Speaker 1: Okay, listen today, I have a confession to make. I've
Speaker 1: lived in England for eighteen years and I still don't
Speaker 1: support a football team. That's because the sport I follow
Speaker 1: religiously is cricket, and yet there is something magical about
Speaker 1: the Football World Cup. I return home after a long
Speaker 1: work day and I feel compelled to watch the game,
Speaker 1: even if it is Cape Verde or Kurisow playing, or
Speaker 1: as it turns out, particularly after watching those games when
Speaker 1: Cape Verde and Kurisaw are playing. There is a good
Speaker 1: reason why the World Cup is the most followed sporting event,
Speaker 1: and this year's tournament is bigger than ever, happening in
Speaker 1: places that are hotter than ever. This is zero. I
Speaker 1: am Akshadrati this week the future of sport on an
Speaker 1: overheating planet. There are two big questions here. The first
Speaker 1: is what is climate change doing to sport? And the
Speaker 1: other is what is sport doing to climate change? Sporting
Speaker 1: events have an emissions impact, and a heating planet has
Speaker 1: impacts on athletes and fans who are facing risks to
Speaker 1: their health and well being doing things that they love.
Speaker 1: From adding extra hydration breaks at this year's World Cup
Speaker 1: to the Tokyo Olympics, moving the marathon event a thousand
Speaker 1: kilometers northward to manage the heat, to having air conditioned
Speaker 1: stadiums at the Qatar World Cup, to shortening the lengths
Speaker 1: of stages in the Tour de France cycling event. Climate
Speaker 1: change is forcing sport to adapt, but how long can
Speaker 1: they continue to do this when we all continue to
Speaker 1: heat up the planet. To discuss all this and more,
Speaker 1: I am joined by Jessica Murphy, a researcher and professor
Speaker 1: at the University of North Carolina who studies the intersection
Speaker 1: of sport and climate change. As always, if you've got
Speaker 1: feedback or guest suggestions for Zero, get in touch at
Speaker 1: zero port at Bloomberg dot net. Jessica, welcome to Zero.
Speaker 2: Hi, thank you so much.
Speaker 1: Let's start with the impact of a hot planet on
Speaker 1: sports itself, and let's look at the Football World Cup,
Speaker 1: because it's here, the biggest sporting event. It's happening at
Speaker 1: peak somewhere in some very hot places in North America.
Speaker 1: You're speaking to us from North America, and by now
Speaker 1: almost everyone has seen that these games have added a
Speaker 1: hydration break midway through each half, and that's a decision
Speaker 1: to avoid heat strokes. But athletes are people who are
Speaker 1: already competing at the extremes of their body. They're already
Speaker 1: pushing themselves far beyond what most of us are capable of.
Speaker 1: So in that context, is climate change a few degrees
Speaker 1: celsius of heat much of an issue.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, when you're already at an extreme as far as
Speaker 3: the capacity of what your body can do, any slight
Speaker 3: shift is that much more dynamic. A matter of degrees
Speaker 3: year over year really shows up physiologically, mentally, economically, all
Speaker 3: things are stretched that much further when bodies are pushed
Speaker 3: to an extreme, when lifestyles are pushed to an extreme.
Speaker 3: So any slight change can really be at times catastrophic
Speaker 3: and other times and accelerant for human performance.
Speaker 1: And can you talk through some examples of what catastrophe
Speaker 1: looks like for an athlete in heart conditions.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And exertional related heat illness in many cases is catastrophic,
Speaker 3: and it is a combination at least what we've seen
Speaker 3: as our planet has gotten warmer, that exertional related heat
Speaker 3: illnesses aren't due to one hundred percent to the exertion
Speaker 3: of the body, but it is a combination of the
Speaker 3: exertion of the body. Our bodies produce heat but also
Speaker 3: the heat of our planet in the ambient temperatures, so
Speaker 3: a combination of both can many times be a medical catastrophe.
Speaker 3: Anything ranging from heat syncoped to heat exhaustion, heat stroke.
Speaker 2: Those are.
