Major Red Flags!

Transcript

Back with another episode with AJ Jacobs on Good OR Bad. AJ, welcome to the show. This one is the Olympics, good or bad? And normally when I think of the Olympics, I only think of good. Like, it's this thing we all every every 2 years, basically, because, you know, the summer and winter rotate. Every 2 years, we tune in. We get so excited. Who's gonna win? Who's gonna win the gold medal? And you feel so inspired by these acts of incredible athleticism. What could be bad? So there's lots of good, but let's trash the Olympics for a few minutes before we get to the good. Yes. Are you ready? Yes. Well And and I just wanna mention, for each bad that you're gonna mention, later on, we'll discuss the good side of it. But I encourage the listener to challenge our faking on the bad a little bit while they're listening to this. There you go. Alright. So the first bad for me, as a nerd, I find the the glorifying the physical over the mental to be troubling. Like, why why, why is there no chess? Why is there no chess? Although for many, many years, so the so the Olympics, I think there's about 204 countries involved. So the International Chess Organization, which is called FIDE, is has a 189 countries involved, and it's taken very seriously in each country. And they've really been lobbying the Olympics to include them. Up until now, the Olympics have considered it, but have not included them. And for 2024, it's still being considered. I don't know if it's likely or not, but there's a a a very I think it this it's the most respectable push by the chess organization to be included in the Olympics. So I think it will happen. It might have. Well, have you ever seen on YouTube, you ever watch, chess boxing? No. Oh, it's awesome. What is chess boxing? Well, they do one round of boxing, and then they sit down and play 5 minutes of chess. And then they do another round of boxing. And are these is the boxing or the chess good? Is it mostly boxers who play chess or chess players who box? Good question. I have not researched it deeply enough, but, I do just love the idea of, you know, they're bashing their brains. First Olympic sport. Yeah. There you go. They're doing brain damage, and then they're trying to use their brains. So maybe that's the solution. But you were saying before we recorded that actually in the early history of the modern Olympics, like the 1900, they actually did have some non, athletic sport. Yeah. There was a competitions. Architecture, literature. There was, music, painting, and sculpture, and I think these were abandoned in the 1954, Olympics. But there was there was medals awarded for all of these all of these things, and they weren't ins the competitions were inspired by sport. And in fact, the very first organizer of the Olympics Oh, yeah. Baron Pierre Coubertin Big Coubertin. Submitted for I think it was for literature under an assumed name, and he won the gold medal. That is and what was do you know what the writing was about? No. I don't know. Because it all had to be sports themed. Right? So it was like paintings of a rugby player. I saw 1. Oh. Oh, I didn't know that. I didn't know that part, but that makes sense. I mean, on one hand, that is insane because how can you judge what is the greatest work of to me, I mean, we can do an episode on award shows, but it is kind of crazy to try to quantify art as this is the best. This is the second best. Very common, though. Like, Pulitzer Prizes. Every the Booker Prize, the National Book Award, tons of art, you know, fellowships and foundations. So that's that's common in in the world to judge works of art. And then in the Olympics for sports, we judge ice skating. We judge synchronized swimming. Yeah. You're right. You're right. There's a lot of subjectivity in in the judging, which could be considered under the bad too. And remember back in the days, the joke was the East German judge was always giving the American a 4 out of 10 because they had a grudge. What's to incentivize judges not to do that? That's a great question. And, you know, considering that the difference between gold and silver on the career aspirations of the athletes is so important, any kind of incentive to to be unfair is really critical for people. It's almost like people should ignore the medals because there's always gonna be some slight, not call not corruption necessarily, but bias. Maybe it should be, like, you know, gym class for 3rd graders, and everyone gets a gold medal. No. The whole world is moving towards a participation trophy. Participation trophy. Hey. It's because here's the thing. I I have nothing to get life is pretty hard. If my 3rd grade kid gets a participation trophy, I will applaud him or her because, believe me, when he's 25, it's it's not there's no participation trophies anymore. So let them get a trophy when they're younger. What about nationalism and