does it normally doesn't end up, at least in most years, making it all the way to the east coast of the u. s. this is the american west new reality, uncontrolled fires, hazardous air homes and lives already lost and many more believe likely to come in the months ahead. patty colleen al jazeera washington. ah, this is al jazeera and these are the headlines, the pentagon, this expressing alarm about the rapidly deteriorating security situation. in afghanistan, the most senior us general says the taliban controls nearly half of the country's $400.00 plus districts. it coincides with the continued pullouts of american troops . thousands of people have rallied and at a sample bone to show their support for the e. c. o. p, and government troops fighting in t grey. it comes as the conflict has widened to include fighters from neighboring.

i'm horror and for regions. catherine soy has more from addis ababa people started coming in here on medical square. they rarely just ended about half an hour ago. so people say coming very early in the morning, we started hearing them from all the tell us wrong fi, say t a. m. and as you said, thousands of them showed up and to speak really was castigating. the to grand defense is saying that they've been using children as soldiers and shields. they also accused the international community, including the international media of bias smith in the coverage in favor of the 2 grand leadership. china has deployed its military to her and province. the central region is struggling with its worst flooding in recent history. troops of burst nearby damn to reduce the risk of more floods. at least 33 people have been killed . south korea has reported a record 1800 new coven 19 cases. in one day,

the more contagious delta variances fueling the surge. the latest numbers include 270 sailors who were foreign home from an anti piracy mission authorities. there are no considering expands in restrictions in so and its neighboring regions. the delta variance is driving up cases in thailand, which just reported another record day if you cases will them. 13600 people have tested positive in the past a thailand's national vaccine institute has apologize for not buying enough fact scenes. it says it's now looking to join the global kofax vaccine sharing scheme. and it's one day until the start of the summer then picks in tokyo, organized to say, to more athletes at the and then pick village tested positive for cove. at 19, among 12 cases linked to the gains, that's the up to date. the stream is next. talk to, i'll just 0. we roll,

did you want the un to take and who stop to we listen, you see the whole infrastructure and being totally destroyed. we meet with global news makers and talk about the stories that matter on our sierra the hi, i'm very okay. you're watching the stream on today's episode. we're looking at sport, the perspective of the side loving sports when they jo. love you back modern di lemme as of a sports fan. that's today's topic. inspired by this book, the office i joining us. well. hello jessica. i like pizza. really good to see how well you are what you do. jessica? yes, i'm jessica luther. i'm a freelance journalist. i live in austin, texas. i co host the feminist sports podcast called brent all down. and then of

course, on the co author of this book with the visa. hi, i am happy to gave it's in. i'm based in new york. i'm a sports writer and a podcast host. i host the athletic flagship, show the lead, and very proud to be the co author of this book as well. i love that we have 3 women talking about school or thought they said america. audi is heads may well explode if they're exploding. i'm new to godaddy. okay. jumping to the comics section. if you got questions for jessica, aka visa, about being a sports fan and some stuff, big the dynamics that go along with that. jump into that youtube comments and you can be part of the conversation. let's talk about these modern, got them as well as a, as a sport, final sign of sports. what that actually means, why did you get together to write the book? jessica? well, i think especially as women in this space were constantly made to feel like we don't

belong, as sports fans let alone as sports writers and journalists and you know, i think that a lot of the frustrations that arise from that from being kind of labeled as the unicorn in the room is how i put it really led to, you know, to us wanting to write this book and you do a deeper examination of some of those dilemmas and still why we continue coming back to sports. why we love them so much, even when they might not always return the favor. jessica. yeah, i mean can be a really hit. i think the book is structured. it's 14 chapters. i think we ended up with each chapter the different theme or an issue within sport that of contra just sports fan might have. so brain trauma, racism, or sexism, l, g, b, t, q athletes, races, mascots like, all kinds of stuff. and these are the things that can visa and i as bandler. so things that re wrestle with every time that we turn on the tv or go to a matcher or game. and we just really wanted to space or we could work that out for

