11.9 | Annie Ziren, who are watching on Zoom, but cannot be here. Hello, if we could give all |
| 1:16.7 | them a round of applause, please, for watching. Amazing. Notice I didn't say my own kids when I was |
| 1:24.6 | talking about who's watching, but that's okay. So before I do talks like this, if you've seen me do a talk before, you know I always ask |
| 1:31.4 | this question because it helps me sort of gauge the audience and some of the things I talk |
| 1:35.3 | about. How many people here consider yourselves absolutely hog wild sports fans? Okay. How many |
| 1:43.3 | people consider yourselves like a casual sports fan? You follow it, but it ain't that big a deal. |
| 1:48.5 | And how many of you would rather shave your head with a cheese grater than hear somebody talk about sports for 40 minutes? |
| 1:53.8 | Anyone there? Oh, wonderful. Oh, what's your name? What is it? Pat? Pat? Pat. Cat. |
| 2:09.6 | Well, I really hope this talk hits its mark for the diehard sports fan, the casual sports fan, and CAD. |
| 2:12.4 | That's our goal for this session. |
| 2:16.6 | If we can do that, we're going to get everything done perfectly. |
| 2:19.7 | So here we are at the Socialism Conference, |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Dave Zirin / The Nation, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Dave Zirin / The Nation and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2025.