Speaker 1: Also media.
Speaker 2: Oh oh my gosh, welcome back to Behind the Bastards,
Speaker 2: a podcast where, unbeknownst up to this moment to everyone
Speaker 2: who has been listening for years, Matt Leeb and I
Speaker 2: live in a house that is essentially an exact replica
Speaker 2: of Burton Ernie's home in Sesame Street, and we're just
Speaker 2: we're in bed. We're getting relaxing from a long day
Speaker 2: of watching terrible things on the internet. Matt, are you
Speaker 2: are you tired? Are you bummed out?
Speaker 3: All the time? Every day is a new fresh crop
Speaker 3: of horrors, which is why you know, I like to
Speaker 3: go home to our special Burton Ernie house that we
Speaker 3: live in together. And so we do it.
Speaker 2: You do it, We do. That was really tough on
Speaker 2: your wife, but you know, I think it was the
Speaker 2: right decision we made.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, she hates it, but also you know,
Speaker 3: like it was pretty clear in the green up that
Speaker 3: I would continue to be living with Robert Evan in
Speaker 3: our Burton any compounds shocking explanation.
Speaker 2: Unbelievably, the rent on Sesame Street is a nightmare.
Speaker 3: It's insane. There's just a lot of gentrification. Now you
Speaker 3: know we are the gentrification. Yeah, well sure, but I
Speaker 3: mean when we first decided to move in there, you know,
Speaker 3: it was like it was a nice, you know, neighborhood.
Speaker 3: It had a lot of culture, you know, right, and
Speaker 3: now there's just a lot of oscar the grouches.
Speaker 2: Yeah, just say that.
Speaker 3: You know, they're in that trash can and I'm like, wow,
Speaker 3: maybe uh, try doing less fentanyl.
Speaker 2: You know, speaking of fentanyl, you know the emotional equivalent
Speaker 2: of fentanyl, Matt is when you accidentally, without trying to
Speaker 2: have three straight weeks or like six straight weeks of
Speaker 2: stories about pedophiles on Behind the Bastards. I didn't mean
Speaker 2: to write when I started with the Margaret episodes that
Speaker 2: we were doing talking about those German pedophiles. I didn't
Speaker 2: realize that the next like several weeks just happened. I mean,
Speaker 2: when I started researching the Thomas Jefferson episodes, I should
Speaker 2: have realized, like, oh no, I'm just doing another pedophile
Speaker 2: I got. I got locked into a bad pedophile loop,
Speaker 2: is what I'm saying. Man, happens to the best of us.
Speaker 2: You know, you're best of us.
Speaker 3: You're trying to do your regular podcast schedule and it's
Speaker 3: just pedophile Pedophileoh you finally went outside.
Speaker 2: You got fresh air. Oh yeah, yeah, I went off
Speaker 2: roading on a mountain and I came back and spent
Speaker 2: an entire week reading about the Olympics. And I'm I
Speaker 2: am proud to say, Matt, no babies die in this
Speaker 2: episode except for like offscreen, and uh no pedophilia in
Speaker 2: these episodes. You know, we're safe. We're safe. I'm so excited.
Speaker 2: Here's a round of applause.
Speaker 3: No, that was laughter.
Speaker 2: Fun.
Speaker 3: Now the point is, I have a soundboard, but I
Speaker 3: have not figured out exactly which sound does what. So
Speaker 3: it's going to be a test. We'll see.
Speaker 2: Okay, okay, a lot of tests this week. Well that's good.
Speaker 2: I just want to promise everyone before the cold Open closes,
Speaker 2: we got a fun one this week. Soay we come back.
Speaker 2: We're going to start talking about every Brandage, who was
Speaker 2: the American who kind of ran the Olympics in the
Speaker 2: United States and eventually he's going to be on the
Speaker 2: IOC and he's going to run the Olympics for everybody.
Speaker 2: And he is just a Nazi, just a real good
Speaker 2: old fashioned American Nazi. I know now I understand why
Speaker 2: I got the call. Yeah, we're gonna have fun with
Speaker 2: this one. Anyway. That's the cold open, ah, and we're
Speaker 2: warm Matt before we roll into this episode, you got
Speaker 2: any pluggables to plug? Yeah, that's right, I waited for
Speaker 2: after the cold open guys, what Yeah.
Speaker 3: I mean I do have some pluggables. I actually started
Speaker 3: a new podcast, and this podcast is about Israeli propaganda.
Speaker 3: It's called Bad has Bara, the World's Most Moral Podcast,
Speaker 3: as Bara of course being the word for explaining, which
Speaker 3: is kind of a euphemism in Hebrew in Israel for
Speaker 3: you know, pr propaganda. Yeah, and so yeah, I started
Speaker 3: that podcast a few months ago and just yeah, if
Speaker 3: anyone out there is looking for sort of you know,
Speaker 3: information about what's going on in the news regarding all
Speaker 3: this Israel Palestine stuff, yeah, that's what I've been That's
Speaker 3: what I've been doing. I've been doing it from an
Speaker 3: anti Zionist Jewish bent, so that people can, you know,
Speaker 3: more fully understand what they are seeing and hearing with
Speaker 3: their eyes and why people are telling them not to
Speaker 3: believe what they see and hear with their eyes and ears.
Speaker 2: Well, it's fun. That does kind of fit in with
Speaker 2: our subject of today's episode, because as is going on
Speaker 2: right now in Gaza. We are talking about a time
Speaker 2: when a bunch of horrible stuff was being done by
Speaker 2: the government of a country and a lot of other countries.
Speaker 2: Everyone just kind of tried to pretend it wasn't because
Speaker 2: it was really inconvenient to deal.
Speaker 3: With the problem.
Speaker 2: You know, in this case, the country's Germany. Oh yes, yeah,
Speaker 2: So we're going to get to that, but first we
Speaker 2: kind of need to start this episode. We really have
Speaker 2: to peel back a couple of thousand years here, because
Speaker 2: it's worth talking about what the Olympics was.
Speaker 3: Uh, and we had.
Speaker 2: To start from thousands of years ago? Yeah, we do.
Speaker 3: God damn all right, when was the first Oh that's right,
Speaker 3: the Olympics is a thing.
Speaker 2: It's gotten back in the Yeah. No, further than that,
Speaker 2: this is the ancient Greeks, right, yeah, different, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: they are, they're much older.
Speaker 1: Once upon a time, Once.
Speaker 2: Upon a time, there were these guys called the ancient Greeks,
Speaker 2: and you know, they invented Western philosophy, and they invented
Speaker 2: some chunk of mathematics. I don't know which part of mathematics,
Speaker 2: but I remember learning that some of math was invented
Speaker 2: by the ancient Greeks. Sure, and they made a lot
Speaker 2: of art that said, well, they did a lot of
Speaker 2: great stuff. They spent the bulk of their time murdering
Speaker 2: each other in really terrible ways. The ancient Greeks loved
Speaker 2: killing each other. But in the late seven hundreds BC,
Speaker 2: the ancient Greeks decided, let's do something besides killing each
Speaker 2: other and philosophy, Let's do sports. Now that it's right
Speaker 2: in between, it's a mix, right, like, everyone fights, okay,
Speaker 2: but we're not going to kill at the end, We're
Speaker 2: just gonna you know, you're not.
Speaker 3: Going to give war.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So this is not a new Sports was not
Speaker 2: a new concept in the seven hundreds BC. People had
Speaker 2: been sportsing for basically as long as we've had cities,
Speaker 2: at least in some fashion or another. Nice but the
Speaker 2: idea that became the Olympics was new, which is that
Speaker 2: all of these cities that are periodically, you know, at war,
Speaker 2: in conflict with each other regularly, we're all going to
Speaker 2: come together and everybody's going to compete without murdering each other. Right.
Speaker 2: That is kind of but that's a novel idea at
Speaker 2: the time. The first Olympics. You know, I think the
Speaker 2: dates there's always a little bit of flex in dates
Speaker 2: this far back, but it was probably around seven twenty
Speaker 2: six PC, and it was initially not a great show.
Speaker 2: It's just a single two hundred meter race, which given
Speaker 2: that ever people are like, you know, if you're traveling,
Speaker 2: if you're walking five days to get to another city,
Speaker 2: you could.
Speaker 3: Die on that walk.
Speaker 2: Right, you watch a guy run two hundred meters.
Speaker 3: I lost three children on my way to watch people
Speaker 3: sprint for a.
Speaker 2: While, my family died, But boy, that guy was slightly
Speaker 2: faster than anyone I'd ever seen before.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean it's sad, But also I won five
Speaker 3: hundred dollars with draft Kings.