tribalism? Because it's all about, what country can beat what other country. And I think we're in an era where the world's problems, like climate change, are not national problems. We've gotta work together. So is this sending a wrong message about how important nations are? Well well, it's interesting because I think part if you look at the 2 original inspirations for the Olympics back in 18 96, and not the ancient Olympics in Greece, but the modern Olympics kind of based on those. The 2 inspirations are, how sports and education should be encouraged and having this inspirational international event will encourage more sports among youth and in education. And the other inspiration is peace, bringing you know, even countries that are in conflict with each other kinda have to have a little truce in order to participate against each other in the Olympics. So there's there's this globalist objective in the Olympics, but often that comes out in this national sway, the most extreme being 1936 when Hitler, of course, and the Olympics were in Berlin. Hitler viewed the Olympics as his Olympics and wanted to use it as a platform to show that, you know, the the the then modern German was superior to everyone else. And Right. And, you know, we it's fascinating when you look down the boycotts of the Olympics, each Olympics. I think of the main ones, like 1936 or, you know, during the wars or or 1980 when we boy boycotted because of Russia's invasion of Afghanistan. But it turns out every single Olympics has some nationalist based boycotting. But I I think, again, it's like it mirrors the world. There's this kind of constant, battle between nationalism and globalism, and Yuval Harari points out in Sapiens how the world's been in general moving towards globalism. You know, it's moved moved from the tribe to the village to the kingdom to the empire to nation states to, you know, potentially, you know, worldwide companies or organizations like Facebook, which has 2,000,000,000 members around the world, and and potential currencies like Bitcoin, which is a more international currency, or the EU, which, you know, threw away all the, trade barriers between European countries. But then you have a little bits of nationalism like Brexit and, you know, Trump being a bit more or a lot more isolationist than other prior US presidents. So I think it's the the Olympics kinda mirrors the the general trend towards globalism, but, you know, occasional backlashes of of nationalism. I think a lot about nationalism. There are probably lots of good things about it. Generally, my gut is more in the Yuval Sam Harris camp that we need to eventually move beyond nationalism so that national that nations almost treat each other like, you know, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Like, it's no big deal. Yeah. I like the idea of getting all the countries, all people, people from all over the world together. But how else could you split it up besides nations? And my mother suggested, why don't you do it by last name, like at a bar mitzvah or a gym class? Like, people with the names a through c are in one team and d through might be a little you know, I mean if some nations have a bigger proportion of letters than others, so it ends up being a nationalist. Yeah. That it would be complicated. It's hilarious how tribal we are, and, you know, those experiments where they take kids and put them in 2 different colored t shirts, and then they just start hating on each other. But just thinking, like, when I watch, like, the soccer or, like, the World Cup, and I feel it a little bit, even though I don't watch a single game, if someone tells me the US is playing Italy, like, somewhere deep inside me, I want the US to win. Even though I've never played soccer, I don't care about the World Cup, I don't feel anything towards the sport. I still want the US to win, and it's not like I'm involved in any way at all. It's not like I can say we won, but people say we won. I agree. I like, every 4 year or every 2 years, when the Olympics come, like, my patriotism reaches a peak. This will will never happen, but maybe it would be good for world peace if if they all participated if it was, like, one big Amish barn raising. So instead of competing, they're all cooperating. They can build the they can all compete build, like, this the Olympic stadium, like, the 2 weeks, then they all build absolutely no one would watch that But I feel like the competition. I feel like the UN is supposed to be, like, an intellectual Olympics version of that. Mhmm. Like, they're all supposed to cooperate to create for the one goal of making a better world, and it doesn't really work out that way. That is true. Alright. Another bad is they are rife with cheating and corruption. And and is it so baked into the Olympics that there is just no way you'll ever get a clean Olympics, and it's so bad that we should