Lifestyle
With the DNC underway, a historian explains how 'The Stadium' became a public square
President Biden speaks during the Democratic National Convention Aug. 19, 2024, in Chicago’s United Center Stadium.
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J. Scott Applewhite/AP
On Monday night, around 50,000 people filled the Chicago United Center as President Joe Biden addressed the Democratic National Convention. Columbia University historian Frank Andre Guridy says these massive monuments to sports, entertainment and politics serve as public squares in American culture.
In his book, The Stadium: An American History of Politics, Protests, and Play, Guridy chronicles the role that arenas have played in American history and culture. From a 1920s pro-Nazi rally at Madison Square Garden, to Colin Kaepernick taking a knee in 2016 to protest police brutality, Guridy says that stadiums are where Americans battle over race, class, gender and sexual inequities.
“We fight our political battles in stadiums,” Guridy says. “Because they’re large, because they can accommodate all sorts of people, … they become ideal places to stake your claims on what you want the United States to be.”
Guridy says the country’s first “stadiums” — which took the form of circus tents or wooden ballparks — arose in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and were typically funded by entrepreneurs. In recent decades, however, there’s been a trend toward taxpayer-funded stadiums — though Guridy notes: “This notion that stadiums are places that help generate economic development … [has] been debunked over and over and over again.”
Guridy adds that as more stadiums are built or replaced, they are becoming increasingly generic, with corporate names and a cookie-cutter-style. “I would argue that most of these facilities feel like no place, because they all have the same sort of arrangement of ads and same types of scoreboards, same sorts of rituals,” he says. “They all look the same.”
Interview Highlights
The Stadium
Porchlight Books
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Porchlight Books
On how it came to be that taxpayers pay for new stadiums
Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal helps begin the process by which public funds are building stadiums. … But it isn’t until after World War II, when we see the exploding growth of both the sport and the entertainment industry. When the United States really becomes a nationally sports-crazed nation, where sports franchises start to make the case to politicians that … if you want to have a team in your city, you need to build a stadium for us. And politicians discover that they can gain a lot of political capital by bringing a major league team to the city. And that accounts for the exploding growth of publicly financed stadiums in the 1960s and ‘70s, and really, until this day. …
Because sports leagues are de facto — and also legislatively — monopolies in the United States, they can command that sort of power. It’s become this kind of convergence between aspiring politicians and sports leagues that have been able to make the case that, in fact, the stadium is something that should be funded by taxpayer public funds.
On the role stadiums played in the country’s desegregation
Ballparks like Ebbets Field [in Brooklyn] become places of this enormous cultural and social and political transformation. Now, it’s not just because Jackie Robinson shows up in a Brooklyn Dodger uniform. It’s because people have been agitating for the desegregation and the elimination of Jim Crow for decades. … And we see this all across the country, particularly in the South when … the college football stadium becomes this kind of shrine, this temple, that is designed in part to not just stage football games, but to actually exemplify and celebrate the Jim Crow South and its imagined legacy in the Confederacy and slavery.
Stadiums up until the mid 20th century, particularly in the South, were all-white affairs, or certainly designed to sort of exclude people of African descent and non-white people. But because of the impact of the freedom movements across the South and in other parts of the country, we see this major shift playing out in public at stadiums across the country. So Americans are able to experience that, live, at your local facility.
On how the American national anthem and flag became part of stadium culture
It starts in the early 20th century, where we start to see performances of Francis Scott Key’s anthem in public places. But it isn’t till 1931 when it becomes the national anthem, and it really isn’t till the 1940s, where we start to see the kind of regular performance of “The Star-Spangled Banner” before sporting events … not coincidentally, in the aftermath of wars, in the aftermath of World War I, in the aftermath of World War II. And then later on, we start to see the proliferation anthems like “America the Beautiful” and others performed after 9/11, in moments, not coincidentally, where the United States is at war, when the U.S. government really has to make the case of national loyalty to its citizens, and the ballpark and the stadium and the arena becomes one of those places where that loyalty is cultivated.
