Women’s sports don’t get a ton of media coverage. We hope it’s better now than in Purdue’s last in-depth study, where in 2019, women got a little over 5% of coverage compared to men. But on the whole, women’s sports have been downplayed throughout history, and even in ancient times, some societies didn’t want women to compete. Was it just because of the “falling uterus” theory? We talk with author Alexandra Allred about her book When Women Stood: The Untold History of Females Who Changed Sports and the World and the audacious women who dared to compete. This includes Alex herself, who was the first US women’s bobsled champion–while she was pregnant.

Learn more about Alex at https://www.alexandraallred.com and follow her on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

In our Seoul history moment, Jill’s delves into the yachting competition to tell the story of the first women’s-only sailing event in Olympic history, the 470 race, and how the Americans Allison Jolly and Lynne Jewell, who were not favored to win at all, somehow managed to pull out the victory–even with a broken sail. It’s an incredible story, and you can hear them talk about it here:

We do like to get into the financial aspect of sports, and although we don’t talk about this on the episode, Daily News reported that Jolly estimated that her two-year campaign to compete in the Olympics cost her $75,000. That’s just her! Jewell’s debt was somewhere around $4,000-5,000. In 1988. In today’s dollars, Jolly’s outlay would be around $193,000.

In our TKFLASTAN update, we have news from:

• Para archer Matt Stutzman
• Sitting volleyball player Lora Webster
• TKFLASTANIs who will be competing at the Los Angeles Grand Prix on May 26-27, including pole vaulter Katie Moon, hammer thrower DeAnna Price, and Geoff Wightman‘s son Jake (a TKFLASTANI by proxy).

In Paris 2024 news, the second phase of ticket sales is underway–with one million tickets selling in just 48 hours. At least 20 sports sold out within this time (if you thought modern pentathlon would be an easy ticket, think again!). If you’re not having luck in the regular sale, a hospitality package might be for you (thank you to TKFLASTANI Ken Hanscom for that tip!).

Also, the Italian National Olympic Committee has announced that Casa Italia will be back for Paris 2024. Let’s see how quickly Alison will be able to get in there.

Speaking of Italy, we’ve hit the 1000 days to Milan-Cortina 2026, so we check in with the planning for those Games.

Thank you so much for listening, and until next time, keep the flame alive!

Photo courtesy of Alexandra Allred.

You can find books from all of the authors featured on the podcast at our Bookshop.org storefront. We may earn a commission on purchases made through this link.

TRANSCRIPT

Note: This is an uncorrected machine-generated transcript. It contains errors. Please do not quote from the transcript; use the audio file as the record of note.

Author Alexandra Allred on Women in Sports Throughout History (Episode 287) – Edited

Jill: Hello, and welcome to another episode of Keep the Flame Alive, the podcast for fans of the Olympics and Paralympics. If you love the games, we are the show for you. Each week we share stories from athletes and people behind the scenes to help you have more fun watching the games. I am your host, Jill Jaracz, joined as always by my lovely co-host, Alison Brown.

Alison. Hello, how are you?

Alison: Hello. Did you know we have a YouTube channel? I did know that. Yes, it is Flame Alive Pod and I’ve been spending a lot of time on our YouTube channel.

Jill: Oh yeah. What have you been doing?

Alison: I have been falling down so many Olympic rabbit holes. So I’ll load up a video. We put shorts up there.

We have all the episodes. We have some stuff that we filmed in Beijing and I clean things. You know, you always have to clean up on the, the back end of it, but then it’ll give me suggested videos for me to

Jill: watch. Oh, no. Oh no.

Alison: And for this episode, I was watching some old videos as well. For some of the athletes we talked about.

Oh my goodness, there is so much there and it will suck your life away. And I

Jill: highly recommend it. Any favorites so far? Well,

Alison: then I got onto Eurovision, so Oh, well, no, but lots of old skating programs, people I had forgotten, people that we’ve talked about in book clubs. So old gymnastics programs, all the old Russians.

There’s a great old video of when equipment falls apart. people on the uneven bars and the uneven bars [00:02:00] just collapse and the parallel bars for the men. Yeah, it’s great stuff.

Jill: Well also great stuff is our interview today. Today we are talking with Alexandra Allred, author of When Woman Stood, the Untold History of Females Who Changed Sports and the World. Alex is a former elite athlete and trailblazer. She was on the first ever US Women’s bobsled team. While pregnant. She is also a fourth degree black belt in martial arts and is currently an adjunct professor at Tarleton State University.

We talked with Alex about some of the more interesting stories and themes she’s uncovered while writing her book and her own experience in bobsled. Take a listen.

Alexandra Allred Interview

Jill: Alex Allred, thank you so much for joining us. You’ve written When Women Stood: The Untold History of Females who Changed Sports and the World, why write this book and why write it now?

Alexandra Allred: So this book has actually been in my mind for literally decades. I like to say I was minding my own business.

I was sitting on the couch watching E S P N because I’m a huge sports fan, and I saw men’s bobsled and I thought that is the coolest thing I’ve ever seen. And so I couldn’t wait to see the women. And they did not come. And so I got in my car and I went to the library because this was pre-internet.

And I found that, uh, 1940, Katherine Dewey, the granddaughter of Melville, Dewey as in Dewey Decimal system, she was in an open, the first and last open. Grand championship between men and women, and she won.

And it took about two days for the men to decide. They did not like that. They stripped her of her medal and banned women from the sport of bobsled. I, I couldn’t even wrap my head around it. My background was I was a martial artist and I was a competitive fighter. So then to hear that women are not [00:04:00] allowed to bobsled Only because she beat men in an open competition. And by the way, the big skirt that she was wearing, when she did win that competition in 1940 it was so appalling that I started this really obnoxious letter writing campaign and I wrote the I O C, the U S O C, I wrote the International Bobsled Federation, the U Bobsled Federation, basically just saying, I can do this with my eyes closed backwards.

And so of course the phone call came about two months later when the United States and many other countries, they were being forced to include women into their sledding programs. They didn’t want us, but they were being forced. And I got a, we’re gonna do this, you big mouth are, you come in, you know, and after all that trash talking, what do you do?

So I’m like, yeah, I’ll be there. And then I hung up and looked around and thought, Crap. I had no, nothing about the sport of bobsledding, but I stayed in it. And to everyone’s surprise, I won. And this is what started me really thinking this book had to be told in some way as the director of the then bobsled federation was putting the, the medal around my neck and the Sports Illustrator was there taking pictures.

