Speaker 1: Hey, everybody. I don't know if you've heard, but we
Speaker 1: have a book coming out finally, finally, after all these years.
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Speaker 1: books are sold. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a
Speaker 1: production of My Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, and
Speaker 1: welcome to the podcast. So I'm Josh Clark and there's
Speaker 1: Charles w Chuck Bryan over there, and this is Stuff
Speaker 1: you Should Know. Don't don't do it, Dad, What is
Speaker 1: this gonna do with the Olympics. It's it's it's equally stirring.
Speaker 1: I thought you would have done the Olympic Games song.
Speaker 1: That's what I started out doing, and then about two
Speaker 1: duns into it, I realized they could not bring it
Speaker 1: to mind. So I just wanted the Rocky theme instead. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know. The Olympics, well, I don't know if they would.
Speaker 1: They still be going on right now. I don't know.
Speaker 1: They could have just wrapped up. Actually, it's kind of sad,
Speaker 1: you know. It's sad for now. It will be encouraging later.
Speaker 1: I think the Tokyo Olympics, whenever they happen, are going
Speaker 1: to be a global coming together and celebration of beating coronavirus. Yeah,
Speaker 1: totally those ceremonies, yes, but from what I read, the
Speaker 1: Olympic flame is still alive and well in Tokyo. What
Speaker 1: if the opening ceremonies had little, you know, corona crowns
Speaker 1: running around and people smashing them with like big inflatable hammers.
Speaker 1: And that's right. They tell the story of the of
Speaker 1: the coronavirus pandemic through interpretive dance. It just has like
Speaker 1: a big giant bat at the beginning, and exactly it's
Speaker 1: the villain. Maybe plenty of villains in that one. That'd
Speaker 1: be fun for sure, for sure. Um, so we're obviously
Speaker 1: talking Olympic torches. If you hadn't guests or hadn't bothered
Speaker 1: to look at the title of this episode, everybody. And
Speaker 1: I'm kind of excited about this because it's it's a
Speaker 1: just died in the wool s y s K episode
Speaker 1: and that it's very niche. It's about one specific thing
Speaker 1: that's a part of a much larger thing which we've
Speaker 1: not yet done an episode on. Yeah, and the kind
Speaker 1: of thing where one day, when you're watching an Olympic
Speaker 1: ceremony again you see that flame. Yeah, you'll have that
Speaker 1: that insider knowledge. Yeah, you'll think didn't did it, didn't
Speaker 1: did do? Goodness. So, um, chuck, I didn't know much
Speaker 1: about Olympic torches. I've seen a torch lighting or two
Speaker 1: in my time on television only. Um, but there's a
Speaker 1: pretty it's pretty interesting actually, the kind of the history
Speaker 1: of it and how the things are made. I was
Speaker 1: reading over like, um, I guess you'd call it like
Speaker 1: a request for proposal PDF from like the London Olympics
Speaker 1: Committee from years ago. Um, basically saying hey, this is
Speaker 1: a call out all designers who want to try their
Speaker 1: hand at at UM designing the London Olympic torch. Here's
Speaker 1: all the details you need to know. It was really
Speaker 1: fascinating stuff, and we're going to convey that fascination post
Speaker 1: taste of that RFC or of just torches. Maybe a
Speaker 1: little bit of both actually, so uh, the history of
Speaker 1: the torch we're talking. You know, you've got to go
Speaker 1: back to Greece if you're going to talk about anything
Speaker 1: Olympic history wise, and if you go back far enough,
Speaker 1: you're gonna hear a story about Prometheus stealing fire from
Speaker 1: Zeus giving that to humans. That's how they say we
Speaker 1: got fire. And in order to commemorate that, the Greeks
Speaker 1: had these relay races like we all know and love,
Speaker 1: except instead of passing a little aluminum baton, they would
Speaker 1: pass live fire and flame via torch. Yeah, they would
Speaker 1: set a cow on fire, push it to the next person.
Speaker 1: I actually the one thing on Prometheus. I was looking
Speaker 1: him up. So he was punished by Zeus um for
Speaker 1: stealing fire and giving it, being a bad boy for
Speaker 1: a naughty monty and Um he had his liver eaten
Speaker 1: out by an eagle every day and because he was
Speaker 1: an immortal titan. His liver would grow back each night
Speaker 1: and then it would be eaten now even by an
Speaker 1: eagle again the next day. That's so when I feel
Speaker 1: these days and eagles eating your liver every day, yeah,
Speaker 1: it is kind of yeah. So, but I mean, the
Speaker 1: I guess the the upshot of all this is that
Speaker 1: the fire was extremely important to the Greeks and they
Speaker 1: showed it off as much. So when they started having
Speaker 1: Olympic Games UM back in I guess seven seventies six
Speaker 1: BC UM, they wanted to make fire kind of a
Speaker 1: prominent part of it, and so they they they celebrated
Speaker 1: this theft of fire from Zeus by Prometheus by having
Speaker 1: a torch relay where there was basically like um, like
Speaker 1: today's baton relay marathons or runs or whatever you call them,
Speaker 1: but it was with the torch and whoever reached the
Speaker 1: end with their lit torch one that that relay race.
