0:10

Welcome back to the sustaining sport podcast

0:12

. Today we are talking to Samuel Clevenger

0:15

, assistant professor at Townsend University

0:17

in the USA , and I don't think it's

0:19

possible to have a more complex topic how

0:22

does sport relate to colonialism and

0:24

how does that relationship impact on the environment

0:27

? We start by exploring

0:29

the fairly radical idea of decoloniality

0:31

and examples of how sport was

0:33

and is used to maintain a

0:35

western-centric worldview on themes

0:37

like identity , imagery and

0:39

competition . We also

0:42

reference situations where western sports

0:44

had been reconceptualized more in the

0:46

image of the indigenous people who were pressured

0:48

to play them . Then , as

0:50

we pivot to the environmental repercussions , we

0:52

inevitably have to discuss broader societal

0:54

criticisms and notions such as climate

0:57

justice , burnout and degrowth

0:59

or post growth . I know

1:01

it's a lot to unpack , but I think if you're interested

1:03

in sport or the environment or even

1:05

history , there's something in this episode for

1:07

you , so please do enjoy our conversation

1:10

with Sam Clevenger . Welcome

1:20

, sam , to the sustaining sport podcast .

1:22

Thank you , thanks so much for having me .

1:24

No , you're so welcome . So , as I like to begin

1:26

with everyone , now tell us a little bit about

1:28

how you got into this space . What led you down

1:31

to this particular subject matter of sport

1:33

, colonialism , the environment

1:35

, all the many other topics you touch on .

1:38

Specifically with colonialism

1:40

. It was a particular

1:42

article that I wrote

1:45

I think forget what year it

1:47

was in grad school when I was at

1:49

the University of Maryland and it was a paper

1:51

about . I was getting

1:53

really interested and influenced by

1:55

the school thought called

1:58

decoloniality . It's kind

2:00

of a group of scholars

2:02

with Latin American origins

2:05

that look into kind of epistemological

2:08

colonialism that came along

2:10

with the literal , the physical

2:12

, material colonialism in the history

2:14

of kind of Western invasion

2:17

of indigenous peoples and

2:19

I was really interested in

2:21

the way that decoloniality

2:24

could help explain how

2:26

the idea of sport

2:29

could be tied to

2:31

issues of power and

2:34

repression , like the ways in which ideas

2:37

of sport could be like Eurocentric

2:40

or could inform

2:42

kind of a Western view

2:44

of the world at the expense of

2:47

other perspectives and other worldviews , particularly

2:49

non-Western or indigenous worldviews . I

2:52

grew up as a white settler in the

2:55

state of Ohio in the US and I grew

2:57

up as a fan of Cleveland sports

2:59

and one of the Cleveland sports teams was always the

3:01

Cleveland Indians , the major league baseball team

3:03

, and they famously had

3:05

the chief Wahoo mascot and I

3:07

just remember growing up like

3:09

there was just always something kind of strange

3:13

and difficult with the

3:15

mascot , like even as a kid because

3:17

you go to games and you'd

3:20

see these grown men I mean like

3:22

fathers and grown adults

3:24

be sort of painting their faces

3:26

red and be wearing sort of feathers

3:29

and making kind of stereotypical

3:31

sounds that they think Native Americans

3:34

made when they went to battle or something

3:36

, and it just seemed like it just always

3:38

seemed wrong . So when I was

3:40

in grad school later on

3:43

and started to study in sport history , it just

3:45

seemed like kind of a natural movement

3:47

for me . It's like getting into the ways

3:49

in which sports seem to be tied to these issues

3:52

with the history of colonialism

3:55

. So when I got into that , that

3:57

first piece which is just about kind of

3:59

basically like kind of Eurocentric

4:02

knowledge and the history of sport

4:05

, that was kind of my first

4:07

entry into seeing the ties between the two . It's

4:09

only been kind of more recently in my work

4:11

that I've started to more closely look

4:13

at the links between environmental

4:16

change , colonialism and sport , the interconnections between

4:18

all three of them .

4:21

Yes , and I don't think that's an

4:23

uncommon route , I think to some of these acknowledgments

4:25

, or at least becoming aware of these things

4:27

, I think , even as a non-American

4:29

, the first thing that often comes to my mind

4:32

would be the Washington Redskins and all

4:34

that that's gone on in terms of the

4:36

name , but it goes around the world . I

4:38

think more apparent would be like the Exeter

4:40

Chiefs , which have changed their logo from more

4:42

of like a Native American , but that's a British rugby

4:46

team with a sort of Native American representation

4:49

which seems very peculiar . But again there

4:51

is that change happening and I think in my own country

4:53

of South Africa it's been very tied where

4:55

, post-apartheid , they basically had to

4:57

change all of the sports teams' names because most

4:59

of them were named regionally and the regions

5:02

themselves were bicolonial design . I

5:05

think let's start with this

5:07

concept of like decoloniality . From

5:09

what I understand and I think you probably need to clarify

5:12

this for me it is a deeper

5:14

set of thoughts than purely decolonization

5:17

. Decolonialization refers to more , maybe

5:19

what dependency theory , and decoloniality

5:22

is more both a cultural and economic

5:24

sort of equitization . Is that fair to say ?

5:28

I think so I think it's getting to it

5:30

. I'm definitely not an expert

5:32

. I definitely wouldn't especially as being sort

5:35

of a white settler from the United States , like to declare

5:37

myself an expert in decoloniality . I mean , a

5:39

lot of the writers , like Walter

5:42

McNullo , for example , really

5:44

emphasize sort of the decolonial

5:46

thinkers that have existed

5:48

for centuries , going back to the

5:50

1400s of the Common Era

5:53

, and people that were responding to the

5:55

forced colonization of peoples with the

5:57

arrival of Europeans . The

5:59

thing I always emphasize , because

6:02

there's so many connections between when

6:04

you're talking about you know if you're talking about

6:06

Edward Said and postcolonialism , or if you're

6:08

talking about settler colonialism

6:11

and then this idea of decoloniality

6:13

, like for me , decoloniality

6:16

has a lot to do with the

6:18

knowledge , like the

6:20

colonization of knowledge , and how epistemic

6:23

repression is tied

6:25

to economic and

6:28

physical repression , how , when

6:30

you're talking about the history of colonialism , it's not

6:33

just that the people you're

6:35

talking about genocide or you're talking about dispossession

6:37

or enslavement , but at the same

6:39

time the ideas of those

6:41

peoples were also being repressed

6:43

or trying to be extinguished by

6:45

European peoples . You know the

6:48

emphasis whenever you read decoloniality

6:50

is always about you know strategies

6:52

for changing the terms of the conversation

6:55

, like it's about how

6:57

you frame and understand

6:59

knowledge and the ways that which those framings

7:02

can often reinforce kind of the Western

7:04

modern worldview and slide this

7:07

whole kind of dark history of

7:09

colonialism and then how that

7:12

epistemological repression has

7:14

direct ties to the capitalist

7:17

world system and to sort of economic

7:19

repression , like they're not separate things . They

7:21

have sort of distinct elements to it but they're not separate

7:24

. They're sort of overlapping and interlocked in

7:26

important ways . You know , when I think

7:28

of decoloniality with sport , for

7:30

me decoloniality and sport is like this

7:32

how the ideas that we take for granted

7:35

when we think about sport , like dominant perception

7:37

, perceptions of sport , often

7:39

involve ideas that are linked to

7:41

Western history and the Western worldview

7:44

and we forget that . We often look like

7:46

thinking about sport as being something that's supposed

7:48

to be competitive or something where

7:50

it's supposed to be a business and supposed to be

7:52

profitable , or it involves

7:54

individuals competing against individuals

7:56

. You know , all of those ideas are not

7:58

universal . There's nothing universal about them

8:01

. They come from a particular kind of geopolitical

8:03

origin .