ourselves. and talk to a bunch of people who also feel that way, who are experts in these fields and, and put all of these different topics in conversation with each other. touch, good timing. i want to share with you a headline here and we'll keep buck said offer postponement of m b a, playoff games in protest. the shooting of jacob blake. so your book came out just around about kobe jumped around about some, a dream activity for players who up to that point at been told politics and sport activism. and i thought it was a really tricky area. and then cobit happened, and then the black lives matter movement became more prominent around the world. so this moment when there was these wildcat strikes feast, jessica, how did you break that down in the book? was just about covering out the how does that reflect what you've written already like your philosophy of the difficulty being assad and seeing athletes being

activists at the same time? well, i will say that it's very strange whenever someone says how good timing the book was coming out of the time. because when cove it hit, when rudy go bare, that'd be a player tested positive and the entire league shut down. we had a panic moment, just going i had a call with our publisher and we were like, is it going to be relevant? is it going to be insensitive? people are dying like do they want to hear about the problems that we have within sport? and it turns out, because of all of the dilemma is that the pandemic has kind of brought to the forefront. and then obviously the black lives matter movement really go and global . as you said, it's been very strange and very, very surreal to see the book be more relevant than we ever thought it could be. what we tried to unpack, we have a chapter in, in, in the book of specifically about athlete activism. and about why basically sticking to sports isn't an option for a lot of people, particularly for black men and women in america. and for athletes. finally

realizing how much power they have and how much voice they have. and being able to give, like speak truths about power and speak truth to, to what they've actually, what they have in their hands has been really something to see. yeah, and i'll just add that guides to the chapter about sports. and politics is a lot about apple activists because there's a long history of that and what we saw with milwaukee bucks and the w and b a and all kinds of activism around the world, really and sport that history is there. but politics and sport, they're always wings, and it's been very clear here in the united states as we went through a presidential election that i know last people were following college football. and it's returned to the field with part of a presidential debate. right. that sports often finds itself within politics as much as we see politics within sport, and those 2 things are always married. we think about the fact that we call them

political races, right? like even the language that we use with them, politics has a sports inflection too. and those 2 things are so similar within so many cultures . so yeah, what can you said that you can't stick to sports? right. so what we saw with the wildcat strikes it was an extreme version of something i could eat than i liked it. for on that side of, i would say the political struck spectrum, but this is just part of a long history. tell us a story from the book i don't shit or if that, but that is just that he's people a little bit of an activist who he may not have heard of before. who's in the book? remembering your book, who do we talk about in the book? i'm trying to get your cleaning company who turned hope back. be fool taking a ne i tony. yes, thank you so tony thompson,

she many years ago now. so we would think it was during the, i guess 1st where most that it would have been after 911. so it was, you know, almost 20 years ago. and she was playing a very small school and basketball and college basketball and had her own sort of political awake thing and really started question whether or not the united states flag in the anthem represented her. she. one of her parents was black and she did a fight that way. and with all the nationalism after 911, she really uncomfortable and started to turn her back during the national anthem. and it became a huge story. somewhat because the new york times was right down the road. they heard it, she had all this national press and it was, it was a kind of action that we've had a lot of conversation around some calling copper. nick, the nfl player took a me a few years ago, but we see people like tony who was doing it with even a tiny platform. right. there was a lot about the principal and what this meant to her and using sport as

a place to do that. i'm going to share with our audience a quote from the book. i want you to talk about why there's so much racism in the sport. one of the main reasons that devoted sport fans may not feel welcome is that so much of the coverage is created by specific subset of that population, namely white men, most of them straight. the vast majority says gender. in fact, the herbage, entity of sports media cannot be overstated. i have heard how many times he is running, like a net, but across the field, look at the build on that street and, and these are for athletes of color. and i'm wondering if a sports person or janice of color would even use that things and not can casita. you start on this one. jessica, you pick up. yeah. i, it's, it really doesn't matter who is telling me stories and who is doing the coverage. and i think that's why we do have a chapter about about sports media and diversity and sports media and the need for