On the militarized nationalism of stadium culture, and Colin Kaepernick’s protest of police brutality in 2016
By the time Kaepernick takes his knee at Qualcomm Stadium [in San Diego] in August 2016, eight years ago, you, at that point, had 15 years of jet flyovers. Fifteen years of honoring the military and law enforcement. And that’s the thing that’s interesting after 9/11: The ways in which these, you know, celebrations of the military become celebrations of law enforcement, which [happens] almost immediately, partly because of those who died among the first responders at the Twin Towers, but it’s more than that. It becomes a policy of pushing pro-police politics, I would argue, across the country. By the time Kaepernick does what he does, it’s now 15 years of that in which patriotic expression is narrowed and dissent is less tolerated in public.
Certainly athletes have been persecuted before Colin Kaepernick — most famously Tommie Smith and John Carlos when they make their Black Power salute at the 1968 Olympic Games in Mexico City. … But you do see the absolute intolerance and the vilification of Colin Kaepernick, which I would argue was unprecedented, and I think it’s because we have converted the stadium into a pep rally for the military and for law enforcement. Just the questioning of any sort of police action becomes intolerable, especially when a Black athlete does it. …I think that that’s why the stadium becomes this interesting theater, to look at the way in which we make sense of our world and of American politics. And I definitely think that there’s a much more repressive political culture that ensues after 9/11 than what existed before.
On the “Gay Games,” in part as a response to homophobia within stadiums
One of the most famous cases or infamous cases of [homophobia in a stadium] was the 1979 Disco Demolition event that happened at Chicago’s Comiskey Park, in which a local disc jockey, Steve Dahl, decided to create the ceremony in the middle of a baseball doubleheader to blow up disco records. And this is at a moment when the kind of anti-disco movement was emerging in the United States and [it] was very much an anti-gay movement. It was very much fueled by homophobia and racism. … That event turns into a riot where literally people charged the field and the games are canceled. The second game of the doubleheader was canceled on that evening in 1979 in Chicago.
So the ballpark becomes this battleground, and … gay activists take their struggle to the stadium, and they do that in San Francisco with the advent of the Gay Games movement, which is created by Tom Waddell, among a host of other organizers, who decide to create kind of an anti-Olympics … athletic competition that showcased the athletic talents of gays and lesbians. And that’s what they do in San Francisco in the early 1980s. And their first Gay Games happens in Kezar Stadium, another public controlled stadium, in the summer of 1982.
On how the prevalence of VIP sections negates what stadiums were designed to do
Seating capacity is much smaller now, so you have large parts of the stadium real estate devoted to the VIP crowd, to the corporate crowd. And you have less space devoted to the average sports fan. And this is something that sports fans lament over and over again. And you could say, well, people could just watch sports or watch whatever they want to watch on their device. But what we discovered in 2020 is that the fan really matters. … There were people actually writing articles before 2020 like: Do we really need fans in stadiums anymore? And the 2020 showed we do need them. And that the athletes want them there and that the public wants to be there. …. Think of stadiums as institutions. Think of them as places where, you know, people want to go and congregate, with good reason. And I think that, that’s the stadium at its best when we actually use it for that purpose. So why not open it up to a wider swath of people?
Sam Briger and Thea Chaloner produced and edited this interview for broadcast. Bridget Bentz, Molly Seavy-Nesper and Meghan Sullivan adapted it for the web.
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.
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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?”
On a 75-mile cliff-hugging stretch of highway in California, traffic is way up, despite soaring gas prices. And locals expect the busiest summer in years.
The road is Highway 1 in Big Sur, which reopened in January after three years of repair and reconstruction following a pair of landslides. Drivers can once again embark on the state’s most famous road trip, covering the 100 miles between Cambria to the south and Carmel to the north without leaving the two-lane coastal highway. And they’re heading out in big numbers.
