Well There‘s Your Problem - Episode 162: The Olympics, Part 2

Episode Date: August 1, 2024

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Yes. Thank you so much. But we're gonna have to cut all of the bit where you admit to- Don't talk about illegal stuff. It's not, hey, whoa, that's legally a gray area. You guys are, I don't know what you're talking about. I don't know what you're talking about. As this podcast is preeminent legal expert, please ignore the fact that Nova literally

went to law school. Let's not oversell that, you know. I saw a very, very funny comment, I don't remember where it was, if it was in the YouTube comments or if someone just messaged it to me, but they're like, um, like two professionally qualified engineers and an almost lawyer and I'm like, I dropped out. I'm not, that's not a thing that, you can't make me out to be as qualified as these two, you know, I'm here for jokes. ALICE We are not an engineer.

SEAN No, and I have to tell people that every time, like, oh you're an engineer, I'm like, absolutely the fuck not, I majored in economics, which is not real. ALICE Yeah, uh, dismal science. SEAN The dismal science, yeah. SEAN The dismal- it's not even a- it's not even a- it's- dismal's right, science is pushing it a little bit. ALICE Gambling for white dudes.

SEAN Yeah, I just think about the categorization of sciences, right. Economics, dismal science. Boxing, sweet science. Marxism, Leninism, immortal science. Uh, what else we got? I think that's it, right? That's all the sciences. That's all of them.

That's just all the ones you need. I studied civil engineering, but my concentration in my senior year was in Construction Management, you know, which is the easy one. Was it? Yeah. Civil Engineering, we need to- I didn't know that about you. We need to name it. We need it to be the blank science, you know?

Yeah. Like, the concrete one. The concrete one. The lethal science. Yeah. Yeah. Don't fuck this up, kids. Madam X, what did you major in?

If you're willing to reveal that. Well, I was majoring in chemical engineering and chemistry until I realized that if you take two years off from doing calculus between high school and like sophomore, junior year of college, it comes back to bite you in the ass. school and like sophomore, junior year of college, it comes back to bite you in the ass. Um, and then I switched my major to German. So oh, cool.

Um, Rosas dad major didn't brush Russian. Yes. Your, your, your dad was a spy. Uh, so I should also say, um, I do think about going back to law school sometimes, but right now I'm still doing, in the last year of, a criminology degree. The cop science. Um.

I have a friend who I will not name publicly, who has a criminology degree, and every time he brings it up he's just like, why did I have to be a nice fucking liberal who thought I could reform this goddamn office system? I was like, aw, buddy. That's why I started doing the criminology degree, is you may remember the discourse when I became like, Twitter protagonist of the day, or antagonist of the day, because I was like, having a slightly manic episode, and I was like, I should be a cop, I could be the only good one.

Well, part of the reason why I ended up doing a criminology degree was like, if I can't excise this feeling by getting yelled at, which I couldn't, none of that worked, then surely like learning more about it, learning like the theory of like, you know, penology and like abolitionism and all this, that's gonna change my mind, I'm not gonna wanna be a cop anymore. And two years in, no fucking change? I dunno. ALICE I think criminology would be better if they taught you how to do crimes. How to be a criminal. Yeah.

I mean, they kind of do, to be honest. Like, basically the answer is that, like, a huge amount of crime is legal, and we just kind of, like, the stuff that we call crime and categorize as crime is a very narrow subsection of all the harms and even all the textual crimes that occur, in order to create and maintain a social underclass. So, y'know. That, I mean, that tracks, god that sounds grim. It's called Peric Defeat Theory. I was gonna say, depressing. I was hoping I could take Bank Robbing 101 and do like, y'know, sort of an Ocean's Eleven

as a final project. You would be the shittiest bank robber in the whole world. There's some interesting research. I would not be the shittiest bank robber in the whole world because I will have taken bank robbing 101. Roz, I- You could get research funding to interview bank robbers about how to rob banks. You could fully do that.

You know what, you know what they call the guy who graduates bank robbing school with the lowest grades Look to your left look to your right one of you will not graduate bank robbery school A bunch of guys in striped shirts, with huge sacks with dollar signs on them. I, I dunno, again, I have an economics degree, which is basically learning how to rob poor people I guess, so. Yeah, one of those things that's like a societal harm and sometimes a societal crime that just isn't a crime a lot of the time. SEAN Yeah, you're correct. ALICE It's interesting, because criminology as

a discipline might be dying, like, there's a kind of not insubstantial movement to kind of re-conceptualize it as something called zemiology, which would be like the study of harm. SEAN That sounds fascinating. Do you have any- sorry for diverting here, do you have any reading on that? Cause I wanna check that out. Oh, I will just straight up copy and paste over a reading list for you if you want. Thanks, Nova.

Yeah, you're so welcome. I learn a lot on this show, because I have to. Oh, I may have a reading assignment for y'all for the next episode. Oh, not more reading. I just got done with one reading list. We can call it an optional reading assignment. Okay, not more reading. I just got done with one reading list. We can call it an optional reading assignment. Okay, that's fine. All right, you guys want to talk about this woman who looks frightening to me?

Hello and welcome to... Oh, shit, right, yeah. Hello and welcome to Will Erich Your Problem podcast. It's a podcast about engineering disasters with slides. I'm Justin Rosnick. I'm the person who's talking right now. My pronouns are he and him. Okay go. I'm November Kelly. I'm the person who's talking now. My pronouns are she and her. Yay Liam. Yay Liam. Hi, I'm Liam McAnderson. My pronouns are he and him. I'm the person who's talking

right now. I finally remembered to say that. It's been 160 plus episodes and I just remember to say it. And we have a returning guest. You know her, you love her, the one and only, named Redacted. Uh, yes, I'm a feral goose in the body of a human waiting for my time as a real person. My pronouns are DLC that will be released around the time that we get Half-Life 3 out. If you're thinking of that, you know me and that you want to come up to me and talk to me about this or talk about it with my parents, with my boss, anything like that, that you know from my real life, let's not do that. Also, a shout out to the person in the comments from the fashion episode that I was on earlier who was asking why I sound so exhausted. It's because I am.

I can't get any good sleep these days because of woke. That that that makes sense, actually, when you when you when you phrase it that way. That does track. Hang on, I need to keep going, I need to look for a micro USB cable, because I have a wife who's very needy, and I found one! I am the undefeated cable champion of the world! Incredible. I am so fucking good at this! The tempo of your domestic life alone is incredible. I am so fucking good at finding cables that I definitely didn't forget about.

Shut up. You're gonna have to go buy yourself a mug now that says world's greatest husband on it. I- no, tell her to buy me one. Oh, that's a good point. Yeah, Corinne, go buy Liam a mug that says world's greatest husband. She's not here, man. It's greatest husband. She's not here man, it's just me. She's dead. What if she listens to the episode?

Oh, she killed him. She killed him! He's dead. Wow. RIP Liam. World's deadest husband. Yeah. Uh.

Like the beginning of an action movie, you know? You get like a couple of shots of him laughing and like, what the hell was that USB cable plugged into? I found what just happened to be the cable that goes directly to all the audio devices. Yeah, it's running from my microphone to my mixer, I'm probably not gonna need it. Yeah, you're just like trying to, you're trying to like, you know, quickly swap the cable between the mixer and whatever Corinne needs it for. Just like, over and over again. She's also, she's starting a competing podcast.

In a sort of Looney Tunes fashion. They've, they've, the guy, um, oh god, what's the other guy who does like, stuff that's kind of like, plainly difficult, maybe? That guy is like, um, I don't actually watch any of the content, I don't know if it's good or not, but like, yeah, that guy's like headhunted, Garren. Uh oh. Uh oh. Yeah, sometimes I see his videos and I'm like, wait, didn't we just do something like that?

And then other times I do a video, or we do a video, that's similar to something he put out a few days earlier, and it's like, oh, no one's stealing each other's content here, but we could pretend and get mad at each other. ALICE Yeah, that's true, we could do like a stage rivalry. ALICE I don't think he's gonna get this one. ALICE I mean, the thing is, I've been trying to like, avoid the content, not because I dislike the guy or anything like that, but because, like, the less I know

about it, if it's firewalled off it's impossible for me to steal it unintentionally. ALICE I actually do the same thing, yeah. SEAN It's gonna be a mess for Devon to edit. Sorry Devon, I disconnected my mic and a bunch of other shit while I was looking for a USB cable for my wife. ALICE You just saw cable, and like a bird or a dog, you just kind of ritualized it. You just sort of pecked at it. SEAN Yeah, well, listen, here's the thing, right?

So my wife makes fun of me a lot. As she should. As she's right to. ALICE More marriages, yeah. SEAN However, when it's, do you have a micro USB cable by any chance? Cause that's what Corinne sounds like. I, uh I I do.

I just have to upset my very delicate mess of wires in my in my my internal cable management. Nova is much better than yours. My external cable management could make grown men cry. Thank you for providing me with the opportunity to actually use my German degree for the first time in a very long time. There's a fantastic German word for a mess of wires and cords, you know, up under your desk and that is cobbles a lot, cable salad.

It's cable salad. Okay, what you see on the screen from you are a variety of images related to the Olympics. Except they legally can't be. So if you look closely, you'll notice we have a leotard from a company called Motionware. We've got some products from Oriental Trading Company, and we've got an ad for hotel tickets from a site called 14SB.com. And all of them are very distinctly avoiding actually using the Olympic rings or mentioning the Olympic Games by name because they can't because the Olympics are kind of a dick about their intellectual property.

So just to keep our asses out of hot water, nothing that we're doing in here is claiming to represent the views of the Olympic organization or be in any way associated with them. And if you happen to know me, happen to know where I work, this also does not in any way represent the views of my employer. I am speaking off the clock, out of my own opinions. ALICE Auntie, the Australian sketch comedy group Auntie Donna had the funniest run on this, where they just called it the Olympics, and got away with that. ZACH That's magnificent.

Alright, we will be referring to it as the Olympics. We will be in brazen. Yeah, Olympics, the Olympics Olympics. I was going to say we do brazen violations of copyright, but yeah, we'll do your thing. Well, it's not copyright. It can't be copyrighted because the logo is considered too simple. It's just geometric shapes. And, you know, for, for the actual logos for each host site, there's sometimes some text included, but...

Like London 2012, Lisa Simpson sucking a guy off, yeah yeah yeah. What the fuck? What does it look like? Devon, can you flash up London 2012 with the logo? It looks like Lisa Simpson sucking a guy off, what do you want me to tell you? Oh, it does. Oh, that's tragic. You said a fucking mascot. Are we gonna- please tell me you're gonna talk about the fucking

mascots, right? Wenlock and Mandeville? Because, ugh. I don't have that in here, but we can put it in at the end. It's fine, I'm just gonna make people aware of the fact that Olympic Games usually have like, the city, the year, usually has a mascot, and that mascot is usually terrifying. Why do they only have one? I saw a video about how the one for Paris looks like a clip. Yeah, Les Friges, the Frisian Caps, yeah yeah yeah, which absolutely look like two clitorises. Yeah, you should just like, instead't know instead of like making up a new

Logo they a new mascot that you just go with Pikachu or something like I don't I don't get this Just keep using me sure the 1980 Moscow Olympics bear for every Olympics subsequently. It's the best one Anyway, so they can't copyright it but they they can trademark it. And they come very hard after people who misappropriate their trademarks. So one thing we do have to say before we get started here is that we are when we mentioned the Olympics, we're doing it as commentary on them. We are not trying to act as a representative. We are not trying to put ourselves out as some kind of

officially Olympic sponsored production. That's not what the priority power. act as a representative, we are not trying to put ourselves out as some kind of officially Olympic sponsored production, that's not what the- Yeah, yeah. Parody, parody, parody, parody. This is parody. Redacted in Minecraft. Transformative use. As much as we mentioned on the previous episode that we'd love to be on the Olympic Committee,

we are not. Can you fucking imagine, dude? Hang out with guys called Dick pound and like Tokyo sex well based Before we talk more about the Olympics we have to do the goddamn news Now now I don't know How careful you want me to be. Because the thing is... Knock yourself out, Novi, it's like 11.30 your time, I don't give a shit.

