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Mamdani's Socialism—and Us; plus Football and Concussions | Start Making Sense · The Nation Podcasts

• 0:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: From the nation magazine, this is start making sense.
• 0:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm John Weiner, later in the show, Sports Talk, on the nation podcast.
• 0:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: Of course, Thanksgiving was a big weekend for football on TV.
• 0:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: But weekend where millions of viewers got to see a festival of brain injuries.
• 0:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: Concussions after receiving blows to the head.
• 0:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: Dave Ziren will comment he's the longtime sports editor of the nation and host of the Edge of Sports podcast.
• 0:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: But first, Zorin Mamdami takes office in four weeks as the first socialist mayor of New York City, how should we understand the constraints he faces without accepting those constraints?
• 0:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: Baskar Sunkara will comment in a minute.
• 0:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: With the socialist taking office as mayor of New York City, what exactly should we be doing?
• 1:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: How should we relate to mom, Donnie, and his administration?
• 1:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: For some answers, we turn to Boscar soon, Kara.
• 1:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: He's president of the nation magazine, founding editor of Jacobin, a columnist for the Guardian, and author of the socialist manifesto, the case for radical politics in an era of extreme inequalities.
• 1:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: Boscar welcome back.
• 1:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: Thanks for having me.
• 1:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: Well, let's start with where we are now millions of people are living through hard times and you've said things may get worse very soon.
• 1:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: Please explain.
• 1:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I mean, I think it's obvious that the Trump administration's economic policies are going to spell long-term disorder for the U.S. economy and particularly for U.S. workers, so you're seeing that in his tariff policy, which are incredibly counterproductive.
• 1:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: You see his a mass deportation campaign, which is targeting some of the most productive workers
• 2:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: budget that, you know, I'm a big fan of state spending and counter-secretal crew spending, but there's an irrationality of running larger and larger deficits while at the same time you're undermining the role of the dollar on the national stage.
• 2:17
  [SPEAKER_02]: And you're running these deficits not in pursuit of long-term investment, like Joe Biden did with his his suite of state spending, but you're doing it in pursuit of tax cuts for the rich and other measures that in the short term will be detrimental much less than long-term, so I saw, you know, I think it's safe to say that things are going to get worse.
• 2:38
  [SPEAKER_02]: We're not sure when, but it does seem like
• 2:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: with the end of a historic, you know, period of growth in the U.S. economy.
• 2:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: And if this is how tough things are during a period of historic growth, we can only imagine how bad things will get in the U.S. to come.
• 2:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: So this means Bump Downey will face some pretty severe constraints on what he can do.
• 2:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: We need to understand the constraints, but you say that's not the same as accepting them.
• 3:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: Well, I think there's the abstract constraint, which I think is important to understand at a higher level, which is that if you are a ministerating a capital state.
• 3:17
  [SPEAKER_02]: You are going to be dependent on forms of tax revenue.
• 3:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: That tax revenue is going to come from multiple different places.
• 3:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's going to come from property taxes at the local level.
• 3:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's going to come from income taxes at the rich.
• 3:30
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's going to come from corporate tax rates.
• 3:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's going to come from grants from the state and federal government.
• 3:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: But Mugdani is working with a finite tax base.
• 3:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: And with that in mind, we have to see where we could raise more
• 3:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: So for example, we might find that in fact we can raise taxes on the rich without them going anywhere.
• 3:53
  [SPEAKER_02]: These are people with their kids enrolled in schools in the city.
• 3:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: These are people who have homes here.
• 3:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: A lot of them really do like the city for many of the same reasons that those of us who are not millionaires and billionaires.
• 4:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: like New York City.
• 4:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: They might not go anywhere for a small tax increase.
• 4:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: The corporate tax rate is much more fraught.
• 4:14
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's very easy to imagine a scenario with a combination of business confidence being shattered by the election of a socialist and that socialist raising corporate tax rates, which I mean that that.
• 4:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: The technical feasibility of him even being able to do this given the constraints around New York City are another thing, but let's say if it was possible, you can imagine capital flight and being counterproductive you can imagine all these these other things because essentially the New York City model like a lot of the model of social democracy is a whole
• 4:45
  [SPEAKER_02]: is kind of growth, driven, and large parts by elites and by big corporations and their job creation, and then redistribution, exposed to workers.
