TESTED

A surprising history of women’s sports.

Who gets to compete? Since the beginning of women’s sports, there has been a struggle over who qualifies for the women’s category. A century later, this struggle is still very much alive.

I (Rose Eveleth) have been following this story for ten years. With CBC and NPR's Embedded, I just released a six-part podcast called Tested. The show takes listeners around the world and back in time to trace the past, present, and future of so-called "gender verification" policies. But there is so much that didn't make the final cut.

This newsletter will be the home for all that stuff: additional reading for episodes, stuff we had to cut, behind the scenes photos and materials from my reporting, essays and commentary on this topic, news updates as the story unfolds beyond August, and more.

Sports are binary. Bodies are not. This is what happens when those two things collide.