Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to String of Turtles, the only podcast
Speaker 1: about Pepperonia prostrata, a tiny, succulent native plant that you
Speaker 1: can be growing yourself. And this podcast is entirely devoted
Speaker 1: to that plant. That is the podcast you're listening to.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Margaret Kiljoy, and that's my intro. It
Speaker 1: was so good. Why did you Why why did you
Speaker 1: lead with that? Macie? Well, I've been thinking about how
Speaker 1: I should just This is how I'm going to start
Speaker 1: pitching podcasts. Is just introduced podcast as if it's those
Speaker 1: podcasts I mean, I mean strong first pitch as that
Speaker 1: is my favorite plant playing to my audience. I'll send
Speaker 1: you I'll send you a picture of what that is
Speaker 1: James later. Yeah, please, I'm always excited to learn more
Speaker 1: about plants. Well, or you're listening to Cool People Did
Speaker 1: Cool Stuff, a twice weekly podcast about all the greatest
Speaker 1: people in history, including a String of Turtles with me
Speaker 1: today as my guest is James, who is actually not
Speaker 1: the guest but the host. The guest host, James. Everybody,
Speaker 1: I just went full late night on us. James. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I feel like I'm walking out. I'm going to sit
Speaker 1: on the sofa yeah, I mean that you should feel
Speaker 1: like you're comfortable and sitting on a sofa during this podcast. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I need to install like a podcasting sofa and that
Speaker 1: full support, and it would explain why you're wearing a
Speaker 1: three piece suit. I was surprised, I was. Yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: an American citizen now, so I don't have to It's
Speaker 1: not like it's not like a condition of retaining my passport. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm just swearing it is how I feel safe and comfortable. Yeah. So,
Speaker 1: as we've implied, James is going to be telling me
Speaker 1: about stuff, and I actually don't know what we're going
Speaker 1: to be talking about for the full proper reverse experience. James. Yeah, good,
Speaker 1: I get to surprise you. People who have listened to
Speaker 1: the other things that we've done together will be both
Speaker 1: both shocked and amazed to hear that that this one
Speaker 1: is based in Spain. Yeah, that's what I do. So
Speaker 1: I'm going to keep doing it until someone stops me.
Speaker 1: What I want to ask you, Margaret, is what do
Speaker 1: you think? What do you make of the Olympics. As
Speaker 1: a kid, I thought they were cool, and then once
Speaker 1: I started understanding politics, I learned that they are not
Speaker 1: cool because there are this massive gentrification force that um
Speaker 1: destroys entire neighborhoods and or cities every couple of years.
Speaker 1: That's what I know about the Olympics. But I also
Speaker 1: am like even as a like grouchy, I hang out
Speaker 1: with the girls in the corner of the gym class
Speaker 1: and get failing grades and paint my nails black um
Speaker 1: instead of particip opinion. Even back in my most anti
Speaker 1: sports I still kind of thought it was cool when
Speaker 1: people like spin around six times in the air on
Speaker 1: ice skates and ship. Yeah that is cool. That the
Speaker 1: ship that people do is cool. Like you said, the
Speaker 1: structure that that brings them best to do it is
Speaker 1: deeply uncool. And I think, yeah, your ark is very
Speaker 1: much like mine, except that my PhD was procerally funded
Speaker 1: by the IOC, so it was a little more acrimonious.
