This is a preview of our full episode that you can access over at http://Patreon.com/muckrakepodcast
Become a member today and help us maintain our editorial independence as well as unlock a lot of special features like live shows and our private discord.
Co-hosts Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman delve deep into the crisis in the Middle East and the ramifications it has on a geo-political scale. They also discuss how this relates to the clown show of a process to elect a new speaker of the house as Jim Jordan’s bid appears to have failed.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Welcome to the Weekender Edition of the Muckrag Podcast.
I'm Jared Yates Sexton, and I am so happy that I am reunited and feel so good.
I'm here with my good buddy, Nick Hausman.
Good to see you.
Good to talk to you, pal.
One might say we're as solid as a rock.
No, we're both on the road, and we're going to talk about what's been going on and what we've been doing.
Obviously, on this episode of The Weekender, we're going to talk about what's going on in Israel.
We're going to unpack a lot of different things.
We got to talk about the Speaker of the House debacle, a whole host of things.
Nick, it has been You know, the last couple episodes that we've had to talk about this, this is obviously a really, really hard, dangerous, at times, demoralizing situation.
We're definitely going to get into it.
Go over to patreon.com slash markgrigpodcast to listen to the whole ordeal.
But before we do that, I thought it would be good for us.
I thought it'd be good for our listeners.
Let's talk a little bit about what we've been doing as we've been traveling around, as we haven't been able to connect.
Nick, I don't know if people know this, but you were recently profiled in Forbes for what you are doing.
You're having a little bit of a moment right now.
I guess so.
Yeah, I mean, you know, so I think we might have mentioned it at some point, but over the last couple of years I've, in my basketball trials and travails, I invented a new defense.
And it's kind of radical because you play behind the ball.
And so I've been slowly leaking out little bits and pieces of it as I've been running it with players and learning how to teach it and all that stuff.
And so I did a video on it on my YouTube channel about a month ago, and I've done like 50 zooms across the world at all levels with coaches who want to run it.
And then Matt Issa who works for Forbes called me up and said I want to do a profile on this.
And I am now, I've been on the road the last week.
I've been in Missouri at Baptist Bible College, which is a small college program.
And then I'm also right now in Queens, New York, at Queens College, which is Division II.
And they're a major.
They got major athletes in size and all that stuff.
And I've been teaching them how to run this offense.
And it's been truly remarkable and amazing, especially because you have college coaches that are literally just stepping aside and letting me be the head coach for 45 minutes at a time of their practice.
And it's been amazing.
So what I love about this is you're immediately going into the specifics of the defense, which is really amazing, by the way.
And I remember when you told me about it, I was so excited about it.
But I want to point out because you're being you're not tipping your cap too much.
Nick, you were featured in Forbes magazine, basically and credited with possibly changing the future of a sport like that.
that they made and like, you know, that's as cool as it gets.
Like, how are you feeling?
Do you feel like you're on the edge of something?
Does it feel really good? - You know what the best part about it is, is you know, when I was growing up, I had a Bobby Knight style coach in sixth and seventh grade.
And what made that worse was that we were 11 fucking years old having to deal with exactly what Bobby Knight would have done to his college age kids.
And so part of the thing about this defense is that you don't care that you're going to get beat because you're trying to get behind the player.
So you're removing all of that anger and frustration that coaches generally have.
On the defensive end.
So you're actually creating a more positive environment and if they shoot the shot we want, I don't care if it goes in.
If they shoot that mid-range shot with a hand up or a floater with a hand up, it's a victory because we know that the percentage is low.
So I've actually, let me just put it this way.
The Queens College, we were running it for like, you know, almost two hours straight.
It was late at night, like a 630 at night, right?
We're getting done.
The coach calls everybody together as if we're going to huddle up and finish the practice.
And everyone said, coach, can we just, can we keep playing?
Can we keep running this defense?
And I got to tell you, I've never heard that before, you know, in that kind of a setting.
So there's something about it where we're creating an environment as we move into the, you know, the notion of how to buy.
How better to actually communicate as a coach that's your your players to unlock more potential and this is exactly what it's doing and that can't make me any more excited because we can once and for all help that culture of you know abuse basically when you're using anger and disgust to communicate we can help that you know recede more and then tap into something better for the players and that's really what it's all about.
You know, Nick, as long as we've known each other, and of course, I'm a Hoosier who grew up with Bobby Knight as sort of the main cultural figure.
Like, you know, all I wanted in the world was to play for Bobby Knight.
Thank God I didn't.
But I had my fair share of coaches who were using Bobby Knight's methods that you've talked about.
But you and I have talked a lot about that culture of coaching that is abusive and rough.
But what you're trying to do, I want to point out, it's not just about basketball.
It's what I think You and I both in our work and what a lot of other people are trying to do which is taking these old outmoded things of abuse and trauma and just sort of like these awful things that other people are fighting for and telling us that are important and like not only, I want to point out and I don't think I've said it in so many words,
I'm so proud of you for pushing the boundaries of your profession, but also doing it in a way that is, like, informed with trying to make it better.
I think that's really damn cool, man.
Well, you know, I appreciate that, and it is rewarding, even to get this far, because, again, what is this going to happen?
Is this going to take the world by storm?
