Sounds Like A Cult - The Cult of Roller Derby

Episode Date: July 15, 2025

Once hailed as a feminist rebellion on wheels, modern roller derby spins a complicated web of DIY empowerment, body-positivity, and community. From punny alter egos and glitter-soaked uniforms, to initiation rituals and injury worship, we unpack how the derby track became a sacred stage for self-invention. Rachel Rotten (@rachtilldeath), a longtime skater and derby lifer, joins us to share what it’s really like on the inside: the unspoken rules, the identity shifts, and the brutal beauty of a sport that demands your body, your weekends, and possibly your soul??? Join us in our exploration of the cult-like sisterhood of Roller Derby! Subscribe to Sounds Like A Cult on Youtube!Follow us on IG @soundslikeacultpod, @amanda_montell, @reesaronii, @chelseaxcharles. Thank you to our sponsors! Download Cash App Today: https://capl.onelink.me/vFut/st3nalv7 #CashAppPod. As a Cash App partner, I may earn a commission when you sign up for a Cash App account. Cash App is a financial services platform, not a bank. Banking services provided by Cash App’s bank partner(s). Prepaid debit cards issued by Sutton Bank, Member FDIC. Visit cash.app/legal/podcast for full disclosures. Go to https://Quince.com/slac for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Please consider donating to those affected by ICE activity in the LA Area. Team SLAC are donating to the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights, an LA-based immigrant rights organization providing legal services, policy advocacy, and direct aid to those most impacted. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I will never forget the first time I downloaded Cash App it was to pay my therapist. Yes, I trust Cash App with my mental health transactions, people. Cash App can do way more than you think to make your money work for you. If you direct deposit at least $300 in paychecks each month and use the Cash App card for purchases, you can earn up to 4% annual interest on your savings. No hidden fees, no minimum balance requirements. Also, you can earn up to 4% annual interest on your savings. No hidden fees, no minimum balance requirements. Also, you can hit your savings goals even faster by turning on the Roundups feature on your Cash App card. With Roundups, every purchase you make using the card is rounded up to the nearest dollar and that spare change is automatically put into your savings.

Don't let your money sit around and gather dust. Make it work for you. Take advantage of high-interest savings on Cash App today. For a limited time only, new Cash App customers can use our exclusive code to earn some additional cash. For real. Just download Cash App and use our exclusive referral code, Sounds, in your profile. Send $5 to a friend within 14 days and you'll get $10 dropped right into your account. Terms apply. That's money. That's Cash App. It won't take long to tell you Neutral's ingredients. Vodka.

Soda. Natural flavors. So what should we talk about? No sugar added? Neutral. Refreshingly simple. I was so excited to restock my wardrobe, but I really didn't want to get pieces that were low quality or that I knew I wouldn't like next year. That is where Quince comes in.

I have loved absolutely everything I've ever gotten from Quince. I have this black linen matching set from them. It's like a little button down with some matching black pants. I am obsessed. And the best part is that Quince literally costs half the price of similar brands. Give your summer closet an upgrade with Quince literally costs half the price of similar brands. Give your summer closet an upgrade with Quince. Go to quince.com slash SLAC for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. That's Q-U-I-N-C-E dot com slash SLAC to get free shipping and 365 day returns.

Quince dot com slash SLAC. The views expressed on this episode, as with all episodes of Sounds Like a Cult, are solely host opinions and quoted allegations. The content here should not be taken as indisputable fact. This podcast is for entertainment purposes only. Hi, my name's Katie. I'm Australian, but I live in England. And I'm here at the Roller Derby World Cup in Austria having the best time.

The cultiest thing that I have noticed in the last four days is the insane community of watching people who are so competitive and then they all cuddle on the track during the game. They all smile, they all high five. I think that's a cult. Hi, my name is Dark Pistol from Antwerp Roller Derby Team Belgium. I'm calling in from the Roller Derby World Cup in Innsbruck. And I think that the cultiest thing about roller derby is that we all date each other. This is Sounds Like a Cult, a show about modern day cults we all follow. I'm your co-host Chelsea Charles, an unscripted TV producer and a lifelong student of pop culture sociology.

And I'm Reese Oliver, your co-host and Sounds Like a Cult's resident rhetoric scholar. Every week on the show, we discuss a different Zeitgeist-y group that puts the cult and culture from Lululemon to Harry Potter to try to answer the big question. This group sounds like a cult, but is it really? This group sounds like a cult, but is it really? And if so, which of our cult categories does it fall into?

Is it a live your life, a watch your back, or a get the fuck out? After all, cultish influence falls on a continuum these days, and it doesn't always look the same. Some modern-day cults seem super fringy and ritualistic, but are actually relatively harmless, like horse girls, Jeep owners. The cultiness doesn't necessarily mean they're super destructive, but when you've got modern cult leaders whose influence is so omnipresent that we often don't stop to scrutinize the chokehold it has on us. That is what this show is all about, analyzing and even poking a little bit of fun

at the ways cultishness shows up in places so prominent, you might not think to perceive them as cults. Like an empire built on bruised knees, alter egos, group chats, and the promise of radical sisterhood with just enough chaos to make you question your grip on reality. It is high time we skate into the cult of roller derby. The underground sport-turned full-blown lifestyle where women, fems, and thems, and theys, all of my favorite people reinvent themselves with punny names, busted kneecaps, a whole fuck ton of body glitter. It's pride, baby, well not anymore.

But it's pride all year round around these parts. So whether you are jamming or just reffing, roller derby is not just a game for these folks, it's an identity. So to help us dig into today's very multifaceted topic, we have a very special guest, Rachel Rotten. So Rachel, we would love to know your connection to the world of roller derby. Introduce yourself. Hello, hello, hello.

Thank you for having me. My name is Rachel Rotten. I am a roller derby player, skater. Whatever terminology you want to use is fine. I think the name can be interchangeable with how serious you feel like you're having a conversation. It depends on which way you're driving the conversation, but there's a little bit of code switching for sure. But I've been playing for 15 years. I skate for Angel City. We're the flat track roller derby league in Los Angeles. We are one of the top teams in the WFTDA, which is the Women's Flat Track Derby Association. It's the governing body that governs the flat track version of the sport, which is the dominant version of the sport

worldwide. And I also skate for USA roller derby. That's a US national team that is currently competing at the roller derby world cup in Innsbruck, Austria, which is where I am joining you from. That's so dope. Yeah, like how cool is that? Not every day that we have a guest on Sounds Like a Cold joining us all the way from Austria. And just to break the ice,

you are obviously so immersed in the sport, the lifestyle, especially at this very moment. It is the perfect time to ask, in the sport, the lifestyle, especially at this very moment. It is the perfect time to ask, in your opinion, what is the single cultiest thing about the world of roller derby? I think the culty thing about the sport is that you get into it thinking that it's going to be a hobby that you're going to do like a day or two a week and it takes over your life. Once you get into it, day by day, minute by minute,

more of it just inches into your life and you can do as much as you have the capacity for and often even if you're like, I can do as much or as little as I want, doing the as little as you want is more than most other communities. Even our least is more than most people's most. Yeah, the barrier to entry, that's a super important thing because even just to establish yourself within the world casually, there is a level of commitment and a level of identification that you have to form, even just to participate at the most base level, which I think makes most sports culty.