Speaker 2: With draft that's right. DraftKings first started in seven to
Speaker 2: seventy six PC. Yeah, so everyone seems to agree. I
Speaker 2: have agreed that like doing a whole Olympics for one
Speaker 2: little race was kind of bullshit and not worth the trouble,
Speaker 2: so they started adding games pretty quickly. Now, running is
Speaker 2: always going to be a staple, as it is today,
Speaker 2: But the Greeks were like modern humans and that once
Speaker 2: they figured out the idea of big international sporting events,
Speaker 2: they all kind of solidified that the best thing to
Speaker 2: gather to watch other people do was beat the shit
Speaker 2: out of each other. Yeah, and fighting.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean that's so sad because they're probably trying
Speaker 3: to get away from that. Can can you do something like,
Speaker 3: you know, sportsmanship, like the.
Speaker 2: Thist thing from war Running?
Speaker 3: Yeah, listen, there's got to be blood or else want here.
Speaker 3: These people going to risk thealize of their kids to
Speaker 3: walk all the way over here. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I literally can't even get hard without watching a guy
Speaker 2: die anymore. Like what are we doing?
Speaker 3: So?
Speaker 2: Wrestling was added in at the eighteenth Olympiad and seven
Speaker 2: o eight BC. Boxing entered for the twenty third Olympiad
Speaker 2: and six eighty eight BC, and then puncreation was added
Speaker 2: in the thirty third Olympiad.
Speaker 3: You're gonna have to explain that one.
Speaker 2: It's basically, yeah, it's ancient MMA. It's like the first
Speaker 2: kind of MMA, right, Like it's like a proto MMA
Speaker 2: style competition, right. OK, So this is this is what
Speaker 2: eventually leads to the invention of Joe Rogan.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, as we all know, is an undying immortal figure.
Speaker 2: Uh yeah, he's and that's right, that's right. He's essentially
Speaker 2: the Emperor from Warhammer forty thousands. But he really really
Speaker 2: just focused on fighting sports and male So the ancient
Speaker 2: Olympics had a pretty good run. They're doing this for
Speaker 2: like not far off from a thousand years something like that,
Speaker 2: a little over because they finally died. Yeah, it goes
Speaker 2: like seven seventy six to three hundred and ninety three
Speaker 2: a d thereabouts. Again, these are kind of soft dates
Speaker 2: on the last of the Ancient Olympics is too, But
Speaker 2: the end of the old Olympics is generally blamed on
Speaker 2: Emperor Theodosius the First, who has said to he's a
Speaker 2: you know, he's one of these big Christian Roman emperors,
Speaker 2: and he said to have considered it pagan idolatry. I
Speaker 2: think that more rigorous scholarship has cast a lot of
Speaker 2: doubt on this because he doesn't seem to have actually
Speaker 2: banned them explicitly. But whatever the truth, whatever specifically kind
Speaker 2: of leads to the fall of the Olympics, they do
Speaker 2: stop doing them right by the time. Yeah, it's a well,
Speaker 2: I don't know, I don't actually like the Olympics.
Speaker 3: So yeah, I mean, listen, I don't know whether or
Speaker 3: not the Olympics is good. I just success that there
Speaker 3: was like the first nerd emperor who's like, oh, no
Speaker 3: sports ball please.
Speaker 2: Maybe he may have just it may have just been
Speaker 2: that he was banning other pagan shit, but like that
Speaker 2: stuff was less popular than the Olympics, and so people
Speaker 2: kind of lied about it. I don't know. I'm not
Speaker 2: an Emperor Theodosius the first expert. I just know people
Speaker 2: have cast doubt on the fact that the idea that
Speaker 2: he killed the Olympics. Sure, we'll never know, probably at
Speaker 2: any rate, by the time the Roman Empire, the Western
Speaker 2: Roman Empire falls, we're not doing olympicses anymore. They are
Speaker 2: a fading memory, and they would stay that way until
Speaker 2: a french man with a ridiculous mustache was born in
Speaker 2: eighteen sixty three. I'm gonna ask Sophie to get us
Speaker 2: a picture of that man's mustache up on the old
Speaker 2: screen here. Yeah, but his name was Pierre de Kubartine,
Speaker 2: and he became French, by which I mean he was
Speaker 2: born at a terrible time to be French, because when
Speaker 2: he's seven or so, born in like eighteen sixty three,
Speaker 2: so he is seven or eight when the Emperor Napoleon
Speaker 2: the third decides, you know who I want to start
Speaker 2: a fight with Prussia and.
Speaker 3: It's yeah, he's my favorite guy. He just he just
Speaker 3: went in there and was like, I'm gonna be like
Speaker 3: my great uncle. What was he?
Speaker 2: He was like a nephew. It was like a great uncle.
Speaker 2: We've done the episodes on I forget the act, so
Speaker 2: it's kind of a tortured.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but he's like, I'm going to do it but
Speaker 3: more shitty and gonna.
Speaker 2: Be really bad at it instead of instead of beating
Speaker 2: the Prussians at a war, I'm gonna lose so badly
Speaker 2: that they create Germany. But look at this guy's mustache.
Speaker 2: My god, what a That's a one thing you can't
Speaker 2: critique the man on is his facial hair.
Speaker 3: He looks great.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he looks like he looks like he's just railed
Speaker 2: a triple. It's incredible stuff.
Speaker 3: I love it. Oh my god, this guy.
Speaker 1: Every pick click, it just gets better.
Speaker 2: He this man, this man couldn't. It's it's what I know.
Speaker 2: He actually did live out like past the eighteen hundreds,
Speaker 2: but he shouldn't have Like that is an eighteen nineties face.
Speaker 2: He's perfect for the eighteen nineties. Pierre's family were aristocrats,
Speaker 2: and he was their fourth child. His dad and again
Speaker 2: they're aristocrats, so his dad doesn't have to do anything
Speaker 2: for a living, so he's like a painter and he's
Speaker 2: a Royalist. He believes in bringing I think it might
Speaker 2: have been the Bourbon's back as kings, and his childhood
Speaker 2: suffered from the fact that the whole royalist cause in
Speaker 2: France kind of takes a shit after eighteen seventy one,
Speaker 2: which seems to have made his dad miserable, and his
Speaker 2: dad seems to have kind of taken it out on
Speaker 2: the family. Unlike a lot of European aristocrats, to Cubbartine
Speaker 2: is going to grow up profoundly anti war. He is
Speaker 2: actually never kind of not unique in this period, but
Speaker 2: it's kind of refreshing, really rare. He's never one of
Speaker 2: these guys who's like, ah, the gallantry of combat, because
Speaker 2: it's earliest memories are like, we got our asses kicked.
Speaker 2: We should never have a war again.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, we're not good at it anymore.
Speaker 2: We had one Napoleon and everything's got a shit since him.
Speaker 3: We had Bourbons, we had the dukedoor leone guy became
Speaker 3: the thing like we can't do any of this.
Speaker 2: Shit, Yeah, let's stop. So he's a great student, he
Speaker 2: goes to Jesuit school, which is like those that's the
Speaker 2: if you're like at all Catholicy, that's where you want
Speaker 2: to go back in this period, but he refuses to
Speaker 2: follow his father's wishes because his dad wants him to
Speaker 2: join the military, which again had been kind of the
Speaker 2: expected thing for folks in his chunk of the aristocracy.
Speaker 2: By the time he's a young adult, de Coubartine has
Speaker 2: decided he wants to study law and history, and he
Speaker 2: seems to have kind of thoroughly concluded that like my
Speaker 2: father's France failed, right, like the culture in which I
Speaker 2: was raised in is a failure, and we need to
Speaker 2: make changes, which he's not wrong about. At age twenty,
Speaker 2: he encounters a book called Tom Brown's School Days. This
Speaker 2: is a really influential, maybe the most influential piece of
Speaker 2: fiction and educational history, because it both because of how
Speaker 2: popular it is, like the English boarding school system had
Speaker 2: existed before, because this book is literally about it, and
Speaker 2: in fact it's like fictionalizing an actual English like basically
Speaker 2: principal Tom Arnold, who was like Arnold, Yes, yes, that
Speaker 2: Tom Arnold. He has deep roots. Deep roots has also
Speaker 2: been around for a while yes, yeah, and was Yes,
Speaker 2: this was the thing he did before he wasn't what
Speaker 2: was it, coneheads? He was in the stupids, the stupids,
Speaker 2: the stupids, Jesus Christ. So this is one of the
Speaker 2: most influential pieces of fiction and educational history because not
Speaker 2: only does it like create the cultural image of the
Speaker 2: English boarding school system as this incredibly like renowned and
Speaker 2: like it's part of why people from all over the
Speaker 2: rest of the world start enrolling like rich people in
Speaker 2: English boarding schools. Right, is the success of this book
Speaker 2: and it also launches the genre of boarding school novel
Speaker 2: as like a thing. So this is literally like there,
Speaker 2: this is like the start of the DNA line that
Speaker 2: ends in Harry Potter is Tom brown schooldays, Right, these
Speaker 2: are directly related, Like we get Harry Potter because of
Speaker 2: Tom Brown School Days.
Speaker 3: It's like the.
