Henry Abbott on the Logistics of Ballistics

Summary

Podcast Summary: "Henry Abbott on the Logistics of Ballistics"

Title: The Gist
Host: Mike Pesca
Guest: Henry Abbott
Release Date: May 16, 2025
Duration: Approximately 25 minutes
Produced by: Peach Fish Productions

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I. Introduction to Henry Abbott and the Podcast Episode

In this episode of The Gist, host Mike Pesca welcomes Henry Abbott, a renowned basketball writer and creator of the True Hoop Network. Abbott discusses his latest work, his passion for injury prevention in athletics, and the groundbreaking methodologies employed in his research.

II. Henry Abbott's Background and "Ballistic"

Henry Abbott introduces his new book, "Ballistic: The New Science of Injury-Free Athletic Performance", which delves into innovative approaches to prevent sports injuries. Abbott emphasizes his evidence-based approach, stating:

“I am staying in the U.S. is it that I'm not an expert? Is it that I don't have a good gig waiting for me at the University of Toronto? We'll discuss but first…”
— Henry Abbott [05:44]

III. The Importance of Injury Prevention in Athletics

Abbott underscores the critical issue of sports-related injuries, noting that the NBA lost approximately 6,000 minutes to player injuries in the previous year alone. He highlights the need for effective strategies to mitigate these risks:

“What's going on? And it felt like a really fun thing to really explore and learn about. Just people learning how to jump higher and run faster and not tear their ACL.”
— Henry Abbott [07:31]

IV. Understanding Force Plates and Biomechanics

A significant portion of the discussion centers around the use of force plates—devices that measure the forces exerted by athletes during movement. Abbott explains their function and significance:

“It looks just like that thing when you are going to weigh your luggage at the airport, right? So there are two of those, they're surrounded in concrete in the floor at P3 and they're actually split in half.”
— Henry Abbott [10:59]

These plates provide detailed data on how athletes land, jump, and move, offering insights into potential injury risks.

V. Data-Driven Insights into Athletic Performance

Abbott elaborates on how extensive data collection—accumulating up to 134.4 terabytes—enables the identification of patterns that precede injuries. This proactive approach allows for interventions before injuries occur:

“They can see an ACL tear in the weeks, months and years before you tear your ACL.”
— Henry Abbott [10:56]

VI. Case Studies: Analysis of Athlete Movements

Using real-world examples, Abbott discusses how specific landing mechanics can predict injury risks. He references notable athletes:

“They have a thing they like to say about Zion at P3, which is he pushes on the earth harder than any other athlete they've ever assessed.”
— Henry Abbott [19:51]

Abbott also mentions how athletes like James Harden and Luka Doncic were identified through this data-driven approach, highlighting their unique movement patterns that contribute to their performance and injury resilience.

VII. The Future of Injury Prevention and Training

The conversation shifts to the broader implications of Abbott's research on athletic training. He advocates for integrating biomechanical assessments into regular training regimens to enhance performance and reduce injury rates:

“There's just kinds of athleticism that totally matter in sports that we just haven't really focused on before.”
— Henry Abbott [24:25]

VIII. Personal Anecdotes and Theories

Abbott shares personal insights and theories developed during his research, drawing parallels between animal biomechanics and human athletic performance:

“The best movers are all in nature and there's slow, super slow-mo video of like a cheetah running full speed. And what really strikes me is the head is perfectly still…”
— Henry Abbott [25:24]

IX. Conclusion and Implications

In wrapping up, Abbott emphasizes the transformative potential of his research in redefining athletic training and injury prevention. The integration of advanced data analytics and biomechanics stands to revolutionize how athletes train, perform, and maintain their health.

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Notable Quotes

• Force Plate Explanation:
  Henry Abbott [10:59]: “It looks just like that thing when you are going to weigh your luggage at the airport, right? So there are two of those, they're surrounded in concrete in the floor at P3 and they're actually split in half.”

• Predicting ACL Tears:
  Henry Abbott [10:56]: “They can see an ACL tear in the weeks, months and years before you tear your ACL.”

• Athlete Force Analysis:
  Henry Abbott [19:51]: “They have a thing they like to say about Zion at P3, which is he pushes on the earth harder than any other athlete they've ever assessed.”

• Future of Athleticism:
  Henry Abbott [24:25]: “There's just kinds of athleticism that totally matter in sports that we just haven't really focused on before.”

• Nature's Movers:
  Henry Abbott [25:24]: “The best movers are all in nature and there's slow, super slow-mo video of like a cheetah running full speed. And what really strikes me is the head is perfectly still…”

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Final Thoughts

Henry Abbott's insights into the biomechanics of athletic performance offer a promising avenue for enhancing athlete longevity and reducing injury rates. Through the integration of advanced data analytics and targeted training strategies, Abbott's work paves the way for a new era in sports science.

