Ep. 334: Football: Are We Cheering for Brain Trauma?

0:00It's spirited tailgates and team colors. Friday night lights and Sunday night boopal. American boopal is not just an nostalgic pastime. It's a way of life. And when you combine nostalgia with a part of deeply integrated culture, you have simply put a blind spot. And in today's case, a blind spot over concussions, specifically about severe brain damage due to chronic traumatic encephalopathy or CTE. It's a condition that the NFL has known about, but as my next guest discovered, has worked to minimize and even cover up. He's an award-winning investigative reporter and journalist with ESPN, as well as an author. It was his book, League of Denial, co-written with his brother that inspired the frontline documentary by the same name. Today, we're going to unpack the science, the scandal, and the societal stronghold of football as we ask the question, could football cause brain damage? This is the Curious Intervert podcast with me, Meredith. Around here, we explored taboo questions and societal blind spots.

1:00Please help me welcome the man motivated by the facts and driven by public interest. Curious Truth Teller, Mark Feynrubata. Thanks for being here. Thank you for having me, Meredith. I appreciate it. I think it is hilarious that we're having this conversation the day after the Super Bowl. Yeah, it's quite timely. It's funny because this is actually when people become more interested in the work we've done at times. Okay, obviously, that was one of the questions I was going to ask you because the documentary came out, I think, in 2013. And I'm curious if the interest in CTE has changed since then, if it's fallen away or if the investigation has continued on strong? I think, like with anything, as you get further and further away from something, people start to forget about it or move on from it. And so I think that's happened in certain ways. In other ways, I think PBS often rears the documentary, I think, around the Super Bowl, which regenerates some interest in the work. And then any time there's incidents that happen around football players, CTE becomes a hot topic of discussion,

2:01whether what role it might have played in the actions of former players. So it sort of comes and goes. And the research is ongoing, certainly by the folks who are immersed in it. Well, I'm curious to how, as a journalist, when you were doing this initial investigation, that you could tell if something like this was something that the NFL was understandably treading lightly on. And just working on behind the scenes but kind of minimizing publicly versus an all-out cover-up. Was that pretty clear for you or did you have to kind of dig to figure out which case it was? I don't think it was clear to us where this was headed as we started to dive into it. I mean, my brother and I first got launched on this. We both worked at ESPN and I got assigned a story that had to do with a former NFL player who named Fred McNeil, who had been struggling with early onset dementia. He'd become a lawyer after his career. And he had to stop practicing law because of this. And he was one of the first players to argue that football had caused this issue.

3:03And so as we started to dig into it, I think that there were sort of fundamental questions about this. What did the NFL know and when? How did the NFL deal with the emerging science around football and brain trauma? And to what extent was this an existential crisis for the league and how directly were they pushing back against some of the researchers who were raising these questions? And I don't think initially we really had a clear sense of where that was headed. I think we just thought it was raising a whole series of questions that needed to be asked. So what was your conclusion? Was it just minimization or was it, did it have the markers of an actual cover up? It had a bit of both for sure. I mean, there were aggressive pushbacks against the science that was emerging in a way that denied what people were seeing and what the results of the research were showing. While the NFL was also putting out its own body of research, that sort of raised doubts about the connection between football and brain damage.

4:04Certainly, people have described that as a cover up, at least a level of denial that was perhaps willful. But then you also had a level of just sort of thinking that there was a way to manage the issue and to legislate rules around it in which they could minimize the destruction and the damage from playing the sport. So I think it's probably a little bit of both and it probably depends on the perspective of those who are most directly involved. I mean, I think most people know that, oh, concussion, that is bad. But for the general public, maybe they just see, oh, they're wearing helmets, that's why we wear helmets. It's all good. They look for the signs. But CTE kind of is a different beast. Can you explain the symptoms that are said to be indicative of an actual CTE case? What's lost on a lot of people related to CTE and neurological issues that stem from playing football is that most of the research points to not directly related to specific incussions, big blows

5:06that we all sort of see happen in a game, that the league, frankly, has tried to legislate out, but more repetitive blows that happen on virtually every play, whether it's at the line of scrimmage or running back, running into a line backer. It's those kinds of blows that are repeatedly happening in practice during games that create this disease and the disease manifests in a range of different ways. The symptoms that we saw as we did a lot of the reporting around former players were behavior that was quite erratic, behavior that families describing their loved ones was becoming unrecognizable to them, behaving in a way that they were just not familiar in any way, whether it was more anger, more confusion, more sort of paranoia, and that led, there were some, and number of family members we interviewed who described the very difficult path of watching their loved ones before they died turn into just unrecognizable figures to them.