Speaker 3: Public health concerns that do have a fatality rate associated
Speaker 3: with them when it's hot. We do talk a lot
Speaker 3: about hydration, sunburn, things that are also very medically severe,
Speaker 3: but takes a bit longer for those to have a
Speaker 3: fatality rate. The heat stroke has a palpable fatality rate
Speaker 3: that can really affect people who are putting their bodies
Speaker 3: on the line, and that's elite athletes, but also farmers
Speaker 3: and construction workers and people who you know do very
Speaker 3: physically demanding things. But medical catastrophes aren't the only thing.
Speaker 3: Like there are environmental hazards that can render sport unplayable.
Speaker 3: We've seen entire stadiums and arenas destroyed due to climate catastrophes,
Speaker 3: So there's a spectrum there.
Speaker 1: Sticking to the impact on body, there's heat, of course,
Speaker 1: and heat can be dry heat or it can be
Speaker 1: wet heat and humidity, and a lot of the warnings
Speaker 1: going into the World Cup were to look at like
Speaker 1: players in Miami in Florida playing in humidity. How exactly
Speaker 1: is this combination of heat and humidity a problem.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm speaking to you from the southeastern United States,
Speaker 3: and we've got this trifecta perfect storm of hazards. Picture
Speaker 3: it as a triangle of heat, humidity, and direct sunlight.
Speaker 3: When they owe lab they're really difficult to manage physiologically.
Speaker 3: So heat is one thing where drier heats we can
Speaker 3: cool the body off. But that's the interesting thing about sweating.
Speaker 3: The mechanism that cools our body down and be sweat
Speaker 3: is evaporation. When the air is humid, and it's I
Speaker 3: think we've got an eighty percent humidity here today. You
Speaker 3: can taste it, you can kind of chew.
Speaker 2: Through the air.
Speaker 3: There's already water in the air, which means our sweat
Speaker 3: now is not evaporating. Instead, it's a layer of sweat
Speaker 3: that is warming up.
Speaker 2: A lot of times.
Speaker 3: You know, you put an ice pack on, you get
Speaker 3: some cooling relief from how cool it is. Imagine if
Speaker 3: an ice pack was warm. That's kind of what it
Speaker 3: feels like when sweat can't evaporate off of the body
Speaker 3: and effectively cool itself down.
Speaker 2: That on top of direct.
Speaker 3: Sunlight makes playing surfaces extremely warm, and it's the body
Speaker 3: working against itself to try to cool off. And as
Speaker 3: the body works against itself to cool off, now it
Speaker 3: is expending energy on protecting itself rather than the energy
Speaker 3: to play soccer if that makes it, or to play football.
Speaker 1: And you know, we started with football because it's here
Speaker 1: and soccer as you call it in America. We talked
Speaker 1: about the hydration breaks because of the heat and the humidity.
Speaker 1: But just taking a step back, is there like a
Speaker 1: ranking of the most affected sports when it comes to
Speaker 1: climate change?
Speaker 2: Hmmm, that's a great question.
Speaker 3: Definitive ranking, probably not, but generally and at least what
Speaker 3: we see here in the States that they mirror the
Speaker 3: summer and the warmer months. So those sports that take
Speaker 3: place between spring and fall traditional seasons, right, but now,
Speaker 3: from an environmental standpoint, those are very blurry lines have
Speaker 3: a greater exposure to certain heat related hazards because of
Speaker 3: the duration of when the sport is traditionally played. But
Speaker 3: then also competition time, competition duration, and frequency of performance.
Speaker 3: So what comes to mind for me really is baseball
Speaker 3: that is really popular right now? And through a lot
Speaker 3: of the same geographies that we're seeing the World Cup
Speaker 3: playing out with multiple games in a week, lots of travel,
Speaker 3: lots of demands on the body. So baseball is one
Speaker 3: that has a high exposure to some of the most
Speaker 3: critical components that you know increase vulnerability for a sport.
Speaker 3: But soccer, football, track and field, some of these other
Speaker 3: ones where we can really see the exertion might come
Speaker 3: to mind first.
