Good Life Project - Life In Seasons | Kate Fagan

Episode Date: December 3, 2019

Former ESPN on-air personality, writer and New York Times bestselling author of What Made Maddy Run, Kate Fagan, has lived many seasons. A fiercely-competitive athlete as a kid playing pick-up basketball alongside her dad (and dominating on the court), she went on to play Division 1 ball for C.U. Boulder, before turning pro. But writing kept calling her back, Fagan eventually stepped out of the limelight of the court, began to write and just never stopped.Her first book shared Kate's coming story. Her second, What Made Maddy Run, is a revealing look at the sometimes crushing weight we so often place on young adults in the spotlight (and they place on themselves), and what we might do to make things better. Along the way, Kate also fell in love, got married, and more recently, has been navigating the news and reality of her lifelong basketball partner, her dad, being diagnosed with ALS. Kate has so much to share about the importance of showing up for those you love, the thousands of tiny decisions that can change a life, the intersection between media, women's athletics and fans, and the power of valuing your own compass throughout it all.-------------Have you discovered your Sparketype yet? Take the Sparketype Assessment™ now. IT’S FREE (https://sparketype.com/) and takes about 7-minutes to complete. At a minimum, it’ll open your eyes in a big way. It also just might change your life.If you enjoyed the show, please share it with a friend. Thank you to our super cool brand partners. If you like the show, please support them - they help make the podcast possible. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

So Kate Fagan grew up playing basketball with her dad in upstate New York before going on to play Division I ball for Colorado University in Boulder, then do a stint as a pro upon graduating. But all the while, another passion was brewing, and that was writing. It had actually taken hold in her early teens, but really had taken a back shelf to sport. And finally, it was kind of clamoring to take center stage. So Kate walked away from a career playing basketball and into a career as a journalist, starting at a small local paper, eventually working her way into a position at the Philadelphia Inquirer covering the Sixers before landing at ESPN as a columnist, as a features writer, and eventually an on-air personality where she stayed

for about seven years before just recently leaving. Behind the scenes, Kate was also grappling with her own sexual identity, kind of fearful that coming out might affect her professional opportunities and also yearning to devote more energy to bigger, more meaningful stories. And this led to her first book, The Reappearing Act, where she shared her sort of coming out story, followed three years later by a massive New York Times bestseller called What Made Maddie Run, which is this deeply revealing, upsetting, but ultimately powerful and important look at how life as a young college student and athlete can lead to sometimes really horrifying outcomes and how maybe we can all be more vigilant and have

tough conversations that just might create the space for people who are suffering to find solace. And along the way, Kate also fell in love. She got married a few years back and learned that her father, um, her lifelong basketball pickup game partner has ALS. In today's conversation, we explore all of these moments, how she made these changes, what was going on in the conversation in her head and her heart, along with also an unexpected but pretty fascinating look at the perceptions and misperceptions of women's professional sports in this country and their relationship with the media and fandom and so much more. So excited to share this conversation with you.

I'm Jonathan Fields, and this is Good Life Project. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes.

The Apple Watch Series X. Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required, charge time and actual results will vary. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. So we're hanging out in New York City. You're down in Charleston right now, but you actually grew up a couple hours north of here. Yes, I grew up in Schenectady.

Beautiful Schenectady. Kind of like outside Albany-ish, right? Yeah. If I have it right. Yeah, it's outside Albany. My parents now have a place like in Lake George. So like it's one of those places where you appreciate it after. Kind of looking back. Yeah. At the time you're like, why do I live so close to New York City, but not in New York City?

It's like a tease. So close, but so far. And clearly you're into sports at a very young age when you're out there. Yeah. Well, and I was into it just because of my family. My dad played professional basketball overseas. So we were, you know, you're into it the same way you're into all New York sports, usually if you're a New Yorker, you know. I don't know if you're into sports or not, but. Yeah. Well, I feel like there were windows where, you know, like I was into the Knicks in the 90s. The 90s.

Right. When Ewing was there. John Starks. Right. You know, like there was that magical window. Yeah. When it was just kind of astonishing. And I feel like since then, they've kind of been still trying to figure out, okay, who are we to a certain extent?

Yeah. No, I get that. I think not that there's an appropriate way to be a sports fan, but the way it has happened for me is that there are just pockets of years where like I am just so invested in that team but then the ebbs and flows of life take you away from it I don't I don't quite connect with like the 60 year fan who is in it all the time I feel like there's different interests and there's it's you come back to it you go away from it yeah it's so interesting you say that because I feel like I'm less connected to the institution of sport or a team and more connected to the personalities or just like there are those windows where a group of people come together for generally it's a

relatively short couple of years and just something astonishing happens that not just within the team, but sort of like there's a cultural effect. Yeah. It's kind of magical. Yeah. Especially, I think, the way basketball has operated in the last 10 years is your window into the game is usually through a personality or, like you said, like a coalescing like Golden State Warriors, right? Where it's like you just, through osmosis, you're going to understand what's happening if you live in America. Yeah.

No, totally. So coming up, are you more into because you it's genuinely the thing you wake up in the morning to do or is it more like a source of connection with your dad or is it kind of like some blend in there well i'm i'm part of the reason why i left espn is because like i'm not into sports right now right but the way i the way it exists in my life now is as a family connection right and the way i would say i became introduced to it was because it was such a huge part of my dad's life and so who wouldn't want to hop in the car and go you know to the gym when you're seven right like and shoot baskets so that's how i mean that's how I got into it.

I mean, speaking of sport and all that, I think sports is very interesting because I don't think there's anything in our culture that is as rewarded when you're a kid, if you're good at it. I mean, maybe you could say in certain areas, like music could be, and acting. But in our culture, I think if you're good at it. I mean, maybe you could say in certain areas, like music could be in acting, but for the, in our culture, I think if you're good at sports as a young kid, like

your parents are into it, your peers are into it, your teachers are into it. And like, you don't really have to decide whether you love it. You're just like, wow, people think I'm cool if I play sports. And so that was definitely like how I got involved without actually assessing if this was like a passion of mine. Yeah. It's almost like inadvertent athletics. Yeah. You know, by reason of acceptance, by reason of like, okay, so now I have a role. Like I know where I belong. Right.

You're like, oh, my parents think this is great. I have friends. I don't know if I like this sport, but I really like everything it's giving me. So let's keep, let's do the travel team too. Yeah. It's interesting you bring that up. Also, we were actually recently out in Boulder taping some conversation that you went to see Boulder.