Speaker 1: My break up with your Olympic gates that the International
Speaker 1: Olympic Committee, the est it is the very same, based
Speaker 1: in a nice little town by Lake Juneva in Switzerland,
Speaker 1: where all the good stuff happened. Yeah, no bad stuff happened,
Speaker 1: and famously that this is because they entirely took the
Speaker 1: right side in the Second World war and just a
Speaker 1: little bit of what we're going to talk about today, right,
Speaker 1: So this is they were talking about the Olympics and
Speaker 1: why they're great, yeah, and where they're magnifficent and where
Speaker 1: there are no problems with them. These are actually a
Speaker 1: different Olympics from the Olympics you're probably thinking of. People
Speaker 1: are probably familiar with different Olympics. We have been different
Speaker 1: Olympics through time. So we're going to talk today. I think, well,
Speaker 1: I want to start actually explaining a little bit about
Speaker 1: the modern Olympics or the ioc Olympics, or the Olympics
Speaker 1: you probably saw when you're a kid on television, and
Speaker 1: those are like I think I want to defer to
Speaker 1: my friend David Goldblack, who has written a really good
Speaker 1: book on the history of the Olympic Games. It's called
Speaker 1: The Games. People should buy it. He calls them the
Speaker 1: gathering of the transnational bourgeoisie, which I think is pretty
Speaker 1: right on. They so the Olympics have this claim right
Speaker 1: that they're like handed down from a classical tradition. M
Speaker 1: that did the idea that it comes directly from ancient Greece.
Speaker 1: To where where are they doing it next? Paris or
Speaker 1: wherever l A hopefully not so. This is kind of
Speaker 1: baked into one Olympic law. But it's not really true, right,
Speaker 1: Like a lot of them, the stuff they talk about
Speaker 1: in ancient Greece isn't really true. A lot of it
Speaker 1: actually draws from much more recent events, one of which
Speaker 1: is a Cotsworld Olympics, which takes place in a place
Speaker 1: where I grew up. Okay what no, I I had
Speaker 1: don't even understand cards swallow Okay, yes, yeah British. Is
Speaker 1: this a sex thing? Yeah, the older the old cock
Speaker 1: Sword Olympic. No, it's the con sort of place where
Speaker 1: I lived. Nice place that's a sheet. This is like
Speaker 1: cock Fosters. When I was a subway in London, I
Speaker 1: had a hard time. Everyone knew I was the American
Speaker 1: because I would giggle every time the nice British lady
Speaker 1: the robot would say, next up is cock Fosters anyway. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is like Lord Hereford's Knob. Where about like a
Speaker 1: real place you know, who's the tourist, just like well
Speaker 1: worn path to take a picture with the sign Lord
Speaker 1: Hereford's Knob, and like two very tired people who just
Speaker 1: have to deal with that ship every time they get
Speaker 1: have to give their address to someone on the phone.
Speaker 1: The other thing I found out was my publisher tour
Speaker 1: t o R. I didn't know that that was a word.
Speaker 1: Went I went to Yeah, yeah, darn more like you
Speaker 1: do the ten tours and you go and go around him. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I went to one of them. I think Mr Avalon
Speaker 1: was maybe based on one we were in I don't know, Devon,
Speaker 1: England somewhere now. It's like the witchy town in West Center, England,
Speaker 1: the witchy town in west at Stratford, No, West Center England.
Speaker 1: It's like, y'all Salem oh um, it's like where all
Speaker 1: the touristy witchy ship is. You know, Well that's not
Speaker 1: what yeah anyway, Yeah, so yeah. Codswort Olympics, which predate
Speaker 1: the modern Olympics, take place where I grew up, and people,
Speaker 1: if you've heard of them, you'll heard of him because
Speaker 1: one of the events you shin kicking, which is that
Speaker 1: means something completely different. No, No, you put your hands
Speaker 1: on the other person's shoulders and kick the ship out
Speaker 1: of each other's shins and give up. Yeah, yields it
Speaker 1: falls over here. That's the most classic drunk game in
Speaker 1: the world. Much of English culture can be understood, is like,
Speaker 1: that's the most classic drunk game in the world. I
Speaker 1: don't know if people if you want to know exactly
Speaker 1: where I'm from and how I used to speak before
Speaker 1: I went to university. If you watch that that that
Speaker 1: documentary about cheese rolling on Netflix, you're familiar with cheese rolling. No,
Speaker 1: the fact that there's a documentary on Netflix. So they
Speaker 1: roll the cheese down the hill? Do they make the