For more in-depth discussions and updates, subscribe to The Gist and join the conversation on MikePesca.substack.com.

Transcript

[Mike Pesca]

Hi, it's Mike with a major announcement. It is not about the gist. It is about something called the Gist List. So let me tell you, every day I construct the show by reading and listening and imbibing a tremendous amount of information. A lot of it doesn't make it onto the show, of course. So what do we do with that? What do we do with the effluvia, the jetsam, the sods, but also the odds. Enter the Gist List. Every day on Substack, I will be compiling the most interesting, important, maybe unfairly ignored stories that I look at and say, there's something there. You know, we must nurture that which is interesting in this world. Some of these stories do end up as segments. They all start off as ideas. We need ideas. The gist list is designed to interest you, definitely. Not to waste your time to make you smarter. To see where I'm heading every day on the gist. So head over to Mike pesca.substack.com today and every day to sign up for the gist list. It's Friday, May 16, 2020, from Peach Fish Productions. It's the Gist. I'm Mike Pesca, the new director of fema. Met with staff like a tornado meets with a trailer park. David Richardson, a former Marine, took aim at the worst performing 20% of the FEMA staff. The remaining FEMA staff and estimated 2,000 FEMA employees have left. But of the remaining malingerers, Richardson said, If you're those 20% of the people, I know all the tricks, okay? I know them from last corporals, I know them from staff sergeants, lieutenants, federal employees, my own employees, and indeed myself, okay? I played the games, too. Obfuscation, delay, undermining.

[Henry Abbott]

If you're one of those 20 of.

[Mike Pesca]

The people and you think those tactics and techniques are going to help you, they will not, because I will run right over you. I will achieve the president's intent. Now, you may remember Cameron Hamilton. He was the FEMA director as recently as two weeks ago. Appointed by Trump, the Navy SEAL gained prominence for criticizing Joe Biden's FEMA on social media. It's a pretty great credential, but not great enough. Because a week ago, Hamilton appeared before a U.S. house Appropriations Committee and said something disqualifying. I will read you the quote, quote, I do not believe it is in the best interest of the American people to eliminate the Federal Emergency Management Agency. So by saying FEMA should not be eliminated, Hamilton was. He was escorted out of the building the next day. And now Richardson is in charge. The Wall Street Journal reporting FEMA head, that's Richardson admits in internal meetings he doesn't have a plan for hurricane season. Trump has a plan. It's to slash $646 million in FEMA grants and give it back to the states. When asked about this, the state said, you mean we should just do it for ourselves? By give it back to the states you mean don't help us. And this isn't a hypothetical. Arkansas recently got hit by hurricanes. Tornadoes actually. And the governor, the Trump loyalist, the former White House spokesperson Sarah Huckabee Sanders, when told you're getting no aid, said I need aid. So she personally lobbied Trump and he eventually approved the money. And maybe that's what he wants. What am I saying? Of course that's what he wants. Leverage and loyalty. And the hope, I guess, that if you live in a red state or specifically a red state run by a Trump loyalist, specifically a Trump loyalist who doesn't say out loud that you don't need fema, you might get just a little taste of fema or not. And if so, you got to live with it because we once had fema. Say hello to the era of FEMA on the show today. They are fascism experts. They are leaving the U.S. i am staying in the U.S. is it that I'm not an expert? Is it that I don't have a good gig waiting for me at the University of Toronto? We'll discuss but first, Henry Abbott is a great basketball writer, creator of the True Hoop Network and an interesting and more importantly for our purposes, interested guy. His new interest comes out in book form. It is called Ballistic the New Science of Injury Free Athletic Performance. It is really interesting. And Henry Abbott joins us up next. Abbott is one of the great basketball writers, more than a basketball writer, a basketball thinker. He knows data, he's great at communicating. His true hoop network is that. And he's fascinated many aspects of the sport and sport. But he's also interested and you can't not be if you're hoop head, very interested in injuries because The NBA lost 6,000 minutes to injuries this last year. Things are going off the cliff. These gigantic men banging bodies, banging bodies into the ground, banging bodies into each other. What can we do about it? He has an answer. The name of his new book is Ballistic the New Science of Injury Free Athletic Performance. And it talks about a figure named Dr. Marcus Elliot who runs the Peak Performance Project. Okay, that's grandiosely named, but I think it might be true. Henry, welcome to the Gist.

[Henry Abbott]

Wait, Mike, did you just do that from memory or were you reading that?

[Mike Pesca]

No, I had the name of the book memorized. Not memorized, up on a screen.

[Henry Abbott]

I'm impressed. Yeah, that was good. No, thank you for having me. This is gonna be fun.