And one of the people we talked to was Rosalind Wiseman, who has this, she kind of became burst onto the scene in 2002 with a book called Queedon Bees and Wannabes. And she has been touring the world really since then, looking at how kids relate to each other, but also how adults relate to young adults. And she's really, really strong feelings about the culture of youth sports and youth athletics, both academically, but also the private leagues and stuff like that. Not the greatest opinion of a lot of the sort of power

dynamics within those sort of power dynamics within those sort of like those windows and those cultures and leagues. Oh, yeah. I mean, we could spend hours on that and the way once you get a little higher up in the game to like the NCAA and how that affects everyone's experience, like the way money is involved and how it affects the experience of every student athlete, even if they're a rower, and they're not involved with the billion-dollar football industry. It still affects their experiences in ways that I think people don't understand, all the way down to just the pay-to-play model for U.S. soccer. I mean, I don't know how closely you follow, but maybe some of your listeners realize we didn't make the last world cup on the men's side and there's a lot of structural reasons for that that you can tie to more than just oh our best athletes are playing basketball it's like no there's like youth league

issues there's coaching issues so yes the the way sports and the way they operate at the youth level and the way it kind of infiltrates the psyche of a community is very fascinating. Yeah. And I think, you know, not to say by definition it's a bad thing, but it's just the way that sometimes the dynamics unfold on, you know, in some certain scenarios can be amazingly constructive and supportive. And in some scenarios, the exact opposite, destructive. Oh, yeah. I mean, I obviously wrote an entire book on the ways and the cultural ways that the experience of young athletes is being undermined. And I don't know, there was a recent article by Mary Kane. She was a prodigy female runner who we thought, as an Americans thought would be a possible like gold medalist for U.S. running and we're not like running in America is not the same as it is in

other countries in terms of like our performance but anyway so she she just had an article about just her downfall when it came to like her coaches wanting her to be thinner and this was at like the Nike elite level so yeah yeah, there's, I always try to remember all the benefits of sport, especially when you get too far wrapped up in all of the ways in which kids can be haunted by their experiences with sport. Yeah. And I think we're going to circle back about that to a certain extent, because I want to talk about the book that you wrote around that, your second book um let's fill in a little bit of the journey before there you do end up at cu playing ball what was that like for you just your experience there i mean we've talked about a little bit but in terms of how you felt like you

the role that it gave you the sense of belonging the sense of or not belonging or maybe both simultaneously as you're like moving through that season. Yeah. I would say playing, so I played Division I basketball. Right. And I say this when I talk to kids now, like high school kids. I'll be like, I'm so glad that I continued on and finished my career playing college basketball. But one, it remains to this day the hardest thing I've ever done. And two, if I were a freshman right now, starting at the beginning of that experience,

I'm not sure that I would continue with it, knowing what it's like, knowing all of the pitfalls of it. So it's a complicated answer because I think, I think so much of who I am now is a result of perseverance and clearing obstacles and dedication to craft and all of the lessons you learn in that process. But it was also a really challenging time period because of the way the—let me be as specific as possible. too and like being in the world of women's college basketball or women's sports when you think you're gay is actually counterintuitive because you would think like oh a lot of you know stereotypically like oh a lot of female athletes are gay so it should be this like big old gay thing happening

but then you're inside of it and there's just so much closeting there's so much fear over being in reinforcing a stereotype so anyway there's there's a lot of lessons that I took away from that that affected me for the next decade of my life in terms of like, and now I'm down a path that you might not have even wanted to go down, but in terms of like- I'm actually, I mean, I think it's a really interesting thing to explore because I know part of what was going on is you weren't out at the time. And at the same time, a lot of the people on your team, you sort of had, and this ended up being the subject of your first book, you had ended up sort of like rolling in with a group of people who are also very religious. But they were also key players in the team, which creates like this really funky tension. Yeah.

And I always remind people when I talk about it, like I went to CU Boulder. Like I didn't go to, it wasn't a Christian college. It was when we were there and probably since like the number one party school in America. But it just so happened that while I was there, like four or five of my teammates kind of caught the fundamental up Catholic and my parents weren't dedicated to going every week. And so I didn't really even understand like, oh, Jesus Christ died for my sins. Like I didn't understand even that as a concept, you know, because you could go to a lot of Catholic masses and not actually know what's happening. So anyway, so I never explored religion. So I found myself like kind of falling in with, you know, with the fundamentalist Christian crowd while at the same time going through like an internal reckoning of who I was. And so those two collided. And as you mentioned, like I wrote about that dynamic and how it like affected me going forward. Yeah. It is weird when you look back at windows like that and you're like, okay, so there was a lot of pain, but there was also a lot of learning. And it's sort of like, if you, I'm fascinated by, you know, like this question where like, if you're pretty good with where you

are at this moment in life, you know, and part of that, part of that angst, that pain, that suffering, whatever that was, it's part of what got you to this exact moment and you're really good with it. You know, like, would you go back and change it? Not that anyone can ever really answer those questions, but while you're playing in college, where does writing start to show up? Or had it already showed up earlier in your life, but it wasn't the main thing?

Yeah, I had always wanted to be a writer. And I had, and I remember there was this moment where UConn women's basketball was like a huge deal when I was growing up and they went undefeated and won the national championship. I remember that. remember when it came because I just never seen like a female athlete on the cover of a magazine and I like read the article and it was one of those articles where you know you began you begin with an anecdote and then at the end you tie it all back around right and at that time like I wasn't consuming a lot of like journalism so I didn't know that this was like the device that everyone used but I thought this is the most genius thing that's ever happened and so I remember like going down to my mom and being like I'm gonna going to do this. Like, I'm going to

be a writer, just like, you know, holding up the little, the sports illustrated magazine. So like, I had always wanted to be a writer. I wanted to write books. I, in college, I basically majored in basketball. I mean, I, the major I had was like interpersonal communications, organizational communications. I wasn't, I didn't decide my school based on a major. Like I had this idea that I wanted to be a writer, but, and I'm kind of grateful for this now. I wasn't caught up like the way a lot of young people are now that, well, I have to have everything planned. I have to have my major coincide with what my plan is for post-graduation. I didn't really think that way at all. I was just like playing basketball is what I'm doing here. And like, maybe vaguely there's this idea of writing, but I don't need

to be pursuing it right now, which actually seems kind of, seems in retrospect, very healthy to like enjoy the college experience and focus on the thing I was doing instead of like constantly game planning for the future. But when I was done playing, I wanted to write books. I wanted to write fiction. But just financially speaking, I needed a game plan that included a paycheck. So there's that. There's that. But you also, I mean, you were writing in college, right?

