Episode 16 Pioneers of Women’s Sports – Kyniska and Alexandra

women’s bobsled team. Alexandra Allred joins Kevin Carney and Emanuel Petrescu to connect Kyniska’s Olympic defiance with modern battles over access, recognition, clothing, medicine, education, and equality.

Kyniska of Sparta entered the ancient Olympic world through a rule no one expected a woman to use, winning the chariot race twice and forcing history to reckon with women’s athletic power. Centuries later, Alexandra Allred helped break another barrier as a member of the first U.S. women’s bobsled team.

This conversation follows the long history of women pushing into spaces designed to exclude them, from ancient Olympic competition and the policing of clothing to bobsledding, volleyball uniforms, women’s football, aviation, education, medicine, and the fight for recognition. Alexandra brings her experience as an athlete, author, educator, and advocate for women’s sports history to a wide-ranging discussion about power, control, courage, and why women’s athletic achievements matter far beyond the field of play.

Episode Show Notes:

Hosted by Emanuel Petrescu and Kevin Carney.

Guest: Alexandra Allred – Author of the book When Women Stood, The Untold History of Females Who Changed Sports and the World and the first female to make and form the US Women’s Bobsleigh … 1994 by winning the nationals competition with a push time of 6.386 seconds.

Topics covered:

•  Kyniska of Sparta and women in the ancient Olympics
•  Women’s bobsledding and the first U.S. women’s bobsled team
•  Alexandra Allred’s path into bobsledding
•  Women banned from competitive sports
•  Women’s football and adventure writing
•  Aristotle, ancient Greece, and ideas about women
•  Spartan women, status, and athletic power
•  Women athletes in Afghanistan and Iran
•  Olympic uniform controversies
•  Norway’s women’s team being fined for wearing shorts
•  Clothing, control, and women’s public freedom
•  The bicycle, bloomers, and “bicycle face”
•  Girls’ education and social change
•  Women’s health, medical research, and bias
• Women pilots and early aviation sabotage
•  Ronda Rousey and double standards in women’s sports
•  Women’s contributions that history overlooked

Episode Timestamps:

00:00 Introduction to Curious Pundits
01:24 Kevin introduces the topic of pioneers in women’s sports
02:30 Alexandra Allred explains how she discovered women were banned from bobsledding
04:48 Alexandra introduces her background, writing, teaching, and sports experience
06:12 Discussion of women achieving firsts in modern sports leadership
07:26 Alexandra describes her path from bobsledding to women’s football and adventure writing
08:51 Kyniska of Sparta and her historical significance
09:13 Kyniska’s Olympic chariot race victories and the role of privilege
12:48 Aristotle, Alexander, and attitudes toward women in history
14:01 Nomadic women, Amazonian women, horsemanship, archery, and trousers
18:48 Ancient Greece, clothing, public control, and women’s status
21:38 Women, sport, and restrictions in Iran and Afghanistan
22:38 Women’s volleyball uniforms and Olympic clothing controversies
24:50 Afghan women athletes disappearing under threat from the Taliban
26:23 Kevin reflects on social norms, Iran, STEM, and women’s opportunity
30:14 Alexandra connects women’s advancement to national progress
30:58 The first U.S. women’s bobsled team, lack of support, and shared sponsorship money
34:20 The social importance of teaching girls to read
35:16 Bicycle face, bloomers, pants, and women’s freedom of movement
39:27 Women’s health, medical education, and the male default in research
42:21 Black women, pregnancy, medicine, and maternal mortality
43:18 Women’s overlooked influence in history
43:55 Mary, Queen of Scots, golf, Aristotle, and historical bias
46:23 Alexandra’s students reflect on women’s history and violence against women
49:19 Gendered communication and hostile responses toward women
50:33 Feminism, online threats, and public hostility toward women
54:13 Why women’s sports matter as a measure of strength and perseverance
55:56 Language, bias, and gendered sports terms
56:49 Bobsledding speed, risk, and physical experience
57:47 Alexandra reflects on equality for future generations
59:06 Amelia Earhart, Marvel Crosson, and women pilots facing sabotage
01:01:32 Alexandra on pregnancy, strength, and competing in bobsled
01:03:13 Future episode ideas about women whose contributions were overlooked
01:06:43 Alexandra shares her website
01:07:02 Closing remarks

Episode Links:

Alexandra Allred: https://www.alexandraallred.com

About the Podcast:

Hosted by Kevin Carney and Emanuel Petrescu, two curious minds exploring ideas, culture, and everything in between. Curious Pundits is a conversational podcast where each episode starts with a topic that caught our attention and unfolds into thoughtful, unscripted discussion. We follow curiosity wherever it leads, across disciplines, opinions, and perspectives, without pretending to have all the answers. Their main ventures are https://1307.digital/ (Emanuel) and https://organicgrowth.biz/ (Kevin).

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Entities mentioned in this episode

People:

Emanuel Petrescu
Kevin Carney
Alexandra Allred
Kyniska of Sparta
Katherine Dewey
Melville Dewey
Marie-Louise Eta
Aristotle
Alexander the Great
Homer
Pink
Amelia Bloomer
Napoleon Bonaparte
Mary, Queen of Scots
Ronda Rousey
Amelia Earhart
Marvel Crosson
Lise Meitner
Jenny Marx
Karl Marx
Mileva Einstein
Albert Einstein
Hypatia

Organizations and institutions:

U.S. Women’s Bobsled Team
U.S. Bobsled Federation
International Olympic Committee
Union Berlin
Sports Illustrated
ESPN
Case Western University
Charleston State University
WNBA
Roman Catholic Church
Taliban

Places:

Sparta
Ancient Greece
Greece
Saint Moritz
Europe
United States
Lake Placid, New York
Texas
Germany
Berlin
Iran
Australia
Afghanistan
Palestine
Paris
Norway
Great Britain
Middle East
Salt Lake City
Switzerland
Bern
Central Asia
Scythian steppes

Sports and competitions:

Women’s sports
Bobsledding
Olympics
Ancient Olympics
Chariot racing
Women’s football
American football
Soccer / football
Volleyball
Beach volleyball
Gymnastics
Golf
MMA
WNBA draft
Monobob
Two-person bobsled
Four-man bobsled

Books, works, and media:

When Women Stood
Homer’s Iliad

Topics and concepts:

Women’s sports history
Pioneers in women’s sports
Women banned from sports
Women’s Olympic participation
Women’s athletic firsts
Women’s equality
Women’s rights
Feminism
Patriarchy
Misogyny
Title IX
Women’s education
Girls’ literacy
Women in medicine
Medical bias
Women’s health research
Pregnancy and sport
Maternal mortality
Women’s clothing restrictions
Bloomers
Bicycle face
Dress Reform Society
Controllers of women
Women wearing pants
Hijab
Afghan women athletes
Women in Iran
Women in STEM
Women in academia
Extreme sports
Adventure writing
Online threats
Violence against women
Economic complexity
Social norms
Implicit bias
Explicit bias

Transcript

[00:00:00] Announcer: This is the Curious Pundits Podcast hosted by Kevin and Emmanuel. They explore bits of everything through thoughtful conversations, prioritizing curiosity over conclusions, and they thank you for joining them. Now onto the podcast.

