How Much Longer Can Football Last?

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This week marks another kickoff kickoff of another NFL season.

Fans are gearing up to watch the armies of American football wage war, but the even bigger fight might be the one behind the scenes.

A cast of giant personalities, Roger Goodell, Colin Kaepernick, Donald Trump, are facing off in a clash that would be pop culture gold if only real lives weren't at stake.

Is the biggest soap opera of this NFL season going to happen on the field

or off of it?

This

is Radio Atlantic.

Hi, I'm Matt Thompson, executive editor of The Atlantic.

I am delighted to welcome back my oft-Galivanting co-host over in New York, wearing her Atlantic contributing editor hat, the esteemed Alex Wagner.

Hello, Alex.

It is great to be back, Matt, and I'm glad that the contractual stipulation that I must be introduced as esteemed finally made its way into the podcast.

Well, here with me in D.C.

is my not-so-secret unofficial co-host, the Atlantic senior editor, the esteemed Jillian B.

White.

Hi, Matt.

Hello, Jillian.

Thank you again for joining us.

Today, we welcome to the table the one and only Mark Liebovich, who is

fresh offer a relaxing break from the rough and tumble world of national national politics to cover the genteel high society of the NFL.

His latest book, Big Game, the NFL in Dangerous Times, is just out this week and is vying with Bob Woodward's Fear as the hottest book in town.

This town, at least.

Get it?

Totally.

Synergy.

It is so glad.

So glad to have you, Mark.

Welcome.

Matt, thanks for having me.

And, you know, Alex and I have history podcast-wise.

I should have.

We do.

We go back.

We're podcast exes.

We acknowledge none of that history.

You shouldn't.

No, that never happened.

It's like that weekend in Vegas.

That's that weekend in Vegas that we never speak of.

So what a time to be alive.

Mark, I am just going to read a graph from your Times magazine piece from earlier this year to set the table from this conversation.

As of February 2018, the NFL had seen, quote, a two-year drop in television ratings, which the league has blamed on factors like the tension-devouring 2016 presidential campaign and a proliferation of cord-cutting viewers disrupting the broadcast model.

There was the drumbeat of ominous new research about concussions and with it a drop in youth participation in football, regularly regular testimonies from former stars about the sad state of their health, and posthumous diagnoses of degenerative brain disease, chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE.

And that was before the league embarked in 2017 on its most discordant season in years, replete with player protests, fan furor over the protests, and the highly unusual circumstance of an American president using the country's most popular and profitable sport as ammunition in the country's culture wars.

Mark, when you embarked on writing this book four years ago?

Yeah, three, four years ago.

I mean, it was a side project.

Did you know that you were going to be covering Days of Our Lives?

Sort of, but not this particular Days of Our Lives.

By the way, you know,

I tried to have fun doing this, but it gets a little hard to have fun when you're sort of, you know, running headlong into these pretty scary issues.

But no, I thought that

the NFL is a reality show.

They always have a real knack for, in addition to like all the drama on and off the field,

just self-inflicting all kinds of hassles on themselves that can be really, really serious and really, really interesting and turn a lot of people against the league, and yet they still love football.

It's like the NFL is like a, like they're like a drug lord and we're like, we're like addicts, right?

I mean, there's like a nation of football addicts or junkies that is going to sustain this this this entity so

yeah i thought and the i mean the main reason i wanted to do this because i just i needed a break from politics i did not i mean i've been covering politics for a long time politics is my day job politics is again my day job and will be my day job um i thought all right i love football i just want to jump into a different swamp and um i learned maybe after about two minutes that there was zero escaping politics at all this was even before trump you know dove into the swamp

So,

yeah, it was certainly interesting.

I mean, it's not what I expected.

And I had no idea I'd be able to get in as deep as I think I did.

Yeah, Mark, you talk about the fact that

you were trying to find something outside of politics.

And now, I mean, even this week, the NFL is squarely at the crosshairs of political controversy, as it has been for some time in the form of Colin Kaepernick.

But with the new Nike ad and with Donald Trump, Donald Trump, who you wrote, wanted to at one point point own a football franchise, which I think a lot of people maybe who don't follow politics and football

and four decades ago.

I mean, it's been like a lifelong sort of unrequited

journey of him to try to get into the national football team.