Speaker 1: So I grew up in India, and in India, cricket
Speaker 1: is the national obsession. And you know, cricket now actually
Speaker 1: has a US exposure, it has a premier league, and
Speaker 1: I know that the twenty eight Olympics is going to
Speaker 1: feature cricket. It's played outdoors that had these huge pitches,
Speaker 1: there are no roofs, and of course playing in India
Speaker 1: means high temperatures and in many cases high humidity. Are
Speaker 1: there sports you think that would be unplayable in to
Speaker 1: three degree celsius warming that is coming by twenty fifty
Speaker 1: or even twenty one hundred.
Speaker 3: Yes, the short answer is yes. I love cricket. I
Speaker 3: wish that it was more popular. I wish it was
Speaker 3: something that I could have played growing up. I have
Speaker 3: I exposed some of my students to it last summer
Speaker 3: and we did a whole lesson and were coached, and
Speaker 3: they fell in love with it. And it took a
Speaker 3: lot of convincing to be like, this is a really,
Speaker 3: really popular sport, so let's learn about it and grow
Speaker 3: some appreciation. And I think through that we can be
Speaker 3: a little bit more empathetic to the realities that other
Speaker 3: sports face beyond what is normal or most popular or
Speaker 3: most televised wherever you happen to grow up.
Speaker 1: Sports changes all the time, right, Like the cricket has
Speaker 1: gone from playing being a five day game to now
Speaker 1: having a four hour format. Are there ways in which
Speaker 1: you have seen other sports also change because of climate
Speaker 1: change that we are seeing. So we saw a hydration
Speaker 1: break in this World Cup. Any other examples that come
Speaker 1: to your mind.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, I talked about baseball already. There have been rule
Speaker 3: changes and a lot of sports to speed up the
Speaker 3: pace of play. A lot of the times that's marketed
Speaker 3: for entertainment purposes. Right, we have very short attention spans
Speaker 3: as human beings, but it also decreases the time that
Speaker 3: we are exposed to the environment. Pace of play makes
Speaker 3: what was a three and a half hour game a
Speaker 3: three hour game, and that is a considerable amount of
Speaker 3: time saved. There are sports that don't really exist outdoors anymore,
Speaker 3: where we're seeing the adaptations of the sport being moved indoors,
Speaker 3: and in a lot of cases we see that in
Speaker 3: our snow and ice sports they're played inside. So the
Speaker 3: National Hockey League just wrapped up. We saw Stanley Cup
Speaker 3: here in town. The NHL is one hundred percent indoor league.
Speaker 3: But hockey originated outdoors on ponds that used to freeze,
Speaker 3: and so these are slow shifts that over a person's lifetime,
Speaker 3: we won't see the entire time span of the adaptation
Speaker 3: or the change of the sport, but we do see
Speaker 3: these little tweaks across a lot of sports. Equipment is
Speaker 3: changing the style of uniform Shorts are getting shorter, and
Speaker 3: pads and helmets are getting lighter to make accommodations and
Speaker 3: adaptations for changing climate. Distance runners right, like, the uniforms
Speaker 3: are just getting less and less, which is a pro
Speaker 3: and con. There's a lot of technological advances to that,
Speaker 3: but it does a different It has a different effect
Speaker 3: on sun exposure and moisture wiking, Like there are these
Speaker 3: constant shifts over time where one day we'll look back
Speaker 3: and say, wow, this sport has changed entirely from how
Speaker 3: I remember it.
Speaker 2: But in the moment there are these little tweaks.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And in cricket, as you know, the ball itself is
Speaker 1: made of leather and it changes as it is played
Speaker 1: in a longer game, especially how the ball changes is
Speaker 1: very important, and temperature has an impact on that, and
Speaker 1: the surface has an impact on that. You know, the
Speaker 1: surface can get drier much faster and as a result
Speaker 1: can have more impact on the ball, can change the
Speaker 1: trajectory of the ball, So that's also going to change
Speaker 1: the game.
Speaker 3: Surfaces is a totally different topic. That is another podcast episode.