I don't often say this, but I feel grateful and lucky to be in the United Kingdom. Because there's a trade-off, right, like, you guys can say whatever you want about beloved children's author J.K. Rowling, who I think is a lovely woman, But like, you guys can't say shit about the fact that some guy, some chud, took a shot at Donald Trump, and missed. And missed. One shot? He took like eight shots! He went Bronte James! Yeah, no, he did extremely poorly. This was a poor show, y' know, for what could have potentially been the funniest day in

American political history, ruined by poor marksmanship. You know, again, I'm trying to avoid breaking US Code 18875 or 115 here. I don't know that you will is the thing, like, this is the thing, this is the most likely news segment to get you, like, door knocked by the Secret Service. I mean, we are- And if you do, like- It's called the goddamn loots, you know, we're a news organization. Those guys got a lot on their plate right now, they got like a huge backlog of jokes

about assassinating the president to go through- Year and a half, 18 months time, we're finally like, you know, we're recording Chernobyl. Number 44, woo woo that's me! Knock on the door, comes in, like, here's the thing, right, I think that ultimately... They're gonna have to go through a hiring spree like the census does every ten years. Okay, I mean, here's my question, right, so, registered Republican, Demolition Ranch t-shirt, I don't purport to know what goes on in any person's particular head just based on their external appearance, but I think we can make some educated guesses here.

Justin? Justin? I think I just heard your door. Is your door, um... FBI OPEN UP! Oh shit! Jesus Christ! Hi. They move quick. door, is your door, um... FBI OPEN UP! Oh shit!

Jesus Christ! Hey, can we move quick? All those new hoes. Fucking my head got dropped so much, dude. The nook's not mine. No, absolutely it's not mine. I'm gonna get a text with my wife in a second. I'm gonna text with my wife in a second. Anyways, so what I'm asking is how many times do you think, you know, this guy in all of

his infinite wisdom made a post where he called somebody on the left some variation of, oh, this pussy who wouldn't know which end of the gun to point at the target, I mean, honestly. And then you go out and you end it like this. ALICE That was a detail that really struck me, as I'm looking into this guy and who he is and what his deal is, that he got rejected from his high school's rifle team for being so bad of a shot that it was- SEAN Too unstable? ALICE No!

For being too bad of a shot that it was dangerous. SEAN Oh my god. Jesus. shot that it was- no, for being too bad of a shot that it was dangerous. Like, that- Oh my god. Jesus. Come on, man. And the thing is, the thing is, right, if this guy had killed Trump, he would've, like, Trump first of all would've experienced the most American death of all time, right? Um, but also, like, imagine being that kid, right, the intrusive thoughts win, you're

gonna fucking, like, do the thing, you're gonna violate a bunch of US codes, and you actually hit the guy and kill him, right? He was even, like, in the moment before the Secret Service kill you, how do you even process that, y'know? RIght? Tiger Woods fist bump. My, my, yeah my understanding. Fortnite dance, he was a zoomer.

Born 2003, it's why he fucking missed. All he knew was Fortnite build mode. It's like oh god I'm gonna make a really risque joke here and I feel bad about it but you remember the Virginia Tech shooter killed like 33 people. Oh yeah, yeah absolutely. And they were like it was because of Counter Strike and he used something like a thousand rounds of ammunition to do it and it's like if he had done had done Counter-Strike he wouldn't have needed a thousand rounds. ALICE If we had, like, if this kid had been into

Tarkov or something, different headlines completely. You wouldn't be worrying about this guy's ear or whatever. SEAN Yeah, exactly, it's like, you wanna be the Texas A&M shooter, not the Virginia Tech shooter. RILEY It's the University of Virginia Tech- uh, no, just Texas. Oh. He did technically do a mass shooting, cause he killed like, two audience members. And one of those guys is getting the kind of heroic edit, where they're like, oh this

guy is a volunteer fire chief, whatever. But he had Twitter, right? And you could look at his Twitter. I'm not gonna like that, whatever it is. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And, like, one of his last posts before he got fucking shot was, um, about Gaza, where he was like, oh, they'll get over it like Japan did. And then he got killed by, like, one of his own guys. So I don't know what to tell you, America's the greatest country in the world.

Um, and, like, the Biden campaign has, like, fucked up their response to this so badly, and then so has Trump, weirdly. Yeah, Trump's decided to take on certified Yall Star JD Vance as his vice president. Don't say those words to me, Vance. Just like a guy everyone hates. And this is the thing, right, like, I keep seeing it said on Twitter, these are the only two guys who could lose to each other. Like, you change any variable here, and the result becomes immediately obvious.

But like, everything is maintained in this weird status of fuckery. Where it's like, no one learned anything from this, there's nothing really to be said from it, other than just, wow, this was a moment in history. It happened, it's crazy that that happened, and, y'know, what can you say, he led an amazing life. Yeah. I mean, y'know, the worst case scenario did not occur, which is where Trump gets a cool eyepatch afterwards. ALICE Yeah, I mean, he got to like, kind of get

up on stage and look cool for a bit afterwards, right, and everyone was like shitting their pants about how like, oh, the election's over, y'know, cause this is the coolest image ever taken. And I sympathize with the fear, right, I think I was there too. But like, then when we found out, oh, it's just some guy who looks like one of the kind of redneck characters from Preacher, and is probably like a griper, it just doesn't really have any political valence to it. Yeah, I mean, there's not a lot of data to suggest how the assassination bump works.

I think the main thing that's going to benefit Trump is that Biden doesn't have a brain. True. He said- he came out to say that as Americans we settle our differences at the battle box. We can do that. Into the battle box. Yeah, shit, alright, I'm down for that. I'm always down for battle.

It sounds like a better system to be honest. Mono in mono, yeah, let's go man. But yeah, no, I just- Choose your weapon! I thought for a while that like, the worst possible outcome was somebody attempts to assassinate Trump and like, fails. But that was predicated on the idea that it would be like, I don't dunno, some kind of liberal crime squad, or worse than actual leftists. JUSTIN The liberal driller.

ALICE Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like a guy who listens to Keith Olbermann too much, and is like, I'm gonna lock in and kill the president. But like, no, instead it just turned out it was something weirder and more American than that, it was some guy. JUSTIN Like many assassins, just a crank. Yeah, for real. And like, I don't know what to make of that.

I'm glad that he wasn't, like, mostly glad he wasn't trans, but like, y'know, glad he wasn't fuckin' Antifa or whatever the fuck. And I don't know what ramifications this is gonna have. Yeah, it's very confusing. It's confusing. Weird as hell to walk in it. I mean, you remember after Columbine how all of the attention from that being plastered on every news channel 24-7 for like, months straight, led to a bunch of people doing actual copycat shootings, and since then with school

shootings, they've had a policy of like, they don't really put out a lot of information about the guy who did it because they don't want people to think they can get famous by doing that, and they're not doing that kind of prudence right now? Oh, so you think like, assassination is back in a big way, as like a trend? Well, I mean, we have now had two major political assassinations and or attempts in the space of when did Abe get assassinated, like, two years ago? That guy knew his business, though. I think this is the thing, right, that really stunned me about this, is the United States

of America, the most guns country in the world, very very easy to get a gun. Crucially, very very easy to practice with a gun, find a lot of like insane YouTubers, who this guy was clearly already watching, who will teach you how to zero the sight on a gun, and... Whereas this Tetsuya Yamagami, the Japanese guy, built his shit out of electrical parts and like plumbing pipes, and absolutely vanished Shinzo Abe and his legacy from the face of the Earth. Like, and I guess at that point you just have to say that they wanted it more, you know?

Yeah, I was about to say. Yeah, much like the Eagles in Super Bowl 50-Tel. You know, you can't be successful in these things unless your motive is pure of heart. Like screwing with the Moonies. He approached the assassination attempt with a common debt. Yeah, exactly. Or impressing Jodie Foster. Or uh.

Who amongst us? Well no, because impressing Jodie Foster is an impure motive because Reagan lived. Yeah, because Reagan lived. Yeah, because Reagan lived. I feel so bad for laughing at those. Well, I mean, the thing is, you can tell that no one has any clue how to spin this on the right, because now that it's not a woke, soy, gay, BLM, Antifa member, the thing that they're going in on is the Secret Service awokeoke soy, gay BLM, Antifa members.

Um. No, well actually what I've seen is just, we shouldn't allow women to be on the Secret Service, which, come over here and I'll punch you in the face, come out. I mean, it does seem like the Secret Service dropped the ball in a big way on this one. Not just the Secret Service, but local cops, the local cops, the other thing that came out was like- LIAM Although the Butler P.A.P.D. did their job? ALICE Yeah, the Butler P.D. because this guy was outside the Secret Service perimeter, just on a roof.

JUSTIN Oh, hang on, can I read y'all a Tumblr post? It's gonna take you a moment to find this. ALICE Fine, but while you do, this local cop climbed up a ladder to check the roof, and the guy pointed a gun at him, and the cop in that moment was in absolute blue wall solidarity with every cop in Uvalde and was like, okay, well, don't need this job anyway. No problem. Slide back down the ladder.

Sinking to the edge like Homer Simpson. Yeah, and that's what a lad- I mean, in fairness, that's maybe, more relatable to be like, I will not give up my life for Donald Trump. But like, still though, this is what allowed us to see Donald Trump get the Claire's earpiece. JUSTIN He's got the, uh- ALICE I guess it's- it went through the top of the ear, so technically it's an industrial, I guess? He put like a cool bar in there. JUSTIN He's got the cool scars like the German officers like to give each other.

Oh! Is it called a Schmis? Yeah. I think that's just blood though, I don't think that's an actual cut. I think that's just like bits of his ear that have been thrown forward. The thing is, he didn't actually get shot, it was some... Well, I mean, he got shot at... The teleprompter or something?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, it was a teleprompter blast, just hit him in the ear. I thought the bullet grazed his ear. No. Well, he said that it did, but like, apparently the Secret Service think that it it's teleprompter blasts just hit him in the ear. I thought the bullet grazed his ear. No. Well he said that it did, but apparently the Secret Service think that it was the teleprompter. We'll have to wait for the slow motion replay. Alright, found it. Oh god. Not the slow mo replay, the tumble post.

Alright, so, um, Tumblr post from user Bipolarist, okay but for real, why is Trump coming to my town to speak directly outside where I work? You're literally in the farmland area of town Comments from various people in the replies. We have an opportunity here. You should plant a bomb You have the opportunity to do something great Bipolarist response to this I'm gonna end up on a watch list Bipolarist Next reblog you're never gonna believe, they were on top of my office.

So, uh, the attempt to assassinate the once and future president went poorly. I think it's still gonna win, I don't know if it's gonna be because of this. Yeah, I don't think this has had a super meaningful effect, I think the main issue is that Biden doesn't have a brain. Um. Yeah. It is gonna complete the sort of fall of the Secret Service, which is gonna be cool. I wanna do an episode about that soon.

Yeah, we're gonna do the Open Service. Yeah, time to- Alright, what do we got next? Time to do some counterfeiting. Yes ma'am. The last guy who tried to kill Trump was British, he was like this Robot Wars autism guy. SEAN What?! ALICE He tried to- his plan, I shit you not his plan, was to grab a cop's gun.

SEAN Oh I remember this! Yeah! ALICE It didn't work out for him. SEAN I don't know why you wouldn't use your Robot Wars robot. ALICE If Trump got like flipped off the stage, if you ran HypnoDisc into Trump, that would swing the election for Biden pretty strongly. In other news... Oh boy.

Uh oh. Oh boy, oh boy. So, um, what you don't currently see in front of you is a power outage map. We we had a hurricane hit Houston. Second one in less than a decade. That's, you know, significant. So what happened was our wonderful electricity provider in Houston. Centerpoint, had some major issues start happening with their system after the de-ray show that we had back in, I think it was May, and their

outage map went completely offline. It's a real map and territory situation with the outage map, you know? They were not able to provide any outage information to any customers for several days after the hurricane blew in, and until they finally got an alternate solution going sometime on late Tuesday, if I remember correctly, what they were doing was people in Houston were using the Water Burger app to figure out what areas did and didn't have power, because if the Water Burger's closed, there's no power, and if the Waterburger's open, there is. ALICE Once again, resetting to zero the number of minutes since obsessively thinking about the pronunciation of Waterburger in the Brockhampton song Sweet.