• 4:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: As other things we try to do to improve the conditions of workers in pre-distribution ways, like increasing the minimum wage and things like that,
• 5:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: But ultimately, we are dependent on Capeless and it's an apocryphal thing, is I'm not even sure if Frederick Jameson ever said it.
• 5:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: But the old line goes something like the only thing worse than being exploited by Capital.
• 5:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: Under Capitalism is not being exploited by Capital.
• 5:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: Capitalism.
• 5:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: So I think it's worth keeping in mind that medic and strain, and then of course Mamdaani has additional constraints based on the fact that the city can't really deficit finance itself.
• 5:31
  [SPEAKER_02]: The city has to get approval from the governor for lots of basic functions, like revenue raising, and also the city, of course, is dependent.
• 5:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's still a court and court net donor.
• 5:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: meaning that money more tax revenues flowing out than is flowing back in, but the city is dependent on certain supports from the federal government.
• 5:53
  [SPEAKER_02]: So those are all the constraints about what could be possible.
• 5:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: I think it's important to just think about what are the social forces that could be mobilized in a non-body administration.
• 6:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: How do we get workers, but those of them organized
• 6:09
  [SPEAKER_02]: active and involved with politics, how do we turn municipal governance into something that feels like a real avenue for people to express their demands on the state, but also that gives them agency to really participate, not just as passive recipients of welfare, but as people who really deserve a shot and a deserve a say in the governance of the city.
• 6:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: redistribution is kind of the number one task if affordability is your theme.
• 6:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: Socialism isn't just high wages and good health care in the secure retirement.
• 6:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: If a great quote from CLR James, what was it CLR James said about socialism?
• 6:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: Well, CLR James and some of his writing on democracy said that every cook can govern.
• 6:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: every cook can govern.
• 7:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's a radical idea.
• 7:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: Of course, every cook is not going to govern New York City for the next four years.
• 7:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: Mombani is, but what you're talking about is steps we can take towards that world where every cook can govern steps that, as you say, offer a taste of democratic control hint at a different political economy.
• 7:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: Can you give us some examples of what
• 7:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: Well, I think that at the very least, it's worth remembering that Zora Mombani is ideologically a socialist from the organized socialist movement.
• 7:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: So these are ideas that he's familiar with.
• 7:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: He's someone that is actually committed to seeing at least some of these things brought into practice.
• 7:43
  [SPEAKER_02]: So you can imagine, for instance, neighborhood assemblies forming and various neighborhoods in New York City, the mayor of New York City, encouraging people to come out to the neighborhood assembly,
• 7:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: Maybe it would just be care of the things that your mayor is trying to do.
• 8:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: We're going to knock on people's door and tell them here are the five parts of the affordability agenda he's trying to knock.
• 8:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: Here's the thing we want you to do calling your local city council person or your assembly person, who's an Albany, calling them and getting them to support XYZ measure to help us carry out this agenda, but also at this neighborhood assembly, we want to hear about your lives, we want to hear about the things that are most important to you.
• 8:26
  [SPEAKER_02]: We want to hear about your ideas for how these programs should be implemented.
• 8:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: So it isn't completely bottom up.
• 8:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's a mix of the top sparking the bottom and the bottom informing the top.
• 8:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: And I think that's a very realistic addition to city governance as it is, this consultatory neighborhood assembly.
• 8:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: I actually don't know enough about it yet.
• 8:53
  [SPEAKER_02]: I have about
• 8:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: Mayor Lindsay for a time in New York City in the mid-20th century, pursued the idea of neighborhood assemblies and was far from a radical, but he wanted a way out of machine politics in New York City.
• 9:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: But I'm afraid right now, what we have is almost the worst of both worlds.
• 9:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: In the sense that a lot of the old Democratic party machines, which were obviously corrupt and imperfect in many ways, are gone.
• 9:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: But nothing has been replaced in its stead.
• 9:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: And as a result, we don't have that clear avenue for a lot of working class people that would be able to go previously to the kind of King's county democratic party and demand certain things and ask for certain things that feel represented by the institution.
• 9:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: And I think we need to find a way of recreating this sort of democracy and even more radical form.
• 9:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: We all know that bomb Donnie is going to have to make compromises.
• 9:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: And you say we have to be ready to support him when times get tough.