Speaker 1: And that's how kind of the Olympic torch was born. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And you know, the games back then were a very
Speaker 1: big deal and that they would stop war, which is
Speaker 1: something they loved to do, just to take part in
Speaker 1: these games. And they had these runners. They call them
Speaker 1: heralds of Piece that would go all through Greece saying,
Speaker 1: you know, truce everybody, right, and they would hope they
Speaker 1: don't get speared, and if they made it through, that
Speaker 1: truce would remain all during the Olympics until the flame
Speaker 1: is extinguished, and then they started spearing again immediately. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And the point was so that anybody who wanted to
Speaker 1: go watch the Olympics could make it through Greece um
Speaker 1: unkilled to go watch and then make it back home unkilled,
Speaker 1: hopefully too unkilled. Yea. Uh So, if you go back
Speaker 1: to Olympia, there was an altar there dedicated to Hera,
Speaker 1: who was the goddess of birthen marriage. And at the
Speaker 1: beginning of those first Olympic Games, they would ignite a
Speaker 1: called in at Harrah's altar and they would light it
Speaker 1: with with a parabolic mirror. They call it a scaffia,
Speaker 1: and it's sort of like you know an Archimedes deathray
Speaker 1: where you are a magnifying glass or something where you
Speaker 1: focus the sun down to that you know, single spot.
Speaker 1: If you're a sadistic child, you burn ants that way.
Speaker 1: Should never ever do that. It's not nice. No, we
Speaker 1: leave the ants alone, leave the ants alone, but they
Speaker 1: would that's how they would ignite that initial flame, and
Speaker 1: that flame the idea is that it stays lit throughout
Speaker 1: the Olympics. Yeah, so this is a pretty cool tradition
Speaker 1: if you think about it. I mean, just because the
Speaker 1: Olympics have been around for so long today, the modern Olympics,
Speaker 1: we kind of take this whole thing for granted. But like,
Speaker 1: this is a pretty neat tradition that I guess just
Speaker 1: came up out a whole cloth among the Greeks. And
Speaker 1: so they were like, we're going to keep this going,
Speaker 1: and they did for another thousand years while they did
Speaker 1: the Olympics. But then when the Olympics kind of died
Speaker 1: out after a millennia, um, no millennium, the torch and
Speaker 1: all of that stuff died out with it. Fortunately, the
Speaker 1: Greeks were a highly literate society and they wrote a
Speaker 1: lot of this stuff down and um it was rediscovered
Speaker 1: when the Olympics were revived in the nineteenth century by
Speaker 1: a guy named Baron Pierre de Kubertan, and he um
Speaker 1: one of the things that he did was to say, um,
Speaker 1: I really loved the Olympic Games. I'm not necessarily aware
Speaker 1: that there was a torch relay or anything like that. So, um,
Speaker 1: we're gonna wait another thirty years or so before we
Speaker 1: introduced the torch again. That's right. That came in n
Speaker 1: and amstra Dam and there they had the cauldron on
Speaker 1: fire on purpose, but there was they weren't relaying that torch. Still.
Speaker 1: It took till ninety six in Berlin when Carl Deem
Speaker 1: he was the Secretary gener role of the Organizing Committee
Speaker 1: of the of the Games there and he said, hey, guys,
Speaker 1: we gotta bring this back to to the O g
Speaker 1: S and we gotta get that torch relay going, and
Speaker 1: we gotta light it in Olympia and get it here
Speaker 1: to Berlin. We gotta do it right. Yeah, he definitely
Speaker 1: did it right for sure. I mean, not only was
Speaker 1: like the whole thing revived, like the idea of the
Speaker 1: torch relay, but igniting that torch in Greece and then
Speaker 1: make having it make its way all the way to Berlin.
Speaker 1: That's pretty cool stuff. And from what I read that
Speaker 1: was also right up the Nazis alley and that it
Speaker 1: kind of connected the Third Reich to the Great Greek
Speaker 1: and Roman Empires. Um of your which they were super
Speaker 1: into to try to legitimize themselves. UM, so they went
Speaker 1: for it. Fortunately, that first Olympic torch, which we'll talk
Speaker 1: more about the torches, um it did not have a
Speaker 1: swastika anywhere on it, which is wonderful that they managed
Speaker 1: to keep that off of there. I know that's kind
Speaker 1: of surprising too, Huh. It is extremely surprising, but I
Speaker 1: mean it really is genuinely surprising, and I'm like very pleased.
Speaker 1: I was really pleased. I looked at pictures of that
Speaker 1: torch with like one eye closed, just trying to find no, no,
Speaker 1: just I was afraid I was gonna see it. I
Speaker 1: couldn't believe it, and little by little I was like,
Speaker 1: it's not there. So I was pleased by that. You
Speaker 1: have been my eyes eyes. I just turned into tothe
Speaker 1: from the end of Raiders that lost dark and melt.
Speaker 1: So h the relay at the Winter Olympics. I think
Speaker 1: it took until nineteen fifty two to introduce it at
Speaker 1: the Winter Games, and they did not light it in
Speaker 1: Olympia that year. They lit it in Norway because that's
Speaker 1: where the skiing was born, so they thought they would
Speaker 1: honor Norway in that way. But finally, finally, in nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty four in Austria at Innsbruck, they said, we gotta
Speaker 1: get it together, every addie, we gotta get on the
Speaker 1: same page. We gotta go winter and summer and started
Speaker 1: out in Olympia and relay that thing to wherever the
Speaker 1: heck We're gonna have these games, that's right, And they did.
Speaker 1: And I actually looked a little bit into the I
Speaker 1: guess the nineteen fifty two games where um they lit
Speaker 1: it in Norway. They lited it in the heart of
Speaker 1: the home of nineteenth century Norwegian skiing legend Sandra Norheim.
Speaker 1: It's either Sandra or Sandr so n d r E.
Speaker 1: And he was apparently quite the daredevil skier. I saw
Speaker 1: a quote about him that he was fearless and daring.