Do you feel like there's a common culture

like in politics and the NFL?

And if so, what is that culture other than one of fear and loathing?

Well, I mean, it's reality TV for starters.

I mean, it's Trump is, I mean, the NFL for a long time has been the great spectacle of American life.

And I think that's one of the reasons that Trump has been attracted to it.

I mean, he loves a circus.

He loves a reality show.

He loves carnage, right?

I mean, it's right up his alley.

It's tribalism.

It's not very subtle.

And, you know, it's, I mean, NFL owners, one thing I found.

I mean, it's like fake toughness, like central.

It's like a lot of vicarious rich guys, you know, who like to think of themselves as athletes.

I mean, Al Davis, the legendary owner of the Oakland Raiders, you know, he actually used to wear padded suits to make himself look more like an athlete.

And, you know, they all tell, all these owners, I mean, I spent way too much time with these extremely wealthy, extremely unimpressive old white guys who own these teams.

And they just like, they all felt the need to tell me, you know, I used to play the game.

And like, I remember I was talking to Robert Kraft, the owner of the New England Patriots.

He's like, oh, I used to play the game.

And I'd say, really?

What was that?

He goes, well, I played lightweight football at Columbia.

All right.

So,

I mean, and you're actually, you're boasting about it?

Like, even if I was the best lightweight player at Columbia or even like Notre Dame, I wouldn't be boasting about that.

I will note for the record that has far more football than I have ever played.

You didn't even play lightweight at Columbia.

Flag football.

Flag football, fourth grade.

But anyway, so, yeah, no, but no, Kaepernick, I mean, politics is everywhere.

And then Trump came in.

And And so Trump, his most recent foray into this was trying to get the Buffalo Bills in 2014.

And sort of as a mark of the priorities in our society, they wouldn't let him in.

So as a consolation prize, he's sitting in the White House

heckling

from the bully poll.

But he can't be in their club, but he gets to be in their heads.

One of the things that I really struggled to understand

is who has the most power in the league?

Because it seems kind of complicated.

complicated.

I do.

I mean, you know, they're all

that might not be interesting.

No, it's actually not that complicated.

It's the owners.

The owners.

I mean, that's what's really unique about the league, and it's really ridiculous if you think about it.

I mean, it's 32 extremely, you know, again, I mean, if you were putting together like an all-star corporate board for like Federal Express or Apple or, you know, Bank of America or some, you know, iconic American corporation, you could pick any sort of board members you could.

I think maybe two or three of these 32 owners are people you would even consider.

Okay.

If you were trying to find like a great CEO, Roger Goodell would not be the person you would hire to run this incredibly powerful cultural entertainment sporting entity that just sort of captures the imagination of so many people in America.

Why wouldn't he be?

Why wouldn't he be?

Because, well, first of all, he's just, he has a very narrow sort of football mind.

But the ability ⁇ I mean, I don't think football football is in any way prepared for the vast sort of cultural issues that it has to be dealing with now in the society as it evolves technologically, demographically, racially.

I mean, just like the cultural sensibilities that are driving so many businesses and so many consumer businesses,

the NFL just seems very incapable of just seeing beyond the very, very kind of rigid

model for success that they've had over the years, which is make

big broadcast contract, rely on the popularity of football, people will watch, and at the end of the year will have really big ratings and have really, really big checks coming in.

And it's not like they can ever imagine a different world than the one they have operated in for five decades.

So it's just like, look, these are not people you would choose.

And I just, they don't, I mean,

I think in the last five or six years, you have seen they're just ill-equipped to deal with the domestic violence issue, the health and safety issue,

you know, player discipline.

I mean, there's going to be a a very contentious

labor management negotiation in a couple of years.

I mean, it's just one thing after another.

And

Goodell, I don't quite know why he keeps keeping his job.

So

do you think that this moment with Trump, with the protest, with CTE, it's just kind of the confluence of like basically mismanagement or an inability to manage and deal with some of these cultural issues all coming to a head as they're also losing viewers and money?

Aaron Powell, it is.

I I mean, it is sort of, I mean, you can put like sort of layout like all the doom scenarios like right alongside, just all the quote-unquote existential issues.

That's the word they use.

But, and the big butt here, and this is usually the last word, is they just keep printing money.