6:06In early on, right? Because we're not talking about 70s, 80s year old, we're talking about what, 50? Yeah, I mean, in some cases, even earlier than that, Mike Webster is a player we wrote about, he's sort of patient zero, as Palm people describe him, the first player diagnosed with this disease after his death, and he played many years in the league, but not long after he retired in his, I believe early 40s, he began to manifest some of these conditions. And so, I think one of the complicating factors with the disease is that it comes up in a lot of different ways. You also have people who have other issues and other histories in their families, right? Webster, for example, had a, you know, parents of the history of alcoholism, siblings with the history of mental disorders. So, I mean, all of these things bleed together and it becomes, I think, a more complicated picture to discern what's causing what. And in some ways, the NFL has leaned into that. This idea that there are other contributing factors to what's gone on, and I think some of that's very legitimate, but it moves you away from this discussion

7:07of what is the actual problem playing football, and what are the dangers of banging your head over and over and over? Well, I think if you just combine a little bit of doubt with people who understandably don't want to believe that this could be true, then that's like the perfect combo for dismissal or as, you know, the documentary is called denial, right? Because you have something you love, you have something that is like you've got legacy with it and you've got spending time together and a lot of money, obviously. And so, just to have a little bit of like, ah, it could be this, it could be that is enough for everyone to move on and forget about it. Yeah, I mean, I think this is you've hit on the distinction between say this issue and smoking, right? Like so, people love football, it is a beloved sport. I mean, I think they were estimating perhaps 130 million people were going to watch the Super Bowl yesterday and I'm godly amounted. And the most watched television programs

8:09every year are football programs, not just sports, everything. And that makes it more challenging, I think, for people to process this particular issue, because both, both because it feels existential to the sport, but also because there's a level of like, what am I celebrating? You know, am I celebrating this sort of gladiatorial nature of what I'm watching? And then do I have to sort of block out what's going to happen to these guys in 10, 20, 30 years? Like, that's something we all do. I mean, there is a level of denial in all of us. And I think that's part of what we were getting at with the book and the title. Oh, that's so true. I didn't even think about the American exceptionalism bit of it until you just said that, because we're like, oh, the gladiators, they were so barbaric. Or like the bull runners in Spain, oh, those people over there. But we Americans, you know, where we are civilized or whatever, but yeah, it's kind of like, oh, you gotta not think about it when you're watching the sport and cheering them on.

9:11I think there is a bit of what you're describing, but I also think violence is at the core of the sport and people love it, right? I mean, for better or worse, this is what people love. So, you know, despite all the work and research we've done, I mean, I still watch the sport every day. I watched the Super Bowl yesterday with buddies and had a great time despite how bad the game was. So, I mean, I think this is part of the nature of why the sport's as popular as it is. And it's growing. It's not just here in the States, right? They're playing games in Mexico City. They play games in Europe every year. The NFL has a, you know, a global expansion plan that is not small. And it's because the sport is different and more popular in a lot of ways than other sports. That's true. It is. We joked in the pre-chat that I have to Google the rules before I watch it. Otherwise, I cheer it in appropriate time. Right. And yell, goal, right? Because that was a soccer goalie. But I will admit that when you watch football, every moment is exciting because it's like every moment is its own miniature game. That's my very outside review. So, take it or leave it. But it's like, okay, now they're,

10:11now they're trying to go a little bit farther. Oh, what's gonna happen? As opposed to soccer, you could definitely go get popcorn and not miss anything. Right. Yeah. No, I think, I think that's true. I think also there's sort of a disconnect, I think, for fans like as popular as the sport is and as violent as it is, you don't really get the feel for how violent it is on television like as good as HD TV has gotten and as real as it feels like you're watching a game and up close. It's so different when you're actually at a game and on a sideline of a game. Even for fans, it's different. Being on the sideline of a football game, especially an NFL game is so different from what you're seeing on TV. The game is so much faster. It's so much more violent. The sort of plays that look like nothing's really happening where a running back runs into the line of scrimmage and is tackled for a one yard gain or whatever, those plays when you're watching them on the sidelines and you're hearing them, they're just so different. And I think in this way, television works perfectly for football because it enhances the violence to enough of a degree