Speaker 1: cheese wheels by rolling them? Then you chase? It's quite
Speaker 1: literally literal Cooper's Hill. You just it's I mean, it's
Speaker 1: not fucking about. It's a proper hill. Okay, you're gonna
Speaker 1: lose your footing at some point, but the key it's
Speaker 1: just to kind of let it roll and go kind
Speaker 1: of come down the hill just flailing and aim for
Speaker 1: the cheese when you get there. Fantastic. I mean a
Speaker 1: lot of people get very grievously injured, like people have
Speaker 1: life altering injuries. All right. I've been listening to the
Speaker 1: Terry Pratchett books again, and I swear to God all
Speaker 1: of the weird fantasy made up just England. I remember
Speaker 1: one time I interviewed Alan Moore about this thing, and
Speaker 1: I was asking him how he felt about v for Vendetta,
Speaker 1: and he was like, look, it's an American parable, the
Speaker 1: movie version, so they should have said it in America,
Speaker 1: and so setting in England because you Americans think we
Speaker 1: probably still have giants or whatever here. And I couldn't
Speaker 1: tell him he was wrong. And the fact that you
Speaker 1: have a cheese rolling hill in cock swallow codswallow, cops
Speaker 1: fold Cotswold. Yeah, okay, so that's that's on me. That
Speaker 1: one's on me. I'm sorry, Okay. Yeah, this is a
Speaker 1: very twee version of English. And it's like the cops
Speaker 1: was are full of people who like have a ship
Speaker 1: tone of money and I want to pretend that it's
Speaker 1: the eighteenth century, okay, and and people who have lived
Speaker 1: there and are in agriculture or whatever. But yeah, it
Speaker 1: presents a very tweet version of Englishness, which it packages
Speaker 1: for foreigners, you know, like there were bust tours of
Speaker 1: Americans all the time coming through villages near where I
Speaker 1: grew up. And it's not it's not all of what
Speaker 1: Englishness is anyway. The Olympics have always claimed that they
Speaker 1: unite the youth of the world right and promote peace
Speaker 1: through mutual understanding, acceptance of the rules and fair play.
Speaker 1: But in reality they really celebrate the shared interests of
Speaker 1: global elite with enough time and money to travel around
Speaker 1: the world before commercial airlines existed, and then they take
Speaker 1: part in events like modern pentathlon, which, if you're not
Speaker 1: a fan of marger, includes fencing, horse riding, and shooting
Speaker 1: in addition to running and swimming. I see that rules
Speaker 1: I have known. I know those are all bougie things,
Speaker 1: but they also are rule. So yeah, I did a
Speaker 1: trial for Olympic Modern pentathlon when I was younger, and
Speaker 1: it's fun. There's lots of things you can't do in fencing,
Speaker 1: which makes it kind of cucked in my opinion. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but yeah it was fun. Not not for me, not
Speaker 1: the way when it's fen my life. But there was
Speaker 1: a while there where if you were good at exercising,
Speaker 1: they were just trying to find people who could who could,
Speaker 1: Like Britain had this weird thing for a while where
Speaker 1: they talk to the Olympic medals by just being like, hey,
Speaker 1: you're good exercising, can you go on a horse right bucket?
Speaker 1: Like now? Yeah, okay, so by the it makes shin kicking,
Speaker 1: you know. I never really got a shin kicking you
Speaker 1: want to try shooting off a horse, But yeah, that
Speaker 1: sounds better. If they bought the shin kicking back, I
Speaker 1: think I'd be more in favor of the IOC, just
Speaker 1: like recruit people who have abnormally bony shins. Yeah. So,
Speaker 1: by the early nineteen thirties, Olympics have become an international institution,
Speaker 1: but they continue to enforce a rule about amateurism. So
Speaker 1: the amateurism rule holds the Olympians can't be professional athletes
Speaker 1: and they must not receive a financial reward for practicing
Speaker 1: their sport. So this rule has its has its roots
Speaker 1: really in the invention of sport. So, like we were
Speaker 1: talking about cheese rolling, Right, what's sport does is it
Speaker 1: takes play and then it contains it like both physically
Speaker 1: and within a set of rules. Right, if people want
Speaker 1: to read about this, that the kind of the classic
Speaker 1: Texas Homo Ludin's And this happens in nineteenth century England, right,
Speaker 1: and very quickly after sports like football and redby first
Speaker 1: football and rugby have to deviate from each other. Right,
Speaker 1: they started the same sport. Okay, there's a there's like
Speaker 1: a myth about the guy who invented rugby. It's not true.