I think so. And I think what makes roller derby interesting in that regard is it takes the thing that you need in most sports and that's like time to dedicate to the development of the skills themselves. And then it adds the identity layer to it, right? Like you're not just learning to skate or learning to play the sport. You're also leaning into not only your individual identity that you, you know, sort of step into when you start playing, but also like your team's identity and your league's identity and then the greater sports identity. So there's many, many layers. It's like a club sandwich of identity.

I'm getting D&D vibes, which oddly enough is a quote that we have not yet covered, but I hope to cover, but this does seem like way cooler though. And I mean, you don't necessarily get ripped when playing D&D. To better explain the rules of roller derby, let's take a listen to this clip from the 2009 Drew Barrymore directed film, Whip It. First whistle blows and the pack takes off.

Then a second whistle blows and the jammers take off. Some of us faster than others. Once the jammer breaks through the pack, she hauls ass around the track a second time and tries to score. For every player on the opposing team the jammer passes, she gets a point. Now line up and get you some.

So before we get into the origins, I do have a question for you, Reese. As a spectator, what do you think the cultiest thing about roller derby is? I think honestly, maybe the cultiest thing about roller derby is? I think honestly maybe the cultiest thing about roller derby, just speaking off the dome, is that it is one of the only spaces where women are kind of encouraged to be violent. And I love that. And I think I wish we had more spaces where we could be casually violent.

I don't want to say violent, it's like a little extreme. But I guess just like, you know, expressing yourself physically, which sometimes manifests aggressively, I think there's something really cathartic about that, but I don't think women get in a community building sense a lot, which I think in kind of a mid-Semarish way taps into a very primal cultishness,

just because we are so deprived of that in our everyday life. That answer actually resonates with me a lot because it's one of the things that drew me to roller derby. I grew up playing sports. I played sports my whole life, but not a single one of them was a contact sport. I didn't have the opportunity to feel what it felt like to hit somebody until I started playing roller derby. And I was definitely the kind of kid that, when I was young, I was a tomboy and like rough and tumble. And I always wanted to wrestle or tackle the kids

when we were all playing in the arcs. I grew up in the eighties and nineties when kids played outside. I don't know what they do now. But when presented with the opportunity to do this, the thing that I thought was the coolest was the physical contact piece because in no other context of my life had I been encouraged to hit someone harder or to get better at physically dominating somebody in that way.

In other sports, there is physical dominance, but it's posturing, right? At least in a lot of the women's athletics that we grew up with, right? In basketball, you're boxing somebody out. In soccer, it's speed. And, you know, in baseball, it's precision in various forms. You know, there's like this mental aspect to the game that's really, really important to all those sports and these really specific skills to each of those. But you don't physically put your body up against somebody to check someone. And the first time I did that, it was like this insane rush of like, oh my God, I'm physically so much stronger than I thought.

And I know if I keep doing this, I could only get stronger. Wow. It's really fun. I literally have chills listening to that response. That's like amazing. Because I guess I never thought about that idea until just now of how like a lot of girls sports, women's sports growing up were not contact sports.

And so yeah, that's amazing to just hear that perspective. I want to talk a little bit about how I perceive roller derby because I went to my first roller derby bout here in Vegas like two months ago. And I'm pretty sure it was Los Angeles versus the Vegas team. I don't know if it's the same league that you're in, but that timeline actually sounds right. So we have multiple teams in our league. So the team that I skate for is our like globally ranked team, but we have other teams that

are competitive regionally. We have four teams that are competitive in different divisions, essentially. We did very recently have one of our teams go out to Vegas, so I would not be surprised if you watched some of my league mates and friends play. Dude, this is not about the cultiness, but I would say that what was so inspiring to me is just like what each team represented. Like I just saw every different, I guess, demographic.

It just was so inclusive and was just so special. Even the audience represented that. It was just like a special place to just be and just be witness to. What I would say the cultiest thing that I observed and with doing research for this particular episode is like the double consciousness theatrical aspect and we keep using the term like violent but it was a lot of like aggression that I saw displayed and then immediately after the game everyone is just like from either side I saw people hugging and just embracing each other. And I was just like, what a testament to what the game actually is.

And I was reading that a lot of the players kind of play into the theatrics of what it is to actually play the game. And I just thought that was, I don't know, a little culty, but also just super dope. Yeah, I think you'll talk to people in the sport who will say like, yes, I love to like ham it up a little bit. And then you'll also talk to people who are like, oh, no, like, I'm totally serious. And I'm so focused on what I'm doing. And I think both of those experiences of playing the game in real time are super valid.

And they may also like change throughout the course of somebody's skating career, right? And they might also change within the context of what kind of a game you're playing. Like, you know, I think how you would play a game at the global championships, you know, is going to be different than how you would play like a home team game. So I think that's going to be unique to every single person. But I do think you identified something that is really special about the community. And that's that like, everybody works really hard to do this thing. Everybody pays to be a part of their organization and puts in a lot of money and time into going to the gym or whatever the things are that they're doing to enhance their derby life

outside of the actual skating time. They're investing time and money into that. So once you're out there, you really are encouraged to just leave it all out there, to play as hard as you can, to hit as hard as you can, to have as much fun as you can. And then at the end of it, you congratulate the people who knocked you down and you go up and hug the people who you totally ran over.

And I think that's something really special for the sport, but also just for like women in sports. Like what a cool thing to be able to have a space where you're encouraging each other to do better, to be better, to hit harder. And you're not holding it against somebody every single time. Like I'm not going to say that there's not people who don't like each other in roller derby. of course there are. But by and large, if somebody hits the shit out of me at practice, like at first I'm going to be a little rocked and then I'm going to be like, that was a good hit. Especially if it's somebody who maybe doesn't usually hit you like that and it's like a marker of progression and camaraderie

and strength. And it's a piece of the sport that I really love. I love being able to tell people that they're capable of more than they think they are and then to see that actually happen in real time, to see people that you skate with gain confidence and get better is incredible. And to see it in yourself is so rewarding. I had no idea how strong I was or like how mentally tough I could be until I started playing the sport. Like even with a full background of playing sports I've never been tougher than I am in this almost 40 year old body right now. Damn girl. That's inspiring. I feel like everything you just said points to like okay yes this is objectively very fucking culty but also objectively good. I think women could always use more good cultishness and I yes, this is objectively very fucking culty, but also objectively good.