He leans in and he whispers, you know, this means nothing. And he wasn’t kidding. They sent us off on the World Cup tour because they had to. We had no sled, we had no coach. We had no training in how to crash. We had no training in how to drive. I mean, it was, the Bad News Bears, but in real life. When I was in the World Cup in Calgary, the Jamaican bobsled and Trinidad and bobsled teams helped us.

And when we were on the World Cup in St. Maritz, Prince Albert of Monaco, his bodyguards helped us And when we were saying we need our own sled, they suggested that we have a bake sale. And so that was really my teammates and I realized we said, they’re trying to make this so difficult that we just give up and go home And so we made a pact. We said, we’re staying in this no matter what. [00:06:00] Until they announced that women make the Olympics. And so we did, and we, lot of injuries, a lot of drama, a lot of trauma. But we stayed in until they announced that. And then I went on to play another Sports, Sports Illustrated.

They’d followed my career in bobsled. So they asked me to try out for a women’s professional football team. And the only thing was I wasn’t allowed to tell them that I was a reporter for Sports Illustrated. And so I gotta tell ya. There were some terrifying women but I made it. I made the team and I wrote about it and I think that was when I learned that women’s professional football players to make the league work.

And I have the picture, the, when I signed the contract and shook my min general manager’s hand and I got $1, and that’s when I really realized what men would play. Professional football and only be paid a dollar. And what men would’ve stayed in the US bobsled program if they had been given nothing except for the anticipation of being injured and going home.

And that’s when I knew like, this is women are just, we are truly so badass in ways that no one will accept. And then as I started doing more and more research, I realized how often women are written out of history. And that was the beginning

Jill: so I do have to ask, who was forcing bobsled to take women? Where was that pressure coming from?

Alexandra Allred: Thank you, Jill, because no one ever asks that question. So the I O C was really pushing a diversity agenda, and that was really hard because the International Olympic Committee has a very long and storied history in holding women out of the games.

Right. And so we’ll get to that. They were, yeah, they were pushing this agenda. And then at the same time, they were getting a lot of complaints from other countries who wanted female Bobs letters. And so I really think they just thought. Oh, all right, fine. We’ll just let them in. And then left it to every country.

So the [00:08:00] Swiss were not wanting their women. The Germans were okay with it. The Canadians were really good about it, but the best was England. And so there were countries that really supported their female athletes, but there were many more who just they threw up breadcrumbs and expected us to just go home.

Alison: And isn’t that ironic because Team GB cut all the money for their women’s sliders.

Alexandra Allred: Yeah. And it’s funny because, and I love that you know that, so it happens where it goes in waves and I sense believe that when it comes to women in particular, everything has a political agenda.

Everything. And so on the face of it, Great Britain was fantastic and very inclusive and so was Canada. Canada has had moments where they pulled back, but engli, a lot of countries will pull back and then give again and pull back and give again. And it has nothing to do with the female athlete’s ability or how amazing she is.

It’s everything about what’s going on in the politics. Historically speaking the female form has been used in war, in religion, in politics, in economics, to the convenience of the person who has their own agenda, that is usually not profe

Jill: Before we get off the bobsled, One of the things jumping way ahead in the book is how the Soviet Union recognized the power of women in sport. And it’s interesting how your experience with countries that didn’t want to deal with women in sport, and yet you have a whole philosophy that does see the value and how does that, I mean, that’s gotta conflict on the global playing

Alexandra Allred: field.

It does Lenin in the Soviet Union, but Lenin recognized the value of women, and I, it wasn’t so much that she was woman, but it was all bodies. And he knew if he was gonna have a revolution, he needed to have as many bodies as possible. and then from [00:10:00] Lenin, That just continued on, is that we need all citizens, we need all people to make this work.

And so, you know, I, I tell my students when I teach on this topic, I always say, that’s fine with me. I don’t care. That’s how I wish it, that’s how I prefer it to be, is that we stop saying, men, women, this, we just say we need all able bodied people for X, Y, Z. That’s how it should be. Right. So then in the book, as you mentioned, The Soviet Union was already putting in their female athletes because, and this actually we go forward, but let me go backwards for a second.

In Athenian times, the Spartans recognized right off. Now the reasoning was a little skewed, but they believed that strong women built a strong society. Okay. That is absolutely true. Where they twisted it a little bit is it wasn’t so much the strong woman, but they believed that a strong woman would carry and bear a strong male baby.

That’s what they wanted. But again, it gave women an entry into military training a little bit. And then sports they let her have a voice in politics. They let her own some property as opposed to the ancient Greeks who held. Everything away from females and the female form was supposed to be submissive and frail, and she had really no rights except for taking care of household duties.

Now let’s flash forward. The Soviet Union adopted that philosophy of a strong woman. A strong female athlete would show our Soviet power. And it did, and that’s exactly what happened in those 1952 games is when the Soviet gymnastics team came marching out and they did, they marched . Everybody was shocked.

And I laughed because in the clippings that I found, they were described as Amazons and gigantic women. you know, they were five foot two, but they marched out and they looked so uniform and then they were so strong and they were mechanical in their movements, and that terrified the world so much that John [00:12:00] F.

Kennedy wrote a piece that went into Sports Illustrated, basically calling out to say we gotta get stronger. Because the Soviet women’s gymnastics team scared everybody so much. It was crazy.

Jill: Going back to Greece. when I was reading that part of the book, you got the impression that Aristotle did not like women too much. And so what he wrote and because that’s what survived, that perpetuated a way of thinking. And then you get, Napoleon who did that again, and then what our listeners know James Sullivan and then Avery Brundage Classic.

I don’t, I can’t even begin to describe what we think of of those two. Okay. Let’s talk about how one person has such an impact on women’s ability to progress in sport.

Alexandra Allred: So you just triggered me. With saying the word Aristotle. Oh my goodness. Yeah, I did a lot of reading on him and he was a horrible person.

And if I could go back in a time machine and punch out anyone in history, that would be the guy. I mean his hate for women. Honestly, I wouldn’t punch him. I, I would love to just confront him and go, what is your deal? I mean, his hatred for women was just so obscene and as you say, it carried throughout time and just, woman is a pair of ovaries.

That is what woman is, but men were supreme beings who just had testicles. I mean, and, and that was in the. Mid centuries of, the Industrial Revolution, but I love that you just named James E. Sullivan. Because nobody knows who he is. And do you realize that today in sports? the Sullivan Awards is one of the most coveted awards in today. He was a horrible racist and misogynist. And the fact that we still have athletes receiving the Sullivan Award, I, I can’t believe that they know who this guy was.