Are we going to, you know, I kind of have a three-year plan where, you know, sort of smaller colleges run it this year, Division I colleges run it next year, and then, you know, maybe the NBA in the third year.
And that would be another one of those incredible things where, you know, in the past, if you had done something like this, you probably would end up being obscure.
People don't know who you are.
And, you know, there's a lot of who invented the two-three zone, right?
No one, you know, has that credit.
I'm not necessarily out there for the credit, but we live in a social media society where it could exist that way anyway.
But at least my motivations are pure in the sense that we want to try and change it for the good and unlock more potential for more players.
We probably all recognize the pattern here where a coach will detonate on a player, scream and yell, all this anger and all this stuff, and then he'll sit next to him at the end of practice or after practice and put his hand on his knee and say, Hey man, you know, I love you.
You know, I think you can do better.
That's what, you know, now that whole scenario is describing an abusive relationship, right?
And we need to stop that.
That would be like a man who's battering his wife and then afterwards he comes down and he tries to apologize and hug her and say, I love you, right?
It's the same thing.
So if we can change that, that would make it worth it for me either way.
And that's the most important thing.
And if people remember that I was the one that kind of developed this, then that's nice too.
Well, one of the cooler things about this, and again, it's not just basketball, I think, you know, in the research I'm doing, like, for my book and my work, man, it's like, there are so many of these systems that we have learned to pretend like they work, and they don't.
Right.
You know, it would be one thing if it was like, you know what, a stern coach is what's going to always get results or whatever.
Like the old ways are good enough.
We don't need to change them.
Those are actually just kind of stories that we tell ourselves, you know, in order to sort of You know, I think a lot of people who live like I did in, like, dysfunctional, abusive households, sometimes you tell yourself a story, which is, yeah, that was hard, but it made me who I am.
You know, it brought me to where I'm at.
And instead, like, it then sort of spreads throughout society.
Like, you know, I've been doing research on, like, law enforcement and, like, law enforcement's been based on irrational ideas for a very long time.
It doesn't get the job done.
But somehow or another it sort of scratches for some people's psychological need.
The whole point is we are at a point where whether it's basketball or politics, I mean everything we're going to talk about today involves this.
We have to start getting better.
We have to heal some of that old stuff and try new things and find different ways because like those old ways have gotten us here and those ways don't work anymore.
If they ever did.
There's nothing more soul-crushing to me when I hear players say that they need that kind of abusive coaching to play hard, you know?
And all that says to me is that they've never had a coach that practiced, you know, emotional intelligence.
And if they had, they would realize a whole other world out there that, you know, that would require a little bit of imagination that they might not have.
But once they taste it, they would never want to go back.
And I think that applies to everything from policing to athletics and even teaching in the classroom, you know, which we always are talking about as far as, you know, the level of public schools, you know, how well are they educating our kids and all those methods.
It really is worth that with all the data we have and all the methods of crunching that data that we would invariably get better at it.
But, you know, it's also like you're talking about You know, as if like the time old tale of the Republicans being better for security, for instance.
Right.
And people still want to believe that.
And time and time again, the data and the evidence and the truth proves that wrong.
Yeah, it's time to open up our eyes and recognize what hasn't worked.
And, you know, I I'm glad you said that about like recognizing alternatives.
You know, I can't get into the specifics of who it was with, but I was out in Iowa organizing with some groups and some people.
And, you know, Nick, they have been systematically abused, you know, by Republicans, by the donors who are behind them that we always talk about.
Like, there have been all these attacks on it.
You know, a lot of us right now are feeling really tired and really demoralized.
And what ends up happening in those situations, I'm sure people listening feel this too, and I know you and I, you know, we cover this stuff.
And this is part of our jobs.
This is part of our, you know, our calling.
Like, we cover really hard stuff.
And even us, there are times where, like, things get so bad that we kind of look around and we'll even say to each other off camera, Like, I don't know how this gets better.
You know what I mean?
I don't know how this ever gets better.
Like, it just feels really, really bad.
And what happens is, you know, when you're in these environments, you kind of are robbed of the ability to think of something different.
You're robbed of the ability to imagine something better.
And that's unfortunately the side effect of that type of behavior.
So I'm really proud of you for that.
And I feel like Like, what I've been doing is been trying to talk to people about that sort of perception, you know?
That sort of idea that there isn't something else that can be done, and which is absolutely an intended side effect of all of this.
Like, they want people, we talked about it, they want teachers to quit, they want doctors to quit, they want election workers to quit, they want organizers to quit.
And meanwhile, what you have to do is you have to understand what has happened to you, you have to process it, and then you have to imagine something better.
And like you said, when you realize it, it's addictive.
It's, you know, obviously it feels better.
And yeah, I just think that is, that's the key in so much of this stuff.
For sure.
I mean, listen, the attitude we can adopt would be that it will get better, right?
That would be the language that would serve our purposes and make life bearable, right?
We know it will get better.
The only problem is, the question is, when?
And when you're looking at things like the political landscape, you know, it'll get better.
The Supreme Court will eventually, you know, go back to being more liberal.
But, you know, it could be 50 years from now, Jared.
That's the thing that scares me.
And you've been listening to a free preview of The Weekender.
The full version is available at patreon.com slash muckrakepodcast.
So head over there to support the show and help maintain our editorial independence.