• 9:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: And we also know that some people on the left will denounce him for selling out.
• 10:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: The big problem is how do we understand what's winnable right now?
• 10:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: And how do we understand what we shouldn't be pressing for?
• 10:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I mean, I think that a lot of this just depends on the issue that you think is most important and what you think the horizon is.
• 10:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: A lot of the flag that I've seen Zorn mom down to get recently was on the issue of housing and a support for both the city of BS program, which will make it easier to build housing in your city and some ballot propositions that we had in New York that made it easier to build housing over the objection the city council.
• 10:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: Now I just happened to agree on the level of policy
• 10:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: deep in though obviously that it puts us in lead in certain ways with groups of developers.
• 10:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: So both affordable housing advocates and developers are on the same side of this issue in many ways.
• 10:53
  [SPEAKER_02]: But some other progressive constituents like some key tenant unions are on the other side of that issue.
• 10:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: I do think in general it would make perfect sense for Zermon Downey to have
• 11:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: monthly standing meetings at 10, 15 minute call with Jamie Diamond.
• 11:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: Jamie Diamond is head of JP Morgan, the largest bank in the world and it's headquartered in Manhattan.
• 11:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: JP Morgan is a major employer in New York and because it actually helps me or city to have financial services jobs in the city and not being forced out into Texas.
• 11:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: Now that makes perfect sense within the
• 11:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: But it might not feel good in a moral sense.
• 11:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: People might say, I didn't elect this young radical socialist to have his 15 minutes every single month with Jamie Donut.
• 11:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: I think that's the sort of thing where we have to understand a structure of constraints and also understand that
• 11:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: the most dangerous thing to the socials who've been the United States is for us to not govern effectively.
• 11:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: And for a crime rates to go up for people in the city to feel like things are getting less affordable, not more affordable after after four years.
• 12:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: So the immediate immediate need is successful governance.
• 12:09
  [SPEAKER_02]: And then after that, we could tie his governance to
• 12:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: forms of politics that we know that so on is at least in the abstract interested in.
• 12:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: Another of the issues that's been in the news in the last week or two is that Mombani opposed a primary challenge to how keen Jeffries is the congressional representative from parts of Brooklyn.
• 12:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: This was a challenge
• 12:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: talked about mounted by a city council member who is a DSA member, a revolutionary group has declared this is quote, evidence that Mam Dami and the DSA are providing an essential political service to the ruling class, lending an air of political legitimacy to an establishment that is increasingly
• 13:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: No socialists, he's kind of a tool of the crypto world.
• 13:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: He barely endorsed Momsdani for mayor.
• 13:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: He's been the inadequate as a leader in the fight in Congress against Trump.
• 13:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: So how come Momsdani did not support a socialist challenge to hacking Jeffries?
• 13:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yes, so I was in a meeting, a DSA meeting that is on actually addressed a couple of weeks ago.
• 13:26
  [SPEAKER_02]: Where this came up, it was an off-the-record meeting,
• 13:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's been covered so much, and he's talked about this in other forms too.
• 13:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: But I think his logic borrowed down to thinking that it was a question of finite resources.
• 13:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: Do we want to spend the next year fighting Hakeem Jefferies in the Democratic Party leadership at the national level?
• 13:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: Or do we want to spend it trying to implement our affordability agenda in New York City?
• 13:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: that it's more strategic and tactical consideration about the finite uses of funds and volunteer time, then it is any sort of moral defense of a game Jeffries.
• 14:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: I think we have to understand that, but also understand that there will be times when Zawan will be under direct pressure.
• 14:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: because he needs to deliver first constituents, direct pressure from elite Democrats, and that as socialists, we need to be independent of some of the pressures that he's under.
• 14:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: I just don't think this is the particular moment, but in the abstract, of course, I'd be more than happy if the moment arises where it seems wise to criticize Iran and propose a different path.
• 14:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: The left has had many troubles and it's, you know, over the decades and centuries, but it's never been an unwillingness to criticize our leaders.
• 14:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: In your keynote address to the DSA in New York, you quote the leader of European socialism from the turn of the,
• 14:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: 20th century Edward Bernstein, who said, the goal is nothing, the movement, everything.
• 15:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: You say pretty much the opposite.
• 15:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: The goal is everything.