just say give up. Your entire childhood from, like, the age of 5 to, let's say, 20, you're you're told if you work really hard and do really well, you're gonna achieve national or international prominence in your favorite sports. So you work hard, hard, hard. It's the only thing you focus on. It's the only thing you do to to the, you know, you leave behind everything else, and you just focus on on your one sport. And your parents push you, and your teachers push you, and your coaches push you. And then finally, at the age of 20, when you're hitting that peak professional level, somebody comes up to you and says, hey. If you wanna move any further, you need to talk to this doctor and start doing what everyone else is secretly, quietly doing, which is this illegal doping. And by then, it's too late. You're you're all you've done your entire life is this sport, and you've had this one dream, and so you do it because that's what everyone you're told. That's what everyone else is doing, and there's nothing else for you to do. You you haven't focused on anything else in your life. So he says that's how he and many others and many Olympic athletes get trapped into doping. So it's an interest it it is a bad thing that there's that there's this corruption and that there's cheating, and and it ends up being a competition who who have the who has the best scientist. I mean, one crazy solution is just say, all bets are off. Let everyone dope as much as they want. Yeah. I actually agree with that for because, a, it it communicates correctly and honestly to children who are about to and parents and coaches and teachers who are about to make this major push for a child to be a success in some sport that he or she shows talent, and it tells them honestly what what is involved at a at a professional or at a peak performance level. And 2, it might encourage better research. I mean, you there is a line on doping where above that line, you could die, and below that because the doping is so much. The drugs are so much in your system. And and maybe there are benefits to scientific research on these drugs. Like, let's reduce side effects. Maybe you can have better performance of all humans, and reduction of side effects if there's if there's more concerted research on doping because it's because now it's legal, so it's encouraged. The other thing is, let let's say, you know, these Olympics are making these athletes are making their choices. And even though I said they're encouraged to do so and there's bias to do so, maybe the Olympics become this is one big, you know, laboratory of, you know, which doping is safe and which isn't. Certainly, we do we allow football players that the National Football League is one giant test tube about concussions. Mhmm. So, you know, is that any different than what's happening what's already happening in the Olympics, but secretly. I like it. You're just pro science. You're just that's all you want. I am. And I'm also but I'm also pro performance. And if there's a way to to enhance performance in any area of life that's safe, scientifically researched, and even encouraged, I I think that should be pursued. Look. Every most high school students now, there's so much pressure to get into a good college. You see their parents doing, you know, illegal, you know, paying s a you know, for SAT scores to be cheated and and whatever. So so and every kid takes Adderall when they're taking their SATs, when they're taking their AP tests. My kids are doing homework until 4 in the morning sometimes. It's insane. It's so much more than when we were kids. And, you know, so so there's certainly there's doping in other areas of life. I I I I think because it is considered legal and acceptable and even a positive in other areas of life, why can't we find the right balance where it's positive in sports? It's fascinating. I feel I should just stick up for doping as maybe not the greatest thing for the I gotta throw that in or else we're gonna get a 100 emails. So But what's your reason? Well, I would say, the critics would say, it's dangerous. Your testicles shrink to the size of a raisin. It is cheating in a sense that if the goal is to see how much you as an individual can excel, than having a scientist shoot you with drugs, that's, that takes away all of the fun and naturalness of this competition because then it's all about who has the better scientist. I I agree with you in an ideal world. Just like in an ideal world, the Olympics should lead to world peace and partnership and so on. But the reality is even if doping is bad, better to be honest that, hey. You're probably gonna be encouraged to illegally dope, and the people who are illegally doping are probably gonna beat you. Because all things being equal, even for kids, if if 2 kids have the exact same educational background and IQ, one takes Adderall, the other doesn't. The one taking