And, I mean, they still, the NFL still accounted for like 70 of the top-rated TV shows in America last year out of the top 100.

70 of the top 100-rated TV shows in America were all football games last year.

That's a lot of football.

It's a lot of of football games.

That's a lot of football.

The Carolina Panthers, I mean, the owner of the Panthers, Jerry Richardson, was totally disgraced in a sexual harassment suit at the end of last season.

He sold his team.

You know, the Carolina Panthers, which he bought for $150 million or started for $150 million in like 1994, 1995, something like that, he sold for $2.2 billion.

At the end of a really difficult season last year, they put out these horrible Thursday night games out for network bid and Fox

dramatically overpaid for it.

And so look, they're all making a ton of money, 60% of which is from broadcast deals that go through 2022 or something.

So look, I mean,

there's a lot of sort of short-term reinforcement for short-term thinking, which is money.

To go back to the power question for a moment, how does Trump's entrance into this field and his thirstiness, I mean, for a fight

in this context, how does that complicate the power dynamic?

You scored a scoop earlier this year in bringing us into a meeting of those 32 bosses

where

his name, the name of President Donald Trump.

It's kept coming up again and again and again.

No, well, first of all, Trump loves this issue.

He thinks it's a winning issue for him.

The base loves it.

If you look at, I mean, you know, you could not draw up a better sort of Trumpian foil.

Like, you know, you have a mixed race, big Afro, San Francisco player who kneels during the national anthem.

And he's vegan.

He's a vegan.

Right.

On top of all these things.

I think that's the key part.

He wears a Kunta Kante t-shirt to a deposition, you know, with Bob McNair, like probably the probably the most conservative owner in the league of

the Houston Texans.

And this was like earlier this summer, last, whenever it was, I guess it was last spring.

And he's, and as your own publication reported, his strategy is usually like it's strategic silence, right like unlike Trump unlike Trump right yeah unlike Trump who is bombastic and probably speaks far too much on social media Kaepernick is

Kaepernick is a really different oh absolutely kind of activist if you will right but I think if you sort of look at at Trump and Kaepernick as two extremes, they do sort of show you how outsiders can fill the void of leadership and really sort of imaginative thinking that exists or doesn't exist inside the league.

So to go back to like what we were saying, like this meeting that, so we got a tape.

There was like this, it was right in the middle of the

anthem controversy.

I mean, Trump weighs in, this was last September, October.

A group of about half the owners, half the, you know, a bunch of players, maybe 24 people, they assemble in this private meeting.

Roger Goodell, the commissioner, says, you know, it's really important that we keep this confidential.

So I love when they say that.

And then you can quote that in the paper and say, according to a source that provided an audio tape to the New York Times.

But the striking thing and the takeaway from listening to these owners go back and forth was one, how, again, how unimpressive so many of them are, but also the degree to which it was all geared towards how do we not trigger Donald?

And like he knows a lot of them, and a lot of them gave them money.

I mean, he gave them a lot of money for his inauguration, for his campaign.

And they just like, well, we just got to get out in front of this.

We can't set him off.

anymore.

And you just get this window into how he's just like this puppet master manipulating these people who want no part of him and now they have no choice but to deal with him because he's the president of the United States and has done you know a great deal of damage to their leaders but you've said that that's somewhat of a symbiotic thing right because owners and the NFL have felt before that they have not really had kind of a friend or a window into the presidency they didn't have that with Bush they didn't have it with Obama right and now here's an opportunity for them to have kind of that window in what's it doing for them well look it's all like this club they're in which I'm not in and um i don't think alex is in, but she could be like nodding knowingly, like, oh, yeah, I'm part of that club.

I'm in a lot of clubs that you know, flashing a secret, like, gang sign or something.

No, no, she, I mean, knows, but no, I don't know what it's like to sort of be in this orbit where you call each other when you've won a Super Bowl championship or when you've won a presidential election.

I mean, this is an orbit I could never begin to understand.

So, they just like, everyone's like kind of starstruck, basically.

I think one of the reasons you own an NFL team is because you want to like, you know, be friends with Tom Brady after the game.

I mean, you own the team.

You can go into the locker room and be the first guy to hug him.