This is- SONIA Well, you hear about Waterburger all the time, but never about Dartburger. ALICE There's some sort of text and equivalent of the California in-and-out Sonic situation, where it's like, I actually like the smaller local chain, because I'm more authentic. SONIA I mean, Water Burger is the only good fast food burger out there. RON Oh, um, I don't know about that.

ALICE What's your suggested alternative? RON Well I can't have Five Guys anymore because my wife is allergic to peanuts, Rod, so I get nothing. Oh, that's a good point. Five Guys isn't fast food, Five Guys is sit down. Yeah, Five Guys does usually take a pretty long time, like, there's no Five Guys with a drive-through. Drive Guys.

Drive Guys. Bok bok bok bok. Guys, I've got the rebrand for you right there, I will take my payment, like, immediately. You need to find the five guys. You're a Smashburger? Like, a Smashburger? Like, that's a piece with five of those. Smashburger is hit down, and also, the last time I went to a Smashburger I saw someone

cough directly onto the griddle and then throw my burger on top of that, so I won't be going back there. It's the flavor. It's the flavor. I like the loaded fries, this is why I weigh nine hundred thousand pounds. JUSTIN Shake Shack's too expensive for what you get. ALICE We don't have Shake Shack, the thing is, Glasgow,

because we eat so many fried foods and we're so unhealthy, and have like a twenty year lower life expectancy than the rest of the UK, we get American chains, and Canadian chains, we got Tim Hortons before London. We get chains before- we got Wingstop before anywhere else, and we just got our first Popeyes, so I'm kind of, I'm hopeful for burgers also. You gotta get a Smokes Poutinery. Yeah, sure. So the thing about Texas is that, like, and those of y'all who live here will know this for whatever reason, you know, because we

are the state where the state government is like, we should not exist and we're actually going to go ahead and just blow up everything about ourselves that would allow ourselves to be effective anyway. Um, we wind up in some sort of kind of, I don't know whether to call it a dystopian nightmare or the rare example of what conservatives think the private industry doing things actually working would look like in that, you know, if you think back to the pandemic or the freeze, you'll remember that H.E.B. were kind of the only ones who had their shit together and were doing a better job of local grocery chain.

H.E.B. Yeah. Oh, OK. Stands for Howard Earlbutt. Anyway, yeah, I got my groceries and my chest. Yes. Very good. Very good grocery store. I understand. Yes, very much so. But they were kind of the only ones to pad their shit together at all, much more so than the state government. And we're doing a much better job with like communicating to the public

about preparedness, about availability. And so my kind of running joke has become the closest thing we have to a real government in this state is the Howard Earl Butts grocery emporium. I mean, and this this is this is also a symptom of like how they, you know, ultra privatize the electricity grid in Texas, to the point where it's on like a separate interconnected grid than the East Coast and the West Coast, except for the Gulf Coast oil refineries that actually need reliable electricity. And then. No, because Houston is where a lot of the Gulf Coast oil refineries are. The areas that that are part of the interconnection

is I think there's a bit towards Beaumont and then kind of the western portion of the state on the other side of the mountains and maybe the panhandle too, but I don't have a map in front of me. But the other thing is, the last time this happened, you know, which was I think when it when when it snowed, the the, you know, that they blamed renewable woke energy for causing the problem, which is like, oh, do you know how many people I've had the argument with about like, it's not that the wind turbines froze. There are wind turbines in Antarctica that operate without issue all of the time. It's that all of the sources of power generation were not properly winterized because they're

not required to be winterized and capitalism will do anything to make a quick buck. My brother in Christ, you deregulated the power industry and they installed renewables which obviously again aren't the problem but if they were the problem it would be your fault because of woke yeah no it's because of woke it's because of woke deregulation which I assume is gonna be the next the next battleground deregulation's gonna become woke. Oh yeah, battle box. JD Vance is 5'7", and I find that kind of embarrassing. Oh my god, yeah. That's the same height as me.

That's hilarious. And me, yeah. Actually, wait, now, thanks to Triptorell, and he's an inch taller than me. So I saw the picture that KGB posted announcing your live shows, and my first- Oh fuck yeah let me- KGB? Jesus Christ let me plug those, I've been going absolutely insane about them. You're now a member of the KGB?

Absolutely, and 11th, and we're gonna watch the Johnny English films, so you gotta killjamesbond.com slash live, you can get tickets, we're selling tickets to the live streams as well, so you can watch those, even if you can't make it to London. Please God buy tickets, I am panicking about this. Yes, please buy tickets to Nova's show. But also, if you do go to the show, say hi to her for us, and then laugh at her for being so short.

I saw that picture and I was like, damn, Nova's short! I felt real bad, but I was like, aw, she's tiny. Yeah. I'm like, pocket size. You know? Yeah. Also, Devon is 11 feet tall somehow. Oh yeah.

Devon and Abby are huge. They're giants, and I'm like, slightly under average height. Brutal. Alright, moving it along. Yes. So Nova can go to bed. That was the goddamn news. Alright.

I'm gonna rise like a fiscal mess. First we must ask ourselves, what are the Olympics? Bad, they're bad. Sort of Nazi project of sports washing. Not initially, but... Very quickly. Very quickly occurred. And let me tell you, some of the people involved were open Nazis, or proto-Nazis, because fascism

predates the Nazis. I do want to also note, while I'm sort of monopolizing the microphone, that the guy who first introduced the idea of sex testing into Olympic sport, or indeed sport generally, was a German Nazi who ended the letter where he asked the IOC to do it with Heil Hitler. So, okay. What we get to talk about in episode three at length. So anyway, this is not episode three. This is episode two. Last time we spoke predominantly about.

Last time we spoke predominantly about how the process of planning and preparing for the Olympics leads often to bad outcomes for the host cities. This week, we're going to be talking about the actual Olympics themselves, and a lot, but not all of our focus will be on how that affects the people who attend the Olympics and how they kind of get shortchanged, the spectators actually both watching from at home and attending in person. So let's go ahead and talk really quickly about a little bit of the history behind the Olympics and how we got to the situation we're in today with them. Next slide. So the Olympics began as a as an ancient Greek competition.

There were actually four original Panhellenic games. They were kind of on a quadrennial cycle. So you would have a different one each year. The Olympics, the Pythian Games, the Nemean Games and the Ismian Games. And those are all just named after locations in Greece. Each one of these honored a specific god. They were held at religious sites in those cities that were relevant to the god that they were meant to honor. The Olympics predated the other threes by about 200 years, as best we know, and ran from around

776 BC to 393 AD. It consisted of athletic contests such as running races, predominantly the stadion, but there were also other distances, wrestling, boxing, pancreasion, which is also a martial art pentathlon, which consisted of wrestling, stadion, long jump, discus, and jaasion, which is also a martial art pentathlon, which consisted of wrestling stadion, long jump, discus, and javelin, as well as chariot races, and some times there would be local events at each one of these Panhellenic games that were specific to the site where they were being held. ALICE RAYMOND RAPBASSELS, things of this nature. Yes. Do you guys not do that, Brad? You guys still- do we use that poetry?

What happened to poetry? Well, speaking of which- It's still going, last I heard. True. Unlike the modern Olympic Games, or at least the current iteration of the modern Olympic Games, there were also religious elements and artistic competition that were held as part of the Olympics, it was more of a cultural festival and not specifically focused on the sport. Unlike a lot of other sports festivals in Ancient Greece, because there were many of

them, the winners only received an olive wreath, they didn't receive any prizes or money or anything like that, it was seen as, you know, a more... ALICE Sort of. Once you get back home to your polis, once you get back home to your city state, then you get like, y'know, it's much like Wimbledon now, right? Like, the prize money doesn't compare to the fucking endorsements. LIAM The glory. ALICE Yeah, you fucking sell some like- exactly! You sell the fucking sandals, where you're like, these will make you as good a discus thrower as me, or whatever.

Yeah, the air hurks from Hurk-It. Like, usually like that. That's olive oil. Yeah, exactly. Oh, this is my extra virgin olive oil, and it's an extra virgin, cause I'm a eunuch. I mean, I mean, it's like, a celebrity is not a modern invention, particularly for sportsmen. Like, sorry, I was just winding up to talk about Roman gladiators. Keep going, Nobun. Keep going, Nobun. I didn't think eunuchs was a Greek thing.

Shut the fuck up, god damn it. I appreciate it so much. I do also want to address the dick allegations implicit in this slide as well, because like... The dick allegations? Yeah, the dick allegations. So you may notice that these guys are naked, right, which is the kind of correct, manly, honourable way to compete. It's more hygienic, in the sense that it honours hygiene or whatever.

However, one of the things that you do, right, is because the Greek's model of what is kind of like, seemly, is, it's okay to have your dick out, but it should be small dick, because big dick is barbarian and savage. You have, don't Google this, a thing called infibulation, which is essentially tying your dick up into the side, like, it's kind of... ALICE The dick ponytail? ALICE Side pony? ALICE Yeah, it's basically the dick ponytail. It's basically, these guys were tucking, right? Because that's an important element, not just from stopping your shit flopping around

and hitting you in the thighs where you're trying to throw the discus, but also because like it honours the gods more. So naked is like, it has a different kind of like, uh, sort of cultural implication, I guess. Mm. These are not problems I have in my life. Well, I'm trying not to have them too, but you know. Yes. These are not problems I have in my life. Well, I'm trying not to have them, too, but, you know.

Anyway, here's Star Wars America. Yeah, no, and all while we're here, fuck labor for their selling out. Oh, thank you. Yes. I I've been kind of going back and forth and put it in the in the news myself, because I go insane any time I talk about it. SEAN Don't blame you, god damn. ALICE Yeah. SEAN Well, the good news is we're about to- I almost

said about to-mescu-rish-ed. ALICE Mount a rescue mission to London. ALICE Mount a rescue mission to get me to the United States. SEAN Yeah, sorry, it's not a very good rescue mission. ALICE But then we all have to run to Canada. SEAN Thank you, I appreciate it. But then we all have to run to Canada. Thank you, I appreciate it. Yeah, we can run to Canada. Get over the border in Canada and the doctor's like, have you considered killing yourself?

The thing did it to a Paralympian! It did it to a Paralympian! They'll do it to fucking anybody! They'll do it to me and Roz, we're just fat! Yeah. I'm fat too, what do you want me- Oh, fat and trans, oh buddy. We're gonna form a human chain. Pick a struggle, Ina.

I think you're very lovely. But yes, continue. Anyway, so, some facts about the competitors in the Olympics. Originally, it was pretty much only wealthy men that would be able to do this, just because the cost of training all the time, traveling around to all of the different competitions was too great. Eventually, it got to the point where there are enough local competitions that you could kind of work your way up through that until you were, you know, sponsored, I suppose,

enough to be sent to one of the Panhellenic games by somebody who was not yourself. But it was also seen, you know, this wasn't just we're dicking around with this because it was fun for us. It was also culturally important because it was seen as the warrior's duty to be fit to fight. And during the times that the games were occurring, there was the Olympic truth. It was primarily military, not political. In fact, eventually the time of the games would become when they would announce a lot of political alliances and such, because so many people from all around would be there.

But the point of the Olympic Truce was to allow safe travel for the athletes and the spectators to go between wherever their home bases and where the games are actually being held. We don't have a fantastic record of the time, but it's possible that women participated in some contests, particularly chariot racing. And everything except the chariot racing, as already mentioned, was pretty much done dick out. So, you know, that's cool. The actual origin of the word gymnastics is exercising naked. The chariot race is, you know, they have to wear the fire suit with all the sponsors on

it. That was the thing. DUDE EXCE- Oh, but under here I'm naked! You have to paint it on the horse too. Yeah, exactly. Oh, cause it's annoying, cause you have to make the chariot look like- it's like, nominally stock chariot, so you have to make it look a bit like a chariot that you can buy, and it shares the name, y'know.