Speaker 1: He ran straight down the most dangerous and challenging hills,
Speaker 1: rudely waving his cap, which is made me love that
Speaker 1: guy immediately. And I think those games ended up in Helsinki.
Speaker 1: But well, there's a little nugget I'll drop in the
Speaker 1: next uh segment here after we break. Oh, I can't wait. Well,
Speaker 1: I've got another segment or another nugget on that this
Speaker 1: there's one other time in history, when the Winter Olympic
Speaker 1: torch was lit in the heart of the home of
Speaker 1: nineteenth century Norwegian skiing legend Saandr Norheim was in Squa
Speaker 1: Valley in nineteen sixty. Because the Olympic committee couldn't get
Speaker 1: their act together fast enough to organize the lighting ceremony
Speaker 1: in Greece, so Norway stepped in again and said, she's
Speaker 1: got a fireplace. We've seen it in action. He he yeah,
Speaker 1: party at Sundry's house. I'm sure we're mispronouncing it, probably
Speaker 1: so rudely waving his camp. Do you want to take
Speaker 1: a break yet, Let's do it, all right, everybody, We're
Speaker 1: gonna take a break and we're gonna come back and
Speaker 1: guess what we're gonna talk about Olympic torches some more, alright, chuck,
Speaker 1: So let's talk about um, those r fps that thrilled
Speaker 1: me so fully. Yeah. If you want to be the firm,
Speaker 1: the design firm that builds, designs and builds the torch,
Speaker 1: you gotta get in there and you've gotta submit your proposal.
Speaker 1: You gotta Greece and palms. You gotta gotta tip the
Speaker 1: right doorman, if you know what I mean. You have to.
Speaker 1: You have to spread many goats around. That's right to
Speaker 1: the right people. No, I think. You just submit a
Speaker 1: proposal and the Olympic Committee looks at it and they
Speaker 1: sort of sit there like at the beginning of planes,
Speaker 1: trains and automobiles, for three hours in silence, kind of
Speaker 1: twiddling their thumbs, looking, looking, looking, and finally they say,
Speaker 1: the bid goes to you. You win the assignment. You've
Speaker 1: got to have a torch that looks great, of course,
Speaker 1: and you've got to have a torch that works, because
Speaker 1: this thing has gotta it's gotta stay lit under any
Speaker 1: condition it can be. You can get this thing through
Speaker 1: a hurricane, supposedly, and it'll have to stay let. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean they're pretty serious about this thing not going out. Um,
Speaker 1: So they build in redundancies. UM. Oftentimes there's a couple
Speaker 1: of different flames working in conjunction to to make this
Speaker 1: thing work. Um. But in addition to the actual feel
Speaker 1: of it and the look of it, like, you want
Speaker 1: to make it so that anybody, anybody basically alive on
Speaker 1: Earth could carry it. So it's gotta be lightweight typically
Speaker 1: UM I saw usually about a pound or so. UM.
Speaker 1: It has to all most of the ones in that RFP,
Speaker 1: the Golden RFP for from the London to Olympics. It
Speaker 1: had a list. Actually, you gotta look this up, everybody
Speaker 1: I cannot remember. Just search um London Olympic Torch Proposal
Speaker 1: Design Proposal. I'll bet that would bring up this PDA anyway,
Speaker 1: some sleepy corner of the internet worse. Yeah, I found it,
Speaker 1: and I'm proud as punch about that. But um, I
Speaker 1: had a list of like some of the specs of
Speaker 1: past torches, and most of them seem to be around
Speaker 1: one to two pounds. This article from How Stuff Works
Speaker 1: is three to four, but I saw one to two pounds.
Speaker 1: Maybe that's without being fully loaded with fuel. Sure, And hey,
Speaker 1: if you can carry something this two pounds, you can
Speaker 1: probably put two hands on it and manage the four pounds,
Speaker 1: although they like you to hold it with one one hand. Yeah,
Speaker 1: just because it looks cooler. Uh. These these modern torches
Speaker 1: that we're looking at, we're sort of originated at those
Speaker 1: Squall of Valley games in nineteen sixty when a Disney
Speaker 1: artist named John Hinch designed this, you know, sort of
Speaker 1: the first modern torch that everyone else said, yeah, that's
Speaker 1: a good idea. That's what we should do. We should
Speaker 1: have fuel inside of it, and we should have some
Speaker 1: backup flame inside of it. And they kind of function
Speaker 1: like a like a camp stove. Sure, a fancy camp
Speaker 1: stove basically is what it is. And then and we'll
Speaker 1: get into the fuels and stuff. But in that there
Speaker 1: is a liquid fuel that becomes a gas. Uh you know,
Speaker 1: it's under pressure and then it comes out these tiny
Speaker 1: little holes just like a camp stover, like a Colman lantern. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I didn't know this. This is pretty cool. Um.
Speaker 1: There are two two things that have to be designed
Speaker 1: into it, well, a couple of things that have to
Speaker 1: be designed into it. UM. In addition to being um
Speaker 1: easy to carry by, basically anybody has to be very light,
Speaker 1: has to be aerodynamic. Ergonomic, I think is another. If
Speaker 1: you threw that word around in your bid, they would
Speaker 1: probably be like, oh, this guy knows what he's talking about. UM.
Speaker 1: But you you also have to at least as far
Speaker 1: as London was concerned. But I got the impression that
Speaker 1: this was a standard thing that you have to design
Speaker 1: in a way to permanently deactivate it after it's one
Speaker 1: time use, so that it can never be lit again.