• 15:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: The goal of socialism is something we should never forget.
• 15:09
  [SPEAKER_02]: We want a society that's really powered from the bottom up.
• 15:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: We want a society in which ordinary working-class people have more control over their workplaces, living a deeper richer democracy, the political level too, than you would want to figure out how to empower those actors in the present.
• 15:26
  [SPEAKER_02]: So they're not just passively voting and relating to democracy or something they do every two years, or every four years, but rather a politics is something they participate in actively.
• 15:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: But ultimately, I think we've seen, as Bernstein couldn't have seen, what happens when socialists win within capitalism and win consistently within capitalism.
• 15:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: And ultimately, it's a lot of good things.
• 15:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: We've seen the models in Sweden and Norway and these other countries.
• 15:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: But we've also seen the limits and constraints of that system.
• 16:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: We see that ultimately, if you leave the power to invest in capital's hands,
• 16:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: that when times get tough, capitals will ask for deregulatory rollbacks, they'll ask for weaker unions, they'll ask for easier conditions in which to accumulate and the state, which is dependent on those capitals and dependent on tax revenue from those capitals, and we'll have to oblige.
• 16:24
  [SPEAKER_02]: You know, those are constraints we're going to end up running into.
• 16:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: eventually, and also even beyond that, I think there is a vision of socialism that could potentially be more compelling to ordinary people than just people receiving welfare from the state.
• 16:38
  [SPEAKER_02]: Of course, I think we need a bigger welfare state.
• 16:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: The goal of socialism is everything.
• 16:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: The Baskar Sunkara, you give the keynote address at the New York City Democratic Socialists of America's by annual organizing conference.
• 17:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: is usual.
• 17:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: There was an NFL triple hitter on Thanksgiving day.
• 17:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: Three games in a row starting at one in the afternoon and ending around 11 at night in college football games all weekend on TV.
• 17:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: So weekend where millions of people get to see a festival of brain injuries, concussions after players receive blows to the head.
• 17:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: For comment we turned to Dave Ziren, he's the longtime sports editor of the nation, host of the Edge of Sports podcast, also the author of 11 books on the politics of sports, including a People's History of Sports in the United States.
• 17:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: He's also a co-producer and writer of the documentary behind this shield, the power and politics of the NFL.
• 18:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's streaming now on Apple
• 18:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: Dave Ziren, welcome back.
• 18:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, it's great to be here, John.
• 18:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: Thanks so much for having me.
• 18:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: Well, for those of us who do not watch the NFL TV, please explain the blue tint.
• 18:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yet the blue tent is something that's on both sidelines, where players are led into when it is feared that they have received a concussion.
• 18:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: Now inside the blue tent is a non-partisan as they put a concussion expert who is not connected to either team from an employment perspective and they decide whether a player should or
• 18:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: they are now forbidden to go back into the game.
• 18:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: So the blue tent makes it seem like the NFL is dealing with concussions, but what is the underlying significance of the blue tent for you?
• 19:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: Found the blue tent to be so illustrative of where the NFL is right now with regards to players and injuries,
• 19:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: Because when a player may have a concussion, they could be vomiting, they could be stumbling, they could have severe light sensitivity.
• 19:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: And of course, obviously, they could have a crushing headache.
• 19:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: And they're trying to take all of that out of view of the cameras because they want to present a three-hour, highly commodified spectacle of violence
• 19:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: where the actual effects of the game itself are kept out of view as much as possible.
• 19:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: Now let me be clear about something, John.
• 19:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: This is a step up from the olden days where they pretended and they really, this really was their official line that there was no connection between concussions,
• 20:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: or post-concussion syndromes and playing in the national football league.
• 20:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: So at least they're acknowledging it.
• 20:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: At least they're not relying on team doctors, which is what they used to do.
• 20:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: Of course, a team doctor would have the incentive to send a player back in.
• 20:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: But at the same time, the blue tent still says so much about what the NFL does not want us to see.
• 20:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: So what we're talking here is about the effects of repeated concussions and damage to football, they cause what's called CTE, chronic traumatic and cephalopathy.
• 20:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: How are we doing with CTE so far in 2025?
• 20:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'll tell you it's impossible to really know, I mean, CTE is endemic to the game because what CTE arises from is not the concussions, but the inability of players to be able to let concussions heal.