Adderall will probably do better on the SATs that day. And so Mhmm. So you're not gonna be able to avoid this kind of corruption, sometimes legally, sometimes illegally. So, yes, I agree with you. You're right. In an ideal world, it feels like cheating. It feels like it's not a fair test of skill and and hard work and and talent and endurance. But on the other hand, it's it's happening, and there's nothing we can do about it. And the scientists are always gonna stay one step ahead of the people trying to stop it. Interesting. Well, I did hear I like this argument I heard from someone. I can't remember who made it, but he said, you were never were never gonna have a fully sanitized room. There are always gonna be some germs in it, but that doesn't mean that we should do surgery in a sewer. So there's always gonna be some doping, but should we fight against it? So it could be the case that there's just nothing we can do about it, and it already is happening. I agree with you. Again, I will I will state for the record that doping doesn't seem like a good thing. It feels like cheating. At the same time, there's there's reality, and maybe there maybe we should focus on what could potential medical long term benefits be of of studying these things. I just had a good idea, though. Maybe there should be a separate competition for the scientists who come up with these drugs. So, like, you get a gold medal if you develop a steroid that increases performance by, like, 8% versus 7%. Yeah. And I guess I guess that's what the Olympics would be if doping was legal because then the scientists would be upfront getting you know, sitting next to the call matter winner. I had this new anabolic steroid. It's incredible. It's 4 a half percent increase worth it. We've got a great idea. Like, you have the platform, you have the athlete, and then you have the scientist right next to him on the platform getting his own gold or her own gold medal. Yeah. It's very much a gray area. What is doping? And, actually, I loved researching the history of cheating and doping because, in the first olymp modern Olympics in Athens in was it 18 96? Yeah. The winner of the marathon stopped at a cafe and had a glass of wine to keep him going. I'm not I'm not sure wine is really Versus coffee. Yeah. Yeah. He might have, but no. But he had wine. And, and I I also heard did you hear this too? And I think it was in the 1900 or 194 Olympics, one I think it was a marathon runner runner was given strychnine, and I'm not quite sure why. Is that I saw that. That was hilarious. Yeah. They they mistakenly thought that that was, like, gonna help him, but I think it just nearly killed him. Alright. My favorite was in the 1968 games in Mexico City, there was a Swedish pentathlete who confessed that for the pistol shooting competition, he drank 2 beers to calm his nerves. And I just think anytime you combine alcohol, firearms, and competition. It's a great idea. Yeah. Alright. So in addition to cheating, there's also corruption. I don't think we need to get into it too deeply, but, I mean, there are all these stories of the Olympic Committee being bribed by everything from school tuition to, hospital bills for their family so that they'll vote for a certain city. Like, the Salt Lake City Olympics in 2002 were notorious for the corruption. Not to mention the bribes once the city gets the Olympics. You know, there's all, you know, there's all sorts of bridges to nowhere that are built, you know, with the Olympic funds. I mean, the a modern Olympics could cost, I don't know, up to $40,000,000,000 to to put on in terms of, like, all the infrastructure that has to be created. And so that's a lot of a lot of people becoming incredibly wealthy. Like, we think, like, oh, an Olympics cost $40,000,000,000, and that's this abstract number. But that $40,000,000,000 ends up in the hands of real people, and those people go from being, you know, mediocre businessmen to potentially billionaires. I wanna get to the business in one second, but, yeah, some people make buttloads of money from the Olympics. Some people lose buttloads of money, so it's all where you stand. But the, but I did hear one quote. You know, the reason they only hold the Olympics every 4 years is because it takes them that long to count the money. So there are people like hotel developers and tourism companies and stadium builders who are just raking it in, And there are other people who are incredible losers, for the that we can talk. But I wanted to pick up on one thing that you had mentioned about these athletes who devote their entire lives to this one you know, whether it's 30 seconds or 10 minutes of, of competition in the Olympics. And what is that like? Because, you know, you're making these sacrifices in every other part of your life, academic, social, dating. And then, you you know, what if you have a bad day? You eat a, you