He did everything he could to keep women and non-white males at a sport. Just a horrible person.[00:14:00] You all know, this obviously is the history of sport with white supremacy Is appalling and is for all the people who love sports so much. I don’t think enough people understand how a white supremacist affixed themselves to the sports world to be proof of how superior they were.

And then of course, as soon as the sports world opened up to non-whites, look how dramatically things had changed. It’s really interesting. I could talk on this one for days. Yeah. That’s why you wrote a book. That’s why I wrote a book. Yes. I teach at university and college level kinesiology, and I train tomorrow’s physical therapists, occupational therapists, coach, trainers, everything right.

And I would be given textbooks to teach from and I would literally look at a 300 page book and see, and I’m not kidding you, about three pages on women. About three pages and I started protesting to the dean saying how are these people going to be good at what they do when they can really only talk to and be safe with and for 50% of the population?

And that’s really when I decided I have to write this book because I don’t know if you all are familiar with the Mary Cain Nike story. The fastest girl in America, she goes to Nike with the dreams of going to the Olympics. She is Olympic bound and they destroy her because they don’t know female anatomy.

And, and it was so negligent. And US Congress spoke to our own medical facilities and said this has to change, but they left it for them to do this. Today they still use a 154 pound male model to represent women. In medicine and we know that females will wake up in the middle of anesthesia because we react differently to anesthesias in different medications.

We have different signs of a heart attack or a concussion or to cancers, and yet we’re still using the [00:16:00] male model and only 6% of all exercise science is given to females. And the main reason is they’ve told us. Because of our reproductive system, because of our menstrual cycle, we are too time consuming and costly to run medical trials and so they just don’t.

Alison: Okay, so this just leads into my biggest question. Coming out of reading your book and having spoken to a lot of female athletes, there seems to be this constant push and pull between female athletes who want to. Train like men or just treat us like you treat everybody else referring to men, and we have to do things differently because women’s bodies are different and women’s bodies respond differently.

So where do you come down? And kind of that constant push and pull of equality versus opportunity versus making it work for a woman’s body.

Alexandra Allred: That is a great question, and the answer is, and I have this discussion with my college students all the time, and my answer is, Yes. To, to both. That’s my answer.

My own sports background is I am a fourth degree black belt. I was a competitive fighter. I played women’s professional football. I test, drove the Volvo Gravity car and was the first North American. And, uh, Person to do this. I did Bob sledding pretty much. if you tell me I can’t do it, I’m gonna do it.

And somebody might say and they have, they’ll laugh and say, you’re like a guy. And I say, no, I’m like a Spartan. I’m like an Amazon. And so just because I do non-trad what has always been non-traditional female sports doesn’t mean I’m trying to train like a man. I’m training like an Amazon.

I’m training like a Spartan. I’m a badass woman. Not anymore, actually. I’m getting old and tired, but I was a badass woman once upon a time.[00:18:00] But that is how we should be accepting that and I am, no, I am no better, but certainly, certainly no less than a male, but I can do pretty much anything the biological male can do too.

I know I can. There’s certain disadvantages, all before we started recording, Alison was talking about being shorter. So sometimes the reach is harder. I’m not gonna be slam dunking in the, the W N B A anytime soon. But I can pretty much just do anything anybody else can do.

But yeah, I am different. My body is built differently. And so I am extremely territorial over the small space that is women in sports because biology does matter there. just in terms of science, this isn’t an opinion, it’s just science, and I know I’m, eeking us toward a really controversial topic right now.

And so I always say to everybody, I have a family member who has fully transitioned female and I love, adore and worship her, and I tell people all the time, it is not my business or anybody else’s business to tell someone how they’re supposed to live. that is absolutely everybody has the right to be the person that they were meant to be.

Who and whatever that is. And so I always tell people my only thing is, is that, that this one small space, because exercise science does matter. Biology does matter. And the female athlete, her menstrual cycle pre-competition reeks havoc on athletic performance output. And that’s a fact.

And so what I tell people all the time, but. Since on the topic of transgender female athletes, we absolutely have to provide a space for them. And the transgender youth must have a sports program because sports is so much a part of our culture worldwide, [00:20:00] and it’s, it’s so healing and therapeutic and it’s so good for us on so many levels, both physical and emotional and mental, that we have to provide them with that.

But my stance is, Until we stop using the 154 pound male model to teach tomorrow’s doctors and researchers that a woman is, is really a little man. We’re not, and until we have 50% medical research and representation, until we have 50% females in medical trials, and until we have 50% exercise science, we would be grossly negligent to let.

A non-biological female body in the small space of sports. Until we know enough to fully represent her, we don’t need the Mary Kay story. Again, we need to understand the female body better before we open it completely up.

Alison: Okay. I’m gonna ask this question just to make sure that I’m understanding you correctly, cuz as we said, it is very

Alexandra Allred: controversial.

It is.

Alison: Are you saying that we don’t know, we don’t have the science. Or the science that we have says that allowing transgender females is unfair competing against biological females.

Alexandra Allred: I love that you broke it down because, so right now, my answer for right now would be, we’re still trying to figure out the fe, the biological female body, her reproductive system, and how much having her menstrual cycle wreaks havoc on her as a competitive athlete.

Right? And so, We need to get that figured out into the future. I had a transgender female athlete in one of my classes and we kind of did this and so, so I said to her, I said, I’m blocking you out now. Yes I am, but not because you are who you are. I’m blocking you out now because I am who I am and I need to know that we are fully able to understand and take care of the cisgender female athlete right into the [00:22:00] future.

That gets, that’s when, I’ll be perfectly honest with you, I’ve got a big fat, I don’t know, and again, that’s not being anti-trans gender, but I look at someone like Leah Thomas, the swimmer, Leah Thomas, and I go, oof, you know? Wow. Just by biology alone, that was wildly unfair to all of those female athletes.

We know right now that the hormone suppression, the testosterone suppress repression that is used is not conclusive because even after two years of repression, the testosterone level on transgender female athletes is higher than almost all elite, a female, cisgender female athletes who have high levels of testosterone.

But that’s not to say that this can’t be something that we can do in the future. So I have, but we just have to make sure that we do level the playing field. For now, it’s definitely not level taking out the trans, the transgender female athlete. It’s just not fair for cisgender females. we don’t have the research on cisgender females.

