Well, how's that for timing. Look at that.
We've got Stevenson Sylvester rolling by the show today. Brett Sancia Pick six Previews will join us.
Want to remind you if you miss last segment.
Nick Romondo joined us, and then Tony joined us and Tony's three and a half year old son, Kiri needs a bone marrow transplant and we are looking for a match. So Nick Rimando has a charity pickleball tournament today and I want to let you know. It's at Second Summit Hard Cider, which is at forty ten South Main Street in Mill Creek, and they've got about one hundred and fifty kits where you can go get just a quick mouth swab. It takes just a couple of minutes. If
you have some time today, please head down there. We do not have a match for Kurrey yet and time is running out. If you are planning on heading down there, you can text Hope for Kiri to six one four seven four and they'll send you kind of the document you need to fill out prior to getting screened. If you're not available to head down there today. The website is Hopefkiri dot org with a link to their GoFundMe and link to join the donor registry, and then information
about new kits when they arrive at other locations. So we're gonna push this as hard as we can. Let's save this kid's life. He's three and a half years old. Cerebral ald It's a devastating and aggressive brain disease. So between the ages of eighteen and forty, you're more likely to be imagined if you have Italian or Asian heritage
as a result of the lineage of Carrie's parents. So again, Nicky's pick Aball tournament starts in about an hour and forty five minutes at Second sum at Heart Cider at forty ten South Main Street in Mill Creek, Live in studio today our friend Amy Donaldson, which always makes me smile.
Hello, Amy, how are you hello?
I actually ooh, gosh, I don't know if that's my hell? If I'm coming in.
High you can control your ears? You sound good to me?
All right, good, I won't worry about it. Then.
I actually am was a registered donor, a bone marrow donor for many years. Okay, I am unfortunately over forty at this point, I am chairly barely right.
I've been aged out and I have no Italian or Asian heritage. I'm like full Scottish, little English and a little Scandinavian blood on my mother's side. Nobody gives a rip about my you know, twenty three and me, But that's that's kind of my ideal.
How you been, It's good to see it.
Yeah, I've been good. I have also been sending that message out. I hope we find and I hope we register a ton of donors. Yeah, for sure, because I had got registered because my best friend from high school's son got leukemia and needed a bone marrow transplant, and so he just asked everybody to get registered and I was hoping I would just was a match for him.
I was not. He found a donor.
Through this registry, okay, and it saves lives, and it's really I had never was lucky enough to be able to donate, but I have no people who have and friends who have, and it's for a healthy person. It is no problem, and yeah, it's an amazing thing to be able to do.
Yeah, three and a half years old. I'll just keep pushing the website.
I hope for Carrie dot Org, he's got two siblings neither were a match unfortunately, and times running out. We had his dad on last segment and you could just hear like the emotion in his voice. You and I both parents. This is this is something no parents should ever go through.
No. And if you've had I know you yourself have had, you know face that.
It could be deadly situation.
I had a kid who had opened our surgery twice, once at eleven months and once at fifteen years old, and probably will have to have it again.
And it is, I think the worst thing.
Because you like to think you could handle anything, you can do anything, you'll do anything, but there's it just reduces you to like, oh you you really have no power here, you have nothing. You can just love and so, like I said, hopefully his efforts will help a lot of kids, but also his And yeah, please go get registered at the time.
It's it's not hard for sure, and you can play pickleball, my guy, there you go.
I was really I was like, I'm going to play in that pickleball tournament because I love pickleball so much, but I.
Have to work.
Well, we'll get you out of here. And I just came out of my basement to talk to you though, Oh did you really well?
I've been writing all day.
So Hope for Kirie dot orgon again.
If you can head to Nikki's Pickaball tournament, text Hope for Kirie right now to six one four seven four, and they're going to send you the documentation you need to fill out.
Uh.
To just get swapped takes a couple of minutes forty ten South Main Street and Mill Creek starts at about four forty five.
What are you working on? What's the latest with you?
Working on?
So many? I have so many little you know, plate spinning and know how that is, you know me never just one thing. But right now I am working on a podcast that will be launching probably February to April of next year. Okay, I can't talk about it yet, but probably close the next couple of months. But it's a sports related but yeah, it's a sports related podcast,
which I didn't plan on doing. I actually had a different podcast that I had been working on, and this one had kind of been on the back burner, you know how that has just always having this idea and it's sort of bubbled up to the top. So that's what I've been working on. And it's consuming a lot of time. I'm also I've been working on a book. So I went to a writer's conference a few weeks ago, and I have a writing coach who's checking in with.
Me now and there.
Do you have a writing coach?
Oh?
I have.
My husband jokes about this. I go to more writing classes and conferences. He's like, you'd think you don't know how to write, but no, it's it does help.
Does it really like you don't?
Yeah, and they know things or they've come at it from a different perspective. I mean the people think that because you write for newspaper, you know how to write writing for newspaper and then switching to podcast, completely different game.
Yeah.
I questioned my decision every day for two years. Why did you give up something you were good at for something that you suck at? Now I finally feel like I'm like in first grade of podcast writing.
Don't suck at it. Let's be clear.
I don't think you didn't read those first drafts. I should send you. I should send you a Blooper rail. You would enjoy it, Actually, porter would enjoy it. But yeah, it's tough. I mean, it's a different kind of writing, completely and so just for fun, I took a screenwriting class in the spring and it really like just made me kind of reinvigorate it with fun.
I mean, this is the thing.
When you write every day in one form or another, it's hard to like then say I'm gonna go have some fun and write some more because you're tired. It's writing is like it's a little piece of your soul goes out into the thing.
And yeah, so I love it.
I'm doing my column again for a Kastel Sports, so they came my first column last week. It's going to be run on Wednesdays. So I'm happy to be doing that again because I love I have missed covering daily sports. I'm not going to be doing daily sports, but I'm going to be writing about some of the issues and players and I have I asked for ideas and I
have been I think I have one hundred ideas. I still ask for them because I mean, I think if we find a donor through this, I would love to talk to whoever ends up being a match, or if somebody else finds a match because they shared their story. I just remember, this is why we share stories, right, this is why we do it.