Speaker 2: First ya novel. Yeah, I love this, Yeah, I mean
Speaker 2: it has a lot to do with that. Yeah, Tom
Speaker 2: Brown school Days focused on the Rugby School, which is
Speaker 2: again run by Tom Arnold. In one later article on
Speaker 2: the subject, a guy named Volker Cluges rights. Arnold sought
Speaker 2: to educate his students by including sports and community games
Speaker 2: for Christian gentlemen. I was confronted with something completely new
Speaker 2: and unexpected, athletic education. Kubertine wrote, Now, Arnold actually didn't
Speaker 2: like sports. He's one of those guys where he's like,
Speaker 2: I don't actually, I think this is kind of like
Speaker 2: at a little common for me. But if you don't
Speaker 2: give boys away to tire themselves out, they'll masturbate. So
Speaker 2: this is the best option.
Speaker 3: That it's always someone trying to stop you from coming
Speaker 3: as a team. Well, yeah, the fuck.
Speaker 2: The entire route of like Victorian civilization is stopping boys
Speaker 2: from coming. That's all that we stop this. In an
Speaker 2: article for The Daily Beast, Candida Moss rights Arnold believed
Speaker 2: that in order to create Christian gentlemen, he had to
Speaker 2: replace bad impulses with good. Arnold himself wasn't a particular
Speaker 2: fan of sports, but he preferred it to fighting or poaching.
Speaker 2: If you exhaust young men and produce and promote the
Speaker 2: idea of sportsmanship, you will keep them out of trouble.
Speaker 2: So Coopertine, he takes on this and he's going to
Speaker 2: take it further. Right, But this idea that like sporting,
Speaker 2: kills bad impulses in young men, right, and he's not
Speaker 2: as obsessed with coming as he is with violence, right,
Speaker 2: but he's going to become increasingly convinced that, like somewhere
Speaker 2: in sporting lies the solution to like all of these
Speaker 2: wars that keep happening.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I kind of feel that there's there's something to
Speaker 3: that there where you're just like, what if, like instead
Speaker 3: of you know, everyone just like killing a bunch of
Speaker 3: people every few years, Like, what if we all just
Speaker 3: fucking had a magic the Gathering tournament and figure it out? Yeah,
Speaker 3: you know, I get it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I've I've seen some like not quite sports riots,
Speaker 2: but I've seen some like really rowdy fights over sports
Speaker 2: in Germany between like German and French fans. And I
Speaker 2: thought at time was like, well, this is a real
Speaker 2: move up from World War One, Right, this is so
Speaker 2: much better than the last time you guys got angry
Speaker 2: at each other.
Speaker 3: No one's getting gassed, you know, everyone is just kind
Speaker 3: of like using a couple of teeth.
Speaker 2: What an innovation.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Cooper teen spent the eighteen eighties traveling around the world
Speaker 2: through the US and UK and Switzerland and meeting all
Speaker 2: sorts of advocates for youth sports and sporting organ associations.
Speaker 2: Particularly influential was a meeting with the Peace League, and
Speaker 2: this is an activist group who taught that boxing was
Speaker 2: a great way to like prevent war, right like if
Speaker 2: you if and I guess partly, yeah, I get that,
Speaker 2: like giving people a healthy outlet for physical aggression could
Speaker 2: be useful in that, but also there's a lot of
Speaker 2: head injuries that come with boxing, and we know that
Speaker 2: head injuries, yeah, can contribute directly to war.
Speaker 3: Yeah, listen, this is it's a there's a pros and
Speaker 3: cons to this idea. But I get it.
Speaker 2: I get it.
Speaker 3: You know, you know you can see the logic stop war.
Speaker 3: You know they were ultimately wrong, yes, but I get
Speaker 3: trying it out for a little bit.
Speaker 2: It's not like, yeah it is. It's one of those
Speaker 2: things I both want to make some bit jokes because
Speaker 2: of how like wrong this guy is, but also I
Speaker 2: can see the logic like at the time, you can't,
Speaker 2: he's not. It's it's not dumb or like a shitty
Speaker 2: for like wanting this to work. I also wish it
Speaker 2: had worked.
Speaker 3: It's better logic than you know, Oh, this will stop
Speaker 3: you know, kids from coming. Yeah, that's that of course
Speaker 3: is not going to bed. Well, I don't even know
Speaker 3: what their thought process is because I've never been too
Speaker 3: tired to janet.
Speaker 2: No, no, no, no young man ever has been, No
Speaker 2: young man has ever been.
Speaker 3: We all always have a little extra room for jell O,
Speaker 3: you know what I mean.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And it's it's also like he's got better logic
Speaker 2: than the guys who are like, well, we've built the
Speaker 2: least gun ever, surely this will stop war.
Speaker 3: Yeah. No one's gonna want to get in front of
Speaker 3: one of these guys. So war's over.
Speaker 2: Yeah. No one's going to feed an entire generation of
Speaker 2: their young men into these things.
Speaker 3: We built a giant human meat grinder. Anyways, war is
Speaker 3: over now, right, pulling more men into it all cruel fate.
Speaker 2: So Cooper teen wrote that boxing could be a peacemaker
Speaker 2: and still you know again, this, this whole process is
Speaker 2: what culminates in him being inspired to revive the Olympics. Right,
Speaker 2: he revives the Olympics because he has this messianic belief
Speaker 2: in the power of sports to end global conflict. And
Speaker 2: I think he's mostly when he talks about ending war,
Speaker 2: he's not talking about ending all these little colonial wars.
Speaker 2: He's primarily talking about like avoiding another European war, right, yeah, right, right, right.
Speaker 3: Right, yeah, the war that's that will cost more lives
Speaker 3: for you know, his own people. Where's the nice colonial war?
Speaker 3: Is just like no, that's just a simple eradication. Yeah,
Speaker 3: we don't even hear about that on the news, really exactly,
Speaker 3: that's not even people don't worry about that. Shaw, you
Speaker 3: kill all them.
Speaker 2: So, as Da Kobertine wrote, let us export rowers, runners
Speaker 2: and fencers. There is the free trade of the future,
Speaker 2: and on the day when it is introduced within the
Speaker 2: walls of old Europe, the cause of peace will have
Speaker 2: received a new and mighty stay. Sure, it's a nice idea. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Eventually he convenes a Congress eighteen and obviously I am
Speaker 2: YadA YadA ing a lot about this process because we
Speaker 2: don't need to get into the weeds of it. But
Speaker 2: they have a Congress in eighteen ninety three to decide,
Speaker 2: like he and a bunch of other folks who are
Speaker 2: part of like major sporting organizations in the West, how
Speaker 2: are we going to revive the Olympic Games?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 2: It is decided that these games should be for amateur
Speaker 2: athletes only, not paid professionals. This is the first of
Speaker 2: what are going to become mini breaks with the original Olympics.
Speaker 2: In the ancient Greek Olympics, there was no rule against
Speaker 2: them making money for winning, right, you could bet on
Speaker 2: ship like. They didn't have any problem with that. There's also,
Speaker 2: as far as we know, there were no rules against doping. Now,
Speaker 2: doping was different in ancient Greece. We know that they
Speaker 2: would like eat a lot of beef because they thought
Speaker 2: it was like it worn't the way steroids.
Speaker 3: You know, if you eat a lot of beef, then
Speaker 3: you become strong as how everyone knows it's simple.
Speaker 2: Yeah, beef makes you cowstraw.
Speaker 3: Yeah, if you eat whole horse, you become run as
Speaker 3: fast as horse. It's simple logic. Everyone knows you could
Speaker 3: fly real hard. Everybody knows this.
Speaker 2: Now. The other thing I should notice that, like at
Speaker 2: the start of the revived Olympics, there are no rules
Speaker 2: against doping, and in fact, people are going to do
Speaker 2: lots of drugs in the early Olympics and it's fine. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I'm okay with that.
Speaker 3: Early Olympics. Yeah, you know, that's they they were figuring
Speaker 3: it out.
Speaker 2: It's considered it actually may have been less common then
Speaker 2: just because it was considered ungentlemanly, but it wasn't like
Speaker 2: forbidden for a while, right, And so a lot of
Speaker 2: times people wouldn't do dope just because it wouldn't dope
Speaker 2: just because like, well I am a gentleman, you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Anyway, there's a lot of confusion in trying to understand
Speaker 2: what the Olympics were meant to be when they were revived,
Speaker 2: in the use of the word amateur, because like if
Speaker 2: I were, say it were to say, oh, that golf
Speaker 2: player is a real amateur, you would interpret that to mean, well,
Speaker 2: he's not very good, right, yeah, you would not. An
Speaker 2: average person would never look at a world class Olympic
Speaker 2: gymnast and go, wow, what an amateur? Right, Like, that's
Speaker 2: just not how we use that word. Yes, but in
Speaker 2: the late eighteen hundreds and early nineteen hundreds, that word
Speaker 2: had a very different meaning. And I want to quote
Speaker 2: from an article for Vice by la Jennings here. Sports
Speaker 2: in the nineteenth century remained a luxury of the middle
Speaker 2: and upper classes, with lower class athletes routinely excluded from participation.