And in the same vein, I mean, Donald Trump is like, I mean, everyone's basically a star fucker.

Can I say, I can say that.

This is a damage

leader.

But no, I can say that in the book.

I say that throughout the book.

But it's true.

I mean,

Trump loves to be around, you know, legit rich people, legit, you know, successful people, legit athletes.

He likes to be around things that sort of ring in a very kind of simplistic way of American success.

And I think the same thing, like, wow, we have a friend in the White House.

And, like, Robert Kraft can go to Mar-a-Lago eight days after his team winning the Super Bowl and dine with the new president.

He'd just been inaugurated.

And Shinzo Abe, the president of Japan, in Mar-a-Lago.

That doesn't happen every day.

And what a time to be alive.

Trump space is pretty close to the NFLs and closer in some ways than the owners, right?

The viewership of football is significantly white.

It skews very white, very

Republican.

Traditionally, it's been the most Republican of sports brands.

And look, 75% of the players are African-American.

I mean, it goes up and down a few percentage points depending on the makeup of the rosters.

But yeah, so there is like an incredible imbalance.

And,

you know, again, it's sort of set up perfectly for the Trump base.

I mean, the problem is the NFL can't just play to the base like Donald Trump has decided he wants to do.

I mean, they need everyone.

I mean, they need millennials.

They need Democrats.

They need, you know, African Americans, Hispanics, women.

I mean, they need, they just, I mean, to make their numbers, and their numbers are huge to begin with, but to grow the way they want,

they need the whole basically electoral map or consumer map.

So it does,

you know, they do have to depart at some point.

Aaron Powell, Mark, how, let's talk about the events of this week.

How much is someone like Colin Kaepernick, especially with the power of Nike behind him, how much is he an existential threat to the NFL given the issues they have with Democrats and minorities and progressives?

I mean, is it really a problem for the organization?

And I guess,

you know, how much is it an issue for the president?

Or is it just good for him because it's divisive politics?

Yeah, I think he would say that it's it's right up his alley.

It's his game plan.

I mean, I don't think the president, I mean, I think he probably would cling to this

as like a teddy bear, like after a week of Russia and Woodward and whatever.

But no, I mean, Colin Kaepernick has become an existential issue.

I mean, he sort of went from nuisance to

someone who became a cause celeb, especially after Trump weighed in against him.

And they still thought this was going to go away, but an arbitrator decided last week that his collusion case against the league is going to be hurt.

So a lot of people who are not ready for prime time, like a lot of these owners, are going to have to testify

in a public record to

their business practices, which they don't like to do.

I mean, this is a private company and they operate in relative secrecy.

So that's very uncomfortable.

And I think it's an existential threat inso much as Colin Kaepernick has really shown how much power the players have.

It was a little, I mean, it wasn't surprising, but players sort of started exercising their power last year.

I mean, it was clear to them that the owners needed them to stand in line, like literally.

And if not, it was going to make things worse and people are going to lose money.

And look, players in the NFL don't have a lot of rights.

I mean, they don't have guaranteed contracts.

They have kind of a

lopsided collective bargaining agreement.

I mean, it's not.

It's not a very empowered position.

I mean, not to mention you're playing a sport that could really affect your long-term sort of physical viability.

And you can be cut at any time.

It's a very unfair structure.

So this was empowering to a lot of players.

To go to that point directly, one of the effects of Trump's incursion into this territory has been to bring that very thing, one of the most serious aspects of this conversation, CTE and the fact that these players are putting

their health, their lives on the line for the game.

He has brought that fully into the culture wars

on the field.

Yeah, on the field, but he did before Kaepernick, too.

I mean, he thought like football was an example of political correctness gone amok.

I mean, they let these players, you know, wear their have their dreadlocks and they do goofy things on their uniforms.

I mean, there was, again, before Kaepernick, there was this event,

he did a campaign event in Nevada where he said,

you know, football has gone soft.

America has gone soft.

And it was after a particularly violent playoff game.

It was after a violent playoff game that all the players were saying it was a disgrace.

And, you know, Roger Goodell said it was a disgrace, and players were suspended, and fans in Cincinnati were throwing things on the field.

Take us to that game for a moment.

Yeah, it was Pittsburgh and Cincinnati wild card playoff game early 2016 and

yeah, the game just degenerated.

