What Is Riley Gaines Hiding?

EPISODE 316: We investigated.

Here’s the episode that has rendered my Twitter mentions unusable, on account of the people flooding them, so the first thing I’d love for you to know is this:

This will NOT be an episode about whether trans athletes should play women’s sports.

And it doesn’t require you to feel one way or another about that question, which I’ve previously devoted multiple episodes (e.g. here and here) to considering.

You’ll see this clearly, I think, once you finish watching and listening to our six-month investigation with the terrific Madison Pauly at the Center for Investigative Reporting and Mother Jones.

We deliberately chose to tell this story through the lens of the young women who were also on the University of Kentucky swim team alongside Riley Gaines: the Trump administration’s preferred face of the anti-trans movement.

But there’s no denying that there is an overwhelming population of online Americans for whom that debate around trans inclusion in sports — an obvious political winner for Donald Trump — is all that matters.

To the exclusion, it turns out, of ever coming to grips with the disturbing and dishonest game being played.

AN OLD TWEET YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT:

Thanks,

Pablo