[Mike Pesca]

Like, it's not landing well, it's not. My personal trainer once told me that I had the worst body. What was the word for it? Like, worst body awareness of anyone she's ever trained. So that's good.

[Henry Abbott]

Yeah, that's not a natural thing for me either. I'm more of a grinder. Like, I'm more of, like, I'll show up at the gym, I'll do the stuff. But, like. And it's not like, when someone actually said to me, movement, moron is a phrase I heard once. Yeah, I didn't love hearing that.

[Mike Pesca]

Yeah, but you make up for it, right? Don't you, like, throw rocks for fun and weird things like that?

[Henry Abbott]

Sure, let's go with that. Whatever the challenge is, I'm in. Let's go.

[Mike Pesca]

No, what is that thing you do.

[Henry Abbott]

In upstate, the high rocks are you talking about?

[Mike Pesca]

Yeah, what is that?

[Henry Abbott]

Oh, this is not. Yeah, okay. This is. This is. I think it's like, America's fastest growing sport, and it's coming up soon. On the east on the. It's like Hudson Pier. There's a big pier that used to be where they would tow your car.

[Mike Pesca]

Yeah.

[Henry Abbott]

If it was parked in Manhattan. And now it's kind of a part. It's like Air Quotes park, even though there's no, like, living thing there. But that thing is taken over by like 5,000 athletes, including Lance Armstrong people. And you do eight difficult CrossFit type events with a kilometer run in between each thing. So you push a heavy sled, you pull a heavy sled, you 100 wall balls. The worst thing in the world. The literally the worst thing that you could possibly could happen to you is a burpee broad jump, which is I could just throw your body on this baking hot ground and then you stand up again and then you jump again and. Yeah.

[Mike Pesca]

Have you ever looked into burpee, the guy who burpees are named after? Yeah, he's an early, like, kinesiologist. So anyway, let us talk. This is great. But this is. This is sort of parallels your process, which is you have way too many ideas, Right. And then you get focused and fascinated on something. So how did that focus land on Marcus Elliot?

[Henry Abbott]

I was in this very room, the attic of our home for the pandemic. Writ large, including, like when I was infected. I was like locked up here and I just. Everything was a bummer. It was like just not fun enough writing about the MBA when there was no mba. I was like, what am I doing? And I was doing a little dirty money research. And that was like the worst thing to fall asleep thinking about. And I was like, I just want it for even just for my own health. I want to write about something that's more inspiring, more fun to think about, more fun to learn about. And I thought of this guy, Marcus Elliott, who runs this lab P3 in Santa Barbara, where a huge percentage of the NBA, 70% of current rostered athletes have been assessed by them. And they have a whole different approach to preventing injuries. And it felt like a really fun thing to really explore and learn about. Just people learning how to jump higher and run faster and not tear their acl. Seemed like a better use of my time than, you know, who's got the offshore bank accounts that are secretly controlled by Putin.

[Mike Pesca]

So I first heard about him and I didn't remember hearing about him until I went back and did a little research. Your friend and former colleague Tom Haberstrough in 2011 or something, wrote an article for ESPN and the whole thing was based on the. The San Antonio spurs doing this crazy thing, trading an excellent player for some kind of not unknown, but an okay draft pick. And it turned out to be Kawhi Leonard. And Marcus Peters was sort of, or the thinking there was tied up with all of that. So he's not just a rehab guy, he's a guy that if you can focus in on his insights, you get a real advantage. Right.

[Henry Abbott]

So I have this inclination to like not be bombastic in life. I'm kind of like an evidence based.

[Mike Pesca]

Ballistic, but not bombastic.

[Henry Abbott]

Yeah, ballistic, but like here's where I'm going to make a little exception. And like I genuinely think that what's happening here is like one of the most important things happening on the planet for all of us. And the reason is because, well, heart attacks are the best way to talk about it. So we used heart attacks for the first couple thousand years of cardiology were bummer, that guy keeled over. Maybe it's because he coveted his neighbor's wife. Right? That was literally what the literature said.

[Mike Pesca]

And then literature such as it was literature.

[Henry Abbott]

Then the electrocardiogram followed by the echocardiogram were invented and they could see the blood flow through the heart. This was the first time we could get the signal from the noise and we could see, oh, for 10 years before you have the crisis. The arterial blood flow is slowing down. Now we prevent heart attacks by the million. Like it's one of the greatest interventions in human history. Long before the crisis. The doctor says, oh, we gotta adjust your diet or have you exercise more or take a medicine. Yeah.

[Mike Pesca]

And lifespans increase by a decade. Not just because of that, but coinciding with that.