[00:00:18] Emanuel: Hi everyone and welcome to yet another episode of The Curious Pundits Podcast, Bits of Everything where Kevin and I are talking about essentially everything there is to talk about.

We cover history topics, we cover current affairs, international affairs, gossip, technology, AI, and many more topics.

If you like what you are seeing, or equally important, dislike what you are hearing, seeing, go to curiouspundits.com. That’s where you find links to our YouTube channel, to where you like to listen to podcasts, Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Stitcher and everything else. Follow, like, share, comment and send us a message as well.

It’s my pleasure to pass along the virtual microphone to my co-host Kevin, who will introduce a special guest that we have today. It’s also a premier, it’s a first episode where we have another pundit. I would say an expert. Kevin and I are pundits because we have an opinion on a topic that we may or may not be experts.

I suspect our guest has a little bit more experience on the topic.

So Kevin…

[00:01:24] Kevin: She actually knows things, which is why she’s our guest. So again, I’m Kevin, and today’s topic is about, broadly speaking, pioneers in women’s sports. And we have two specific women that are going to be discussed. One is, and excuse me, because I always forget the name, so I’m looking at my other monitor, Kyniska of Sparta, which is a trip way back in history.

And the other person is our guest. Alexandra Allred was a member of the US Women’s Bobsled team in the nineties, before it was an official Olympic sport. And Alexandra, correct me if I’m wrong, but it didn’t become an official Olympic sport for another 20 years. Is that right?

[00:02:13] Alexandra: 1999 they announced that the women would be in the 2002 Olympic Games.

[00:02:18] Kevin: So not as long as I thought, but still a long time.

[00:02:21] Alexandra: Yeah.

[00:02:22] Kevin: And now over to you, Alexandra. Give us a little rundown of your expertise in this topic.

[00:02:30] Alexandra: The topic of bobsledding actually came by way of accident. I was sitting on the couch holding my six month old baby watching ESPN and I saw bobsledding and thought, man, this is the coolest thing I’ve ever seen in my life. And I couldn’t wait to watch the women and watched watched. They never showed.

I actually went to the library because there was no Internet at that time. And after doing some digging I found out that women were banned from the sport. And women in the late 18 hundreds, would recreationally of course, but they were sliding in Saint Moritz and throughout Europe and even in the US.

But somewhere along the line, women were banned from doing any kind of bobsledding, especially anything competitive. And then in 1940 the United States opened up and allowed women to participate in the 1940 Grand Championships in Lake Placid, New York, which is also the home of the US Bobsled Federation.

And a woman won, in fact the granddaughter of Melville Dewey, Katherine Dewey. And two days later, she was banned from the sport and stripped of her medals. And that was completely infuriating to me. I began writing all kinds of letters to anybody and everybody attached to the sport in any formal or informal capacity, and got a phone call one day from someone who said… Howard Lowry, and basically said, we’re going to have our first ever women’s trials for bobsled. Are you coming? Big mouth? And what do you say?

So I said, yeah, I’ll be there. And hung up the phone and was completely terrified because I had no idea what I’d gotten myself into. I knew nothing about the sport of bobsled. But I went and kept making cut after cut. And in September of 1994, I won. And I was 16 weeks pregnant.

And when I won the first ever women’s bobsled team in the United States, history was made at that point. And I will say that more people were interested in the fact that I was pregnant than the first ever women’s bobsled team. But whatever makes headlines.

[00:04:47] Kevin: Absolutely.

[00:04:48] Emanuel: For this, introduction about your career in bobsledding— but how about yourself? Maybe take 1 to 2 minutes to introduce yourself to our audience as well. Why you are a guest today, not just the part that you already introduced.

[00:05:05] Alexandra: Okay. My name is Alexandra Allred and I am an adjunct professor at Charleston State University in Texas. And I teach a number of things, but my greatest passion is women’s sports. I’ve written a number of books, numerous articles. In addition to being on the first ever US women’s Bobsled team, I’m also the first American to test drive the Volvo Gravity car.

I got into extreme and adventure writing following my time on the bobsled team, and I ‘m amazed by what women have done in sports, given all the obstacles that were placed before her, and that’s just become my passion, and I love educating. I’ve been in higher education for over 20 years…and my second passion is that I also work with young adults who have special needs.

And in my mind that everything kind of jives together very nicely because it’s really all about informing people, especially those who have been in some way disregarded in history.

[00:06:12] Emanuel: To that point I want to share a news. We’re recording this mid-April 2026 and as of last week, Union Berlin’s football— what Americans call soccer. I’m going to have a special rant some other time. Union Berlin. It’s a football team from Germany.

Berlin appointed Marie Louise…as the first female manager.

[00:06:35] Alexandra: I saw that, it’s fantastic. I remind my students of this all the time: those little things get a sound bite in the news, and then we all go on. It doesn’t seem like a big deal, but it is such a big deal. Historically speaking, we’re in 2026, and we’re still having these kinds of ‘first time.’

Given where we came from, where it started for women to be allowed in sport or not allowed, she inserted herself into sport. That’s a great story. It’s a great headline, and congrats to her.

Love it.

[00:07:09] Emanuel: Maybe one of the episodes that we can cover, perhaps simply on her, because I read a few things about her how she came to coach, and it’s definitely fascinating.

[00:07:22] Alexandra: Yeah, I’d tune into that.

[00:07:26] Kevin: I have a question about what I would call your career progression, right? So you got into bobsledding by accident, and you wrote a book called When Women Stood about pioneers in women’s sports. Which came first?

[00:07:43] Alexandra: Oh I joke all the time that I was in extreme sports before they called it extreme sports. Growing up. I was always into anything that, as my mom would say, if it can hurt her, she’s going to do it. And so I was always doing that anyway. And so yeah, it was an accident, but it wasn’t just because I was watching ESPN to begin with.

I just love sports. And when I saw that women weren’t allowed, as I said in the intro, that was intolerable to me. And after I retired from bobsled, Sports Illustrated asked me to play women’s professional football. It was a brand new women’s football league.

Football is American football.

[00:08:24] Emanuel: Yeah

[00:08:25] Alexandra: Yeah, I couldn’t let them know that I was writing a story for Sports Illustrated, which meant that I had to make it on my own merit. And then I played for a season with the Austin Rage in Texas, broke a couple of bones and then went on to test-drive the Volvo Gravity car, and then got into adventure riding.

So it’s just all part of the adventure and just seeing what I can do and then talk about it.

[00:08:51] Kevin: I did say early on that we were going to talk a little about…and again, I gotta look up her name, Kyniska of Sparta, because there is some historical significance to her story leading to what I would call current events. This is as good a time as any to segue into who was she and why should we care?

[00:09:13] Alexandra: She was an extraordinary person. And when I’m talking to my students, I’m very clear about the fact that there have always been extraordinary women. And what makes me sad is because they were women, we don’t know about the everyday average women because she just didn’t make the news. Kyniska made the news because she was the daughter of a King in Sparta.