8:04

No , it does make a lot of sense and it's , I think

8:06

, fascinating from a South African perspective , because

8:08

it's exceptionally true that , both both

8:11

from a knowledge and identification

8:14

perspective and also from an economic perspective

8:16

, south African sport is entirely in

8:19

the colonial design . I mean , I

8:21

acknowledge your point about it's maybe some ironic

8:23

to hear this from likes of yourself or

8:25

me where , yeah , we are both white people

8:27

but from countries that basically only

8:29

exist because of colonialism . But

8:31

all of the sports in South Africa , like the big three

8:34

, are football , slash soccer , predominantly

8:36

rugby and cricket , which are kind of England's big three

8:39

sports . But then if you actually look into the

8:41

sports themselves , the very systems on the

8:43

ground are pointing still

8:45

towards England . Like , if you are a young

8:47

South African soccer player , slash

8:49

football player , you absolutely want

8:51

to make it at your local club level , maybe

8:54

make it at the big club level so

8:56

that you will be picked up by a European club

8:58

. And that is for both reasons of financial

9:00

gain , of course , which are drastically imbalanced

9:03

, and also from a perspective of

9:05

identification . You know these children

9:07

are raised . I'm not saying they're indoctrinated

9:09

, I would not go that far . It is purely just a

9:11

case of , yeah , marketing and good

9:14

TV coverage to

9:16

think that , you know , playing for Arsenal or playing for

9:18

Liverpool are the best things that can happen , such

9:21

that , yeah , their own ambitions

9:24

within their own country seem to be quite diminished

9:26

.

9:27

Oh yeah , absolutely , and it comes . You

9:30

know , there's even kind of this sort of backward

9:33

looking route too where they assume that

9:35

kind of the value of the sport , like

9:37

you know , for example , like history is a football , like

9:39

association football , like most histories

9:42

still assume that the origins are in

9:44

England , so it has like a Western

9:46

European origin . I mean , if

9:48

you look at it from kind of a longer perspective

9:51

of ball games like this , the very

9:53

long history of various different societies

9:55

using a ball and either

9:57

kicking it around or throwing it around , then that history is a lot

9:59

more complicated . I mean , people have been doing those

10:01

type of ball games for centuries . I mean , you can go back at

10:04

least to the Egyptian societies

10:06

thousands of years ago . But we have these narratives

10:09

that say that , okay , well

10:11

, this modern version of the sport originated

10:13

in Europe , in Britain , and

10:15

from there it's spread around the world . So it retains

10:17

that kind of kernel of kind

10:19

of Western exceptionalism . That's kind

10:21

of serves to reinforce the existing

10:24

power structure where kind of the European

10:26

institutions and sort of European governments

10:28

or Western governance seem to still

10:30

reign supreme within the organization . And

10:32

that's the same thing , not the same thing . But

10:34

there's similar dynamics , I think

10:36

, in the United States as well . I mean a

10:38

lot of my work . So I've done some work

10:41

recently and I'm still doing some research on the history

10:43

of basketball , and with basketball

10:45

there's this sort of long established narrative

10:48

that James Naysmith , who

10:51

was a Canadian born kind

10:53

of physical educator , comes to Springfield

10:55

, massachusetts , and then in 1891

10:58

writes down the rules for basketball

11:00

. There's been ball games that involved an elevated

11:03

hoop in a rectangular court for a really , really long

11:05

time . There's a lot of Aztec and

11:07

Mayan and other kind of early modern

11:09

civilizations , going all the way back to the Olmecs

11:11

, having very similar games . But in the narrative

11:14

that exists and then the narrative that's reproduced

11:16

by the NBA and

11:18

by the basketball hall of fame , by universities like

11:20

the University of Kansas , they reinforce this idea

11:22

that no , it's this modern

11:25

, individual Western man

11:27

had this sort of immaculate conception

11:29

of a game that had no sort

11:32

of predecessor whatsoever , had no connection

11:34

to any other people that existed in history

11:36

. And then suddenly that narrative kind of reinforces

11:39

this sort of exceptionalist

11:41

view of the sport and

11:44

it's part of how they sort of frame the sport

11:46

, how they promote it , how it

11:48

exists as kind of an economic

11:50

entity . You

11:53

see that in a lot of different sports to this

11:55

day .

11:56

I think it's funny that that does sort

11:58

of still manifest itself when , at

12:00

least I would say , former

12:02

British colonial countries such

12:04

as New Zealand , australia , south Africa and

12:06

I'd even go so far as to say the likes of Scotland

12:09

, obviously pushing it back , you know , even perhaps

12:11

pre-colonialism , in terms of that rivalry

12:13

. But there is this

12:15

sort of mantra and I think the Scottish fans were

12:17

singing it a few years ago during the Euros , the

12:20

football tournament . It's like anyone but England , because

12:23

they accept the narrative of like . Maybe

12:25

these people invented the sport . Whether or not that's true , as

12:27

you say , is highly debated , but

12:29

if they are going to invent a sport and spread it

12:31

around the world , then we better take that

12:33

on board and beat them at it . And there's this , you know

12:35

, some kind of tribalism and joy that people

12:38

get out of it , and I would even say I get a lot out of that . You

12:42

mentioned this kind of relationship

12:44

with the how the sport spread , and obviously

12:46

that was a part of colonialism and , specifically , globalization

12:48

. Where do you see sport in the

12:50

cause and effect ? Do you see sport as

12:52

just another thing that's being globalized

12:54

like many other types of culture , or do you

12:56

think sport has a bit more agency in terms

12:59

of it is a tool to be

13:01

used to influence people .