I think women could always use more good cultishness. And I think that this is a good example of that. And having space to be able to get angry at people and not have that held against you forever, I think is also something that women don't ever really get. I think it teaches you real life skills, right? Like it teaches you to navigate conflict management in like a real sense. Like you have to like pull up your pants and just be okay with somebody like

hitting you hard. And 100% everybody is gonna walk into practice one day, not have had a good day at work, feel super sensitive, maybe have a teammate that they haven't connected super deeply with, and they're gonna feel targeted by that person. But like how incredible to have the opportunity to like work through this conflict, both with yourself and with this other person, because at the end of the day, like you're on the same team, you have to get through it. And the harder you hit each other, the better both of you are going to get and the better the team is going to get in the long run. Right? Like there's something so important in sports in general for both like interpersonal

dynamics and for understanding the team over self mentality and then how you operate as an athlete in recognizing that everybody is there for the same reason at the end of the day. Like nobody's there to sabotage you when you're all playing for free. Yeah, like everybody is putting in to it what they can put into it, which is sometimes a lot. And sure, sometimes people don't behave well, and you have to learn how to grow up and be like, hey, I really didn't like how that happened at practice, or I didn't like how we interacted, or I really don't like when you give me feedback like that. You know, like, I've had teammates that look at each other and they say, like, I don't

receive it well when you yell at me when I do something wrong. Can we walk that back? It's real shit. And sometimes you're like mad at each other for a week and then you go to practice next week. That's so dope. Maybe I should get into it and every time we record, I'm like, am I joining a new cult this week?

This show is just Chelsea and Amanda try out new hobbies. Really. Which one? The show is just Chelsea and Amanda try out new hobbies, really. Hit pause on whatever you're listening to and hit play on your next adventure. Stay three nights this summer at Best Western and get $50 off a future stay. Life's the trip. Make the most of it at Best Western. Visit bestwestern.com for complete terms and conditions. of it at Best Western. Visit bestwestern.com for complete terms and conditions. Hi, my name is Hydra and I'm at the roller derby world cup and I think the cultiest thing about roller derby is this absolute need to evangelize. You will not find a roller derby person that when

they meet any other human being tries to get them involved in roller derby in some way. My name is Anna. I'm an outsider of roller derby, but I think the cultiest thing about roller derby is they have a thing called eating the baby and everyone gets really excited about it. Okay, so obviously this would not be a proper, sounds like a cult episode if we didn't get into the origin story of the alleged cult at hand.

of the alleged cult at hand. So, roller derby first hit the scene in the 1930s as a co-ed endurance competition dreamed up by a depression air promoter named Leo Seltzer. Born in Chicago in 1903, Seltzer began his career organizing endurance-based spectacles such as walkathons and dance marathons, basically events that capitalized on the economic anxieties and voyeuristic appetites of Depression-era audiences.

During the Great Depression, audiences were hooked on the grit and spectacle. Watching folks dance until they dropped or walk in circles for days wasn't just bizarre entertainment. It was a raw real-time survival story. People saw themselves in those contests, broke, exhausted, and doing whatever it took to stay standing. So in 1935, inspired by a statistic noting the widespread popularity of roller skating, Selsa created the Transcontinental Roller Derby, a cross-country endurance race on skates

staged on an indoor track. Though initially positioned as a legitimate sporting event, Roller Derby quickly evolved into a hybrid of athleticism and theatricality under Selsa's direction, foreshadowing the blend of spectacle and subculture that would define the sport for decades to come. But then the real rebirth happened, a roller renaissance if you will. The one that gave Derby its gritty, glittery cult status started in the 2000s in Austin, Texas

cult status started in the 2000s in Austin, Texas, when a crew of punk rock women decided to take the sport into their own hands. Bad Girl Good Woman Productions, BGGW, founded by a fiercely independent crew of women from Austin's punk and art scene, led largely by April LaMerta Ritzenthaler was a self-run all-women's league rooted in feminist DIY ethics. However, in spring 2003, internal friction prompted a breakout. Roughly 80% of the skaters split and formed the Texas Roller Girls, launching flat track roller derby in grassroots punk feminist style. That league went on to define modern derby rules and helped establish WFTDA, the Women's Flat Track Derby Association. Meanwhile, the remaining BGGW crew became the Texas Roller Der long star roller girls focusing a bank tracked

play and their own aesthetic approach. A critical figure in that split turned growth was Jennifer Hydra Wilson, a founding member of both BGGW and Texas roller girls. She brought her competitive sports background and organizational vision to the movement, went on to help form the United Leagues Coalition, and served as WFTDA's first president. She's the namesake of the Hydra Trophy, awarded annually to the WFTDA champions. Modern roller derby is equal parts athleticism and alter ego. It lives in warehouses, roller rinks, and converted basketball courts all over the world. So oftentimes in Sounds Like a Cult history, we tend to decide if we can dub one fearless leader in the world of any cult.

Would you say in this particular space that Jennifer Hydra Wilson would be your dubbed cult leader? I would definitely say Hydra. Hydra is impossible to divorce from the history of the sport, but I would also like if it's like a A and B scenario or like a Batman-Robin situation,

I would also add Bloody Mary from the Texas Roller Girls. I think she also changed the face of the sport from a governing body perspective. She would become the president of the WFTDA after that. And her leadership during her years at the helm of the WFTDA is something that all the old timers, people who are still around, still talk about to this day because it really guided everything to where we are now. So I would say, Hydra for president, Bloody Mary for VP. So we wanted to get into a little bit of the language and lore associated with roller derby. So take it away.

So roller derby has not just developed terms like some sports, it has cultivated a whole vocabulary, a mythology, a secret handshake for a subculture determined to define itself. So let's talk about some of the rituals that are associated with roller derby. First up, when you join, you earn the affectionate title of fresh meat. I love that. It's very like Ned's Declassified, like a teen movie, teen Nick vibes. I love it. What's funny about Fresh Meat is like, that's what I was called when I joined. Almost everybody I know was Fresh Meat when they joined. But in like more recent years, a lot of people pushed back about renaming what it meant to be at like this entry point. So a lot

of organizations have started to move away from fresh meat and move towards things like rookies and new recruits and things like that. So things that are more descriptive of the program and a little bit less graphic. Yeah, yeah like you know fresh meat comes with all of these like, visuals that come with it, right? It's like, do you mean fresh meat as in like something to be made? So I expect to be made? Fresh meat as in like, yeah, like there's so many ways that that terminology can be taken. And so I think like in recent years, a lot of teams have have moved away from it.