I mean there were just fights and you know personal fouls and ejections and eventually suspensions and like the fans were just like you know it was one of those things where you just sort of stay up late on a Saturday night in part to see who's going to win the football game, but also to see if like if like the end of like civilization is unfurling on CBS with Jim nance and phil sims right and phil sims said this is a total disgrace and and trump you know two days later he was right in the middle of the campaign just seized on this and he too said it was a disgrace but for completely different reasons he said it was a disgrace because you know you used to be able to like really hit someone and just see this beautiful violence on a field and without now you have these penalty flags everywhere which again very easy metaphor for you know the kind of things that the donald trumps used to be able to get away away with, or the people who vote for him could get away with, and all of a sudden, penalty flags, rules, new laws, progressive politics, whatever you want to look at, political correctness, all the things that he was arguing can find America from being great again.

And so, again, then Colin Kaepernick came along, but even before that, it was a perfect sort of Trumpian parable to sort of, you know, especially yell from the podium.

To what would effective leadership,

particularly in the context and around CTE, look like?

You know, I think, first of all,

they think they're doing a lot now, and a lot of it's optics, but they're obviously giving a lot of money to research.

But the problem is they consistently get nailed for,

you know,

there's a...

a research group at Boston University that they hate because they consistently have found the most really alarming research on dead players' brains.

And it's the Boston University Brain Lab or something like that.

But that's where like all the dead football players who decide to donate their brains, that's where they send their brains to, because that's the study.

And granted, you know, these are often football players who die young, and it's for some kind of, you know, suicides, things like that.

I mean, that reason that would self-select them to some kind of brain damage.

But Aaron Hernandez is

really tragic player for the New England Patriots.

He was convicted of murder, kills himself in prison on the morning the Patriots were supposed to see Donald Trump at the White House in early last year.

I thought he had impeccable timing.

It was just like a classic thing.

But

his brain went up the road to BU, and the researcher, her name is Anne McKee, found that for a 27-year-old athlete, she's never seen a worse case of CTE.

And this is someone who went completely off the rails, you know, who was convicted for murder.

But yeah, that study at BU, I mean, I guess the league, you know, is trying to give their money elsewhere.

I mean, so you do get a sense that maybe they're picking the more advantageous and less alarming research.

So they do keep getting the L the Night.

Anyway, so yeah, go ahead, Alex.

Sorry, can I ask?

I don't know,

this is like a rumor that I've heard when we talk about CTE in different circles for years now, but that OJ Simpson, probably the most famous violent player in the NFL,

was maybe, or is, I shouldn't use the past tense,

has

CTE.

It could be.

I mean, the thing about CTE is you just never know until the players die and they still have a brain.

So, I mean, yeah, I mean, although they're actually, there is talk that they could be fairly close to some kind of breakthrough where you could tell the extent of a player's brain while they're still alive.

I don't know if it's while they're still playing, but

yeah, I mean, look, players who exhibit that kind of thing, it's obviously there's something inherent to the football culture that

overlaps with violent behavior, but it's certainly possible.

Aaron Powell, could this be the season that breaks the NFL?

Aaron Powell, well, people have been saying that.

I do think it'll be a longer-term thing.

I mean, I'm also

not necessarily the doomsayer here that like Malcolm Gladwell, who says that 25 years there'll be no NFL.

But I'm also...

I'm very much aware, and part of this is, and this is a weird kind of connection, but covering Washington.

I wrote this book five years ago called This Town that was really about about sort of the empire.

Like it was about the permanent feudal culture of like this really fat and happy, permanent class of people, whether it's elected officials or staff people or media people or hangers on or lobbyists.

It was just no one wants to leave.

Like the getting's really, really good.

And

the overlap is amazing.

It's like there is this sort of last days of the empire feel.

And what happened to Washington, I mean, I don't think I didn't predict Donald Trump, but you could totally see that a world was created that would invite some kind of counteraction or counter effect or populist effect.

And, you know, again, Trump, I think, is a direct result of that, and he ran very much against that.

And his presidency is positioned, you know, quite clunkily, but

that's basically still where he is.

Football is the same thing.

I mean, you can see that no one knows what to do.

I mean, the only thing they have, the best thing they have going for it is football.

