Welcome to the Edge of Sports podcast. I'm Dave Ziron. We have a special show this week. It starts with a talk that I gave a couple of years ago about how sports operate in a fascist or an authoritarian society.

I gave the talk a couple of years ago and frankly, it feels a lot more relevant than even the time when I gave it.

I hope people can listen to it, especially people who are conflicted about loving sports,

loving as they're called bread and circuses in this difficult time.

Also, I'm so excited to share this with you.

I had a great discussion with your favorite basketball savants, Ariya Shirazi,

about injuries in NBA history and the injuries that actually changed the course of the

league. Well, I can't wait to get this started. Let's please, you know, go right away to this talk

I gave at the Center for Economic and Social Change, Haymarket Books, Socialism Conference,

a couple of years ago.

It's on sports in a time of fire, sports in a time of fascism.

Let's get it started right now.

So here we are at the Socialism Conference, so obviously let's talk some sports.

You know, it was duh it was

CLR James the great Trinidadian Marxist and Revolutionary he wrote a brilliant

book about cricket I know nothing about cricket I love this book it's called

Beyond a Boundary and in its, he penned the following statement.

He wrote, what do they know of cricket who only cricket know? And it's a beautiful line.

What do they know of cricket who only cricket know? And to use less elegant language, what James is saying

is that you need to have some

sense of the real world if you're going to understand the sports world, and perhaps you need

to understand the sports world to have a view and lens to understand the real world. So in the

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