But I think historically, it is an important term, A, because most of us went through programs called Fresh Meat and B, because I think there's a real conversation there that's actually really interesting that pulls you into talking about how we think about women's bodies and things like that in sport, not just our sport, in any sport. Yeah, there's definitely an objectification aspect to it. And the fact that there is, I mean, conversation around it and an attempt to reframe, I think, as a green flag in terms of cultishness, I think that bodes well. But where the term comes from, we were talking about this kind of early punk roller-girl zine culture where it's a little rougher around the edges, a little angrier, toughness, DIY ethos, and

radical community is kind of what rules. So the term fresh meat, it feels like hazing because it is in a way hazing. It's a rite of passage. It's representative of the things that you are expected to endure emotionally, physically, socially, before you even think about getting a name or an alternate persona, which I think means kind of showing up and mattering as an individual in this space. That's something you have to earn, which leads into our next ritual being the alter ego. It's not just a name, it's a persona. So the use of the alter ego echoes wrestling culture, hey, WWE, drag performance, and even indigenous warrior naming traditions. These rituals allow people to embody power through

theatrical identity, yet another way in which I think people would live more happy, fulfilling lives if they stop making fun of theater kids so much. You know, it's so funny listening to this. There can be so many parallels drawn in the whole world of Greek life and all the sorority lives. And I am a part of the sorority under the national Panhellenic umbrella. And what's so unique about our sororities and fraternities is that we're in them for life.

And so my grandmother is a part of the same sorority that I am in to this day. So I grew up in the sorority and then went to college and was a part of the sorority. And when I just think about this, it's literally the exact same thing, the same within cults. It's like there's already an established hierarchy. You come in as a neophyte and you have your profites that kind of assure you into the experience. But there is a very established sense of like, you are here and you have to work to belong here. And we have alter egos and all the things. So it's very interesting. Yeah.

What I really love about the alter ego is I feel like it can be a really good way to kind of push past the cognitive dissonance of like, I'm not really, maybe I'm not an aggressive person in real life. So if you're not an aggressive person in real life and you're trying to roll a derby, maybe those are the people,

do you find those are the people who end up like getting the most into it theatricality wise? Do you find that helps people? I think it's kind of an even mix of both, right? I think for people that aren't super aggressive in their real life, they find an outlet that they never knew that they could have or they find a new part of themselves that was laying dormant or undiscovered or you know, intended to in their personalities. And then for people that maybe do have more dominant or aggressive personalities,

they find a new outlet of what to do with some of that energy. So I think you can have it both ways and that diversity of personality and of type of human that you're moving through spaces with is I think more important now than it's ever been, especially as we move away from like workplaces in the traditional sense that we used to have them. There used to be all of these spaces in our lives where you interact with different kinds of people

and this post-pandemic world that we live in, like, and I've been thinking about this a lot in terms of roller derby, but the world has changed so much and the way that people show up in spaces to interact with other people has changed drastically in the last five years. Drastically. We used to have all these places where you had to go interact with people that you disagreed with or maybe came from different backgrounds. You had school, you had universities, you had jobs, you had internships, you had all of these things. And I think a lot of people no longer have that day to

day interaction. And so I think the reason why communities like this are attractive to people is because they create a space for belonging to something where you know you're part of something greater than just yourself. And even on your worst day, you have people that show up and that like want to talk to you and want to spend time with you and they're, they're all choosing to be there. You're not being paid to be there. It's not a job. It's not transactional. You're not getting anything out of it other than whatever it is that you need to get out of it. So I think communities, whether it's wrestling or roller derby or knitting or a book club, like I think those things are like massively important to human

interaction and people's ability to navigate conflict and disagreement and agreement and bonding and love and trust and creating all of this like depths of human experience that we all need. And you know, we just do it with some like glitter and bruises and like fun outfits and names. We just get to build a really fun character and a whole alternate persona. And then we all, it's like you have twice as many friends because you're friends with everyone and then you're friends with everyone's little roller derby personas and then everybody's friends and it's great. It's also fun to get to try on a part of your personality

that other people haven't met yet. And when you move into a space where you're like, I get to decide who this person is. And so if you're a person who's like, I've always been misunderstood, what a great way to like establish a new version of like, how do I make sure I'm not misunderstood in this space? How do I step into this space intentionally?

How do I jump into these friendships in a way that people like me and see me in the way that I want to be seen? Yeah. Bringing it back to some of the ritual aspects, I want to ask you if you could tell us about a cult-like ritual associated with roller derby that we might not know of that maybe you've participated in? There's a really fun one called Getting Married, but it's about derby that we might not know of that maybe you've participated in? There's a really fun one called Getting Married, but it's about derby wives. Derby wives.

So in roller derby. Right, right. Explain. I know. It sounds like you produced that one. Exactly. So in roller derby, you start with somebody or you find your person right away. You immediately bond with somebody, sort of like you would at summer camp or in a new class or somewhere you go right like you know

you meet that person who you're like oh this is this is my person who like their experience in this is running parallel with mine is intrinsically linked to my experience of this. And then like you become protective of it and then they become protective of you and all of a sudden it's like you have this new it's your you have this new, it's your new work bestie, right? It's your Derby bestie. And then you go to Roller Con, which is this annual convention that a lot of people in the community go to every year in Las Vegas. And this ritual of having a Derby wedding was started actually by two friends of mine back in 2003, the first Derby married couple, shout out to Casey Bomber and Eva Lee. They decided that they were going to have like a joke wedding. Like they're basically

declaring their love for each other, but they're not romantically involved. They're like, I'm committed to you. I'm committed to this experience and we're going to do this. And then that grew into this like group wedding in a parking lot of the Double Down Saloon in Las Vegas. Oh my God. Which is where I married my Derby wife. We made wedding dresses out of trash bags and we stole a giant Miller High Life bottle from a Rite Aid and filled it with beer. It took a lot more beer than we thought to fill it and it's kind of iconic and silly

and ridiculous. But the idea is that like, you're kind of going through this like ceremonial commitment to somebody and to something. You know, it's changed over time. I don't think they do it at the Double Down Saloon parking lot anymore. I think it happens at the...