Speaker 3: I think if you are talking about grass and fields
Speaker 3: and you know, that is a different can of worms altogether.
Speaker 1: Talking of grass, you know Wimbledon played in very hot temperatures, Like,
Speaker 1: what would the changes to grass to the game.
Speaker 3: Oh, my gosh, that's a great question. Tennis is so
Speaker 3: interesting to me because there are eight plus different ways
Speaker 3: that the game can be played, which is really really cool.
Speaker 3: And grass is an element that is so controlled and
Speaker 3: manicured in sport, But at the end of the day,
Speaker 3: it is a natural element in a lot of cases.
Speaker 3: So turf management is a really comprehensive field when it
Speaker 3: comes to sport and athlete health and safety, but then
Speaker 3: also the playability of the game. So we can see
Speaker 3: the ball bounce in different ways, we can see how players.
Speaker 2: Their bodies respond.
Speaker 3: To changes in friction in turf density, lots of slips
Speaker 3: and a rolled ankle here and there. That can come
Speaker 3: down to how used this place on the grass is,
Speaker 3: and the environment has a lot to do with that,
Speaker 3: even if all of the right steps are taken to
Speaker 3: preserve it. That conversation has come up some here regarding
Speaker 3: the World Cup, especially the sites that are NFL hosts,
Speaker 3: and the transition from artificial turf to natural turf grass
Speaker 3: and the soil at the concrete and the substrates underneath
Speaker 3: the grass, and how that might affect the trajectory of
Speaker 3: the ball, or how high the ball bounces, or how
Speaker 3: bouncy the ground is when a player falls. All of
Speaker 3: these things that when you're watching on TV can be
Speaker 3: really hard to digest and see, and so it's super
Speaker 3: comprehensive and really interesting, and I expect it to be
Speaker 3: an area that changes.
Speaker 1: After the break. I asked Jessica Murphrey what responsibility athletes
Speaker 1: and teams have to raise climate change as an issue
Speaker 1: for their sports. If you're enjoying this episode of Zero,
Speaker 1: please write us a review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or
Speaker 1: YouTube and email us at zero port at Bloomberg dot net.
Speaker 1: I want to come to the impact of sports on
Speaker 1: climate change. Yeah, but let's come to emissions from travel
Speaker 1: a little bit later. Let's first address the bigger point
Speaker 1: which I feel like we don't talk about often enough,
Speaker 1: which is that sports icons are cultural influencers. These are
Speaker 1: athletes with huge following who, if they wanted, can raise
Speaker 1: the profile of climate change and make people think about
Speaker 1: the issues in front of us more.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Are you seeing players take that responsibility seriously?
Speaker 2: Yes?
Speaker 3: And there's been what I would say a great increase
Speaker 3: in athlete activism and advocacy on behalf of the environment
Speaker 3: here recently over the last five or ten years, and
Speaker 3: social media has certainly helped with that. As far as
Speaker 3: the platform and athletes are doing this, I think in
Speaker 3: different ways. Not everyone is extremely outspoken, but they're making
Speaker 3: decisions on behalf of themselves and their followers or their fans,
Speaker 3: So there's a whole host of female football players that
Speaker 3: signed a protest against so fuel sponsorships of professional soccer,
Speaker 3: which is amazing to see, especially coming from female athletes,
Speaker 3: as women and children face greater climate vulnerabilities. Having that
Speaker 3: power come from a sector in the sport that is
Speaker 3: often overlooked and underpaid, I think is really powerful and impactful.
Speaker 3: A lot of the times we do see climate champions
Speaker 3: sprinkled throughout a league or concentrated on a specific team,
Speaker 3: and there are some sport federations and organizations working to
Speaker 3: make it more of a collective effort.
Speaker 1: But it is still, as you said, few places and
Speaker 1: few sport and few people inside a sport that are
Speaker 1: doing it. In cricket, for example, the Australian captain Pat
Speaker 1: Cummins is talked about climate change, but it's not like
Speaker 1: every player or every team has a player that talks
Speaker 1: about these issues. Is that because there is still a
Speaker 1: political cost to talking about climate change that there might
Speaker 1: be a backlash if you take this topic up.