that. and exactly what you said, because we would not as people of color frame the stories in the same way. and it matters to have a lot more voices and a lot more perspective coming in, especially when the athletes that we cover are people of color and orange just says gender white men. it also, it speaks to a broader problem that we have in media, particularly in the united states. but i think we probably have this problem in media throughout the world where the people in power look like the people who are telling the stories in the people who are doing the journalism and what we wanted to do in this chapter in our book. which really highlight the fact that there are other people out there doing this work and they need to be heard and they need to be read and we need to support them. and one of my favorite parts of the book read, you just lift a holo to the female sports journalist was like a sports janet and it was one after never, often, never often that was if you didn't know that many, you definitely, you know,

by the end of that chapter, jessica, sorry, go ahead. yeah, no, and that chapter is different than all the other ones in the book. it has a different format. it's much more, almost like an oral history and what we did exactly what you said. there are a lot of females or analysts in that chapter, and we asked them to tell us something about their experience within the field, and we really left it open. but we also just asked men of color. we asked non binary or a sports reporter people who voices, we don't normally get to here because it's really hard to overstate how white and male sport media is like. media in general has a diversity issue or what's not the worst version of it. well, what description would you give us that way you've both been working and you just look around and describe what you see when you, when a work environment. i mean, can i just say that last year i went to the women's world cup and this is my story

. i don't often and impress boxes, so that's not my experience. i write a lot and the culture of. 7 of sports programs and i'm not in press boxes and i'll never forget last year going to the open or for the women's world cup and paris and walked in and was kind of taken aback about how many men there were. they were definitely women there, but we all kind of congregated together. and what hit me was that they're sending people to cover it who normally cover soccer or football. and so it's normally men, right. and so they've just shifted them over to cover the women for a month of time. and you feel like there is a physical reaction you have going in there about you recognize your difference as sort of as soon as you step in that space should be having, having been in quite a few press boxes myself, you are very aware when you were the only woman in that space,

you were very aware when you're the only woman of color in particular. and i, you know, i, just as a quick story, i was covering me and be a all star game at madison square garden and new york several years ago. and you know, the way that they have the proceedings set up is they have 2 rows basically in the arena where it's just pressed and everyone has their headphones on and they're out there. computer are typing away and are covering the game and all of that. and i noticed the entire press ro lift their heads and pay attention to what was happening on the court because the cheerleaders took the court. and it's things like that that make you very aware of when you are the only person who looks like you in the room. i want to segue into mascot's. ca visa because you've, you looked a lot at those. and in 2020. why would there be any mascot of native american indians? any mascot that would make us go? that's not quite right. it's

a very good question. why we are still grappling with this is something that indigenous people, especially in this country, have been telling us that they are not okay with, for 5060 years. at this point. i think it has a lot to do with what our identities are and how they are wrapped up into our sports stand up. and that's something that we actually interviewed a sports psychologist about about why it's so difficult for us to separate these. these issues that we have with, with, with our own fandom and what she said basically was when you're a sports fan, them is formed attempts to be earlier in life and it tends to be a part of your own identity formation. so if you are a fan of a team that has a racist native mascot, when someone comes along and criticizes that you feel like they're criticizing with or criticizing something very core to your identity, even though this is hurtful to people. and honestly we had, we saw the washington football team change their name and their logo this this

summer. not out of frankly, any goodness of their heart. but because investors had a problem with it. so what we can do is we can follow the money and we can put actual monetary and financial pressure on people to ultimately do the right thing. but it is very frustrating that this is still a conversation we're having. and jessica will tell you that there are still, even though the washington football team and the nfl changed their name. there are still 80 some odd high schools that still have that name and still have some kind of a logo that is problematic. and it, especially here, especially in the united states, it runs deep into our core, also of our american identity and the foundation of this country based on that kind of violence. and it really is difficult for people to try and reconcile those things. ladies, can i play a video comment for you? this is from elizabeth holloway. she's a spokesperson for the exeter cheese for change in the ex to cheese, a united kingdom rugby team. and just before we take a little bite from her,