I know it sounds crazy. Not crazy, just cozy. Just cozy. But you know, there's like But there's an officiant there. Oh, that's good. That's good. There's a ballroom full of people that are like, these skaters looking into each other's eyes

and basically sharing commitments the way that you would with a partner. But with this friend of theirs. Wait, everyone's doing it at once, like the Moonies? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, I love it. It's like the Moonies? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, I love it. It's like full Moonies. It's really silly.

And then there's a party afterwards. A little reception. I live for this. Yeah. All sounds like a party. Oh my goodness. It's pretty culty, but it's pretty fun. And I'm still like best friends with my derby wife.

We started skating together. She's here in Austria this weekend. That's so dope. And like the women who started the whole thing, they're still best friends. They live in Los Angeles. You know, they started it in 2003. They were with the LA Derby dolls at the time. And it's just become like a part of the culture and like a part of the language of roller derby. It's like your derby wife is just a thing and everybody knows what that means. I love it. Follow-up question. Are there any like culty wellness or like aesthetic routines that's associated with this lifestyle? Okay. I would say there's like small offshoots depending on like what somebody is naturally inclined

to get into as far as their like supplemental health routine. So like my team for a fair bit of time was like sort of known as like the Crossfitty team because we all used to do Crossfit and our captain at the time was like super jacked and people like knew her for her arms and people were just like, man, that team lifts, you know, so we were sort of known as the like the Crossfitting team. And I know lots of like vegan skaters that are really into that like diet side of eating. There have been skaters that are part of like the whole like herbal life thing.

Oh, yeah. Yes. It's a cold one. It's whole like herbal life thing. Oh yeah. Yeah. It is. There's a little intersectionality here with the world. Sports teams are actually such a goldmine if you're in an MLM because like the whole point of it is like I have to exhaust everybody I know and these people are obligated to spend time with me and they also for a fact know at least 40 other women they can show this to. Like really that makes so much sense. Yeah, totally. Like I definitely had a teammate who a long time ago who did the Herbalife stuff and she

had her own like branded version of Derbalife. Screaming. Not the Portmanteau! I love a punny queen, honey. We love the Portmanteau in the love a punny queen, honey. We love the portmanteau in the show, but that one's a little bit illegal. And then I definitely also had a teammate ages ago who did like Arbonne stuff. So like, I think you're right.

When you start to get into these like micro communities, the Venn diagram is a circle. That's kind of what my senior thesis actually was about how all of these female-centric cults feed into each other. Specifically, what I wrote about was MLMs and Mormonism and social media, like tradwives, that kind of whole intersection. But I do just think that the feminine hobby being like, okay, now all of these different capitalist cults are going to take advantage of this group of women is such a sad reality to see play out in so many different spaces. But I'm happy that it seems like roller derby is still not underground enough, but like

within its own culty bubble enough that it maintains enough of its own culture that from an outsider looking in, it doesn't seem like it's too permeated by stuff like that. I don't think so. Yeah, I think that stuff doesn't last very long because of the type of woman that finds Roller Derby or the type of person that finds Roller Derby. Like I think by and large you have independent thinking, like feminist, revolutionary minded people kind of like the kind of person that's coming here. They may be looking to their peers for cues for other lifestyle things. There's certainly like a look to a roller derby player and there's certainly like style that like kind of gets

like passed within the community. It's like you see one person wearing this thing and then all of a sudden a month later, everybody's wearing that thing. And so like, there's those like natural tendencies of group spaces that you're going to find, but I don't think there's like a deep, deep, deep infiltration of a lot of that stuff. I think sometimes it'll be when they naturally find the people who are already looking for

it and that's okay, it is what it is. And if that helps people feel healthier or feel more in control of their life or their body, then okay. But I don't think everybody's going to immediately be like, yes, we all take the same supplements now. For sure. Hi, my name is Scarra to death and I am here at the roller derby World Cup and I think that the cultiest thing about roller derby is that no matter what injury we get we just keep coming back Hi, my name is Yaya calling in from the roller derby World Cup in Austria

And I think the cultiest thing about roller derby is that we all take on fake names well, not all of us, but a lot of us do and I think that's a lot like the Rajneeshis for instance, but that's just my opinion. Okay, so now we're going to move into something that I definitely latched onto talking about the Derby wedding, which is just like the spectacle of it all. Like it is just at the end of the day, so much goddamn fun to watch like every aspect of roller derby unfold. And as we all know, Western

culture has a long-standing fascination with spectacle and violence, from Roman gladiatorial arenas to the Victorian-era human zoos. That same obsession is still alive today in roller derby, hopefully a little more benevolently. Just as Romans once flocked to the Coliseum for gladiatorial combat, roller derby inherited a fusion of spectacle and struggle. The crashes, the jostling in the pack, the red-skating aggression, it's bloody and delicious and bruised. Mwahaha. Cultural historian Stacey Holman-Jones writes in a 2010 Text and Performance Quarterly article entitled Performing Punk Femininity, Gender Sexuality, and the Body in Roller Derby, that, quote,

Roller Derby gives us a chance to revel in a kind of organized unruliness, offering a space where women and non-binary folks can perform aggression without apology, end quote. Other scholars have picked up on Derby's gladiatorial energy as well. In her thesis, Contesting and Constructing Gender Sexual Sexuality, and Identity in Women's Roller Derby, sociologist Suzanne Becker argues that aggressiveness and violence are central to the sport of roller derby. Some players resisted the spectacle, but the author notes that violent imagery the players attempt to evoke was a consistent and deliberate part of their public persona. So I kind of asked a version of this question earlier, but I

guess my question now would be, are there players that make it part of their character to be nonviolent? I guess I'm curious about that. Oh, what an interesting question. I definitely think that there are people that would consider themselves to be not nonviolent, but like they would frame it as being like a strategic player or like a good partner. See, like D&D, I'm thinking everyone can't be the same, right?

Right, right. Like, it's almost like when you're learning to play, you kind of practice like a form of hitting where it's like a hammer and nail, right? So you have to have one person that sort of sets up the hit in order for the other person to be able to nail the hit. And so like, you can't be the hammer that like really like makes that drive without having the buddy who sets up the hit for you. It's an ensemble honey. You need the teamwork. You do you do. I will say like, you guys know this, but there is also men's roller derby and the men play different than women like the women's version of the sport is very teamwork based and the men's version is often very individualistic. I think

maybe that's starting to change, but like, I don't play. That sounds so much less fun. Yeah. But in the teamwork, one doesn't shine without the other. And so I do think that there are people that would describe themselves as being a good glue player is like a term that we use a lot. Like somebody who helps stick to somebody to be a good partner in a defensive scenario or a person who would play a secondary offensive position where their job is to make the jammer look good by opening up walls for the jammer to be able to score.