• 21:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: So if you consider a concussion to be like a bruise or a cut on the brain, think about when you have a bruiser or a cut on your arm.
• 21:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: And if somebody kept hitting it every single day, it simply would never heal and probably would get worse.
• 21:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: Now, you asked how we're doing with it.
• 21:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: There have been several deaths
• 21:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: since the start of the NFL season.
• 21:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: I wrote about it for the nation.
• 21:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm not seeing it written about anywhere else.
• 21:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, you reported nine former and current NFL players under the age of 48 have died this year.
• 21:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: Of those nine deaths you reported in the nation, seven were the result of suicide and a couple of them were especially horrifying cases.
• 22:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: Hall of Fame, linebacker, junior,
• 22:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: Chicago Bears Safety David Derson, what did they do?
• 22:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, those were several years back, and I used them as illustrative examples, because what they did is something that you've seen other players do, and they were the first to do it, and that's take their own life through a gunshot to the heart, as opposed to the brain, because they want their brain studied.
• 22:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: And let me just interject here, when is CTE diagnosed?
• 22:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: As of now, and we've been waiting on new tests for some time.
• 22:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm a little somewhat distraught that it hasn't developed yet.
• 22:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: But as of now, you can only definitively tell CTE that you have CTE through a post-mortem examination.
• 22:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: because the brain has to be cut open.
• 22:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: So the players know this and two of them shot themselves in the heart rather than the head.
• 22:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: That is correct.
• 23:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: So their brain could be studied.
• 23:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I want to go back to what I was saying is the reason why.
• 23:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: One was for insurance purposes and class action suit purposes.
• 23:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's just so sad to think about that, too, because you think about money problems of x players as well in that context.
• 23:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: But the other reason,
• 23:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: is that they want to be their family and this was Dave Dorson wrote a very poignant suicide note about this.
• 23:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: They want their family to understand why their behaviors had been so different in the recent years.
• 23:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: Why that sort of film came over their face and over their eyes and their family as as is often the case said that they really just couldn't recognize them anymore.
• 23:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: This was related to CTE and not just some happenstance.
• 23:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: And the other big news this year was that guy who killed four people at the NFL headquarters on Park Avenue in Manhattan earlier this year.
• 23:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: What do we know about him?
• 24:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, that gentleman was found.
• 24:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, first of all, went into NFL, the lobby of NFL headquarters and just started shooting people on killing several people.
• 24:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: because he said he was taking revenge on the NFL because he felt like CTE was destroying his brain, CTE which he says he got as a high school running back.
• 24:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: Now this is scary for one basic reason is the father of a high school football player who has gotten a confession.
• 24:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: The fact that this gentleman never played at the college level, he took his own life on the 38th floor of the building, barricaded in.
• 24:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: The autopsy did reveal that he had severe CTE and one of the things that again was very upsetting about this story is that the shooting was huge news.
• 25:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: his desperation for why he did it, and the attendant autopsy, and the fact that so many of his friends were like we never could have seen this coming until recent months.
• 25:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: First of all, that speaks to the CTE issue we raised earlier about rapid mood changes.
• 25:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: And it also is just such a tragic code up to the story that the media had stopped caring when to care would have meant speaking about the connection between CTE and tackle football, even if you just played at the high school level.
• 25:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: One of the most significant things in the PC wrote about this recently for the nation is your research into whether other sports caused the kind of brain injuries we see in CT. What about you would think boxing or cage fighting would do the same thing?
• 25:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: You would think, but then you look at the death tolls, and we went over the tables of each, and it's just not the same thing.
• 26:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: And we can talk about why, I mean, the main gift, it's not to say that ultimate fighting or boxing aren't brutal on the brain.
• 26:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: We know they are, but we also know that these fights are hugely spaced out.
• 26:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: And again, let's go back to what we were talking about before the bruise on the brain.
• 26:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: if you have to be able to give it a chance to heal.
• 26:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: And it's very hard to heal when you play weekend, week out for 17, 18 weeks.
• 26:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: And when you have practice every day starting in high school, I was just thinking that is I was talking because it's important for people to know that CTE is not like getting, I really want to hammer this home, it's not like getting a concussion on top of a concussion, that's not CTE, it's the inability to let the concussion heal.