Speaker 1: Which I thought was kind of cool. I bet you
Speaker 1: could hack that though. Funny enough, I found another weird
Speaker 1: corner of the Internet researching this one at Olympic Torch
Speaker 1: Repair dot Com, which is possibly the most niche retail
Speaker 1: website I've ever seen in my life. They sell one
Speaker 1: part and it is a part design to fix the
Speaker 1: Atlanta Olympic torch. And they don't use the words that
Speaker 1: you will be lit again, But just from the pictures,
Speaker 1: from the text, from everything that I'm seeing, I believe
Speaker 1: this is a rogue website dedicated to making Atlanta Olympic
Speaker 1: torches burn again after they've been purposefully disabled. Well, and
Speaker 1: you might be laughing saying how much could this person
Speaker 1: be making off this? But here's another little fun fact.
Speaker 1: There are anywhere from ten to fifteen thousand of these
Speaker 1: torches that are built. Uh if you'll notice when you
Speaker 1: see these, you know, and they don't cover all of
Speaker 1: this thing, or maybe they do in some dark corner
Speaker 1: of the Internet. I'm sure somebody does cover might end
Speaker 1: up doing it in the future as a hobby. Covers
Speaker 1: each and every passing of the torch, but they don't
Speaker 1: actually pass the torch. They light the other person's torch
Speaker 1: and then they run away, and then you never the
Speaker 1: camera doesn't hang on the person who just you know,
Speaker 1: standing there with their torch, and you think, what happens
Speaker 1: to those things? Well, you're allowed to buy it if
Speaker 1: you want. The one from Japan this year was gonna
Speaker 1: cost about six hundred, six hundred fifty bucks American. That's
Speaker 1: a steel. Have you seen that thing? Yeah, it's good looking.
Speaker 1: They're beautiful. Have you seen the overhead shot where it
Speaker 1: looks like a cherry blossom. It's wonderful too. And that
Speaker 1: is a price that's basically at cost. Because the a
Speaker 1: the IOC nor the AOC can profit from the sale
Speaker 1: of Olympic torches. That is not a side hustle for her. No,
Speaker 1: so don't believe what the right says. She can't actually
Speaker 1: make any money off of Olympic torchi. So um, that's
Speaker 1: basically cost. And it turns out there's quite an aftermarket
Speaker 1: for these things too. I think they're right now too,
Speaker 1: complete collections for individuals in the world and another guy
Speaker 1: that's close, and they cost anywhere from fifteen hundred four
Speaker 1: thousand for the newer ones, fifteen to seventy grand for
Speaker 1: older ones. And I think the pricest ever was that
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty two Helsinki one eight hundred and eighty thousand
Speaker 1: dollars because they only made twenty two of them, so
Speaker 1: obviously rarity is is going to drive that price up.
Speaker 1: The highest I saw was less than that is two
Speaker 1: fifteen thousand for the ninet in sixties Squaw Valley one
Speaker 1: that Disney designer made um and I think I saw
Speaker 1: like they made a hundred of them, so you'd have
Speaker 1: to have some coin to to have a complete collection.
Speaker 1: And that's a very niche collection as well. I mean,
Speaker 1: and I have to say, like a lot of them,
Speaker 1: you just they're not very pleasing to the eye. There's
Speaker 1: some ug Olympic torches out there. I mean Mexico City is.
Speaker 1: If it's not a hand whisk, I don't know what
Speaker 1: it is. Well it is and it was cool it
Speaker 1: actually according to the two thousand twelve London Olympics UH
Speaker 1: Torch RFP PDF, that is the longest I'm making t
Speaker 1: shirts out of different pages. That is the longest burning
Speaker 1: Olympic torch in the history of Olympic torches. Most of
Speaker 1: these things are designed to burn ten or fifteen minutes
Speaker 1: which is alarming if you're like, well, wait a minute,
Speaker 1: we want the Olympic flame to burn out. But as
Speaker 1: we'll see, these relays are actually super short. Um, this one,
Speaker 1: the Mexico City torch, could burn up the thirty minutes. Dude.
Speaker 1: I like this torch, the whisk. I think it looks great.
Speaker 1: I think it looks like a whiskey. I don't think
Speaker 1: it looks bad. I just think it looks like a
Speaker 1: kitchen whisk and I can't think of anything else but
Speaker 1: whipping cream when I look at it. I'm looking at
Speaker 1: two different torches though, for Mexico, one looks like a
Speaker 1: whisk and one looks like sort of like an Aztec club.
Speaker 1: So there's two torches. Well, I don't know. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: have to I'm gonna have to get to the bottom
Speaker 1: of this because I'm seeing let me know what you find,
Speaker 1: because I'm gonna have to add it to my niche
Speaker 1: website about Olympic torches. Oh goodness, so um, I don't
Speaker 1: remember where we were going with that. Oh, you're talking
Speaker 1: about the Tokyo one where you can buy it. So
Speaker 1: when you when you have the torch, when your torch
Speaker 1: relay is done. It's taken from you this able, put
Speaker 1: in its packaging and then presented to you. If you've
Speaker 1: vindicated you want to buy it, and if not, they
Speaker 1: throw it into the nearest river. But I think that's
Speaker 1: pretty cool that you can you get to buy it
Speaker 1: if you want to, and it's disabled so you can
Speaker 1: never let it again unless you know the guy who
Speaker 1: runs Olympic Torch Repair. But one of the other things
Speaker 1: too that they they has become kind of a thing,
Speaker 1: especially in the last like thirty thirty years, maybe more
Speaker 1: is sustainability built into these and you want to it's
Speaker 1: not a requirement, but I get the impression that's exactly
Speaker 1: where I got it from, that you you're probably doing
Speaker 1: nothing but helping your bid if you have figured out
Speaker 1: some sort of sustainable angle to it. Like the Tokyo torch,
Speaker 1: which again it's just gorgeous rose gold looking, but it's
Speaker 1: actually aluminum, and the aluminum is made from former temporary
Speaker 1: housing that was used after the Fukushi a disaster to
Speaker 1: how some of the residents who have been displaced the
Speaker 1: strings there. Yeah, yes, I'm sure the person who designed
Speaker 1: that was like, I got it. I got the thing
Speaker 1: that's going to get we're gonna win this bid with
Speaker 1: this and is it true now? But they don't know
Speaker 1: I made no I shoot down airplanes in my spare time.