Often, the offensive player is not who gets the glory, it's the jammer because the jammer gets through and it looks cool and they can jump the apex or do a cool spin. But they did that because their offensive buddy created that opportunity for them. You're also getting into this important piece of sports where you can't just have stars, right? Everybody on the team has to be able to do the work. And if you just have a team of superstars, like all star teams are kind of a mess sometimes. Right? Like any anyone who's watched sports, those sometimes are not the most strategic or interesting or dynamic teams.

They have a lot of showmanship, but when push comes to shove in a championship, like, is that the team that's going to win? Maybe not. Too many cult leaders who's in fighting. Or if everybody's doing the same thing, then somebody's not doing the other job that needs to get done. Yeah. Rachel, we're going to have to do some sight words, like a link to some sight words at the end of this. Yeah. Okay. No problem.

I had to learn. You got it. Because you said Apex, and I was like, whoa. It's like sports. Wait, yeah. I know. Now I'm actually talking about the game itself, right? Which is dope.

Like the actual mechanics. Actually, I did want to add from your history lesson earlier, a question that players in the sport will get is, I think you addressed both of them in the history lesson, but I just want to intentionally like call out the difference here. There's a difference between banked track, which is the version of the sport that a lot of people would remember seeing like pictures of from the 70s or if it's like an older person, they're like, I used to watch this when I was a kid on TV. So like bank track is like a like a velodrome like slanted track. There's only a handful

of those left in the United States. But like to contextualize the split with the Texas split, that was what created this like huge growth opportunity for the sport. Because one of the struggles with reestablishing bank track as the sports surface in the early days was the cost and the size of the space needed to house a track like that. And that's still something that not only bank track leagues struggle with, but also flat track leagues. But flat track was born out of necessity. In Texas, when those girls didn't have the money to buy a bank track or to build a bank track or to have a place to hold a bank track, they had to skate on

a flat surface in order to raise money to buy that track. And so the split was because, I mean, for a lot of reasons, and there's a great documentary you should watch about it. But Flat Track, you know, very logically, there was this group of women that was like, well, we could just keep doing this. And then everybody everywhere could do this because all you need is a flat surface. And then we can standardize the size and we can standardize the rules. We can create more growth by evening the playing field, creating more opportunity internationally for all of these leagues. If you just post the track dimensions on a message board and say, these are the rules and these are the dimensions, anyone anywhere

can print those out and chalk it down and go to work. And that's what happened. And so the ULC became the WFTDA. and that was where leagues that were popping up all over in Seattle, in London, in New York, in Los Angeles, in Denver, in Chicago got together and they said, okay, this is crazy if everyone starts to go play each other and everyone's playing by their own house rules. Let's all agree on a standardized set of rules and let's standardize the officiating expectations so that the referees that travel are refing the same game. And they're refing it the way that everybody in each of these cities sort of expects it to be refed. And so that wouldn't

have happened if there wasn't this group of women that were like, you know what, we just want to play so badly that we just will figure it out on a flat surface and hey, guess what, that actually makes it more accessible. So that was a defining moment for the sport. And it's still really important that bank track exists also because it's, you know, this more historic version. But the rules of that game have evolved greatly over time as well. There's a lot of overlap with flat track rules, but there's a lot of things that don't line up with how the game is played. And there's this constant debate of like, what is the best to watch? There's this

push and pull of how do you make the sport more watchable? And what is it actually that people want to watch about the sport? And that's like a whole other can of worms to open up because I think there's a lot of people that have ideas about what they think a sport should look like. And there's even more people that have an idea of what they think a sport should look like when it is played by women. So, you know, when you get into this, like, of course, there's going to be a lot of women in roller derby that are going to kind of be cut from a similar cloth, because the way that women exist in athletics is kind of inherently political in and of itself. Yes. And here you have this like full contact team sport that not only you can be that unapologetically and fully embodied in this like even more extreme alter ego if

you want to be that. But also it is run by the skaters. It's not dictated by some national or international governing body that is overseen by a board of directors that everybody's out of touch with. Every league in every city in the world is run by its skaters or its alumni or its members at large. Boo-boo. And the governing body itself are all people in the community. So you are held accountable by your peers. And that's both a good thing and a bad thing in a lot of ways, but it certainly is different than what any other sport is doing.

Which also kind of speaks to in doing my research, I saw a lot of the DIY theme that just surfaces itself in different aspects of the entire sport. And I yelled out FUBU, For Us, By Us, because that's exactly what it is. And you're totally right. I have not seen that with any other sport. So that's amazing. Just seeing like where it came from and to now, how it has come into fruition is amazing.

Yeah, I believe that the For Us, By Us mentality is what makes Rollercoaster be special. It is also what makes us our own worst enemy sometimes. And I think I would be not a good representative of the community and of the sport if I didn't like specifically call that out. Like I know I have peers that would listen to this and they'd be like, you don't have to lie. Like, you don't have to like make it sound like it's perfect all the time.

Yeah, it's certainly not perfect all the time. It's certainly not perfect all the time. But short of having a large investment or like endowment of some kind that could really kickstart a meaningful explosion of growth, we have to hold our own destiny in our hands. And that means that it can only move as fast as the people who are playing it can move it. And that's like a whole other set of challenges because you have competing interests and different people want different things from the sport. Being international is really interesting, like just to put it in context here, like some of the countries here have national government support because their governments have athletic

programs that provide them with free training space or provide them with these resources. That's something that's built into their government. And then some countries have no support and also they're countries that struggle economically. And then you have places like in the US where you kind of have a little bit of everything where you have some leagues that are like massively successful and humongous and 500 members and you know, and these really, really successful programs and a paid staff. And then you also have your local leagues that are skating at city parks and putting on games underneath the park lights at night and just doing the best they can

to scrape together a couple hundred dollars a week to just go out and do this thing that they love. And those experiences all exist in the same community and that everybody is sort of considered a peer, but all of these players are having these very lopsided experiences of the exact same sport. That's very culty. And I think something about it operating like essentially kind of like a franchise where it's like a lot easier to run and you get a lot more security and knowing that it's a lot easier to run and you get a lot more security and knowing that it's a lot more accessible. But there's also a lot less eyes on things, a lot less making sure everyone's getting what they need, and just a lot less fairness when it gets on a larger scale like that, when there's less regulation.

