"What's Good?" W/ Charlie Taylor · The 5th Element Podcast Network

Ep.378 - Olympic Gender Testing, Kanye & Losers

April 8, 2026·1 hr 8 min·5 clips

The IOC's mandatory sex testing for women athletes is a ban on transgender and intersex competitors, resuming a shameful Olympic tradition.

1. What's Good episode 378, recorded on Easter Monday, is a solo episode by Charlie Taylor covering politics, culture, and sports through a Black British perspective. 2. Charlie Taylor is the host of What's Good on the FemFem Podcast Network; he also writes for Fifth Element and has launched a Substack called 'Life of a Generalist.' 3. The episode's underlying argument is that institutions — the IOC, music bookers, and state security forces — consistently prioritize commercial or political convenience over the welfare of marginalized groups. 4. Charlie notes that PayPal, Pepsi, and Rockstar Energy withdrew as sponsors of the Wireless Festival following Kanye West's booking, framing them as 'moral arbiters' of the controversy. 5. The IOC segment, drawn from a Slate article by Julie Kliegman, details the decision to require every woman athlete competing in the 2028 Los Angeles Games to submit to a cheek swab or blood test for the SRY gene. 6. Erica Loughbow, executive director of Interact, is quoted saying 99% of the policy's real-world impact will fall on intersex people, not transgender women, because any single-gene definition of sex catches people with variations in sex traits. 7. Imane Khelif, the Algerian boxer who won gold at the 2024 Paris Olympics, is cited as someone subjected to a 'massive global hate campaign stoked in part by President Donald Trump,' who incorrectly described her as transgender and male. 8. South African runner Caster Semenya had her private medical records leaked during her own eligibility dispute, which the Slate article describes as evidence that the policy 'smells of stigma, not science.' 9. Since trans athletes became eligible for the Olympics in 2004, only one — New Zealand weightlifter Laurel Hubbard at the 2021 Tokyo Games — has competed, making the policy's premise statistically marginal. 10. Research cited by the Center for American Progress found that in US states implementing exclusionary gender eligibility policies, overall girls' sports participation decreases. 11. The Kanye segment draws on a Consequence of Sound article by Kiana Fitzgerald documenting that his January 2025 Wall Street Journal apology ad was followed within weeks by swastika t-shirts and within months by a song called 'Hail Hitler' sampling a Nazi speech. 12. West's Sofi Stadium show put 1 million people in the Ticketmaster queue; tickets ranged from $125 to $595; a second date was added, and he booked a 103,000-capacity show in Reggio Emilia, Italy for July. 13. His album 'Bully' was projected to move 117,000 first-week units, debuting at number two on the Billboard 200, compared to Vultures 1's 148,000 first-week number-one debut. 14. Charlie argues that the key power holders are not media outlets but event bookers, who effectively 'bring Kanye's visions to life' and whose willingness to book him determines whether his commercial rehabilitation succeeds. 15. The Nigeria segment is drawn from an Africa Is a Country essay by Amole Ibukun examining community self-defense in the context of a US airstrike on ISIS-affiliated Lakurawa militants in Sokoto State on Christmas Day 2025. 16. The essay argues that community self-defense initiatives consistently fail when defense becomes the task of a specialized, masculinized cadre divorced from the community's material needs — replicating rather than replacing the military-civilian split of the state. 17. Amilcar Cabral's PAIGC in Guinea-Bissau is cited as a partial counter-example: the liberation movement built schools, food stores, and healthcare alongside its guerrilla campaign, but was undermined by a perceived separation between front-line fighters and leadership conducting diplomacy from Conakry. 18. The Zapatistas (EZLN) in Chiapas are cited as the most durable contemporary example of defense fused with material care — schools, autonomous governance, and healthcare sustained for over three decades against state hostility and cartels. 19. The episode suits listeners interested in political theory, sports governance, and Black cultural criticism, especially those who prefer to engage with long-form written journalism via audio. 20. Listeners who prefer structured debate, short-form commentary, or entertainment-focused content will find the episode's article-reading format and extended essay length demanding.

As heard by us

A loose monologue that follows the money from coverage to bookings.

Taylor opens with a holiday catch-up before moving into Kanye, the coverage cycle around him, and the money trail linking outlets, promoters, and venues.

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Why you'd press play

You get an Easter Monday catch-up, a run at why Kanye keeps getting covered, and a blunt take on who keeps booking him.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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