she explains how when they are trying to talk about this, the way that you've been speaking about. it could be that the way that your test technique, jessica, that the fans got really aggressive and they didn't want to hear about racism at all. and lisa had a little bit more. and here's a question for you. additionally, the hypocrisy that we're seeing from people like the premier ship, who run the competition in england and the are a few, there are to be football union who are the regulator for rugby in the k. they of both launched against racism type initiative. yet when we raise the contradiction with them, baxter is allowed to carry on using races, chance races, logos, races, imagery, they tell you, tell us say something completely different. it's not right to them. it's not related. it's completely different. so that hypocrisy or why people say they're against racism, say they're against causing offense, wants to have in creation and quality yet. don't think that this is

a problem. be really interested in your views on that. do we just have to be patient and keep trying to educate and share these experiences? are there anything more we can do? huh. that's so interesting to me because i'm so happy to have her here on this, the exit her chief as the example i always use of how this has breached the american borders, that you find these images and other parts of the world. and i think, wow, man, that's a good question is such a hard one. because here in the united states we've had indigenous native people for decade, half a century, telling people in power that these math gods are not honoring anyone that they are in fact bad. and they should be changed, and in the same time we've seen other team changed their logos change, their team mascot. is it possible? it's not like this is an impossible task. we've seen it in action, and yet still things don't change. and one thing i'll point out,

i did some research and part of the chapters we, someone did, i say ecologist, i so theologists did a study about that. and what they found is not just that needed that the native mascot make native people feel worse about themselves. which that should be enough alone, but they actually make white people feel better about themselves. and so you're really up against some big societal forces here and trying to get this change. and i think what elizabeth is talking about there, that the people that love the exit are chief feel and it's goes to it could be had to. they feel implicated in that racism. when you tell them that there's something wrong with the mascot, and maybe what they need to really sit with the fact that maybe they are implicated . and they couldn't really figure that out. i am looking at some questions on youtube for you later. hope you don't mind taking into them. so at the t poor t, the pool, thank you for for watching tv. this topic that you're bringing up all these

problems that you bring out these modern dynamics of plants and talk about them. digital says, talking about the native negative aspects as a little bit of talk, but no one really sees them as negative. yeah, i think that some fans do talk about these things to read. the whole reason that this book came about was because jessica and i am and friends like us and people that we work with have these conversations all the time. and one of the things that we really wanted to do with the book was allow, allow the space for these conversations to happen without someone questioning your own fandom. if that makes sense, we lead the book basically by saying we'd love sports. we love sports so much that we do this for a living that we cover these things, but we believe that they can be better. we want them to be better because we think that they have the capacity to do so. so in having these conversations and we don't have all of the answers, we'd like very decidedly say in the book, we don't have a solution hosting solution here because none of these issues are actually black

and white. right? and no individual fan is going to fix systemic racism. however, if you're at a bar, whenever we're allowed to go to bars again, and you're watching a game, and someone mentions that they might be uncomfortable with a player who is up there because of something they've been accused of, or that they're uncomfortable about the financial arrangement. of the way the game is played, being able to have that conversation without policing, someone's fam them, i think it's really important. casita, this is spooky. it's almost like you were watching the youtube comments go with invited off, a brief, brief offices, a responses to the hams, have been alley talk. thank you. have a school because given too much importance by society, jackson, you pick that one out. i've got one more look at the oh, i don't know if they're given too much importance. they certainly are given a lot of important and i think we just have to start like that's just a starting place. so they're going to be important and we should be having these conversations around them. mohammed carleen lane says,

and it is picking up when the money the money mentioned that you just like a visa, white billionaire clubs don't make more return to the communities in which those clubs, ah, locate it. well because they don't have to yeah. you said there are people with a lot of money, don't give away money for no reason. so unless government or official officials make them do that, they're not going to. all right. there is, and i think sport or sports have always done this. they've athletes have always connected with what is going on in the rest of the world. this question is from jennifer mccleary, and she's an assistant professor and she has a question for both of you see fit talk about progressive circles of society. we often focusing on this idea that representation matters if she can see it, she can be my research problem, a type of this assumption and says the need to think about other issues that lie