know, you eat a bad taco that morning, and you, you miss your pole vault, and and that's it. I mean, can you imagine the crushing, despair that that would cause? So is this are the Olympics actually good for athletes, or are they bad for athletes? I did read another article by an Olympic athlete that shows the just the cost of of this. And she said, she was a gymnast, her name is Caitlin Ohashi, and she wrote about how the Olympics was the ultimate goal, but it wasn't my goal. It was my my family and the coaches, and she was miserable. She said that she, by the end, was, mentally, physically, and emotionally broken, And she had she had to eat 500 calories a day like just raspberries and then do these incredibly difficult, physical challenges. And she quit. She quit. And it does have a happy ending because she joined her college gymnastics team, and she did this, did this routine that on that went viral because she was it was to my Michael Jackson song, and she was just having a good time, not caring, smiling. She wasn't so serious as she was going for the gold. And people were like, oh, you can actually have fun doing, gymnastics. It doesn't have to be. So, so she's an example of how these athletes are sometimes miserable. And, you know, you you're you're talking about Olympic athletes, but there's not only the the Olympics affects not only Olympic athletes. There are the many, many multiples of Olympic driven athletes who don't make it to the Olympics who are crushed and disappointed. You know, they're pushed initially by parents and coaches and teachers, and then they're just crushed because they don't make it or they have an injury, and it just they've spent 10 years of their life, maybe from 6 to 16, training for something, and they're only they only make it regionally good, or they don't quite qualify, or they have an injury, or they have anorexia, which happens in a lot of cases with, like, ice skating or gymnastics or track and field. So, you know, I think it not only applies to the Olympic athletes. It applies to all these child athletes who are being pushed towards the Olympics and don't make it. So there's there's depression. There's physical stress and injury. There's anorexia. There's all sorts of complications. But what's a positive benefit for being an Olympic athlete? There are at least, 2 that occur to me. One is just the feeling of being the best in the best point 1 percent of your chosen skill. I mean, that must be an amazing feeling. I've never had that feeling, but it must be an amazing feeling. But but, yes, you should have that feeling. Right? So every one of your books has been on the New York Times bestseller list, which means you're in the point top 0.00 1 percent of books sold, but it's all relative. Right? But the second advantage of being an Olympic athlete is not for the athlete themselves, but for the inspiration they provide to other people. So I agree with that, but that's a positive to the Olympics. I have, like, one more bad part before we get to the good parts. 1, critics talk about this a lot, that the Olympics are just terrible for the disadvantaged vulnerable parts of the population. So some people are making buttloads of money. But on the other hand, every city that has the Olympics, they displace the poor people, because they don't want them on TV. So they Even in the US, I I forget which city it was. Maybe it was Atlanta. They moved 25,000 homeless people to, like, another city. And there's there's a lot of argument about wasted funds. Like, they build these stadiums that are never used again. So they they might build a stadium for a $1,000,000,000, and it's never used again. There's Right. The bird's nest stadium in China is like this gorgeous thing, and it is just sits empty almost all the time and costs $11,000,000 a year to to keep up. But I think I I I look at it 2 ways. There's kind of microeconomic benefits and disadvantages, which is does the do the Olympics themselves show a profit or a loss Mhmm. That year? And is there corruption or no corruption around the Olympics that year? So that's one issue. But then there's a macroeconomic issue, which is that in in you know, it's a it's a multiyear, maybe even a decade long process of getting the rights to host the Olympics in your city. So many cities compete, and often cities, in order to win the Olympics, they'll spend 1,000,000,000 of dollars boosting their infrastructure, like improving roads, improving bridges, building buildings, building hotels. So that creates draw jobs and spurs economic growth on a macro level. It's hard to kind of measure this is because of the Olympics, but on a on a macroeconomic level, there are sometimes tens of 1,000,000,000 of dollars being spent on things that are only positive for the city. Increases jobs, builds infrastructure, and who knows what else benefits. The other thing is often cities and