Just gimme 50% of all medical research, science, clinical, extra everything, and then we can go, okay, this is what we know. Now let’s look over here and let’s look at the transgender female athlete, body biology, hormones, whatnot, and then let’s have that conversation. Again, I’m not in the business of telling someone that they can’t be who and what they need to be, but I’m still looking at repeated Mary Cain stories over and over again because we’ve got.

Coaches and scientists and doctors who just shrug their shoulders and just look at us like We have bikini medicine, we have breasts, and we have a uterus, but everything else is exactly the same. Nope, not by a long shot. Okay, so getting

Alison: back a little bit to the book and the history, [00:24:00] because what we’re really talking about is throughout sports history, there’s a question of what is a woman and what is feminine and what is, Allowed for women to do.

And you talk a lot about that in the book.

Alexandra Allred: Yeah. I’ll tie up with what we were just talking about. So a lot of people will find out that I am opposing transgender female in sports right now, and then I see them for who they are and that is, Ultra-conservative, extreme right groups who, their problem with transgender females in sports isn’t even about sport.

Women in sports, you know, and I’ll look at ’em and I’ll go, you know, you’re the same guy trying to take away right. Women’s rights for her reproductive system. You’re the same guy that would. 50 years ago of what you would’ve said, women don’t have the right to vote, so you go stand over there and get away from me because we’re not on the same team.

I don’t have any problem with drag shows. I don’t have any problem because the female image. What is woman in the female image? The female image is always been used by both sides for whatever reasons. Right. And that’s one of the things that I talk about is the female image has always been important to the ancient Greeks, right?

And then when the Spartan woman opposed that, Then look what was written about the Spartan woman and then today that female ideal, the hegemonic, hegemonic feminine ideal is still so important today because look at our most popular athletes, they’re usually white, most definitely, pretty, most definitely thin and trim, and they kind of have that more frail look.

Cosmetic surgery has become extremely popular for the obvious reason. So we hold onto that ideal and. That supports a, that the patriarchal system big time. And then anything that strays from that, a transgender female strays from that. And so [00:26:00] that terrifies people. They’re beautiful. So I talk a lot about the ideal because the feminine ideal on all levels in politics is so much more important than what our male ideal is. I talk a lot about just why politically, what a female looks like is so important to them.

And so in today’s conversation that it’s turned into what is woman, I should say?

Alison: historically in the Olympics, and we’ve made jokes about this pretty much since the beginning of the show, there is a lot of concern about.

Men who run sports and women’s reproductive potential. And why is that? Constantly the reason that women get barred, that men want to stop women from participating and other women wanna stop women from participating in sports. The idea that you’re floating uterus will end up out of your body.

Alexandra Allred: Okay.

There’s two answers to that. First of all, in recent times, the United States has a brilliant Nordic ski jumper named Carla Keck. And when she was first trying to get into Nordic ski, jumping into the early nineties, and actually as a child, late eighties, but when she was trying to get into Nordic ski jumping, she wasn’t allowed.

And the sport wasn’t allowed in the IOC because it was a. Feared that when she landed on the snow that her uterus would just fall out of her body because of the impact. And this has been throughout time. And the truth of it is, is it’s, just a convenience, number one. It lends to everything I just said about how little men understand about the female body that they could, throughout time into the 1990s, be worried that her uterus could drop.

Just only proves once again that we have never fully. Cared about or given a much thought to the health and welfare of the female. And so this is, we’ve just always just abused her [00:28:00] and then used her physical being as a convenient to our political point in the late 18 hundreds when women wanted to take to the bicycle.

There was so much outrage to her getting on the bicycle, and they would warn that the vibration of her bicycle seat would cause her to become loose and immoral, or it could even drive her insane because she could have orgasms while she’s pedaling, and then on top of that, doctors were taking to local newspapers and writing articles, warning that she could get bicycle face.

By sheer pedaling, she would grimace and she would have this bicycle face. And it really wasn’t about her having a contorted face or her uterus and it, was about her having freedom. That’s what it was about. And for Carla Keck, it wasn’t about it falling out when she landed, it was about her playing with the boys.

That’s what it was about. And so going back, even before that, The idea was to tight lace, you know, the corsets, you know, to tight lace a woman, to make her figure as hourglass as possible. And that was for the, male gaze. It’s always been about disfiguring and dishonoring and discrediting the female for the male gaze or just, to be a prop for.

From Spartan Times to now. That’s what it’s always been. So, you know when they would talk about, when Sigmund Freud would talk about. Women passed out. It’s like, yeah, . She’s passing out because she’s gotta waste four inches wide that she can’t breathe. That’s why she’s passing out. And then into the 18 hundreds when women were drowning all the time, it was because, yeah, they’re drowning because when their bathing suit is wet, it weighs 30 pounds.

That’s why they’re drowning. And oh, by the way, you never taught her to swim. really, it’s funny, but it’s just absurd. And so that even into today we were always talking about protecting the female form, and yet by the 1990s, France had allowed [00:30:00] breast implants to be put into women. And they knew that the implants were made from substances.

That came from mattresses. And then women started getting really sick and dying. And so we really don’t worry that much about women until we can use it as a platform of some kind, and then it becomes a discussion. I don’t know about you YouTube, but my uterus has never wandered. I know where it is.

Jill: Well, could it also be that men see their reproductive organs, so they’re like, well, I see it. I know what happens, and oh my gosh is just kinda hidden away. That’s a mystery mystery up in there. We don’t know.

Alexandra Allred: You know what? That’s so funny and so obvious. I’m sad that I never thought of that myself.

Alison: Okay. Speaking of reproduction, you have a lot of stories of pregnant athletes and competing while pregnant in the book.

Alexandra Allred: I do. so, I, I gave you a little preview of How insane the segue into Bob Sledding was.

And so I realized I am pregnant and the first thing I did is I went to my teammates and I said, I can’t quit because if I were to quit because I was pregnant, All the good old boys would say, yep. See, there you go. Women just get pregnant and that’s why you can’t hire ’em for jobs.

That’s why you can’t pay ’em the same. That’s why you can’t get him into sports. And so word quickly got around that. There was this pregnant Bobs letter and I got a call from Case Western University and um This renowned program for researching, and they wanted me in because at that point, in 1994, really the only studies on elite female athletes who were pregnant were by athletes and long distance runners.

And at that time I was clocked at running about 20 miles an hour. I was squatting 3 75 and doing really intense plyometrics. And they said We’d love to have you. And so. I said, yeah, because it was a way for me to know that my [00:32:00] baby to be, was gonna be safe. And so I was literally hooked up to everything when I was doing plyometrics and doing all kinds of intense training and a few times then they would kind of raise a hand and say, okay, dial it back.