13:03

I mean most of my work involves

13:06

kind of historical analysis , like if

13:08

you asked me to describe myself , let's say , as a port

13:10

historian . So when you look back

13:13

in terms of the diffusion of

13:15

modern organized forms of sport

13:17

, they were often deployed

13:20

by settler nations like

13:22

in my work , the United States , for example

13:25

as tools for cultural

13:27

assimilation , ways

13:29

of stripping indigenous

13:31

or non-western peoples of their customs

13:33

and assimilate them into Western society

13:35

, western views , western attire

13:37

, western ways of

13:39

acting and working . You know

13:42

you could look at the

13:44

colonization of Hawaii and the

13:46

sort of the appropriation and commodification

13:49

of surfing , of surfing practices , into

13:51

it's kind of like a business by the early

13:53

1900s . You can look at Puerto Rico

13:55

, the boarding schools

13:57

. You know American Indian boarding schools , the

14:00

government , government run boarding schools

14:02

, church run boarding schools

14:04

. That happened in Canada as

14:06

well where they sort of

14:08

forcibly placed native

14:10

children on these schools and then it

14:12

was basically a curriculum of colonization

14:15

and assimilation . You know , in those curriculum

14:17

I mean sport it wasn't just

14:20

there . They didn't include sport

14:22

just because they thought the kids would like it

14:24

and it'd be fun and playful . I mean it was

14:26

part and parcel of their

14:28

sort of assimilationists and kind

14:30

of erasure objectives

14:33

. You know , like the sport itself they

14:36

thought at least , was

14:38

a way to fully ingratiate

14:40

the native children into the Western

14:43

way of living . It didn't

14:45

work . I mean , like some of the best histories

14:47

out there are these histories from the perspective

14:50

of indigenous peoples and sort of detailing

14:52

the ways that indigenous peoples did not

14:54

engage with the sport in the way

14:57

that you know the school leaders or

14:59

the other organizers of sport wanted

15:01

them to engage with it . They

15:03

use sport for their own purposes . They use sport

15:05

as a way to sort of a kind of counter

15:08

hegemonic strategy , a way of maintaining their

15:10

native identities in the face or

15:12

in that context of colonization

15:14

. I'm thinking in particular of the

15:17

historian Wade Davies has his book

15:19

Native Hoops , which is about kind of the history of American

15:21

Indian basketball , and American Indian

15:23

peoples encounter basketball through

15:26

the boarding school experience by the turn

15:28

of the 20th century . So it's distinctly

15:30

a context of colonialism . But the way

15:33

that they engaged with basketball

15:35

, the meaning that they ascribed to basketball , how they

15:37

used it , was entirely connected

15:39

to the way they preserved and maintained

15:42

a sense of native community and native

15:44

identity . It wasn't , it was not as if they

15:46

just simply accepted the sort

15:48

of intentions of the school

15:50

leaders .

15:52

Yeah , absolutely , and I think to that point it

15:54

raises some very interesting parallels

15:57

with even just the colonial history of South Africa

15:59

. Obviously the first Europeans to get there were Dutch

16:01

and then followed , once they found

16:03

a certain degree of resources where the

16:05

British came as well . And in

16:07

the evolution of the country and I'm speaking in quite

16:09

broad strokes here , but even

16:12

the broad evolution of the country it sort of became

16:14

associated that cricket was a little bit the English game

16:16

and rugby was a little bit the Dutch game

16:18

, even though rugby is also an English invention

16:21

. That's kind of how it played out

16:23

. So in this very sort of British boarding

16:25

school style education which a lot

16:27

of the white people in the country had

16:29

, those two sports were pushed

16:31

, obviously particularly across men . And

16:34

then during the apartheid era it was kind of

16:36

considered almost not

16:38

frowned upon , but not part of the

16:41

ethos of the country to play games

16:43

like soccer , slash football . But

16:45

that was very interesting because then it became an act of protest

16:48

to some degree within the

16:50

oppressed indigenous people under apartheid to

16:53

play soccer , because that

16:55

was not what the dominant powers were doing

16:57

. And actually on that act of rebellion there

16:59

was even some causation there because the the

17:01

ANC , the African National Congress , which

17:04

was an underground movement during most of apartheid

17:06

, realized that the local

17:08

soccer communities attracted a crowd . So

17:10

it was often used as like a non excuse

17:13

, but like , built on top , was this way of communicating

17:15

and gathering momentum and coordinating

17:17

acts of rebellion , which I think is super interesting

17:20

. And then , yeah , since the end of apartheid

17:22

, rugby and cricket are slightly diminishing in

17:24

the national consciousness and soccer

17:26

and we do call it soccer in South Africa , by the

17:28

way is growing .

17:31

You know , it's interesting too , like , I

17:34

do think , like when you look at these various

17:36

sort of contexts where sport was

17:38

sort of well , european forms of

17:40

sport , sort of enter a context of colonialism

17:43

, I think often the intention was to

17:45

make the people

17:47

who are living in the colony more productive . So

17:49

, like you're saying , was sort of kind of the economics

17:51

of South Africa to kind of be

17:54

a compliment to what they're

17:56

trying to extract economically

17:58

within , within the

18:00

, the place that they're trying to colonize . That

18:02

was certainly the case , I think , with the , with the United States

18:04

. You know , there is often , when you're talking about either

18:07

extracting for gold or the

18:09

various other natural resources , like sport

18:12

. The function of sport was to sort of

18:14

instill this , this idea that

18:17

you need to constantly be improving

18:19

your productivity or maintain your productivity

18:21

, and playing sport was a way of

18:23

maintaining that . So it has

18:25

, in that sense , like in these various

18:27

different contexts of colonialism , sport has this

18:29

weird connection where

18:31

it's being , it's often

18:34

being cast as if it's

18:36

not connected . It's kind of like the

18:38

it's outside the

18:40

economic context of colonialism , but I think

18:42

it's actually a lot more integral .

18:45

And I think obviously during apartheid

18:47

South Africa were famously sanctioned by

18:49

, eventually by most of at least American

18:51

supported allies around the world . The

18:54

Soviets were taking a different approach , but you know that played

18:56

into the Cold War . But one of the main

18:58

sanctions was it did become sport

19:01

. And there was this very controversial rugby tour in the

19:03

70s where New Zealand , which

19:05

was going through its own sort of reckoning

19:07

or or shall we say , awakening to their own racial

19:10

history , sent a touring

19:12

site just to Africa , despite some other countries saying

19:14

no . But they brought certain

19:16

Maori players with them , but then they pretended

19:18

like they weren't , like the South African government

19:20

, because they realized that they needed someone to play

19:23

to keep this sport functional

19:25

. The South African government basically like , pretended

19:27

that the even in the official documentation you'd

19:29

read it pretended these four Maori descended

19:32

players were not Maori so

19:34

that they were legally allowed to play . Because if we , if

19:36

they had acknowledged they were Maori , it would have been illegal for

19:38

them to play rugby at the International

19:40

11 South Africa , which is very frustrating

19:42

, I find . I also think that even more

19:45

recently there's been a little bit of this and to

19:47

the American listeners , they might struggle

19:49

to follow this , but in the ashes

19:51

, which is the cricket series between Australia

19:54

and England that's going on at the moment . There was

19:56

a game a couple of weeks ago where both

19:59

teams bowled a lot of short balls , where the

20:01

ball is like right at the batsman's head and

20:03

it's a little bit dangerous , but the idea is that it kind

20:05

of throws them off their game . And these bowlers were bowling a lot

20:07

of these balls . And then one of the West Indian

20:09

players whose long since retired so

20:11

he's from Jamaica and cricket obviously

20:13

became a very big thing in the Caribbean said

20:16

that there was some hypocrisy there because

20:18

when the West Indian players had done the same thing against

20:20

England about 40 years ago , they

20:22

were banned from doing so because they were so

20:24

good at it . So there was this weird contradiction

20:27

where these very physically strong

20:29

players came up with a new tactic on the field

20:31

and the English said no , no , no , you can't do that

20:33

. But then 30 years later they do exactly the

20:35

same thing and no one complains about it . But

20:38

I apologize for that little to

20:40

anyone who don't know about rugby or cricket . So

20:42

let's bring in the environmental

20:45

angle here . Let's start with the obviously

20:47

the colonial side . There's no doubt

20:49

that the concept of even development

20:51

, or even economic growth , has like

20:54

severe environmental consequences , and

20:56

the biggest emitting countries are

20:58

the likes of the United States and Europe . How

21:00

does colonialism play into that ? So

21:03

this problem of economic growth , like

21:05

this emphasis on economic growth , you made , or

21:07

even just like spreading this certain

21:09

idea of how we live our life and spreading

21:12

that to all four corners of the world and thereby increasing

21:14

emissions in all four corners of the world .