Caltrans estimates that as of May, Big Sur restaurant and retailer guest counts are up 40% from last year, and that northbound traffic at Ragged Point, the southern gateway to Big Sur, has risen 900% year-over-year.
People pose for photos near Bixby Bridge. Monterey County’s Board of Supervisors voted to explore a 12-month ban on parking around the bridge.
Safety cones prevent parking along Coast Road near the Bixby Bridge.
“Take your time,” said Kirk Gafill, co-owner of the popular Nepenthe restaurant and president of the Big Sur Chamber of Commerce, offering advice to travelers. “You’re going to be sharing the road with a number of people.”
As travelers rediscover the road, the cost of driving has been shooting skyward. California’s average gas price ($6.11 per gallon as of May 26) is up 26% from the year before. In early April, rates hit $9.99 at the isolated gas station in the Big Sur community of Gorda.
For spring and summer travelers, these numbers would seem to pose a stark question: Stay home and save money, or head for the coast because the road is finally open and it’s still cheaper than flying?
So far, the latter answer is winning big.
Fog lingers off the coast of Highway 1.
“We are definitely seeing a huge uptick in our reservations,” said Megan Handy, assistant general manager at the upscale Treebones resort. She estimated that bookings are 30% or more ahead of last year, and rates are unchanged since then. But “it’s still not feeling super crowded, which is nice. Everything still feels kind of calm.”
But added traffic has raised some anxiety. On May 19, Monterey County’s Board of Supervisors voted to explore a 12-month ban on parking at Bixby Bridge, one of the region’s top photo spots.
Over the years, the number of cars parking near the bridge — often illegally, sometimes impeding emergency vehicles — has risen. The proposed parking moratorium won’t take effect until the supervisors discuss it further.
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Busy as things are, several business owners pointed out that many international travelers have not yet returned — perhaps because most make their plans more than six months ahead, perhaps because of global politics, perhaps a little of each.
The biggest challenge for businesses during this resurgence? “Restaffing and retaining,” said Handy at Treetops.
At Nepenthe, Gafill said his business has seen a 45% boost in guest volume since the road’s reopening. Gafill said he would have expected a 35% pickup, “simply by virtue of reopening the highway.” The additional 10%, he said, might be “all that pent-up demand,” aided by “a very beautiful and very dry winter,” followed by a mild spring.
A lunch crowd dines at popular restaurant Nepenthe.
Another possible factor: Nobody can be sure how long the road will remain open.
To cope with the influx of people, Gafill said, “everybody is trying to recruit and retain their existing staff.”
At the Ragged Point Inn, where rates dropped as low as $149 nightly last fall, rates are back over $200 and staffers are suggesting that customers book at least six months ahead. The inn has reopened its snack bar for the first time since early 2023, and management is investing in capital upgrades and staging live music on weekends throughout the summer.
Business “is up over 100%,” said Diane Ramey, whose family owns the inn. “I know not all of our neighbors are having the same lift, but everybody is doing better.”
Traffic approaching Bixby Bridge.
A visitor poses in an oversized chair at Big Sur River Inn.
Even at the New Camaldoli Hermitage, a Benedictine monastery above Lucia, the road’s reopening and coming summer season have made a difference. Bookings are up an estimated 30% at the hermitage, which rent rooms and cottages (for two nights or more) to visitors who agree to its requirement of silence.
Big Sur business owners advise visitors to travel on weekdays for less traffic and the best hotel rates, and to get on the road as early as possible.
Since its opening in 1937, the highway has been vulnerable to landslides and shifting ground, operating on a longstanding cycle of landslide, closure, repair, reopening and then another landslide, or sometimes a fire. The U.S. Geological Survey has identified the Big Sur coastline as one of the most landslide-prone areas in the western United States. The 2023-2026 closure was the longest in the highway’s history.
Over time, road crews have used increasingly sophisticated strategies. In the most recent efforts, Caltrans said, it used drones to help survey the slopes and remotely operated bulldozers and excavators to reduce risks to workers.