You gotta, because my heart rate. As my heart rate would go up a few times, Katie, my daughter her heart rate would drop. And so I had the benefit of going full on like so many women have never been able to do because I had EKG leads, I had a heart monitor, a fetal monitor, I had an oxygen mask, and.

even though this makes everybody wildly uncomfortable, I also had a rectal thermometer in while I was training. Yeah. And a funny story about that too is it’s funny, you know, and now I’m very just matter of fact about it because it’s important. It’s important to know that my inner core temperature is more important for.

My baby in utero than My heart rate as an elite athlete, me getting up to 170, 180 beats per minute is nothing. But even today, OBGYNs will tell their athletes, don’t let your heart rate get over 140. And so most athlete elite athletes get so discouraged with that information. They just quit 140, that’s nothing.

And then you feel like, well, what’s the point of what I’m doing? So on my heart rate could go up as, but we, what we watched was my inner core temperature, and then Katie’s heart rate. a funny story about that is when the internet finally. Kind of opened up and it became huge as it is.

It was in the early two thousands. And I would have people walk up to me and say, oh, I read about you and thank you so much. Your research really helped my training for whatever sport. And I’d say, oh, that’s so cool. What? What were you reading? And they’d say, the thermometer.

And I think really, for everything I’ve done, this is my big contribution. This is my contribution in women’s history. She wore the bral thermometer, so, you know, so yeah, I, I’m working really hard. That’s, this is why I write books as I’m trying to make people [00:34:00] forget about the whole rectal thermometer thing.

Alison: What I thought was so interesting in the book is we are of an age, and when I was pregnant, it was, Self-limiting. If you feel good enough, go do it. And when I was a kid it was, women can do anything that boys can do, and yet that message doesn’t seem to be absorbed in society. Like they say this to us and they said this to us as children, and they said this to us as pregnant women.

And yet all these years later, my daughter is 20 and yet we’re still having this discussion about is it safe for pregnant women to compete at the Olympics?

Alexandra Allred: Yeah. I mean, that goes back to what I was saying earlier is that how is it that it’s 2023 and. I still get emails from people who say I’m pregnant.

Can I do fill in the blank? And so that just lends to what I was saying, which is how is it 2023?

And we only do 6% of exercise science on females, and we still use a 154 pound male model. And so we really have to fix that problem but it’s not just medicine, it’s not just medical. So for example, at the end of every semester, And I talk a lot about Title IX and the history and how it came about and, and why it’s so important and, and it’s relevant every year on campus.

And at the end I let my students free flow I let them tell me what they think and I ask. So after everything that we’ve gone over with title IX and everything else, how can we combat the violence against girls and women? How can we do that?

And I, I always have to sort of brace myself because the answers are so honest, but my male and my female students will say something along these lines of, Yes. It’s really terrible. I don’t see change because this is just the way it’s always been. And I just, [00:36:00] I just think I’ve given you the tools.

I’ve told you if we follow the guidelines of the ncaa, we do reporting. We check on our coaches. and we change how we. Talk about females versus males in sports and everything else, we could make a change, but in the end of the whole class, their takeaway is, yeah, there’s, we’re always gonna have violence against women.

It’s sad, but that’s just the way it is. Do you know? And I just think, so what do we do about that? What do we do? Well, I have some rather simplistic answers, but they’re not if long term. You know, you all remember when the Norwegian volleyball women’s team decided that they were not gonna wear bikinis anymore?

The sands people don’t realize that the sands can get hotter than over a hundred degrees, and yet the men wear shorts just. All the way down to their knees and they wear tank tops, and the women are supposed to wear bikinis. Why? And you’re gonna tell me that you’re protecting women, but you want, you don’t care if she gets burned up on the sand because it’s always about the image.

Because the I O C understands that women’s beach volleyball is far, far more viewed than men’s. Beach volleyball. And why is that? We like the, it’s the gays. We like to look at her body and so that would’ve hurt the I O C financially, if we allow the women to dress like the men.

So we can’t have that. The women’s. Ice skating in the Winter Olympics is the most popular, most viewed sport followed by bobsled. And the only reason bobsled is, is because everybody wants to see a crash, right? And so there’s reasons behind the, what is the most viewed, but the most viewed women’s gymnastics, women’s beach volleyball, women’s ice skating.

Because we like to look at that feminine form that we like one of the least viewed the W N B A struggles because we don’t like [00:38:00] to see tall. Large, aggressive, angular women. I do. You guys probably do but that’s not what’s viewed. And so it always comes down to politics and money. What is the feminine ideal?

And they aren’t it, but the women in, women in bikinis getting burned up on 102 degree sand. we like that. So let’s just keep ’em in those bikinis. So I do think that when we stop, Really pushing that look of her being in the bikini. It’s easier. That’s what I said. It’s so simplistic, but it’s not because, but if we could stop that whole feminine or the, what is that ideal, I think we could really, even the odds I did have a student say to me once, cuz I said, Most people don’t realize the Latina female athlete really didn’t come onto the scene until the 1990s.

And I, you know, I look around my class and one day I said to my class, I go, why is that? That just seems like it was yesterday. How could that be? And a Hispanic male student said, oh, I can answer this. This is my culture. And he said, because you can’t really take a hypersexualized person seriously.

And I just thought, well, there it is, ladies and gentlemen. There’s your answer.

Jill: Along the basketball lines, and I realize that this strays from Olympics and stuff, but the women’s NCAA tournament basketball tournament this year got great.

Alexandra Allred: Ratings.

Jill: Yeah. And do you see this as kind of a turning point where will we start seeing more of this style of body, this style of aggression at play and being okay with it?

Alexandra Allred: So, yay. Good question. And when I actually did talk about female basketball players, in terms of the Olympics, no one really watches the women’s basketball in the Olympics, but they do pay attention to the men’s basketball team.

So there’s definitely disparity there. It just as there is the N B A and the W N B A, but to this, yeah. [00:40:00] How many people watched the L S U Iowa Women’s Basketball game? It broke records. I mean, it was phenomenal.

I mean, it was an amazing game and I absolutely loved it. And so I welcome that level of competitiveness because it gets people talking. And I’ve had my own college students tell me that they don’t watch women’s sports because they don’t think female athletes are exciting, to which I, in front of the whole class, I’ll go.