countries, in order to win the Olympics, will signal that they're good actors in the world domain and will will, lift trade barriers so they're more friendly with other countries. And so that has a a global economic effect and even a a countrywide, economic effect that, again, can't be, quantified exactly how much of it traces to the Olympics, but does have a positive effect. I feel like macroeconomically, due to the importance of the Olympics, there's a a net positive. There's economic growth around the country in and around the year that they're hosting the Olympics. But probably on a microeconomic level, there's a lot of corruption. Most Olympics seem to have lost money overall, although some have made money. Like, Salt Lake City made money. There's a couple Olympics that have that have made money. And but, you know, then it's you can say that's like any major event. Yeah. Well, it's interesting. From my research, it's really hard to tell whether it's a good idea for a a country to host the Olympics. From and macroeconomically, you're talking, they're spending 1,000,000,000 of dollars, and they're hoping that the tourism and their brand will increase. From from my reason, it seems that it depends on how well the Olympics are run. So some countries did great like Los Angeles. It turned a profit and it got all this good infrastructure and roads. On the other hand, you've got the, the Greek Olympics which some say was so bad, this is the Athens, the Olympics in Athens in 2004, Some say it was so bad that the debt they incurred helped cause this crazy economic crisis. But when you're talking on a macroeconomic level, it's sort of like the Olympics is a form of quantitative easing, You know, similar to, let's say, an extreme level, similar to the the the bailout of banks in 2009 where money is just simply printed and given to the economy. And so in the US, that tends to work for whatever reason. In Greece, for a lot of complicated reasons, it doesn't work. Or China, it may or may not work. It's it's unclear because of the shady numbers. But I think I think in general, on a macroeconomic level, you have to work you have to look at, does does quantitative easing work for this country, or does it simply increase debt levels, or does it increase inflation, or or where? Because when 1,000,000,000 are spent, that means 1,000,000,000 are made. Someone is making every one of those dollars, and then they, in turn, spend those dollars. They buy new houses. They hire construction workers. They buy new cars. So so just in general, that should have a net positive on the economy, but there's there's negative side effects too, and it gets too complicated to to measure. Well, I know critics would argue that there really is very little trickle down effect from these Olympics. So when you improve the infrastructure of a city, for instance, like in Rio, it wasn't like they were building roads so that poor people could get to their work. They were building roads from the airport to the fancy hotels. So that's helping some people, but it's not yeah. So it's making the rich richer, but everyone else gets screwed. Wait. And it depends too When there's corruption, in particular, it depends to what the rich are doing with the money. So, like, if they then take the money and hide it in Swiss bank accounts, then that doesn't affect the economy at all. It's a net negative on the economy. So, again, it it it sort of depends on the level of corruption involved as well. Yeah. Why? Well, I have plenty of other things that I can trash the Olympics with, but I feel bad for the Olympics. I feel we should start talking about the good because there is plenty of good. And can I tell you my favorite good thing to come out of the Olympics Yes? Is all of the sex that the Olympic athletes have at the Olympic Village. And it is apparently, it's just like an orgy. It's like a free it's like Woodstock. And, I feel like this is a negative. You do? Because, a, I feel like a little jealous. Okay. It's negative for you. There's, like, a little bit of sexual jealousy there. And, b, I wonder how many divorces occur as a result of Olympic frolicking. So so their they're whatever. Their testosterone and energy is Right. Is revving up so much. What was the number on the number of condoms given out at the last Olympics? Oh, yeah. It is unbelievable the amount of con and at the Rio Olympics, Brazil handed out 450,000 condoms to the Olympic Village. That is 42 condoms per athlete. Just a minute. And they're using them. Right? The reason they hand out that much is because the prior Olympics, a 100,000 condoms were bought and disposed of in the 1st week. I do think that you could argue the Olympics are a huge force for good, for progress, for going in the right direction. And I'm thinking about women, for instance. In the in the beginning of the Olympics, women were not allowed to participate. In