Speaker 2: The rules for the eighteen seventy eight Henley Regatta declared
Speaker 2: no person shall be considered an amateur orsman or sculler
Speaker 2: who is or has been by trader employment for wages,
Speaker 2: a mechanic, artisan, or aborer. Sports historian Alan Gutman explains
Speaker 2: that in its earliest institution, rules of amateurism were invented
Speaker 2: by the Victorian middle and upper classes to exclude the
Speaker 2: lower orders from the play of the leisure class.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's that sounds about right though. That's yeah, that's
Speaker 3: kind of what it is. I mean. Listen, yeah, whenever
Speaker 3: people talk about, you know, NCAA basketball players like trying
Speaker 3: to get a little bit of money for their the
Speaker 3: fact that these schools use their images and sell merch
Speaker 3: based on them, but they can't make a single dime,
Speaker 3: it does feel very similar. It's like, no, we've put
Speaker 3: these rules in place so that you stay poor, yeah,
Speaker 3: and we can make some money.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, And that is we are talking about the
Speaker 2: origins of why the NCAA be that way, right, Like
Speaker 2: that all has its roots in this and in fact,
Speaker 2: the bastard for the avery brundage is the guy who
Speaker 2: is like has a major role and why the NCAA
Speaker 2: adopts those like student athlete regulations. Yeah, but it's important
Speaker 2: to know that like kind of where we are now
Speaker 2: with like these student athletes, and it's like, well, you know,
Speaker 2: we can make millions of dollars off of you, and
Speaker 2: you can mortgage your body and your future health, but
Speaker 2: you can't make any money off of it because then
Speaker 2: you wouldn't be an amateur. That has its origins, and
Speaker 2: like the origins of that are these rich people being like, well,
Speaker 2: poor people like sports too, and they're often better at
Speaker 2: them than us. So let's just say, if you make
Speaker 2: money doing anything, you can't compete with us. If you
Speaker 2: have to work for a living, you can't. You can't
Speaker 2: play our games. These are just for amateurs.
Speaker 3: That is exactly why it was an invented. Absolutely were
Speaker 3: just like, man, these guys are way too good at rowing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. And to be fair, Kopertine and the Olympics
Speaker 2: are actually a step forward from this very regressive. It's
Speaker 2: still regressive by modern standards, but from these you know
Speaker 2: that eighteen seventy eight, we like, yeah, nobody can take
Speaker 2: part in this if you have to work for a living. Right.
Speaker 2: Quote when Peer de Kubertine called for the revival of
Speaker 2: the Olympic Games in eighteen ninety two, primary discussion amongst
Speaker 2: the elite group of educators and public figures who formed
Speaker 2: the first version of the Olympic Committee was to determine
Speaker 2: who would be allowed to compete in the games. In
Speaker 2: other words, who counts as an amateur, because this word
Speaker 2: is still very important to them, but they are going
Speaker 2: to kind of redefine it.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: Initially it had meant like, well, only rich people can
Speaker 2: have the time to become world class athletes because they
Speaker 2: don't have to, like work for a living. And it's
Speaker 2: going to evolve through this period. In eighteen ninety four,
Speaker 2: the workers rights movement has made enough inroads that even
Speaker 2: the kind of out of touch elites that Da kuber
Speaker 2: Teen works with to start the Olympics, they're not going
Speaker 2: to say if you have to work for wages, you
Speaker 2: can't compete, right, But they are going to try and
Speaker 2: exclude working class people anyway by basically saying you just
Speaker 2: can't make money from sports, right, which still excludes people
Speaker 2: because only rich people can afford to like practice enough
Speaker 2: to become world class without ever making money on it. Right,
Speaker 2: it still mostly excludes people. I mean, I don't know,
Speaker 2: I mean I guess it's like someone if they run
Speaker 2: for a living because they have a job as you know,
Speaker 2: a circus performer running away from this crazy, crazed lion.
Speaker 2: But like, for the most part, it's like, yeah, no
Speaker 2: one's playing basketball on any other level except for right
Speaker 2: professionally for money. Yeah, and there is there's also a
Speaker 2: degree of a legitimate concern, which is that these guys,
Speaker 2: as much as they hate to admit it, recognize that,
Speaker 2: like pro boxers are always going to be better like
Speaker 2: and most pro boxers are like poor people who came
Speaker 2: up fighting like the nastiest kind of fights you can
Speaker 2: fucking conceive, right, yea to be able to become like
Speaker 2: make a lot of money as a boxer, that guy,
Speaker 2: some like rich dude is like the fourteenth Earl of
Speaker 2: chong Seberry or whatever. That guy is going to get
Speaker 2: his skull turned into powder by eighteen nineties. Mike Tyson, Right, we.
Speaker 3: Must ben anyone who does it professionally less we get
Speaker 3: our heads mashed in by an irishman.
Speaker 2: Yeah, a man whose ears are entirely calliflower.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he's not allowed.
Speaker 2: No, he can't compete, No, no, not.
Speaker 3: So.
Speaker 2: Eventually they come up with a new definition for amateur,
Speaker 2: which is somebody who is profited specifically for their participation
Speaker 2: in a sport that they want to compete in for
Speaker 2: the Olympics. As Alan Goodman notes, through most of the
Speaker 2: twentieth century, amateurism was defended with the argument that fair
Speaker 2: play and good sportsmanship are possible only when sports are
Speaker 2: in athlete's avocation, never his or her vocation. Kind of
Speaker 2: what's going on here, We're going to see this with
Speaker 2: when we finally do get to Avery Brundage. There's this
Speaker 2: attitude among like the wealthy and the aristocracy, who all
Speaker 2: have a lot of money, that there's something gross about capitalism.
Speaker 2: Still they are the winners of this system, but they
Speaker 2: recognize that like the way in which we compete under
Speaker 2: capitalism kind of ruins fun stuff.
Speaker 3: But the way of doing that yeah you know, yeah,
Speaker 3: yeah that's true.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but their way of dealing it with it is
Speaker 2: to just try to keep poor people away. Yeah. So
Speaker 2: the first actual Olympics is going to hit in eighteen
Speaker 2: ninety six. It is, you know, more gender woke than
Speaker 2: the original Olympics. Women had not been allowed to participate
Speaker 2: in the original Olympics. The ancient Greeks not really big
Speaker 2: fans of women.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they didn't even fuck them have Yeah, not.
Speaker 2: Really not famous for that, so they you know, the
Speaker 2: new Olympics is going to be a lot better at that,
Speaker 2: but it is biased heavily towards men and women of means.
Speaker 2: In the longer term, the fact that this veneration of
Speaker 2: amateurism is initially bundled up in the heart of the
Speaker 2: whole idea will provide an opportunity for Olympic officials to
Speaker 2: exact execute petty grievances and fuck with athletes they don't
Speaker 2: like for whatever reason. We are talking bullshit, power trip stuff,
Speaker 2: and the king of that kind of shit is going
Speaker 2: to be the future International Olympic Committee President, Avery Brandage.
Speaker 2: We finally got into our bastard. So that's take an
Speaker 2: ad break here and then we'll come back to talk
Speaker 2: about Avery. We're back. Do you like the Olympics, Matt
Speaker 2: like watching them and stuff? This is an Olympic year,
Speaker 2: I think.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so I don't like them, nor watch them, but
Speaker 3: when it's on, it's something that like occasionally I'll just
Speaker 3: like turn on a TV and I'll be like, oh
Speaker 3: shit losing, you know, or like, oh that guy's doing
Speaker 3: a shot put, and I'll sit and watch for a second,
Speaker 3: and then I'll think to myself, like, how the fuck
Speaker 3: did they fill up all those seats? Yes, usually the
Speaker 3: question I have, But I don't mind people who love it,
Speaker 3: you know. Yeah, if you like watching people throw a
Speaker 3: javelin like power to you. I wish I was that
Speaker 3: easily entertained.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm torn because, like you, I don't really like
Speaker 2: watching the Olympics, and I also recognize that they often
Speaker 2: destroy the cities that they're hosted in one hundred Yeah,
Speaker 2: I kind of think we should have just picked one
Speaker 2: place to do them and right, yeah, and destroyed that
Speaker 2: and destroyed that. Yeah, really fuck up a single city
Speaker 2: in Greece. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they're not using.
Speaker 2: It, no, or do it in like downtown Dallas. Just
Speaker 2: absolutely annihilate, like force all of these international dignitaries to
Speaker 2: get on the fucking high five for seventeen and a
Speaker 2: half hours.
Speaker 3: They gotta go to Dallas two years fucking Dallas.
Speaker 2: Just absolutely take take one of the worst traffics that.
Speaker 2: I mean, they're trying to do it in La that
Speaker 2: that won't be any better.
Speaker 3: I was. My mom prides herself in letting me know
Speaker 3: that I was conceived during the eighty four Olympics.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but which event I don't know.
Speaker 3: I don't want to she just says it. I run away.