Because you had the Fagan Files. How do you know these things? I'm sure you've read the entire volume of the Fagan Files. Of course. Everybody knows. I mean, we're going to make that into a book. Describe what that was. It's kind of interesting. Well, so this would have been 2000. So almost 20 years ago. So blogging wasn't really a thing yet. Obviously the internet

was a thing, but not a big thing. And the, our sports information director who like worked with our team to like liaison with the media asked me if I wanted to write, like, the equivalent of, like, a team diary. Like, take people on the road and, like, write little 500-word insights so that people who followed our team, you know, the couple thousand people who come to every game could, like, read my dispatch from, you know, Waco, Texas when we're playing Baylor. And so I did that for, I think two years. And so I don't know how many I did. Maybe I did like 25 total. So that was, you know, that was almost kind of like writing a column. So that was kind of my first introduction to what would be like more quote unquote journalism, even though I wasn't. Yeah. Did people- I wasn't investigative in any way.

I know this was back on the day where it was kind of harder for people to respond to stuff. It wasn't like a blog where you have comments and there was social media. Were you getting feedback from people on what you were writing? I vaguely remember like diehard fans. And maybe there was like 80 to 100 of them who would come to like the pre-meal, you know, almost like a tailgate kind of thing for women's basketball. I vaguely remember some feedback from them, but it was probably more insular, you know, like my teammates would read it.

I do remember feeling like it was more for my teammates than it was for outside consumption. But one thing I know for certain was that, well, I don't know for certain, but I don't remember there ever being comments on it because one thing that was really eye opening to me when I stopped playing basketball and then I got into newspapers is that it took me a really long time being in newspapers, perhaps even all the way until I got to the Philadelphia Inquirer, where I realized that people, generally speaking, thought female athletes in women's sports sucked and were boring. Like, I just did not have that viewpoint because I didn't grow. Nobody could give me that feedback, right? Like, if you're a young female athlete now and you're growing up and there's an article somewhere, there's like 50 comments after being like, yawn, who cares? Seriously, we had to turn off our comments when I worked at ESPNW when we covered female athletes because it would just be the same generic kind of like nobody effing cares you know don't stuff this like PC women's sports down my throat so it like I grew up at a time where like you didn't unless somebody was saying that to your face you didn't know like I

went all through my college career played played professionally for a couple of years. And I thought people thought we were great. Like I thought I was as respected as the male athletes. And now I just like, I almost feel for female athletes now, like young ones, because that whole illusion has been shattered. Yeah. Do you remember the first time you either read or saw or heard something that like the moment, like it became clear, like, oh, wait.

It was, it was comment. I mean, it's not like I'm like, oh man, I was sitting in this, you know, it's not that crystal to me, but I think I was at the Philadelphia Inquirer and I covered the Sixers for them. Right. So you come out of school. Yeah. You play pro. You're in Ireland.

And then you come back and you've got like small papers and then you land at the Philadelphia Inquirer. Yeah. Sorry. We'll give the quick like. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. Played some ball. Worked at a bunch of newspapers.

And I got this break and I worked for the Philadelphia Inquirer and I was covering the Sixers. And it was like some of my colleagues there were covering high school sports and it was a women's probably like a sectional or state or whatever they have in Pennsylvania game, women's soccer. And I remember kind of just, I always, I always thought it was really enlightening to scroll through the comments. I know a lot of people are like, stay away from the comments, but I think there's a lot of good information in comments a lot. And so I was reading through the comments of like this girl's state soccer title.

And I all they were were like, like diehard Philly Eagles bros. Right. Like and I that was when I remember being like, wait, is this an anomaly? Like, is this just like a couple of people spammed this page? And so over the next couple of months, I read all of the ones that had to do with female athletes. And it was and they weren't like the same selection of commenters. It was like always the same kind of comments regardless of where you looked.

And that's kind of when I realized it. It feels like I was so naive. But this was only like 10 years ago. Yeah, which is kind of crazy. I mean, when that dawns on you, when you're like, oh, oh, wait. Yeah. Like there's this whole thing and perception that's out there that I've been completely ignorant to essentially, like, or shielded from, or just like, because I wasn't looking at this stuff. What do you do about that at that point? Or do you, actually the bigger question in my mind is, do you feel that you have a sense of enough power to even do anything about it in that moment in that moment

no the only power i always felt like i had was like vowing to myself you know when you're in a bar and the wmba is on and like some someone makes like the like get this trash off here like you vow to yourself like you know even if it's socially embarrassing, like I'm going to stand up to that. But what from like that quote unquote moment going forward, in my mind a problem, as someone who played Division I basketball, played pro, knew a lot of NBA players, knew obviously the players at Colorado, some of whom went on to play pro, and it all felt to me like we all understood the respect we had for one another. The game didn't feel different to me.

I'm like, why is this? Why is there this perspective? academic insight into the moments in time where women's sports or female athletes do transcend and why they transcend in those moments and why in other, why for the rest of time, usually they're ignored. And so, you know, we could probably spend like two hours dissecting like a lot of what I've learned and that whenever I'm talking to like, whenever we get down this path, if I'm talking to young girls or people who are interested and I try to tell them like everything I've learned from behind the scenes in the media world, how all of that affects it, like it really drove my like thirst to understand why people feel that way. Yeah. So we don't have to go the two hour

route. Yeah. You want to go the snapshot route? Yeah. Cause now I'm really curious. Yeah. So very quickly, I think people have this concept that we as a culture like men's sports more than women's sports because men run faster and jump higher. When the reality is that most of us pay attention to sports because of stakes and storylines and in men's sports, those are proliferated like almost any time you tune into a game just by existing in our culture you understand oh this is a major league baseball game this will end in the world series and i understand they're being paid millions like you just inherently understand the stakes and also just by existing you will understand a number of storylines, especially in like the NBA world, baseball world. Like

you can't be alive in America and not flip through the Red Sox Yankees game and think, oh, I know the storyline here. You just know it. And so the way I try and to share with people, I'm like, okay, so if it's all about men jumping high, running fast, like then why do you watch little league world series? Why are you really invested in your son's game? Like I can go watch my nephew play and I'm like riveted because I know him, I know his teammates and I know the stakes. Like they're really important to him. And so like, I think what people don't understand about women's sports is that literally three percent of media coverage is given to female athletes. So if you're passing through a women's game, why would you stop? Because to you, it's like it's honestly like you pass through like a Russian language station. You don't inherently think to yourself, oh, the mystics are playing the sparks and I know so-and-so is feuding with so-and-so and I want to see how this plays out.