Yeah. Well, I think the governing body to the best of its ability creates as even a playing field is reasonable with regulations and risk management guidelines and things like that. But the imbalance of resources is like a thing that is going to be a continued pain point for the sport for a long time to come. But I think like with women's sports, those resources are few and far between. And then you have something like roller derby and it's like, well, who's going to fund that? Right. Exactly.

Exactly. I mean, just look at how hard it was for the NWSL to really get the attention on women's soccer kick-started. It's been a long haul for women's soccer to gain the kind of respect and attention that it deserves. And only now do I think people are really starting to pay attention to women's soccer, women's basketball. I think we're sort of at like an interesting tipping point with some sports, and I think that's a really good thing that people actually like care and are talking about it. But like, I'll poke my eyeballs out if I have to spend the rest of my life having the same conversations about the value of women's sports versus men's

sports and how much more watchable men's sports are because it's just not true. No, no, it's a resource question. It's always been a resource question. It's always been a resource question. Yes. It's always been a time and availability question. I guarantee. Look at what the WNBA looks like now versus when it started up 30 years ago, right? If you had given women the same 80 years, whatever, to play basketball that men have had, the sports would look the same virtually. It would be indistinguishable.

Then, we wouldn't be having arguments about co-ed sports either, the hot take. Ooh, yeah, if everyone could just play sports, if everyone could play sports, then it wouldn't even be in it. But the starting line has to be the same at every point. Right? And that's the thing. You can't ever remove that variable, because history is what it is.

Patriarchy is what it is. It has existed for hundreds of years. And so we can't ever undo that thing that's been set in motion. So you have to make intentional movements to try to create those spaces and figure out ways to close the gap on resources for sports like this.

Ooh, that's good. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay.

Okay. Hello, my name is Mattitude Adjustment calling from the Roller Derby World Cup in Austria. And I think the cultiest thing about roller derby is that we give up all of our money and all of our free time to play this darn sport. Hi, my name is Ferocious calling in from the Roller Derby World Cup in Austria. And cultiest thing about roller derby is how it absolutely can take over every facet of your life.

So earlier you mentioned patriarchy switches, which I think is a perfect segue. I try to stay away from the buzzwords, but sometimes they just like slip out. Sometimes we just have to actually talk about the things that are the problem. God, for fucking sake. I know. I'm like, right now, whatever male listeners you have are like switching off because they're like, oh, not another one. All the ones we just got from the WWE episode are like unsubscribing to us.

100%. Sorry, guys. I'm like, listen, guys, we all love wrestling too. We're in. Stick around. You'll like us. You'll like this too, I swear. It's a perfect segue to talk about the over-sexualization

and the male gaze associated with how roller derby is portrayed in Hollywood media, all the things. So roller derby lives at the intersection of power and performance, but for many skaters, that power comes with a price. As scholar Rachel Sklar writes in Whip It Real Good, Gender Power and Roller Derby, even when skaters framed their outfits

as empowering or ironic, media coverage often reverted to fetishizing them, casting them as bad girls gone wild, rather than athletes with intent." End quote. In further exploration of this, an article entitled Derby Girls, Parodic Self-Sexualizations, Autonomy, Articulacy and Ambiguity, the authors suggest, and I'm paraphrasing the abstract,

when a woman's choices, especially around how she presents herself, line up a little too well with what society already expects from her, people start asking questions. Is it really her choice? Is it empowering? Or is she just playing the same old system?

Second way feminism often raised flags about women, quote, self- self sexualization, suggesting it might be internalized oppression. But third way of feminism, flip the script, reframing things like Derby gear, drag, and hyper femininity as expressions of confidence, autonomy, and agency. This tension shows up clearly in figures like Ronda Rousey. Shout out to my

girl Ronda Rousey. Love her. She is the reason I have adopted the quote, do nothing bitch. Love you girl if you're listening. Or the roller derby community. Women who lean into aggressive, sexual or theatrical personas. The argument here is that self-sexualization can be autonomous, not just a product of patriarchal conditioning. It's not automatically harmful and in fact it can come from a place of deep self-awareness and articulate choice. Still these performances don't happen in a vacuum. They exist inside gender power structures where the risk of commodifying female sexuality or reinforcing narrow ideas is always lingering.

Oh, patriarchy. So my question to you is, some skaters say their outfits, names, and derby personas are deeply feminist. Others say it can feel like playing into the male gaze. What's your take and can both be true at once? Okay, there's like many questions and many layers. First of all, I'm gonna start from the back forward.

Both things can absolutely be true. I think there can exist many truths all at once. Next question, is it for the male gaze? I don't know, it kind of is for the female gaze, if you ask me, like there's a lot of queer women in roller derby. I don't think they're doing it for the men. I hope not ask me. Like there's a lot of queer women in roller derby. I don't think they're doing it for the men. I hope not.

But to answer more earnestly, I think it's a lose-lose if you start talking about how women use their appearance or don't use their appearance. I think when you're talking about like what is sexy and what isn't sexy, there's like the version of it that is the like quote obvious, like male gaze focused version of sexiness. And then there's what you yourself think is sexy, that what feels sexy to you. And I think that doesn't fit neatly in the box of like, this

is what is sexy to the male gaze. It might fit in that sometimes, but it might also not fit into that. And I think there has to be room for both of those things, not because it's attractive to the male gaze, but because anyone can find anything sexy. Like I wear full face of makeup when I play. And I do get asked a lot, like, why do you do that? Like some skaters wear no makeup, some wear some sort of like cool face paint

that's like part of their persona. Like my persona is that I'm like full glam beat face for all my games. And for me, that's like part of my ritual that isn't for anyone else that is for me. It calms me before I play I sit in front of my mirror, I do my makeup, I feel a sense of strength and consistency. I feel like I know the person looking back at me when I put on that face for every game. And I'm not doing it for like, nameless man in the crowd. I don't care what that guy thinks of me. If I care what that guy thinks of me, that guy is probably not interested in roller derby,

actually. Like, that guy probably thinks that it's lame because good luck taming this group of women. My take on it is there's that version for everybody. Everyone is going to show up to play as the version of themselves that they feel best in. For some, it is literally just athletic wear. And for others, it's an opportunity to blur the line between what makes them feel good and what doesn't. But like, I mean, if you watch these World Cup teams this weekend, there's not a nary a fishnet in sight, right?