To connect.
We do it to help each other and remind us that none of us are in this game alone.
What is your well said? What's your first cassel column?
Is it?
It was on?
It was on the Former Brothers new gym, oh Nice and I actually submitted it a couple of months ago, but there was some maturn to leave for someone else involved in and so I was working on something else. So we finally got it done. But there's still time to donate to the gym. And for sure, it's always timeless what the former family has done for this state, and not just in boxing, giving kids a sense of community, giving them a place to go. The young men that
I found. His mom is a recovering addict. She'd been cleaned for a year when I met them. Saved their lives. They don't have a dad in their lives. They have all these amazing male role models and they get to He gets to go every day for free. Kids go and they can box for free. They learn discipline, how to take care of one another, the value of competition and good sportsmanship. Right, there's so many things and now, and they have a study facility there.
I don't know if you've been out there yet Yeah, I was there for the opener.
We did my show out there.
Yeah yeah, I think I was out in the morning when they did the River. So yeah, it's deluxe. I mean, I I was so happy because I love the.
The fact that there's a support. Like I've combat sports have.
Always been a safety net for a lot of people living on the margins of society. But now there's a safety net there that's going to give them more options even if they don't make it in boxing. They have community, they have study skills, they have help with their homework, they have food to eat, there are a lot they have access to athletic trainers. There's just so much support there. And it's a beautiful building to boot But yeah, I
love it. And if you don't know anything about the history of boxing in Utah, all that stuff you used to be in Don and Jane Fulmer's basements and probably Jay's garage and now it's like this amazing museum and yeah, it just makes you like, oh, there's a lot here in the state that I don't know anything about, and it makes.
You super proud.
Well, and you're not going to meet a sweeter guy than Larry Fomer.
No, I mean, just like maybe one of his brothers.
Well okay, fair enough, but he's one of those guys where every time, whether he's in studio or I've been out on remote, he just puts you in a good Nottain you just feel happy around Larry.
And I should say in a couple of weeks they have an outdoor boxing match coming up. So they poured this cement slab on the property that I believe they they I don't they rent or release, but for like a ten bucks or a bucket year or something from the county and it they're gonna have outdoor boxing.
Matches but they used to back in the day.
That's awesome.
But instead of a chicken coop, they're going to be in this amazing venue and there will be real restrooms in case you're on the fence. That's always my requirement. Yeah, it is there a place to go to the bathroom?
I'm down?
And is there food?
You know?
You know me, food is maybe more important than the restroom.
And porter how long?
So Deontay Wilder was there, Yeah, and he sat down and I didn't know what to expect. We probably did a forty five minute segment with him, didn't we I mean, he just yacks poetic forever.
Yeah, it was. It was a good long it was.
It was most of our radio hour, which yeah, about forty forty.
I miss I'm gonna have to go back and with him because he was wonderful with those kids.
People need to know Porter's magic with the clock based off of my lack of clock integrity?
Did we call it time? Blame this with ADHD.
Yeah, And that's that's really what it is like.
So I've always In fact, it's interesting because you brought up the podcasting dynamic. You know, for two years, I was not doing this job. I just did podcasts only for two years. And when you have that experience, I was about, oh, we're turning six this week. This show is six years old this week, which is pretty pretty interesting. It both seems like it was yesterday and forever ago. I don't really know how to you know, time is
such a mental construct. But during my two years of podcasts only, you just see the movement of this attention economy moving digitally and online.
So when I first took this.
Job, I told Cavon, I said, I want to try to make live radio sound podcasting. I said, what that means is I'm blowing through my clock all the time. Like if I have a conversation that's going well, I want And one of my favorite pieces of feedback I get is if somebody sends me a message of like, hey is running errands and you had Deontay Wilder on and I sat in the Harmon's parking lot and I listened to you for forty five min done it.
That's the coolest thing, you know?
Or I've been coming home or and I've been I have to hear the end of this.
Yeah, And it's not like you can't go you can't listen to it on podcasts later, sure, but you're in the moment and there's an energy and an emotion to it right one hundred percent. But I'm gonna I'm gonna have to look that one up because I member, I don't remember why. I think.
I think Larry told me you were there, but I had that was crazy.
Yeah, it was great, but but it it And yes, like part of my approach is thinking about the person who couldn't hear the interview live, who gets home from work and pulls up the podcast page and says, wait
forty five minutes with a World Championship boxer. I'm going to listen to that, but in real time, it just it makes my man in there spend different plates on his head when he's got to deal with my you know, wait, you're supposed to go to break here, but I just approach it differently, and you see how people pay the bills.
But that's I actually would love to see us figure this out. Actually talk to one of your sales managers about this. How do you make this less transactional? Like I you give advertisers, give us, give you money, and then you give a product. Right, and the listeners are the the people you're trying to sell stuff to. Right, what if it was all we are all trying to do the same thing. We're trying to create this community
and we all benefit from it. So the advertisers that support your show that listeners support them because they're not going to have as many ads, they're not going to have as many bricks, but they but they support those advertisers because they're supporting this unusual you know format.
That to me is like, oh, let's figure let's try that.
That would be super fun to try, but it's hard to get sales to go along. With it because they're like, but we've got this many ads and d da da da, because that's what advertisers are sure will work. And I just say, like, let's just try it a little bit. And podcasting is a great place to try it, yeah, because there's you know, it's such a I feel like it's a creative you could say chaotic universe, or you could say a crap show whatever, but it's a place
you can try stuff. And so we're with radio. As you know, there is a way of doing it. We've always done it this way. We're not going to change our minds aiming, So don't come in here with your new fingled idea.
Yeah, well it's and you know, for years and years and years, I would hear this thing from sales staff or you know, front office folk up in you know, the upper tier offices, like we need more time spend listening TSL. They always say that, so we need to turn If somebody's listening to your show for seven minutes of time, how do we turn that into twenty? And like my whole thing is like, okay, well we don't go to break if something is compelling, that's how we
do it. And then we try to convince them to sit in their car and listen to a good conversation.