11:14and the amazing athleticism of the athletes. Yet at the same time, you're not really getting the full sense of how unbelievably brutal this sport is. That is such an interesting perspective because you're talking about being on the sidelines as a reporter, correct? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I remember the very first time I covered a game. The last two minutes of the game, you leave the press box and you go down to the sidelines so you can get easier access to the locker room after the interview players and coaches. And I remember the very first time I did that, it was a 49ers game and I was just blown away by how different it all felt to me. My brother makes a great analogy. He describes it as the difference between imagining that you're hovering over a freeway as the cars are cruising by 60, 70 miles an hour versus standing in the median while those cars are going by 60 to 70 miles an hour. It's just obviously be such a very different experience. That is a very good analogy. Yeah. So the research you were earlier, you were saying that it's really those daily hits even though the game itself is really violent

12:16when you're on the field, you know, seeing it up close, but it's not even those major hits that people, the scientists think that's causing the CTE, but it's really the frequency, not the intensity, is that right? Correct, yeah, it's more, I mean, certainly the intensity adds to it, but the research seems to suggest that really the amount of ongoing pounding that the head is taking, you know, because the brain is inside the skull and rattles around in there and inside fluid, it's rattling and banging against the hard skull. And so the research suggests that that is what's leading to these kinds of problems, leading to the repetitive trauma that's creating this kind of damage. The research talks about, you know, the number of NFL players who've been diagnosed with this disease post-mortem is exceptionally high. And I think, you know, part of that has to do with like, you know, these guys have been playing since they were kids and then they were elevated and then they play at high school and then they play in college and they play in the pros.

13:17So, you know, I think there are other real questions that are separate from this about the actual prevalence if you just play high school football, but certainly for NFL players, it seems like the numbers are quite high. Right, you're right, though, there is kind of a selection bias because the researchers that are cutting open the brains are cutting open the brains because the family's like, hey, this might be a thing, we need to look into it, but it's like 90% or something. Yeah, it's a very high percentage, but it, you know, they will be the first to admit there is a selection bias for sure. These are, again, players who oftentimes were struggling at the end of their lives and they decided to donate their brains. And so, they're with something going on there. And they played and, you know, they played for years, right? They played for decades the sport and so they were getting hit repeatedly. Is there any other circumstance or, I don't know, I don't know, could CTE be caused by anything else? Because that was some of the pushback that I read was like, well, what if it was, you know, alcohol consumption

14:20or, I mean, are there any control groups for the CTE research? There's a lot of research that's come out of Boston University in which, you know, at this point now, the NIH has fully accepted that like, the cause of this is repetitive trauma to the brain. That's it. And it'll manifest occasionally in other, you know, it's manifesting in other sports. It'll manifest in other situations, but only when you've been repeatedly exposed to this kind of damage and trauma. I think there was pushback from the NFL and from others for years trying to suggest that there might be other explanations. But I think it's pretty clearly accepted now that this is about repetitive trauma to the brain. And it is distinctly, you know, in many of these cases related to these guys playing football. What caused the NFL to go from, no, it's not, no, it's not, no, it's not to accepting? I think one, the sort of preponderance of science to congressional hearings. And I think this is a billion dollar industry, right? And so looking for ways to address and accept and, you know, minimize is a way to deal

15:22with this kind of stuff, right? My brother was a hearing, a congressional hearing, where they sort of finally admitted it was almost out of the blue, this connection. And they had never really done it. And I think after the fact they almost backtracked a little bit like, wait, is this really what we're saying? And I think part of it is just because there was this groundswell of understanding that this is what was going on. And so the move had to be to go from stop arguing about this to how are we going to address this. Part of this also was, of course, because of litigation. You know, the league was being sued in a massive suit from former players. And so, you know, any sort of acknowledgement at that point was not going to work in the case of the litigation. And so that impacted certainly things for a while. Yeah, I could say that. I mean, you're right to say that it's this million dollar industry, which is why I was surprised that ESPN was like, yeah, Mark, go and do that book and do that documentary. And the NFL was like, no, no, we will not be commenting. In my mind, neither one of those would want you

