The Waves: Brittney Griner and the Problem With Women’s Basketball
Slate News
Slate Podcasts
4.5 • 6K Ratings
🗓️ 16 July 2022
⏱️ 30 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On this week’s episode of The Waves, Slate senior producer Cheyna Roth is joined by Amira Rose Davis, professor, historian, and co-host of the feminist sports podcast Burn It All Down to talk about Brittney Griner. The WNBA superstar has been detained by the Russians for months. Cheyna and Amira talk about how Russia treats its women athletes like superstars (until they don’t), while in America it takes weeks for people to really notice when a star WNBA player is missing. Later in the show, they discuss the impact of having Brittney Griner out of the league and Amira recommends WNBA players to watch.
In Slate Plus, the fascinating (and feminist!) history of cheerleaders.
Recommendations:
Amira: Formula 1 racing, including Netflix’s Formula 1: Drive to Survive and F1 romance novels like the Fast and Hard series.
Cheyna: Jana Schmieding for her roles on Hulu’s Reservation Dogs and Peacock’s Rutherford Falls.
Podcast production by Cheyna Roth with editorial oversight by Shannon Palus and Alicia Montgomery.
Send your comments and recommendations on what to cover to thewaves@slate.com
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the Waves, Slates podcast about gender, feminism and nothing but net and Russian |
| 0:20.8 | prisons. |
| 0:22.0 | Every episode you get a new pair of feminists to talk about the thing we can't get off |
| 0:25.4 | our minds. |
| 0:26.4 | Only you've got me, Shayna Roth, Senior Producer at Slate and Producer of the Waves. |
| 0:31.8 | And me, Amir Rose Davis, Assistant Professor of African and African Diaspora Studies at |
| 0:36.8 | the University of Texas Austin, and one of the co-hosts of the Bernalaw Down Feminist Sports |
| 0:41.7 | Podcast. |
| 0:46.2 | Brittany Griner, probably one of the top players in the WNBA, has spent the last five months |
| 0:52.0 | detained by the Russians. Russian authorities found hash-vaped cartridges in her luggage |
| 0:57.0 | at the airport. |
| 0:58.5 | Last week, Griner pleaded guilty to drug charges and is expected to still spend the next |
| 1:03.3 | weeks and months in Russian detention as the court reads the file into the record, and |
| 1:08.2 | then she faces up to 10 years in prison. |
| 1:12.4 | This is a case that at first got surprisingly little attention, especially outside of |
| 1:16.8 | the sports world, but that has started to change, particularly as talks of essentially |
| 1:22.9 | trading Griner and another American for a Russian arms dealer have circulated. |
| 1:28.2 | Amira, you are our amazing sports expert here on the Waves. |
| 1:32.7 | Why has this case captured your attention? |
| 1:34.7 | I mean, I think it's terrifying. |
| 1:37.0 | This has been so many ripples and waves to this case, first and foremost, to hear that |
| 1:41.5 | she'd been over there. |
... |
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