Speaker 2: I don't want to know where she fucked and during
Speaker 2: when I don't. Don't take this the wrong way, but
Speaker 2: you do seem like a shot put baby.
Speaker 3: I don't take that.
Speaker 2: I mean that as a compliment. Yeah, that's yeah for sure,
Speaker 2: honest sport.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, top heavy guy. Let's see what you're saying.
Speaker 2: I didn't mate that.
Speaker 3: So balls of steel that's what you read.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, there we go. Avery Brundage, let's talk about Avery.
Speaker 2: Born on September twenty eighth, eighteen eighty seven, in Detroit, Michigan.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, Avery would be nine years old for the
Speaker 2: very first Olympics. He was one of the people the
Speaker 2: aristocrats behind the early Olympic Games actually wanted to keep
Speaker 2: out because he is definitely working class. He's going to
Speaker 2: be very rich, but he is born a working class kid.
Speaker 2: His dad is a stonecutter.
Speaker 3: Damn.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's like that's the og working class.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's the original fucking working class job. Yeah, stonecutter
Speaker 3: and pitt digger.
Speaker 2: And in classic working class fashion, his father abandons the
Speaker 2: family when Avery is five, which is a thing people
Speaker 2: could get away with a lot more easy, but easily
Speaker 2: back before the internet.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you can just walk, just leave.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he goes for a packet of smokes. Where's that gone?
Speaker 3: Forever?
Speaker 1: Gonna?
Speaker 3: Who are you gonna ask?
Speaker 2: You're the man of the house now, Avery, I hope
Speaker 2: you know what all taxes. Avery has one younger brother, Charles,
Speaker 2: and they spend their early childhood bouncing around with relatives.
Speaker 2: We don't get a lot of context is how this
Speaker 2: impacted him, but it doesn't interfere with his schooling. He
Speaker 2: is an excellent student. He wins an essay contest in
Speaker 2: nineteen oh one at age thirteen that secures him a
Speaker 2: trip to see President McKinley's second inauguration. Yeah, he really
Speaker 2: got in on the McKinley train right before the end
Speaker 2: of it. There is that the one who oh, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: get he gets got yeah Anton shoh gosh.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's like an anarchist kills him.
Speaker 2: There was That's the one one that we got. Yeah,
Speaker 2: there's a there's a pretty good song from a musical
Speaker 2: about that, sung by Doogie Howser, So check that one out. Yeah,
Speaker 2: in general, aside from the dad abandoned them thing. He's,
Speaker 2: you know, not a bad early nineteen hundreds childhood. He survives,
Speaker 2: so that's doing good. You know, he makes it past
Speaker 2: all the cholera and the Spanish flu, so you know,
Speaker 2: he's not doing bad. He makes a living as a teenagers,
Speaker 2: like a boy delivering newspapers. It's kind of unclear to
Speaker 2: me how poor he really is. One source I've read
Speaker 2: claims he had to sell newspapers to help his mother
Speaker 2: buy bread, and that when he got into sports in
Speaker 2: high school he had to build his own equipment to
Speaker 2: be able to play. I kind of have come to
Speaker 2: think some of this is myth making right. He is
Speaker 2: definitely working class, but he has a big family that
Speaker 2: seems to have been very supportive of he and his brother.
Speaker 2: And his uncle Ed is the Republican leader of Chicago's
Speaker 2: North Side during a time that means you are taking
Speaker 2: every bride conceivable like his his His uncle Ed is
Speaker 2: the Attorney General of Illinois. Eventually that man is Batman
Speaker 2: is getting so bribe.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's no way, okay, this is really poking holes
Speaker 3: in the whole working class here thing here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So one thing everyone agrees upon is that Brundage
Speaker 2: was an exceptional athlete. He becomes a track star near
Speaker 2: the end of his public school life, and when he
Speaker 2: graduates and moves to the U of Illinois to study
Speaker 2: civil engineering, he plays basketball and continues to do track.
Speaker 2: He is sort of a stereotypical jock. He's a popular kid.
Speaker 2: He's the leader of his fraternity. He's one of those
Speaker 2: guys who would have posted quotes from Friday Night Lights
Speaker 2: on their Facebook wall every hour and a half if
Speaker 2: he had lived to see the modern era.
Speaker 3: So a cool guy, So a cool guy, cool guy,
Speaker 3: My favorite guy from high school. Why is that to
Speaker 3: show that?
Speaker 2: Because I grew up in Texas, Sophie, No, it is
Speaker 2: a vibe.
Speaker 3: That's great.
Speaker 2: My high school sports stadium was more expensive than most
Speaker 2: state sports stadiums, and my high school didn't not have
Speaker 2: a good football team. That's just we just had a
Speaker 2: ten million dollar stadium because you do. Yeah, like you've
Speaker 2: got to be ready in case someone gets good. Yeah,
Speaker 2: so you might have a kid who's really good at
Speaker 2: some point, or that.
Speaker 1: You find Kyle Kyle Chandler to be very handsome.
Speaker 2: Man, I don't even know who that is.
Speaker 3: Both things can be true. Sophie.
Speaker 2: I saw Sophie. I didn't watch my parents watch that show.
Speaker 2: I avoided it, like the plague. I just know what
Speaker 2: it means to people speaking of what sports means to avery.
Speaker 2: Since they don't have Facebook, he has to settle with
Speaker 2: writing articles for his school paper.
Speaker 3: In Facebook, he would have found his dad.
Speaker 2: He would have found his dad. But no, but no,
Speaker 2: So he's got to write shit like this, which I
Speaker 2: founded in nineteen seventy two Sports Illustrated article that's talking
Speaker 2: about his life. One of his contributions was entitled the
Speaker 2: football field is a sifter of men. No better place
Speaker 2: than a football field could be chosen to test out
Speaker 2: a man. Here a fellow is stripped of most of
Speaker 2: the finer little things contributed by ages of civilization, and
Speaker 2: his virgin nature is exposed to the hot fire of battle.
Speaker 2: It is man against man, and there is no thorough
Speaker 2: a mode of exposing one's true self. Oh yeah, you've
Speaker 2: definitely exposed your urgin nature. Yeah, man, football the crucible
Speaker 2: of manhood.
Speaker 3: Touch one, boob, bro.
Speaker 2: You want a fucking game that's a crucible of manhood? Uh,
Speaker 2: there's a Burskashi, the Afghan version of polo, which is
Speaker 2: played on horseback with the corpse of a goat as
Speaker 2: the ball. That's a crucible of manhood, right there. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: play some burskashi, right, don't get me this football ship.
Speaker 2: You guys didn't even know what to tackle back then.
Speaker 2: So Avery is, Look, they hadn't invented steroids. It couldn't
Speaker 2: have been very good football.
Speaker 3: No.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they were wearing all leather exactly normally.
Speaker 3: You know they were the people were definitely getting hurt,
Speaker 3: but yes, from him, very little, but not in a.
Speaker 2: Way that was as impressive as the way our current
Speaker 2: professional monsters hurt each other.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, you don't know about c Yeah.
Speaker 2: So Avery is a smart kid who's obsessed with sports,
Speaker 2: and like Kubertine, he comes to see them as a
Speaker 2: potential remedy for every problem of modernity. Now, Kubertine is
Speaker 2: obsessed with peace because you know, his childhood had been
Speaker 2: defined by a war and avoiding conflict through sportsmanship. Avery,
Speaker 2: on the other hand, seems to because he is a
Speaker 2: poor kid who makes a lot of money as an adult,
Speaker 2: he comes to see athletic competition as proof of the
Speaker 2: fact of the wisdom and goodness of capitalism. Right, because
Speaker 2: he's good at capitalism right, and so sports has to
Speaker 2: mirror the thing that he has found. Meaning in sure,
Speaker 2: Avery gets a job as a construction superintendent for a
Speaker 2: major architectural firm, and he personally supervised the construction of
Speaker 2: three percent of the buildings built in Chicago during the
Speaker 2: years that he had this job.
Speaker 3: So he is very real money.
Speaker 2: He has. Oh the bribes. This guy's taking my god, Chris.
Speaker 2: Throughout his early to mid twenties, he continued to compete
Speaker 2: as an amateur, in fact, working a day job completely
Speaker 2: outside of the field of athletic endeavor. Avery Brundage was
Speaker 2: the very model of what the Olympics now meant by
Speaker 2: the term amateur. Now, the early nineteen hundreds are a
Speaker 2: different time in athletic competition, and Avery was into some
Speaker 2: stuff that I was going to say was very weird
Speaker 2: sports shit until I realized this sport is still a
Speaker 2: sport today. We just don't talk about it because it's
Speaker 2: kind of lame. But I'm gonna run from a Sports
Speaker 2: Illustrated article about his chief sport. Although heel and toe walking,
Speaker 2: the discus and shot put were his specialties. He became
Speaker 2: a devotee to the torches of the pentathlon, to cathlon
Speaker 2: and most excruciatingly of all, what he fondly calls the
Speaker 2: old American all around. Now, I'm not shitting on the
Speaker 2: pentathlon and the cathlon and stuff. Those are like really difficult,
Speaker 2: physically demanding things. It's just incredibly funny to me that
Speaker 2: heel to toe walking is a sport.