And her story is… and it’s just important to always start with, she was a woman of privilege. And so there’s no way an ordinary woman could have done this. The only women who were allowed in the early Olympiads into the stadium were prostitutes or young maidens. And that was it.

Those were the only women who were allowed in the stadium. Not even family, not even mothers. So for Kyniska to be there in the first place is extraordinary. But the most extreme of all the sports in the early Olympiads was the nine-mile chariot race. And it was, I mean, they battled it out. Death was imminent many times in these races. They’re very dangerous.

And the one rule was you had to own your chariot and the horses. Most owners, no way would they do this. So they usually had slaves, which sounds horrible, but that’s just the way it was. Or they would hire an athlete, an up-and-coming warrior trying to make a name for himself. It wasn’t written in the rules any other way, except that you must own your team of horses and your chariot.

And Kyniska, was the daughter of a King. She had it. And so when she rolled into the stadium, nobody could stop her. It was not appreciated at all. But nobody could stop her because the rules were such. She won. And of course there was outrage. They couldn’t believe it. But again, what were they going to do?

She was a woman of extreme privilege, but also she won. The part of the story that I love the most is that nobody thought, as much as they hated this, nobody thought to write in the rules, from now on, even if you own your team of horses, you’re not allowed in if you’re a woman. Nobody put that in.

She came back four years later and won for a second time. And then they were like, hold up, we gotta put this in writing. And so they put it in writing. But this happened for Kyniska because not only was she the daughter of a king, but also she was Spartan. The difference between women in Sparta and in all the other Greek states was very different.

So that’s why I love her, because she really, yes, she was a woman of privilege, but I love that she had the courage to do it because she knew the kind of backlash she was going to face. And then she wins back-to-back Olympics and really sent a message to the world what she could do, which was extremely important because a little-known guy named Aristotle was really busy sending out the message that women were second-class citizens.

In fact, what he wrote was… she was an undeveloped human. So for Kyniska to come in and crush it, two Olympics in a row, that really flew in the face of what was becoming a standard. That it was accepted that this is where women were. The women of Sparta were exceptions.

[00:12:48] Emanuel: I thought you were going to say, and there’s a difference between the woman of Sparta and all the men from all the other Greek states.

[00:12:56] Alexandra: Yes. Thank you. I’ll take that too.

[00:13:00] Kevin: I’m going to make a weird historical segue, and bear with me, but for whatever reason, it’s not well known that when Alexander of Macedon was, I think 14 to 16, Aristotle was his private tutor for two years. And then at the age of 20, Alexander’s father dies. Alexander becomes King, and off he goes. But when he was ethnically cleansing Central Asia. he didn’t seem to project the attitude that women were inferior. So I’m really curious. I didn’t realize that Aristotle was such a… what’s the phrase I’m looking for?

[00:13:44] Alexandra: Misogynistic.

[00:13:46] Kevin: Yeah, thank you.

[00:13:48] Alexandra: Yeah.

[00:13:49] Kevin: I didn’t realize that about him, and I’m just curious how it is that Alexander didn’t agree with it, didn’t pick it up.

[00:13:56] Alexandra: Well…

[00:13:58] Emanuel: It’s not just him throughout history.

[00:14:01] Alexandra: But he had a wide, vast audience. Aristotle did. So it’s widely discussed… there’s very little information about it, but I actually did stumble on some when I was researching the Amazons. Are they real? Did they exist? The women of the Scythian steppes the nomadic women.

Alexander the Great did actually come upon and friended nomads, and there are several references to possible relationships that he had with well-known nomadic women. And there’s speculation on children that he may have fathered. And so he had a deep respect for the nomadic lifestyle and actually took a lot from their lifestyle as he was marching across the world, conquering everybody. And so it’s no coincidence that the women of Sparta had many rights, which surprises a lot of people. Some people kind of gloss it over and romanticize it, that they had more rights than they actually did.

On the surface, the reason that Spartan women had the power they had was it was deeply held that a stronger woman could make a stronger baby, which meant stronger warriors for the state, right? But the nomadic women, they had tattoos, they drank alcohol, they voted and the men shared in child-rearing duties.

So very shocking to the ancient Greeks, which is one of the reasons why they downplayed a lot of the contributions that the nomads made. But Alexander the Great appreciated… there’s not a lot of writing, but there’s a lot of suspicion among historians of what a great impact they had on him.

So it’s not a surprise that he would respect the women.

And in fact, most people don’t know this, but it is believed that it was the early Amazon women, the Amazonian women, who invented trousers, who invented pants. So I’m…

[00:16:08] Kevin: Yeah. I’ve actually heard that story, although I forget where. Women warriors in Central Asia is an ancient tradition, primarily because the method of warfare was based on horsemanship skills and archery. And you weren’t advantaged by having increased upper-body strength. And there’re actually notes that the Romans wrote about how formidable, not necessarily the women were, but how formidable the horseback archers of the Central Asian steppes were.

Like apparently they, and I know we’re getting way off track, and I’ll get us back in a minute, right? But they would ride in a horseshoe pattern. But in that horseshoe pattern, the Romans wrote that they could launch 200 arrows a minute, and they were incredibly accurate. Even if they were facing backwards on a horse that was galloping the other direction, they could still hit a target.

[00:17:08] Alexandra: Yeah.

[00:17:08] Kevin: And Romans were like, this is weird, right? They had never encountered that before.

[00:17:13] Alexandra: Yeah, in Homer’s Iliad, he writes about the female riders and the Amazon women. And it was the, curve bow, which is smaller, more accurate, and could, and do far more damage. The early nomadic women, the Amazonian women, they invented the curve bow and the trousers, and they were highly skilled because they didn’t have this big, cumbersome bow, but they could just light a place up.

And Homer talks about that.

[00:17:45] Kevin: Actually what triggered that memory was trousers. So the story I heard is that they invented trousers because it decreased chafing on their thighs,

[00:17:54] Alexandra: Yes. Yeah.

[00:17:56] Kevin: Which is a very practical reason to invent trousers.

[00:17:59] Alexandra: And then flash forward: women, even in the streets of Paris, it wasn’t until 2021 that Paris lawmakers finally eradicated the law that women could not wear pants on the streets of Paris.

[00:18:15] Emanuel: So, we are in the wrong…?

[00:18:19] Alexandra: Yeah.

[00:18:19] Kevin: It’s a crazy history. My train of thought is going all over the place, but somehow we need to bring this back to women pioneers and sport because…

[00:18:26] Alexandra: and that’s my fault because I mentioned Aristotle. So, actually, it really does all tie together…

[00:18:33] Kevin: Yeah.

[00:18:34] Alexandra: Kyniska really set off this outrage. And for the longest time in the other Greek states, it was widely held at Sparta was out of control for a number of reasons.

But yeah, and for them to allow their women to have to be able to speak publicly. So people always think that the women of Sparta were allowed to vote. No, they weren’t allowed to vote, but they were allowed to hold property. They could be in control of their staff. These are the people of privilege and they could speak publicly.