And at the end of the race, if it doesn't fit under the cutout form, then you're disqualified. There goes the number 34 yogurt car. What else is Greek? Um. Remember when Dale died? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Um Remember when Dale died? Oh yeah, when Dale was run over 45 times like that guy in uh, in, in

Ben-her? Yeah. Yeah. It'd be, it'd be like Dale-opolis. Dale Earnhardt-opolis. DALERNHARDTOPOLIST should think about the time when the horse could turn left before people before he got really bad when Biden introduced himself as I'm Joe Bidenopolis at a Greek American thing did he really? God this fucking guy. Look, it's, I think, I think it's okay to make fun of Greeks.

Much like it's okay to make fun of Italians. Settle down there, Poland. Never racist. No, it's never racist. No, you can't make fun of Polish people. Because we do it better ourselves. Half Polish, half Norwegian. Yeah, that's true. I don't know, I'm American, I'm from America.

Yeah, I know. But I- Anyway. That's a losing. There's a Norwegian flag in your apartment. Yes. Get suspiciously no Polish flag. I don't know where I put it.

Interesting. You need like a half and half, you know? One of those house dividing flags. There's a pride flag in mine, but I'm definitely not of pride ancestry. Next page, please. I got a New California Republic flag in there because, you know, my loyalty to that country is never going to die. All right.

So Pierre de Coubertin. Great capture. The title I have for this slide is just, oh god damn it, not another Belle Epoque French cultural victory. French cultural victory, so. It keeps happening. It keeps happening. They did so good, they did so good in that, like, decade, it's like, incredible.

Have a whole idea for a podcast about the Belle Epoque on the back of this. Uh, yeah. Oh yeah. The architecture was so good. Yeah, for real. They invented shopping? Yes. And war?

Two things we'll have to do. Yeah, absolutely. And NASCAR, probably? Yeah, probably. Oh no, I think the Greeks invented NASCAR. Well, much like the Olympic Games, the French revived NASCAR. Yes. Or what they imagined NASCAR to be.

There was actually a bunch of people bootlegging Bordeaux. ALICE And they're like in Amphorae for some reason? JUSTIN Yeah, yeah, they're just like screaming down the road, and the police are chasing them, and they throw something special in the engine, and they go ho ho, and speed away from the cops. ALICE One of my favourite accounts on Twitter used to be illustrated French crime news, from early 1900s, late 1800s periodicals and stuff, and it's all these really luridly but well composed illustrations of a woman torn apart

by wolves, or Robert shoots two gendarmes as he makes his escape or whatever. And it's always very theatrical, I'm a big big fan. And it's called Old French Crime, but it's only doing reposts now, uh, great stuff. Here we go. A 1914 movie operator is mauled by a lion. That's gone poorly. Anti-Semitic, anti-Dreyfus sympathisers throw bundles of food to their besieged friends. If it were up to me I would've shot all these people dead.

I'm actually rooting for the cops in this illustration. To murder these anti-Semitic people. Crucifully. See how they like it. The anti-Dreyfus are. Yeah. Party anti-Semitic people. Mm. Gruesomely. The anti-Dreyfusat. Yeah. Party anti-Semitism. Yeah, go on.

Alright, so this is Pierre de Coupeton. He was a French aristocrat, intellectual, who focused on education and particularly on the role of sport in schooling. This was, you know, mid to late 1800s, a time when organized sport as we know it today was sort of in its infancy. He really romanticized ancient Greece and looked to the gymnasium as the model for how he thought modern education ought to be. In that he saw this- RIP Pierre de Coubertin, you would have loved high school gymnasiums.

Yes. Oh my god. We're already at Naked Kids. SEAN Bro, for god's... Brods. Buddy. Alright, you know what? Fuckin leave it in for a while, I care.

YouTube's not gonna like that one, but that's fine. Go away. ALICE We'll just cut everything YouTube's not gonna like, it's gonna be like, six minutes long and it's gonna be entirely Madame X talking. That was like an actual thing back then, I think. Next episode, we're gonna have a real fun time for Devon where they get to bleep just like two solid minutes of me talking, and my instruction is just gonna be, you know, bleep this in whatever the way you find funniest

But right now um he saw this kind of triple unity Between the old and the young unity between the different disciplines and unity between Theoretical and practical work in the Greek gymnasium system that he felt was kind of missing from education as it existed in Europe at the time. He also saw that there was a practical concern. France had just kind of had a big loss in the Franco-Prussian War, and he felt it would be helpful to prepare more of their young men as, you know, adequately physically and mentally fit soldiers for that task. His push to integrate this school of thought into the schools more or less failed. But it did lead to the idea of reviving the Olympics. There had been some low key discussion of this among a bunch of different

parties kind of across Europe since the mid 1800s. There were folks in France folks in the, folks in Greece who were all kind of talking about this. Cougar-Ton organized a Congress in 1894 at the Sorbonne. And from that came a plan for the first two modern Olympic games, that being the one held in 1896 in Athens and the next one held in 1900 in Paris, as well as the nascent organization

that would eventually become the IOC. There were some major early struggles with the Olympics and their organizations. The 1900 Paris and 1904 St. Louis Olympic games were both kind of overshadowed by the world's fairs that were being held in the city at the same time. Even to this day, people who keep track of this stuff have a bit of a challenge trying to differentiate between what's an official Olympic event versus what was something that was just kind of being held by the World's Fair

and shouldn't be counted as an Olympic victory. And they also just were generally very poorly organized. The 1904 marathon is a really good example of this. Number one, it was held during the hottest part of the day in an area that was very dusty. There were no water stations set up. So the contestants were going most of the route without the ability to stop and drink any water. Less than half of the people who entered the marathon

wound up completing because they were, you know, collapsing from exhaustion and dehydration and from the heat. The original winner crossed the finish line and then it came out that he had actually accepted a car ride for a significant portion of the distance. And so he was no longer allowed to be considered the winner. And the a quote I have here is that the actual winner, Thomas Hicks,

was near collapse and hallucinating by the end of the race. A side effect of having been administered brandy, raw eggs, and strychnine, which is rat poison, by his trainers." Um... RUN FASTER MOTHERFUCKER. There's a lot of this in the early history of the Tour de France and cycling, as well as these guys having entire bottles of red wine and cocaine thrown at them and shit. Get rid of the... Get rid of the... at them and shit. Get rid of the...

John Boyes does a great video about the uh... Get rid of the... Get rid of the... It's a dumping agency. Yeah, I was about to recommend that. Yeah, John Boyes does a great episode of Pretty Good about the 1904 St. Louis Olympics marathon, but the whole entire Olympics that year was just a complete shit show. Um.

I believe there's also a... And it was also stolen. They stole it from Chicago. complete shit show. I believe there's also stolen. They stole it from Chicago. I believe there's also a citation needed episode about the 1904 marathon for the Tom Scott Enjoyers in the audience. But other things that happened during this marathon, there were competitors who stopped and took a nap because they ate like apples that had gone bad.

There were competitors running without shoes. There were multiple near fatalities. There were dogs that were chasing the runners off course. It was a shit show. And after all of this chaos, the 1906 intercalated games got the movement back on track by actually being a well organized and planned event. The original idea had been that every four years that match for lack of a better way to put it, that match the US election year.

Those would be the ones that would move the site around the world and be held in different places. And in the opposing two years, like 1906, 1910, so on and so forth, they would have a version of the games in Athens that would stay at that site. And the idea was to be similar to the Panhellenic cycle that we mentioned earlier. But it wound up being because of just the way things worked out with organization and then World War One hitting and everything that 1906 was actually the only time they had this additional cycle going in Athens. But it still deserves some credit,

because, like I said, that was kind of the event that saved the Olympics as a concept. As for Kuberton himself, I don't know what kind of pill this dude was, but he was definitely something pill. He had this whole idea of what the Olympic philosophy ought to be, that the game should push in all of its competitors, and that was, number one, a major focus on amateurism rather than on professional athletes. Number two- Which, as we've emphasized, is not entirely borne out historically. Indeed. Um, number two, a sacred truce, um, which is a similar carrying on idea from the Olympic

truce of the ancient games, um, and the game should be used to promote cross-cultural understanding and peace. Um, and a quote from him that's kind of germane to this is, uh, the important thing in life is not the triumph, but the struggle. The essential thing is not to have conquered, but to have important thing in life is not the triumph but the struggle, the essential thing is not to have conquered but to have fought well. And you see... That sounds like some loser shit.

Me when I crash into eleventh place in the speed skating or whatever, break every bone in my fucking body. That's how you know you're an amateur. More than that, they use that now to like, glorify like, Keri Strug going out and vaulting on an extremely fucked up ankle and all that sort of thing. And it's kind of like, you know, I on some level, I get it. But on the other hand, like, what are you encouraging here?

Next slide, please. Great hats. Yeah, this is some good hats. The next thing that happens in the history of the Olympic games is that you move kind of from a more military mindset some good hats. A little bit of a there's fencing, there's modern pentathlon, there's equestrian, there's a lot of different sort of martial arts and fighting sports. Modern pentathlon is like meant to be the like, the like five skills that are like a sort of a military officer needs to get back from behind enemy lines, you know, like riding an unfamiliar horse that you're presumably captured or stolen. That sounds like hell. Or like, you know, shooting or whatever.

It's certainly hell for the horses, there was a major scandal in 2020 where, like, one of the Pentathlon riders' coaches smacked one of the horses when it was misbehaving, and getting the rider trouble. Oh, is this the one who punched the horse? I just learned about this, because I listened to Milo special. And so as a result, you know, instead of doing something sane, like instituting some rules about conduct for coaches and athletes when involved with the animals like the very strict ones that FBI sports have.

What they've done instead is they've said, the IOC said to modern pentathlon, get rid of the horseshit. And after 2024, modern pentathlon will have an obstacle course instead of a show jumping portion. So if you want to see the show jumping version of modern pentathlon at the Olympics, this is your last chance. Anyway, this kind of goes hand in hand with the traditional

conception of sport as preparing soldiers for war. But after World War Two, we a term which here means Europe and the West and start having, I say, fewer wars citation needed on a smaller scale, smaller scale citation also needed. And there is a shift as society demilitarizes. A better way to put that might be that there are fewer wars fought on the European continent within these countries own territory. But the upshot of it is that you get a lot fewer people who are members of the military. You get less presence of military life just kind of in the public consciousness.

And so you start to see things like the sports such as equestrian, which had previously limited participation to military personnel become open to everyone. The Olympics starts including more women's events and Mexico 68 in particular is kind of a landmark shift in the concept of amateurism that makes it something of a demarcation between the traditional form of the 20th century Olympics up until then, and then the path towards the more corporate and professional Olympics we now see. This is a reappearance of our buddy Avery Brundage. But for Mexico 68, he kind of made the decision that instead

of the way things had previously done been done, where athletes could only take about a month off of work before the games to be in high intensity training. ALICE Yeah, like, you're supposed to be a roof for eleven months and two weeks out of the year, and then also independently be the third best in the world at sprinting. Yeah. Although, to be fair, I think it was the US cricket team that, after they won the game, and everyone went crazy, and it turns out that everyone on that team is like a dentist or some shit. There's not really a lot of full-time

professional cricket players in the United States. Um- Although, dentistry kind of a profession that does leave you a fair amount of spare time. The thing- the thing about cricket in the United States is that if you actually fully learn the rules, they show up in a black van and take you away. Yeah, to be on the team, we did a whole bonus episode about it. JUSTIN It's like, they take you away, and they're like, no, play baseball instead. ALICE Rounders, why not.

JUSTIN With Mexico City in particular, like, there had been some research that just came out that made it clear that if people who were going to compete in Mexico City did not get enough time to adapt to the elevation by training at that kind of elevation, be it in Mexico City or somewhere else in their own country with similar mountainous region, they were going to be struggling really hard at the games. region, they were gonna be struggling really hard at the games, and so that was kind of what led the IOC to say, okay, y'all can have some extra time off of your normal day job to train for Mexico 68, and, you know, it's kind of one of those things where once you let the cat out of the bag it just keeps growing and growing and growing. ALICE helps when you have superpowers who are, like, willing to invest either formally on a state level, or in a kind of more arm's length way into something that is technically a job, but in practical terms means you're training all the time.