Speaker 1: It became possible for teams around the country to compete
Speaker 1: against each other before this, Like one town or school
Speaker 1: might have its own set of rules and they play
Speaker 1: against the town next door or something. You can see
Speaker 1: this in like folk football matches, where yeah, they're cool,
Speaker 1: Like there's a football in between two towns and they
Speaker 1: have to kick it into other town basically, and like that,
Speaker 1: there are very basic rules. Go ahead. The sport that
Speaker 1: I play, it's called bella garth, and then bella garth
Speaker 1: you get foam swords and you get each other with
Speaker 1: the swords, but not in the head. And there's all
Speaker 1: kinds of really elaborate rules, and the the sports split
Speaker 1: and I don't remember which direction I when someone's gonna
Speaker 1: be really upset about this. Dagger here is a very
Speaker 1: similar sport. Dagger here is where you get foam swords
Speaker 1: and then you hit each other with the swords, but
Speaker 1: not in the head. It's the same sport, but there's
Speaker 1: different rules, and it's called cross gaming. When a dagger
Speaker 1: here field goes to a dagger to bella garth field,
Speaker 1: and vice versa. So I'm very familiar with the difficulties
Speaker 1: presented in learning. You know exactly how why the foam
Speaker 1: tip of the sword has to be um, whether or
Speaker 1: not there's resurrection spells like I'm I feel the rugby
Speaker 1: football problem that writing into. Previous to that, see like
Speaker 1: folk football had a very simile set of rules like
Speaker 1: this's that's one. I forget where it is somewhere in
Speaker 1: the West Country. Whether the only rules you were allowed
Speaker 1: to stab your opponent again, And that's a problem them
Speaker 1: and dagger here. I don't think these people were dealing
Speaker 1: in foam daggers that would see you. Okay, okay, So
Speaker 1: but once their rules, who agreed to right, you can
Speaker 1: play anyone, You can play anyone from anywhere, so very quickly,
Speaker 1: this allows people of different classes to play each other,
Speaker 1: and so very quickly people who are in a upper
Speaker 1: class pedition start to fence off from playing sports against
Speaker 1: people who are not right. So this distinction emerges between
Speaker 1: what are called gentlemen and what are called players gender police.
Speaker 1: For the most part, right it's men. The Olympics with
Speaker 1: a gentleman and amateurs. People wealthy enough to take time
Speaker 1: off work for travel and training work because you could
Speaker 1: afford the time and travel weren't welcome at the Olympics,
Speaker 1: and you can see these rules being used to police
Speaker 1: not just class, but also race. You're probably familiar with
Speaker 1: Jim's Thorpe. That's the name I've heard before, and I'll
Speaker 1: remember once to tell me. He's an Indigenous man and
Speaker 1: role member of the Second Fox Nation and he's probably
Speaker 1: the greatest athlete America has produced. Okay, so his first time,
Speaker 1: he went to one of these residential schools, right he
Speaker 1: went to Carlisle Indian School. He was allegedly walking past
Speaker 1: where some kids were training high jump one day. I
Speaker 1: wanted to try it, and still in his school clothes,
Speaker 1: he beat all of them. Twelve. He dominated the pentathlon
Speaker 1: and decathlon at the Olympics. He however, had his medal
Speaker 1: removed because he played semi pro baseball in college. So
Speaker 1: he's doing this is his sixteen sport, rightly five But
Speaker 1: before that he got some money for playing semi for
Speaker 1: a baseball So no one wanted to compete against this guy. No,
Speaker 1: he is he is like a gigger chad, to put
Speaker 1: in modern parlance, like he's it's really sad. Actually, Jim
Speaker 1: thought wrote a book about the Olympics. This guy loved
Speaker 1: what the Olympics were supposed to be and like wanted
Speaker 1: this chance to show himself to the world and improve
Speaker 1: him every bit. They're equal and their superior in fifteen
Speaker 1: different sports, right, And he did that and then they
Speaker 1: were like, now, fuck you dude, you can't you can't
Speaker 1: have your medal. So he went on to play pro
Speaker 1: baseball and then also pro football because he hadn't played
Speaker 1: enough sports. So like, yeah, there's there's not that he
Speaker 1: was like before Bo Jackson and without a shoe contract sadly,
Speaker 1: but his medals were reinstated, like not that long ago.