And even that was really shocking. And that in this timeframe is really when Aristotle really doubles down and really starts to spread the message of this is not how proper women behave, and proper women had to be reminded they can’t have power because they’re second-class citizens. And he also wrote that the woman had a childlike brain and is the incomplete human.

And so why would you give an incomplete human with a childlike brain any kind of power? And so in ancient Greece, for example, it became very important, even how she dresses and the topic of women in clothing goes all the way to today. How she dresses, it was about power. And around the same time, there was a group in ancient Greece called, and this was their official title, the controllers of women.

And the controllers of women walked the streets of ancient Greece to make sure that women wore the proper clothing that would tell people in society what their status was. So, for example, a stola was this long tunic, which would tell men, non-relatives, males, that she was either married or a widow, hands off. But then other clothing would let them know that she could be attacked and raped in the streets.

She could be beaten, she could be chastised for behaving a certain way that wasn’t in her station. So when I go back to Kyniska again, when you understand what was going on, and here she rolls into the Olympiads with her own chariot that she owns and her team of horses and kicks ass. Two Olympics in a row. It’s astonishing. I mean that it’s astonishing because … what other woman could possibly do that? No. I believe that there were scores of women around the world that could have done that very thing, but the fact that she did have to use her status so she wouldn’t be killed, but she did it, was so important to us today.

[00:21:22] Emanuel: Sounds like a lot of what’s going on in even today, in our day and in different parts of the world. And one example that comes to mind is Iran, where we see the enforcement of certain rules, especially against women. And we have this case that’s going on.

I haven’t been following it, but I know of its existence, where a female football player ask for asylum in Australia and now she’s back. But it’s still a big controversy. And obviously, being a woman in certain places is… you’re always threatened with… you could lose your life, or even worse, if I might say that.

If you have any thoughts or ideas on this topic. Anyone, share.

[00:22:05] Alexandra: I do, and we can dial it back, only if you all want to go along with it, but in the United States, there’s a whole topic of women wanting to wear pants so that they can get on a bicycle and everybody flipped out. But to your point far more serious…

[00:22:23] Kevin: Actually, can I comment, because

I don’t know exactly which volleyball team it was, but a woman’s volleyball team was

recently fined because they wore shorts rather than the bikini bottoms.

[00:22:36] Alexandra: Yeah. Yes. So it was the 2020… which was 2021 because of the pandemic… Olympic Games, and the women of Norway said, you know what? Forget this, and for the audience I’ll point out. So when they play in the Olympics and even compete leading up to the Olympics, the sand that they play on around the world can reach temperatures of 114 degrees Fahrenheit. So they’re literally burning their skin. And all anyone has to do is do a quick Google search, and you’ll see throughout time the men wear shorts that go to their knees, and then they wear a tank top. Their arms are exposed, but they wear a full-body tank top, the women were mandated to wear bikini bottoms and a little tankini.

It’s a tankini. So a little tank that’s like a bikini tankini, and then their bikini bottoms. And a lot of women have not liked this for a long time. But finally Norway said in 2020, we’re done. And they had their own uniforms designed that could keep them… prevent injury being burned. And they were fined by the IOC because optics is everything for women. And and by the way, this has been an issue in gymnastics as well. Women in gymnastics have for the last two decades, been asking to not have to wear the little gymnast outfits that they wear because I don’t know how else to put this. So forgive my being crass, but they’ll get wedgies. But if you’re an Olympic and you’re competing and you do a quick little finger roll to pull the fabric out, that’s a fine. They get fined. The men, it’s a full-body outfit. But anyway. Yeah. But with the women of Norway, Pink… the rock star Pink, publicly said she would pay that fine. And it began to cause such a problem that, again, for the IOC, the optics were worse. And so they took it back and they made some adjustments.

Yeah. So they don’t like it. And the volleyball players themselves go back and forth with what to do about this.

But Yeah. But to your point, Emanuel, one of the women on the cover of my book, When Women Stood, she and I were just starting to communicate with each other in 2020, 2019, 2017… oh gosh, I should know this. Anyway, when the Taliban came into Afghanistan, there was literally instant… I can’t even say 24-hour notice. It wasn’t even that much. All the women of Afghanistan, every single athlete was put on notice: you could be killed if you didn’t get off Instagram and disappear now. And they did, and some fled, and they were able to flee. But others have just literally disappeared from volleyball, wrestling, soccer / football, fencing. These, women athletes who are finally making great strides on the Olympic platform so the world could see them wearing a hijab.

That is very meaningful to them. And maybe the rest of the Western world could get an education about this. These women disappeared overnight because they were going to be killed by the Taliban because they were female athletes.

How dare they?

[00:26:08] Kevin: I have what I hope is not a weird take on the concept of social norms in general, but within the context of social norms for women in Iran. And it really has to do with how seemingly random and arbitrary social norms are. So every society, every country, every economy has things that they value more than other things.

So there’s a war on, and apparently the United States and Israel had really poor intelligence as to the state of the Iranian program in ballistic missiles and drones. Apparently Iran is holding their own because they’ve been working on a ballistic missile and drone program for decades. So apparently in Iran over the last 30, 35 years, if your interest was STEM, they supported you because it fed into one of their priorities.

If your interest was sports, they squashed you because they saw that as irrelevant to whatever. There’s more PhD, mathematician, scientists, engineers per capita in Iran than there are in what we call the West, because it’s important to the Iranian state because it supports one of their priorities.

Including women, right? So if you’re a woman in Iran who wants to be an engineer, you probably feel a degree of freedom. And if you’re a woman in Iran who wants to be a soccer player, you probably have exactly the opposite experience. I just find that really interesting.

[00:27:48] Alexandra: To your point yeah, they’ve been very focused on advancing the country in terms of power, weapons, education, and even then, for females in academia, it’s a hit or miss. It depends on… and this has everything to do with your status.

So we go all the way back to Kyniska again. So not just any woman can decide that she’s going to go to the university and get her PhD. It’s going to be women of of notoriety who have that distinction. But yeah. And then everyday women, whether she’s an athlete or not, they really bear the brunt of everything… Hard in the country. Even when you watch the Palestinians, you know, when you watch the food drops or in any kind of aid that comes out. Next time you see a shot like that, look for the women. You don’t see them. It’s the boys and men who run out and get everything. And the women are just virtually… you don’t, you just don’t see them.

When there’s protests, look for the women. I do. I always look, and you just don’t see them in certain countries because it’s too dangerous for them to do this and they know that.

We have a long way to go… the world.

[00:29:07] Kevin: Oh.

[00:29:08] Emanuel: Oh yeah, for sure.

[00:29:09] Alexandra: Yeah.

[00:29:09] Kevin: There’s no argument there.

[00:29:11] Alexandra: Yeah,

[00:29:12] Emanuel: Looing at constructing the future is important to understand the past. So going back to Kyniska. Her…

[00:29:18] Alexandra: Yeah.

[00:29:18] Emanuel: …In shaping what, not necessarily modern, progress.