So it was really cool to me when you get into the really elite sports, like, fucking snowboarding or whatever, where every athlete is insanely wealthy, going back about fifteen generations and their job is like, snowboarding. Do you remember that woman who, what, she bought her way onto an Olympic team to do it? Yeah! God, um. I mean, what country and what sport, but yeah, she just was like, I'd like to do the Winter

Olympics! and just bought her way on. Yeah, and she was just like a totally normal skier or whatever. Yeah, yeah, she just was like, I'd like to do the Winter Olympics, and just bought her way on. ALICE And she was just like a totally normal skier, or whatever. And like, she was fine, but she was like a league behind everybody else. SONIA Elizabeth Swaney is an American born and raised freestyle skier who competed for Hungary in the 2018 Winter Olympics, in the women's half-pipe based on her Hungarian ancestor. ALICE Really shit-house that the Wikipedia article

gives her the OLY post-nominals. JUSTIN So you said cat out of the bag, and it was very funny because Milkshake had just jumped up on the desk and is sticking his face in a bag, because I think he- ALICE That cat is so goddamn dumb. JUSTIN That is such a stupid cat. ALICE One of the other fun things you can do once you have these programs of nominally amateur

athletes who are training all the time to represent you, is you can just dope the absolute fuck out of them. Oh yeah. This is all stuff that we're going to get more into in episode three, where we talk more about the athletes. But for now, we can go ahead and go to the next slide. Ah, the miracle on ice. So as you get kind of into the, yes, as you get kind of into the seventies and eighties, the

Olympics starts to become sort of a symbolic cold war in the American and I assume the Soviet public conscious. You know, if you can't send your 18 to 35 year old young men out into a war zone to fight for your country, why not have them do it in a sports arena? Women too, but don't let them get too mannish, because part of how we're selling capitalism is that we have hot babes and they don't. ALICE Yeah, as opposed to the press sisters who are being called the Press Brothers and sort of like American Press of the 50s, kind of thing.

SEAN What's that? ALICE Oh, so there was a pair of, I wanna say, I'm not sure if they were Soviet, but definitely like Eastern Bloc athletes. Track and Field. Yeah, both Soviet. And because they were perceived as looking quite masculine, and also possibly because the Soviet Union was shooting them full of testosterone and HGH. The entire Western press was like, these are secretly transgender, and are being used to cheat.

The history of neurosis about female athletes is a very storied one. You get the you get the the grim Soviet judges who, you know, the other judges give everyone like give a guy a nine and a nine point four and an eight point nine. So you get six six. Well, there's there is a story about the 1988 Olympics where there was an East German judge. The American team during qualifying in gymnastics,

women's gymnastics had placed third and it was looking like they were on track to get a bronze medal over East Germany in particular. And the East German judge comes up at the beginning of the team optional and is like, well, two days ago, and we didn't tell you about it then because we didn't think about it or whatever, y'all had somebody up competing

and you had another athlete go up onto the podium to pull the springboard out after she started her routine. And that athlete, after she pulled the springboard, didn't leave the podium. And that's a deduction. And that deduction is just the right size to put you back into fourth place behind each East Germany. So how do you like them apples?

Yeah. So I think every every set of judges should have a designated hater on it is the thing. There should be many of them do. Her name is Nelly Kim anyway. Hope you like your four ass. Let's see you do the hobby horse shit. Oh my God. No, that would go poorly for me.

But this East German judge of whom I speak is named Ellen Berkner. do the hobby horse shit. Oh, my God. No, I know that would go poorly for me, but this East German judge of whom I speak is named Ellen Berkner. I just think you're you're at the top of the game, professional amateur athlete. You know, you should be able to get past one hater judge. You're the best in the world. Yeah, that makes sense to me. Mm hmm. There was a big problem with gymnastics judging back in the 80s and early 90s where like a lot of the biggest stars, they would get these scores and the other coaches would protest like, why are these scores so high?

And the judges would be like, well, we didn't give the score to her based on what she did. We gave it to her because we know she can do it. Oh, my God. Yeah. Well, gymnastics thing is weird because like they're all like 15 year olds now. Um, that's actually changing. It was it. There were a lot of young girls between when Nadia became

like the big star in the 70s up until about 10 years ago. But these days, most of the gymnasts competing at world champions, championships and in the Olympics are over the age of 20. Oh, OK, OK. Because I think it'd be unhealthy for their self-esteem if they have to go against the hater judge. And once they get their braces stuck in their to toe, it's very scary to me. I don't know how to do that.

That's a figure skating joke. My bad. Yes. Yes. What I was going to say is that the minimum age for competition in gymnastics has been raised twice from 14 to 15 and then from 15 to 16. In both times, that was kind of the rationale is that athletes that young should not have to put up with the stress of international competition And then the FIG after doing this one and was like we're gonna start a junior worlds competition anyway, and I'm like fuck you

But past your prime at the wise and old age of 17 Past your prime at the wise and old age of 17. But anyway, so as as the games kind of become representative of the Cold War, the US versus Soviet metal tally the direct head to head matches, such as the Miracle on Ice, which is what's pictured here. That was the 1980 Winter Olympics hockey final. what's pictured here, that was the 1980 Winter Olympics hockey final. And the overall first world versus second world medal tally kind of becomes the symbolic battlefield. It comes to a bit of a head when the US and their allies boycott the Moscow Olympics in 1980 in response to the Soviet invasion of

Afghanistan. And then the Eastern Bloc turns around and responds with its own boycott of the Los Angeles Olympics in 1984. I have to say, I wonder how the Hungarians and Czechoslovaks felt about all of this because they had both at various times been invaded by the Soviets and within the past couple of decades. And you didn't see a lot of boycott of competitions being held in Russia going on in response to that. But.

But my Russian teacher in high school competed in the 1980 Moscow Olympics. She was also a teacher. And yeah, she you could tell when when you were in her 1980 Moscow Olympics she was also a PE teacher and Yeah, I cheap you could tell when when you were in her PE class that she was in the Moscow Anytime you were doing like reps of any kind of work. Why are we playing dodgeball with guns? No, we play dodgeball with frisbees and someone threw one at my face and it busted like my jaw and it was very unpleasant. And then we didn't do that afterwards. Now, now, that being said, I love Vera Zierman.

She is a wonderful woman, but also she was a hard ass. She would make if you were doing some kind of You have to only throw frisbee in bottom half of body do not throw it head yeah she was she would uh if you were doing any kind of workout with wraps like a push-up or something or you know squats she'd be like okay now we're gonna count in Hungarian now we're going to count in okay now we're gonna count in Hungarian. Now we're going to count in Ukrainian. Now we're gonna count in... Oh God.

And they got so many more syllables in those languages. It makes it more difficult. I feel so validated because I do this to my students too. We rotate between English German French Russian and Romanian so and Spanish the worst part was when when she you know I think one of one of the rowing coaches was like let's get Mrs. Airman to To do some fitness workouts for the rowing team now She was like comes in and it's like alright the gloves are the gloves are off now. And now we're going to do the hard workouts. I just went home. How about that?

Just like slinking away as we screamed at Russia. I just you grew up in infinite jest with the sport change. Now she was great. Another kind of factor that becomes important here is that because the athletes for these countries are some of the very few citizens who are actually allowed to travel outside of the communist block. A lot of there are some several famous cases of athletes and coaches from these countries defecting and the left.

The West loves us in particular, kind of the most notable case in gymnastics, which is where the majority of my expertise lies. Bella Caroli was the famous Romanian gymnastics coach of Nadia Comaneci in Romania in 1976 for the Montreal Olympics. And after they come back to Romania, after those Olympics, they take Nadia and a couple of his other athletes to the national training facility and have them training there instead. And he doesn't appreciate the way that they the Romanian government kind of comes and gets in his business and won't let him train his athletes on

his plan anymore, which, frankly, probably a good move on the Romanian government's part because he was pretty abusive. But the the upshot of it is that in 1981, I think it was he decides to defect to the United States during travel for a competition and brings his wife with him and they kind of have this almost perfectly designed for the media American dream story where they're living in poverty for a couple of years, not working as gymnastics coaches, learning English off of Sesame Street, sharing a single soft pretzel

for dinner because Bella can't get any work doing anything other than like sweeping floors because he doesn't know English. And then suddenly he finds a coach who like knows who he is and offers to take him in and give him a job. And suddenly he ascends to this kind of godlike status where he's got, you know, Olympic athletes training at his gym. Mary Lou Retton is the most famous one, but over the next 10 to 15 years he had several more go through there. He's got, you know, this huge house and this huge ranch that he's able to buy off of all the money he's making, and he kind of turns into this American cowboy because he goes and buys

a truck and buys a horse and Runs cattle around his ranch and all this kind of stupid stuff and there are so many fluff pieces from late 80s and early 90s That are just following him around while he does all this stuff and then kind of yells Incoherently at the camera in a barely understandable accent for five minutes I mean that the the the poverty thing seems like weird to me, because it's not like there's an especially small Eastern European expat community in the United States at this point. You know, I could point you in the right direction.

As far as defection, as far as defections go, there is a Soviet joke about the sort of countermeasures that they did about this, not in sports, but, and about the other big thing which was like, sort of, uh, like, cultural tours, right, which is, uh, that, y'know, the third violinist in the Soviet orchestra is like, always terrible because he's a KGB guy. Y'know. Um. So I do wonder if the Soviet hockey team enforcers are like, y'know, just there for the hockey kind of thing.

Is it because they really like boarding people? Yeah, I mean the joke is that the guy has never seen a violin before, he's trying to play it like a rifle, y'know. Well, I don't know about that with the athletes, but it wouldn't surprise me if they had someone like that among the coaches. Um, but so yeah, the especially during the late 80s, early 90s, right as the wall was falling and all of that, the American media machine is just milking this for everything they've got.

But another kind of interesting thing that happens during this era is that this fellow that you may know of by the name of Ted Turner. I've heard of that guy. Yeah. For those of you who haven't, the founder of CNN creates this thing called CNN, creates this thing called the Goodwill Games, which in the years opposing the Olympics. So for summer, that would be your non election years. And for winter, that would be your election years.

We're going to have an extra competition very similar to the Olympics, but more focused on like being positive and friendly and creating goodwill between the two superpowers and not about wanting to prove who's the best as much. No, it just got me thinking. You know what other Soviet athlete defected was my Russian teacher. The Russian PE teacher. She ran the border in a VW microbus.

That's pretty impressive. P.E. teacher she she ran the border in a VW micro bus Well the getting was good So limit limit to the transferability of skills there. ALICE Yeah, speak for yourself. RIP to your PE teacher, but I'm different. JUSTIN Oh. I think she's still alive. ALICE Shut up! JUSTIN Anyway, next slide please.

ALICE Oh, I've just seen how many more slides there are. ALICE You wanna drop? You can. JUSTIN Maddie. ALICE I... I'll see how I get on. Alright. So, uh, you know, the wall falls in 89, the Soviet Union kinda falls apart in 1991, we

kind of arrive at what some people have termed the end of history, I don't agree with that, but anyway. Over the course of the 20th century, especially the second half, the Olympics grew in both their size and their cultural cachet of being, y'know, something that everyone kinda tuned in to watch and not just people who were into sports the rest of the time. The Olympics- Oh, you're like, ah, I gotta watch the curling, I gotta watch the women's beach volleyball, I gotta watch the curling. I gotta watch the women's beach volleyball. I gotta watch the uh-

Watching the women's beach volleyball at the Winter Olympics is a great bit. You guys know what this is gonna start? I've been here for decades. Just like a bunch of women like- Freezing. Oh no, that's the uh- the- the- what's the opposite of a beach? What's like the cold eskisloaf? I meddled in the beach volleyball at Nagano. Women's glacier volleyball.