Speaker 1: The IOC gave his family his meles back, but he
Speaker 1: died not having had his medals taken away, right. And
Speaker 1: you can see this in other instances with other especially
Speaker 1: with indigenous athletes. Actually the them always falling foul of
Speaker 1: little professionals professionalism rules because it wasn't there was one
Speaker 1: acceptance and professionalism rule, and it was for fencing coaches.
Speaker 1: Fencing coaches could compete, okay, because it's a class thing, right,
Speaker 1: Like the fencing is that that's what it was about.
Speaker 1: It is about people that they didn't want to play
Speaker 1: with and people who they wanted to play with, so well,
Speaker 1: that sucks. Yeah, it was shipped actually, which is why,
Speaker 1: as we're going to find out, there were some other
Speaker 1: Olympics which were considerably better. The Olympics didn't want athletes
Speaker 1: like Jim Thorpe because it dispproved a lot of what
Speaker 1: the Olympics were supposed to be about, which is kind
Speaker 1: of leugenic. But Workers Sport did a welcome athletes from
Speaker 1: slams and sworkshops around the world, and retally they would
Speaker 1: run faster, jump, higher, lift heavier than their boys counterparts.
Speaker 1: Like everything else on the left, it broke up very
Speaker 1: quickly into multiple factions. And yeah, it's shocking, isn't it.
Speaker 1: When is when? And where is this? This is the
Speaker 1: first couple of decades of the twentieth century. Okay, so
Speaker 1: you'll see them mostly like like post Russian Revolution and
Speaker 1: you have like a you have a sports International, you
Speaker 1: have like it's Workers Sport was huge. It's hard for
Speaker 1: me to convey to people like how big this was.
Speaker 1: You'll get like, so for instance, um, if we look
Speaker 1: at the Workers Olympics, you had a hundred thousand people
Speaker 1: competing in a quarter of a million watching. Jesus, these
Speaker 1: are vast events at one of the Spartaki Ads. I
Speaker 1: think it was a Sparkay. So you have the workers
Speaker 1: Olympics with the Socialist of Spartaki adds, a communist right
Speaker 1: like Spartacus. Yeah, the Spartaki adds. I think it was
Speaker 1: at the Spartaki yad. They they had this for the
Speaker 1: closing ceremony. They constructed a giant tower like look at
Speaker 1: several stories high, like paper and cardboard. Tower collapsed it
Speaker 1: because they had written global Finance Capital on it. So
Speaker 1: the closing ceremony was collapsing it and setting it on fire. Rules. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was pretty cool stuff. Actually, it's it's said, we
Speaker 1: don't have this anymore. And so one of the primary
Speaker 1: defenders of this amateurism, right, it's class police and a
Speaker 1: sports this dude called Avery Brandage. Every brandage first headed
Speaker 1: up the United States Olympic Committee and then the International
Speaker 1: Olympic Committee. And it's around this particularly odious bureaucrat that
Speaker 1: I'm going to sort of start our story today because
Speaker 1: you see in nineteen thirty one, the same year, acquarter
Speaker 1: of a million socialists in Germany watched that fake tower
Speaker 1: get pulled to the ground and burned in the closing
Speaker 1: ceremony of the Workers Olympics. The International Olympic Committee met
Speaker 1: in Barcelona to see who was going to hold the
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty six Olympic Games. Okay, ten days before they met,
Speaker 1: Spain had declared a republic. When they decided to meet there,
Speaker 1: it was a monarchy, soas military regime had collapsed, they
Speaker 1: step down and a left liberal republic had been constituted.