[00:29:24] Alexandra: And I’ll tell you a bobsled story so we can jump ahead for a second, because this is a long-held belief that I hold it very personally. I’ve seen it in action, but I’ve also read throughout history when you look at world economics. It’s not a surprise that the countries that hold their women back are the poorest.

They suffer the most. And and the lesson here is when we raise up all of our citizens, the whole country is raised up. I don’t care where the country is. When you raise up all your citizens, the whole country goes up. So from my experience in bobsled, I make the team, I’m getting the medal put over my neck, and the director of the then Bobsled Federation says to me as he’s putting the gold medal around my neck, you know, this means nothing, right? Which was such a shocking statement. And so I waited until we got all the way back to the Olympic Training Center, and when all the women were together, I told them, you know what was said. And one of the men was around and he came over and he was like, yeah, if you think you guys are getting our money. This is one of the most expensive sports in the world. We need all the money that we can get, and we don’t have enough money as it is. We’re not sharing. And they meant that. This is one of the reasons that I feel so passionate about driving women in sports forward.

So what happened is… imagine it: it’s one of the most dangerous sports in the world. We had no coach, we had no uniforms, we had no sleds. And it’s really hard to learn to bobsled when you don’t have a sled, I’m just saying. And so we had to pool our money together and we went overseas. And the Canadians and the Brits, the Germans, the Swiss… they were phenomenal in helping us.

There was a reason because these women had already been allowed to slide in their countries. They weren’t a team, but they were being allowed to slide. And there was already this quiet movement of, we’ve gotta get women into the Olympics. And it was in it for them to help us.

And so from 1994… to literally the Olympic games, but we’ll say from 1994 to 2000… when we competed in World Cups and we competed against each other… off the track, every nation, we all helped each other. We all helped each other. You don’t see that in other sports. Until the Olympic Games and then it was like, all right, we’re set. Now. It’s every country for herself.

But for us, I should share with you all, a picture that I have of the first sled that we got of the United States. Someone had spray painted, “Help me” on it, and the, and it was rusted, the cowling was coming up… it was falling apart, literally.

But we plowed ahead, and we kept going, and we were starting to make a lot of news and an investment firm gave us $250,000. They were our first sponsor. And the first thing we did as women is we had a vote, and we thought, man, $250,000— are you kidding me? This was everything for us.

And we took a vote and we shared our money with the men’s program. And over the years I’ve had students, especially my female athletes go, what? They were so terrible to you. They didn’t deserve that money. But we shared because we thought if we put this money into the entire program, we’ll lift up the whole program. Respect, right? It didn’t go quite that smoothly, but to this day, I have mad respect for that team, that 1995 team, who, being treated the way we were treated, shared that. And yes, we finally got coaches and we got uniforms and we were included in the press kit. That finally happened. So it was a great moment.

But yeah, so back to the women in nations who are still held back, I think about them all the time because I think their day is coming where they’re going to have this opportunity, and we’re going to see that when we start lifting up the women of other countries, the whole country’s going to go up.

It just, it will, it’s part of humanity.

[00:33:30] Kevin: Emanuel and I did an episode on reading and the significance of literacy, and at the very end I brought up a quote, and I wish I could remember where I picked it up, but apparently sociologists have done these studies, and there’s been multiple studies, and it turns out there’s one thing that a society can do that will increase the economic complexity of the society, increase the material wealth of the society, decrease the birth rate of the society, and decrease the willingness of the political leaders to commit to war casualties.

That one thing is teach girls to read.

[00:34:11] Alexandra: Yeah.

[00:34:11] Kevin: It’s that important.

[00:34:13] Alexandra: Yeah, that’s… it is that important? Because then that opens up… but also if you’re of Aristotle’s thinking…you, that’s the last thing you want do.

[00:34:26] Kevin: It’s a waste of resources.

[00:34:28] Alexandra: Exactly. And it’s dangerous. It’s because if you empower girls, they start having pretty bold thoughts, and they want to wear pants and they want to run for political office.

And so, the best thing you can do is hold women in fear and no opportunity for growth. That’s the greatest thing you can do. And that’s why I say is if we raise everybody up, it is absolutely tied to economy. And it’s just so important. In my class, it’s a favorite story of my students because it’s so absurd it’s funny.

But in the late 1800s, there was a group of women… women of prestige, white women in the United States, and they saw that there was this thing called the bicycle, and it was very exciting. And they wanted to be able to get on the bicycle, right? And so it’s kind of hard to be on a bicycle when you’re crashing all the time. And most people don’t realize that dress at that time, with the under- required underlayers and the petticoats, most dresses were about 20 pounds, very heavy. And so there was a movement, this Dress Reform Society by Amelia Bloomer, who… that’s where the name bloomers come from. And she redesigned a dress so that she could throw a leg over and straddle a bike. And I used the word straddle because with my students, what came from that was, the patriarchy was religious leaders and fathers. They were outraged because surely she would be sexually stimulated if she was on this bike, and that was horrifying. And so they got leaders to write letters and put them in the newspaper, and they exclaimed that, and I don’t say explained, they exclaimed that this was… a very bad woman would want to do such things. When that didn’t work and women started trying to get these bloomers and ride bikes, then they came up with the term bicycle face and they appealed to her vanity.

And they said to women, if you ride a bike, the strain of pushing those pedals, you would grimace and you would make a face. Remember when you were little and your mom said, don’t cross your eyes because it’ll stick that way? This was their version of don’t ride a bike because you’ll get a bicycle face. And so this was like the terror to stop women from riding a bicycle.

But in the end, what it was really about was she might get on her bike and ride two neighborhoods over and meet other people, and they lost control. And that is the history of pants for women.

[00:37:11] Emanuel: Can you imagine?

[00:37:13] Alexandra: Yeah. Can you imagine?

[00:37:14] Emanuel: Writing against it, and I’m pretty sure there’s some people who wrote PhD thesis on with solid arguments on why…

[00:37:22] Alexandra: when I… and a lot of times when I work out with a friend, I’ll look over, do I have bicycle face right now? Just because it’s just so absurd. But yeah, that’s throughout time. And to what’s going on in Iran and the women of Afghanistan, the athletes who disappeared— clothing and no education and opportunity, that’s the way to control, going all the way back to the controllers of women in ancient Greece.

So clothing and what she wears is vital to a lot of societies that just want to hold part of their population back. It’s crazy.

[00:38:02] Kevin: It is. I agree. For what it’s worth, and I don’t think I’ve revealed this detail of myself to you, Alexandra, in our prior discussions, but I’m a bit of a macroeconomics nerd. Like I’m actually learning how to build systems dynamics models of how economies work using a system dynamic modeling thing.

[00:38:20] Alexandra: Wow.

[00:38:21] Kevin: But the one thing I can say definitively that separates the rich countries from the poor countries is the diversity within the economy. The more different things you do, the richer you are. Like that is just a general truth.

[00:38:37] Alexandra: Yeah, I, and in full disclosure to your audience, you didn’t find me. I reached out to you and one of the reasons that I reached out to you is I saw that you guys were actually looking at a different topic, and and I’m so grateful to both of you because I really inserted myself in.