I don’t know what you’re looking at, but they’re extremely exciting to watch and there’s been so many controversies. One of my favorite stories that I uncovered when I was doing research was Elizabeth Wilkinson in the beginning of the 17 hundreds, and her husband was not a nice guy, and he was a notorious thief and robber, and he was eventually hung.

And one of the women that testified against him in court. Elizabeth went after that woman and she took out an ad in the paper and she totally trash talked to her and she said, I wanna meet you in the back alley at high noon. Anything goes, I’m a whooper. You know what? And so this woman showed and they had a throwdown, and after that, Elizabeth Wilkinson’s launched her what we would call today, her m m A.

Career and she fought men. She fought women, she used weapons. It was anything goes. But the thing that stunned the world was that she didn’t just do the fight. She would take out an ad in the newspaper and call somebody out and trash talk them so much. That Royals nobility would show up to her matches because they were delighted by this woman.

She broke every feminine norm there was, but they loved her. Flash forward to Rhonda Rousey who had tattoos and she trash talked and she, in the interview she talked. Openly about having a pretty good sexual appetite. And she drank and [00:42:00] she did all these things. And so there was a whole score of people who were, that’s so inappropriate, and they didn’t like her, but so many, many more loved her because she was just like in your face.

And so I do think that we’re gonna see more and more athletes just laying it out there and just being who they are, which is, they’re highly competitive and they’re gonna trash talk and they’re gonna do what they’re gonna do, and I love it. I love it.

Jill: I’m glad you brought out the boxing because that’s one of the things that I noted in while I was reading was how long ago women were fighting, and yet women’s fighting sports in the Olympics took a long time to get in, especially with boxing didn’t get in until 2012.

Talk to us a little bit more about women fighting and then that eventually getting accepted as a sport.

Alexandra Allred: So first of all, I would say women have been fighting for thousands of years. We just don’t get to write about it because it was literally written outta history.

We have glimpses of the Amazons and the Odyssey and a few things, and then there’s just radio silence because then when, as soon as they started writing more and, and record keeping that kind of behavior was just, Eradicated from history. And so we like to think that Elizabeth Wilkinson was an oddity.

I mean, she was but she was the first and only for another several hundred years. Right. In fact, women have always been fighters. One of my favorite parts of my research was when I came upon, when archeologists actually, finally realized, wait, these graves that we’re.

Digging up. And these bodies that we’re finding, these are Amazons, and they began, they did D N A testing and they realized that there are women who were buried with their weapons that have always been labeled and tagged as males, by virtue of seeing weapons. And it never occurred to anybody that these are women.

And that’s when we started to learn so much more about the Amazons and how long they’ve been around. And so [00:44:00] women have always been fighting. throughout time and they’ve always been soldiers and they’ve always been competitive. We’ve just never really heard about it. And then of course I shared Elizabeth Wilkinson, but yeah, into the nine 1990s.

We have a British fighter named Jane couch to thank, because in England, women were not allowed to box based on her menstrual cycle because we all know that women are unstable during their menstrual cycle. And so she was it. This went before a court that they decided that, a female boxer and a menstrual cycle, are you kidding me?

and so, and again, I can’t say enough times. That’s why I’m saying we need so much more research because that held in the 1990s and so then it took that many more years and Jane couch fought and fought and fought for the right, for women to fight. And so the fact that it took so long for women to be allowed to be competitive fighters when she’s always been a fighter is just, yeah.

It just lends to how slowly we move when it comes to women in her rights.

Jill: excellent, Alex. Well, thank you so much for coming on and talking about our book. We really appreciate you. Taking the time to share with us.

Alexandra Allred: Thank you. And I loved your questions. those were fantastic. Those were hard hitting, but fantastic questions.

Jill: Thank you so much Alex. Learn more about alex@alexandraallred.com and follow her on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter. We will have links to all of those in the show notes. We’ll also have a link to Alex’s book. You can get a copy through our bookshop.org affiliate store, which is bookshop.org/shop/flame alive pod.

We earn a commission on all purchases made through our store link, whether or not they’re books on our list. So if you’re buying some books for summer reading, Please use our link because money we earn from that goes to cover operating costs and to fund our in-person coverage of Paris 2024.

Seoul 1988 History Moment

Jill: Ah, that [00:46:00] sound means it is time for our history moment all year long. We are looking at Seoul 1988 as it is the 35th anniversary of those games. It is my turn for a story. So since we were talking about women making history, I wanted to talk about the first time that women got their own event in sailing.

Alison: Again, I think this is either the fourth or the fifth story where women got their own event in this, this was a big Olympics for equality.

Jill: I’m a little flabbergasted when we say equality because. It still has taken a long time to get to actual equality, but you’re right, this was a big step forward in, in that movement. So this is the first time that women had their own event in sailing with the four 70 craft.

The four 70 had been a mixed event since 1976, but this was the first time it was separated into a men’s event and a women’s event. Back in 1988, they called it yachting. It wasn’t sailing The four 70 is a two person dinghy that has Spinnaker sail. So Spinnakers are those big billowy sail that they used for sailing with the direction of the wind, just to give you an idea of what this boat is like.

And in this race, we had 21 nations competing with the dominant team being Sweden’s Merit Soderstrom, and Beita. Bankston and four seventy.org wrote quote. No one expected much of a competition, but then no one had experienced women’s sailings at the gains before end.

Alison: I’m just gonna roll my eyes verbally.

Jill: Now Weather was a huge factor throughout the entire yachting competition. The event was held in Busan on the southeast coast of South Korea, and that was the country’s major port, but it wasn’t a sailing hub because there wasn’t really much recreational sailing going on in South Korea, of course, until they got the game.

[00:48:00] So they had to build that up. There was a Korea Yachting Association basically existed in name only. This is kind of important because there was little data about the tides in the area, and teams hadn’t started really digging into meteorological programs that competitors use today. So they did have many test events here because of Korea’s lack of experience in this event, and they wanted to make sure everything was going well.

The year before at the test event, the winds had been very light. So that’s what competitors compared what they prepared for. However, this turned out to be one of the windiest competitions ever in Olympic sailing history. And this will become a factor in many events as we shall find out. Cuz I’ve got more than one story in the yachting, sailing genre for you.

So we’ve got our favorites from Sweden, but seemingly out of nowhere comes Americans, Allison Jolly. And Lynne Jewell, Jolly blown

Alison: in by the

Jill: winds, right? Jolly was a skipper. Jewell was the crew. These two were an odd couple like you wouldn’t believe. Julie was small. Jewell was tall, Jolly was a pessimist. Lynn was an optimist.