Speaker 3: I think there are a lot of costs, and politics
Speaker 3: is certainly one of them, and then fan alienation is
Speaker 3: another one that's sort of been studied at the organizational level.
Speaker 3: I'm not entirely sure about at the individual athlete level,
Speaker 3: but there's definitely some concerns. Athletes have also historically been
Speaker 3: put in a box outside of environmental issues, but social ones,
Speaker 3: political ones, educational ones where people look to them to win,
Speaker 3: to score points and earn medals. Anything outside of that,
Speaker 3: regardless of the domain, has historically been scrutinized to the
Speaker 3: point where their livelihoods are at risk. And this is
Speaker 3: extended long before there was climate advocacy in sport. On
Speaker 3: some of the greatest playing fields the Olympic Games, super Bowls,
Speaker 3: Australian opens that there's a lot of pushback when athletes
Speaker 3: do anything other than compete well, and that's a really
Speaker 3: difficult position to be in.
Speaker 1: One more shout out should be for David Pocock, who
Speaker 1: we've had on the Zero podcast as a politician, but
Speaker 1: before he became a politician in the Australian Senate, he
Speaker 1: was the captain of the Australian rugby team and he
Speaker 1: chained himself to a coal mining equipment while he was
Speaker 1: still playing. Then of course took that activism to politics,
Speaker 1: so sometimes you do get people who take it all
Speaker 1: the way to have impact on the world in a
Speaker 1: positive way. Now, let's come to the smaller but real
Speaker 1: impact as well, which is carbon emissions. There are forty
Speaker 1: eight teams competing in this World Club, the most ever,
Speaker 1: across three countries, the most ever, and that's why the
Speaker 1: carbon emissions expected from this World Cup are also most ever.
Speaker 1: Seven point eight million metric tons of CO two is
Speaker 1: expected to be emitted as part of it, most of
Speaker 1: it linked to the travel that happens of the audience
Speaker 1: coming to watch these games. If that's the case that
Speaker 1: we know fan travel is what causes the emissions, what
Speaker 1: can we really do about it, because that is aviation
Speaker 1: fans would like to see the sport. How is it
Speaker 1: that the system can help address this portion of emissions.
Speaker 3: Yeah, great question, and I would have to lump together
Speaker 3: fan travel and team and personnel travel as well. Because
Speaker 3: of the platform that we discussed that sport has, the
Speaker 3: teams and the executives are not exempt from traveling. The
Speaker 3: responsibility cannot be put entirely on the fans. Playing sport
Speaker 3: and enjoying sport is a part of being human, and
Speaker 3: those who are least responsible for the level of crisis
Speaker 3: shouldn't bear the entirety of the guilt and the shame
Speaker 3: around it.
Speaker 2: It is.
Speaker 3: You know, fans are operating in the system that was
Speaker 3: provided to them, and those are choices that happen at
Speaker 3: the institutional level. The announcement of a three country, singular
Speaker 3: continent tournament received an intense amount of pushback. The schedule
Speaker 3: received an intense amount of pushback, the number of teams,
Speaker 3: the fossil fuel sponsors. All of these things receive pushback,
Speaker 3: but the decision goes ahead. Does that mean then that
Speaker 3: fans are not allowed to enjoy sport, or that we
Speaker 3: should all boycott the largest display of one of the
Speaker 3: most popular sports on Earth because of it, or should
Speaker 3: people still be conscious, concerned and cognizant while also cheering
Speaker 3: on their country. So there's no hard and fast answer
Speaker 3: to that, but the responsibility comes down to those who
Speaker 3: make the decision on what this tournament should look like.
Speaker 3: FIFA has adapted in the past. Look at Men's twenty
Speaker 3: twenty two in a totally different time of year. Lots
Speaker 3: of changes were made to have the cutter tournament.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean the cutter Tournament would be the second
Speaker 1: highest carbon emitter after this World Cup, not because there
Speaker 1: was that much fan travel because it all happened in
Speaker 1: one country in close proximity, but because of the construction
Speaker 1: cost of building these mega stadiums to accommodate so many people.