I mean, it sounds weird, but the best thing football has going for it is football.

But it's true.

I mean, people love the game.

It is a great game.

I continue to love the game, and it's a perfect television game.

I mean, most people watch football on television, and it's the field is shaped perfectly.

The TVs are rectangle.

I mean, it's perfect

asymmetry.

I mean, it's just, it's perfect.

And they do a great job with HD.

And so it's really good entertainment.

That was a very trumpy comment.

They do a great job with HD.

Is that really the NFL skill, or is that not the broadcast network?

Well, whatever it is, the formula has.

It's really sharp picture.

it is a it is a great watching experience, except that the games kind of suck sometimes, so that's not good, and that's another problem.

I'm wondering to what extent you think the,

I guess the disparities in the power differentials, as they keep coming up, as they keep getting blown up between CT, between

these protests, between Trump constantly weighing in.

I mean, even in the way that you laid it out here, the fact that the players are 75%, give or take a few minorities, they are essentially out there, some of them, killing themselves early, definitely damaging their brains.

And then the one form of active protest, which has essentially been a silent protest, has been quashed or owners have tried to quash it.

You know, I think that's perhaps more evident than it's been in years what the differentials in power here are.

So I'm wondering how much you think that'll play into changes.

I think we'll know more when there's a collective bargaining agreement.

I mean, the fact is NFL players have very little few rights now.

I mean

they have entered into, you know, I guess a lucrative collective bargaining agreement because, I mean, there is more money in football and they're probably seeing more of it than they have ever.

But

look, I mean, I do think that it's really hard to collectively

to organize football players.

It's a really tough sport to hold sort of an effective strike in because it's a short season.

They have very short careers.

And look, if your entire life were geared towards, say,

you know, if you're lucky, six years of like playing a sport that that's just your whole life, you've been working and you have the skill to do it and you can make a fair amount of money.

You know, to waste a year and not only that, but to risk the,

you know, risk the anger of your bosses who can just cut you like that.

I mean,

it's a really tough thing to contemplate.

And think about, I mean, beyond that, you have a very top-down sort of military structure of usually an autocratic coach, a very sort of oligarchic owner, right?

I mean, again, usually conservative and or sort of military in its mindset.

And so, look, if I'm like a borderline player, I mean, forget Colin Kaepernick or forget like Tom Brady or Aaron Rodgers.

If I'm like a decent player and I want to like get six, seven years in the league in, and, you know, I got a pretty good shot of making the Cleveland Browns and like I'm penciled in to be like a backup linebacker.

You know, my spot on the rockers looks pretty secure.

And I start kneeling because I believe that this is the right thing to do.

And the very conservative owner, Mike Brown.

And

it's not a great career move if you want to be perfectly blunt about it.

I mean, it's very easy for us to sit here and say, yeah, why don't they protest?

They have a voice.

These are important issues.

But at the same time, I mean, to actually get from that.

that sort of sentiment to actually doing it and risking your job and your career.

I mean, Colin Kaepernick is probably set for life now, and he'll be remembered in a certain way.

But for everyone like that, I mean, there's just,

it's not that safe to do still, as his example shows.

Mark, I know that after you wrote This Town, you came away with a renewed sense of pride about your hometown, Washington.

Absolutely, yeah.

That's how you always see me in New York.

Are you able to watch the game in the same way, having written this book?

You know, that's a great question.

I have thought about that.

I guess we'll see.

I mean, the season starts tonight, Thursday, but I would like to be able to.

I mean, I'm not someone who wants to sort of die on the hill of football is evil and we must all just turn off our TV sets because that is the right thing to do.

I mean, you know, I respect people who make that decision, but I'm just, I don't want to lead that fight.

But I do, look, I mean, I've been inside the sausage factory now.

I mean, a lot of these people don't like me, I don't think.

And, I mean, for better or for worse, I mean, the game has sort of broken some glass early on.

And,

you know, I root for New England.

I, you know, I hope that the 80s.

Knowing all that you do.

Knowing all that I do, despite all that,

having grown up up there, I hope that the 90% of the people listening to this don't like hate me or don't like not even consider buying the book because I just made that damning confession.

You're going to sell me.

I'm one of the good ones.

I'm going to sell so many books, Mark.

This podcast.

I keep saying that.