During the closure, no traffic was allowed on 6.8-mile span from just north of Lucia until about a mile south of the Esalen Institute. Drivers detoured inland by way of U.S. 101.
Correspondents of CBS’ 60 Minutes pose for a portrait in 2023. From left to right, they are Sharyn Alfonsi, L. Jon Wertheim, Bill Whitaker, Lesley Stahl, Scott Pelley, Cecilia Vega, and Anderson Cooper. Former Executive Producer Bill Owens sits on the far right. Only Wertheim, Whitaker and Stahl remain at the program.
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When CBS fired Scott Pelley on Tuesday night, the new 60 Minutes executive producer, Nick Bilton, told Pelley it was for insubordination at a staff meeting the day before.
The veteran correspondent argues he was defending the DNA of 60 Minutes and the integrity of its journalism.
The battle royale over the network’s most prestigious and profitable news program is part of a broader fight over the direction of CBS News.
And given CBS’s acquisition by a billionaire family whose business interests have become intertwined with the political interests of President Trump, it reflects a larger war over control of the media in the current moment.
That father and son, Larry and David Ellison, bought CBS’ parent company, Paramount, last summer. In January, they became co-owners of TikTok’s U.S. operations. Now they’re seeking approval from Trump’s regulators to buy Warner Bros. Discovery, the parent company of CNN.
A glamorous show shorn, for now, of most its stars
CBS fired Cecilia Vega, a correspondent, and Tanya Simon, the executive producer, from 60 Minutes last week. They are shown in this photo at the 2026 White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner on April 25, 2026 in Washington, D.C.
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Kristina Bumphrey/Variety via Getty Images/Variety
But the specifics of this individual episode matter — for 60 Minutes, CBS, its audience of millions, and even the news business itself.
The program has been the most glamorous post in broadcast news. The correspondents are the stars of the show. And now, there are just three of them.
Anderson Cooper left last month, concerned over the direction of the network’s coverage. Last week was a virtual bloodbath: correspondents Cecilia Vega and Sharyn Alfonsi were fired. So were a producer and two show executives — including Tanya Simon, a longtime staffer who had stepped up as executive producer when her predecessor resigned in protest before the Ellisons’ takeover.
With Pelley’s ouster, only correspondents Lesley Stahl, Bill Whitaker, and Jon Wertheim remain. Now they are considering whether to resign, according to two associates with knowledge.
Their brand-new boss, Bilton, was previously a tech reporter for The New York Times and an investigative reporter for Vanity Fair. He executive-produced a documentary for Netflix about a couple accused of laundering Bitcoin and has been a producer on several other films.
Notably, he has no experience in television news.
Neither does Bari Weiss, whom David Ellison installed as the network’s editor in chief last October. The Ellisons also bought her center-right views-and-news site, The Free Press.
She has maintained that the network of Walter Cronkite needs a makeover for the digital moment. She has also contended for years that CBS, along with the rest of mainstream media, is too reflexively anti-Trump, anti-Israel, and too woke.
A rejection of CBS News executives’ overtures
The new executive producer of 60 Minutes, Nick Bilton, has been a tech journalist and documentary filmmaker, but lacks experience in broadcast news.
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Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images/Getty Images North America
Bilton attempted to set a conciliatory tone at Monday’s meeting — his first with the show. Pelley, a formidable veteran correspondent and former CBS Evening News anchor, wasn’t having it.
Pelley called Bilton unwelcome and unqualified. And Pelley said that Weiss was attempting to “murder” the program.
In firing Pelley on Tuesday, Bilton said the journalist had hijacked the meeting and rejected overtures to work constructively through their differences. (NPR obtained a copy of the firing notice.) Bilton wrote that Pelley’s “antipathy to the future of the show came through loud and clear.”