Speaker 1: You have written that some of these mega events, because
Speaker 1: they move from location to location at every iteration, introduces
Speaker 1: all sorts of problems construction costs, fan travel, but there's
Speaker 1: also environmental conditions that change that organizers have to adapt to.
Speaker 1: Should we just agree on one permanent location for or
Speaker 1: many of these sporting events and just make that be
Speaker 1: the case in the future. Would that even be feasible?
Speaker 3: One location is pretty tough, but a rotation of a
Speaker 3: select few might be the best next step. And to
Speaker 3: your point, the research really is about disrupting the status quo.
Speaker 3: It doesn't have to be bigger than the last time.
Speaker 3: It doesn't have to have more teams than the last time,
Speaker 3: or seat more fans than the last time. It doesn't
Speaker 3: have to be every four years either. We could go
Speaker 3: six years and that might not be the most outrageous
Speaker 3: thing if it means we're protecting the planet, we're protecting people,
Speaker 3: we're letting our earth breathe a little bit. Before asking
Speaker 3: of all of these demands to host something so large
Speaker 3: a singular site might actually do more harm than good
Speaker 3: for that specific location. Now is a concentrate of emissions, construction, degradation, depletion, deforestation,
Speaker 3: and then historically the economic benefits that are oftentimes associated
Speaker 3: with sport aren't necessarily accurate to what is experienced and
Speaker 3: lived through by local communities, and so that actually might
Speaker 3: be pretty harmful. But a little bit of rest and
Speaker 3: something similar to what the International Olympic Committee has been
Speaker 3: doing is awarding these bids to locations that have existing infrastructure.
Speaker 3: So to your point, right, like the Cutter tournament, a
Speaker 3: lot of that was from brand new construction, and so
Speaker 3: that's something that's not happening in the US. But emissions
Speaker 3: are still extremely high. But with the Olympic and Paralympic
Speaker 3: Games in Paris and then Los Angeles, the infrastructure is there,
Speaker 3: from the airport to the transit to the facilities and hotels.
Speaker 3: That certainly does help, But that doesn't mean the Olympics
Speaker 3: needs to be in Los Angeles every four years or
Speaker 3: every however often.
Speaker 1: You know, you brought up sportswashing a lot of the
Speaker 1: mega tournaments and it's not just this football World Cup,
Speaker 1: but you can take to the France, you can take
Speaker 1: the Cricket World Cup. Almost all of these events have
Speaker 1: large fossil fuel sponsorship, and of course the advertising and
Speaker 1: sponsorship money helps these teams and perhaps some of them
Speaker 1: will not be able to compete without it. But how
Speaker 1: should people and teams be thinking about the money that's
Speaker 1: coming from fossil fuel companies into these sporting events.
Speaker 3: That is a seven layer question, I think, because of
Speaker 3: how connected all of these institutions and industries are. It's
Speaker 3: very difficult to separate fossil fuel companies from financial institutions,
Speaker 3: from media rights holders, and sport at such a high
Speaker 3: level sits in some tumbleweed of all of.
Speaker 2: Those those industries.
Speaker 3: It's a lot of the same people running the same
Speaker 3: companies that have been in relationship with each other for
Speaker 3: a very very long time. A great example, I think
Speaker 3: are the beverage companies that we see as some of
Speaker 3: the title sponsors at some of the world's largest sporting events.
Speaker 3: But those beverage companies are in the business of selling
Speaker 3: bottled sports drinks and bottled soda and bottled water, and
Speaker 3: so that's plastic, and that's oil, and that's fossil fuels.
Speaker 2: You see.
Speaker 3: So these are so intricately linked that understanding or even
Speaker 3: wrapping our minds around what sport looks like, at least
Speaker 3: as we can consume it on television will look entirely
Speaker 3: different walking away from some of those sponsors that are
Speaker 3: deeply nested in other ones. But what's really great is
Speaker 3: that the solutions do exist, and it might just come
Speaker 3: down to a matter of creativity and the disruption to
Speaker 3: the status quo, like maybe not having the tournament so
Speaker 3: often means that we're running fewer commercials and the travel
Speaker 3: is a bit more spread out and you can start
Speaker 3: to divest a little bit over time. I don't think
Speaker 3: there's a cold Turkey approach to sponsorship and marketing for
Speaker 3: sport at any level, let alone at the top.