• 26:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: So when you're in practice and you're having all these what they call sub-concussive hits,
• 27:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: and from a physical perspective, unless you have a concussion that hasn't healed, my son got a concussion this year, and his coaches kept him out, even though it was his senior year and even though it broke his heart, they kept him out for four games, because there was that level of concern, not just by my son's parents, which I am one, but the coaching staff and
• 27:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: If you want to ask me for good news, it's definitely that there's more education and more teaching us to how to tackle properly, which has lowered the number of concussions.
• 27:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: But like I always say, talking about safe football is like talking about a safe cigarette.
• 27:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like you can have a longer filter, you can have less tar, but safer is not the same thing as safe.
• 27:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: Now, a lot of football fans will tell you that the new helmets do a much better job of protecting players' brains.
• 28:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: Is that actually true?
• 28:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, how many players actually wear the helmets in the NFL?
• 28:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: These helmets, a lot of players think, look very silly.
• 28:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: The number of players wearing them right now, that have been seen wearing them in games, I believe it's about a dozen who are wearing them at this point.
• 28:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: They're called Guardian Caps, and even the ones who wear them, don't even wear them on every play.
• 28:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: They're heavier, um, some players say it makes it more difficult to pivot your head.
• 28:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: And if, frankly, if your head isn't on a swivel, that also causes the chance of injury, because you can't necessarily see somebody coming and and gird yourself for that.
• 28:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: So 12 players wearing it is hardly a solution.
• 28:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: we talked about how it's not just the hits in one game, it's the thousands of hits going back to high school practice that create
• 29:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: the basis for CTE, and I understand now there are schools for high school age boys that are football academies, especially in Florida, private boarding schools, where football is everything, where they train basically professional football players who are going to make it in the NFL.
• 29:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: I read about one called IMG Academy,
• 29:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, very famous cost eighty thousand dollars a year to send your kid there.
• 29:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: What's the day like of students at IMG Academy?
• 29:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: A lot of football because that's what the parents are playing for it paying for it.
• 29:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know what's interesting too is.
• 29:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: 80,000 a year for high school.
• 29:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: First of all, keep in mind, the children of oligarchs are not being sent to be our pro football players.
• 29:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: So then you have to ask yourself, well then where's this 80 grand a year coming from?
• 29:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: And according to a book I read called the most expensive game in town by a great writer named Mark Hyman.
• 30:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: It came back many years ago, but his point is so important.
• 30:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: is, you know, youth sports have become so professionalized and so expensive, you know, that the olden days of seeing someone like Willie Mays play stick ball and saying, hey, that guy has a major league talent.
• 30:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: Those days are dead.
• 30:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: There are pipelines.
• 30:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: And if you don't have the money to get in the pipeline, there's a very low chance that your kid is going to make it in these sports, not that there isn't an incredibly low chance anyway.
• 30:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: This 80 grand a year tends to be cobbled together by these families to get them to go.
• 30:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's considerable.
• 30:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: This is the Mark Hyman book I mentioned.
• 30:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: Considerable financial sacrifice.
• 30:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's like for some parents, cost prohibitive, are not words in their dictionary.
• 30:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: When it comes to the idea of having a kid who can play college or professional sports.
• 30:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: So, we know that the NFL is a huge business with a huge audience, and they don't want to interfere with that by looking at brain injuries, caused by concussions.
• 31:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: But what about the players association?
• 31:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: You mentioned them briefly, have they been paying attention to CTE lately?
• 31:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: There was a very strong NFL player's association, at present, there is not.
• 31:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: There is an interim director who comes from the legal field.
• 31:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: He replaced a guy who was formerly the CEO of Booze Allen.
• 31:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: And why a CEO was named head of the union is something that I think would make scholars and scribes scratch their heads.
• 31:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: He was not only terrible, he was terribly corrupt and had to resign under a cloud of scandal.
• 31:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: Now, who this gentleman replaced was a guy who I quoted in my article named Damora Smith.
• 32:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: who was the head of the NFL player association.
• 32:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: And he is was the person who really did a great deal to bring CTE to the public's attention, to challenge the NFL, sounding like cigarette executives.
• 32:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: There's no connection between cigarettes and cancer.
• 32:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: There's no connection between the NFL and CTE.
• 32:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: By the way, that's not even what I said that.
• 32:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: They were called out by Congress, Roger Goodell, the commissioner of the NFL.