Speaker 1: I have a bunch of them in my backyard. Now
Speaker 1: I know what to do with I like to be
Speaker 1: from the top better. Yeah, it's Gord's on the side. Yes.
Speaker 1: And one of the things I mean we talked about
Speaker 1: flames and then being redundant um the the you don't
Speaker 1: want that flame to go out. So one of the
Speaker 1: things that that that torch has is from each of
Speaker 1: those rounded petals that looks like the petal of a
Speaker 1: cherry blossom flower, provides a flame and they all come
Speaker 1: together to to build one big flame. But because you
Speaker 1: have five different smaller flames, that big flame, even if
Speaker 1: it flickers or wins, it's never going to go out.
Speaker 1: You've got five redundancies exactly. So the fuel they've used
Speaker 1: a bunch of things over the ears, because you want
Speaker 1: something to burn bright, something that you can see during
Speaker 1: the daytime. You want something that's not dangerous. But there
Speaker 1: have been some dangerous torches over the years. They they've
Speaker 1: used gunpowder, they've used olive oil, they used to use
Speaker 1: something called hexamine, which is formaldehyde and pneumonia can't be
Speaker 1: safe and uh, naphthaline. So in our soap episode, Chuck,
Speaker 1: one of the things I didn't get to talk about
Speaker 1: was that Fell's naptha laundry soap. Yeah you ever seen
Speaker 1: that stuff? I don't think. So it's like this hips
Speaker 1: terrific laundry soap that's old timey that they still make.
Speaker 1: But naptha is benzene and it's actually really really bad
Speaker 1: for you. So they're basically burning benzene in this stuff,
Speaker 1: and you can all sorts of bad things can happen,
Speaker 1: like your red blood cells can rupture. Yeah, that's no good.
Speaker 1: You can also have nasty smoke, like in the case
Speaker 1: of Atlanta's was pretty smoky. Uh in Fi D six,
Speaker 1: they had magnesium and aluminum uh lighting the flame, and
Speaker 1: there were chunks of flame that fell off. So you
Speaker 1: don't want that either. You want something that burns clean,
Speaker 1: that looks good. I think now they use propane and butane,
Speaker 1: which makes a lot of sense. Uh. You know that's
Speaker 1: what you use in lighters and gas grills. Uh. And
Speaker 1: you know, like I said, it works like a little
Speaker 1: like a little camp stove. You've got this fuel being
Speaker 1: pushed through a valve. There's a fuel reservoir, and then
Speaker 1: you have all these little tiny openings just like a
Speaker 1: camp camp stove will and once it squeezes through there,
Speaker 1: it builds up that pressure. Then finally, once it's out
Speaker 1: the other side, that pressure drops, turns into a gas
Speaker 1: and it's ready to burn at a consistent rate. Right.
Speaker 1: And again there's a couple of flames, typically one that
Speaker 1: burns really hot but small that is almost like a
Speaker 1: pilot light for the bigger ones in that there's five
Speaker 1: of those things. And then you've got the bigger, brighter
Speaker 1: flame that big and bold and just says in your face, world,
Speaker 1: I'm the Olympic flame. Um. But it's much less stable.
Speaker 1: It flickers a lot more in the wind, but it's
Speaker 1: not going to go out because you get those pilot lights.
Speaker 1: It's sort of like the understudy to the Broadway star. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but the understudies really the one who's giving the star
Speaker 1: all of the suggestions and notes that are making the
Speaker 1: star a star. And uh, we'll get to the route
Speaker 1: here in a few minutes. But this thing, you know,
Speaker 1: goes a long way, and sometimes even across oceans, and
Speaker 1: sometimes underwater, which is what happened in two thousand when
Speaker 1: it went across the Great Barrier Reef very symbolically, and
Speaker 1: they had a flare inside this thing to keep the
Speaker 1: flame burning in the water, which is pretty amazing. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Did you see video of that? Yeah? I mean I
Speaker 1: saw it live. Oh you did, huh. I'm an Olympics guy.
Speaker 1: I love that stuff. That's cool. I didn't see that.
Speaker 1: I like the Olympics too. I don't know if i'd
Speaker 1: see him an Olympics guy. Okay, but you're an Olympic
Speaker 1: torch RF guy. Yeah, thank you. That's way more at
Speaker 1: my all, yeah, than than running around. Should we take
Speaker 1: another break? Yeah, I think we've reached break time if
Speaker 1: you ask me. All Right, we'll come back and we'll
Speaker 1: talk about lighting this thing and then and the big
Speaker 1: relay right after this. All right, Chuck, So we're back
Speaker 1: to talk about the actual lighting of this thing. And
Speaker 1: if you guys will remember, we talked about lighting the
Speaker 1: torch using a para parabolic mirror to concentrate the sun's
Speaker 1: raise all the way back in the seven seventies Specie Well,
Speaker 1: when the Olympic organizers of the modern Olympics started bringing
Speaker 1: the torch back. I guess what was his name, Carl Bernheim.
