The WNBA’s New Deal
Hang Up and Listen
Joel Meyer
4.6 • 986 Ratings
🗓️ 23 March 2026
⏱️ 70 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Hosts Lindsay Gibbs, and Ben Lindbergh discuss the WNBA's new CBA, which contains massive salary increases, revenue sharing, and historic precedents for all women’s sports. Then host Alex Kirshner arrives for a conversation with Ben and his Effectively Wild co-host Meg Rowley to recap the World Baseball Classic and preview the MLB season.
In this week’s bonus episode for Slate Plus members, the hosts chat about the abundance of athlete-hosted podcasts –is anyone listening?
WNBA CBA: (8:18): From $66K to millions
MLB (29:34): Are the Pirates playoff material?
(Note: time codes are only accurate for Slate Plus members, who listen ad-free.)
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You can email us at hangup@slate.com.
Podcast production and editing by Kevin Bendis, with production assistance from Patrick Fort
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, hello, hello. It's Monday, March 23rd, 2026. Welcome back to Hang Up and Listen, the sports podcast here at Slate. I'm Lindsay Gibbs, women's sports lead at CBS Sports, author of Power Plays, and co-host of Burn It All Down podcast. We have a really thrilling show for you today. |
| 0:23.9 | First, we're going to talk about the best news I've ever received at 4 a.m. on a Wednesday. |
| 0:28.8 | The WNBA finally has a new CBA. We'll be diving into the terms and what it means for the future of the league and women's sports as a whole. |
| 0:37.6 | Then my co-host will be joined by Effectively Wild's Meg Rally to break down the wild ending of the World Baseball Classic |
| 0:44.2 | and to preview the upcoming MLB season, Rose, Bud, and Thorn Style. |
| 0:50.0 | As you might have noticed, I am not Alex Kirshner, the contributing writer for Slate and co-host of the college football podcast Split Zone duo. |
| 0:57.6 | Our fearless leader, Alex, is on his honeymoon for the next two weeks, but have no fear. |
| 1:02.0 | You will be hearing his voice on multiple segments through the power of editing. |
| 1:07.1 | But I am not alone here this Monday. |
| 1:09.9 | Joining me today is Ben Lindberg, a senior editor for The Ringer, and co-host of the |
| 1:15.3 | Effectively Wild Baseball podcast with the aforementioned Meg Rally. |
| 1:19.7 | Ben, how are you doing, my friend? |
| 1:22.1 | And how much madness did your weekend entail? |
| 1:26.1 | Doing well, enjoying this Lindsay intro. This is exciting. |
| 1:31.4 | And, you know, there was a moderate amount of madness, I guess. They were calling it March mildness |
| 1:37.6 | for a while there. I don't know if we made up for the mildness with just a little bit of madness. |
| 1:43.3 | I guess Iowa did its part over Florida |
| 1:46.4 | on Sunday night to throw a little non-chalk into the mix, but it was for a while looking a lot |
| 1:53.2 | like our preview segment from last week suggested, just kind of going the way that the seating suggested. |
| 1:59.0 | So I guess compared to the past two years, there's been a little bit more unpredictability, |
| 2:05.3 | but not enough for us to honor March Madness with a segment this week. |
| 2:11.8 | Next week, for sure, but it hasn't been mad enough to earn that honor. |
... |
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