[Henry Abbott]

Coinciding with that, yeah. It's definitely the model you'd like if you're a doctor. This is a better way to keep your patients healthy. Right. So this guy, Marcus Elliott towards ACL on 17th birthday and he wanted to basically do that for sports injuries, which has never really been seriously pursued before and spent 35 years knocking around. You know, he studied every different kind of medicine there is basically trying to find the signal. Right. And eventually it became movement data, super clear. Now they're 20 years into like, you know, force plates, infrared cameras in the ceiling, little sensors on your body and you move like Anthony Edwards is in there jumping and cutting. And in all of that data set, which they have 134.4 terabytes of now, are the clues. These are the signals. This is how you can see an ACL tear in the weeks, months and years before you tear your acl.

[Mike Pesca]

Tell me about a force plate. What is it? How does it work?

[Henry Abbott]

It looks just like that thing when you are going to. They're going to weigh your luggage a check in at the airport, right? So there are two of those, they're surrounded in concrete in the floor at P3 and they're actually split in half. So they're, they're together. And you might, for instance, if you're Anthony Edwards, step off an 18 inch plyometric box, land with one foot on each force plate and then jump to the moon. Right? That's what he would do. And instead of just getting the force down, the force plate will assess every little. Is he pushing a little to the left or right or this direction, anything. And it tells you a ton. It gives a ton of signal and they can see. So a common thing that might happen is they might see, oh, 60% of his forces on his left side. This is not an Anthony Edwards story anymore. We're just talking about hypothetical.

[Mike Pesca]

By the way, we have listeners who are very steeped in the NBA and listeners saying why you keep talking about the guy from er, it's the Minnesota Timberwolves. Excellent point guard, Anthony Edwards, but continue.

[Henry Abbott]

I don't think everyone should know everything with NBA, but this is an you should learn at this point, we're at the point in history you should know Anthony Edwards, he's like, he's amazing. So you might see, oh, he lands with 60% of force on one side versus the other, which might seem like no big deal, but it's a huge deal. And then he would look at the movement data to see above in his body, what's happening. Is there some oddity if he's, like, not putting his heel down on his other foot? Is he, you know, doing something with. His hips are uneven? What's going on? And then in that are the clues, the breadcrumbs for healthy movement. Some of the things a lot of us move in weird ways that are harmless, but they've now they have such a big data set that they can really start to say, ooh, this thing when you put your foot down this way, that really does reliably lead to crisis, et cetera. So they have this kind of stuff we all want to know about our bodies.

[Mike Pesca]

Did Elliot think that there was a holy grail of injury out there, or was it more the case that he knew that dozens of things relate to injury and he's just one person with one budget, and so he put his money into force plates and landing. Landing science.

[Henry Abbott]

So he has all these little stories of, like, clues he got earlier. Right. So at one point, he was an elite triathlete who competed against Lance Armstrong, and he was developing a lot of pain in his shoulder.

[Mike Pesca]

And his coach have that in common with him?

[Henry Abbott]

Yeah, no, I'm not a triathlete.

[Mike Pesca]

No, you compete against Lance Armstrong and they.

[Henry Abbott]

Oh, yeah, everybody gets. Everyone gets a Lance Armstrong competition, for sure. Yeah, you guys, if you haven't done that, you should get on that. It's super fun. But so, and this sounds very believable and common, but he swam a certain way, and he was doing long mileage, and his shoulder was sore, and his coach was like, oh, you need to reach your right arm a little, a few inches out further to the right or closer to the midline, I think it was actually. And the pain just goes away. But you think about it, if he'd played it out further, for sure, he would have gotten injured. And he didn't, because something he did in advance, kind of like the heart attack thing. Right, right. Then he did this big project when he was finishing at Harvard Medical School for the New England Patriots. And I love this. Like, the Robert Kraft was like, we got to get better at hamstrings. Great thing for billionaires, say, right? And so the answer was Marcus.

[Mike Pesca]

The man is very into massage.

[Henry Abbott]

Marcus was the solution to this hamstring thing. And he just took, you know, time of year, temperature on the day position, um, how many steps into your run did you tear your hamstring?

[Mike Pesca]

All.

[Henry Abbott]

Everything he could get right. Or then he would do video analysis of the gate. And like, do you have this certain running style that for me is very hard to decide from video, but to him is very clear. And he made a big giant sort of data project of who's at risk.

[Mike Pesca]

Yeah.

[Henry Abbott]

And then he spent the summer visiting everyone who was at maximum risk and training them out of whatever looked like the riskiest thing. And they went from a median of 23.5 hamstring strains per season to three. So he didn't have the force plate.

[Mike Pesca]

But, like, was temperature involved and important?

[Henry Abbott]

That's a great question. I, I know that there was like this early. It's early season open field players running max speed. Some of them, the big thing is they're. Some people have the habit that after they sprint a few steps, their running form falls apart. That's a big, that's a big worry. Um, I think those were the main ones. I don't think temperature was a huge factor. Great question. But he. So I think that's like a, that's kind of proof of concept that there is something you could measure, but that he was. Had to measure everything to find it. And eventually he was kind of refining what he would capture and to force plates and then motion capture.