Speaker 1: Mm hmmm. I think he was so the German guy
Speaker 1: from the Olympics. I believe he had this like that's
Speaker 1: what he went right to it. He was also a
Speaker 1: sports historian, by the way, which gives away why he
Speaker 1: was so so privy to all this stuff. But he um.
Speaker 1: I guess since that time, every time we've lit a
Speaker 1: torch from Olympia, they have used a parabolic mirror to
Speaker 1: concentrate the sun's raise and they stick a torch in
Speaker 1: there and it catches flame, and then there you have
Speaker 1: the official Olympic flame that will make its way from
Speaker 1: Olympia to the host city somehow, some way. Yeah, they
Speaker 1: make a big show of it. They have an actor
Speaker 1: dressed as a ceremonial priestess in these robes and like
Speaker 1: the ancient Greeks, and they you know, they acted out
Speaker 1: and uh the uh for the winner games, they actually
Speaker 1: the relay begins at the monument to the guy who
Speaker 1: spoke up earlier, Pierre de uh Cobertine, who founded those
Speaker 1: first games. But the Summer Games u a k a.
Speaker 1: The other games are carried to a firepot at that
Speaker 1: altar of was it Harra, Yeah, Harry Zeus's wife, sister
Speaker 1: sister wife, and then the relay begins and you know
Speaker 1: how this works out is determined at every Olympics. The
Speaker 1: organizing committee determines the route. Uh, there's always some silly
Speaker 1: Olympic theme. It's not always silly. Sometimes it's nice. But
Speaker 1: I'm not a big theme guy. No, you didn't like
Speaker 1: the theme of the Olympics. What's it? I think you're
Speaker 1: gonna bring that up. That was the mascot. That wasn't
Speaker 1: the theme. Oh, I thought it was both. I think
Speaker 1: the theme was red knickery. It was the theme was
Speaker 1: get or Done. I was looking online today because remember
Speaker 1: they had those have talked about them before, those stainless
Speaker 1: steel pickup trucks in Atlanta, and I was like, where
Speaker 1: are those things now? And I could find nary any
Speaker 1: evidence that they ever existed. So I don't know if
Speaker 1: they scrub the internet, but uh, I know you're better
Speaker 1: at the dark corners of the of the web. So
Speaker 1: maybe maybe we'll go in together and buy one. That
Speaker 1: would be pretty awesome actually, So you know, like I said,
Speaker 1: the route is determined by the committee. Um, sometimes it
Speaker 1: goes from country to country on a plane. Sometimes it's
Speaker 1: a train. There have been dog sleds, there's been motorcycles
Speaker 1: and horseback And if you are a person who is
Speaker 1: tasked with carrying this thing, like I think you have
Speaker 1: to be able to go at least four hundred thirty
Speaker 1: seven yards four d got to be at least fourteen
Speaker 1: years old. I would like to throw our name in
Speaker 1: the hat quite frankly for a future Olympic Games. That'd
Speaker 1: be fine. I'd be willing to carry it with you.
Speaker 1: We could put a hand on it. Yeah, But um,
Speaker 1: you're you know, you're you've done something for the community,
Speaker 1: or you're a notable human being, or or you or
Speaker 1: you work for the company who's sponsoring the Olympics, right right,
Speaker 1: you're a you're a sea level executive, which is absolutely true.
Speaker 1: We're not kidding, no, no, And I mean like there's
Speaker 1: sometimes hundreds, sometimes thousands of people who are involved in
Speaker 1: this because I mean if if basically you're running, if
Speaker 1: you're running like basically a football field and a half
Speaker 1: and you're going you're bringing you're taking this thing kilometers, right,
Speaker 1: You're like you need a lot of people to do that.
Speaker 1: So there's a lot of people involved in the Olympic relay.
Speaker 1: So there's a lot of people who you know, yeah,
Speaker 1: I just kind of ended up there because they you know,
Speaker 1: they were a sponsor. But there's also interesting people too.
Speaker 1: There was in Um. Sometimes they're not even people, Buddy.
Speaker 1: I was looking at the Pieong Chang two thousand and
Speaker 1: eighteen Winter Olympics relay and there was a robot named
Speaker 1: Hubo who was a torch bearer. And Hubo not only
Speaker 1: carried the torch, Hubo drove the torch and like basically
Speaker 1: a Doom Buggy with a human being in the passenger seat,
Speaker 1: and then got out, approached a brick wall, almost fell over,
Speaker 1: was righted by some other humans, cut through the brick
Speaker 1: wall and then passed the torch through the whole. Hubo
Speaker 1: had cut into the brick wall. That's the level of
Speaker 1: zany nous that can be achieved with the with the
Speaker 1: torch relay, because there's so many people involved. Can you
Speaker 1: imagine being that guy? It's like, did you see the
Speaker 1: Olympics the other name the torch relay? Oh did you
Speaker 1: carry the torch? No? I wrote in the Doom Buggy
Speaker 1: of the robot right just looking very nervous. That was
Speaker 1: a fail safe, you know, in case he went nuts.
Speaker 1: That's pretty great. They also did um paragliding, the paragliding
Speaker 1: the torch from one place to another. UM. It's pretty cool.