Whereas if you flip past a Russell Westbrook, KD, Kevin Durant, like, you know, this beef that exists most of the time if you're paying any attention to like certain headlines. So that's kind of my like three minute segment on it that like it's more about stakes and storylines because if you think about the times where those apply to women's sports like the olympics or the world cup yeah you get you know the highest ratings you've ever seen like we're obsessed with women's hockey because they're playing canada and we all understand the stakes and the storylines that's so interesting so so much of it actually has to do with decisions made within boardrooms somewhere about where we're going to allocate our attention and our dollars to direct the media. And if only 3% is actually ending up in women's sports, then essentially we never get the repeat exposure to the stories and the stakes and everything that's unfolding to develop some sort of understanding of who the people are,

what the stakes are, what the storylines are, what the, so like we can't transfer into that story without having to do a lot of work ourselves to get there. Whereas on the other side. Bingo. It's like, we're already there. Yeah. So there's no, there's no work that we have to do to get there. Right. That's fascinating.

Right. And since I'm on my little my little soapbox now and. What I saw happen from the inside was that at the very top of media companies, there's like this, of course, you know, the president, like, of course, we need to devote more time to women. And then there are like, you know, people like me who are like, let's do it. But the people who are making the decisions are making 70 grand a year. They're middle level producers. All they know is that if we talk about LeBron James, they're going to get that steady rating. And that if they want to introduce

a new character, their rating's going to go down for a while until it goes back up. Because you saw that with like, you can see that with Ronda Rousey, right? Five years ago when she first comes onto the scene, like you talk about her, people are like,

you have to explain her who she is. And then three years later, people are paying $100 to watch a UFC bout that lasts 17 seconds, you know. And you can say Ronda Rousey on TV and like no one's tuning out because they're like, what is this? So you could just ran out. You would run out. You would run into this like risk taking problem where the people who are actually deciding what to put on the air don't want to take risks because they don't want to be the one whose show has a lower rating.

And they know if they put LeBron on the air, even if you're just watching to be annoyed that it's more LeBron, you're still watching and you're not ambivalent to it. It's so complicated because in a way, you can't really fault those people because at the end of the day, the decision that they're really making is not, I want more of this and less of that. It's, I have a mortgage. First and foremost, the thing that I want to do is do good work and take care of my family or whoever, whatever it is in the world. So they're making decisions largely based on their ability to survive in the world because

they know that in that, especially in the media world, it's, you know, one of the unfortunate truths is, is that you tend to be judged by your last biggest success and your last biggest failure. Yeah. So you're like, you're always one production day away or one segment away from either being promoted, staying where you are or being let go on the next round yeah yeah that's tough mayday mayday we've been compromised the pilot's a hitman i knew you were gonna be fun

january 24th tell me how to fly this thing mark Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die. Don't shoot him. We need him. Y'all need a pilot. Flight risk. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping.

And it's the fastest charging Apple Watch, getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series X. Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required. Charge time and actual results will vary. I'll give you one more. Yeah, yeah, go. I'll give you one more. Yeah, yeah, go. So I used to do this.

I used to do a couple shows for ESPN. And, you know, the thing about talking about sports on TV is that I don't know a lot about every team. I know to research about what teams I know we're going to talk about. So it's like, we're going to talk about the Baltimore Orioles today. Okay, well, I'm going to wake up early. I'm going to read about the Baltimore Orioles for two hours. If during a production meeting, someone fights to get a women's sports story on the air, the response from a lot of like men or women, but mostly men would be like, I don't know anything about that. And what ends up happening is like I'm sitting there thinking, well, I don't know anything about the Buffalo Bills and I don't know anything about the St. Louis Cardinals, but I'm going to do a lot of research.

And for some reason, there's this barrier when you get a topic about women on the air that a lot of men don't think that it's important enough that they should do the same research. And so then you fight to get like a segment on and then the segment is lackluster because people don't know about it who are talking about it. And so it's not as interesting as something that you're passionate about and you know about. And so it's like this like triple whammy where if someone, because I've fought at times to get segments about women's sports on the air and sometimes they don't do well

because I can't carry them and the people you're supposed to be talking with don't know anything about it. Yeah. And it's hard to fake passion in a conversation past the first like 30 seconds. Right. You got the 30 seconds

and then you're like, well, I actually don't know anyone who plays women's basketball except for this one person. So now I don't know what to say. Yeah. It's like, where do we go now? Yes.

Yeah. So interesting. Yeah. And then you have like we've had Abby Wambach in the studio also. Like you have people like her or like any number of people who are on the U.S. women's soccer team. It seems like that sport is one of those things that has, in the last five, 10 years, it has really started to transcend. But I'm curious from your lens,

do you feel like that's actually transcending and staying? Do you feel like that's also riding that wave of it's hot for a moment and then it kind of goes away again? Well, it's still doing that ladder where it's hot, except if you look back from 1999 until when women won the World Cup in 99 to now, they're staying more relevant longer. And so I do think that we're going to see, if you fast forwarded 20 years,