The easiest way and this is what I I because I do narrative podcasting, so I tell a story over episodes. And the easiest way to lose people I listen to narrative podcasts I make them is to interrupt and try to sell me something because it reminds me that I'm not part of the story, right, all the work.
That it's a dropped in random this.
Universe, and all of a sudden, now you want to talk about tires. No, no, right, well let's go back to talking about well, how did you find belief in yourself to become a world champion? How did you envision that when nobody around you had that kind of success from them? Right? Like, that's the thing, that's the conversation you want to be involved in. And if you tell me at the very beginning, hey, this company makes this possible.
As you and I see this a lot in outdoor community, we will support a company that doesn't do ads on our shirt because we want a shirt that we can wear wherever we want.
We won't work like a billboard, right right, But it takes some level of trust.
Yeah, yeah, so of all of because we had Mad Dog on Chris Russo, who was kind of the first. He and Mike Frances did Mike and the Mad Dog when I was a teenager in the Northeast and it was the first like sports talk radio show and it was, you know, those two going back and forth, and in a way, they are real pioneers like you hear a lot of like the steven A. Smiths get Bayless getting the credit for this embraced debate. It was Mike and
the Mad Dog before anybody else. And we had Dog on the show like a month ago, and he said, every live radio host can be a podcaster.
Ten percent of podcasters can do live radio.
That's what I believe that.
But what's your experience been, because I wanted to ask you, like, you've done live radio, you've done podcasting, and you write a lot. What's what's the biggest energetic ask of the things that you've done.
What do you mean energetic ask?
Like you referenced earlier, when I write something leaves my body and when I'm done with the show, every day I go home and I sit in my backyard for like thirty minutes and I want to talk to anybody. I'm just sitting there, like you know, like the energetic ask of doing this for four hours every day is a different ass than it is for podcasting because we have a clock.
As I reference, I blow through it.
But there's no like hey, pause take two, like we are live right now, this is a live mic, I think, so they're different.
So live radio to me, and I did twelve years of sports talk radio and I'm mostly good high school stuff.
Then filling in.
Every time I did a four hour show versus my two hour show, I was reminded a how much more you know, preparation goes into it than you hear in a two hour or a four hour show, right, you double or triple it, right, Like It's it's crazy how much more you have to prepare to do a couple of hours of live radio. The other thing is you can't be I'm me, like, I don't have an alter ego. And when you do live radio, no one wants sad you, nobody wants anger you.
They want they want this happy.
Give me information, make me feel better about life, tell me some stuff about the world, right and and you like and I see that I actually it's One of the things I love about your show is and and is that there is a dynamic of where like, okay, that we're not going to be just happy. Sports is fun, right, Like we're gonna we're gonna be real at times. But I think for the most part, radio radio, live radio is a persona that for me, I find incredibly difficult
to maintain. I can't be this thing you need all the time. It's like it's like putting on a good face for your kids or something when you're pe oed. You know, we've all been like in a fight with our spouse and we have to go to a party and pretend we'd like each other.
Like that's what I feel like. Live radio is like whatever you're feeling, you know.
Taylor Swipt has a song you can do It with a broken Heart, and Jason Kelsey talked about that, like so many times you have to sit down in front of a microphone after you lose a game and you want to punch everybody in the face, and you have to sit there and try to be a good sport and talk nice and be happy and not say what kind of freaking dumb question is that? Because there's a lot of dumb questions in those problems. Yes, meeting right, So to me, live radio is exhausting because of the
masking aspect, and so that's I'll put that aside. End the amount of preparation that nobody, everybody think should just go on and just shoot the crap, right, So there's no respect for the amount of work it takes. And a lot of people who don't work can make it in this business and we're all in the same boat. That is very problematic for me, and I don't like that because I'm a fair Everything has to be fair.
So then podcasts for me is different because I do narrative podcasting and it's years of thinking and researching and doing all kinds of interviews and reading all kinds of books.
The one I'm.
Writing for next year is I've read at least six books on this subject. And you have to immerse yourself in a story in a way that is uh, it can be traumatic. I mean I feel like sometimes you can, especially with a true crime podcast, you can engage, you can feel some secondary trauma or it triggers your own trauma your own life, right, And so there's that aspect of it. And writing for me is an absolutely participatory sport.
It is not I know people who just I remember talking to another journalist about this way will not name who said, Stott, you just need to put a put a wall up between your emotions and the thing you're covering. And I was like, I don't know how to do that.
Right, right, that's the thing about you, though I'm glad.
Well, I mean, I think it, but it makes it harder to do as what they call it a quick and dirty sure, right, So that's why I didn't like quick and dirty. I was like, I'll do the cancer story because I can get into that, I can feel that, and I will be tired and sad and like you say, you don't want to talk to anybody after, but I'll feel like I did something of value. And for me, the reason to write anything or do any of this is that you do something to educate people, to inspire people,
or help them figure out a problem. We can talk through a problem or an issue that's that we face as a group. So and then as far as newspaper writing or you know, my writing, I do on my own. The book that I'm writing, it is the single most difficult thing I've ever done, and part of that is you're as a journalist and a person who's d you've kind of lived half in the public eye and half out right, you have to kind of two lives. I've kind of not done that. I've kind of just let
my life be my life. But in going through the book that I'm writing, it's a lot of parts that I haven't even shared with my closest friends. Right, So some people know about it, some people don't. But it's a book about grief and about losing my stepdaughter and taking care of my grandmother until she passed away.
And so I.
Once wrote about being a victim of domestic violence and a column And if you haven't had that experience, you're not gonna understand what I'm going to say. But it was the most humiliating thing that I ever experienced as a professional journalist to have my boss call me and say two things, that's the best thing we've ever run in the paper, which is supposed to be a compliment, right, And the second one was, I can't believe that you were a victim of I can't believe our amy was
a victim of set. I can't believe that, which is like completely reinforcing all the shame stigma, right, So I know sharing stuff like that it's good and we should do it. And I know the cost now because I've done it and I've asked other people to do it, and so that part of it, like writing, that is very difficult. But it's also I always say, the work is the medicine, and sometimes medicine sucks, baby, yeah, but I'm willing to do it because it's the only way I know how to live.