[00:38:56] Kevin: You slid into our DMs, in a manner of speaking.

[00:39:00] Alexandra: Yeah,, I did.

And thank you. And truly, I want your audience to know these guys are great because they’re so open-minded and they just love all forms of discussion. So I truly, I appreciate this.

But the reason that I did that was because what you just said it’s so important. And right now I’m watching in real time. Rights being pulled back. I’ve been in higher education for over 20 years, and for the first time ever, I had to defend my own syllabus and what I’m teaching… tomorrow’s leaders… tomorrow’s leaders in wellness and human health and medicine, and I’m having to defend that I want them to know that in 2021, all of our top medical universities in the nation are still using the one hundred and forty five, forty nine pound male, I’m sorry, 159 pound male as a representative of women in medicine.

That’s insane. We’re they’re still doing that. And when, and in 2021, when they were called out in Congress and saying you have to start using a female model. You can’t just use a smaller male and call that a woman. They said it’s on the student to do that studying on their own. Come on, we all know that going through medical school, they’re not going to have the time or energy to do that.

And that’s why today we still have so many medical issues with women because we’re not fully studied even now. And so… and I’m in shock that I’m having to try to defend teaching equal rights for health… for our moms, our grandmothers, our sisters and wives, and cousins and neighbors. I’m not doing anything crazy.

I’m just trying to, I’m trying to make sure that we’re studied properly. We know now of course, women… have so many heart attacks, but it was always widely misdiagnosed because we don’t display the same symptoms as a man. And we wake up during surgeries because we respond differently to anesthesia.

There’s just, the list of medicine is just, it’s just crazy.

[00:41:19] Emanuel: It’s funny times where last time I checked biologically women born were more predominantly around the world than men. I think it’s 50 something and it’s projected to be…

[00:41:33] Alexandra: Yes.

[00:41:33] Emanuel: 60 in the next a hundred years or so, if not even more.

[00:41:38] Alexandra: Yes. And there’s a… and there’s a movement right now among the black community… black women, that they’re starting to use doulas and having home births now, because the United States… we lead all western nations… in black women… the mortality rate of during her pregnancy is outrageous. It’s because the black women… women are neglected in medicine, absolutely. But the treatment of black women… it’s astounding. So there’s so much work to be done. And we went way off on this time, it’s my fault.

[00:42:20] Kevin: Yeah do that.

[00:42:20] Alexandra: But i’m tying it back to your your nod toward reading and education and how it just lifts everybody up.

[00:42:30] Kevin: It’s weird because there’s a few very prominent political leaders in the past who got it. Most notably Napoleon Bonaparte. But still, in spite of their apparent success in whatever they were doing, this aspect of what they believed to be true was… somehow… it fell away from the mythology. Now I may… I don’t understand Napoleon as well as a historian of the Napoleonic era et cetera, et cetera, but I’ve heard that the quote, the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world, is from him.

[00:43:07] Alexandra: Yes. And I’m by no means am I an expert, but I did hear… I’ve read that before. I’m going to go back to sports for a second.

And so Mary the Queen of Scotts…

She was an avid golfer. She loved golf, and in fact, she coined the term caddy. But because she was the queen, she could play golf, but it was almost, I think it was something crazy like 150 years later was the first time then women could actually play golf.

And my point being is that… there’s always been women doing all these things, but they were only ever women of great prestige, and so we looked the other way. And I was I read a great quote. I can’t say it verbatim, but basically we owe a lot to Aristotle for being so misogynistic because, he wrote so much crap about women.

That’s really the first early writings that we have about women, and that’s why we know how far back this goes. But to your point, we have an explicit and implicit bias against women that all ties back to patriarchy. And that goes back forever. I mean, we’ve always been, I was always told that men were the hunters, women were the gatherers. Not so.

Now we know that women were also hunters. It’s just that history didn’t write it that way. And so really, everything that we think we know, and I tell this to my students, it’s worth doing some research and going back, because most of the time we’re going to find out if it comes to women or populations that have been disparaged in some way, going to find that’s not necessarily true. Including the people of Iran.

What’s going on right now in the middle…. it’s… how is this happening? It’s because we’ve used language to diminish some people and lift other people up, and then it’s okay if we commit genocide or we attack people because somehow… we’ve written this new dialogue that’s acceptable to us.

[00:45:19] Emanuel: There is little we can do. One of the things that we can actually do is discuss and bring them up and highlight them and point and educate ourselves as much as we can. Through books, through shows, through speaking with other people, or watching the podcast such as ours.

[00:45:35] Alexandra: Yes. At the end of every semester one of my favorite things to do is the last question on the final exam is… I’ll ask my students two questions. I want their take on everything that they learned in this semester, and I get a lot of our athletes as well. So I get all my, the football players and baseball players and basketball players.

And then the second question goes to violence against women. And in the course we go all the way through Title IX and what’s important about… we go through everything, right? All the myths and treatment from back, from Ancient Greece all the way to the women’s volleyball team choosing to wear more clothes. Because I actually talk about that, so throughout time. And… the two things I get… the one that really tugs at my heart is having gone through everything we go through, my question about violence against women is I basically say, having learned everything that you’ve learned, what can we do as a society to dial back the violence and hate that women incur around the world?

In the United States, a woman is killed by someone… three women a day are killed. And every three minutes around the world, there are multiple girls who were either molested or killed.

The numbers are staggering, right? And so I ask my students, what can we do? And by far, almost 90% of my students will say in some varying form… yeah, it’s really terrible and it’s sad, but that’s just the way it’s always been. And that’s the answer after a whole long course. And I just think… and I know that… and I don’t diminish their grade in any way for them answering that. Because I understand that the optics, that’s how it looks. That’s what’s going on right now. It’s easy to have that just be your answers. Yeah, that’s just the way it’s always been, what are you going to do? But the second question I ask is, what’s your takeaway? And I love, especially from my young men, I love reading…

I had no idea, bloop bloop. And they’ll give me all the different things that they learned and they’ll say, I had no idea it was like that women are badass. And that just… that gives me hope. It gives me hope that they realize…. and so I can’t fight that second one of the optics of… women are always going to be abused, that’s just the way it is. I haven’t been able to fight that yet, I feel like I’m on my way when I get all these young men to say to me… and women, my women too… to say… I didn’t know that. Wow. I didn’t know that that’s who invented that, and that’s who fought this. And that’s, this is why we… and so that, is why every semester I teach again and again, even though I swear I’m never going to do it again. I do.

[00:48:28] Emanuel: That’s powerful.

[00:48:31] Kevin: I remember a specific situation that might be maybe 15 years old, and it made the news at the time, although I haven’t heard much about it recently, but it was like we accidentally fell into an experiment. There was a very small consulting firm, and I don’t remember the details, but it was one man and one woman that was the entire workforce of the consulting group.

They had a common email box that they used to make it simple for the outside world, but they individually got their own individual email within the common email box. And one day the guy starts getting these incredibly hostile responses from clients that he had a really good rapport with, and he shows it to her and she says, no, those are mine.