Speaker 3: I still I'm trying to picture heel to toe walking?
Speaker 2: Is it just? Uh?
Speaker 3: Is that gallivanting?
Speaker 2: What is it looks like if you did you ever
Speaker 2: live in a place where like there would be like
Speaker 2: groups of usually like oh, and I don't say this
Speaker 2: to insult them, usually like middle aged women who would
Speaker 2: have like a walking group together.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, speedwalk, my mom, speed walk.
Speaker 2: It looks like that to me. But when people describe it,
Speaker 2: they're always like, this is a shockingly intent race. Walking
Speaker 2: is actually one of the most intense and physically demanding
Speaker 2: sports you can do. And I'm sure they're right, but
Speaker 2: it also does I don't believe them that the state
Speaker 2: of time?
Speaker 3: Did you picture at Hills Park? Yes? I did. It
Speaker 3: was just like, this is the first thing I thought
Speaker 3: of it. I was like, I've seen all these old
Speaker 3: ladies doing the speed walking and I'm.
Speaker 2: Willing to believe it's good exercise by sure. As an
Speaker 2: adult and president of the Olympic Committee, Avery Brundage told
Speaker 2: Sports Illustrated that an eight hundred and eighty yard heel
Speaker 2: in towalk he did was quote the closest to man
Speaker 2: can come to experiencing the pangs of childbirth.
Speaker 3: I don't know, man, it's possible. I don't know, man,
Speaker 3: but I bet it's taxing. But the problem is is
Speaker 3: that you can't think about it without being like, is
Speaker 3: there Olympic crab walking?
Speaker 2: Is that also a thing that doesn't seem that bad?
Speaker 3: I make it silly.
Speaker 2: My mom did speed walking, and the only thing she
Speaker 2: ever compared to childbirth was kidney stones, which seems to
Speaker 2: be pretty widely done. So I assume kidney stones are
Speaker 2: a comparable experience in some ways, but I've never had either.
Speaker 2: I've never had either, so.
Speaker 3: I would rather do heel to toe walking than push
Speaker 3: kiddystone through.
Speaker 2: My heel to toe walk all day long, all day long. Anyway,
Speaker 2: racewalking is still an Olympic event, even though I made
Speaker 2: fun of it. So if you're a racewalker out there,
Speaker 2: I'm sure we're going to get the racewalking hive get
Speaker 2: really angry at us on Reddit or something. I'm not
Speaker 2: trying to shit talk your sport, but it's very silly
Speaker 2: that he compares this to childbirth. But he is a
Speaker 2: really good athlete. In nineteen fourteen, at age twenty six,
Speaker 2: Brundage won the US championship in the American All Around,
Speaker 2: which is like, it's a series of ten events the
Speaker 2: one hundred yard dash, a high jump, high hurdle, shot put,
Speaker 2: broad jump, fifty six pound weight throw, pole vault, and
Speaker 2: then that eight hundred and eighty foot walk, plus like
Speaker 2: a hammer throw and a run, all done in a
Speaker 2: single afternoon, which is like, that's a whole thing to do, right,
Speaker 2: That is a that's a lot. He's very good at it.
Speaker 2: Sports writers in nineteen eighteen call him the greatest athlete
Speaker 2: of his day. So that's all very impressive. You could
Speaker 2: look at Avery Brundage's early life as an almost seamless
Speaker 2: path of success from poverty to wealth to athletic greatness,
Speaker 2: with one gap in his resume of perfection, and that
Speaker 2: gap is this. In nineteen twelve, he partook in his
Speaker 2: only Olympics as a competitor in Illinois, he had been
Speaker 2: a star.
Speaker 3: But in the.
Speaker 2: Olympics he finishes sixth in the pentathlon and fifteen in
Speaker 2: the decathlon. And if we're looking at objective terms, neither
Speaker 2: of those is bad. You know, Yeah, you made it
Speaker 2: to the Olympics. That's pretty good, right, you got to
Speaker 2: hang on in the Olympic village.
Speaker 3: That's sick.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you got to. I mean, I assume they had
Speaker 2: less sex. Bat I assume at least Avery wasn't having
Speaker 2: that much sex. Yeah. This guy about race walking, Yeah
Speaker 2: yeah he didn't. He doesn't have much game. Anytime he
Speaker 2: meets a lady, he starts talking about how he knows
Speaker 2: the pain of childbirth, walk the virgin.
Speaker 3: Virtues of heel to till walking. You'll never understand it.
Speaker 2: But he actually drops out of the pentathlon before finishing
Speaker 2: because he realizes he can't get enough points to actually meddle,
Speaker 2: which I don't know. My kind kind of seems like
Speaker 2: bad sportsmanship. But I've never been to the Olympics.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 2: Jim Thorpe, the best athlete in the field at the time,
Speaker 2: wins gold in both events. Jim Thorpe is a Native
Speaker 2: American athlete. Right, this is going to be very important
Speaker 2: because later in life, Avery is going to nurse something
Speaker 2: of a grudge against Thorpe. When Avery becomes president of
Speaker 2: the International Olympic Committee, Thorpe loses his medals, and there
Speaker 2: was like a move to like, come on, give him back.
Speaker 2: As you know read he was a great athlete, and
Speaker 2: Brundage is always going to be like, no, fuck him.
Speaker 2: He broke the rules right, and some people will suggest
Speaker 2: maybe it's because he was kind of, you know, jealous. Still,
Speaker 2: he never got over loosing. Despite his frustration, or perhaps
Speaker 2: because of it. The whole experience of participating in the
Speaker 2: Olympics hit Avery as a sort of religious experience. He
Speaker 2: later wrote this, what social, racial, religious, or political prejudices
Speaker 2: of any kind might have existed were soon forgotten in
Speaker 2: sportsmen from all over the world, with different ideas, assorted viewpoints,
Speaker 2: in various manners of living, mingled on the field and
Speaker 2: off with the utmost friendliness transported by an overflowing Olympic spirit.
Speaker 2: My conversion, along with many others to Kubertin's religion, the
Speaker 2: Olympic movement was complete. And I kind of think that
Speaker 2: what's happening here is that like people didn't travel as
Speaker 2: much internationally back then it was harder, and he like
Speaker 2: goes overseas as a young man and makes a bunch
Speaker 2: of friends and has an intense physical experience, and he
Speaker 2: walks away in the same way people do when they
Speaker 2: go to raves and stuff, now festivals, Right, he has
Speaker 2: that kind of This is like burning man, right, yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they're like, damn you know. It's just like it's
Speaker 3: the only place in the world where you can feel
Speaker 3: at one with all of humanity, right, and it's like,
Speaker 3: what are you talking about. It's like bonoouyeah.
Speaker 2: Exactly, And like any kind of person who has that
Speaker 2: sort of experience as a young person, he's going to
Speaker 2: spend some time convinced this is the way to save
Speaker 2: the world, and unlike most people, he never moves past that. Right,
Speaker 2: It's normal to take ecstasy at a really good concert
Speaker 2: and be convinced that you found the secret to war.
Speaker 3: But like, yeah, right, a few years later taking ecstasy
Speaker 3: just to play some video games at home, and you're
Speaker 3: just like, I have a drug product.
Speaker 2: Oh, this is no longer as fun as it was.
Speaker 2: So it was not uncommon for dedicated Olympians, particularly those
Speaker 2: who went on to work for the Olympics professionally to
Speaker 2: kind of worship the Games. This is a religion to
Speaker 2: the people who are most into it. It really is.
Speaker 2: In his book Berlin Games, Guy Walters writes Kubertine was
Speaker 2: almost regarded as Christ, and Ballet Latour, who is like
Speaker 2: his second in the Olympic committee, as his disciple. These
Speaker 2: men were infalliable because they embodied an idealism that far
Speaker 2: transcended the grubby, quotidian strivings of humanity. It was a
Speaker 2: pagan idealism. It's pageantry, godless. But at Chauvinu's adherents were
Speaker 2: nothing less than fanatics, men for whom no other point
Speaker 2: of view was acceptable. If anyone obstructed their ideals, then
Speaker 2: they would be subjected to the most vicious ad hominem attacks.
Speaker 2: So they have a toxic fan base. Yeah, breaking new
Speaker 2: ground there, the Star Wars nerds. Yes, yes, yes, this
Speaker 2: is like how everything works now, but it is noted
Speaker 2: at the time as being pretty unique. Right, there's nothing
Speaker 2: quite like the Olympics and it's toxic fan base.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I told them that I didn't really like the
Speaker 3: heeled to tow running and they called me a slur.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, they mailed a bomb to my dad's house
Speaker 2: because I joked about walking not being hard. Starting in
Speaker 2: nineteen nineteen, Brundage began to take on more because, again,
Speaker 2: by nineteen nineteen, he's not old, but he's like old
Speaker 2: for competitive athletics. So he starts taking on more and
Speaker 2: more roles in sports administration. He initially takes on roles
Speaker 2: in the Amateur Athletic Association or AAU, which what is
Speaker 2: at one point the rival of the NCAA. This is
Speaker 2: one of those things where they both kind of come
Speaker 2: up at the same time and they're kind of trying
Speaker 2: to do at least very similar things, and so they
Speaker 2: hate each other, right, Right, there's like.