So that's the.
Which one's more emotionally exhausting in the short term. This live radio people and everybody is a critic, I mean, and in live radio, you get it right. I mean I was a sub and at X ninety six one morning and I'm watching the text line and they told me, don't watch it.
I can't help it.
I do it at KSL two and I was like responding to people who are criticizing me or saying why am I wearing what I have on? And they're like, stop, stop doing that. But for me, that's my old newspaper thing. Like I remember when I wrote a column about Max Hall when he had said the crappy stuff about YouTube, and I got five hundred emails within twenty four hours. And there's no way I'm responding to five hundred emails. I read most of them. My colleague is pretty much
at all. I just let them have my email because they were stunned at what people would say to a woman journalist.
Right, it was an education for all of us.
But I remember responding to a lot of those that people were like, why are you responding to that? Because here's the thing. The minute you respond to people, they become themselves again. They come back into their body whatever, whatever tick them off, whatever sent them out where they could say something nasty to you. Then they come back and they go, oh wait, that went to a real person, and that real person has thoughts, and now I have to defend this really creepy thing that I said.
I don't do that.
When people threaten violence, I just those people just get blocked. But the people who I think, this guy's not a bad person. He has a wife and children. I'm gonna do his kids a favor and I'm going to give them a little bit of insight into what he said and why that's a problem.
And it does disarm people.
I mean, I don't look, I'd never have the text sign pulled up. We don't take phone calls. I am really never on social media. My approach to the whole thing has changed a lot over the path, like I would.
Say doing this show.
And also I need to give Gordon Monson some credit for kind of changing my approach during the final few years of our show together, because I'll occasionally stumble upon a show I did a number of years ago if I have it, I have a few interviews that I liked, saved or whatever, and I'm like, you took yourself so seriously, Like when I was young in this business, I'm like chip on my shoulder.
I'm going to prove to everybody I belong.
I know what the narrative is around who my father is and why I'm where I'm at. So I'm going to be better than everybody else, and I'm going to be a lot better than everybody else. So you know that I deserve to be here, and I just let all that go. And I don't take myself nearer seriously. And I want to use this platform to help people and you know, have fun, and it should be fun.
This is the toy Isleld life. But at the same time, it's such a great conduit to make a difference if you just don't take yourself in the craft as seriously as I think most people do.
What you felt about your parent, who your dad is, I felt that about being a woman. Sure, I'm like, I'm going to be better, gonna work harder, I'm gonna do everything you ask of me.
I'm gonna do it.
I'm gonna do eighteen times more than you asked me, because then you're gonna love me. Then I'm gonna be in the fraternity. And guess what you're not. You're never it's not there's always gonna be somebody saying you're only here because you're a woman, or you don't know what you're talking about because you're a woman, Like, that's always
gonna happen, same as it's always going to happen. I had somebody say to me when I had your dad on my podcast and we did a bonus episode with your dad, which was amazing, and I had a business person say to me, that was amazing, that was like how to be successful in business? That one and the one with Jason christ Like love the bonus episode, right, they were bonus episodes. And then literally the same day I got an email from somebody who said, so, did
Spence get that interview for you? Or did Dave reach out to you? Never did it occur to them that I bugged you and your dad? And let me just say that your dad was so nice that I bugged him two or three times and he's back east doing his thing. One of the calls was like clearly, like right around midnight, like I just had to do what I to do, and he was like, whatever you need because he believed in what I was doing and it wasn't about he.
Didn't know me.
He was like, I try, I believe, I want to share this, and I believe this is a great project and I'm going to do it. It had nothing to do with any of the things that everybody thought it did. And I'm like, Dave wouldn't know where to get my phone number. I'm pretty sure, But like, I don't even know if he knew you and I knew each other until I interviewed him and said, oh, I've been on Spencer's show a lot.
I was like, you don't know if you put your mom did?
Yeah?
Yeah, and they were great. Have you and we actually do need to catch a break? Yeah, Ben we'll do some more coming up next with Amy.
But have you changed the way you kind of approached the whole thing?
And you reference authenticity, I think the other thing that I just realized that I needed to do because it's really hard to do this for four hours and then change back in who you are in real life.
And I noticed there was kind of.
A dynamic that was occurring where I was carrying over, like my on air persona into my real life and like, you know, i'd have friends and you know, people that I spend time with. Dude, I don't really want to debate you right now, like you're not on air, you know, And so I try to be just more authentic to who I am with this. And I do think there's an intimacy to live radio that's a little bit different. It's a very intimate platform. It's one of the reasons I like it. Like I'll go do a TV hit
with Dave on KUTV. It's seven minutes, you know, And this is different because you're on air for hours at a time, and I think people honestly feel like they get to know you in a way. And so where I give Gordon a lot of credit is him encouraging me to. As Robin Roberts said when she got her Lifetime Achievement Award, this line is always stuck to me.
Make your mess, your message right.
And so whether it was stuff I was going through personally or you reference you know, my health issues when I was young, a brain tumor nearly killed me.
Gordon's like, go on air with that. I've never done that before.
I don't want to do He's like, no, you will be stunned at the reaction of our listeners.
Gordon's actually given me some career changing advice. Gordon and Brad Rock two best pieces of advice I got.
So have you changed the approach over the years.
Do you feel like I would say now people who know me, No, I just I could never do what you guys do because I can't be like I'm just me sure and nobody wants to put that on air for four hours.
I mean, it's true, but.