21:16

Yeah , you know , you

21:18

know I've been , I've been reading a lot of work

21:20

by this philosopher is a Swiss

21:22

, german philosopher named Young Jo Han who talks

21:25

a lot about the psycho politics

21:27

of neoliberal capitalism , which is

21:29

a very kind of Eurocentric worldview to . What

21:32

he means by psycho politics is , you

21:34

know , we often talk about capitalism

21:36

, sort of pursuit of capital

21:39

, this endless pursuit of capital , for through

21:41

the commodification of the material resources

21:43

of Earth , be that people or be at sort

21:45

of the actual resources that are extracted

21:47

from the earth . But then he also talks about

21:50

kind of the way capitalism also colonizes

21:52

the human psyche . So we start

21:55

to look at ourselves and exploit

21:57

ourselves as if we are commodities

21:59

. So we people start to relentlessly

22:03

pursue , pursue achievement

22:05

and kind of the optimization

22:07

of the self , as if we need to sort of constantly

22:10

improve ourselves , as if we are kind of mechanical

22:12

robots where we can just constantly kind of

22:14

tinker with ourselves and find ways

22:16

to make ourselves more efficient or more productive

22:18

. And not only is

22:21

that sort of tied into this

22:23

all discussion of kind of epistemic repression

22:25

with with colonialism . It's a very sort of Eurocentric

22:27

worldview , this idea of like endlessly

22:30

pursuing your productivity . It

22:32

has a very sort of Western geopolitical origin

22:35

, but then also I mean

22:37

that that's kind of corollary

22:40

to this problem of growth

22:42

. You know , when you talk about growth

22:44

and climate change , it's not , it's

22:47

not just the growth

22:49

in terms of economic activity

22:51

and sort of sort of adverse

22:53

impacts of that economic activity

22:56

on the earth , but then also us

22:58

burning ourselves out . There's a kind of . I

23:01

guess what I'm trying to say is , you know , following

23:03

Han , there's a dual crisis with

23:05

climate change . There's the crisis

23:08

of how we're kind of destroying the earth

23:10

and the burning of fossil fuels

23:12

and sort of the degradation of the biosphere , and

23:14

then how we're burning ourselves out in the process

23:16

. It's kind of a dual death drive

23:18

, the way Han describes it , bringing it back

23:21

to Freud there . And that , I

23:23

think , is where sport really

23:25

has a central role , like sport , is

23:28

the popularity

23:30

of sport as a cultural

23:32

spectacle . The importance is

23:34

not just that it's popular , but the way

23:36

that it reproduces

23:38

cultural ideas , and

23:41

one of the such foundational cultural

23:43

ideas that dominate forms of sport professional

23:45

and elite levels of sport in

23:48

the United States , going all down to collegiate levels of sport

23:50

and how they're promoted in mass media and how much

23:52

big business they are , but they constantly are promoting

23:55

this idea of achievement , individual

23:58

achievement , as one

24:00

of the most important values

24:02

that you can believe in . They are constantly

24:05

reinforcing this very

24:07

Western-centered psychopolitical worldview

24:10

. That is not sustainable

24:12

. It's not sustainable in any way

24:14

. I'm coming at all of this from

24:16

, in many ways , a perspective of degrowth

24:18

, like what I'm saying here is , what

24:21

is necessary in terms of

24:23

dealing with the environmental

24:26

emergency is very much . It'll

24:28

involve kind of reduction of growth

24:30

, strategic reduction of growth , and

24:33

that's going to involve not just sort of reduction

24:35

of economic or business

24:37

growth , but then also a rethinking

24:40

of how people live and how

24:42

we look at ourselves and how we understand ourselves

24:44

and different conceptions of happiness

24:46

and well-being and mental

24:49

health and how we treat each other

24:51

. And that's going to involve , I

24:53

think , looking at sport differently , because

24:55

sport constantly is

24:58

reinforcing a very unsustainable

25:00

worldview . Not only is the sport industry

25:02

constantly growing , with immense

25:05

environmental consequences you can just look

25:07

at scholars like Jules Boykoff

25:09

and the studies of the Olympic Games . I

25:11

mean that mega event is

25:13

dramatically not sustainable

25:15

. It can't keep going the way it is

25:17

in terms of operations but then also

25:19

if we keep thinking of

25:21

sport as something where the

25:24

most important thing is individual

25:26

achievement , individuals constantly achieving it and

25:28

every year trying to achieve more and more and more and trying to

25:30

improve our productivity . That's not sustainable either

25:32

. I mean , that's not a sustainable

25:34

way of thinking about ourselves in an era of climate

25:36

change . So yeah , sport is central

25:38

to it .

25:40

Yeah , I think there's so many good themes raised

25:42

there I think the Olympics one and I

25:44

had I had Jules Boykoff on this podcast

25:46

a couple of months ago and , yeah , so amazing

25:48

that one can spend your entire career basically

25:51

highlighting the problem of this and still nothing

25:53

sort of ringing true . But I do think the cows are

25:55

coming home a little bit with that . I just saw this

25:57

morning that finally , lvmh signed

26:00

on to sponsor the next

26:02

Olympics in Paris and it was a bit of a relief

26:04

for the Olympics because they were struggling to find sponsors

26:06

. The reason being and even though this is supposed

26:08

to be the most sustainable Olympics ever , the reason

26:10

being is that their expectations were out

26:12

of line for how much money that

26:14

wanted to come in . You know what I mean . Like

26:17

every time you host an event , you're expecting a bigger

26:19

sponsor than last time and subsequently

26:21

, five , 10 years beforehand

26:23

, you start putting in the excess

26:26

that will that you can spend that money

26:28

on , and then that money doesn't come . You put

26:30

yourself in a very tricky position and

26:32

I think , even at the grassroots level

26:35

, the area that I struggle with the most

26:37

, both from an emotional perspective

26:39

but from an ethical perspective or projects like Sport

26:41

for Development , which is that there

26:44

is no environmental understanding

26:46

. Or even if it is , it's just usually

26:48

a charity where Europeans fly

26:50

over and teach some African

26:53

kids some soccer and say

26:55

look how good teamwork is , and then they leave and

26:58

of course you know you can get into like the monitoring

27:00

and evaluation of it . But there's

27:02

an ethical question here . I guess they're trying to

27:04

focus on the development , but I just

27:07

often see there one travel

27:09

emissions and two the

27:11

, as you say , hegemony of it all . Yeah

27:14

right Right .