[Mike Pesca]

So what. But why force plates? Or I keep saying force plates, but why landing? As the very important thing that drove him are disproportionate amount of, say basketball injuries based on landing wrong.

[Henry Abbott]

So the answer there is like a five alarm fire where just the data is like so clear. Like, these are by far the biggest forces athletes deal with. Like, however much the strongest man in the world can lift in like a weightlifting competition, people all the time land with more force than that. Um, because of gravity, really. I'm kind of dumb. Like in the early in the process, I was like, wait, so like, if Zion Williamson, like steps off the box and then lands and then jumps again, like he's ending up at the same place. Is there equal force up and down? And the answer is not even close to equal because there's gravity pulling him down both ways. Right. So like the down is way stronger. Um, this guy, Yuri Verkashansky, invented what we now call plyometrics and he, he discovered all this that basically in this instantaneous moments where you're bringing a lot of force from the approach into this, like stomping on the ground and then jumping, these are the biggest forces and nobody trains you how to deal with those moments. So this is most, these non contact injuries, this is what they occur from, right? If you go watch Derrick Rose, this is what it's from. There's just massive forces. It's actually kind of stupid simple that like that's when Derrick Rose's ACL is vulnerable because the force necessary to tear his ACL in half is present when he's landing, right? This is the moment.

[Mike Pesca]

It's so true. No one trained you and they train everything. You know, going back to Bill Bradley talking about peripheral vision. And of course you have thought millions of times about how to make a foul shot or what to do on the foul line to get into the mindset of a foul shot. Probably the, the same person who couldn't be more detail oriented about that. No one has ever told him how to land. You just land.

[Henry Abbott]

Meanwhile, the best runners in the world all land the same way because they all land with their toes up and their foot, what they call dorsiflexed, which is where you're kind of pulling your toes toward your shin. And the reason they all run like that is because that means you land with the force of landing going straight into your Achilles, which is very well designed for that, which then feeds into your quads and then your glutes and the three stack joints of your leg are like this beautiful machine that like cushions the blow of landing. That's just like the first part and then shoots you forward because the rubber bands like snap back, right? If you do that, you're going to be faster. And so if you don't do that, you can't make the Olympics. And so Marcus and he used to work with this, like all these elite athletes with this Canadian track coach and he was just noticing before he had force plates that like in basketball you can get to the NBA, but because you can read the floor or shoot well or you're tall, you don't have to have perfect landing form. But in this sport where you have to land well, everybody lands the same way, right?

[Mike Pesca]

It's sort of like with you and the swimming example and running, that's all they have, right? They all they have is that one stroke or form, I guess, breathing a little bit. But in the NBA there's so much else to work on and there's so much mental load just about where to go on plays it's very, very complicated. And then you work on the skills. You work on, I guess, maybe not rebounding, but you definitely work on your shooting. You work on so many different types of shots, you don't even think unless, you know, Marcus. To work on landing form like a runner would. And, you know, also, running doesn't take that much of your time in basketball. So even though it's the equivalent of running form and landing form, you could see why it wouldn't come up naturally.

[Henry Abbott]

It's just not. We just. It's just not something we've understood well. Right. It's like the cardiology before the. Before the electrocardiogram. Right. It's just off the radar that this would be such a big thing. But as soon as you see it, I mean, the numbers are ridiculous. There's an NBA player landing with a force of 11,000 Newtons in their database. That's, you know, that's. It's triple the force necessary to fully sever a human spine.

[Mike Pesca]

Yeah, you talk about the volleyball player who has that spine severing landing, and she's not very big.

[Henry Abbott]

She. She's a tiny person. She's a. She's a tiny, fit person. I think she's five. Five Katie Spieler. And she landed with, I want to say, 3,100 newtons of force, which is exactly about the amount it takes to sever a human spine.

[Mike Pesca]

So an NBA player does three times that. Now, we don't know this particular player. He's anonymized, but we do know Zion Williamson, who is, I guess, has the most mass of any player. I mean, if you take Taco Falls. Mass distributed across bodies.

[Henry Abbott]

Taco Fall was there when I was there, actually. That's so funny. Yeah, totally.

[Mike Pesca]

He's also a great swimmer, or a sw. No, not a great swimmer. He just learned to swim. But Zion Williamson, this gigantic person, what kind of force was he landing with?

[Henry Abbott]

So they have a thing they like to say about Zion at P3, which is he pushes on the earth harder than any other athlete they've ever assessed. It's a little different from landing force. It's like the second part of the jump where he's, like, pushing up. So this is informed by his size, but also his strength.