I and I don't blame them, but I you know, in one hour, I guess you can handle it one hour a week for sure. But I think that Gordon told me you're great at this. You have a really good sense of humor. You know what you're talking about but you won't let people in on the radio. And if you people can get their sports information anywhere. If they don't care about you, if they can't connect to you, they're not going to listen to you. And that changed the amount I was willing to let people in because
as a print journalist, the lines are really clear. Sure when you do when you grow up in newspaper news in a newsroom, there it is no pun intended black and white, there's no gray area. You go to a banquet to cover an awards banquet, you do not eat, you do not participate, You are not part of the story. That changed when I went to sports and I was completely out of my element, and Gordon gave me that
advice on because I was doing sports talk radio. And you can hear the difference when you have print reporters on versus broadcast report or columnists. Print reporters are always pre editing what they want to say, because that's how we write, right. We think and write it and then we edit it and change it and go over and over til it sounds the way we want it to sound. That's not a luxury you have in broadcasts. You just have to own what you think what you feel and
how much you're willing to share. And that was a shift for me. So the change came then. And then I would say, Brad Rock the other significant change. I was really struggling in sports, probably looking to get back into news and leave sports, and he saw me at a ski event. I was covering a pre Olympics event, and he said, and I was expressing to him my frustration and why I wanted to go back to news, and he said, you're trying to be us. He said, the thing that makes you valuable is you're not us.
So what if you don't know the latest scores and stats, or you don't know who the I score was. You can look that up, he said, what you when I come and talk to you, you know whose grandmother has cancer. You know where their fiance is sitting in the stands. He's like, you're the only person I know who went over and sat with Larry Miller at a WNBA game and never came back to press row because Larry invited you to stay, and you stayed, and you have three
or four stories now from that and a column. He's like, that's what you do well, and you need to value that because that's what we value and I realize, like when you try to when oftentimes the thing you hate the most.
About yourself is your superpower.
The fact that I cannot put up walls around my heart and around how I feel and what I think. That's how actually the reason I can connect people who've had experiences I will never have, whose children have been murdered and they found their kid in their own house, right, Like, I have to sit with them, and I have to write something about that. I have to put you in somebody's shoes who's forgiven the killer of their son's murderer, right, And that's a thing that you can't do if you
have any anything between you and them. You really have to just surrender yourself to the story. I always say, Everyone's like, well, how do you decide this?
Or that?
It's the story for me, and it sounds hokey, But the story is what I serve, and I serve it completely and it takes a toll. But I'm also like, I feel super lucky that I get to see and be inspired by the people I have come in contact with over the years. But for me, that's that moment. Gordon's in the broadcast side and Brad Rock on the print side. What those were the two people who said, like,
stop trying to be something you're not. And Gordon's was just like, if you don't let us in, we're not going to listen.
No, but you know you can. There's so many places to get information. Why would I come to you?
And he and he was right, you know when you say the work is the medicine, you know if I'm because it's and we do have to catch break and we will. But it's funny all these thoughts, this is why I like having you in. That'd come to my mind about like stretches of doing the show when nobody knows that off air of my life was like crumbling, right, And so my dad would always say, it's this Vince Lombardi line. A pro is at his best regardless, right,
So that light goes on at two o'clock. It doesn't matter what's going on out there, you can't bring it in here, right, And there is a therapeutic nature the show or writing a column.
Right. I covered a hockey game Utah Grizzleyes soccer game, hockey game while my kid was in the ICU at Primary Children's and everybody was like, what are you crazy? And I was like, you know what the greatest escape is, Yeah, I for for for two hours. I'm not a mom whose kid might die in surgery. I'm a writer. I'm covering hockey and no one gives a crap. Yep, it's a game.
Yeah, no, it is all right, We'll catch a break. Amy's live in studio for another big segment coming up. All right, our friend Amy Donaldson, MUKSL and other platforms over the years, is live and studio for another big segment. You're gonna bring in Stevenson Sylvester. Today, Utah had a scrimmage over the weekend. We are nineteen days away from game day. And then Brett Siancia picked six previews will
stop by, so Amy referenced during the break. Last segment was like a twenty five to thirty minute hit just on a lot of different things. You know, we went all over the place talking little inside baseball and you know, maybe some people like it, maybe some people don't. But that's okay, beauty of podcasting as you can listen to whatever part of the show you want to later on,
but it's we're live now. I'm not going to use the term that I used during the break about the situation in the WNBA with certain things being thrown off on the floor. The WNBA finds itself in a really interesting place. And I was recently with family members for a family reunion and my sister in law was the Mountain West Conference freshman of the year at BYU and basketball. She unfortunately hurt both of her knees and so kind
of cut her career short. They live in Indiana now, they live in Carmel, Indiana, and my little niece, Martha May, has this Kaitlin Clark jersey she wears all the time. And I'm actually going to visit them this weekend. We're going to a game. We're gonna go see Kaylen Clark in the fever.
Play is back? Is she back from injuries?
I don't know. I hope so.
I know she had missed seven or eight straight games. What do you make of the way that she is covered? What do you make of the way that the sport is covered now as a result of the rising popularity that I hate to say, and it does seem to be because of Kayln Clark.
I'm not saying it's only her, but.
No, no, I wouldn't disagree with that.
What I guess what I would say is there's coverage from people who don't know anything about what's basketball and don't know anything about the league and don't care about that, and they feel like they have to get on board
with everything that's popular. And she's definitely like she's a she's You could ignore women's sports, and you could ignore the WNBA ninety percent of the time before Caitlin Clark, but once she broke on the scene in the in the NCAA tournament, there just was too much grassroots affection for her and really for the women's game. And so you saw this everybody sort of saying, oh, well, this is super popular, we have to do something about it.
And you see this a lot with non traditional sports, but with when it comes to women's sports, and I would say women's basketball.
In particular, Oh really, yeah, why do you think that is?
Because I think there is a sexual bias. There's a gender slash sexual sexuality bias. And if men most of the media, I mean, they did these surveys every year when I was covering the Olympics, and they were eighty five to ninety percent male, and similar statistic white. But all of my bosses, all the bosses at all the news organizations across the country are are middle aged white guys or older, right, and so they drive and decide
ultimately what we cover. And most of my colleagues were guys, very few men of color, lots of but lots of males. Even if they're men of color, they're all almost all male. And there would be time there were times in my career where I literally did not see a woman unless I was covering a women's game for weeks at a time professionally, right, just you just and I would be like, oh,
I would notice when I saw another women journalist. I have a mini a selfie in my phone of me and the one or two or three other one and there were four of us at a football game. I made a sack of selfie. You put it on social media because it was four of us. Right, it was a high school game, so you know, there you go. But anyway, that.