Speaker 3: No, I'm going to these kids off.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I want to rip off these children. I'm the pain.
Speaker 2: They like to desploit them. They pretty nasty fight for
Speaker 2: a while, They're like there's a period where athletes will
Speaker 2: get blacklisted for playing in like NCAA events or AAU
Speaker 2: events by the other group. Right, and Avery is actually
Speaker 2: going to negotiate a detente between the AAU and the NCAA.
Speaker 2: And part of how he does this is he offers
Speaker 2: the NCAA the power to certify college students as amateurs. Right,
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, he is the start of all this. Now, yeah,
Speaker 2: at the point he does it, college sports is not
Speaker 2: an industry in the way that it is today. I
Speaker 2: don't even think it's realistic to say he would have
Speaker 2: conceived of sports period. Isn't like professional Like the best
Speaker 2: professional players of the day are making decent money, but
Speaker 2: not like they're not getting hundreds of millions of No,
Speaker 2: they're not getting anything close to that, right right.
Speaker 3: In fact, he probably thinks it's antithetical to sportsmanships to
Speaker 3: make money off of him.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes he does. And it's important to note that
Speaker 2: while that is an excuse now for ripping these kids off,
Speaker 2: at his time, there's not the industry behind it to
Speaker 2: profit from. So I do think he comes by this
Speaker 2: belief honestly, even though I think this is a really
Speaker 2: dumb move. Yeah, I don't think he's actually I don't
Speaker 2: think he's full of shit in the way that like
Speaker 2: modern NCAA officials.
Speaker 3: Right, yeah, I know they all know what they're doing,
Speaker 3: but he might have been just a little bit more
Speaker 3: idealistic about it.
Speaker 2: Right, right, right, And this is a bigger story than
Speaker 2: we have the time to lay out. But the gist
Speaker 2: of the problem that comes from this is that colleges
Speaker 2: are going to immediately realize that taking a hard line
Speaker 2: on amateur status allows them to let kids work for
Speaker 2: free and take keep all the money for themselves. This
Speaker 2: has led to something This leads very soon after Avery
Speaker 2: does what he does. This leads to some horrific situations.
Speaker 2: And I'm going to quote from an article by Ellie
Speaker 2: Simpson and Lauren Chang Pratitt about this. Ray Denison was
Speaker 2: an Army veteran, father of three, and a football player
Speaker 2: for the Fort Lewis A and m Aggie's on a scholarship.
Speaker 2: In September nineteen fifty five, he shattered the base of
Speaker 2: his skull on the knee of a ball carrier during
Speaker 2: a game. He died thirty hours after the incident. Dennison's wife, Billy,
Speaker 2: filed a lawsuit against Fort Lewis A and M for
Speaker 2: workers compensation. The National Collegiate Athletic Association argued that Dennison
Speaker 2: was a student athlete because he was on scholarship, meaning
Speaker 2: he was not eligible to receive benefits. In its defense,
Speaker 2: the NCAAA avoided such terms as club since that was
Speaker 2: how professionals referred to their teams. The organization added an
Speaker 2: amateurism pledge to every scholarship signing. The NCAAA won the
Speaker 2: case coined by then NCAAA president Walter Byers. For that case,
Speaker 2: the term student athlete is used as legal precedent to
Speaker 2: limit the benefits and compensation college athletes can receive while
Speaker 2: playing full time. So damn that happens. Not all that long,
Speaker 2: you know, we're talking like forty years, a little less
Speaker 2: than forty years, But like that is the ultimate result
Speaker 2: of what Avery sets in motion. So in nineteen twenty eight,
Speaker 2: Avery is elected the head of the American Olympic Association,
Speaker 2: replacing Douglas MacArthur. The oh shit, not long after that's
Speaker 2: going to try a new Korea.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I love that. It's just doesn't that kind of
Speaker 3: put to rest the whole idea of sports being a
Speaker 3: way to stop war?
Speaker 2: When Douglas McCarthy he's out. Avery's in nineteen twenty eight,
Speaker 2: and by this point the new Olympics has gone through
Speaker 2: some growing pains of its own after almost twenty years
Speaker 2: establishing itself World War One through a wrench in the
Speaker 2: planned nineteen thirty six Berlin Games, the Games had been
Speaker 2: basically set before Hitler came to power, right, I mean,
Speaker 2: it's not in power in twenty eight, but like Hitler
Speaker 2: comes to power in thirty three, the Games had been
Speaker 2: set before then. And once the Nazis take over, this
Speaker 2: is going to become a serious issue. Right, but the
Speaker 2: games even before Hitler is in the fact that there's
Speaker 2: going to be an Olympics in Berlin is a big
Speaker 2: deal for Germany because after World War One, Germany is
Speaker 2: this Paria nation, right right, And the thirty six Olympics
Speaker 2: are seen by the Germans not wrongfully, as being like
Speaker 2: this is kind of us re entering the community of Nations. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2: Everything's cool now, everyone will be normal.
Speaker 3: This is the Weimar guys talking like, yeahly, by thirty
Speaker 3: six everything will be so fucking chilled. People will welcome
Speaker 3: us with open arms.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we've got some problems, but we'll still have some
Speaker 2: figured out by Set City five at the latest.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it'll just be a few years from now, but
Speaker 3: people will still love Germany's in don't worry. So.
Speaker 2: Brundage gets elected President of the American Olympic Committee in
Speaker 2: nineteen twenty nine, a role he will hold until nineteen
Speaker 2: fifty three, but later that year disaster struck. The economy crashed,
Speaker 2: and Brundage lost his first company and the bulk of
Speaker 2: his fortune on the brink of bankruptcy. He responded to
Speaker 2: losing his money by bullshitting that he was still rich.
Speaker 2: He describes going about town with quote his my chest
Speaker 2: out and not a nickel in my pocket. But no
Speaker 2: one knew except my accountants and secretary.
Speaker 3: He's like, He's like, I'm gonna still look rich even
Speaker 3: though I'm poor.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I don't know. His monicle just gets bigger
Speaker 2: and bigger. It's like, oh, I just made more money again.
Speaker 2: He's described as having lost all his money, but the
Speaker 2: way he writes things, I kind of think he took
Speaker 2: a hit, but like he was not on the streets
Speaker 2: or anything, right, he was not. It just like hurt him, right,
Speaker 2: But he does start another company, he does recover and
Speaker 2: rebuild his fortune. I kind of think he just kind
Speaker 2: of exaggerates the degree to which he was down during
Speaker 2: the depression, because it's more impressive if you come back
Speaker 2: from being completely broke, as opposed to like, well, I
Speaker 2: went from rich to kind of struggling middle class and
Speaker 2: then I got rich again, you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, there's no rapper who was just like, started
Speaker 3: from the middle.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, started from honestly doing pretty okay.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, I started from the top, still at the top.
Speaker 3: Everything's fine, has always been.
Speaker 2: Fine, either way, whatever the truth is. He would later
Speaker 2: mock businessmen who lost their money and committed suicide and
Speaker 2: the depression, like, saying that they lacked quote, the character
Speaker 2: building discipline of competitive sport. Wouldn't have shot himself if
Speaker 2: he'd done more heel and toe.
Speaker 3: There's all these people jumping out of buildings. Have you
Speaker 3: tried jumping over a hurdle?
Speaker 2: Yeah, over something slightly higher than you know you can
Speaker 2: jump over, and seeing how well you do?
Speaker 3: You know, stop shooting yourself in the head. Stop just
Speaker 3: start shooting, yeah, shooting.
Speaker 2: By the early thirties, Avery is back on top, and
Speaker 2: we were going to talk about what he does next.
Speaker 2: But you know who's never not been on top? O
Speaker 2: the sponsors of this motherfucking podcast.
Speaker 3: That's right, they started from the top, still at the top.
Speaker 3: That's right.
Speaker 2: We're gonna buy some socks or I don't know, I
Speaker 2: don't know what the product is.
Speaker 3: Could be, it.
Speaker 2: Could be the Washington State Highway Patrol. Either one, we're
Speaker 2: back by the early thirties. He's rich again. I assume
Speaker 2: that seems to be when he got rich again. It's
Speaker 2: a little unclear. I don't have access to the man's
Speaker 2: bank statements. Either way, he does get rich again. When
Speaker 2: he dies, he's worth like twenty million dollars. He seems
Speaker 2: to have credited his love of the Olympics and sportsmanship
Speaker 2: with instilling in him the values that made his recovery possible.