fact, in the ancient Greek Olympics, women were not only not allowed to participate, they weren't allowed out allowed to attend. A married woman attending the Olympics was a capital offense. She would be executed. So we've come pretty far from that. So why would they be executed? Wouldn't they just be stopped at the door like no women, or would women sneak in? Women sneak in dressed as men, I think. So, but then you've seen progressively more and more women, and we're almost at 5050, and I think what's great is that there is this global pressure to include women. So you had some holdouts. There were 35 countries who were still sending all male teams in the 1992 Olympics, but they face so much international pressure that, for instance, Saudi Arabia, finally, in 2012, sent their 1st female Olympics, a judo, competitor and, track and field. Oh, I wonder how they did because I wonder if they got the same level of training when they were younger. It's a good question. I don't think they won the the medal, but they they you know, at least they're in there, and I love that. And and same with with race, some argue that the IOC sanctions helped to end South African apartheid. So you want to appear, you don't wanna embarrass yourself on a world stage. Right. So And this is related to your earlier point about globalism. Like, I think on this like you say, this world stage, everyone's in plain view to 1,000,000,000 of viewers now on on television, and you don't wanna embarrass yourself. Like, you wanna participate according to the standards of most of the world. And so there's this there's this unique world pressure to, you know, join join the rest of the community, get rid of apartheid, or have women participate. So in the 2016 Olympics, the highest rate of female participation was almost 5050. It was about 46% of of the athletes who were female, which was the highest ever. Yeah. It's like peer pressure for good. And and you figure that's very inspiring to, women, particularly in these, more oppressive countries. It shows girls, little girls, that, oh, I can achieve the heights of peak performance. I I don't have to be stopped by my country's laws, or those laws are changing. So there's there's hope. Yeah. I love that. And and maybe there is some world peace that can come out of this. I you know, there was the North and South Korea marched under one flag at the 2018 Olympics, which was huge. Another good thing I like, you talked about this, the inspiration. I mean, some of these stories are just crazy. Yeah. Like, I was I was reading one story. There was this in 1960, there was this, Olympic runner, a sprinter, from Ethiopia, a baby, Bikila Bikila. A baby Bikila who, he he goes to the Rome Olympics in 19 sixties from Ethiopia. He goes to the Rome Olympics. First off, his his whole story is great. When he was a kid, I didn't even know this existed. There's a game in Ethiopia that's like hockey, but instead of the goalpost being, let's say, 50 or a 100 yards apart, they're miles apart. So you have to do this extreme running, you know, for long distances to play even play this game. And so he grew up playing this game. Then he takes a job with the Ethiopian imperial guard guarding the emperor. He it's it's 11 miles from his home. So every day, he runs to work, you know, because he there's no transportation. He run in 1960, he runs to work 11 miles and runs home. So he builds up in this weird way, this training for, you know, marathons or I I forget the yeah. He was a long distance runner, but I forget the exact sport that he won the gold medal in. Anyway, he, gets to Rome. He buys sneakers. He didn't have sneakers even. So he buys sneakers, but they didn't fit. They caused blisters, and I guess he couldn't afford another pair of sneakers or didn't think to buy another pair of sneakers. So he runs barefoot and wins the gold medal. And, you know, ever so couple things. One is ever since, East Africa has kind of dominated, these particular sports in the Olympics because he was such an inspiration throughout Africa. I mean, there's statues of him. And then it took a sad turn, although you could argue still inspirational. Many years or several years later, he had a car accident. He became paralyzed. He was paraplegic. He could use his arms. But then he started participating in sports like ping pong, which he could participate in, which ultimately you know, this led to, like, Special Olympics and Paralympics and so on. And, you know, he died at an early age because of this accident. At the age of 41, he he passed away. But this he sort of kind of kick started many inspirational stories. Are the rights available? Because I'm gonna make that into a movie. I mean, that is There has been documentaries on him. Oh, yeah? And, but, again, I feel like if you look at any Olympics, there's probably Right. Many inspirational stories. Like, that's one. You know? Then