below the surface of what we can see in terms of representation. so for example, my forthcoming book looks at women and you see and while they've increased the level of exposure by best buy, adjust degree in the past couple years. there are issues of labor, exploitation, pain and quality and sexism that lie below the service that we need to pay more attention to. so my question for could be the, and jessica is what do you wish spans? and the porters of women's sports would pay more attention to in terms of equity and social dr. jen brand a good question. i think it was, she had something so perfect that one of the issues with women's sports is that we're still just trying to get it on television. a lot of the time, we're just trying to get for me to cover it at all. and so i do feel this, i don't want to be the person who's bad mouthing anything going on with women's sports because i don't want to give anyone who's ready to push it aside again,

a reason to do that, right. and so we're, i mean, i'm glad the gen is reading her book. i think that's so great that we're going to have that, you know, text to turn to in order to dig into these issues more deeply. and so part of what we need is we need more coverage, better coverage. we need a more expensive sports media around this so that we have a space to ask all these difficult questions. but those don't displace just a general coverage that we get of women's board visa. yeah, i mean exactly what jessica said, we need more coverage. we need, we just need to normalize the idea that not only do women love sports, but wouldn't play sports and that women playing sports is something valuable is something that it's women's access to sport has been deemed by the united nations as a human. right. so there is a reason that we are pushing for this and in addition to, to better coverage and better video archives and better stats being cap. just being able to tell the story because again, these are human beings in

a matter. i am just looking at your twitter page, cassie sir. so jessica and i may or may not be screaming right now. i think you're screaming abu with me. it is one of the new york times slash books to give this year hash tag loving sports that we reminded nothing sports when they don't love you back di lemme is of the modern fine. we just looked at the very surface of the book. it's a g, c, the book a few now or both. it's so much in there now, but it's john now that you're talking about it. if you could sum up the experience in a sentence and complete the in a sentence, what would that sentence be? oh, my gosh, in the sentence, i just think this has been such a rewarding experience and one of the best things isn't meeting other fan to feel this way and feel seen by this book and yeah, rewarding. and i think also cathartic. i think it was cathartic to be able to write about these things and to have people agree and receive it in the way that they've

been. thank you. thank you so much. and also what, what, what struck me was that every day there is a new story that you could have put in your book or something new that happened. but anyway, yeah, relevant, so juicy. jessica could peter, thank you so much. we are going to continue the conversation on instagram live, not with jessica casita, but with friend of the st. maxwell appears, he's an athlete, he's a humanitarian fan guy, never for me. athlete. the 22nd gmc platform, but for now i will wrap up next much and take the me coveted beyond. well, the taken without hesitation, fulton died for our define. wow. a lot of new babies were

i didn't think it's like them babies to death. people and power investigate, exposes, and questions they use them to be of our around the globe. on our after days of rare freezing temperature is blanket and the 2nd largest state in the us power stations are all back on line. that after unusually high demand lead to rolling blackouts, texas hasn't seen a storm system like this in 35 years. and it's clear it systems simply weren't up to the task. transmission lines taken down by ice still has left nearly 200000 without power. but now jackson's face a new crisis. 7000000 people a quarter of the state, and we're being asked to boil their water if they haven't at all. because the cold weather has broken pipes and taken water treatment plants offline, grocery store shelves are largely they're leaving residence,

wind up in their cars for food and water. presidential biden says he's declaring the entire state the disasters declaration, there is hope, sustain temperatures above freezing beginning saturday from the world's most populated region, the and until story across asia and the pacific to discover the current events with diverse coaches and conflicting politics. ah, when i went on out there a our coverage of africa is what i'm most proud of. every time i traveled, whether it be still west africa, people stop me. can tell me how much we appreciate coverage. and our focus is not

just on their suffering, but also on the more lifting and inspiring story. people trust to tell them what's happening in their communities in a clear and unwise. and as an african, i couldn't be more proud to be autumn. ah, the pentagon sounds the alarm master the taliban recent gains while us troops finalize the withdrawal agreements for my son. ah, hey, this is al jazeera lloyd from dough home, also coming up, thousands of people gather in the field in capital to show their support for government troops fighting in t grey trying to stay.