Was just so rare.
So when most of the people deciding what to get covered, where you spend resources in media, are men, it's gonna be a tall order for women to get even thirty percent of the coverage if you just take a look. I mean back in the day we had daily newspapers. I did this all the time. I would keep track of how many stories would go on the front page, both at the Trip and at dese Right News for
women's sports. And it was always a controversy BYU or it was like a local mom story like which I've written myself mom and also an athlete, right, so I or if you know there were firsts, there's always you know women, Oh it's women's History month. Oh it's an anniversary of Title nine. And we did those stories right, but like they just didn't make the cover. And that what I tell people is when you pay attention to something, that's what you're telling people what you care about.
So if you don't pay attention to something, you don't care about it.
And a lot of these guys, I would say sportstock radio is a hotbed of this, but there's a lot of newspaper and a number in broadcasts as well who haven't paid attention to the WNBA, don't even know how it works, don't care, and don't really see it as a league and an athletic league worth investing their time, energy and money, and so those people now are forced to to commentate and cover and I heard so much crap, so much bs, so much you know, vomit, verbal vomit.
I'll just say from that those people who had had nothing good to say about women's sports. I covered the WNB when Utah, when the Utah Stars were here. I was a sidebar person for Linda Hamilton, two women covering Hamilton. Yeah, professional sports league, and it was the greatest three years of my professional I loved it so much, was so fun.
I've also bought season tickets that I shared with two other families because I couldn't afford them by myself, because I was a single mom at the time, and I took my daughter those games so she could see even if she didn't play sports. See these options. You want to see women and you want to go. We've seen political speeches, We've seen musician. You want to see them in all these different roles, right and so, And I'm a kid, you know, grew up on that cusp of
Title nine. I got opportunities my mom didn't have because of Title nine. So I was very cognizant of this when I took my kids and did things. My two daughters but to listen to them talk about the rise of Caitlin Clark and why she was so popular and what was happening was disgusting. It was disheartening, it was infuriating. And there were a lot of really great journalists who I won't repeat all o their but you can go
back and read them. Sarah Spaine among them, who kept saying, hey, you guys are new to this game.
Let me help you out.
And they just spit on her just you know, you don't know you're talking about you're a lady who wants to be in sports, and you know it was that was really hard. So there were really there was really good coverage of the rise. But I'll tell you look at go back and watch the press conference when she got drafted and the guy who's talking to her Doyle, Oh yeah, so yeah, I mean so and you and I think we talked about that. But she's had to deal with who is her boyfriend? Is she straight or gay? Uh?
Paige Buker's same thing, you know, is she Sophie what's her name?
That plays with Kaitlyn Clark? The plays with Kaitlin Clark.
Now you know, oh she's hot and she's you know violent we love this, you know, so like there's this subset, so there's really good coverage out there, but you have to work for it. And then there's a lot of noise of people who who may know other sports, really popular guys, some of them I like and listen to their podcasts, who really really missed and instead of like correcting it.
There's been a couple that have corrected.
It, but a lot of them have come in and not said, I don't know this space. Let me let me come into this space intelligently, let me come, let me educate myself, let me bring people in who will help me navigate this place in a way that isn't harmful because women already endure it.
Why do you think there's so much abuse in women's sports?
Right? There are things that we already endure. There are things we're so lucky to be here, we're so happy to be at the table, we're so happy to have your breadcrumbs, that we just don't ever ask for what
we actually should get. And case in point, when the women wore at the All Star Game, pay us, pay us what we're worth or whatever the T shirt said something about the pay like pay us what we should may or pay us what we're worth, and everybody was upset about it, and people like Sarah Spain said, look at the TV contracts, look at this, let's compare it to other leagues.
Are the women making what they should make?
Right?
And everybody's like, well, they don't make money. Well, there's other leagues that don't make money that pay their players millions of dollars, right, So that's not there.
It's very complicated.
But I think that the oversimplification and the sexism that's inherent in our business has made it both amazing and super fun.
And I loved it. We've talked about it.
It's giving me a lot of hope for the future. But it's all so just tiring. How many people just refuse to evolve, yeah, and learn and just say, oh, I learned this today. They just can't be wrong and that's a bummer.
Yeah, and you know the shirts that the women wore Overall Star weekend. It was really easy in a vacuum to give a snapshot reaction about, Okay, well, how much money does the league generate? What is the revenue of the WNBA. The ultimate reality is NBA players receive about fifty one percent of basketball related income and WNBA players receive about nine point three percent of their basketball related income. Now, I don't have their P and L statements. I don't
know what that league makes compared to the WNBA. I do know evaluations for teams have gone through the roof to the tunes of hundreds of millions of dollars. But everybody in this attention economy, and that goes back to the sex toys being thrown on the floor. I mean, this cryptocurrency meme coin company is taking credit for it because they were clearly looking for attention.
No. But and this to me is peak American sports moment. Women have fought and fought and fought just to get a tiny slice of attention, a tiny slice of the financing, a tiny slice of what's out there, right, and they finally get it.
They're having this moment.
Women's sports in general is having this moment where they're getting attention, where people want to invest financially in them, they want to invest their time with them, they want to learn their names. This is amazing, right, They want to pay attention to their records. And these dudes say, either we don't care about them, we just want to share of their attention. This is what happened, and this is what I think happened when Kaitlin Clark came on
the scene. These sports talk guys and these there's some male columnists and podcasters who decided, oh my god, these women are having this moment, and they couldn't let us have this moment. They couldn't educate themselves, they couldn't defer to another. There were plenty of women who've covered the WA and womenen who've covered women's basketball in the WNBA. They could have had on their shows, but they didn't do that. They had to take a piece of that
moment for themselves. They can't just let them succeed. They can't let them into this universe that they decided long ago was theirs, and they get to decide who comes in and why.
It's maddening.