Jolly was a better tactician. Jewell was a great boat handler, so together they were very complimentary and they, where they did match was their drive to win. So that’s what made them a really good team. In the months leading up to the US trials, they decided to stay home to train and work on fundamentals instead of going to Europe to sail in competition.

So nobody really knew what they were doing and they just kind of, Became an afterthought in terms of competitions. It was also cheaper to stay home, particularly because they needed a new boat in February before the trials. Their boats spine broke when they got lost at sea. New boat not ready until two days before the trials.

Okay, that’s cutting it very close. Right.[00:50:00] And they ended up winning. You know, you have a brand new boat to get used to, and they won. So they got the right to go to Seoul and compete at the Olympics. At Seoul. Their boat went through measurements and failed a balance test because it was two balanced and didn’t look like the other four 70 boats.

And in order to race, they had to ha add a half a pound onto the transom. And to put that into perspective, they said that half an ounce is a big deal. So they loaded a half a pound onto this boat.

Alison: I don’t think anybody has ever said to me that I am too balanced.

So this is really a foreign concept.

Jill: They also had to change the gib bleeds, take out all the hardware and go with a totally new string system. So needless to say, their mental game is all messed up. They’re all toyed with their mental game, but you couldn’t tell. Because they started their regatta with a bang in the first four races.

They had two wins, one second place, one third place. In the fifth race they got disqualified for an incident with a French cuz Jolly had made a quick tack to stay clear and capsized in the process. The French protested, the international jury ruled in their favor. So the disqualification Put Jolly and Jewell into second place overall. In the sixth race, they got second place to put them back on top, and then in the seventh and final race they needed to finish just 14th or higher to win the gold. You would think that would not be too difficult in a 21 boat race, but the winds, there you go.

Before the start of the race, there was light air and Jolly and Jewell were in third going through the first triangle of the course, and then disaster struck the wind. Current and waves all picked up. Wind got up to 35 knots, which is 40 miles an hour. Waves are getting to be nine to 10 feet tall. About three meters boats all around them starting to capsize Jewell’s, calling out [00:52:00] the wave type so that Jolly can navigate them as carefully as possible.

So she’ll yell, steep wave with a flat back round wave with a round back, big wave. And then as they launch through that, Jewell goes no back. And they, because there’s nothing on the back of this wave and they just slam down and their chip

Alison: breaks.

Jill: So they slow down and they debate what to do. Jolly suggests capsizing the boat to be able to work on a fix. But then Jewell says That’s gonna be too dangerous. With the all the wind and the wave and the current, they finally decide to loosen the rig tension enough to allow the upper part of the mast to tilt down.

Until they could reach it. And so as Jolly’s bracing it with her feet and Jewell makes the fix with, I saw several different types of objects. She used to fix this. It could have been rope, it could have been shirt string. It could have been a shoelace And this took ’em about five minutes to do.

So when they’re done, they’re in last place, but there are still two legs of the chorus to sail. So Jolly decides to make a big move at the windward mark In 35 knot winds Jolly calls to hoist the Spinnaker.

Alison: What?

Jill: They are the only boat on the course to risk this move. And they start flying

1. Yes. But that’s when you’re gonna lose control cuz it’s going so fast.

Yes. And you’re catching so

much wind. Yes. But they had done a lot of heavy wind training and even though, While they’re flying, the boat goes, starts nose diving over the waves. So much so that they had to sit on the stern, both of them, to keep it from going under. They managed to finish the race, navigate the course.

They’re completely spent. When they’re done, they have no idea how they did. They’re staggering up the deck and they find out they got ninth and won the gold medal. Swedish favorites. One silver. Alison Jolly and Lin Juul remain the only American [00:54:00] women to win gold in the four 70 class. And this marked the beginning of the federation’s determination to reach the I ooc guidelines requiring a greater proportion of women’s participation in the games.

And they will have full gender equity for the first time at Paris 2024.

Alison: Hopefully they’ll have better wins.

TKFLASTAN Update

Alison: Welcome to shk.

Jill: It is the time of the show where we check in with our team, keep the flame alive. These are past guests and fans of the show who make up our citizenship of sh. First up. Para Archer Matt Stutzman has qualified for the para archery world champs, and he’ll be representing team U S A while defending his world title.

This

Alison: year. Lora Webster and the team U s A sitting volleyball team have qualified for the Paris Paralympics.

Jill: Woo. And Paul Vaulter, Katie Moon Hammer thrower Deanna Price and shuffles by proxy. Can we say that Jake Wightman? Absolutely yes. Son of Geoff Wightman. They will all be competing at the Los Angeles Grand Prix on May 26th through 27th.

You can find out more information@lagrandprix.org. That looks like an amazing event. I was reading about it and it’s, the shot put competition, of course, is the biggies. Ryan Kreuser. Joe Covax. And the stadium was built in like the eighties and they don’t know if the shot put court field will hold their throws

Alison: because nobody can control Ryan Grouser.

I mean, he’s come close to throwing it out of the field. At World Championships. Yes. Which was a, to feel designed to handle him. So this ought to be good.

So we were talking in our Patreon show about resilient volleyball players ending up in your lap.

That’s a good reason to become a patron, but now you’re gonna end [00:56:00] up, someone’s gonna have to catch Ryan Crow’s

Jill: shot, but and that get outta the way cuz those things are heavy, man. And can you imagine the velocity that would have, huh? And he would feel

Alison: so bad about it. We’ve seen many interviews with him and he’s a great, great guy and God, he would really not wanna take somebody out.

Jill: But yeah, check that out. La grand prix.org. We would like to take a moment to thank our patrons who keep our flame alive. Speaking of the Patreon episode that you so lovely, so nicely teased, if you’d like to become a patron at the silver metal level, you get access immediately to all of our bonus episodes with rule changes for Paris 2024.

And wouldn’t you know, like to know how Brazilian volleyball players might. End up in your lap. So becoming a patron is really your way of supporting everything we do and enabling it to happen. There are many other benefits all starting at $2 a month. See flame Alive pod.com/support and look for the Patreon link or just check the show notes.

Paris 2024 Update

Alison: I did get an email. In my regular inbox this time that said my time was coming. But of course we’ve gotten our press credentials, so I don’t need it. And it’s a good thing because it didn’t seem like people really got what they wanted in this ticket round

Jill: I also got an email and I checked it out.