16:24to be moving forward with that. So why was ESPN so supportive in this hugely taboo line of investigation? So it's an interesting question, and we got asked it a lot, especially as the documentary was coming out and created a big problem at one point. The reality of ESPN is it's a complicated place. On the one hand, you know, the NFL is our business partner and the ESPN pays billions of dollars for the rights to air NFL games. And that complicates things for sure. At the same time, ESPN has created this investigative unit to do this kind of work. And I mean, I've been there now for more than 18 years. And I was in newspapers before that. And when I came to ESPN, one of the first questions I asked during my interview was, are we going to be able to do this kind of reporting that raises questions about the leagues? And the answer was, absolutely, this is what we're creating the unit for and this is what we're going to do. And so my brother and I, I think often times that others have asked the question, like when's this going to end?

17:25But to ESPN's credit, they have time and again, committed to this kind of reporting, which is very expensive and also again, has some conflicts to it. So I think two things are equally true. It's complicated. It creates headaches at times for my immediate bosses and for the network. But at the same time, perhaps more than any other media and to ESPN is committed to this kind of work in a way that is really earnestly sort of holding the leagues to account. So in this way, I feel really lucky. It's a challenging situation. But I've never had ESPN or anybody say, we're not going to do this. There was another story that you worked on. I think it was about steroids or something. You got some pretty serious pushback from, I think, just the public, right? I mean, what kind of pushback did you get for the CTE story? We got pushback, certainly from the league and we got pushback from sort of management types. I think fans, for the most part, were just really interested in learning more.

18:26After the book and the documentary came out, we got a lot of questions from parents. What would you do? Would you let your kids play those kinds of things? I think there were some people who thought, oh, you're out to kill football, you're out to get it. But I just think that's the nature of this kind of reporting. But the pushback was not nearly as visceral or as personal in some ways as some of the steroids reporting you yielded. Isn't that funny, though? I was surprised to read. I think you got death threats. It was pretty bad. Yeah, fans are fans. I mean, they're like, some people are more, I mean, my colleague on the steroid story used to joke that people don't like to be told that there is no Santa, there is no Easter bunny. And so these are their heroes. And thinking that their heroes might be cheating with something that some fans didn't want to really confront. Dude, sports psychology is so fascinating because that, for example, is so perfect. You can't call someone less magnificent by stating the fact that they used performance-enhancing drugs.

19:28But we could throw them away like yesterday's garbage and let them beat themselves their heads against essentially brick walls over and over. And they end up having violent behavior towards their families and not knowing who they are and sitting in their car. That's totally fine. But don't tell me that my favorite player was less because he used drugs. I think people are really, at least, rabid fans, it's a very personal thing for them. I think there are some parallels in the same way that fans of, say, the San Francisco giants who were watching as Barry Bond's their hero was breaking all these records despite his steroid use in the same way that they could sort of compartmentalize that and be in the fan, like a dad would be in the stands with his son and be like, look, of course, I would never let my kid use steroids, but I'm gonna sit here and celebrate Barry because everybody else is doing it or whatever however they rationalized it. I think some of that happens with football too, right? We all rationalize, look, these guys are adults.

20:28They're making decisions for themselves. At this point, it's hard for anybody to argue that they don't understand the potential dangers. I think for years NFL players could say, look, they knew their bodies were gonna be really damaged by doing this, but not their brains. Now it's pretty hard to argue that. I think they understand that. And so I think fans, say, look, these guys know what they're getting into. And so they're paid a lot of money and so they rationalize it that way. Then why is there still some discussion that CTE is bad science? I asked this because when I was downloading your book on Kindle, of course, Amazon suggests if you like this, you might like this. There's literally a book called CTE is bad science. And I was like, well, I'm gonna ask Mark about that one. So is there a reason that people, other than the cultural and psychological aspect that people may have a legitimate claim that the way that the research is done is questionable? Well, I think it's not only, I mean, you said the cultural but also the financial reasons, right?

