I'm Brian Lerer. This is my daily politics podcast from WNYC Studios. It's Tuesday, June 8th.

Don't be a quitter. It's a line that's been drilled into all of us since childhood, right? If you want to get good at something,

you have to keep at it. Our negative connotations with the idea of quitting are so strong that it can

be hard to sort out when quitting something might actually be better for us than staying in the game.

Enter Naomi Osaka. When she quit the French Open last week,

citing mental health concerns, it spurred conversations about why we push ourselves to keep going

despite pain we might be feeling. My next guest goes one step further to say that at least

when it comes to Naomi Osaka, quitting wasn't just about protecting her mental health.

It was about sending a message to the establishment. With me now is Lindsay Krause, a writer and

producer for the New York Times opinion section. Among her projects is the Emmy-nominated

series Equal Play, which is helping to bring widespread reform to valuing women's sports. Her

latest piece for the

section is called Naomi Osaka and the Power of Nope. Lindsay, welcome to WNYC.

Hi, Brian. Thanks for having me. Just to begin on the news, just yesterday, Naomi Osaka

bowed out of a second tournament, one coming up in Berlin what reasons did she

give for that compared to the French Open? They're the same at this point

she is basically making a statement that she's not able to participate until

she can do things on her own terms but she's not giving a lot of details

right now she has the power and she is using it.

So right now we've got Wimbledon, which is coming up in flux.

I mean, she's scheduled to be there and, of course, Tokyo Olympics,

but I don't think anyone really knows what she's going to do.

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