27:14

Exactly , I struggle . I struggle

27:17

with that question because , like you

27:19

know , when you look at sport , it does have

27:21

the kernel of ideas

27:23

that I think are beneficial , like the

27:26

idea of cooperation , for example , with all sport

27:28

. Like you , like , different teams have to cooperate , they have

27:30

to agree to the rules in order to have the sport

27:32

actually happen . And things like teamwork , like the

27:34

idea of teamwork in and of itself isn't a bad

27:36

thing , it can be a good thing . It's how those , it's

27:39

either how those ideas sometimes get kind of subsumed

27:41

with a kind of an over emphasis on

27:44

the competitiveness of it and the achievement oriented

27:46

element of it , and how those , you

27:48

know , how we kind of forget that those are

27:50

all kernels to it . I think it's just the

27:52

way that I

27:55

agree with you . Like , I get a little dismayed

27:57

sometimes at how particularly

27:59

dominant forms of sport get overemphasized

28:02

. You know , like in , like in the United States

28:04

, they're just , it's just those like

28:06

three or four major popular

28:09

sports and you don't hear very much of the

28:11

other forms of sport that are going on . And some of those forms of

28:13

sport have more interesting ties

28:15

to a sense of community

28:17

within local areas or

28:19

complicated histories that involve

28:21

various different subaltern or sort of

28:23

marginalized groups Like that's the really

28:25

interesting stories with sport that

28:27

need to be emphasized , and sometimes we just focus so much

28:30

on these dominant sports

28:32

. There needs to be kind of more

28:34

work to really emphasize the other kind of

28:36

sports at the periphery or at the

28:38

boundaries that offer different

28:40

opportunities .

28:43

I think there is a challenge with that . Where

28:45

there's a natural centralization

28:48

to any anything of interest

28:50

, you know it becomes a little bit of a winner . Take

28:52

all the sport that has the most resources , that

28:54

has the most influence , the most interest

28:57

across the world will naturally attract the most

28:59

attention and more resources to be reinvested

29:01

in the same thing . So FIFA

29:04

aren't going to go around using their excessive wealth

29:06

and the small projects they

29:08

do run in Africa and I mean small , not in the

29:10

scale of the projects , but in the scale of the actual

29:12

projects they could do , given how wealthy they are . They're

29:15

not going to not going to sponsor some like other sports

29:17

. They're like no , because they know that by

29:19

getting more and more people around the world into

29:21

soccer , slash football , that'll

29:23

suit FIFA in the long run . You know it's that's only going

29:25

to help their , their situation . And

29:28

of course you can't ever criticize project

29:30

by project . You can't go to the course

29:33

the project manager in , like Uganda , and

29:35

say you're doing the wrong thing because they're not . They

29:37

are helping people . They are taking resources

29:40

from overseas and bringing them into the country

29:42

. They are doing some good things . But

29:44

it's also quite difficult when

29:46

, as we've just discussed , they're not doing things

29:48

, maybe exactly the best for

29:50

the long term , for the community , whether you know , be a short

29:53

term project and the outcomes

29:55

are potentially negative as in it centralizes

29:57

powers and worlds . I guess this leads

29:59

to another big topic around you

30:01

know , reparations . What do you make of that

30:03

topic ? Because there's a growing number of people in

30:05

the global south and I hate using the term global south

30:08

because it seems a bit nonsensical

30:10

to me , but I acknowledge the difference between the wealthy

30:12

north and the less wealthy south what

30:14

do you think of the concept between reparations from the

30:16

north to the south ? Because I can see why

30:18

it's demanded and it makes a lot of sense to me

30:20

, but the execution seems almost

30:23

impossible . Like who do you give it to ? And also

30:25

that anyone in the north , particularly

30:27

the working class people of the global north , would ever accept

30:30

that because it would also diminish their own material wealth

30:32

.

30:33

I don't , I don't I am not well versed

30:35

in that discussion but , to be honest

30:38

with you , but when I'm thinking about listening to what

30:40

you're saying , like not only does

30:42

kind of the complexity just kind of come

30:44

right at you , but also like

30:47

what you were talking about , this

30:49

issue within a context of

30:51

kind of an environmental emergency which

30:54

requires , in

30:56

effect , kind of a very drastic reduction

30:58

of economic growth . If

31:00

I'm thinking of it in terms of the context of

31:02

sport , with reparations , in

31:04

some sense it involves

31:07

a strategic growth

31:09

for certain groups

31:12

, right ? So like not

31:14

only you're talking about reparations in

31:16

a context of centralized authority

31:18

, which which makes it sort of super duper

31:20

complicated , like you were saying earlier , like central

31:23

organizations trying to control

31:25

an actual sort of sport or

31:28

sort of what happens within an industry , but

31:30

then you're also talking about this

31:32

issue of who benefit

31:35

from certain types of economic growth and who

31:37

shouldn't , which , to be honest , I

31:39

think is , I think

31:41

that's going to be a necessary thing . I'm thinking

31:43

about , if there's any sort of implementation

31:46

of kind of a degrowth or post

31:48

growth strategy in global society

31:50

, it's going to necessarily involve certain

31:52

aspects of the world , specifically in the global

31:55

north , because those are the more affluent and

31:57

those are the countries in the

31:59

global north . They're the ones that are polluting

32:01

the most , right like they're the ones

32:03

that they , or the corporations and

32:05

sort of consumer societies in the global north , they're

32:07

the ones that are causing the most sort of carbon

32:10

emissions and pollution that's driving climate

32:12

change . So the degrowth is going to

32:14

happen the most , the reduction is going to happen the most there

32:16

, and there's probably going to be areas of the global

32:19

south and economies of the global south where they're going to

32:21

need to continue to continue to grow some

32:23

economies or continue to engage in economic growth

32:25

in order to achieve sort of a greater equity with

32:28

northern societies . So I think

32:30

I think in that context

32:32

, reparations is going to would be

32:34

kind of a necessary , a

32:36

necessary part of that right in order to achieve

32:38

equity . But how it's implemented , I

32:41

mean , that's a really that's a really difficult question . I don't think

32:43

I have a good answer to that .

32:46

I'll tell you if the two of us did have a good answer for it . I

32:49

promise you this . This wouldn't just be on a podcast

32:51

.

32:52

But yeah .

32:53

I think . I think even

32:55

the field of degrowth is struggling

32:57

a little bit with itself and obviously this is why

32:59

the names come up a lot , because the degrowth

33:02

bit is only a phase , you know

33:04

. It is only to try and bring us down to a

33:06

sort of sustainable level . And then you have the term post

33:08

growth , where it's more flatlining

33:10

. And of course technology will have

33:12

a role and I know the

33:14

people who , I guess , define themselves eco and

33:17

modernist would say technology will save us , even

33:19

though evidence , I think , strikes the contrary . But

33:21

there will be some technological improvements . You know we are

33:23

improving our renewable energy outlook

33:25

, all this kind of stuff . And in that

33:27

realm there seems to be some kind of contradiction

33:30

where obviously a lot of the materials required

33:32

for solar and other types of renewables

33:34

come from Central Africa

33:36

and those materials currently

33:39

are not being used on the whole to

33:41

build solar panels in the

33:43

Democratic Republic of Congo and that's where they're

33:46

being built on the whole . They're being built in Europe and

33:48

I understand those . They're still being paid , but

33:50

are they being paid a fair value ? Because obviously

33:52

the Congo is quite a difficult

33:55

area right now and there's not a lot of institutional structure

33:57

, so it's probably very easy to extract

33:59

materials at below market rates . How's

34:02

that resource being used ? So I

34:05

even think that in our efforts to like decarbonize

34:07

, we're still kind of leaving certain areas behind

34:10

. So I agree with your point African

34:12

doesn't necessarily need to decry . Certain parts

34:14

of almost the entire global South don't need to

34:16

decry . In fact , they need pretty

34:18

rigorous development to save a lot

34:20

of people from a lot of horrendous things . But

34:22

at the same time , the

34:25

institutions that have or sorry , the countries

34:27

that have the biggest emissions definitely do , but

34:29

they're the ones in charge . So how , why would they ever

34:32

choose to decry ?