21:29So most of the criticism I've seen is rooted and it's either coming from people who have connections to the NFL or sort of misinformed kind of folks. I think there's no doubt that there are legitimate questions to be raised and have been raised about this bias. We talked selection bias that we talked about earlier. And again, the scientists at BU and other places will fully acknowledge that that's an issue. But I don't think there's any legitimate science that exists anymore that's raising doubts about whether this is related to repetitive trauma to the head. And so I think to the extent that those complaints exist and that reporting exists or research or books or whatever people are calling it, I think it stems from, you know, again, people either who have connections to football on the league or to industries that are gonna push back on this because it's financially problematic or culturally problematic for them. Yeah, yeah. And that's not surprising, right? That's not limited to sports. That's not limited to any. Like we see that in all sorts of components of society, right?

22:32Yes, actually we do. And when I think about the way we treat football, especially I'm in the South. So especially the way we treat football here has a lot of religious undertones and even the beginning of the CTE story has it because the doctor that discovered it in 2002, Bennett O'Malo, by divine guidance, that he was prompted to preserve and inspect the brain of Mike Webster, despite having said that, yeah, this guy died of a heart attack, moving on, blah, blah, blah. He said that, you know, the spirit guided him. And then he was later attacked with accusations of being unscientific, which if we were to give that a religious term would be heresy. And then the NFL kind of took a Cino evil approach, which is straight out of the Catholic scandal handbook. How do you view the Church of Football complicating this whole issue of actual science, especially when it comes to protecting young people's brains?

23:35The NFL story feels very different to me than the story around youth football. So, and I think in the same way that I describe that dad making the distinction between letting his watching Barry Bond's with his kid and then saying, of course, I'd never let him take steroids. I think there is this distinction between what's happening at the pro level and what's happening at the youth level. And I mean, I do, you know, look, there's something about football that feels very different than all these other sports. I mean, I think a lot of it has to do with that these guys are not like us, right? Like these are superhuman, large, fast, unbelievably athletic people, right? Who, you know, if you see a baseball player, you feel like you can relate. If you see a basketball player even to a degree, you feel like you can relate. You're not nearly as athletic as or talented, but football players are just, the sport is so different.

24:36I feel like the players look so different because they're just so physically imposing that there is this sort of gladiatorial sense to it. I think that appeals to people for the reasons of the violence we talked about and all of that. And that has culturally taken on a life of its own and particularly in the States and particularly where you live, you know? I mean, college football in the South, you know, the level of passion is insane at times. You know, it's crazy. It's not Godlike stature of the players. I think that influences the youth football. That's in my mind, at least. That's why they're so connected that, you know, that one story is the other story because when you're a dad and you are just like hiked up about your team and you have a boy, you're, I mean, it is almost automatic that they're playing football. And I've been to those games with, you know, my husband's friends, dads and stuff. And I made the mistake of being like, don't we think this is a little violent?

25:38And they were like quickly learned that is not the place to bring that up. But because of this admiration and, you know, borderline worship, I feel like we are not incentivized to ask those hard questions like, should six year olds be slamming up against each other? I think when I say the distinction between the two, I'm saying that this question of like, how bad the football is for the brain at the NFL level is very different than talking about it at the youth level. I think I said this earlier, more and more people are asking those questions. It's led to any number. I mean, when we would talk about the book at book events or when we would talk about the documentary, the number one question we got asked from parents is would you let your kids play football? And what are the dangers for kids playing football? And I think part of the challenge is around the research again because of the selection bias and because you can't diagnose the disease until after someone's died, is that trying to determine how dangerous it is at the youth level when most kids

26:39are not gonna go on to play in college, most kids are not gonna go on to play beyond high school and balancing the value of athletics, balancing the value of a sport that some people love and including the kids versus the potential for damage is a challenging thing for some people, right? We all sort of engage in risks in varying degrees and, you know, when we play athletics or when we do whatever and so I think that the equation at the youth level has been, can I figure out how seriously concerning this is for me as a parent? You know, and the reality is more and more NFL players, you've heard them say things like, I would not let my kid play tackle until high school and that's why you're seeing, you know, spikes in flag football at the youth level and that's why you're seeing the NFL both getting behind flag football, you're gonna see flag football at the Olympics in Los Angeles for the first time. One series of stories and reporting angle we did related to the NFL was they made a conscious effort