But to me, that sex toy thing was the same situation as the Caitlin Clark coming on the same here's this moment. It's super fun where everything has to be a controversy, everything has to be about she's pretty and white, and so everyone else is trying to beat her up our you know, and I will say there is a bias.
You look at coverage.
Look at the coverage for women volleyball players or women's soccer soccer players compared to women's basketball players, or women boxers or women wrestlers or anything like that.
There is a These menu are.
In charge decide who's attractive and who will sell and we all know it sells, so I don't have to say it, but I could say it in a lot more direct way, which I do off the air, and that is that when they decide that, they decide that the pretty attractive women are worth investing in, and they play sports that men think are feminine, that are okay, and in fact, male volleyball players are still fighting for respect because it's so much a women's game in the US.
Yeah, and a corner covid never won a tournament, but you know she was dating.
I think she married a singer pop singer. I can't remember. I'll eat the Iglesias guy or whatever who.
By the way, I had the displeasure of seeing him perform live at like an NBA event. Good looking dude could not sing a lick that's a side, but had.
A corner cove is a perfect example.
Tennis skirt attractive never won a tournament, but was like the biggest star in her sport because of the way she.
Looked, biggest start because the media would pay attention to her. Sure, this is the and this is the thing. And then but if you get media attention, then you can get sponsors. And this is what I always say, Like when we brought the Royals back, amazing investment from the community, you know, the ORGANI but I kept saying, like, there's this gap.
How are you going to get the media to pay attention?
Because if you can't get the media to pay attention, your sources of money will dry up. Because nobody wants to pay for something that just operates in the dark, right. They want attention. They want to be part of a winning thing, and especially when you're not winning. How are you getting these women sponsorship deals? How are you getting sponsors for your program so that you can buy the players you need so you can get the investment that
you need in those women. And that's the missing link that nobody really can answer.
So the last WNBA CBA was five years ago. Okay, So here are some figures to just give you some context as to why the shirts were worn and why the players are asking for more because the easiest thing for people to do is to use the narrative and look, the early years of the WNBA were bankrolled by the NBA. Nobody's running from that, but that was in the late nineties. That was twenty eight years ago.
It's also their decision right to invest in women's sports.
So here are the figures.
So last year, an eleven year, two point two billion dollar TV deal with Disney, Amazon Prime, and NBC Universal, the league reported a jump of forty eight percent in attendance, one hundred and seventy percent increase in viewership, and a six hundred and one percent rise in merchandise sales and expansion fees and valuations now roughly average around two hundred and fifty million dollars. Okay, So again, these figures indicate that the money is there in a way that it
has been prior to. And if you're a player and you look at the NHL where they get forty eight percent, you look at the NBA where they get fifty one percent, You look at Major League Baseball where it's fifty NFL the same, and you are realizing that you are entitled to nine point three percent of the revenue generated by your league. Put yourself in their shoes, you would be pissed off too.
And I think, I mean I covered them when they had to have part time jobs or full time jobs overseas, but no, they did both. Yeah, I mean some of them had full time jobs and one was a paramedic. I remember this, And I mean Kate Starboard was a scientist. You know, she's still like Alder in COVID.
She's like a maid.
She's a professor and a scientist, and she was one of the best wings in the w NBA at the time.
Right, Like, so.
I I I have trouble with just the ignorance of oh, they're women, so they have all the required it is. It's that you don't really belong here. And really, let me just say, all those people who talk like that, they're just telling on themselves at this point. So I'm fine letting them talk because now I know who I'm not listening to.
Let me ask you about. And this is an interesting dynamic here because a lot of young rookies in the NBA. There was a book called the Jordan Rules. You know Michael Jordan, when he was a young player in the NBA. The Detroit Pistons had a rule, no layups, no donks.
You go in the lane and we're going to take your head off.
Okay, So this isn't something that has only ever happened to Caitlin Clark, but there does seem to be some treatment of her from her peers.
Oh it's a little bit no confusing to me. Why no, what do you think that is?
So again I'll say this is there, that's not an figment of your imagination.
That's true. And here's the thing.
When you when you're a woman in business, they convince you that your biggest competition is other women because there's only room for one of you at the big table. So if you want to get in the big table, the room where it happens, then you've got to beat out all these other women.
They don't tell you the men are your competition, just the other women. Right.
So women are not the worst women. The worst people to me in my career have been other women in a lot of cases. Right, My mentors are mostly men, and that is not an accident. It's because women are pitted against each other through in business. Now that has been shifting, right, But so imagine you grow up in that situation and you're all competing for it. There's only this tiny tiny bit of spotlight, you know, this little tiny pinhole of spotlight.
And if Caitlin Clark takes it all, there isn't.
Any for Aja Wilson or Asia Wilson, there isn't any for you know, anybody. Page Bukers like you can't have two stars like we love in the NBA that there's a bunch of good rivalries.
That we love. We love. That's what made the NBA great.
It was what made it solve, and it was what made it a billion dollar business. That's what works is these rivalries is the good guy and the bad guy, is the villain and the and the hero.
All those things really work.
We love them, right, but we as women are taught, first of all, no one wants to be the villain.
You're the villain.
You're never getting a shoot al you know what I mean. So you we can't do what men do. You can be Dennis Rodman and make a zillion dollars because you're the bad guy.
Every I mean, think of hockey. Hockey wouldn't be.
Hockey without a lot of people stepping up to say I want to be the villain.
I want to be the enforcer. I want that role.
So women don't get to do that, right, And that's what I love the Sophie Cunningham storyline because she's hot, so they're gonna let her be a villain. And I mean I love the commentary out of that. And and also like thoughts, here comes the verbal vomit, right, Oh, they hate her because she's beautiful. No, they don't. They hate her because she's being a villain. But she's being
she's able to be a villain because she's hot. You know, if she was not hot, if she looked like some of the other women in WNBA, that would not be allowed.
No one.
They would be like, get that, put that animal in chains. I've heard this said about women basketball players, right, And so my problem is when you look at this, you can't look at it in isolation. It is part of society and we are told there's only so much for us, for women, it's a finite amount of resource.
And what a lot of young women are learning is that's a lie.