Speaker 2: But he was worried despite the fact that things are
Speaker 2: doing better for him. He's worried about the growth of
Speaker 2: sinister socialist movements in Russia and beyond. At the same time,
Speaker 2: he finds himself intrigued by a new political strain in Germany.
Speaker 2: This Hitler chip has some interesting ideas. Fucking hey, why
Speaker 2: does it always go back to Hitler?
Speaker 3: Robert Now?
Speaker 2: Part of why it goes back to Hitler is that
Speaker 2: Brundage is like an Olympics worshiper, and he he comes
Speaker 2: to see the Olympics in somewhat eugenic terms, and in fact,
Speaker 2: he seems to have felt about athletes the way Hitler
Speaker 2: felt towards Germans and I'm going to quote from Guy
Speaker 2: Walters here. Brundage also saw an olympism an enshrinement of
Speaker 2: his own racist ideals, ideals he shared with the Chicago
Speaker 2: Association of Commerce in November nineteen twenty nine. Perhaps we
Speaker 2: are about to witness the development of a new race,
Speaker 2: A race of men actuated by the principles of sportsmanship
Speaker 2: learned on the playing field, refusing to tolerate different conditions
Speaker 2: than the other enterprises of life. A race physically strong,
Speaker 2: mentally alert, and morally sound. A race not to be
Speaker 2: imposed upon because it is ready to fight for right
Speaker 2: and physically prepared to do so. A race quick to
Speaker 2: help an adversary beaten in fair combat, yet fearlessly resenting
Speaker 2: in justice or unfair advantage.
Speaker 3: Yes, such a short trip from race walking to race science.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's less than eight hundred and eighty yards. For sure.
Speaker 3: It's a problem with it, you know, just the word
Speaker 3: itself being you're super into race, that's how you become racist.
Speaker 3: God damn it. Great stuff Like I it's it's just
Speaker 3: I don't want to say I get it, but it's
Speaker 3: like it's one of those things where you just I
Speaker 3: whenever people this is a problem I have with the
Speaker 3: Olympics and general that makes me uncomfortable is there is
Speaker 3: something of a you know, when they say like yeah,
Speaker 3: all the nations you know are competing and whatnot, it
Speaker 3: does feel somewhat like race wars the sport. Yeah, it
Speaker 3: has that element to it a little bit.
Speaker 2: And then it's always made me feel icky. And there's
Speaker 2: this this other thing that, like the Olympics, to Koper
Speaker 2: teen seems to legitimately have come by his I think
Speaker 2: that this could help us, you know, get past war
Speaker 2: as a society, and I respect those utopian ideas, but
Speaker 2: it does seem like we eventually walk back around to like, well,
Speaker 2: this isn't literally war, but like what do you do
Speaker 2: in war? Well, you heard a lot of kids. And
Speaker 2: I think about like Larry Nasser molests He's not the
Speaker 2: only he's not the only gymnastics coach to have done that.
Speaker 2: And certainly I think about like, oh, you know, the
Speaker 2: the the systematic mistreatment and abuse of young men as
Speaker 2: foot soldis. I think about stuff like you know, Soviet
Speaker 2: Union doping athletes or like athletes doping, it all sorts
Speaker 2: of countries, right, like yeah, this this obsessive need like well,
Speaker 2: we have to win, and anything that we have to
Speaker 2: do to these these athletes in order to allow them
Speaker 2: to win is okay. So let's shoot them up with
Speaker 2: whatever the fuck we could shoot them up with, right.
Speaker 3: And creating a lot of this and the shaming of people,
Speaker 3: you know of like athletes, and they're trying to like
Speaker 3: ban fucking at the Olympic village.
Speaker 2: There is the one great thing about the Olympics. That's
Speaker 2: why you get good at sports, right, yes, you can
Speaker 2: eventually someday, nobody some sort of village. Nobody ever became
Speaker 2: the best at a sport to not get laid, I'll say,
Speaker 2: exactly right. Going on, So, the fact that Avery is
Speaker 2: kind of arriving at race science by a way of
Speaker 2: here to tell walking yeah, leads him to occupy an
Speaker 2: awkward cultural position as Hitler takes power in Germany. Before
Speaker 2: Hitler's election, the nineteen thirty six Olympics had again been
Speaker 2: promised to Berlin. After Hitler comes to power, many Americans,
Speaker 2: a lot of them are Jewish American athletes, but not exclusively.
Speaker 2: There's a lot of just people who don't like Nazis
Speaker 2: decided like, well, now the Nazis are in charge, we
Speaker 2: shouldn't participate in these Olympic Games, right, because it will
Speaker 2: normalize the Third Reich and its oppression of its Jewish citizens,
Speaker 2: and not just the Jewish the there's a lot of
Speaker 2: people who are because it's not just Jewish citizens being oppressed,
Speaker 2: but in general, the Third Reich is doing a lot
Speaker 2: of terrible shit, and if we show up there to
Speaker 2: play the games will kind of be handing them a
Speaker 2: win and legitimizing the regime. And we shouldn't, right, right,
Speaker 2: A lot of people are arguing this enrages Avery. His
Speaker 2: most prince rigid principle is that the Olympics should never
Speaker 2: be political. Now, of course that's not really true, that's
Speaker 2: what he says. But the way Avery treats the Olympics
Speaker 2: is deeply political. He just because whenever he's thinking about
Speaker 2: something he believes deeply, he doesn't consider that politics.
Speaker 3: Right, it's not politics, that's just his that's just reality.
Speaker 3: Everyone else is just is just perverting his reality, which
Speaker 3: is the only true reality.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I want to I want to quote again
Speaker 2: from that Berlin Olympics book quote. He also frequently insisted
Speaker 2: that more than the future of amateur sport was at
Speaker 2: stake and shielding sport from political manipulation upon sport for
Speaker 2: sports sake depended the healthy psychological valuation of individual effort
Speaker 2: and excellence that was at the very heart of a
Speaker 2: democratic way of life. Moreover, fit bodies and competitive spirits were,
Speaker 2: in Brundage's view, essential to the continued success of American
Speaker 2: capitalism at home and abroad. But we never acknowledged the
Speaker 2: political coloring of his vision of the Olympics. He regarded
Speaker 2: them as a kind of international mission for spreading democratic
Speaker 2: values and the continuing ideological battle between communism and the
Speaker 2: American way of life.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but that's not political.
Speaker 2: That's the natural. That's a natural state. That's just fine,
Speaker 2: it's just normal stuff. Now, that's not politics, right, right, Yeah.
Speaker 3: God is a capitalist. Reality is a capitalist, right, Communism
Speaker 3: is the devil.
Speaker 1: And most people who self identify as a political or
Speaker 1: the most political people I've ever met in my entire life.
Speaker 2: Yes, right, of.
Speaker 3: Course, that's like, you know, it's the height of privilege.
Speaker 3: Is the a political nature of your viewpoint when you're
Speaker 3: just like, oh, I don't know, I've always felt like
Speaker 3: politics is weird. Status quo always seems cool and great.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, I back when I lived out in
Speaker 2: the middle of nowhere, I ran into one guy who
Speaker 2: identified as a political and actually was. And the reason
Speaker 2: why I believe him is when I told him that
Speaker 2: Hillary Clinton was running for president, he was like, wasn't
Speaker 2: a Clinton just president?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: And I was like, and it like, did not seem
Speaker 2: to be aware of the Bush years. But this was
Speaker 2: a man who had been out in the mountains that
Speaker 2: entire time, not really aware, just kind of missed like
Speaker 2: sixteen years.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, yeah, No, if you're going to be a
Speaker 3: political you have to be like almost literally living.
Speaker 2: Under a ruck.
Speaker 3: No.
Speaker 2: No, I literally have not talked to anyone in twenty years.
Speaker 3: All my best friends are animals. I really don't know
Speaker 3: what's politics now, You, in fact, are a political sir.
Speaker 2: Wow, all right, so Matt to plug.
Speaker 3: Well, if you are an a political person like me,
Speaker 3: I yeah, no. I have a new podcast out there
Speaker 3: called Bad has Bara, the World's most moral podcast, in
Speaker 3: which me and some great guests we talk about what's
Speaker 3: going on in Israel and we break down some of
Speaker 3: the hilarious new propaganda that seems to be dropping on
Speaker 3: a daily fucking basis. So yeah, if you want to
Speaker 3: you know.
Speaker 2: Check that out.
Speaker 3: You can get it wherever you know podcasts are given
Speaker 3: away for free, or go to YouTube and type in
Speaker 3: bad has Bara. The channel is called frotcast because I
Speaker 3: used my old YouTube channel that no one watched and
Speaker 3: I started posting on there and now it's now it's
Speaker 3: mostly bad has Bara content, but proadcast is the name
Speaker 3: of the channel. Can I change it? Probably will?
Speaker 2: I know, I don't know how youtubes work.
Speaker 3: It's f R O T C A S T that's
Speaker 3: the name of the channel. And the podcast again is
Speaker 3: called bad has Barra h A S B A R.
Speaker 2: Hey check it out. All right.
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