I think you would see the NWSL, their domestic league being increasingly popular. And so that those moments between World Cups and Olympics, there's some staying power for those women. I think, and as I mentioned 20 minutes ago, like this, I've been fascinated by the women's World Cup team for the last 10 years, basically since Abby's header, when she brought us back from the loss to Brazil

and that like reignited passion for the U.S. Women's National Team that really kind of like saved them from the edge. And so ever since then, I've been curious, like why is the U.S. Women's National Team relevant and can transcend? And for example, like, do you ever hear anything about

the U.S. women's basketball team? Women's. Yeah, I mean, that's why I was curious because it seems like in this one domain, this one sport, and I wonder if it, you're pointing, so tell me. So I think there's a lot of smart people

who like do panels and talk about this stuff. The WNBA is up against it because they're something like 60% black whereas US Women's National Team like they've got this like you know they're mostly white they've got the girl next door thing going on although you definitely argue that this iteration of them is a little more subversive for sure but over the years, if you go back to the Mia Hamm days, this is the place where if you're the all-American family

and you've got a daughter into sports, you take them to a U.S. women's soccer game, it's quote-unquote family-friendly. It's mostly white. It's mostly safe. It's until recently mostly straight. And so it's like this all-American experience you know, and I'm using these things in quotes, whereas like what, what women's basketball has is like the quote unquote problem it has

is that it's, it's 60% black. It's much more of like an urban sport. You're wearing baggy clothing. So you're not even getting the kind of like femininity that people like to see when you that you see more of even on the soccer field. And it's kind of it's almost it's got this this aura around it that it's. It's the if your daughter was playing basketball, when people get really deep into this, this theory, they're like, oh, this is this is like a subversive actual sport because it's like you're wearing baggy clothes. It's much more, there's many more race issues. So it's like basketball's got a whole lot going on that it has to deal with when it comes to transcending and becoming mainstream on the women's side. Yeah, that's so interesting. So bias, explicit and implicit plays

a pretty meaningful role in the difference there. Who knew we would be talking about this today? I didn't. If we go, whatever feels good. That's right. Let's jump a bit back more into your story. You mentioned you were at ESPN. So you make the jump from coming out of school, playing pro ball for a bit,

then working your way up and saying, okay, I'm done with performing as an athlete. And this writing book that's been a part of me for a while, it needs to come take center stage. You ended up at the Philly Choir covering the Sixers and then other stuff. And then eventually at ESPN, where you stayed for what, six, seven, eight years?

Seven years, yeah. Right, until pretty fairly recently, actually. Starting out doing a lot of writing, writing and eventually features also. At the same time, and I want to talk more about that, you're also, you mentioned, like, you're starting to realize in college, you're stepping into, like, your sexual identity. And are you, the whole time, like, the early days until you're at ESPN,

are you out at that point or it's still just, it's quiet? I, until I start, I would say when i started at espn was when i started testing the waters of whether i could be out professionally in my own mind what was your concern i mean beyond the personal like you said professionally so like what's the tie in there well and personally i was only out to people i was really close with i wouldn't have been out like i wouldn't have been like out at a bar and mentioned that i was gay got it so really what i had the philosophy i had adopted when i looked around in college was that you separated your professional life in your private life.

I mean, there's this thing in women's college basketball where a lot of coaches literally have two closets, where one is the clothes that they will wear around parents and administrators, and then the other are the clothes that they will wear out with friends. And it's like this very clear divide that who they are, like truly who they are is not something they're ever going to bring to the workplace. I mean, I used to go through media guides. This has changed dramatically in the last 10 years,

but for the longest time, there was not one out female coach in all of women's college basketball, not one. And there's like, there's 380 division one programs. Like there's at least a hundred. If you go assistant coaches too, you know, there's whatever, there's 2000 coaches, not one out. And so I just adopted this and you, anyway, you'd go through the media guide just to finish that little story and you'd read the bottom part. It's always the part where it's like, Kate lives in Charleston with her wife, Catherine, and their two dogs, right?

In every women's college media guide, it would be either, you know, so-and-so is a practicing Christian who's involved heavily in her church. Or it would be like, she lives alone. You know, maybe they'd mention the dog, but this is, this is, this is how I thought life worked. If you wanted to not get fired, whatever fired meant to you. And so that's how I lived until I started at ESPN. And it changed when I was at a meeting before I got hired, but I was going to do a freelance story back when ESPN the magazine was in New York. And we had the meeting and it was about negative recruiting in college sports, in women's college basketball, about coaches using anti-gay language to deter recruits from going to a quote unquote gay program. And one of the editors, just like jokingly as the meeting is breaking up, a woman was like, oh, like, you know, we're doing a women's college basketball story.

And it's, of course it's about the gays. And she said it so flippantly. And then she didn't, she looked at me and she was like, don't worry, I can say that because I'm gay. And like nobody, this was like mind boggling to me. And it's really crazy to think about it now because I'm so ridiculous. But this was mind boggling. I was like, wait, she and she was like one of the highest editors there. Like, wait, people know she's gay. Everyone's fine with it. And so that was really the start of me trying to test the waters. Like every fifth time, if someone was like, why are you seeing anyone?

Like most of the time I'd be like, no, even if I was. And then every fifth time I'd be like, yeah, I'm seeing a woman. Her name is blah, blah. And I'd see how it went. And then I like gradually grew into that. Yeah.

I mean, were you like, did you reach a point where you're kind of like, oh, this doesn't really matter? Not for a long time. Yeah. Because even when I first started ESPN, I mean, you remember this was like a year or two before the Michael Sam getting drafted and then ESPN showing Michael Sam kissing his boyfriend and the uproar. So it was, and at the, I remember I went to the Superbowl one year and there's one NFL player who the only NFL player who was willing to publicly say he was an ally,

not gay, but just willing to be okay with gay people. And I had to like, I went down to the Superbowl just to like get some time with him to understand how he could say something so bold. So even this was seven, now probably seven years ago. I mean, it was very different even when I first started at ESPN in terms of like how people, consumers of ESPN were willing to talk about it and have that incorporated into their sports vernacular. Yeah. And it's like fast forward to the last year or two with you at ESPN and just the culture

at ESPN, the culture around sports feels like it changed in a pretty profound way in both what you were doing, what you were writing about, almost on every level. Yeah. Yeah. So along the way, you're doing your work, you're writing, you're also on air, which I'm really curious about because being a writer is a very different headspace and wanting to be a writer. And the Jones that you get from writing, it's a completely different thing than what goes on your head when you're in front of a camera or behind a mic and there are tons of people. It's performance mode versus sort of like in a cave, like making stuff mode. And you had been in performance mode for the entirety of your college career, basically. And probably a bunch of years leading up to that, like as an athlete on a D1 team.

You made a decision to really step back from that. But when you, and to write, like back from that but when you and to write like writing that's my thing when you end up at espn and you're writing and at the same time now you're stepping back into performance mode as an on-air personality how does that how does that feel to you when you're doing that at first i didn't want to do TV, and the on-air aspect for that very reason. Because I really identified as a writer. And I had that almost like the prestige of being a writer. Whereas being on-air felt like a whole different thing and not as

i you know i'm like i'm a writer i'm a i think thoughts it's like i'm a writer's writer yeah and like being on tv is not that but then it was like a few months later, I started, I would do TV if it was like a one-off thing. You know, there's a story and they wanted someone to comment on it. And then after the domestic violence scandal in the NFL where Ray Rice punched his then-fiance, like I did a bunch of TV hits then. And it felt important because they needed people to be saying actual insightful things about that issue rather than what was on TV then where like ex NFL players were like, well, I don't know what's going to happen with our fantasy running back now. You know, there wasn't a lot of insight. So after that happened, it kind of came back around. We're like, well, would you want to do some of our more long-term TV on air?