27:40to market themselves towards moms and to market about the safety of the sport and how it was getting safer. And so part of that is because they were worried about their fan base and kids and moms saying, I'm not gonna let my kid play, you know, or parents saying, I'm not gonna let my kid play. So I think that discussion is happening way more than it used to be. We did stories about tackle football in Texas and, you know, and it's weird to see like six and eight year olds running around with those big helmets on. They look like bobble heads and, you know, and running into each other. Granted, the force is not nearly what it is at the higher level, but it's still an issue. Have any changes been made and how the game has played either both at the youth level and at the NFL to help minimize the risk? Yeah, I think the biggest change at the NFL level and it's interesting that it has not trickled down as much. I think to the youth level, but the biggest change that the NFL made in conjunction with the players union because most everything has to be bargained collectively is less hitting during practices.

28:41There's a much smaller window now for players to be having full pads and full hitting during the off season and during practices. And I think anybody in the research field agrees that like the less hitting goes on, the less exposed the brain is, the better that's going to be. We haven't seen as much of that legislated at the youth level. There have been efforts to ban tackle football before certain ages at the youth level that have not gone anywhere. There have been, I think certain leagues and youth levels have taken to less hitting in practice. But there's a lot of pushback to that because coaches argue that these young players need to understand how to tackle. They need to be exposed to tackling at an early age to understand how to do it properly. So that's been a hotly debated issue. Hey there, it looks like you're enjoying this episode so far. Since you appreciate nuance and curiosity, I'd like to officially invite you to my private Facebook group. In there, you can give me direct feedback on episodes,

29:41vote on future topics, and participate in giveaways. Search MFR Curious Insiders on Facebook or click the link in the show notes to request a join, it's free. Okay, back to the show. What's been the logic around the age selected for when tackle football might be safe? The folks at Boston University have done some research over the years that suggested, I'm trying to remember this has been a while now, that the age of 12 was a cutoff point for waiting to play. That if you played after 12, there was a lesser chance that you might develop symptoms later in life. Again, almost all of that is based on data related to NFL players. So it's still a more complicated question and issue. I think people have taken to saying high school just because it's a real easy sort of cutoff point and say, and also the divide is developing much more as kids hit high school. And so the idea is, let's say, we're not gonna have tackle football up until a kid is 12 or 13 and is now in high school

30:46and both that's gonna minimize the amount of hitting that happens at a younger age. Exposure is the biggest part of this and players perhaps are more ready to learn how to tackle and more ready to learn how to play the sport in a presumably safer way, which I think is always a bit of a misnomer to talk about it in a safer way, because I mean, the sport, it is what it is, right? It is an inherently violent sport. It's running into each other, right? That's what the sport is in many ways. So there's no getting around that it is, it is inherently a collision sport. And on the NFL side, I heard that there have been some adjustments with the rules, not just off season, but during the game, how it's played, like players can only hit us like below the chest or do you know anything about that? Yeah, so the league has, there's been a lot more aggressive penalizing of players who are hitting other players in the head, you know, it's called spearing or using their heads to go after players.

31:48There's been more aggressive protection of quarterbacks. They're the most valuable players on the team, obviously, financially and otherwise. They've changed the kickoff. The kickoff is this play that many people describe as one of the more violent plays in football because you had guys basically running at full speed from one end to the field to the other and then colliding with each other. And so they've changed the nature of the kickoff to in hopes of minimizing the amount of damage. I've always felt like most of these things, or many of these things are, I mean, they address this distinction we talked about earlier that concussions are not really the issue. It's repetitive trauma, but the NFL has seized on concussions and the numbers of concussions, which is not a small thing, I'm not minimizing it, but as a way of suggesting that they're really trying to make the sport safer. And again, I think some of that's legitimate and some of it is rooted in just trying to address the concerns that have been risen by fans and parents. I mean, I could definitely see where some of it

32:48is just like legal team meets marketing team also. Like, okay, what does the majority of the public understand? They understand concussions and that feels like an avoidable event. Like diseases and conditions that are a moment in time feel like they're easier to even talk about than diseases and conditions that are caused over a lifetime of doing something or not doing something. Well, absolutely. I think there's that spot on and I think the other piece of that is when the entire sport is rooted in these ongoing collisions, if you acknowledge that that's basically the problem, that raises some pretty serious questions about the sport itself, right? And again, I can't emphasize enough. This is the most popular sport in America. It's not even close. It's football and then it's everything else. Nothing else is in the ballpark. Football, it's the NFL, then college football, and then everything else. What about helmets? Has there been any change to improvements of how the helmet is actually made?

