Lifestyle
How to have the best Sunday in L.A., according to Abby Wambach
Imagine it: Soccer legend Abby Wambach, five years old and a gifted forward, scoring 27 goals in her first three youth soccer games.
Now widely known, it’s a story that Wambach shares often to emphasize the importance of working with teammates, or what she calls her “wolfpack.”
“After my third game, my mother asked me why I didn’t pass the ball,” recalls Wambach, 44. “I said the whole point is to score the most goals. She told me, ‘It is going to make you lonely. None of your teammates will want to be friends with you.’ Since then, I have prided myself on passing the ball and building up my teammates. It was the beginning of my life of gratitude.”
In Sunday Funday, L.A. people give us a play-by-play of their ideal Sunday around town. Find ideas and inspiration on where to go, what to eat and how to enjoy life on the weekends.
Empowerment is a theme that runs throughout Wambach’s activism, speaking engagements, and now, “The Wolfpack Way,” a picture book for children that arrived in bookstores this week. For even with her formidable soccer skills (following her debut, she was moved to the boys’ team), Wambach says she felt powerless as a child. “All of the decisions were being made for me,” she says. “So I created a picture book I wish I had growing up — full of inclusivity, teamwork and diversity.”
When she’s not writing books, the two-time Olympic gold medalist and former U.S. women’s soccer team captain co-hosts the weekly podcast series “We Can Do Hard Things” with her wife, best-selling author Glennon Doyle, and Doyle’s sister Amanda. Recently, the couple has been on the road with their 17-year-old daughter, singer-songwriter Tish Melton, who is performing in her first tour. When she is home, Wambach would start her ideal Sunday surfing in Manhattan Beach, followed by a walk along the Strand and an Angel City FC soccer game, of which she is a part owner. With time flying by, Wambach appreciates spending time with two of their three teenagers while they are still at home. “I have gold medals and championships,” she says, laughing, “but I assure you: my kids don’t think I’m remotely cool.”
This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for length and clarity.
7 a.m.: Catch a wave — or not — at El Porto
After making my morning coffee at around 6 a.m., I will go surf at El Porto just north of Manhattan Beach. I’m a novice. All I do is paddle around and fall off, but it doesn’t matter. It’s magic when you’re in the water, and it’s crisp and cold, and the dolphins are going by. There is a reason you keep getting called back to the ocean, even if you never catch a wave. Nothing else in life can replicate the feel of the water. You’re using Mother Nature to do something to move. You’re taking on a marine animal experience. Surfing is complicated, so when I get it down, it feels like a whole human experience when I’m done. I’m always so hungry afterward. It reminds me of when I played soccer and what it would feel like when I got off the field. I usually grab a burrito from Brother’s Burritos to warm me up after.
Every once in a blue moon, our youngest daughter Amma has a Sunday soccer game; in that case, you’ll find me on the sidelines at her game. At first, the other parents considered me a soccer extraordinaire and wanted to hear stories, but after several years, I’ve become a normal parent.
Noon: Take a walk with Glennon and map out the week ahead.
Our Sunday walk is when we catch up on personal and family stuff and what is circling around in our world. I love walking along the Strand bike path in the beach cities. We use our weekend walks to form what we discuss on the podcasts. We talk a lot about ourselves and plan for the week ahead. Sometimes, you need to have that quality time with your partner with no cellphones in hand. There is often a lot of silence. When you have three teenagers and are doing big business endeavors, finding that solitude and planning the week is one of those things that we really need as a couple.
2 p.m.: Indulge in a nap
In the afternoon, I’ll take my Sunday nap. To be completely honest, I am a napper on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday too. This is a regime that I brought from my playing days. It’s important. I think that’s why I can wake up so early — I know I’ll get a nap in the afternoon.
3 p.m.: Hit the cold plunge and sauna
After my midday nap, I like to take a cold plunge in the garage in my inflatable Edge Theory Cold Plunge. I’ll do a cold plunge, then have a sauna. I like to pretend I’m a wannabe professional athlete and have to prepare for a big game.
4:30 p.m.: Attend an Angel City Football Club game
If we are in town and they are playing, we are at the Angel City soccer games at BMO Stadium. It’s such an awesome environment to have 22,000 people at every game. I feel so much joy — and jealousy — that this is their weekly experience as professional soccer players. It’s such a fun thing for us to be a part of. The kids go with us too. We have seven season tickets, and sometimes we bring friends. It’s an experience that you don’t have elsewhere. We are all accustomed to going to football and basketball games for men. Women’s soccer games are just as intense, but they are also open and welcoming. You see moms and daughters, entire families and soccer teams from all over Los Angeles. There is a support section that never sits down. It’s so entertaining.
7 p.m.: Cook dinner and watch “Friday Night Lights”
I am the cook of the family, although Glennon has been dabbling recently. We have two kids at home — our youngest is a junior in high school — and that’s when everyone comes together. We normally like to have an early dinner and watch TV shows together as a family. If I cook, everybody else does the dishes. Once the dishes are done, I’ll make Glennon and me some tea, and then we will sit down in the family room, hang out and spend five minutes figuring out what we will watch while our teenagers do their homework. We are into “Friday Night Lights” at the moment. It’s such a great show, and it’s fun for us because the kids haven’t seen it. Spending time with each other on Sunday evening is a great way to ease into Monday and a big week ahead. We fight off the Sunday scaries a little bit with our Sunday routine.