There's as much as we want to make there is no It's like love, there's no finite amount of it. We can we can create a different table, We can create a different universe, and a lot of the women are embracing it. Some of the women, especially the older women, are still in doctrine of the way I was, which is, hey, your competition is other women. I rejected that, right, but like a lot of women haven't. A lot of women
in my age are still in that mindset. And they're in that mindset because if you want to get rewarded, you have to play in a men's world. I don't care about getting rewarded at this point. So you know, my reward is I get to do a job I love, sure, and I worked for a woman and I work with women.
So there you go.
All right, well said before I said you loose, give me a quick thought because you referenced the Royals and they trade alley for six hundred k spread out over three years, and you know, the coach comes out. I was like, yeah, she wanted to be traded. I mean, I can't speak to that. I don't know if that's the truth, but it's not even not a very good team. And she was she might be the starting striker for our women's national team during the next.
World Cup cycle.
Oh I'm sure and the last time they were here, they were second in NWSL and attendance. Portland was the only other city they was out drawing Salt Lake. I haven't seen the up to date numbers, but I've seen the crowds. They're not the same that they were. And now the Royals last time around had Becky and Kristin Press and several World Cup stars. But man, you get rid of Ali, and she seemed to be the main reason people are shown up.
Well, I think I don't know. I don't know about why people are. I know, I'm a season ticket holder and I know why I do or don't show up, and it's not because of Ali. But I think the hard thing about the Ali trade is that they center to Kansas City, the best team in Louisa, who didn't need any help. And it just doesn't make any sense. Why you Yeah, you treed Donovan Mitchell, but you don't send him to your your in conference rival, like you don't you know what I mean, Like there's some okay,
you don't want to stay here or whatever. The reality is, right, whatever this story behind the scenes is, we have to this, we have to part ways. But the choice seemed like shooting yourself on the foot right, And it seemed like like no, there was no no self preservation mode. I guess you know what I mean, like, Okay, well this has to happen, but we're gonna do what we can to get X, Y or Z.
Yeah.
It was like, let's just be nice for her. She wants to go.
Their friends are there so cool, and it just seemed like to me, it's reminded me of like like a college thing or a little league thing, like it's not that big a deal. We're just friends, right, We're just having fun, And I'm like, this is business.
Yeah right.
So I think that was the thing that was baffling. I believe that she didn't want to stay here. I believe the coach when he was talking, and I think he's an amazing coach. And I know Dunny went off on David's show and said, you have to wonder, you know, what's happening or whatever, like what kind of culture they building?
Whatever?
Those are good questions to ask, right, But like I think you can talk to the women and they love what's being built there, and they love the way it's happening, right, And I mean we did a little off the record thing. And I don't know that I've met a male coach that I would rather play for.
I don't know him at all.
Yeah, and I won't talk about what was because it wasn't off the record thing. But I asked very pointed questions, including like do you know when your players are on their periods? So so yeah, I want like these are okay, I'll ask them because these affect a woman's health in a way that I mean, I'll never forget covering World Cup speed skating. Uh. You know, this is the highest
level speed skating outside of the Olympics. And the woman who was the best speed skater in the world at one thousand meter what finishes a race goes over and throws up in a garbage can. So I'm thinking you mustut it flew right, I mean, you don't see that otherwise. So we wait for our time in the mix oone and I say, you know what's going on. I started my period this morning. I eat food. I shouldn't have
eaten food. It always makes me sick and starts talking about it because any woman who's had a period knows it affects your health, It affects your ability to do all the things you do all the other days, right, And it was the first time though a professional athlete had brought it into the mix zone, and the men were visibly like, I don't.
Want to talk about it, like whoa, whoa, whoa? Why?
I wouldn't feel comfortables that question, why are we going yet?
Well, I wouldn't ask. I didn't ask are you on your period?
Right?
I wouldn't ask them on that, but I would say, like, what's up with you?
I would say that to a male athlete, you just vomited in a garbage can after your race.
What's going on? I'm not feeling great?
This is what happened, right, what I talk I've had a football players I three Taco Bell burritos and it was not a good choice. So you asked us questions because they give you contact for what's happening. But like what I'm saying is women have not women are higher. Instead of knee injury that loosened your joints, they're all kinds of problems, back injury, neck injury. There's no higher concussion proto. The highest rate of concussion in high school
sports is girls soccer. So there are reasons to know those things, right, and so I want to talk about those things with coaches and trainers and owners, and they haven't been. It hasn't been allowed, So I thought the perfect place was this off the record thing. It did make some people uncomfortable, I think, but you know who didn't get squeamished about it the coach. The coach who was like, not only do I know it, I know who and what and how it impacts them.
And I changed things up for them based on that.
That's great, And that to me is like, that's where we have to go with coaching in general. If we're going to be that sensitive about a man's injury, or you know, we try to be that sensitive now with mental health, right, why wouldn't we also factor in if you know women, you know their cycle is a hormones or a major part of their lives, right, and so why wouldn't you Why wouldn't that be a thing we talk about with trainers and medical staff and coaches. Right,
But that's not happening. So I will say I don't know all of what went into it. I was shocked at that there wasn't an attempt to get more or to make it so that it didn't hurt the Royals in the short term, and that it didn't hurt so much in like a morale. From a morale perspective, there should have been I think a bigger statement about, hey, this is a situation. Here's why it's going to feel
the way it's going to feel. But it was like, like, don't ask, let's pretend that this doesn't matter, and it matters. We already have it, as we've said, Uh, you know, an inferiority complex. We don't need, we don't need to fuel that fire. We need to address it right out of the gate and say this is going to hurt, but here's why it's not going to be. Here's why you shouldn't worry. Here's why you should still come out and support us. Here's what we're still doing, you know, and that that didn't.
Happen, Amy, that is our time. It's always great to.
See you talking about Chris is a Maidenson arcle.
I know, I know, but we are like ten minutes.
I know, I know, and I'm super excited you have Sly. I love Sly.
But we'll get you back soon. Okay, great to see it, Amy, Donald's and our friend from KSL.
All right,