Contributor Ben, he got an email and Opted not to buy anything because there was nothing he wanted left. I think there were a lot of people who got a lot of tickets that they wanted and then a lot of people who thought everything was gonna cost 24 euros. And was, we’re upset. So, yeah, phase two is ongoing for ticket sales.

Might be over by the time you read this because organizers were releasing 1.5 million tickets for this phase. But according to fran zoo.com, they sold 1 million tickets in the first 48 hours,[00:58:00] which I think is unbelievable. 20 sports are sold out. There’s a lot of football left and baseball stuff with big tournaments is left. But if you wanna see break in, forget it. Fencing no. Modern pentathlon. No. And you, you know, Modern Pentathlon. Not the most popular of sports, but even it is sold out too. Our friend Rich Perlman over at the Sports Examiner noted that organizers could. Go back to the sites and see if there are ways they could add more seats to sell more tickets. They could also ask for tickets back from the federations and the NOCs and sponsors and others if they’re not gonna be used.

So will they do this? Don’t know, but it’s an idea.

Alison: It really is. I mean, they wanna sell as many tickets as they can because this is cash in their pocket. They don’t share ticket sales with anybody.

Jill: Right, and it’s much needed revenue with the way inflation has kind of really hurt their budget.

They could really use that boost. Our friend Ken Hanscomb also noted that some of the tickets could still be available as part of hospitality packages from on location. We’ll put a link to those in the show notes. Now, those might be expensive.

But if this is an event you really wanna do or really wanna see, that might be the way to do it.

Alison: It’ll be interesting to see as press, because we didn’t have this issue in Beijing with having to get ticketed as press for certain high demand events.

And this clearly we’re going to have to be. Ticketed for certain events and what we can and cannot get into as press. We were very free in Beijing to just roam around, go in and out of for all our lack of freedom. We certainly never had, even for the opening ceremonies, we had a ticket, but everyone who asked for one got one.

That will not be the case in Paris. We’re gonna have to be much more diligent and precise in where we wanna go when, and to see which events it’s gonna be a challenge. Not just for fans, but for press as well to see things.

Jill: Yes. [01:00:00] And one other factor in that is transportation. How long will it take to get around, I don’t know if you noticed this, but somewhere on the Paris 2024 ticketing website, and I will look for a link for this, for this show notes.

They did have a plan, your travel, and they said, don’t look at other apps because they’re not factoring in. The crowds that you’re gonna have to deal with. Someone

Alison: posted in Ken Hans Gum’s Facebook group, that two venues that were in Central Paris, they were recommending four hours transfer between them and it’s about a 15 minute walk, and I think they were recommending the four hours because of getting out of the venue.

And through the out security, walking in this enormous crowd and then getting into the next venue through security. So even when you can, it’s gonna be like the buses in Beijing. We can see the venue. We just can’t get to the venue, but in a very different way. So this ought to be interesting to do not go to Paris if you’re claustrophobic clearly cuz they are expecting wall-to-wall people.

Jill: Which I think to bring back that Olympic excitement will be fun. Good news for those of you in the US who are looking at N B C coverage, Peacock will stream all events, live plus have full event, replaced clips, and exclusive programming. This should be free. Except for men’s basketball, which I guess they’re putting on the 4 99 premium tier according to Front Office Sports.

N B C networks are also going to have a lot of live coverage during the day. Plus they’ll have primetime programming across, uh, number of its networks. They’ve said it’s gonna be unprecedented how much coverage they have, They say that every time. Well, that’s true,

Alison: My people!

Jill: There will be a Casa Italian hospitality house. This will be located at [01:02:00] pre Catalan.

Can we get you out of there? The house will also have a look at Milan Cortina 2026. I imagine they will have a fair amount of displays about the games since they are next up for hosting. There’s not much other details about how much if it’s free to get in, if public are welcome, but we know it’s going to exist.

Milan-Cortina 2026 Update

Alison: Speaking of Italian, it’s 1000 days to go till 2026. This got me so

excited.

it’s funny, so when this popped up on my Instagram, people started all the Italian organizing committee and, and the different Italian teams. I happened to be on the phone with my mother and I said, oh, it’s a thousand days until Milan Cortina. And she said, Wait, what do you mean? She didn’t realize that the next one was in Italy and all of a sudden she got so excited for me

and she, she said, wait, you’re gonna get to go to Italy. I said, don’t get too excited. We haven’t gotten press credentials for that yet, but got very excited again.

Jill: Good. It will be exciting once it goes and I mean, it’s the mountains there are so beautiful. Work is beginning on the long track speed skating rink this summer.

This will be at Fiera Milano Exhibition Center in Milan. They’ll be combining two existing halls to make one rink. We talked about that cuz there was a little conundrum over Can we have an outdoor venue that has a cover over it or not? And they’ve gone with the, please use an indoor venue. Tactic. This is pretty cool.

the organizing committee also plans to make Verona Arena fully accessible. This is the venue where the Olympics closing ceremonies and the Paralympics opening ceremonies will be held. And it’s a big deal because the arena is 2000 years old. So obviously not really accessible, but [01:04:00] organizers hope that this will be one of the big legacies of these games.

Alison: Do you know what

Jill: that means?

Alison: Hmm. We’ll be two gentle women. A Verona.

Jill: Oh my gosh.

Alison: That’s gonna be what our Milan Paralympic coverage will be

Jill: called.

Get ready for that. That’s gonna be a good one. I’m gonna, I don’t even know the plot of that play. It doesn’t matter.

Alison: It’s a Shakespeare comedy. Somebody was dressed in drag, somebody was confused about who they were. Everybody ends up happy in the end,

Jill: and that will be us at the Paralympics.

Exactly. All right, well that’s gonna do it for this week. Let us know some of your favorite moments in Women’s Olympic and Paralympic

Alison: history. You can connect with us on Twitter and Instagram, flame Alive Pod. Email us at Flame Alive podd gmail.com. Caller text us at 2 0 8 3 5 2 6 3 4 8. That’s 2 0 8.

Flame it. Be sure to join the Keep the Flame Alive Podcast group on Facebook. And don’t forget to get our weekly newsletter filled with other fun stories about this week’s episode. You can sign up for that@flamealivepod.com.

Jill: Next week coming up is Memorial Day weekend here in the United States. So we will be doing a shorter show, but we will be, uh, assuring in the summer movie season with our movie Club Selection Zero to Hero.

We had a great conversation with film B about that, so tune in and, uh, see if you want to watch it for yourself. Thank you so much for listening, and until next time, keep the flame alive.