33:50There have been. There's very degrees of how people view that in terms of success. You'll see players now if you watch the NFL, they're wearing these sort of things on top of their helmets. They're called Guardian Caps and there is some research that suggests that that's minimized the forest and damage. But the reality is the helmet issue has been an ongoing battle for the NFL for years. I mean, when in the reporting in our book, when the NFL first started to deal with this issue decades ago, and they were confronted by it in a way, their answer was, oh, we got this, we got this, we'll take care of this, we're gonna build a better helmet. Like we're just, we're gonna just throw money at this, we're gonna build the perfect helmet. And anybody who was in this field, the researchers who were in this field, were like, you don't understand the concept. Like the brain is rolling or rattling around and fluid in there, the better helmet is not necessarily gonna be the answer. And so for decades, that was their messaging.

34:52And I think most of the researchers thought it was not gonna work. I have not kept up enough with the ongoing research around these new helmets to speak sort of with any authority on it. I just know that there's only so much you can do to protect the brain in there. And again, the game has gotten faster. The players have gotten bigger and stronger. And so the force of that can't be minimized. And the helmet in many ways is sort of a weapon and it's a piece of protection, right? There was one neuro scientist, I think, in the documentary who said it's the equivalent of hitting 20 Gs or something. Like Mike Webster, we talked about him earlier. There was a point where he sees a doctor, you know, not that long after he's retired and the doctor is examining him and is sort of a little baffled by both how he's presenting and some of what he's looked at in the brain. And they're like, he's like, were you in a car crash? And Webster's like, yeah, I've been in like 25,000 of them. You know, and that's football, right?

35:53That is football. So, you know, the amount of force is a lot. It's significant. Another thing that's interesting is the very human tendency to use broad brushstrokes to explain away all sorts of behavior based on one diagnosis. And we see this a lot with ADHD or it used to be dyslexia. Remember back in the 90s where like everyone was dyslexic? Autism is certainly a hot one. And so it becomes such a broad spectrum that it's an easy way for the human brain who prefers closed problems. Like everything has a little neat bow to, you know, oh, that was CTE, that was CTE. And you've said, you know, that you see that happening in that field also. If you read about an incident happening in which an NFL former NFL player does something horrible, whether it's kill someone, whether it's they end up

36:54killing themselves, you know, anything that's sort of out, you know, like violent or that the first question is, was it CTE? And I'm not saying that's not a bad question to be asking, but I do think, you know, it minimizes the complicated nature of, as you say, of circumstances, right? Like where there are mental health issues in the family that also contributed to what was going on at the time. Did the emergence of these issues coincide? You know, for example, if it's somebody who's in their 20s at a time when that's the most prevalent period for, you know, development of schizophrenia or other types of issues. And so I think that has complicated the discussion in some ways. And I think part of the problem for people who raised those questions is there was so much pushback from the NFL early on about this issue. And the scientists rightfully so felt like they were being attacked and that the league was in denial, that now when you raise some of these questions, the flip side happens that people can be viewed

37:54as like CT deniers or they're attacked for saying, oh, you don't think this is really about football. And I think the, you know, I think the researchers have tried to say like, look, we understand there's a lot of complicated things going on in the brain. We understand that there are probably contributing factors here. We understand we've got to figure out why some people get CT and why others don't. But we think this is a, clearly this is a real problem that's contributing to what's going on. But we understand it's maybe not everything. But that nuance, like in everything in the world these days, that nuance seems to be lost, right? In a lot of cases, like nuance is not, nuance is not at the top of its game at the moment, right? Well, that's because our attention span is shrinking. So, you know, you can't scroll through nuance. You have to listen to a full conversation about it and if you can participate it. And yeah, I mean, that's a heavier lift. So on one hand, I understand. But on the other hand, I do hope that there are more and more