There we go. Dude, trying to play volleyball in ski pants would make me want to kill myself. Playing volleyball normally makes me want to kill myself. You know the sound of the kind of like technical fabrics like going whoop whoop whoop? Yeah, exactly, like that, but like when you spike a volleyball, incredible. So the Olympic sports have kind of reached this critical mass where they can't just get by on the doctrine of amateurism that they had had before, while still providing the level of spectacle that the audience is looking for. We'll discuss the effect on the athletes

more in episode three, but in 1985 the then president of the IOC, Samorach, begins this program called the Olympic Partner Program that allows certain companies exclusive sponsorship rights to the games and boy, howdy, has it had some effects. Next slide, please. Coca-Cola, the official carbonated drink of the Olympics. Is that right? Is there men's beach volleyball Just regular swimming trunks, oh, you know, I there's also men's regular volleyball

We have like a sort of you know, they're playing highway to the danger zone in on repeat in the back This is so wrong. They're like wearing baseball caps and shit. Oh fuck off. That doesn't make sense. Objectify the men too! Yeah, I wanna see the hunks. I wanna see these hunks.

The real gay sports at the Olympics are diving, unlike any of the swimming events, but especially diving. Like, that's your gay sport. Uh, moving on to the next slide please. So the Olympic Partner Program, as we mentioned, has brand exclusivity, they get four year contracts- Yeah, if you try and get a Pepsi in the Olympic Park they shoot you. They shoot you, yes.

Oh my god. They have four year contracts of what is called Categorical Exclusivity, which means that, you know, if you're the official soft drink partner of the Olympics, then only your soft drinks can be sold, advertised, anything in relation to the Olympic games. And that means that your national federations and your athletes cannot make deals which contradict against that. So like if the USOC wants to get a little bit more money, they cannot go out and add Pepsi as a sponsor, it's Coke or it's nothing, and you, the hapless

spectator- Pepsi is not okay. You, the hapless spectator, if you're going to the Olympics, you cannot buy anything with a non-visa credit card. Incredible. Inside the boundaries of the game. That's stupid. Yeah.

It's another L for American Express. First Costco, now this. And Diners Club and JCB and whoever else is out there. Mastercard. Alright, next slide please. So the next thing. Logistical nightmares and actual nightmares. And I should state with regards to this that, you know, some of these are

nightmares for the organizers. Some of them are nightmares for the citizens of the wherever the Olympics is being held. Some are nightmares for the athletes. It kind of depends on the specific situation. I'm not making a value judgment about any of this stuff by calling it a nightmare. So go ahead and next slide. During the Olympics in London, there was an ad campaign that McDonald's ran that was like we all make the games and it went through and went

like showed pictures of people in the crowd and like the photo snapper, the loud cheer, so on and so forth. It was like this little poem and this video that we're not seeing was a parody of that that was talking about problems people were having with the Olympics, like, y'know, the person who's about to get fined 135 pounds for driving in the lanes, the protester, the overworked security guard, the person running the gun on top of the building to shoot down. ALICE Terrible, terrible time to be a photographer, particularly, like... What was that? Well, I mean, so, since the Terrorism Act 2000, it became... There was a lot of legal grey areas where stuff was like... Well, not even grey areas. Well, I mean, there was...

Let me take that again. Since the passage of the Terrorism Act 2000, and a lot of other legislation, there were some places where it became illegal to take photographs, but there became a lot more places where even though it was legal to take photographs, the police would become very very upset with you and try to stop you, even though they had no grounds or legal power to do that. And the Olympics was like, as with anything, where the British security state really put its thumb down. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Okay. So, some other examples of just kind of clearing the undesirables to the IOC, for lack of a better word. For the Rio Olympics, when they went to build the Olympic Park, they did some serious slum clearance on this place called the Villa Alto Dromo, which was a favela in Rio de Janeiro that was demolished. The residents in it were relocated, but the government had also, you know, promised some things like there were some community facilities that also got demolished and they were like, we're gonna rebuild these where we've relocated y'all to, and then they didn't. And this is very common with slum clearance in general, but particularly with... Important to say that in Brazil, when we talk about slum clearance, it's not just the kind

of slum clearance that you might think of in, like, the government politely asks you to leave, this is the army and the marines come through with APCs, and you are kicked out of your house at gunpoint situation. That also did kinda happen in the United States as well, but y'know. Oh yeah, no I know. The other thing is, favelas are a bit more developed than you might expect, I mean, people have running water and electricity in those places. People have lives there, but nothing else, that have more value than watching our beach

volleyball team kick the absolute shit out of Ecuador. Yeah, but you got to see a bunch of military helicopters flying around and people shooting at people out of them. And another thing that you hear about very very regularly in advance of the Olympics is the social cleansing of homeless people and sex workers from the city, as like, since Montreal, which is what I've been able to find news articles about, I have not been able to find one host site that didn't do this, including Paris. So. able to find one host site that didn't do this, including Paris. ALICE Yeah, absolutely.

And especially if you're selling the Olympic legacy part of your bid, as we're gonna have all of these redevelopment things, we're gonna build on top of and regenerate deprived areas, what that in practice means is we're gonna kick all the people out of them and then build a stadium no one's gonna use on top of it. SEAN Exactly. ALICE I mean it's fun, because sometimes there'll be, as people have become more aware of this, sometimes bids will include stuff about affordable housing, or whatever, and this is something that the London 2012 bid had, was that as part of this regeneration, we're gonna have,

yeah, there's gonna be this stadium that no one uses, but there's also gonna be like, say, I don't know, a thousand units of housing, of which ten percent will be affordable. And then the affordable housing is immediately allocated. JUSTIN 120 percent of very amene income. ALICE Exactly. And usually you have to access it through a separate door of shame. Yeah, I have to go through a lottery process. Mmhm. To even apply.

I think it would be nice if 100% of housing were affordable. Yeah. That'd be a nice idea. We can only dream. Alright. Um, next slide please. So the next- The Zill lanes! The Zill lanes! The ZIL lanes!

Yeah! I call them ZIL lanes after the, well, they were called that after the manufacture of limousines, luxury cars, in the Soviet Union, because parts of central Moscow had and still have designated lanes for VIPs. Yeah, but like, every street in Moscow has like, 45 lanes, so you have some despair. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But like, the lane that like, you know, has like, 50 blacked out armored G wagons coming down it.

Oh my god, you imagine what it was like when it was the Soviet Union, and then like, three guys had cars, and like, you know, they had all this road available to them. Yeah, I really feel like, I mean, so like, I know, they had all this road available to them. ALICE Yeah, I really feel like, I mean, I keep telling old Soviet jokes on these, the guy who comes from his rural village to Moscow, and so, you know, comes back and they ask him how it was, I think I've told this joke on this podcast before, and he says, oh it's wonderful, everything there's for the betterment of man, I even saw that man. So yeah, with any Olympic games you get a lot of additional people coming into the city,

both your athletes and your spectators, and understandably this creates traffic issues. In London 2012 in particular, a lot of these roads had these temporarily designated Olympic lanes with a 135 pound fine for driving in them. Had to really work hard there to not accidentally say 135 dollar pound. Uh, anyway. A 135 dick pound fine. Oh god.

Dick pound. Dick pound. So, this uh, severely- The dick pound exchange rate is terrible. I just saw it first. This severely affected the capacity of the roads for normal people. There was a lot of confusing and contradictory signage that got folks, like, one of the news articles I was looking at were, there were two lanes of normal traffic, and then they merged into one lane, and that lane became of normal traffic, and then they merged into one lane,

and that lane became the Olympic lane, and there was nowhere for people in those normal traffic lanes to turn off and not be in an Olympic lane. Yep, driving in London, roll a dice, you receive a 135 dick pound fine. But the other thing is that they did build, to take the pressure off, the single dumbest public transport thing in London. I need to know what this is. They built- The... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the...

the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the... the cable car over the River Thames, that goes from nowhere to an empty

stadium no one uses. ALICE Wait, I wanna go to the O2 arena, though. ALICE There's absolutely no reason ever to take this thing anywhere, including the O2, because it's all better served by the tube or even by buses, and it's like this weird, blight exceptional case on every public transport map, and it's just like... It's one of the things, like, if I'm Mayor of London, right, two things that I'm doing,

day one, to satisfy my OCD specifically, I'm dynamiting the cable car, and I'm deciding which zone Battersea Power Station tube station is in. That's it. That's... There's another ancient Tom Scott video I could so pull out of the archives right now. But... I mean, municipalities love gondolas, because it's like, uh, you know, it looks like transit, even though it isn't very, very low capacity. Generally speaking, is about these is that they did encourage people to try,

you know, biking, walking, taking the tube, stuff like that that they might not have done normally to get around London. stuff like that that they might not have done normally to get around London, and, y'know, long term that may... question mark question mark question mark have led to an easier transition into the ULAs and everything else that's going on in London now in terms of pedestrianizing streets and that sort of stuff. But y'know, that's questionable. ALICE Yeah. It needed like woke Sadiq Khan to do it. terms of pedestrianizing streets and that sort of stuff. But, y'know, that's questionable. ALICE Yeah.

It needed like woke Sadiq Khan to do it. JUSTIN But, many of the cities which have hosted have beefed up their transit as part of the deal, and again that's a positive, but as we discussed in the last episode, sometimes it's not finished in time, Rio de Janeiro in particular, like, there was an entire metro line that they were supposed to build that they just didn't Yeah, oops, all right next slide, please So here we have some tickets to upcoming well They won't be upcoming by the time this goes out but two preliminary matches for soccer at the Paris Olympics

And if you look at where they're actually located down at the bottom, you can see that we have them in Bordeaux, in Lyon and in Nice, which you may, if you know anything about French geography, recognize as not being anywhere close to Paris. That's not even in the Ile de France. Yeah. So this is very common with the tournament style sports that have to have prelim matches, because for most countries, it's just, you know, you don't have enough stadium space

in whatever city the games is happening in to handle all of these little preliminary matches. So you have to put it where you do have stadium space. A more compact Olympic Games is considered preferable, both for the benefit of the athletes not having to travel a lot between each of their matches and for the benefit of the spectators in that they're not having to travel a lot to go to other matches as well.

Or, you know, if you come to Paris for the Olympics, you're in Paris for the Olympics. Unless he's serving, in which case, go to Tahiti, asshole. Yep. Yeah. Well, throw throw one of the games and stop. Yeah. But again, it's just, often not possible to actually do that, and the organizers are kinda stuck with what they have to work with, because they don't wanna take on the debt necessary

to build a whole bunch of different stadiums to handle this and then not have them usable afterward any more than the main ones are. The result? ALICE Harris with like 64 tournament stadiums ringing the outside of it like the giant tower blocks in Le Corbusier is planned for the thing. SEAN We've rebuilt the Maginot Line! With stadiums! ALICE All 100% empty.

SEAN You could build like 40 football stadiums on top of each other. You know what, that's the thing, if they put another deck on every stadium, you have the number of stadiums you need. You can play games simultaneously. I have read Sideways stories from Wayside School, I say we do it. What if we just double up, right, we change a couple of the shirt colors around, we just play two games of football on the same pitch at the same time, and we just pay attention to the scoring.

You have an interdimensional foul, you've committed breach like City in the City. JUSTIN November, I think you've just invented a new sport there. ALICE I'm so proud of myself. For efficiency, we have one elevator that only goes up, and one elevator that only goes down. I'm just doing the like, um, Elon Musk, I find chess too simple tweet, but for football, you know, just like, 22 men, I find that too, uh, too, it's like basic for me, like, what

about 44 players? So, you know, kind of the result that you get from this is a lot of these nonmetal events that are first round preliminaries out in the middle of bumpfuck nowhere don't really get a lot of spectatorship, which can be discouraging for the athletes and also just kind of you're spending a lot of money to host this game and not getting in much revenue from the crowds coming in. So- I mean, listen, this is the thing, you do get to see Messi play against Iraq, right?

Like- Yeah. There's one Iraqi guy in there just fucking pissed. Damn it. So I wake up on a Sunday, Saturday Saturday and just be like, oh good. The clear solution to this is you just get everyone in the world insane about high school sports and then you have adequate facilities for the Olympics. Just the Texas cultural victory.

Yeah. I mean, it's gonna happen. Halfway there with everybody wearing jeans. There'll be a Bucky's, there'll be a Bucky's in Kathmandu. It wasn't surprising. Just like the Marines on Iwo Jima planting a Hebsign. Big Bucky's flag. Next slide.