In his own statement late Tuesday evening, shared with NPR, Pelley accused CBS’s new news leadership of killing 60 Minutes‘ DNA and pushing him “to inject falsehoods and bias into a politically sensitive story” and “to include assertions that are unverified.”
The accusations, to which CBS has not yet responded, echo those made by Alfonsi and Vega, the two correspondents fired last week.
Earlier this year, Alfonsi publicly complained after Weiss held one of her stories at the last minute, and kept it frozen for weeks, demanding an on-camera interview with a Trump White House official that never played out. It ran, unchanged from the intended version, with additional statements from the administration tacked on to the end.
After being fired, Vega said in a statement obtained by NPR that her team had “experienced efforts to insert political bias into our stories.”
“Let’s call this what it is: censorship, both censorship and self-driven” Vega continued. “It is dangerous for the show and dangerous for democracy.”
Weiss previously rejected Alfonsi’s and Vega’s allegations. (CBS said Vega’s claims, for example, were “not based in reality” while expressing appreciation for her work.)
Weiss and Bilton say digital threat requires a 60 Minutes overhaul now
In a meeting this morning, Weiss said that Pelley chose his own path — that is, to be fired rather than to find a way to work through his concerns, according to attendees. The network and Weiss have not yet publicly addressed Pelley’s accusations of interference.
Bilton and Weiss say they respect the show’s traditions, its accomplishments and its legacy of enterprise reporting, extended interviews and visual storytelling. It rose in the ratings 9% over the past season under Simon.
The two news leaders say, however, 60 Minutes needs to be overhauled before it becomes increasingly irrelevant in the era of streamers and other sources of news, information and entertainment in the digital age.
Interviews with 12 current and former CBS News staffers, from producers to executives, suggest great reservations and suspicions remain about Weiss’ judgment and her ability to handle the prominent and even famous journalists on whom her division relies.
Weiss had initially sought to reinvent the CBS Evening News, dropping a two-anchor format that had sagged in the ratings. Cooper turned down Weiss’ overtures to anchor it and left the network altogether, concerned about her approach, according to associates. (They spoke on condition of anonymity because Cooper has not chosen to speak publicly on the matter.)
David Ellison became chairman and CEO of CBS’ parent company, Paramount, after buying it last year.
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Noam Galai/Getty Images for Paramount/Getty Images North America
The ratings have continued to sag under new anchor Tony Dokoupil. And some CBS journalists, including producers who have left the Evening News, have publicly accused Weiss of making editorial decisions driven by politics. She has rejected those claims.
The decision to take on overhauling two key shows — one listing, one highly profitable, both high profile — carries significant risks for Weiss and the network, even apart from other considerations.
But the Ellisons’ presence cannot be ignored.
When Shari Redstone was negotiating the sale of CBS’s parent company, Paramount, to the Ellisons’ Skydance Media last year, the network announced the end of Stephen Colbert’s late night show. He had been one of the president’s most biting and acerbic critics.
David Ellison also made a series of concessions directly to Trump’s chief broadcast regulator, Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr, gutting CBS’s diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives and appointing a conservative ombudsman to field complaints of bias against its news reporting.
Carr and other regulators approved the Paramount deal last summer.
The accommodations echo those made by other media titans.
Amazon and Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos remade the editorial pages of the Washington Post, which he owns, into a far more hospitable zone for Trump at the outset of his second term. So did Los Angeles Times owner Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, a noted medical device inventor. Amazon and Blue Origin have multi-billion dollar contracts with the federal government. Soon-Shiong’s medical research firm routinely has patent applications up for review with federal regulators. One was approved Tuesday.
The Ellisons are hoping to win approval from federal regulators next month for their purchase of Warner Bros. Discovery in a deal valued at more than $110 billion. It would include Warner Bros. Studio, HBO and CNN, among other properties.
As Weiss routs CBS News’ old guard, the question of what role she might play at CNN — and what changes that portends at CBS — hangs over journalists at the two networks. The fate of 60 Minutes serves as a high-stakes case study for both.
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