And at that point, I don't know, it felt like inevitable. Like I was working for a TV company. I mean, that's what ESPN is. It's a TV company. It's not. It's like everything they're writing is to push people to the TV products. So at first it was challenging. And I thought that was really interesting, the challenge of it. But by the end, and one of the reasons I left ESPN was that, you know, the satisfaction of writing a good sentence could not be matched by spouting off a stat about the Pittsburgh Steelers.

You know, it was like I was spending so much. It was spending so much time researching. For a three minute on air appearance during which I would make predictions that no one would ever hold me to. So it was like two years of my life where I'd walk out of a studio having just said, the Pittsburgh Steelers are going to win by seven because they're a quarterback, you know, whatever it was. And it felt so empty.

I was like, no one's going to hold me to what I said. No one's going to remember I said it. I don't care about it. And I'm like, and yet I'm doing this thing because I don't, I didn't have an answer for that. And so, I mean, that was, that was why I wanted to leave ESPN because like I had spent a year being like, I need to do less TV so I can get back to writing, but it's like a slippery slope. It would be like, I need to do less TV so I can get back to writing. But it's like a slippery slope. It would be like, but you also can't have half your brain in a TV appearance and then think you're going to write amazing words. I just, maybe some people could do it, but I couldn't. Yeah. And I mean,

the interesting backdrop there is what you're writing also, because like there's a couple year window where you're, you're researching and then writing the book that comes based on Madison Holleran's story. How does that first come onto your radar? So Maddie's story, the heart of it, you know, happened in downtown Philadelphia. I mean, that is the building from which she jumped and took her own life. And I had lived in Philly. And so when Maddie died, I was a couple in the Philadelphia Daily News that said, star student jumps to death over grades. And I remember reading that and just being taken aback by how hollow that sounded to me. And I wasn't even sure if that was like one dimensional. It just felt like not a good enough understanding. And so it was because of that and because I had played college basketball, my assumed, had gone through at that time. But I did relate

very much to being a freshman Division I athlete away from home and just feeling like the experience blindsided you. And so that was really my entry point into being really interested in Maddie's story. And from there, I had an editor at ESPN who came to ESPN from a magazine, from Seventeen magazine, and Maddie had posted an Instagram of a poll quote from Seventeen magazine. And so simultaneously, she had been at Seventeen, and after Maddie died, the people at Seventeen were trying to deconstruct why she had screenshot this poll quote. And I was trying to deconstruct this headline, and so it was kind of like a meeting of the minds there that we both independently, then we met up. I'm like, here's the story I want to work on. And she was like, that's a story I want to work on. And so we kind of moved forward together on that. Yeah. So you start to dive into this. The first thing that comes out is this ends up being a big article, sort of like a feature article. And it's really, what was a big question in your head

when you're sort of like saying, this is what I want to answer in this article? Well, of course I wanted to answer why. And so that's, I mean, that's kind of been the driving force of like talking about Maddie's stories trying to convey to people that it and it's so unsatisfactory but like i i'm you're never gonna have a why and i and i remember the the first time i talked to maddie's best friend her name is emma she said to me she was like you know don't don't go into this thinking you're gonna solve a case that you're gonna come up with like the one linchpin catalyst and bring it back to us on

a silver platter she's like we've all at that point maddie had died like a little less than a year prior she's like we all did that like you know the people who her, we did the thing where we like searched through everything and we're like trying to find the missing piece here. And so like that, that was the, but no matter, she said that. And I still was like, cool. But like, of course I approached the story for the first year I worked on it, like an investigative journalist. I mean, like I went to where she died. I every, you know, there's graffiti on the wall and I'm like trying to interpret the graffiti. There's like a running store around the corner. And I'm like, you know, asking people there if she like shopped there, you know, I'm like, oh, I'm going to find the thing. I'm going to find the,

the trauma that led to the outcome. And so that drove the story for a long time is just trying to take that headline, that one-dimensional headline and like get an answer that makes sense. Because star student jumps to death over grades does not make sense. But, you know, and this wasn't the case, but like, you know, was she assaulted at school? Was she, did she have a, you know, a drug problem? And like, there was some huge thing that happened that turned her life on a dime. But of course, I like, I just never could find that thing. And so over the years, it's kind of become this story of trying to shed light on all of the variables that were at play. Yeah. I mean, that eventually becomes this much deeper dive and much bigger exploration that becomes the book, What Made Maddie Run, where it's really just a much broader look at, because

from there it's like, okay, so let's start with this one story, but then kind of look at what's happening systemically with young adults when they hit universities, with cultures of perfectionism and stress and pressure and mental and emotional anguish that can be like applied from the outside in, but also so many people, like the standards they hold themselves to, and what's happening with college campuses and support

and availability of counseling and stuff like that becomes this much bigger sort of societal deep dive into this moment in time yeah because i think what i learned after the magazine piece came out and it was in espn the magazine um you know and and that original story, it was for an ESPN issue called The Perfection Issue. And the ESPN, the magazine used to do that. They would have a theme issue. And so in that magazine, the first magazine piece on Maddie, we focused a lot on perfection, which is an important thing to focus on. I think a lot of kids fall into this idea of being like a destructive perfectionist where as opposed to other forms of perfectionism, you could actually harness for good use, you know, destructive perfectionism is, is one that leads you down often a dark path. But so

we focused a lot on perfectionism and Instagram in that original article. But like the weeks after that article came out, I mean, you know, it's like I had like hundreds of emails from kids and like kids don't email, right? Like high school, college kids, like they're not emailing journalists, but they were emailing about Maddie because just like to a person, it was like, I see some piece of myself in Maddie. And one thing I heard a lot and I still hear a lot is like, you know, the people will be like, I am Maddie, except I'm alive. And so it really, after the magazine article,

it really opened my eyes to what you're talking about, which is that Maddie's story, although unique to her her is very representative of like young people and the rising rates of anxiety and depression suicide i think suicide in colleges has doubled since 2013 which is a stunning statistic yeah i mean it's horrifying reading about her story um reading about sort of like what's going on within the culture, you know, and as a parent also having a couple years ago, watch things on TV, like 13 Reasons Why. I think the biggest fear for so many adults, especially so many parents is that, and I think this is a question everyone tries to answer. It's like, did I miss something?