Avery Brundage, you Nazi fuck. Yep. You Nazi fuck. because the the Olympic committee was insisting that they compete under the name Formosa to be nice to China, and they wanted to compete as Republic of China. And at the same time, China was also not participating in those Olympics because they didn't want to associate with any any organization that recognized the existence of Taiwan at all. So, you know, kind of shooting yourself in the foot twice there. with any any organization that recognize the existence of Taiwan at all. So, you know, kind of shooting yourself in the foot twice there. But with regards to the 1980 boycott in particular,

because that's the one that there's a lot of English language media about. You get a lot of athletes who were kind of talking about, you know, the politics involved didn't really apply to them. And it was a very unfortunate and disappointing situation for them to miss their one opportunity to compete on that stage when, you know, four years later, who knows if they're going to be injured knows if they're gonna be injured, if they're not on top form, or at the top of their game anymore, if they've had to retire for some reason, you know, the list goes on. ALICE Listen, we're in a more evolved and progressive

society now. Now, when a bunch of Russian troops invade a country and commit unspeakable war crimes there, we just make the Russian athletes, like, sort of, perform under the Olympic flag in a little, like, Russian Olympic committee thing. Um, actually, if I remember correctly, the rules that they're gonna have for this Olympics is the Russian athletes who are allowed to participate, um, are not allowed to use the ROC or any sort of like representation of the country. They are completely neutral athletes and they have to be like, there's a lot of bona fides.

They have to verify to prove that they are not in any way associated with the war movement, like with gymnastics. It those rules came out so late that there wasn't really any opportunity for anybody to qualify anyway. But it would have been like the 14th team athletes because so many of the sports clubs in Russia that people train gymnastics at are associated with the military. So even if the person training at them isn't in the military per se, because their sports

club is associated, they're not allowed to participate. Um. It's where I allowed to. Oh, yes. They could. They're not going to. They. Yeah. I mean, would prefer to see that one. Um, but there's also, y'know, national abstention from the Olympics that isn't really a boycott

per se, and an example of that is like, uh, China during the Cultural Revolution, they pulled out of- Yeah, we're busy. Why are you, as a Chinese communist, competing in, like, the bobsled team, when you could be manufacturing pig iron? JUSTIN Well, they didn't just pull out of the Olympics, they kinda pulled out of international sport in general, they disbanded most of their national teams, and the few that remained did not participate in events that were sanctioned by organizations with Taiwan-friendly policies until on into the 70s, and they only rejoined the Olympics in 1984,

which was interestingly when the rest of the communist bloc decided to boycott. The USSR after the Soviet Revolution also did not join the Olympic movement until the 50s. ALICE I believe there was an attempt, briefly, to try and create a kind of parallel Soviet or, like, sort of, like Comic Con Olympics. Like the proletarian games or whatever. STACEY It exists, it's called the Spartakiyad. ALICE Oh hell yeah, of course it does, yeah yeah yeah.

And then in China they also have the National Games, that were started during that period of extension as kind of a way to make up for that. And then the picture that's actually on this slide is about protests from the athletes. This is kind of the most famous one. In 1968, John Carlos and Tommy Smith are up on the podium. They take their shoes off. They split a pair of gloves between them and protest the US anthem with a black power salute. This is one of the most iconic pictures from any Olympics ever. And as a result of this, they were expelled from the Olympics.

Thanks, Avery Brundage. And I believe they both planned to do the Black Power salute, but then they realized they only had one pair of gloves. And who is it? The guy here in second place. Australian guy. Yeah. Well, why don't you? Yeah. He was like, why don't you both wear one of the gloves? And that worked.

And I think he also was wearing something. Well, if you look in protest, because he wanted to be included his uniform, he's got a badge on that is in support of the black power guys. And for that, he also got blackballed by his his federation. So. Yeah, damn. You know, this is this is this is this is a racist society

that even an Australian gets kicked out. and gets kicked out. We have this thing called Patreon, right? The deal is you give us two bucks a month, and we give you an extra episode once a month. Sometimes it's a little inconsistent, but you know, it's two bucks. You get what you pay for. It also gets you our full back catalog of bonus episodes so you can learn about exciting topics like guns, pickup trucks, or pickup trucks with guns on them. The money we raise through Patreon goes to making sure that the only ad you hear on this podcast is this one. Anyway, that's something to consider if you have two bucks to spare each month. Join at patreon.com forward slash WTYP pod.

Do it if you want. Or don't. It's your decision, and we respect that. Back to the show. ALICE So, someone whose politics are like, priority number one, like, peace, justice, freedom for Palestine, priority number two, Palestinian Winter Olympics team. LIAM Whoopin' ass.

ALICE Like, priority number two, really good at like bobsleigh. Palestinian bobsled team. Hot runnings. Yeah. So our next topic here is kind of the biggest nightmare that's possible to have at the Olympics, which is terrorism. Two major examples of this happening in history. First off, excuse me, in Munich in 1972,

there was an attack on the Israeli athletes. Militants from Black September stormed the Olympic Village, killing two, taking nine more Israeli athletes hostage. They demanded the release of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners, and Israel refused to negotiate with them, and the remaining nine athletes, along with five of their captors, were killed in a botched rescue attempt by the German officials. ALICE We then get onto the timeline of counter-terrorism, and this is the reason why a lot of stuff

like- SEAN All of them exist, GSG9 and all that. ALICE Yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly, this is literally the reason why a lot of stuff like... All of them exist, GSG9 and all that. Yeah, exactly, this is literally the reason why GSG9 exists. Exactly. Yeah, everyone looks at this and says, well that didn't work, better keep trying. Instead of like, negotiators, we need guys who are like, even better at shooting hostage takers. Yeah, we need some operators.

We just have the best operators, we can rescue all of us. Works for a while. Like, a lot of thwarted hijackings and stuff. But yeah, it's sort of like, real timeline moment that, you know? And then the other big one is the Olympic park bombing in Atlanta in 1996. Eric Rudolph, you son of a bitch. Eric Rudolph, yes, left a pipe bomb in the stands that were set up for an after hours concert in the Olympic park.

A man by the name of Richard Jewell, who was the security guard for that area found it with a short amount of time, about 30 minutes left on the clock. The bomb squad was called, evacuations were begun. And shortly after that, Eric Rudolph actually called in a threat from a nearby phone booth. Unfortunately, the bomb detonated before they were able to finish evacuations and it left two dead, one who died from their injuries and another who died from a heart attack as they were fleeing the scene and 111 people with various levels of injury. There were problems with the investigation.

Joel wound up becoming a suspect because of some things on his record from a previous job he had had. And officials thought he might have planted the bomb so that he could fake finding it and play the hero in a similar manner to some recent incidents that had happened. But no, no, no good deed goes unpunished. Yeah. But they had actually kind of come to the conclusion that he wasn't their guy.

And they were going to wind that investigation down. And right as they were about to do that, the Atlanta Journal Constitution did some really irresponsible journalism and ran with that unsupported story. And this huge media circus ensued. The FBI kind of felt like at that point, they couldn't just give up the investigation. They were going like they were going to because it would look like they were, you know,

dismissing their top guy in the name of the public. So it wound up taking 88 days to clear his name. And the reporter who was responsible for all that failed up board. She got a promotion shortly after that, which is really frustrating. Yeah. I think they they harassed the guy's family for years afterwards, just like weirdos who weren't convinced that the FBI was right in clearing. Eventually, in like 2003, I think it was, Eric Rudolph was found convicted and sentenced to four consecutive life sentences in super max after he committed three additional bombings.

So abortion clinics, yes. Yep. He was a very much far right nut job kind of person. And I hope he's enjoying being BFFs with Ted Kaczynski and whoever in there. Well, Kaczynski's dead now, so like... Well, this is... Just Kaczynski's corpse. This is this this was this is back in the day before the carceral state when you could do like a couple bombings

and no one could do anything. Hide in the mountains too for a while? It's a grim but fascinating case. And then another thing kind of worth paying attention to is that across the 2010s there have been you know several terrorist attacks on large crowds that were gathered at stadiums. The November 2015 attack on the soccer match at the Stade de France, the May 2017 attack on the Ariana Grande concert at the Manchester Arena. And so with that in mind, I am sure that this particular facet of security is like something that the Paris organizers are absolutely absolutely going out of their minds over.

They're looking at Butler, Pennsylvania. Like, oh, let's not do that. Yeah. Yeah. This slide was written before that happened. So, yeah, I guess I should have included that, too. Next slide, please. So now talking about the way

broadcasting affects spectators who are watching from home and next slide, please. It's fucking personal now because one of the two people you see in front of you on the slide is somebody I know. So this is actually about the Olympic trials, but it is kind of related to what goes on with the Olympics. These are two athletes, both compete with competed with USA Gymnastics. On the left is Brenda Dowell. She was invited to the Olympic trials in 2016. On the right is his real name is Aidan, but he goes by Fuzzy Bennis,

who was invited to the Olympic trials in 2020. The deal that the USA Gymnastics has with NBC is that after a competition happens that NBC broadcast, USA Gymnastics is also allowed to film all of the happens that NBC broadcast, USA Gymnastics is also allowed to film all of the routines that happen there. And they can take all of those routines and upload their own footage of them to the USAG YouTube page. The rights to the Olympic trials are owned by the Olympic Committee

and they don't have the same arrangement with NBC. And so if NBC chooses not to air a specific routine at the Olympic trials, then you miss it. It's gone forever. And, you know, you cannot watch it anymore anywhere unless somebody like snuck a camera into the stadium and took a really gross looking toaster video of it. So these two athletes in particular Brenda finished 10th out of like 15 or 16

I think she could have been tied for six if she hadn't fallen off the beam on one of the two days And her other three events she had competitive scores with the gymnast who did make the team Fuzzy was in a very similar situation. He did hit all of his routines and he finished sixth. He did not have difficulty that was quite competitive enough for the main team, but there was a chance he could have been named as an alternate.

And neither of them had a single routine shown at any point in the entire broadcast. Like Brenna got her name mentioned as, you know, this is one of the athletes who's here, but we're not going to be showing them because we're more focused on the athletes who we think are going to make the team and fuzzy. They showed like a clip of his dismount in a recap after the commercial. And that was it. And come on, man.

Yeah, it's it's very, very frustrating as a spectator who's interested in the sport, as, you know, someone who watches it seriously, but also as someone, you know, watching from home, hoping to see the person, you know, on the biggest stage of their life so far It's like why don't I get to watch my my person that I know doing this um and so next slide, please So I am sitting this one out as I have to please note that you go the foot the following opinions

are not that of Liam Anderson incorporated or his wife, Rick McAnderson, wife enterprises incorporated nor can I condone any actionable threats made at this time. I will say that Comcast is a lovely cable company who never drops my fucking internet for no reason say in the middle of a torrent session or the middle of a game. I pay for one point two gigs of internet and of that I see not that. And by the way yes I am hardlined into the router. I cannot believe that in the city we live in Philadelphia Pennsylvania that I have to endure this shit and at my old house I had Verizon bias which I was perfectly happy with now

I get Comcast which is just like you want. Hey you want cable fuck you suck my ass and balls It's fucking horrible. I I do not condone the above opinions. I have Liam McAnderson. I'm speaking independently about address. I I also have a peacock opinion Which is when I had a I had an internship at the city, they gave me a do nothing job at the Philadelphia Zoo. And while I was doing nothing, sometimes a peacock would come and hang out with me, he was number 53. Shout out to peacock number 53.

What's a peacock's lifespan like? And how many years ago was this? I don't know. I mean, your average bird doesn't make it more than 10 years. 15 to 20 years, up to 40 in captivity? 40? Jesus Christ, you can't have a middle-aged peacock in its 30s? You've got a peacock that remembers the Soviet Union! I gotta go back to the zoo, I gotta hang out with 53. I saw him snatch a hot dog from a kid, he was great, he was hilarious. Alright, um, next slide please. They were so mean to the kids, it was funny.