Students walk on the Stanford University campus on March 14, 2019, in Stanford, Calif.
Ben Margot/AP
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Ben Margot/AP
When Theo Baker arrived at Stanford University a few years ago, he joined the student newspaper, following the path of his journalist parents, Peter Baker, a White House correspondent for The New York Times, and Susan Glasser, a writer for The New Yorker.
Through his reporting as a student journalist, he eventually broke a story about manipulated data in Stanford President Marc Tessier-Lavigne’s neuroscience research that helped lead to the university president’s resignation.
Theo Baker’s book, How to Rule the World: An Education in Power at Stanford University was released May 19. In it, Baker describes Stanford as a place where proximity to Silicon Valley gives rise to a parallel system of influence, recruitment and money, with investors looking to identify promising students almost as soon as they arrive on campus.
He told Morning Edition host Steve Inskeep there was “a sort of Stanford inside Stanford,” where elite students are drawn into an “alternate reality” of excess and access to cut corners.
In the interview, he discusses how Stanford is not just a university but also a pipeline where status and power can matter as much as ideas.
We reached out to Stanford University for comment and have not heard back.
Listen to the interview by clicking play on the blue box above.
The scoreboard shows the results of the women’s singles final match between Iga Swiatek of Poland and Amanda Anisimova of the U.S. at the Wimbledon Tennis Championships in London, Saturday, July 12, 2025.
Kirsty Wigglesworth/AP
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Kirsty Wigglesworth/AP
Fifteen points in tennis? Nice. Thirty, 40 — even better. Advantage — that sounds good. “Love” — that also must be great, right? Well, not quite.
As the French Open rolls on and Serena Williams has announced her return to the sport, maybe you’ve been paying a little more attention to tennis. The sport’s scoring system is notably distinct, and can sometimes be hard to grasp for newcomers. But even tennis aficionados might not know why, or how, “love” became the unmistakable callout for zero points. For this installment of NPR’s Word of the Week, we’re exploring how a word that signifies trailing behind got such a sweet name.
“Love” comes from the heart — or an egg?
It’s hard to pinpoint when the first tennis ball went over the net. Tennis is a derivative of lots of other sports, such as “jeu de paume,” a handball game played in France, said JT Buzanga, the collections manager at the International Tennis Hall of Fame museum.
But tennis became a patented, official sport in 1874, said Steve Flink, a journalist whose tennis coverage got him inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame. It has retained its unique, mysterious scoring system ever since.
“By and large, the original system has held up almost entirely,” Flink said.
The use of “love” goes back to the late 18th century, said Jesse Sheidlower, a lexicographer. But it was used earlier than that in card games such as whist and bridge. Before the term made its way to tennis, the sport favored plain old “nothing,” or “nil,” he said.
Why love in the first place, though? Historians don’t really know for sure, but there are a few theories.
The French could have something to do with it. Some historians believe “love” derives from “l’oeuf,” which means “the egg” in French. Because eggs are shaped like zeros, terms such as “goose egg” and “duck’s egg” have been used in other contexts to mean zero, Sheidlower said.
It’s also possible English speakers mispronounced l’oeuf as “love.” But Sheidlower isn’t convinced that’s the answer.
“It’s the French equivalent of an English expression. But since that expression doesn’t appear in French, the French word wouldn’t have been used,” he said.
To be sure, France has had a lot of influence on tennis culture, Buzanga said. For example, “deuce” or a game tied at 40 points, comes from the French word for “two”: “deux.” But he prefers another prominent theory: that “love” comes from the idiom “for the love of the game.” Even if a player hasn’t scored, it doesn’t matter, because their heart is in it. It’s the theory Sheidlower said is the most plausible, because the idiom was used by the English before tennis was popularized.
Another variation of the “love of the game” theory is that the word could have come from the Dutch “lof,” or “honor” — or the Latin “amare,” meaning “to love,” Flink said.
But if tennis’ “love” doesn’t come from a French word, the theory at least has a French sensibility.
“I think the ‘for the love of the game’ is kind of romantic,” Buzanga said.
“Love” probably isn’t going anywhere
Tennis used to be a sport of leisure. The style of play has changed a lot over the years; players are more athletic and competitive, for instance, Flink said. But the rules of the sport are more steadfast, he said.
“There’s this incredible, enduring respect for tradition in tennis,” he said. “Changes are not made easily.”
There has been one major change in modern history: the tie-break. Matches can go on and on because players have to score two consecutive points to break a deuce, or by two games to break a tied set. But the onset of television meant matches would have to get shorter if the sport wanted to capture a larger audience, Flink said.
Change even came for “love.” An alternative sprouted up in the 1970s, and is still used today: “bagel,” named for its zero shape, Sheidlower said. Novices may say “zero,” and insiders will understand what they mean, but they “will needle them about it,” Flink said.
But “love” still prevails.
“People kind of like it,” Flink said. “It’s different. Why say zero when you can say love?”
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