Like, was there, and this goes back to what you were talking about. Like, was there one big thing that happened that we all missed in some way, shape or form? Or was it just a confluence of all of these things building up over time? And the question always, I think people wanna know is like, how do I be better at trying to

see things in real time while they're happening so that I can know what to do or can I? And I think that is the big angst and the big frustration when you hear stories about this. Yeah. And it does cause a lot of anxiety among kids I talk to and parents I talk to because I can tell they want me to say that I know that someone missed something. And then they want me to tell them what that person missed. And so this becomes really tricky because it's the one thing I learned in telling Maddie's story is that the outcome of her life was not inevitable. And I think people tell themselves it was inevitable because they don't want to feel responsible and so you're kind of stuck in this no man's land where i need to tell people and i need to reinforce that like at any moment any small thing could have been different at any point in maddie's life and probably it would have been small and she'd still be alive today and yet i can't tell you what that thing is because if i tell you what that thing is then it's as if I'm as if I found the thing to blame and so so there is like this and then it's very anxiety causing because I

it's like I can point I could I can point you to 25 different things that if they had changed in some small way Maddie would probably still be alive so you know you know, it's like, so I'm trying to answer the unanswerable, but the biggest takeaway I've had in working on this book is that when I go around and I talk to parents and kids too, like there is a deep, deep fear of the word suicide. And that to me, if I had to point to one thing, if I wanted to be a little more present or wanted to ensure that, you know, the people in my life, especially your kids, that you're communicating properly. It's like to try to work through your fear of the word suicide and a discussion about suicide. Because so many parents, and this is true of Maddie's parents too, like didn't know how to engage with the word.

And so it was kind of like hoping it would go away. Yeah. Well, it's not something you're taught. Either as a kid to a parent or a parent to a kid or a friend to a friend. No. Like you said, there's just this pervasive, like nobody talks about it. Yep. It's a bad thing.

Yeah. And it's like, well, we've got people over there in the corner that can help you with that but like what kids do you know that like want to go over there into the corner you know it's like you you need to get them there eventually but like it needs to start at home or in a more accessible way than just we're not going to talk about that the thing that you want to say like save it for the person with the white coat it's like all of that all, all of that kind of like reaction. Like if you say the word, it's going to make it more likely. I understand subscribing to that belief, but I mean, it's the biggest thing that I, that I think of when I talk to parents now, I'm like, find a way to like, maybe it's research,

it's reading, it's figuring out from all the literature, like how you can be willing to say, like, have you ever thought about suicide? Most parents will never ask that question. Hmm. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest charging Apple Watch getting you 8 hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series X

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Flight risk. When you were doing the research and the writing around this, because there are some really interesting similarities between you back in the day and Maddie, did you see elements of yourself back when you were in college in her story? place when it comes to this book and this story where like, I can't tell if I feel like a fraud or not, but like, I truly have been blessed with wonderful mental health. And it's really opened my eyes working on this book, like that, you know, I, I really didn't know that everyone woke up and felt differently. Right. I just kind of thought everyone woke up and was like another day, you know, yay. And I didn't know that there's vast arrays. And of course, this seems like common sense, but I didn't know that people wake up and people in my life now who I've had better conversations with who are like, no, I can often not get out of bed or I

can't face days sometimes. And like, so when it comes to like the overlap of my story with Maddie's, it's like I can understand her to a point. I can understand how the environment of Division I sports and the environment of going away to school and choosing to do something that maybe you didn't have passion for. I understand her in so many different ways, but the one thing I just can't hold

on to is like what it would feel like to have that level of like panic and deep depression and live with it for weeks and weeks on end. Yeah. So, I mean, you're, you're deep into this and this is, you're doing the research or having the conversations. You've got the journalist and the writer's hat on. This turns into a book. So, and this consumes a huge amount of you. doing the research or having the conversations, you've got the journalist and the writer's hat on. This turns into a book.

And this consumes a huge amount of you. It has to, to do it justice. Because you don't commit to writing something like that without being like pretty all in. Oh yeah. And at the same time, you're like, and I'm on air personality and like making predictions about this and that.

So it really, it brings context. Like if we circle it back to that, it's like, okay, so on the one hand you're developing, like you're committed to your craft. Like you are a writer who really cares about language and you've just spent years telling a deeply human, eye-opening, meaningful story that's having an impact on a lot of people.

So it's like, and it goes out and then the book explodes, it does really well. So it's like, you see what's possible when you go all in on that world. That's like, it's really interesting. It gives really interesting context to the decision that you then made to say, okay, it's kind of like it's time at ESPN. Yeah. That's very perceptive because that was a huge driving force was seeing how dedicating yourself to a story in this case the writing process like actually could have meaningful effect and like i'm not you know i'm acting like it was like all altruism or anything. It was like, it was like, oh, I wrote something that people care about. Like I cared about that part of the story too, in addition to hoping for Maddie's family's sake that like her story would help

young kids struggling. But it was like this foundation that I built in working on this book of understanding in a lot of ways, what happened to Maddie in one of the, it was like, I saw every fork in the road that Maddie took. And of course I'm like, you know, I've got like the bird's eye view of it, the Monday morning quarterback bird's eye view, but like, I saw all the forks in the road and I saw one of the first ones was her decision to go away from a sport she loved, probably at a school, an environment of a school that probably was more conducive to who she was, like a Lehigh University in like a small town, hilly wooded area, playing soccer, a team sport to like an urban Philly, Philadelphia school in Penn and running track. Like I saw this fork in the road and I also could see her communication around that fork in the road. And it was very clear from her communication that she was aware that what she, what her heart wanted was to play soccer at Lehigh. And so I say that to mean that like, so I'm,

and clearly I have a judgment about that choice. I understand the choice, but I also am like noting to myself that like, I don't want to make that same choice that I'm valuing public perception over a choice more than I'm valuing my own compass. And so like, and that became the heart of the, of the decision with ESPN was recognizing that I was at a fork in the road and the decision to continue doing on-air stuff with ESPN was going to be the equivalent of like going to Penn and running track and field. I'm not saying that I would have had the same like mental, you know, lead to a depression in any way. But like it was like it felt to me like a similar fork in the road.