34:34

Right , exactly , and the thing

34:36

that comes to mind for me is this question of desire

34:39

Like you know , when you're looking at either

34:41

these major sporting organizations that

34:44

are located in the global north or

34:46

, you know , these affluent societies , the

34:48

people and the corporations have to

34:50

want to limit

34:52

their sort of engagement

34:54

with growth or limit their consumerism or

34:57

limit their impact on the earth

34:59

, even as they're looking

35:01

at other societies , particularly in the global south , still

35:03

engaging in growth Because they are

35:05

, because they are less affluent or they

35:07

haven't benefited the most from the

35:10

capitalist world system , how it's operated to this

35:12

, to this point , you know , and that that

35:14

idea of getting people I

35:17

live in the United States , the United States as

35:20

a late capitalist society

35:22

People don't have

35:24

a very good conception of limits

35:26

. They don't like limits . They don't like the

35:28

idea of limiting themselves and the idea

35:30

of trying to get them to not only accept

35:33

the notion of limits but actually

35:35

want it , to see the benefits of it

35:37

, to see the pleasures that can come from

35:39

limiting oneself . I mean , that is , I

35:41

don't even know how that's possible . How do you even

35:43

approach something like that ? And

35:45

you know , these questions of sport

35:48

in an era of climate change is a question of reparations

35:50

and necessarily involves people in

35:52

the global north coming to accept and desire

35:55

limitations to how they consume

35:57

and how they engage in certain things like sport

35:59

, that that question of desiring

36:02

that is really important

36:04

. And we're not , you know , I don't

36:06

. I don't think we're anywhere close to

36:08

even having a very good discussion of

36:10

how we can sort of achieve something like that

36:12

get people to desire stuff like limits .

36:15

Yes , and I think , if anything

36:17

, the current is going in the opposite direction

36:19

. And I'll use a line that one of my

36:21

former guests , a guy called Matzab cousin

36:23

, who's a sort of anti gambling campaigner

36:26

he uses this very nice term , which

36:28

is unstimulated demand

36:31

, which I love where people do

36:33

want things . That's undisputed

36:35

like if you're just sitting there in a field

36:37

, you will go around and leverage

36:39

the resources around you to improve

36:42

your situation . That is how human beings have

36:44

survived , it's how we've how we've propagated

36:46

, it's how we've prospered . That's not for

36:48

dispute , but wanting things

36:50

. There's no want of something you've never

36:52

seen , and I'm not talking about some kind of like

36:54

repressive police state where

36:56

everything is blocked and you can't . You know there's no

36:58

freedom of expression . But at the same time , just

37:01

living your life in

37:03

a global North country , you

37:05

cannot go 10 seconds without seeing an

37:07

advert or a this or that

37:09

, and it's often fairly high carbon

37:12

actions , because those

37:14

are the most profitable industries that

37:16

can pour money into advertising and I

37:18

am very worried that that

37:20

kind of stuff is pouring into the

37:22

rest of the country just because of the ability of

37:24

the internet now and smartphones as much

37:26

, as , like everyone , having internet is a good thing for

37:28

purposes of education and communication . It

37:31

does create desires that weren't there before

37:33

, and it's trying to get the genie back in the

37:35

bottle right . You can't go to these people and say , oh

37:38

, for you to desire a European

37:40

or American lifestyle is wrong , because it's not necessarily

37:42

wrong . But at the same time , those

37:44

lifestyles are so carbon intensive

37:46

and , as you say , there's there's

37:49

growing evidence that they lead to

37:51

lower outcomes in things like well

37:53

being , which I think to the pure

37:55

. I don't know the freedmen supporters of

37:57

this world . The term well being is completely alien

37:59

to them because they can't put a number on

38:01

it necessarily . I know a lot of scholars are trying and

38:04

I think of the work of Tim Jackson at

38:06

the University of Surrey , who's trying to create

38:08

this narrative around sustainable prosperity but

38:10

well being essential to that that , although

38:13

in the short term it seems completely

38:15

contradictory , buying less

38:17

stuff can lead to a happier

38:20

outcome . But how the hell do you tell

38:22

everyone around the world that that's the case

38:24

when , for the last 50 years and still

38:26

to this day , everything they've seen on

38:28

a television or an advert is said buy more stuff will

38:30

make you happy ?

38:32

And I think , bring this back to sport . I don't

38:35

think sport often

38:37

dominant forms of sport , I don't think promote

38:39

a very healthy understanding

38:41

of life and how to live , like in many

38:43

ways it's sort of over

38:45

most sports over emphasize

38:47

unhealthy compulsive

38:50

pursuits right , I'm trying to

38:52

, I think , like the sort of over emphasis

38:54

on competition and achievement

38:57

is one example of that . It's

38:59

really interesting , like in recent years . I'm

39:01

trying to think , like the Olympian Simone Biles

39:03

is one example that's coming to mind or Naomi

39:06

Asaka , where you have these sort of prominent athletes

39:08

who very openly decide

39:10

to stop playing sports or they're talking

39:12

about their mental health in a very sort of public setting

39:14

, which is a really , really interesting phenomenon

39:17

. I mean , you know , you go back a few decades . It'd be

39:19

, it'd be something that would not be accepted

39:21

the way that is accepted now

39:23

, and I think that's in many

39:25

ways a byproduct of

39:28

how much there's this sort of kind

39:30

of hyper competitive emphasis

39:32

that you find in a lot of sports . We have

39:35

these like the NBA , for example

39:37

. They want to expand the number of games

39:39

that the players played in the football

39:41

league that already added one more game . If

39:43

they could , they'd add more games to it in order to make

39:46

more money off of the broadcasting

39:48

and then the putting on of the various regular

39:50

season games , like they always want to do more and

39:52

more and more to the detriment of the players themselves

39:54

. You know , the players have limits . It's like all

39:56

human beings have limits . So I

39:59

think the way that more

40:01

athletes are talking about sort of burnout

40:03

and the mental health struggles

40:05

as athletes themselves is in

40:07

many ways a manifestation of just how kind

40:09

of sustainable a lot of a

40:12

lot of sports are in the sporting values are that

40:14

exist .

