Welcome to the waves. Slates podcast about gender, feminism and sports. Every episode

you get a new pair of feminists to talk about the thing we cannot get off of our minds.

Today you've got me, Shannon Paulis, a senior editor at Slate covering science and health.

And me, Evan Herkhart, a transgender journalist and the community manager for Slates Common Pages.

Today we are talking about whether sports and specifically high school sports should be coed.

This discussion is inspired by a piece in the Atlantic by Maggie Mertens.

It's titled, Separating Sports by Sex Doesn't Make Sense.

I'm excited to talk about this because I was really, really into sports and high school.

Specifically, cross country, track and field. I also did a fake made up third season called Winter Track.

And I'm still really into running as an adult. I'm training for a marathon right now.

And running as an adult at the recreational level, you're usually not separated by gender.

And when you sign up for a big race, you do have to put whether you're male or female on your form.

But the Boston marathon and the London marathon, as of a couple weeks ago, you can register and indicate your gender as non-binary, which is awesome.

Evan, why did you want to talk about this?

This is a topic I can't stop thinking about.

Because as a transgender man, I'm really tired of the misconception that being born female makes people weaker or slower or just not as good as people who are assigned male.

I've never really been an athlete, but when I look more at sex differences and what we know about the science and the sociology there, I found that something people can take for granted that men are stronger and better athletes and women can't really compete is a lot more complicated than people might think.

Coming up, Evan and I are going to talk about why the differences between men and women's athletic abilities are smaller than you might think, and some of the upsides and also thorny issues are out making sports coed.

Hey waves listeners, if you're loving the show and want to hear more, subscribe to our feed. New episodes come out every Thursday morning.

While you're there, check out our other episodes too. Like last weeks about Britney Spears.

If you'd like to listen to the office hours live with me and my co-hosts DJ Doug Pound, and Vic Berger. Every week we bring you laughs, fun, games, and lots of other surprises. It's live, we take your Zoom calls, we love having fun, excuse me.

Vic said something, it's a song.

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