[Mike Pesca]

So I remember when he. One of the many times he got hurt early on the line was they're reteaching him how to run, and it just got mocked so much. What are we doing here? How do you not know how to run? Every single bit of mockery that's not exactly this, but it's related to this. Right. You have to. If you want to have a long career, you have to relearn some of these basic things, don't you?

[Henry Abbott]

Yeah. They did a giant project with like, machine learning going through all of their servers full of data. And they basically had the machine learning just kind of learn what it would learn about what kinds of players there are. And it came up with this seven types of movers. And, you know, zions in this category known as specimen, which is like the biggest forces, they're the rarest, but they're also, in a way, very vulnerable because they have like the big engine, but the same tires as everybody else, right? Yeah. The training they do at P3 is trying to gear everyone toward this group they call kinematic movers, who are just doing a nicer job of moving the forces through their bodies without trauma. Right. And they're not quite so magically explosive. They don't jump so high, but they play a long time. They show up on a lot of all star teams. They win a lot of championships, and they don't get hurt. So, like, this is what all these.

[Mike Pesca]

Guys would the announcers say of these guys, they move so fluidly. Would it appear that way to the naked eye?

[Henry Abbott]

It does sometimes. I mean, who are these.

[Mike Pesca]

Who are some of these kind of guys?

[Henry Abbott]

I know that they kind of made a stink about. C.J. mcCollum is, like, not particularly athletic, but he just kind of moves through the lane in a way that like, you know, and, you know, can you jump off your left foot, your right foot, both feet, you know, whatever kind of thing you have to do, you're able to execute it without getting some extraordinary, dangerous, outlandish position.

[Mike Pesca]

That's so cool. And then I love the part of your book. So I think we're all getting our heads around. Yeah, this makes sense. Running, landing, that's basketball jumping, there's deceleration, which is just the opposite of being fast, but the opposite of being fast in a hurry. And it's quite a skill, isn't it?

[Henry Abbott]

Yeah. This is one of the ones where if you have a giant data set, you get to just learn what it spits out. Right. It's. It's so different. This feels like the most kind of scientific approach is like, what works in sports. And they get to ask those questions of these 134.4 terabytes. And one of the things that spat out, well, there's this guy named Eric who's the chief biomechanist There. And he's. He's just the most kind of studious, ardent, honest, driven by evidence guy. And I wouldn't say he's a little shy. I guess he's a little bit shy. He Less shy than he used to be, maybe, but he had James Harden and James Harden's ad agency and sneaker company and friends and just a room full of James Harden people. This was the year that James Harden had led the league in scoring and was about to be mvp. He's just like a big. Mostly by getting started, mostly about getting fouled. And, you know, they're like. Everyone's like, oh, I'm so excited. The music's loud. They do the assessment, and James moves. And then Eric's already promised him he's gonna give them a little preview of the report on how James moves. And everybody knows he's gonna move like a boss because he's one of the best players in the world.

[Mike Pesca]

Yeah.

[Henry Abbott]

But Eric's looking at the screen and, like, he doesn't jump particularly high. He doesn't move especially fast. He. There's just nothing. There's no party to throw out of this data. But then Eric's like, all right, let me. He's nervous about this, but he's like, you know, he stops really well. He's good at stopping. And they did it. They put that in the shoe marketing. Like, everybody liked it. Eric was not embarrassed about it. But since then, they found it's absolutely a movement super skill. It's a physical system you can build with training. James Harden happens to be super elite at it. And across sports, these people who do this overachieve. About the same time this Harden thing happened, they had this 17 year old visiting with his mom from overseas, and. And. And he tested like Harden, and. And Eric was like, well, let's. If this is a real thing we're onto, then that guy will do. Well, that guy's name is Luka Doncic. Like, and he went and just crushed everything. So we could talk more about why that works if you want. I have some personal theories, but I think it's fascinating. I love. There's just the idea that there's just kinds of athleticism that totally matter in sports that we just haven't really focused on before.

[Mike Pesca]

Yeah, it's for the. Well, I would guess it's for the moment of separation, which we show. I mean, both those guys are covered, covered, covered. And maybe they're not going really fast, but boom, they're open for just a moment, then they could get their shot. Off quickly. Why are they open for just a moment? Couple skills, couple, you know, crafty using their hips into guys but decelerating your defenders going with you really fast. You stop much quicker than he does. Guess what? There's a gap. You score in that gap 100%.

[Henry Abbott]

Now can I add my personal kind of theory which is so many rabbit holes in writing this book it was really fun to explore. Like the best movers are all in nature and there's slow, super slow mo video of like a cheetah running full speed. And what really strikes me is the head is perfectly still, which it has to be because the cheetah is going to die if it doesn't kill this gazelle or whatever. And it's not going to kill it if it doesn't hit the target perfectly.