We somehow are getting each other’s email. And he’s what do you mean? And she’s that’s how they talk to me. And he was completely unaware. So they started doing experiments and I guess on some regular schedule, day by day or week by week, they started flipping back and forth to each other’s mailbox, and there was a definite discernible pattern.

They were polite to him and they were obnoxious and rude to her.

[00:49:45] Alexandra: That’s, yeah I don’t know that study, but in my course I teach… I teach to that. How women are treated by the media and how people are treated in public. There was a blogger in Great Britain, and this was about I think it was 2021, she got on one morning… very popular, she had a a big following, and she wrote Happy International Women’s Day, y’all. And just something fun, very lighthearted. And she made international news because of the death threats she was getting. All she said was good morning, Happy International Women’s Day. And I discussed that in my course because I get it all the time.

So I got into teaching women’s sports because of my own background. I just… I love extreme sports, I always did. Then I found out women were banned from bobsledding and it was really a test to myself that I was like, oh no, this can’t be. And I got in and I had an amazing time and I’m still friends with… 30 years later with the original team.

And so I’ve always tried to do things like that, just self-exploration and lift up my sisters. That’s it. That’s my agenda. And yet I teach this class and I get asked all the time are you a man hater? Why? Because.

[00:51:03] Kevin: Yeah. I don’t mean to laugh, but that is objectively… funny.

[00:51:07] Alexandra: Yeah. Yes, this is, and it’s all the more reason we have to teach these things. But that’s why this woman, when she got up and said Happy International Women’s Day to her mostly female… and then she’s inundated… she had to completely get off all her platforms because of the death threats.

And then if you’re actually an outright… where you wear proudly the label feminist, and I’m going to explain that in a second. The death threats… I got to interview a woman who said she had to move, and she was getting messages where they said they knew that she had a young daughter as well, and she was getting multiple messages where they said, I’m going to rape and kill your daughter. Because she’s a feminist.

And in my class, I’ll say, who considers themself a feminist here? I’m in Texas. And so, there’s maybe one or two that’ll go like a quick little, because it’s a dirty word, but I said you’re being… you’re all… you my baseball players back there, you’re all feminists right now in that you’re just trying… you’re learning about women.

That’s empowerment to women. That’s just being … that’s having a feminist mind where you’re being of a feminist mind to think, oh, what’s it like for her? But we’ve radicalized it so this’s this horrible… it’s the F word.

And yeah, it’s just crazy. So for my career, when I’ve done things, when I played football, when I did various things, there would be that someone would be like, would you want to be a man?

No, actually… Present company excluded, there’s a lot of times I’m pretty disappointed in, men. So no, I don’t want to be a man. I want to just be a better person of myself. It doesn’t matter who I am. And that goes all the way back to ancient Greece.. I’m telling you, since civilization.

When we were nomads, we were equal. When we became civilized, we took half the population and smashed them down and held them down and told them that how they dressed and who they talked to and where they walked and how they thought was up to somebody else. And that is a crazy bad history that we need to stop.

[00:53:19] Kevin: Yeah, I don’t know how argue against that.

[00:53:23] Emanuel: Or anything else after.

[00:53:25] Alexandra: Yeah, and that’s why women’s sports is so important, because women in anything, to your point, we’re more than half the population now, right? So being involved in everything is just going to make all of us better. But women in sports in particular is a really big deal because we… going back to Sparta, we see athletics as like strength and endurance and perseverance, and she has grit.

And so, if we are in that lane as well and we’re excelling in doing really well, it’s meant to be a reminder to everybody that we are here too. We can do amazing things. And that is why Rhonda Rousey rubbed so many people so wrong.

Rhonda Rousey, for those who don’t know, she’s in a very popular MMA… was a very popular MMA fighter. She’s beautiful. But what was shocking, and that was we liked her because she was beautiful. And so she appeared on two different popular magazine covers, nude. She covered herself. And we liked that.

What we didn’t like is that she has tattoos and she cusses a lot and she brags about sexual promiscuity, and that is not okay. And it’s what? Every man does that and we eat it up and we love it, but when women do it, it’s an issue.

So yeah, we have so many bridges to pass, but I do end with my students always saying but man, we’ve made great strides and there’s so many amazing stories. And if I’m given my druthers, I’m going to dwell far more on the positives than the negatives. And there really are.

[00:55:07] Emanuel: I liked how you said man…

[00:55:10] Alexandra: Yeah.

[00:55:10] Emanuel: in the…

[00:55:12] Alexandra: I know. See, it’s that implicit explicit bias. It can’t…

[00:55:16] Kevin: Yeah.

[00:55:17] Alexandra: It’s hard to kick.

[00:55:18] Kevin: I was thinking about you in particular about the about this episode and I caught myself thinking women were members of two men bobsled teams, the fact that my brain defaults to a two man team…

[00:55:34] Alexandra: Yeah. And we will say it often. A lot of people say two person, but it’s easier to say, so we just say it. Amongst ourselves we’ll be like, yeah, two men. And so… the men have four men and two men in bobsled. And women do the two person and then the monobob.

But yeah, it is embedded.

Monobob. And that’s just a singular person.

[00:55:58] Kevin: I get the idea, I’m just like…

[00:55:59] Alexandra: Yeah.

[00:56:00] Kevin: Ooh, wow.

[00:56:03] Alexandra: I wish that I had the money to send you both to Salt Lake City and have you both take a ride in a bobsled. It’s amazing.

[00:56:11] Kevin: Not sure I would go.

[00:56:13] Emanuel: But if I would right, probably half a million dollar you can persuade me to.

[00:56:20] Alexandra: We would ensure that you had a very good, competent driver. But even then, when you’re watching the games and you’ll hear the commentator go, Ooh, and she tagged the wall. Let me tell you, inside the bobsled, the break person is going, oh God, my kidneys. Because when you’re going 85 miles an hour and you slam into the side of the wall in an ice covered cement wall in an only metal capsule it hurts.

[00:56:46] Kevin: Yeah, I believe it. Yeah.

[00:56:47] Alexandra: But it’s fun.

[00:56:51] Kevin: Yeah. We not ever see fully eye to eye on that.

[00:56:57] Alexandra: I was just going to say, I know that you just had, you had a baby and you have a little girl and especially, and I have two granddaughters and a grandson, and I tell people all the time, I love what I’m doing now, talking about this subject, but I love teaching… and I just love doing the things that I do because I want my… my grand babies to grow up and realize that we’re all… we the collective, we’re all equal.

It doesn’t matter your religion, it doesn’t matter your race, where you come from, your gender, your… it doesn’t matter. And that seem… it’s so idealistic, right? And it’s not that way in real life, but I say to my students, but if we all keep saying that and we keep acting it like it can be true, we can make it true.

[00:57:49] Kevin: Yeah. That’s a common theme throughout history. Things that came into being, were spoken about long before they came into being.

[00:58:01] Alexandra: Right.

[00:58:01] Kevin: And sometimes the transition from talking about it to doing it was… it required a lot of effort on the part of a lot of people.

[00:58:09] Emanuel: And took a lot of time.

[00:58:09] Alexandra: Yeah.

