This is the waves. This is the waves. This is the waves. This is the waves.

Welcome to the waves. Slates podcast about gender, feminism and spectacular sporting events

involving people who literally know no fear. Every episode you get a new pair of women to talk

about the things we can't get off our minds. And today, you've got me, June Thomas,

one of the hosts of Working Slates podcast about the creative process.

And me, Amira Rose Davis, a history professor and co-host of The Feminist Sports Podcast,

Burn It All Down, over on Blue Wire. This week, we're going to talk about the Winter Olympics,

a huge international sporting event featuring the best athletes in the world

that's being hosted by an autocratic government currently conducting genocide against the

Wiga population of Xinjiang Province in the middle of a worldwide pandemic, causing environmental

damage by hosting skiing and snorkeboarding events in a place that doesn't usually have snow,

put together by a corrupt organizing committee amid some very basic sexism.

All that's true. These games are a total shit show, but they're also one of the rare occasions

when female athletes dominate our TV sets and the national conversation. And when some pretty

obscure sports in the United States, at least, get a moment in the spotlight. Amira, as someone who

is both a sports nut and an unabashed advocate for the rights of athletes, how do you feel about

these games? Should they even be happening? Yeah, this is a topic I can't stop thinking about because

I can't believe that it's happening, mostly because I feel like many of us are still recovering from

the summer games, that pandemic games has a condensed Olympic cycle. And so it feels like we're

barely coming up from air and here we are at another Olympics and all Olympics are kind of a mess.

This one feels messier than most, but sports still draw you in at three in the morning. I got very

into ski race, you know, like all of these random with just sports. Something still pulls me in,

...