[Mike Pesca]

And if you like that, and you should, there's more because as I said, Henry Abbott is interesting and I am going to allow him to be even more interesting for our Peska plus subscribers. If you subscribe to Pesca plus, you get bonus segments. You get ad free contents. We invite you to book clubs where you get to pepper some of the guests on the show with questions of your own. Go to subscribe.mike pesca.com it is the best way to support the the Gist and you get more of Henry Abbott. The Gist is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Fiscally responsible financial geniuses, monetary magicians. These are things people say about drivers who switch their car insurance to Progressive and save hundreds. Visit progressive.com to see if you could save Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states or situations. And now the spiel. Perhaps you saw the New York Times video titled We Study Fascism and We're Leaving the US in it, three Yale professors explain why they're teaching in Toronto this semester and for at least the immediate future. The decision is framed in exactly the dire terms the headline implies.

[Henry Abbott]

The lesson of 1933 is you get out sooner rather than later.

[Mike Pesca]

That was Marcy Shore, who studies Central Europe. The other two professors are Timothy Snyder began as a scholar of 20th century Eastern European history but has lately transitioned to exploring freedom, populism and, as the title of the essay says, fascism. The third scholar is Jason Stanley, the Jacob Urowski professor of Philosophy at Yale University and author of five books, including On Fascism. So what led this Yale trio north? As they explained, they're experts. They've learned to recognize warning signs. Here's Stanley you know you're living in.

[Henry Abbott]

A fascist society when you're constantly going over in your head the reasons why you're safe.

[Mike Pesca]

At another point, Snyder, who's actually a wonderful writer and speaker, says this talking.

[Henry Abbott]

About American exceptionalism is basically a way to get people to fall into line. If you think that there's this thing out there called America and it's exceptional, that means that you don't have to do anything. Whatever is happening, it must be freedom. And so then what your definition of freedom is just gets narrowed and narrowed and narrowed and narrowed, and soon you're using the word freedom. What you're talking about is authoritarianism.

[Mike Pesca]

So let's take this point. It's the main reason why I disagree with their assessment. One, American Exceptionalism isn't necessarily a means of mass mind control. That's pretty Marxist framing. American Exceptionalism is in part the kind of jingoism that most countries indulge in. They believe they're special, and in many ways they're right. And sometimes American exceptionalism becomes a kind of hagiographic story that doesn't match facts and gives its wielders license to do bad things. But the argument here is that American exceptionalism leads to fascism. Well, what do we make of the fact that we've had American Exceptionalism since we had America? Probably more exceptionalism during the era of De Tocqueville and Manifest Destiny and the shining city on the Hill more than we do today. Because Snyder is telling us that the exceptionalism said to be upon us and around us should make us especially frightened by. Because it is an urgent handmaiden to fascism. It's a factor promoting Snyder, Stanley and Shaw to leave, but only now, only this year. Even though exceptionalism has been around us and around their families since they got here, rampant exceptionalism didn't make their parents leave. It didn't make their ancestors flee. This is the new threat of fascism made urgent just lately. And these three are historians. Jason Stanley is the Jacob Urowski professor of Philosophy, of course. But they study history. So they must know if we're talking about signs of fascism in America that must be taken seriously right now. They must know about, of course, the Alien and Sedition Acts, the Fugitive Slave Acts, the Trail of Tears, Lincoln, suppression of habeas corpus during the Civil War, the Chinese Exclusion act, the Haymarket affair, the Homestead strike, the Pullman strike, the Ludlow massacre, the Palmer Raids. Those were big Japanese internment, including the Karamatsu decision, the Red Scare, the Lavender scare, FBI investigations into MLK and other civil rights leaders. When weren't we as America fascistic or on the verge of fascism or said to be quite credibly trending toward autocracy. We are a big, complicated country with ideals and passions, and we violate those ideals all the time. Now, let's go to the second part of the exceptionalism argument. Tim Snyder warns that because of this thing called American exceptionalism, which he's taking special note of now, though I'm saying has been ubiquitous and even more prevalent in our past history. Because of the presence of this, what we do is we just expect everything to take care of itself and there could never be fascism. For that reason, I don't expect this at all. I don't think many of the people who are quite upset with the excesses of the Trump administration expect it to just take care of itself. And that's not been the history of America. Because abolitionists fought the slave trade, because the labor movement and trust busters fought the trusts, and quite complicatedly, some of the perpetrators of those injustices I listed alien sedition acts, Japanese internment. They would also be the exact same great forces of antifascism in other important ways. If you study fascism as these three scholars do, what you'll do is you'll see signals and signs that align with developments in other countries that became autocracies. But what about the larger body of evidence? What about the data that contradicts that story, that shows resilience, that shows reform, that shows the many ways that we avoided fascism or that other countries avoided fascism, the deliverance from fascism? My point is that the entire story of America is pretty much that data set. If we only select for signs of creeping authoritarianism, we will always conclude that fascism is dawning. Which brings me to the idea that we just assume that America will take care of itself. Do we do that? I don't do that. Judge Boasberg doesn't do that. Do you do that? Does the New York Times, who produced this video, do that? Giant swaths of the Trump disapproving public does not do that. I doubt the Times would commission a piece titled we study the forces opposing fascism and we're staying. Actually, they commission that all the time. By implication, almost every op ed written by an American critical of some aspect of the Trump administration is in fact that piece. Follow me on a sports analogy here. If I were an expert on Patrick Mahomes or Serena Williams or Aaron Judge, or if I was a coach or expert who was opposing these great players, I might say, oh my gosh, I'm very worried. If left unchecked, Mahomes is going to throw seven touchdowns Next week, Judge is going to hit four home runs tonight. Serena Williams is going to ace every point. They're that potent, they could do it if left unchecked. But of course they're not going to be left unchecked. They There are pitchers on the mound trying to prevent Judge from hitting home runs. There are 11 gigantic well paid defenders trying to stop Mahomes. Serena has an opponent on the other side of the net for every one of her matches. I am not naive. I don't misread what Donald Trump might like to do. None of my projections are based on him deciding unilaterally to go easy and follow the Constitution. But there are so many powerful forces working to thwart the execution of extreme outcomes. There are other arguments in the video that the professors think bolster their case, but I think heard it. One is when Jason Stanley refers to a speech by Toni Morrison at Howard University.