40:16

Yes , and I also think your point around more

40:18

and more games is to the detriment of the sport itself

40:21

, and I would use my own lived

40:23

experience is that you know I am a massive

40:25

Liverpool FC fan and I

40:27

never used to miss a game . But if , particularly

40:29

if the team does well in any given way , you're playing up

40:31

to 80 , 85 games a year

40:33

, plus maybe some internationals

40:35

, like in the summer break , you know

40:38

where , like your country's playing , I just can't watch that

40:40

much of one game . I just I cannot do it

40:42

. Like diminishing returns , the whole

40:44

thing , you get everything . And

40:46

it's interesting you mentioned the actual players perspective on this because

40:48

of course I think they you get a little bit of an arms race

40:50

, you get a little bit of game theory where some

40:53

, some players would say , hey , why don't we have a more balanced

40:55

lifestyle ? Why don't we have a sport for half the year

40:57

and the other half the year we're going to be ? I don't

40:59

know , maybe academics would not be amazing , but

41:01

of course , if one of the athletes spent

41:03

the whole year training , they would

41:05

absolutely trance the like you know , they'd wipe the floor

41:07

with everyone else and then I

41:09

mean , this is how they basically describing the professionalization

41:12

era of sport . So then , because

41:14

performance but gets attention and wealth

41:16

, everyone's going to try and perform at the highest

41:18

level and you know it's in the clubs

41:20

interest to play more games and the players interest to play

41:22

more games in the short term , of course , long term they

41:25

get exactly burnout , things like that , and

41:27

I also think there's a lot of intersectional

41:29

problems here . When it comes to things like women's sport

41:31

, you know they were talking this year about how difficult

41:34

it was to raise the same level of commercial

41:36

sponsorships for the women's soccer

41:38

World Cup , and part of that was the time zone , because

41:40

it's an Australian , new Zealand but I also

41:42

think part of that was the expectation , like it

41:45

was never going to be as big as the men's World Cup

41:47

, particularly overnight , and

41:49

also it probably shouldn't because that's such an unsustainable

41:51

event . You know , if the FIFA are

41:53

trying to get the women's World Cup to be big , not because they care

41:55

about women , because they want to make

41:57

the same amount of money twice as opposed

41:59

to do it once , and that's what suffers

42:01

in that , you know , not women , definitely

42:04

not women . Power to them like they should be able

42:06

to earn a much more fairer salary

42:08

, but the environment does completely struggle

42:10

because for every flight that needs to be taken

42:12

, there's your problem . But even the commercial

42:14

side if you have to sell more products to

42:17

make a World Cup commercially viable , those

42:19

products have to be made and sold . So

42:21

, yeah , we're really tying ourselves into knots here

42:23

, that's . Yeah , we

42:25

really are . Now , as I

42:27

try and do a lot of these episodes , I'm going to try and

42:29

put a happy one . When I ask you to try and put a happy

42:32

twist on this and I'm kind of annoyed , I would got

42:34

into the advertising topic because that's actually the topic of

42:36

the next episode . So look forward

42:38

to that . But how do you

42:40

, maybe even at a community level , go about

42:42

changing this ? And I think your perspective

42:44

from being American , I think is very

42:46

interesting because obviously , as you've described

42:49

in this episode , the consumption there is quite

42:51

excessive and that's probably

42:53

one of the first places to be brought down . Even

42:55

at the sporting level , you know , like the

42:57

, the fireworks and the grandeur

43:00

or something like the NFL is unparalleled . Where

43:02

, where does this conversation start in

43:04

the American sporting ecosystem ?

43:06

to maybe dial things down a bit , the

43:09

thing that's been common to mind for me

43:12

lately is , I think

43:14

, the problem of burnout

43:16

of people , either feeling burned

43:19

out either through their consumption of sport

43:21

being a spectator and just the

43:23

sheer amount that they're often

43:25

asked to watch , the amount of advertising

43:27

and promotion of the sporting events , or

43:29

being participants or athletes

43:31

themselves , and feeling sort of exhausted or overwhelmed

43:34

by the sport is a kind of interesting

43:37

catalyst for kind of

43:39

reconceptualizing how we

43:41

engage with sport . I mean , there's

43:43

two things I always think about Like number

43:45

one , the vast majority of people

43:47

are not professionals , do not engage

43:49

in sport as professionals . It's either as spectators

43:51

or basically as amateurs like they play

43:53

the sports with friends or in

43:56

leagues linked to their community . That's

43:58

how the vast majority of us do it , and they

44:00

may be competitive , they may want to win , but

44:02

it's not this sort of professional sport

44:04

where they're making a salary in order to engage

44:07

in the sport , and that

44:09

engagement in sport in and of itself is not

44:11

the problem . It's not the problem

44:13

that's driving climate change , us playing

44:16

people playing sport at a YWCA

44:18

, for example . That's not the problem

44:20

. And then , number two , this

44:23

conception of sport

44:25

that seems dominant , this idea of sport

44:27

being sort of hyper competitive and needing

44:30

to be a business and these huge

44:32

spectacles that are deeply

44:34

, deeply unsustainable . That's

44:37

a very recent understanding of sport . The

44:39

vast majority of human

44:41

history people have engaged

44:43

in forms of play and more or less what we can

44:45

think of in sport in ways that were more

44:48

sustainable , that were very local

44:50

, that weren't overly sort

44:52

of rationally organized , that had

44:55

sort of ties to communities

44:57

, a sense of communal identity

45:00

. And those ideas

45:02

don't , they didn't get extinguished

45:04

with modern sports . They just sort

45:06

of kind of in some ways kind of lose

45:09

their power . They become kind of residual

45:11

ideas within the sporting culture , but

45:13

they still exist . The way people

45:15

have a sense of community

45:18

identity and through sport is a residual

45:20

of those earlier forms of sport that existed before

45:22

industrial capitalism . So

45:25

we have the tools

45:27

, the kind of cultural and ideological tools

45:29

, to engage in sport in different ways

45:31

. We don't have to engage in sport in the ways that we

45:34

do now . We don't have to want

45:36

to desire elite professional

45:38

sport . It's just this

45:40

difficult and arduous

45:43

task of kind of recalibrating

45:46

our desire , our sporting desires

45:48

. How do you do that ? I

45:53

mean , that's where I get to this . I see

45:55

a lot of potential in this discussion of burnout Because

45:57

I think the usefulness of

45:59

this discussion of burnout is it really brings

46:02

to the forefront what

46:04

are we getting out of

46:06

these sporting products , like , do

46:08

these dominant forms of sport actually

46:10

are actually benefiting us as

46:12

people ? And if they're not , then

46:14

what do we do about it and what should

46:16

we do about it ? I mean , that's

46:19

kind of the question I keep going to back and

46:21

forth . And I think that's a question that a lot

46:23

of people can connect to . When you talk about

46:25

it in terms of mental health , well being , a burnout

46:27

, I think that's a discussion that

46:29

a lot of people can connect with .

46:32

Yes , I wonder if , and

46:34

please tell me if you know any research that

46:36

conceptualizes as such . But I wonder

46:38

if there's maybe even from the psychologist

46:40

or the sociologist perspective , if

46:42

we view things like love

46:44

or attention or identity

46:47

or interest as a renewable

46:49

resource given an appropriate time

46:51

. What I mean by that is I

46:54

can be interested in something as long as I do it every

46:56

couple of days at most . If I try and

46:58

do it every day , it runs out

47:00

. I mean it slowly regenerates over

47:02

a period of hours or days , and I think

47:04

there's evidence from the historical

47:06

record that that is the case . And I always use the example

47:08

of association football in England from

47:11

the back end of the industrial revolution

47:13

towards , I'd say , maybe the

47:15

end of the 80s or the 90s . Before it went sort

47:17

of global , was that there was at least

47:19

three generations there where love

47:22

of the local team did not

47:24

diminish in the slightest , even intergenerational

47:27

. Like people would go 60 years

47:29

, 70 years of their life fully in love with their

47:32

team and nothing would change . But in this modern

47:34

world where you know , to quote the movie

47:36

, you can have everything everywhere all at once . There

47:39

is this either maybe it's a competition thing , as

47:41

in you lose interest or you overplay

47:43

your hand , as in . As I mentioned

47:45

, there's too many games per year this kind of stuff , and

47:48

that can we even use the term like fan burnout

47:50

, and if we would just stop the gas on that

47:52

particular thing , maybe it would reorganize

47:55

itself . What do you think ?