But no, but I don't.

I think it might be tougher.

I mean, look, I have never loved the NBA more than I have.

Like in the last,

I love the NBA now more than I did like two years ago.

Part of it is because, you know, the play, there's just, it's like a good time to be an NBA fan, but it's also, you don't have a lot of the baggage that the NFL has.

So we'll see.

Mark, at the end of this idol, now that you've published the book, you're moving back into covering actual politics.

And I'm curious, what have you learned about power in the course of writing this book that you're bringing back to your coverage of DC?

Oh, great question.

I mean, I think one thing you learn about power is that it's fleeting.

And I mean, I also feel, and this is one, this is a really basic similarity and difference between the world of football and the sort of swamp of politics, or the swamp of football and the swamp of politics, which is, you know, there's a lot of fat and happiness in both worlds, but there's a big difference when you have to run for re-election.

And none of these NFL owners could, you know, have to run for re-election.

It'd be really, really good if they did, because it'd be really, really ugly to see what their campaigns and what their election numbers look like.

But no, I mean,

I guess just the nature of power is that

the most powerful people that you think you're dealing with in the world are often just as needy and insecure and vulnerable and

kind of like not as impressive as you might think.

So

there was sort of a emperor has no clothes takeaway I got from

being in this world for a few years compared to what I did before.

And that's usually the approach I take anyway.

But I do, I mean, I guess I have a renewed appreciation for

you know, what it takes to sort of go through the process of politics and making laws and making allies and winning elections and things like that.

So in a minute, we will come back for our closing segment, Keepers.

Mike and Alyssa are always trying to outdo each other.

When Alyssa got a small water bottle, Mike showed up with a four-litre jug.

When Mike started gardening, Alyssa started beekeeping.

Oh, come on.

They called a truce for their holiday and used Expedia Trip Planner to collaborate on all the details of their trip.

Once there, Mike still did more laps around the pool.

Whatever.

You were made to outdo your holidays.

We were made to help organize the competition.

Expedia, made to travel.

At the end of every Radio Atlantic episode, I ask our listeners and our guests the question, what have you heard, read, watched, listened to, experienced recently that you do not want to forget?

First, we'll play a keeper from one of our listeners, Bradley, who is in college, about to spend a year abroad, and recently spent some time backpacking in Wyoming's Wind River Range.

Besides all of the breathtaking scenery, what I truly don't want to forget would be just how friendly complete strangers are when you meet them on the trail.

You don't need to know anyone's story or where they're from or what they do to have just a great conversation about a shared experience.

There's something about being in the wilderness that creates a really unique sense of community.

And I'm really grateful that that was one of the last experiences of America that I'll have for the next year.

Fantastic.

That's a very nice keeper.

America.

That was heartwarming.

Alex, what do you want to keep?

I'm decidedly something really lowbrow, as is my way on this site.

Simple pleasures, Alex.

Simple pleasures.

yeah, I have revisited the joy of the lender's mini bagel.

Oh my gosh.

Nobody has eaten a mini bagel, I think, since 1988.

And I am back in all the way.

No one's eating white flour anymore.

I'm doubling down on it.

And I'm doing it with tempte whipped cream cheese.

How do you like that?

And I'm not opening a can of tab to go wash it all down yet, but that is the new breakfast of champions.

You're welcome, America.

Fantastic.

Mini bagels.

Jillian?

Yeah, well, I am also going to keep with my normal theme, which is TV and movies.

And my keeper is to all the boys I have loved before.

I keep hearing about this thing.

I'm going to watch it.

It is just such a delightful movie and just such a respite from the news of the day.

It's based on Jenny Hahn's 2014 novel.

And one of the things that I loved most about it, other than it just being a delightful, non-corny rom-com was the way that it just took so many things for granted without having to explain it namely the way that it infuses different ethnicities and different cultures into the American experience of this one family and never feels a need to explicitly point it out or say that it's different because at this point it's not.

That is the American experience.

And I just thought that was really lovely and special and really important for representation and everyone should go watch it.

It was very, very great.

Fantastic.

I am so looking forward to

seeing this thing.

Heard so much about it.

I'll switch it up this week and go next, and I will land on you, Mark.

My keeper,

it is a

rough, I mean, the past, however long you want to say, has been a rough time to be Catholic, which I am.