If you think that female athletes are sexy, newsflash, you're going to find that sexy no matter what we're wearing. And it doesn't have to be, you know, booty shorts. It's it's usually like not and because I don't know. I don't know. I always call back to like the lingerie football league, like watching. Do you guys remember that? Were you guys around? Do you know what this is? No. Okay. I'm gonna need you to do. Okay. So about 20 years ago, there was a women's football league called the lingerie football

league. I'm looking at Google images now. They had to play in lingerie. They had to wear garters. They had to wear like a push up bra with their shoulder pads and their like cleavage had to be showing. They had rules in the contract about how they had to be wearing a bra underneath their sports bra to like push up their cleavage. And all these women were basically like, well, we're getting paid

to pay to play a sport and like nobody else pays us. So I guess we're going to suck it up and do it. But like if you watch this, like I remember sitting and watching a game and just being like, this is insane because these women are unbelievable athletes, unbelievable. And they are being asked to run around in their underwear, all because women's sports are either underpaid or not paid. And they had the opportunity to get paid for their athletic prowess that they had spent their whole life developing. And the exchange was that they had to do it in their underwear?

And to be objectified while doing so. I don't begrudge them for doing it. I begrudge the patriarchal system that we live in that said the only way that you can do the thing you're good at is to do it in your underwear. And I also don't care if somebody does something that they're good at in their underwear if that's the thing they want to do that in. Right? Like pole dancing, beautiful.

Like, you know, gymnastics, you're basically in your underwear, you're in the thing they want to do that in, right? Like pole dancing, beautiful. You know, gymnastics, you're basically in your underwear, you're in a leotard. That's fine. But I don't think the most comfortable way to play full contact football is going to be with a garter and shoulder pads that don't cover your full chest because they have to, your whole torso has to be out in order to be consumed by the audience. So my argument isn't the underwear. My argument is that that's doing something with the male gaze fully held as the gold standard. They tried to rebrand it. I think it was like called Legends Football League, like so that it still had the LFL moniker. But I think it eventually

kind of went away because a lot of those women were like, screw it, I'll go play rugby or I'll just go play in full pads or maybe I just won't get paid to do this and that's okay too. But I think Roller Derby is the kind of place where one big reason why we're very DIY and we're like, we'll do this ourselves, like, please get away from us, man with big checkbook, is because of the fear that that big checkbook comes with the contract that says you have to do this in your underwear. And I don't think anybody in the sport wants to do that. I think there's so much special that's worth preserving, even if it means that we don't get to make it as big or as visible as fast as we would like it to. And my hope is that there are investors out there and that there are the right people

out there that are like, this sport is cool and I want to put some money into it, that don't have this like weird insidious like mustache twisting idea of what they want to do to it. And I believe that that has to be true, right? Like the whole thing with the Los Angeles Women's Football League starting Angel City Football Club was that it was a bunch of celebrities and investors that pooled their money to make that happen. So I want to believe that those people have begun to emerge and that they will continue

to but the roller derby at its core, I think, has rebuked that tendency to fall into that world by saying, we're going to do it ourselves so that you can't tell us what to do with it. If we want to wear booty shorts, we're going to wear booty shorts for us, but we're not going to do it for you or for your paycheck. You're culty on their own terms, bitch. Mic drop. It controls our cultiness.

Well, thank you for dropping those bars. I really, really, really appreciate it. You have opened a new can of worms, I'm afraid, because this sounds like another cult that I would like to participate in. ["The New World of the World"] ["The New World of the World"] Hi, I'm Shelok.

I'm calling in from the Roller Derby World Cup in Innsbruck, Austria. I think the cultiest thing about roller derby is how a lot of people enter it straight, realize they're not and end up leaving their partners for someone on their team. My name is Red5 calling in from the World Cup roller derby in Austria and I think the cultiest thing is the impenetrable rules lingo in Derby. Okay, so now I think it's a perfect time for us to transition into our favorite part of the episode, which is where we decide collectively what our verdict is.

Is this a live your life? Is this a watch your back? Or is this a get the fuck out? Reese, what do you think? I'm living my life, I'll be. I mean, we weren't gonna sit here and have this much fun, then I was gonna be like, actually, I think everyone should be really careful

and not participate. No, like, I think it's a cult, but like, I think it's, like you said, kind of a cult out of necessity. I mean, sports are inherently culty, but I think all of the parts of it that are cultier than other sports are out of necessity and for the good of women. So it's a win for me. Yeah. Rachel, what about you? Yeah, Rachel, what about you?

I'm a lifer. I'm in it forever. So I've drank the I'm a lifer. I'm in it forever. So I've drank the Kool-Aid. I'm in the cult. You know, like I'm a certified member of the Church of Skatin. Woo! That's good!

I love that. Chelsea. You already know I'm a full supporter of any cult that allows people to let their freak flag fly. And so for me, it is always gonna be a live your life. I am feeling a sense of gratitude right now, leaving this recording, just learning so much about this world

and hoping to like, I don't know, if we could be a catalyst in any way to get some more visibility for roller derby. Because I mean, this is like, this is the, listen, when I went to my first game, I was like, this is lit. This is- I wanna go now, I've never been. You gotta go, girl.

Sounds like a cool outing. We would love to have you. So Rachel, can you do us a favor? If you would like any of our listeners to come and follow you, can you just shout out any of your socials? Yeah, absolutely. My name again is Rachel Rotten.

My Instagram is at rachetilldeath. That's R-A-C-H-T-I-L-L-D-E-A-T-H. My league's Instagram is at AngelCityDerby. And if you want to follow the World Cup, that's at Roller Derby World Cup and you can follow at USA Roller Derby as we try to hold on to the gold medal for the fourth time in a row. No we don't. Flicks. Well, colties, that is our show. Thank you so much for listening.

Join us for a new episode next week and in the meantime, stay culty, but not too culty. The listener call-ins you heard on this episode are all from the folks currently at the Rollerates on the ground in Austria and sending us these listener call-ins. ["Skate on the Ground"] Sounds like a cult was created by Amanda Montell and edited by Jordan Moore of the PodCabin. This episode was produced by Chelsea Charles

and hosted by Reese Oliver and Chelsea Charles. Our managing producer is Katie Epperson. Our theme music is by Casey Kolb. If you enjoyed the show, we'd really appreciate it if you could leave it a five stars on Spotify or Apple podcasts. And if you like this podcast, feel free to check out Amanda's book, Cultish the Language of Fanaticism, which inspired the show. You might also enjoy her other books, The Age of Magical Overthinking, Notes on Modern Irrationality, and Word Slut, A Feminist's Guide to Taking Back the English Language.

Thanks as well to our network, Studio71, and be sure to follow the Sounds Like a Cult team on Instagram for all the discourse at Sounds Like a Cult Pod, or support us on Patreon to listen to the show ad free at patreon.com sounds like a cult