It was really funny. I love when they hit the peacock noise, you know, the, eeeeh, peacock noise. Fantastic. Oh, that's... wow. That was a really good peacock. That's pretty good. That's a good peacock, yeah. I will not give any information about whether or not it is a hobby of mine to call out to

any peacock that I see just wandering on the street. That's funny. You've been such an incredibly posh Victorian like. No, like my my dad's parents lived in a part of town that used to be next to what is it called when it's nuns and not monks? Convent. And one of the things the nuns at that convent did was raise peacocks. And when they kind of all died out and the convent closed,

the peacocks were just kind of let to wander. And so my grandparents neighborhood had a ton of peacocks just kind of walking around. Really? Yes. I mean, you think it sounds like a joke and they burst on top of your car for the night and take a massive shed on top of it and you realize it really is an infestation. The next slide is the one we're skipping.

OK, yeah, this is the one we're skipping. All right. So, yeah, not really a related to the concept of broadcasting, but this is just where it was easy to stick it in. So why are the Paralympics a separate event is a question that I have kind of. So they so they can hold it in Toronto and kill all the athletes. Yeah, that actually tracks. Um, so why are the Paralympics a separate event is a question that I had asked a lot

over the course of my life and while doing research for these episodes, I found some answers. It turns out that they're actually organized separately by a separate group, the International Paralympic Committee instead of the International Olympic Committee. This group has its roots in veterans who were recovering from World War II, looking for ways to stay active.

It's only been held in conjunction with the Olympics since 1988, prior to that, it was often held at a different site at a very different time of the year, stuff like that. And they've only officially been bid for together since 2001. And the unfortunate result of this is that the Paralympics don't enjoy the same media attention or worldwide following that the Olympics get. I personally think holding the two events closer together in time or even like, you know, make the whole thing three weeks long

and put both of them kind of going on simultaneously would help this out because people who were traveling to or watching the Olympics would be more likely to go ahead and add the Paralympics events to their schedules versus how they do it now where there's several weeks of break between the two. You're probably not gonna get somebody making two trips to France from the USA to watch both or whatever.

It does create logistical concerns in terms of more people being there, more athletes you have to house, all that sort of stuff. But I think if you're careful about how you plan, you could work around that. I don't know. Them's just my two cents. Next slide, please. I mean, just just don't hold it in Canada, you know. Oh, boy, look at the oh, my God, it's like that.

That's like, oh, I'm on slide. I'm on the next slide after Olympic agenda, 2020 and irritating little friends. Love that joke. And I'm just I actually skipped a slide 30 and I you folks are in for a treat. But yes, yeah, we're we're getting there. All right. So next slide, please. We're now talking about the Olympic Agenda 2020, which was a lot of different recommendations that the IOC had made kind of to itself in the 2010s

with the idea of modernizing the Olympics, help making it more sustainable. And a lot of them were good or at least decent ideas. But, excuse me, some of them were not. And one of those is the event based program, which is that previously, the IOC had allotted spaces to 22 sports federations. And in starting with the 2024 games, what they're doing instead is they are allotting 310 metal events that are not necessarily split up among the sports federations the way they used to be.

And that in and of itself isn't so terrible, but the idea is to take unpopular metal events as determined by the TV ratings and replace them with new events that they consider to be more appealing to young people. There are some problems with this that are pretty clearly evident to me. First off, a lot of people on the IOC wouldn't know a young person if one ran over them with a monster truck because they're all like fucking. Perseus. Two agenarians. Yeah.

Step two agenarians who only hang out with other sub two agenarians. And by appealing to young people, they mostly mean, you know, extreme sports stuff like BMX, skateboarding, parkour, breaking. The thing that I the thought I have about that is that extreme sports kind of already have their well-known Olympic like major event in the X Games. The less popular events and disciplines that compete at the Olympics will lose their one moment in the international sporting spotlight and their main opportunity to get more attention and grow their sport. And instead, they only have their

World championship as their major event which is likely pretty poorly covered And so you go right back into that feedback loop that we've been talking about this whole time And with regards to the TV ratings Given that the American right bids have by far the most money tied up in them What probably happens is that what NBC sees from the American public starts taking the controlling interest in who is actually being catered to by these ratings, or at least has a disproportionately large influence where maybe the sport is super popular in Europe or in China or whatever,

but because they're not the ones paying the IOC the most money, they don't get to make the decision and it gets cut. And so it's all going to turn out. It is a fucking put the lathe away, sir. And the issue, another issue with that is that NBC tends to only promote the Olympic sports that it already knows will make money for it. And it continuously makes it more and more difficult for people to even access coverage of the others.

You know, it used to be that you would get those often covered on their other cable channels that they owned during the day, and then you wouldn't really see them in the primetime broadcast, but now it's kind of moved to where it's online, and you have to buy a subscription in order to see that, so it's just getting more and more convoluted. But to the IOC's credit, they do seem to at least be paying attention to the social media response on a worldwide scale as part of this.

But any metric requiring the use of a specific technology will disadvantage or count out those who have limited access to it, which is a large part of the world's population. Sure. Next slide, y'know, a large part of the world's population. Next slide please. Yes, okay. So, this here is a graphic that was kind of the end result of a video released by the

Gymnastics Federation, showing how different teams would qualify to the Tokyo 2020 Olympics. This was a qualification process that had not previously existed in this format. Why is it done in, like, colouring pencil? Because it was drawn on a whiteboard throughout the video to make a, like, cool little video, but... yeah. What the hell is this supposed to mean? Remember that military PowerPoints episode?

We did this once. Defense charts! Building state capacity in Afghanistan! It's probably one of those things where they zoom in and out. military PowerPoints episode. We did this. Defense charts. Building state capacity in Afghanistan was a show. So men and now if you all will give me a moment, I will explain what I what I can. I think three hours. No, we spent at least 45 minutes of that talking about people trying to shoot Trump. But anyway, go. Go. Well, that is true.

Anyway, down here at the bottom, this whole qualification process was put in place as a response to the Olympic agenda 2020 and the new like goals for Olympic qualification that they put in place. So what you see here is three teams bottom left qualify directly to the Olympics from the 2018 World Championships and that's 24 athletes Nine teams qualify directly from the 2019 World Championships. That's 72 athletes And then there's five different ways that individuals can qualify

And then there's five different ways that individuals can qualify. You've got your continental championships. You've got your all around qualifications from worlds. You've got your World Cup events for apparatus specialist, your World Cup events for individual all arounders. And you've got your additional stuff like. Hang on just a second. I got to zoom in enough to see this. Yeah, you've got people who got an event medal at the World Championships who were not part of a qualified team. And so all of that plus spots for the host country, spots for an athlete from an underrepresented

country. And the other thing that they did was they changed how team qualifications work to be instead of previously you would have five member teams and that's what they've gone back to for this Olympics but what they did was they knocked the number of team members down to four and gave each individual team the opportunity to qualify an individual athlete or two that would not compete to be part of this team score. They would only compete for themselves. And this was so hackneyed and complicated and impossible to understand that basically

immediately after Tokyo, they said, yeah, we're never gonna do that again. And they changed it back to a system more like what they had had prior to the 2016 Olympics. Next slide, please. So potential solutions for all of this. Next slide, please. Oh, I don't fucking know at this point.

All I have to say is the love of money is the root of all evil. And until we find out a way to do this without being so focused on the money, we're going to keep having problems like this. Uh, probably stop bulldozing people's houses though. I do like that you put that in there. Yes. All right.

Yeah. Generally a good idea in a matter of way. We have a segment on this podcast called safety. All right. Shake hands with danger. Fantastic timing. Hello Justin, Liam, November, Devin, and possible guests. Gonna go out on a limb and guess it's Gareth Dennis. WRONG!

That'll be real- nope, no. That'll be real neat if I get it right. This is a story from the early days of my career in picture making. I moved to Atlanta, Georgia, right after college, to work in the movies. ALICE This picture directed at me, because sadly there's no November's restaurant. JUSTIN No, and unfortunately. Following some friends

who got jobs on the Avengers movies. Six months later the novel Coronavirus shut the country down. Not a great start. One of my first production assistant jobs after the shelter and place order was lifted was when a friend hired me for a commercial for a brand of strawberries. It was produced by a small production company and was run on a budgetary regime one might call skin flint. Oh boy. Corners were cut, but no one really complained because none of us had worked in six months. One area that the production skimmed on was garbage.

No. Oh boy. It may not be intuitive, but even a small film or TV or commercial production generates a lot of trash. Yeah, I know, I hear it on TV. JUSTIN After our two days of shooting for this strawberry commercial we were left with a- ALICE How the fuck do you know it's a strawberry commercial? Like everyone's aware of the existence of strawberries.

LIAM I think the same thing with Coke and Pepsi commercials. JUSTIN No, that's why you're aware of Coke and Pepsi, is because of all the advertising. LIAM I was already aware of it, I see it in the grocery store. Shut up and keep going. We were left with about 350 pounds of garbage and I and the other PA asked our producer When the trash pickup was set for and answered there isn't one figure it out When I asked for clarification I was given...

What are you gonna do with this 350 pounds of garbage? The same question I ask myself in the mirror every morning. No. When I asked for clarification, I was given the following parameters. We couldn't take it to a dump because the producers were unwilling to pay for it. And we had to get it done in about 75 minutes

because we had to return it, return to our box truck by 11pm, and I had never heard of a dump that was closed on Thanksgiving. That was- that was an addition for me. Um, the producer told us to just find a dumpster. ALRIGHT, yeah, I've done this. Into the open bed of a waiting Cybertruck. Oh lord. I hate this stuff. If we had more time we could have taken the trash to my apartment complex, but the time limit precluded doing that, so myself and the other PA loaded up and set out to find a secluded dumpster to illegally dump the trash in.

Oh yeah. We naively selected a liquor store and started unloading. Oh boy. Oh boy. Oh. Oh. This was a grave mistake. Yeah.

About five minutes later, the liquor store owner and his armed security guard approached us, screaming at the top of his lungs, alternating between threatening us with the police and threatening us with his police and threatening us with his guard and implicitly his guard's gun. The other PA makes the bewildering choice to start arguing with him. I interceded and told him to shut the fuck up and begin apologizing profusely to the owner. He scrimps at me to get in the dumpster and take out our trash and I jumped straight in

and toss each of the 11 bags that we had put in there back out. I mean, of all the things to get, like all the reasons to get told to get in a dumpster at gunpoint, you could do a lot worse. Yeah, that's true. It's a good point. I climbed out and the owner shoves me and insists that six more bags that were already in there were also ours. I'm in no position or inclination to argue with him, so I jump back in the dumpster to

throw those out as well." ALICE You have wronged the small business warlord. This guy is gonna like, when A24's Marvel Civil War 2 starts, like, society's gonna fracture into like 300 million of this guy. Oh my god, yeah, I mean he probably took 27 8x10 to color glossy pictures with circles and arrows. You know?

Anyway. Wait, what? We loaded the trash into the back of the truck and I apologized again and we speed away. We arrived back to the house where we had been shooting the commercial in. I was pissed, I was tired, and I fucking stink, thanks to crawling around in a dumpster. I shoved the keys to the truck in the producers hands until I told them to figure the trash out. My friend who hired me asked what happened and I explained what had occurred. She was immediately pissed off, told me to go home and she would handle

it. I went home, I showered three times and I went to bed. A month later I cashed the check from the job and go on about my life. That Christmas I received a card from the production house that produced the commercial, thanking me for going above and beyond for them on the strawberry commercial. I noted that there card from the production house that produced the commercial, thanking me for going above and beyond for them on the strawberry commercial. I noted that there was no money attached." You have a formal strawberry commendation. Yeah. "'I've since settled comfortably into production office work, which allows me to work in the movies, but crucially, doing so while mostly sitting at a desk and sending emails. Love the show,

it's something I set my calendar to during the sometime long stretches between jobs. Keep up the good work, with regards from Jacob. Thank you Jacob. Alright, end it now. We have no next episode, it's over. There is no more than one episode left. Our next episode is on Chernobyl, does anyone have a commercials before we go? KillJamesBond.com slash live. Kill James Bond live show.

If you survived this, you must. If you want four more hours of me, get a Patreon subscription and watch the fashion episode, otherwise let's not meet. That was a good one, I enjoyed that one. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Uh, and that was the podcast.