And right now, it is a really challenging, particularly time to be Catholic.

The church is grappling with

just

once again a window into

the

impossibly expansive sweep of sexual assault against minors that the church perpetrated over

who knows how long a period of time and covered up.

It has been just grotesque to see again and again the spread of this, the intention behind covering it up.

And as a Catholic, it is a very difficult thing

to grapple with.

And so

it has been

some sucker in the middle of this to encounter the story of Catherine Drexel, Saint Catherine Drexel,

the nun, heiress to a fortune

who used that fortune

to

start an order of nuns

sisters of the blessed sacrament I believe is the name

dedicated to building schools to educating Native Americans and African Americans throughout her community throughout the country

and most notably most Most notably, she bequeathed the gift that gave rise to Xavier University, the country's only historically black Catholic college, and the college, which

I believe, at least until recently, had the distinction of sending the most black meds, pre-med students into medical school, graduating the most

doctors in training, black doctors in training.

Her story, I'm not going to dwell into it at length, but it's a pretty extraordinary one in the story of how she came to be canonized after after her death.

But

it has been a valuable reminder that in the middle of an institution that has both tremendous power and the capacity for tremendous evil in the deployment of that power, there are people like that that can do tremendous good.

Minekeeper.

Mark,

lighten us up over here.

You guys are

left.

No,

okay, well, I would say,

you know what, here's a keeper.

I just thought about off the top of my head, which is.

Those are the ones I like best.

Yeah, no.

When I'm in New York and I'm, I don't care how far I have to walk at the end of an evening.

I actually was at dinner in Lower Manhattan the other night,

finished about 11.

My hotel in Midtown was like maybe two and a half miles away.

I just walk.

Have to walk.

I just need to unwind and the streets are like awake.

But I think it's important to walk without headphones because one thing you realize, even at a late hour in New York, in Washington, wherever you happen to be walking, everyone around you, it seems these days, is plugged in.

So you have, I don't know if it's an advantage, a disadvantage, a kind of privacy you have, but you realize

you are like awake to something that others are not awake to, but also.

You can talk loud on the phone, you can not be on the phone, you can sing, and you have a kind of impunity when you're walking the streets at any hour of the day that you might not have known.

As long as, you know, it's obviously, it's a safe space.

It's people are around.

It's like a sort of a positive urban experience.

But no, the power of not having headphones while walking.

And walking.

Walking.

You do walk.

I like to walk.

I know that.

I like long walks.

When you sign off, you walk off

to wherever it is or anything.

Well, it's like 100 degrees outside.

So I don't want to

go back to my headphones.

That is lovely.

That's beautiful.

That's

I feel both galvanized to go do some walks without headphones.

No headphones.

Everyone's got headphones.

All the time, but I also feel sub-tweeted by that.

No sub-tweet intended.

I am that person that you will pass singing Fiddler on the Roof tonight.

By the way, I'm also a keeper.

Thanks for having me on.

This is fun.

Thank you so much for joining me.

You're a keeper.

You're a keeper.

You're a keeper, Mark.

I'm so, so honored to be kept.

And Jillian, Alex, it is always a pleasure.

It is always a pleasure.

Fun as always.

Till next time.

That'll do it for this week's Radio Atlantic.

This episode was produced and edited, as always, by Kevin Townsend.

Our executive producer for Atlantic Podcast is the fantastic Catherine Wells.

Special thanks to Kim Lau for additional production support and to John Batiste for our mortal theme music.

Thank you also also this week to Mark Liebovich for joining us and to Jillian White and Alex Wagner, my esteemed co-hosts.

What is your keeper?

Call us at 202-266-7600 and leave us a voicemail with your contact information and tell us what you do not want to forget.

Check us out at facebook.com slash radioatlantic and theatlantic.com slash radio.

Catch the show notes in the episode description.

And if you like what you're seeing, rate and review us in Apple Podcasts and subscribe in your preferred podcast app.

We'll also drop a link to Mark Liebovich's new book, Big Game, in the show notes.

Most importantly, thank you for listening.

May you find what entertainment you can, whether it's on a field or a television or a headphoneless walk.

But may you take the most enjoyment from the lives of the people around you.

We'll see you next week.