• 32:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: for sounding like the cigarette executives.
• 32:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: But it was Demora Smith who had a strong robust union response about how this needs to be dealt with.
• 32:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: But it's not just about the union, we really have to talk about the media.
• 32:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: because the NFL now owns 10% of ESPN.
• 32:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: Wow.
• 32:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: NFL has also taken, I mean, becoming broadcast partners with not just ESPN, but with a lot of like Fox, for example, and Fox sports.
• 33:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: And when CTE first came on to the scene and there was that movie concussion, starring Will Smith,
• 33:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: I can tell you, like, I was on ESPN numerous times to speak about this, more than once.
• 33:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: Sometimes it felt like every week, because there was this close examination of what it was and what it meant.
• 33:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: Now you have all these players dying, as you said, under the age of 46, under circumstances that speak to concussion ailments, and not only has ESPN not covered it,
• 33:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: But you can't even barely find an AP story.
• 33:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: And when they have covered it, like when a first-year player from the Dallas Cowboys took his own life, they don't even mention CTE or concussions.
• 33:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: They'll do a whole article about the funeral and not mention it as a possibility.
• 33:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: Meanwhile, you go to the Dallas Morning News and starting the next morning after this young man died, they're asking the question about concussions
• 34:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: didn't play a role in his suicide.
• 34:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: So, I mean, you can see how different the response has been from and especially from a place like ESPN compared to the Dallas morning news, when ESPN is a place that people, you know, that had a track record of doing this kind of work and is clearly abandoned that track record is part of a broader backlash.
• 34:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: uh... in our society so they don't look quote unquote to liberal woke whatever word you want to use uh... they've really changed their tune Donald Trump now goes on yes last question the big question why do you think football is so huge in america and and how important are the hard hits uh... in explaining why so many men watch
• 34:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: well first got to say not just men but women huge well over 40% of the audience is female for the national football league and if you go to games you know unlike say UFC which tends to be overwhelmingly this male space the NFL is less so um so why the broad-based popularity I mean a couple of reasons like one
• 35:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: is that, you know, the NFL has a set of structures in terms of how it's played.
• 35:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's very much baked into the cake of the United States and how it sees itself.
• 35:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's why they have such a tough time making NFL football popular in countries throughout the world while other sports that were invented in the US like basketball,
• 35:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: uh... have found terrific purchase and baseball as well terrific purchase and other parts of the world uh... football no but at the same time what is football really about it's about land it's about conquest
• 35:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: in the conquest of areas of a field where you're pushed forwards and backwards, then that becomes something that I think is deep in the marrow of this country.
• 36:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: And then there's also, I mean, the very sad fact that we have such little community now in this country and people are so atomized.
• 36:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: And even sports audiences these days are extremely atomized and sliced and diced every which way, but you lose, and yet the NFL is actually more popular than it was a generation ago.
• 36:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I think one of the ways we explained that is not only about some of the isms that plague this country, racism, militarism, and the like, but not to mention commercialism.
• 36:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: but it's also something that I think people find meaning in for their own lives in a way that is both understandable, given alienation and atomization, but also at the end of the day quite sad because you really are watching people destroy each other's brains for entertainment.
• 37:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: And then of course there's the blue tent, so nobody gets too squeamish about what they're seeing.
• 37:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: Dave Ziren, the nation's longtime sports editor and host of the Edge of Sports podcast, you can read his piece about concussions in football at thenation.com.
• 37:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's titled, Sports Media has forgotten about CTE even after player deaths.
• 37:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: Dave, thanks for talking with us today.
• 37:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: Thank you, John, and thank you for the incredible book you wrote with Mike Davis about Los Angeles in the 1960s.
• 37:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: You've been listening to start making sense, a podcast from the nation magazine.
• 37:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: Renee Reynolds is our associate producer, Alan Minsky is our producer, Jack Merkinson is executive producer.
• 38:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: Baskar Sunkara is president of the nation, Katrina Vanden Hovel is editor and publisher of the nation.
• 38:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: Our theme music is from Barcelona, Afrobe, License by Creative Commons.
• 38:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: You can find out more about StartMakingSense at thenation.com, and you can subscribe to StartMakingSense on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
• 38:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm John Weener.
• 38:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: Thanks for listening.