Speaker 1: Like people, they try to outdo each other. Each host
Speaker 1: city tries to outdo the last. UM. I think Montreal
Speaker 1: is the one that has has everybody beat. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: oh well yeah, let me go on. So in Montreal
Speaker 1: hosted the Olympics and they figured out how to take
Speaker 1: the flame transmit it into a radio signal. I'm still
Speaker 1: not sure how they did this, shot that signal up
Speaker 1: to a satellite and then beam the signal back down
Speaker 1: from satellite to Canada where it lit another cauldron, another torch.
Speaker 1: So they basically transferred the the energy from the Olympic flame,
Speaker 1: shot it into space, and then transferred it back to
Speaker 1: Earth and converted it back into flame. No one's ever
Speaker 1: going to beat that. I think that's cute that you
Speaker 1: bought that. Oh well, okay, I guess yeah. I hadn't
Speaker 1: really thought that. You didn't see the guy he was
Speaker 1: in the buggy. He was also behind there punching the button.
Speaker 1: The button. It is a thing for sure, and now,
Speaker 1: you hadn't really thought about that. So if you do
Speaker 1: notice these people that are actually on the street carrying
Speaker 1: these things, you'll notice they have security. There's actually a
Speaker 1: medical team, there's plenty of media, they have extra torches
Speaker 1: on hand because they don't want that thing to go
Speaker 1: out on camera. And eventually it's gonna make its way
Speaker 1: to the Olympic Stadium where the big secret. You know,
Speaker 1: they keep it a big secret. Now who that final
Speaker 1: individual is going to be. Um very much kept a
Speaker 1: lid on because you don't want that getting out because
Speaker 1: that's the big moment, and that's always a big deal.
Speaker 1: Whoever they choose for that final person to light the cauldron.
Speaker 1: And there have been a lot of big, big moments
Speaker 1: throughout the years, and I think Atlanta's when they came
Speaker 1: in there, Janet Evans, she didn't even know who she
Speaker 1: was going to hand it to and outcomes Mohammed Ali
Speaker 1: and that was really one of the great Olympic moments.
Speaker 1: I've watched it again today and I was like, why
Speaker 1: am I crying with me? It is amazing to hear
Speaker 1: that crowd when they figure out who it is at first,
Speaker 1: and apparently no one, no one knew, like, um, uh,
Speaker 1: maybe it was cost Us who was doing the Probably
Speaker 1: cost Us, Yeah, I think it was because he hadn't
Speaker 1: gotten Pink Eye that year, so he was still good
Speaker 1: to get to be the commentator. Um, it was cost
Speaker 1: Us in somebody else and they they didn't know apparently. Um.
Speaker 1: And I guess Dick eber Saul, who was a longtime
Speaker 1: NBC executive, Um, have you read that book Live from
Speaker 1: New York about Saturday Night Live? But I knew that
Speaker 1: he was. He took over for a little while. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he he figures big in there. And I can't remember
Speaker 1: if he did a good job or a bad job,
Speaker 1: but I have a good impression of him, so I
Speaker 1: think he did get But anyway, um, he figures big
Speaker 1: into that book. And that book is definitely worth reading.
Speaker 1: It like goes up to maybe the mid to late eighties,
Speaker 1: from the start to the mid to late eighties, and
Speaker 1: it's all just like behind the scenes interviews and gossip
Speaker 1: and oral history of of the whole thing is really interesting.
Speaker 1: But anyway, Dick Ebersol lobbied really hard to get Mohammed
Speaker 1: Ali to be the guy because it was originally going
Speaker 1: to be a vander Holy Field and holy Field actually
Speaker 1: ran it for about ten ft and then handed it
Speaker 1: off to Janet Evans. Yeah, and then Janet Evans took
Speaker 1: it up this ramp and then all of a sudden
Speaker 1: it looks like Janet Evans is going to be the
Speaker 1: one to light it, and then all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: at the top of the ramp, Mohammed Ali pops out
Speaker 1: and the face and the crowd just goes nothing like yeah,
Speaker 1: especially when he when he has it lit and he
Speaker 1: like holds it aloft and his hand is trembling from
Speaker 1: with Parkinson's trembler tremors, and um, they just are going bonkers.
Speaker 1: Was It's just like you said, It's probably the all
Speaker 1: time great Olympic moment as far as America is concerned.
Speaker 1: A few other highlights in Barcelona ninety two, Who can
Speaker 1: forget Paralympic archer Antonio Ribolo when he shot that fiery
Speaker 1: arrow that was pretty sweet. I can't believe he made
Speaker 1: it too like that, just the that the what they
Speaker 1: gambled on that, you know, he could have missed, it
Speaker 1: could have gone out and it didn't, and he made
Speaker 1: it and it lit the cauldron. It's just beautiful. Well,
Speaker 1: it actually didn't like the cauldron, but that was the
Speaker 1: please stop dashing the Olympic torch in ignition button because
Speaker 1: he can't take that chance. Uh. You know, I'll tell
Speaker 1: you what, chuck. When I form my weird niche little
Speaker 1: Olympic Torch website, it's going to be all fantasy. None
Speaker 1: of this behind the scenes trickery, grittiness. It's just going
Speaker 1: to be face value stuff. Sixty four Tokyo. When they
Speaker 1: hosted their first game, they had the Hiroshima Baby a
Speaker 1: K A. H. John Nori Sakai was born on August
Speaker 1: the day Americans dropped the nuclear bomb on Hiroshima. He
Speaker 1: was nineteen years old at the time he lit that thing.