47:57

Yeah , yeah , I do think I think there's something

48:00

important to that . Like well , you talked about

48:02

like diminishing , diminishing returns earlier

48:04

in our discussion and the

48:06

notion of alienation . Like

48:08

I think you know , we can talk about it in terms of kind of the

48:10

Marxist sense , but I think a lot

48:12

of people really feel that

48:15

sense of alienation as fans

48:18

. Like I'm just thinking I

48:21

hope my family doesn't listen to this podcast Like

48:24

I have family members or friends

48:26

where I can just kind of tell

48:28

, like when they're watching the Cleveland

48:31

Browns and it's year after

48:33

year after year where they're getting their hopes

48:35

up for them to win a game or sort

48:37

of get to the Super Bowl , even though they don't really

48:39

know if the Browns somehow magically

48:41

made it to the Super Bowl . It's not as if they would stop

48:43

sort of wanting them to go to the Super Bowl . They wanted

48:45

to do it again and again and again , but they

48:48

can . There's an exhaustion to that . Like

48:50

there's exhaustion in terms of economics , in terms

48:52

of their finances , the amount of money they're spending either

48:54

by consuming sort of food

48:56

and drink , or the money that they spend on merchandise

48:59

that they really wish they didn't spend , but they feel

49:01

like they have to , you know , in

49:03

order to sort of be kind of a supportive

49:05

fan , but then also like they'll

49:09

watch the game . You watch an

49:11

NFL football game on Sunday and you're not happy

49:13

afterwards , like you've spent all this energy

49:15

watching the game and then the

49:17

game's over and you're like , why did I just

49:19

do that ? Like now I'm tired , I got to take a

49:21

nap or I got to do something else

49:23

, and it's not . It wasn't nearly as enjoyable

49:26

as I thought it was . I think people

49:28

feel that I'm trying to think

49:30

the late Mark Fisher had

49:32

this term for it . It was like depressive

49:35

anodonia or something like

49:37

that where there's this sense

49:39

that like we have to kind of compulsively

49:41

look at our phones or

49:44

engage in some sort

49:46

of digital media or pop culture in

49:48

order to get this kind of thrill and

49:50

this thing that we were desiring

49:53

, but we never quite get it . It

49:55

never is as satisfying as we hoped

49:57

it was and it's really kind

49:59

of depressing that it's never that satisfying

50:02

but it doesn't . We don't stop sort of pursuing

50:04

it , we just pursue it over and over and over and

50:06

we never attain that fulfillment

50:08

. I just I'm

50:11

just kind of convinced that people feel that . You

50:13

know , they really do feel that that

50:15

sense of alienation , and that's where , that's

50:18

where the conversation , I think , can start .

50:21

Yes , and I think that's a pretty good note to end on , because

50:23

that really does bring it down to the personal level . You

50:25

know , I think a lot of people who listen to this podcast

50:27

are sports fans and maybe

50:29

they've experienced something similar . So , by the way , if

50:32

anyone's listening and has experienced this , please let

50:34

us know and we can . We can sit you down in a room and interrogate

50:37

you . But yeah , I think maybe

50:39

let's see run this at a personal

50:41

level and see what happens . You know a little bit of taking

50:44

your foot off the gas on certain things

50:46

. As I say , they don't necessarily have to be your work or your

50:48

livelihood or something like that , but it can be your

50:50

recreation and enjoy

50:52

the absence such that when it returns

50:55

, it's perhaps more fulfilling . Because

50:57

, I agree , this constant chasing

50:59

of something that might not actually exist without

51:02

the detriment to the environment and your own bank balance , doesn't

51:04

seem , doesn't seem the right approach .

51:07

And the thing I was just thinking of , the

51:09

Olympics . Like there , in terms of US history

51:12

I know Boi Jules Boykoff had that more recent

51:14

book on the no Olympian movement and in

51:17

Los Angeles and then there's we was like 1976

51:20

in Denver , colorado , and the sort of saying

51:22

no to hosting the Olympic games Like I

51:24

think there's a pretty sort of building

51:26

movement of people in the United

51:28

States where they're looking at the idea of hosting

51:31

the Olympic games and they see the negative consequences

51:33

of it and they say no , like we don't want

51:35

that , and I think that's really , really

51:37

useful . That's a really really useful

51:40

case study in how

51:42

people can kind of reorient their desires

51:44

. Like there's this perception that of course

51:47

anyone would want to host the Olympic games or go to the Olympic

51:49

games and that's just not the case . You know , people are

51:51

realizing that there are other things that

51:53

they want or desire , either in their cities

51:55

or where they live or how

51:57

they engage in sport , and maybe the Olympics

51:59

is not that . So I think

52:01

there's a lot more examples of that

52:04

type of engagement sport . That can give us

52:06

a lot of clues on how to sort of

52:08

move forward .

52:10

Yes , and I think the perfect example of that is

52:12

unfolding right now . To really link

52:15

those these three themes that have held this

52:17

conversation together , around the Commonwealth games

52:19

and how it's just been rejected by Victoria

52:22

and Australia because they think it's going to be a

52:24

financial disaster and there's no host

52:26

for both the upcoming one and the one

52:28

after . And it's raised all these questions

52:30

of why ? Why does the Commonwealth game exist ? Like

52:32

it's this sort of weird British empire

52:35

sort of residue , as it were . As much as

52:37

it is important to the athletes as a stepping stone

52:39

, it is also sort of Olympics light

52:41

, as it were . It's terrible for the environment because you're

52:43

flying from New Zealand , australia , england , etc . And

52:47

it doesn't really help the community where it's based . So

52:49

why are we doing one of these things ? But

52:52

yeah , at the risk of this could go on forever and ever

52:54

. I think we have to call it that . Sam , thank you so much for

52:56

your time , thanks for all of this

52:58

insight you're giving us , and keep up the good work

53:00

and maybe in a few years come back around and we'll

53:03

have some more solutions .

53:05

Yeah , sounds great . Thanks so much for inviting

53:07

me on .

53:16

That was our conversation with Sam Clevenger . Of

53:18

course , this was by no means an exhaustive

53:20

or conclusive discussion of these themes and

53:23

, as you may have noticed , we raise more problems

53:25

than we solve . But such is

53:27

the nature of complex topics and I really

53:29

will endeavor to find the broadest array

53:31

of perspectives that I can . On this Next

53:34

episode we discuss sports relationship with advertising

53:37

. Is advertising a tool for

53:39

sports benefit , or perhaps the other

53:41

way around ? To find out , look forward

53:43

to our next episode . See you then

53:50

.