there's there's stories like Jesse Owens, Jim Thorpe in the US. There's, you know, there's so many inspirational stories. I saw in the 19 04 Olympics in Saint Louis, the guy who won the gold medal in, gymnastics was an American gymnast who had his leg amputated because of a train accident, and so he competed with a wooden leg, and he won. Oh my gosh. Yeah. The other movie I watched in preparation was Miracle about the United States, hockey team in the 1980 Olympics that, beat the Russians, and, and it was, like, you know, un unheard of. Russia was they were all these professionals, and these were just a bunch of college kids. And, you know, super inspiring. I do take issue with the name, miracle, because it was named after Al Michaels, the who said at at the end when they won, he said, do you believe in miracles? And the whole movie was about it wasn't a miracle. These guys worked their asses off. So so the question is, with stories like that or stories like when, I think it was 1996 when the the NBA players who were on the US Olympics basketball team lost, with stories like that, it's interesting to study and break down. Like you say, what did they do? How did their training methods improve or change, in order to conquer the the best in the world? I think looking at the Olympics is also a way to study how coaching and training and peak performance and understanding of peak performance evolves so that somebody can go from being underdog to the best. Yeah. Or or how do the best not train correctly in order to to fall huge, like, with the with these professional basketball players. So I I think stories like that are are are interesting from not only inspirational point of view, but from a scientific point of view. Well, I think the thesis that I've heard is that these hockey players worked as a team. They were not as talented individually as the Soviets, but because they trained, they were so much about not being egotistical. And it was all about the team. There is no I in team. And and the problem with the dream team in basketball, the US players, was that they were all these individuals, but they never had played together. So they didn't know how to work as team. I I will say one other thing that that is a positive on the Olympics, which we we briefly touched on, but the the focus on amateurs. So technically speaking, it's not a it's not a professional game. Athletes, historically, were not paid to participate. Now many countries do pay, their medalists, but I don't think the US does for it. I'm not sure, actually. But, historically, it's been for amateurs only, not for professionals of any sort. And I think that come stems from the roots of the of the modern games in the 18 nineties when the the idea that this should inspire more sports and exercise in education. And let's show it on a global scale the benefits of, you know, physical health and and performance and have that inspire kids. And so I think the focus on on amateurs, even though that's been distorted by both professionalism and by doping and cheating and so on, I think the initial focus on amateurism is is good. It shows everybody you can achieve something in life, whether you're a professional or an amateur. Yeah. And you could derive pleasure from it. Like, you don't have to be the best puzzle maker in the world. You could still derive pleasure from pursuing excellence in something. Right. And then and that ties into this this idea of of these little known sports that you don't see for 47 months of the year. I mean, that you don't see for 47 months in a row, but then they have their moment in the sun. And these people are are not necessarily making a living from their sport, but it's just so fun to see them get their little, that their little moments in the limelight. Yeah. And to and to our earlier point again, so many of them, those other 47 months are forgotten while they're in training for the next Olympics. So some of them are in food stamps. Some some of them are in food stamps and work, at part time jobs because they have to spend most of their time in training. 100 of them have 100 of these athletes, even medalists, have GoFundMe's to to, pay for their gym and training. So we're gonna this proceeds of this episode are going towards whatever athletes we could find out there who have these these GoFundMe's. Love it. Yeah. I think those are the to me, those are the 2 nice takeaways of this. One, that we can help some, like, curlers to go back to curling who who need money. And 2, I think our idea of a Science Olympics where you give gold medals to people who develop the best performance enhancing drugs. I think there's a I think that's a business idea right there. I think it is. And I think just good to shed light on something that is universally adored, but there are always issues. It's it's there's always a gray area, hence the good or bad podcast. There you go.