Speaker 1: What about a soul and those cooked doves? That was rough, man,
Speaker 1: I did. I wasn't aware of that until we were
Speaker 1: researching this, were you. I don't remember that. I mean
Speaker 1: I certainly watched the games that year, but I was
Speaker 1: probably too young to understand that those doves did not
Speaker 1: make it out alive. Dude, it's yeah. I put my
Speaker 1: hand in my mouth, like, oh my god, I can't
Speaker 1: believe what I just saw. That was awful. But they
Speaker 1: so they released the doves as part of the opening
Speaker 1: ceremony and then some of the doves gathered in the
Speaker 1: cauldron and it's not funny. I don't know why I'm laughing. No,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's said, well, there's a certain element to
Speaker 1: it that's funny, but in the worst way, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean. And the three people whose job it
Speaker 1: was to like the Olympic cauld room at their torches,
Speaker 1: they did, and some of the birds didn't fly away,
Speaker 1: and you can see some of them sort of dancing
Speaker 1: in the flame. It's it's that part's awful, but that
Speaker 1: the whole idea of the thing. Is this so preposterous
Speaker 1: and its contrary to what they're trying to do with
Speaker 1: the Olympic spirit that they sacrifice some doves. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: was tough to watch. So then, um, there's one more.
Speaker 1: There's a bunch worth mentioning, but it's worth watching again.
Speaker 1: Is uh lilahammer where um stein grubin uh ski jumper
Speaker 1: skis down a ski jump seventy which is quite a
Speaker 1: few feet more than seventy. Well it's the exact same
Speaker 1: as seventy meters but in feet. Um just going some
Speaker 1: ridiculous speed with the torch that won't go out, and like,
Speaker 1: lands this jump just beautifully. That was a little nerve
Speaker 1: wracking even knowing that it didn't go out. When I
Speaker 1: was watching it the other day, I was like, don't
Speaker 1: go out, don't go out, right, yeah, because it's it
Speaker 1: looks like it could have at any moment, but no,
Speaker 1: it stayed, stayed straight. And then let's see, there's a
Speaker 1: couple more mentioning two thousand and two thousand fourteen the
Speaker 1: flame went to space, which is pretty cool. Let's not
Speaker 1: forget nineteen seventy six in Montreal and then um, it
Speaker 1: was on the concorde. Once it flew on the concorde,
Speaker 1: and I believe for the Barcelona Games. Amazing. So let's
Speaker 1: that for the Olympic torch everybody. We'll talk more about
Speaker 1: the Olympics someday when we do an episode on the Olympics.
Speaker 1: But in the meantime, I hope you enjoyed this. Uh
Speaker 1: And since I said that it's time for a listener, man,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna call this chuck check your privilege. Did you
Speaker 1: see this one? Yeah? Hey, guys, this is in reference
Speaker 1: to your WASP podcast. Great information. I love the podcast,
Speaker 1: but at the end it was almost amusing that you
Speaker 1: assume people have the means to hire a professional to
Speaker 1: remove a wasp nest from their property. I said, almost
Speaker 1: almost amusing. Equally amusing, which I guess is equally almost amusing,
Speaker 1: is the idea of fashioning a kind of trap. I
Speaker 1: don't remember that part. Did you say that? I don't know.
Speaker 1: I say a lot of things risk being stung dozens
Speaker 1: of times for what. Uh, guys, I don't think you
Speaker 1: should be shoving peta style in quotes, non lethal rhetoric
Speaker 1: down people's throats. Nay saying the killing of vermin and pest,
Speaker 1: especially when your solutions don't accommodate outside the middle class.
Speaker 1: Pretty sure there are poverty stricken individuals that love to
Speaker 1: learn and love this podcast as well. You very well
Speaker 1: could be unintentionally alienating them into thinking that they are
Speaker 1: being inhumane, when in fact they have no choice. Think
Speaker 1: bigger picture, Chuck. That is from James Huggins. I mean
Speaker 1: to do that, James, I'm sorry. I I think the
Speaker 1: overarching message was leave it alone, don't do anything to it,
Speaker 1: don't spend money. I've never paid money to have a
Speaker 1: waspice removed. Do you do you know, Chuck? I have
Speaker 1: to tell you. Just yesterday, I was challenged to live
Speaker 1: up to my own words. And there was a wasp
Speaker 1: in our screen porch and I had a fly swatter
Speaker 1: and was trying to just lightly move it out. I
Speaker 1: was like, I'm not gonna kill you. I'm not going
Speaker 1: to kill you. What that thing is? He wouldn't Number one,
Speaker 1: he wouldn't come after me. So we proved that wasps
Speaker 1: are not necessarily super aggressive like they have um a
Speaker 1: reputation for. But then he wouldn't. He also wouldn't make
Speaker 1: his way towards the open door, right. So I thought
Speaker 1: of this ingenious method. I grabbed like a little bowl,
Speaker 1: which virtually anyone on earth can afford, put the bowl
Speaker 1: over the wasp so that it was trapped between the
Speaker 1: bowl and the screen. Then I took the fly swater
Speaker 1: and I split it up between the bowl and the
Speaker 1: screen to create a cover for the bowl, and then
Speaker 1: ran that thing right out of the porch. Remove the
Speaker 1: flyswater from the bowl, and the wasp flew away like
Speaker 1: have a good day. Amazing. That's only smith that she
Speaker 1: gets like a magazine and a like a tupperware for
Speaker 1: kind of any beast works pretty well? Yeah, and that's
Speaker 1: not elite US. No, it's not like I don't disagree
Speaker 1: with James's overall message. I think it was more as delivery.
Speaker 1: That's a little you know, you know. Sure, Okay, So
Speaker 1: if you want to get in touch with us and
Speaker 1: we can, we can do what we will with your email, um,
Speaker 1: you can send it to us at stuff podcast at
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