And I felt not just like I would be hypocritical to like go around and talk to kids and be like, make sure that you're, you know, you're making decisions that make sense for you and not make sense for what society tells you. So that was really, and, and, and just to put a bow on that, I think, I think there are very, I think that there are, there are moments in your, in your life where like you actually, you have an amount of freedom to truly make the decision you want. I mean, I think we always have the freedom to make the decisions we want. But I think there are times in your life where, you know, you might have kids or you might have a marriage or you might have a sick parent. And you don't have that same freedom to truly follow what you want and what you feel like will lead you to like this next challenge in your life.

And I knew at that time, I was like, I didn't have kids. You know, I had the financial resources. So it was like this moment where I felt like I could take a chance on myself. Yeah. I mean, there's also another backdrop happening to all of this, which is there's a beautiful thing and there's a really tough thing happening in your life. You fall in love, right? You find this person, like Catherine, you get married. So you've got this amazing relationship

blossoming in your life. And then in your family with your dad, your dad gets diagnosed with ALS. Yeah. Which is like these two energies going in diametrically opposite directions. Did either of those or did those together along with this other backdrop that we've talking about

sort of inform all of this? Yeah, right. Because like, just like Maddie's story, it's not like there's one thing, right? It was a catalyst of a lot of different things. Like what I've mentioned about like this fork in the road and then just the foundational piece of meeting the person that you want to spend the rest of your life with gives you achievement and success would equal happiness. And that I was willing, even though they felt like small things, I was willing to like back burner relationships in pursuit of that, thinking that I would always have time to come back around to them.

And then he gets this diagnosis, and he's still relatively young at 59 years old. And I knew that our relationship, which was incredibly strong in so many ways, had had some fissures in it. And all of a sudden I'm like, how can I possibly, again, going back to it, how can I possibly spend my time making predictions

about the Pittsburgh Steelers when I have the most important person in my childhood is about to face one of the worst diseases of humanity? And like, and there are things I haven't said and there's time I haven't spent. And so that shook me. like the first three months of his diet after his diagnosis like i couldn't fall asleep without having a podcast in because it's like music wasn't good enough you know because music you can like let your mind run to the forefront whereas podcasts it's like it hijacks your mind and you just have to you know as our good listeners know um it like it forces you to concentrate so yeah so i mean this is it's it's so interesting having this conversation with you in this moment in time, because it's sort of like this, it's, it's coming together of all these different things. And also feels like a really moment, like a moment of a point of inflection for you. And point of, I would guess, sort of like grappling with, how do i want to step into this next season yeah that's a good way to put it yeah um right now it's like

it's really it's like i know over the last couple years since my dad's diagnosis like i i i i did the one wonderful thing it's not wonderful about an als diagnosis, like I, I, I did the one wonderful thing. It's not wonderful about an ALS diagnosis, but like you, you, you can sit with the person that you love and you can tell them all the things that you need to tell them, you know, and that has been one of the greatest blessings of my life, rather than if at, at age 59, he had, you know, died in a car crash. Like, I think I would have really been reeling for a very long, for obvious reasons. But then, like, the reverberations of that, I think, would have lasted most of my life. Not saying the things I wanted to say and being afraid to do it.

And that doesn't exist anymore. It's like one of the greatest blessings is, it's like, you can do hard things like physically and then there are the emotional hard things like sitting with someone who's dying and like being honest with them was probably the scariest thought I would have had like when I was 20 right like there's no way I could ever do that but what the place I find myself in now is trying to like be okay not being defined by something else I just find that really challenging it's like you know I'm because I left East Bank because I wanted to write I'm writing but like you know how you're a writer like maybe two years from now somebody will finally hold the book that I'm writing but But, you know, I, and I

find that hard. Like there's this part of me that wants to like call ESPN up and be like, maybe I can get back on TV so that I feel relevant. I don't, but I'm not going to do that. But if, but like I lean that way sometimes and I'm like, no, like I have to be okay with being present for the people in my life. And I have to be okay that I don't have to always be like relevant and whatever relevant means to you. You know, I'm obviously more relevant to my parents now than I was like five years ago. I'm more relevant to my wife now.

But that part I get that I find that to be very hard. Yeah. I mean, that's always people talk about relevance. And in my mind, it's always like the second half of that sentence, which is almost always left off, is like the question, which is to whom? Yeah. You know, and that's where the real grappling happens. And that's where the real answer comes about like how you actually want to invest your energy. So this feels like a good place for us to come full circle as well.

So hanging out here in this container of the Good Life Project, if I offer up this phrase to live a good life, what comes up? Well, it's very different now than it was a couple of years ago. But right now it's showing up for the people who showed up for me. Like that's what I get the most heart swell swell from is like, I'm here for a wedding in New York. And I'm not sure that five years ago, like I would have showed up for the wedding. You know, I've been like, I got to hop a flight. I don't know. And it's like, but the, but over the last couple of years, I've realized like the people who showed up to my wedding, the people who showed up to the ALS walk we did two weeks ago for my dad.

I'm like, it's weird how cliche, you know, all of the stereotypes and cliches, you're like, you get to a certain age and you start to realize that they all make the world go around. And why weren't you listening? So yeah, showing up for people, showing up for the people who show up. Well, it's not like it's a quid pro quo, right? But showing up for people. Thank you. Yeah. Thanks. Thank you so much for listening. And thanks also to our fantastic sponsors who help make this show possible. You can check them out in the links we have included in today's show notes. And while you're at it, if you've ever asked yourself, what should I do with my life? We

have created a really cool online assessment that will help you discover the source code for the work that you're here to do. You can find it at sparkotype.com. That's S-P-A-R-K-E-T-Y-P-E.com. Or just click the link in the show notes. And of course, if you haven't already done so, be sure to click on the subscribe button in your listening app so you never miss an episode. And then share, share the love. If there's something that you've heard in this episode

that you would love to turn into a conversation, share it with people and have that conversation. Because when ideas become conversations that lead to action, that's when real change takes hold. See you next time. Mayday, mayday, we've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were gonna be fun. On January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg.

You know what the difference between me and you is? You're gonna die. Don't shoot him, we need him! Y'all need a pilot? Flight Risk. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever,

making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you 8 hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series X. Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone Xs are later required. Charge time and actual results will vary.