55 min
Episode 4-476 – MK Lever – Dystopian College Athletics RunRunLive 5.0 - Running Podcast
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- Running
The RunRunLive 4.0 Podcast Episode 4-476 – MK Lever – Dystopian College Athletics (Audio: link) audio:http://www.RunRunLive.com/PodcastEpisodes/epi4476.mp3] Link MarathonBQ – How to Qualify for the Boston Marathon in 14 Weeks - Chris’ other show à Intro: Hello my friends and welcome to episode 4 476 of the RunRunLive podcast. Today we have a super interesting talk with MK Lever about her dystopian college athletics novel Surviving the second tier. It’s a hard book to categorize. On the one hand it’s a near-future dystopian novel about college sports. On the other it’s a scholarly critique of the current college sports power dynamic and some of its most destructive aspects. And then there’s a love story and a rocky-esque championship tension and drama. Like I said, it’s tough to categorize. And that makes it hard for a novel because we humans love to label and categorize. Our brains go all weird and fuzzy if we can’t. You can see this in every review where they say ‘it’s like X’ or even in startup pitches where they will always say something like ‘it’s the Uber of grocery’. And that inevitably makes it hard on books and businesses to gain traction. They have to forge their own paths. They have to create their own market. Sometimes it works, because that cross-pollination finds a new unserved and undeveloped market niche. Sometimes it doesn’t work because it takes a lot of energy to create something totally new. You have to explain to people what it is before you can sell them something. There’s an old joke about pioneers typically having short lives. Anyhow… That’s who we talk to today. In section one I’ll talk about this year’s Boston Marathon because it is next week and for the first time in a couple decades I’m not going to be participating. I feel like I should say more about that, but I’m, let me just say this, and maybe I’m just having a good day, but I feel like I’ve moved into the 6th stage of grief, which is celebration. No seriously I was out at Starbucks today and realize I’m wearing a Boston Hat and a NYC jacket and wondering what I’ll say if someone asks me about it, like “Are you running the marathon this year?” and how my usual response for the last year has been to apologize, “No, I hurt me knee.” But, thinking about the stories behind this hat and this jacket, all I can really say right now is “No, not this year, but I did, and how cool is that?” In section two I’m going to talk about garbage. Because, yeah, garbage. I’ve totally stopped running because my knee was too painful. It’s been a year or so now so my fitness is at an all time low. It’s interesting. I think about that motivational speech where the motivator says “Running is hard. Being fat and out of shape is hard. Choose your hard.” And it’s true. Being unfit is hard. I’ve got some plans to change that and we’ll talk a more in the outro. Going back to the Dystopian novel topic. What MK is doing here is one of the things I really like about the creative vehicle of fiction generally and science fiction in particular. Setting stories in the future or on a different planet allows the creator a safe place to play with ideas. To sketch out alternatives to today. MK does that. Think of other novels you may have heard of that do this? How about HG Wells The Time Machine? It’s really a commentary on the class system. Or Brave new world by Huxley? Or 1984 or Animal Farm by Orwell. Or the Hand Maiden’s Tale. Dystopian novels aren’t about the future. They’re about us. They’re the equivalent of Marley’s Ghost showing us the what ifs of our choices, as people, and as a society. That’s your homework. Read or listen to a dystopian classic and learn something about yourself. On with the show. About Zero ZERO — The End of Prostate Cancer is the leading national nonprofit with the
The RunRunLive 4.0 Podcast Episode 4-476 – MK Lever – Dystopian College Athletics (Audio: link) audio:http://www.RunRunLive.com/PodcastEpisodes/epi4476.mp3] Link MarathonBQ – How to Qualify for the Boston Marathon in 14 Weeks - Chris’ other show à Intro: Hello my friends and welcome to episode 4 476 of the RunRunLive podcast. Today we have a super interesting talk with MK Lever about her dystopian college athletics novel Surviving the second tier. It’s a hard book to categorize. On the one hand it’s a near-future dystopian novel about college sports. On the other it’s a scholarly critique of the current college sports power dynamic and some of its most destructive aspects. And then there’s a love story and a rocky-esque championship tension and drama. Like I said, it’s tough to categorize. And that makes it hard for a novel because we humans love to label and categorize. Our brains go all weird and fuzzy if we can’t. You can see this in every review where they say ‘it’s like X’ or even in startup pitches where they will always say something like ‘it’s the Uber of grocery’. And that inevitably makes it hard on books and businesses to gain traction. They have to forge their own paths. They have to create their own market. Sometimes it works, because that cross-pollination finds a new unserved and undeveloped market niche. Sometimes it doesn’t work because it takes a lot of energy to create something totally new. You have to explain to people what it is before you can sell them something. There’s an old joke about pioneers typically having short lives. Anyhow… That’s who we talk to today. In section one I’ll talk about this year’s Boston Marathon because it is next week and for the first time in a couple decades I’m not going to be participating. I feel like I should say more about that, but I’m, let me just say this, and maybe I’m just having a good day, but I feel like I’ve moved into the 6th stage of grief, which is celebration. No seriously I was out at Starbucks today and realize I’m wearing a Boston Hat and a NYC jacket and wondering what I’ll say if someone asks me about it, like “Are you running the marathon this year?” and how my usual response for the last year has been to apologize, “No, I hurt me knee.” But, thinking about the stories behind this hat and this jacket, all I can really say right now is “No, not this year, but I did, and how cool is that?” In section two I’m going to talk about garbage. Because, yeah, garbage. I’ve totally stopped running because my knee was too painful. It’s been a year or so now so my fitness is at an all time low. It’s interesting. I think about that motivational speech where the motivator says “Running is hard. Being fat and out of shape is hard. Choose your hard.” And it’s true. Being unfit is hard. I’ve got some plans to change that and we’ll talk a more in the outro. Going back to the Dystopian novel topic. What MK is doing here is one of the things I really like about the creative vehicle of fiction generally and science fiction in particular. Setting stories in the future or on a different planet allows the creator a safe place to play with ideas. To sketch out alternatives to today. MK does that. Think of other novels you may have heard of that do this? How about HG Wells The Time Machine? It’s really a commentary on the class system. Or Brave new world by Huxley? Or 1984 or Animal Farm by Orwell. Or the Hand Maiden’s Tale. Dystopian novels aren’t about the future. They’re about us. They’re the equivalent of Marley’s Ghost showing us the what ifs of our choices, as people, and as a society. That’s your homework. Read or listen to a dystopian classic and learn something about yourself. On with the show. About Zero ZERO — The End of Prostate Cancer is the leading national nonprofit with the
55 min