[00:58:10] Kevin: Yeah.

[00:58:11] Alexandra: Yeah.

[00:58:12] Emanuel: Generations.

[00:58:13] Alexandra: In 1929, Amelia Earhart, everybody knows who she is, but most people don’t know who… Crosson is her last name, I’ll think of her first name in a second.

But these women wanted to fly airplanes… 1929, and that was absolutely unheard of. But they got these women together and there was going to be a competition they were going to fly across the country.

And it was… Marvel Crosson. And there was these wonderfully talented female pilots and they all had their own plane. Again, there’s some privilege here that they could own a plane. But they were flying across country and they would stop at different parts to go across country. And one by one on their stops. If they hadn’t hired someone to protect their plane overnight, their planes were being sabotaged and they were having nuts and bolts poured into the gas tank and other they’re just things were loosened. And Marville Crosson was actually the victim.

She was killed, her plane was sabotaged, and she went down and she was killed. And the funny part about that was… the not funny part about that was… every place they stopped… it was very popular and everybody wanted to see Amelia Earhart and these, other female pilots. But there was always with that, several more articles that would just say, this is an atrocity.

And the theme that was always used is, they’re so delicate, we have to protect them. They’re so delicate.

And that’s why women were banned from bobsledding. They’re so delicate. We have to protect them. So we’re going to kill them. To protect them.

And that’s been the theme throughout… it’s an upside down pretending that we’re going to help people and what’s going on to what you were talking about, Emanuel… it’s what’s going on in the Middle East right now is… this ridiculous thought that, well we’re going to seclude them , and we’re going to repress them, we’re going to do these things for their own protection. And that’s always been the theme and it still holds. It’s 2026 and we’re still saying that. Even if we have to kill ’em, we’re going to protect ‘ em.

[01:00:26] Kevin: Yeah

[01:00:27] Alexandra: Yeah.

[01:00:28] Kevin: Weirdly, somehow a drastic punishment for violating a social norm is in their best interest.

[01:00:39] Alexandra: And so early on when you asked me why I love women in sports so much is because that argument becomes a lot harder when you see how much women can live. So when I was pregnant and I was doing bobsledding, but I was part of a Case Western University study and I eagerly entered into that because I wanted to make sure that everything I did wasn’t going to harm my baby, right?

And so I was hooked up to everything. I had EKG leads, fetal monitor, heart monitor, you name it, I was hooked up. And I would do sprints. But I was squatting 350 pounds and I was clocked at running 20 miles an hour and I was pregnant.

Now I would die, but then… that’s how strong… women are insanely strong, but we haven’t really been given until recent history the opportunity to show our stuff.

So when, we were starting to get out… I don’t know if you wi watched the WNBA draft last night… there’s a woman who’s six foot seven, and I said to my husband, who was horrified when I said this, but I said, man, I wish I was as big as she is.

I would love to just walk around as a six foot seven woman, just for a day, that would be so amazing. Just because, but it’s just the, it’s fun to watch where we’re going right now. So I am actually more optimistic.

But yeah, throughout history it’s… why she can’t wear pants and why she can’t be in sports and, so women in sports is a very big deal because it’s important that we start showing really start showing what she can do.

[01:02:21] Emanuel: So powerful that I don’t think can add anything to it. We already passed the one hour mark for this.

[01:02:28] Alexandra: I’m so sorry.

[01:02:28] Kevin: No, not a problem. I would like to plant a seed in terms of having you back as a guest later.

So because being a woman, front and center, was a problem in a lot of societies throughout history, there’s a whole bunch of women who provided contributions to collective achievements who got no recognition for their participation.

And I’m specifically thinking of Lise Meitner and the splitting of the atom.

Jenny Marx. And I firmly believe that if Karl Marx had been married to anybody else, he would’ve just been some weird guy who couldn’t hold down a job. Like we would not know who he was.

And my personal favorite, and I had to Google for her name, because I always get it wrong, is Mileva Einstein. Same deal. Albert Einstein was just some weird guy who was so lost in thought that he literally couldn’t hold down a full-time job. When he published the four papers, which constituted his miracle year in 1905, he had a part-time job in a patent office in somewhere in Switzerland, I think Bern.

Couldn’t work eight hours a day, because he had too much thinking to do right.

Now ordinarily we would think that was super weird, right? But these three women contributed to these collective achievements to such an extent that I firmly believed that without them, they probably wouldn’t have happened. In fact, everyone expected Albert Einstein to keep laying the scientific and intellectual golden eggs for the rest of his life.

But when he and his first wife separated, they stopped.

[01:04:16] Emanuel: I would propose even go further in history. And one character that comes to mind is Hypatia, which was a pioneer in the ancient world to many things including science and whatever science might mean at that stage. Also, she come from a privileged family and also she died for the sin of thinking as well.

She was murdered by a group of radical Christians back then as far as I remember. So some food for thought.

[01:04:48] Alexandra: Oh yeah, I would love this because throughout time there are so many things women wrote and, we’ll never know their names because they were women. A man took it, put his name on it, and there it is. There’s a woman who wrote top 20 hits and then I think it was like the 1940s and fifties.

And she was a phenomenal songwriter. And her name was never put on anything. So that’s very common. So I would, yeah, I would love to come back. We could even title it the Essential and Non-Essential Woman, which is a real… in the, early Roman Catholic Church. In the bookkeeping of the church, they had two columns, the Essential Woman and the Non-Essential Woman.

And it’s flipped on what you would Expect from those two titles. And we could absolutely discuss the non essential women, and how they changed the world.

[01:05:43] Kevin: That’s an interesting way to frame it.

[01:05:46] Alexandra: Yeah.

[01:05:47] Kevin: Ok, let’s do that in the future.

[01:05:49] Emanuel: Question if anybody wants to reach out to you or just drop a question or just say hi, where’s the best place they can do that.

[01:05:58] Alexandra: Oh, absolutely. And I do answer. I have a website, it’s www.alexandraallred.com.

Pretty easy.

[01:06:07] Emanuel: And if you Google the name, you should be able to find a way to contact Alexandra as well.

That being said, if you like to reach out to us, to me and Kevin, you can go to curiouspundits.com. Over there you’ll find the recordings, future recordings of the podcast, links to our social profiles and as well to other platforms where you would like to listen to your podcast, Apple, Spotify, and so forth.

Until the next time, my name is Emanuel.

[01:06:36] Kevin: My name is Kevin and I need to add something real quick, because Emanuel, you and I have been negligent in asking people… if you like the podcast, please go to your favorite podcast platform and give us a five star review. That will help other people find us. Thank you, Alexandra.

[01:06:54] Alexandra: You for having me, and I can tell your audience they are exactly as they seem. Very, genuine, very curious very, kind, intelligent men. Love them.

[01:07:06] Emanuel: Thank you for that. I am blushing. I don’t what to say. My name is Emanuel.

[01:07:12] Kevin: My name is Kevin

[01:07:14] Alexandra: My name is Alex.

[01:07:16] Emanuel: Thank you for listening.

[01:07:17] Kevin: Bye.

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