38:55people that create an appetite for nuance because that's where I think we, when you have a nuance discussion, you probably've noticed this, with someone who is really trying their best to really untangle the mess. Like, you don't know what side they're on, right? You're like, because sometimes you size people up, like, all right, are you left? You're right, what's it going on? You know, so you kind of know how to station yourself. But when people are really, really having a nuance conversation, you don't, it's about the issue. It's not about, I'm pro this and anti that. It's about what, it's an actual thing that you're trying to solve. I say this a lot. I have a, you know, I'm lucky. I've got to talk to young journalists here and there. And, you know, and I think there's this thought that when you're doing this kind of reporting as an example that you're just like, okay, you're gonna paint this one-sided picture of how screwed up everything is. And to me, the best stories are really the stories that are rooted in nuance. The best stories are complicated.

39:55And, you know, and I think that's true with the NFL story as much as it is with most of the things I cover and most of the things, frankly, in our lives. Yes, yeah, I like to joke that we're all spaghetti, not waffles. And if you leave the spaghetti out on the counter enough, it dries and you can't unstick the noodles. It's real mess, so. It's a nice analogy. Speaking of drives spaghetti noodles and complicated dynamics, you've found out that there's some data showing that with these changes in especially youth football, there's a strong race and class dynamic happening. Well, I think there's certainly a concern. I think the research is still sort of evolving. You're gonna see what happens. I mean, we had done a story a while ago about the declining number of participation numbers in youth football and it seemed to correlate with more information about this. And I think there's sort of rising concern that that's gonna lead and is leading to

40:56a sort of class and race issue for the sport that you're gonna see more and more parents in affluent communities, frankly, white parents pulling their kids out of the sport and in urban cities and in black communities, that being sort of still a fallback as a sport for that's an opportunity sport. And so I think there is real concern within. I mean, I have not done this work, but I think there's, I've read about it and I think there is real concern in question about whether when you look down the road 10, 20, 30 years from now and you look at participation rates, what's that gonna look like from a class and race standpoint and how much, how changed is that gonna be? And what's the impact on that for everybody, both the participants for the NFL, for sort of across the board, how does that play out? But I think it's too early to know. Do you think there'll be a check-in in like, I mean, it's been 10 years since the CTE thing kind of broke, but do you think there'll be a check-in

41:56in the next 15 or 20 years to check in on, okay, what are our CTE case numbers now and what are these other socio-dynamic numbers telling us as well? I mean, I would think so. I mean, not to get into a journalism discussion, but the way the industry is declining and imploding at various points, it's, you know, I worry that there will not be as much scrutiny, but setting that aside, one would imagine those questions will be continued to be asked. I think, you know, the big, the big holy grail on CTE research is being able to diagnose it in the living. And so if you can diagnose the disease in the living, that's going to change the dynamic in a pretty significant way, right? Because then you can be looking at not just NFL players and not people who've died, but you can look at a broader base of guys who are playing the sport and other, you know, contributing factors and just look at it in a different way. And, you know, they've been saying for years now, it's just around the corner, but I do have to believe we're getting closer

42:59to being able to do that. And I think that will affect the way people look at this. And then I would think, you know, 10, 20 years now, from now you're going to have a much better picture and not only of the prevalence of the disease, but also what it's done to football at the youth level. Yeah, yeah. So time will tell for sure. Tell people where they can find your books, watch the documentary, all of those things. Yeah, so I think they're still, you know, you can get them at the usual spots for, you know, Amazon or any local bookseller. I mean, I always prefer someone to go buy something from a local bookstore than from the big boxes. And the doc came out on PBS Frontline. And so, you know, I think you can, you can access it through their website. Perfect. Thank you so much. This was great. Meredith, thanks so much for having me. I really appreciate it. Thanks for listening. If you've loved a couple episodes of the show, help me let others know by leaving a rating and review on Apple podcasts. Just share where you're listening from and why you like a certain episode. If you're listening on Spotify,

44:00you can't leave a written review, but you can't leave a rating and that's equally appreciated. And if you liked this episode, you probably like episodes about cover-ups. Then you'll also like the one about the strange history of heart disease. It's a strange cover-up involving egos and big tobacco. It's episode 204. Stay tuned next week for a revastor favorite with psychologist and YouTuber, Ali Motu, on How to Beat Social Anxiety. Until then, keep it curious.