[Henry Abbott]

Toni Morrison warned us the descent into a final solution is not a jump. It's one step and then another and then another. We are seeing those steps accelerated right now.

[Mike Pesca]

The visuals evoking fascism are one of Elon Musk doing the stiffed arm salute and then a famous photo, infamous photo from 2018 of a 2 year old crying while her mother is detained by border control. That photo won a lot of awards and it was at the time incorrectly used to criticize Trump's family separation policy because the mother and daughter were never separated. And last I checked, she was awaiting her asylum hearing 10 months later. As for the Morrison speech that said to be accelerating in all her predictions, it was delivered in 1995. Morrison wasn't talking about specific headlines, but everyone in the room kind of knew what she was referencing. The recently passed Clinton crime bill that was on the minds of Howard University graduates. This wasn't the only thing she was talking about, but when she was talking about fascism and authoritarianism, this was clearly the implication that would have occurred to everyone in the room. And even Morrison herself was concerned about crime. She, embracing broadly leftist analysis, noted that fascism, quote, produces the perfect capitalist one who is willing to kill a human being for a product, a pair of sneakers, a jacket, a car, or kill generations for control of products, oil, drugs, fruit, gold. Stanley is right in that Morrison's warnings can be applied to the worries of today. Or like a well written horoscope, they're sufficiently vague to be applied to every period I listed, every potentially fascistic period in US History. Also of note, all three Yale professors have jobs waiting for them. I don't know if I would call them sinecures, but they are gigs. A public record search shows that Snyder and Shore who are married to each other so it's three professors, two families, who are making this choice to leave. They each earned 129,000 and 115000 respectively in 2024 for the half year they were teaching and living in Toronto. The practicality of leaving for these three is not what it would be for most Americans, but to be fair, they are prominent Trump critics. The risks of them staying are different too. I don't think the professors made a miscalculation per se. Part of what you do as a person is what you can live with and what makes life livable. And that clearly factors into their decision. I do think all the incentives were lined up for them to move to take a pause, to make a point, to maybe earn some attention and approval for their actions. But then I wonder, when the midterm elections happen, and I think they will happen, and the votes are counted, and I think they will be counted fairly and the party said to be fascist loses, which I think is the likely outcome, are these three going to admit they were wrong? And if in 2028, if someone other than Donald Trump is elected president and the votes are counted fairly and maybe even a new party gains the White House, will these professors say, oh, we were wrong? No, that's not how it works. They'll say we were part of the resistance that raised flags that showed what needed to be done to oppose this ever impending. More cue today than it was five, 10 or 20 years ago. But this ever impending fascism. If you study fascism, it's not clear that there will ever be a moment when you can say we're safe now. And you know, maybe vigilance is the price of freedom, but so too is a tendency toward alarmism, the price of expertise. And that's it for today's show. Cory Wara produces the Gist Michelle Pesca, cbso Peach Fish Productions Kathleen Sykes, the doyen of the Gist list Subscribe to the Gist list Mike Pesca substack.com Asher Green does our socials Leo Baum does our well interning improve gpru do proo. And thanks for listening. Sam.