Speaker 1: Obviously, summer is getting hotter, as we are seeing in
Speaker 1: this World Cup, but Kata has shown us that it's
Speaker 1: possible to just move a summer sport to an autumn
Speaker 1: and make it work anyway. I'd be likely to see
Speaker 1: now a lot picks move from the summer to the autumn.
Speaker 1: Is that how we're going to adapt to climate change
Speaker 1: when it comes to playing sport at the elite level?
Speaker 3: I certainly think that that should be on the table.
Speaker 3: The precedent has been set, it's been done before. We've
Speaker 3: moved tournaments, we've canceled events because of global public health crises.
Speaker 3: So there's not a whole lot of backing behind This
Speaker 3: is impossible, This can't be done. We've never done it,
Speaker 3: because we certainly have, and creative shifts like that are
Speaker 3: going to have to take place to protect the health
Speaker 3: and safety of people, because to your first question, sport
Speaker 3: will cease to exist if the people can no longer
Speaker 3: do it, regardless of if we've got the capacity to
Speaker 3: host the event, if people cannot play it, it cannot happen.
Speaker 3: And so rescheduling, postponing, relocations, adding in extra time between iterations,
Speaker 3: these are all very plausible options. Playing in an empty
Speaker 3: stadium to protect health and wellness. We've done that before,
Speaker 3: and so sport at the top level, I think certainly
Speaker 3: should consider that to preserve sport. But I want to
Speaker 3: add a little bit to what you said, because we
Speaker 3: associate sport so closely with the season in which it happens,
Speaker 3: which for you and I has such a global north perspective.
Speaker 3: Summer to us is not summer to the southern hemisphere,
Speaker 3: And so what a summer sport is depends on where
Speaker 3: you're located. Here in the States, we play basketball in
Speaker 3: the winter, So is basketball a winter sport or is
Speaker 3: ice hockey a winter sport?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 3: So there's a nuance and some cultural attachment to what
Speaker 3: a season even means. And if the seasons are changing,
Speaker 3: then are associate of the sport with the season?
Speaker 2: Can also change?
Speaker 1: Will the World Sauna Championship be the next big thing?
Speaker 1: And I'm not making a facetious point here because there
Speaker 1: used to be a World Endurance contest held in Finland
Speaker 1: between nineteen ninety nine and twenty ten as the World
Speaker 1: Sauna Championship.
Speaker 2: Sauna.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think my students would love that. I do
Speaker 3: start a lot of conversations with what is a sport? Right, like.
Speaker 2: What is it?
Speaker 3: And can we change it? But this is another thing
Speaker 3: like we saw marble racing during the COVID pandemic on television,
Speaker 3: racing glass marbles through the sand at the beach. Anything
Speaker 3: is possible.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Jessica, Thank you, and thank you for listening
Speaker 1: to zero. Now for the sound of the week. That
Speaker 1: is the sound of polite shock at Wimbledon after Giovanni
Speaker 1: Pericard broke the record for Wimbledon's fastest serve at one
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty three miles per hour or two forty
Speaker 1: six kilometers per hour. And now, before the usual credits,
Speaker 1: I want to take a moment to thank Sharon Chen,
Speaker 1: who has shepherded this podcast over the past few years
Speaker 1: and who is now moving from the Bloomberg Green team
Speaker 1: to the Finance team. Her smart suggestions and snappy headlines
Speaker 1: have made this podcast better and we will miss having
Speaker 1: her in the team. Thank you, Sharon. If you liked
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Speaker 1: was produced by Oscar boyd Our. Theme music is composed
Speaker 1: by Wonderly Special Thanks to Alissa McDonald, Soamersadi and Laura Milan.
Speaker 1: I'm Akshadrati beat back so