Speaker 1: Crowds of working class people had welcomed in the streets,
Speaker 1: and Francesque Massier had taken the opportunity presented to declare Catalonia,
Speaker 1: the nation of which Bathlona is the capital. Independent. In
Speaker 1: the weeks that follow Catalonia haven't quite left Spain, but
Speaker 1: gained significant autonomy and its assembly. The estapp Catalet joined
Speaker 1: the Republican Arty of Luish Compounds and the Lopping Your
Speaker 1: Group to form a new party called the Republican Left
Speaker 1: of Catalonia catal initials e r C. It basically became
Speaker 1: a popular front combining a really broad range of liberals
Speaker 1: and leftists within Catalonia. Within Catalonia, Yeah, but the popular
Speaker 1: front policy doesn't come about a little later with the
Speaker 1: comm in turn, but this was for the most part,
Speaker 1: most of the popular front. So obviously the International Olympic
Speaker 1: Committee looks at this and it's a giant disaster for them. Right,
Speaker 1: for the working people of Catalonia is a huge win.
Speaker 1: But uh, because they're like, no, but we want to
Speaker 1: like run around and ride horses with rich people, and
Speaker 1: these people want to run around and ride horses on
Speaker 1: rich people, and so it's like they're not really Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's actually like your your dagger here. Yeah, it doesn't
Speaker 1: much like that. Yeah, it's a small difference, just just
Speaker 1: one't work. Yeah, prepositions whatever, Yeah, yeah, don't start. So
Speaker 1: there were five counts to one marquee at this meeting, right,
Speaker 1: a marquee. I don't quite know where they say it
Speaker 1: on the hierarchy, but it's as yeah, I always forget.
Speaker 1: It's someone whose job is being born. That's the most
Speaker 1: distinguishing element of their life. Those people shouldn't been making
Speaker 1: decisions for us anyway. They were supposed to vote on
Speaker 1: whether games will be held, right, and they probably did vote,
Speaker 1: but the International Olympic Committee took the very strange step
Speaker 1: of deciding there wasn't a quorum, which they hadn't done before,
Speaker 1: even when there were fewer attendees. Okay, this this specific ship,
Speaker 1: like this vote is months of my life in an
Speaker 1: archive in Switzerland, which you know, whatever. Wait, but but
Speaker 1: then who decides because the democracy failed? And then one
Speaker 1: person was like no, never mind, there wasn't quorum, Like well, yeah,
Speaker 1: so that's what I would love to tell you. That
Speaker 1: what I have been looking for. So you have the
Speaker 1: airs and you have the various like international Olympic committees reporting,
Speaker 1: So it's someone in the structure of the International Olympic Committee, right,
Speaker 1: I decided we need to vote by telegram. It's dead
Speaker 1: And I've looked at these telegrams extensively, and I don't
Speaker 1: want to say it's I can't prove it true or
Speaker 1: they would have written a boo about it, but I'm
Speaker 1: pretty sure they were like, now we can't have the
Speaker 1: Olympics here, like we need to, like we need to
Speaker 1: do another vote because they've they've voted the wrong way
Speaker 1: this time. Yeah, because all these parts people didn't come.
Speaker 1: But they were like, no, we're not coming, like these
Speaker 1: people are like having a revolution, Like I'm not going there.
Speaker 1: I mean, it was a it turned out to be
Speaker 1: a rough time to be I mean a nice time
Speaker 1: in some ways. But nineteen thirty six pain Catalonian Barcelona
Speaker 1: was like also a rough place, you know, yeah, well
Speaker 1: there was a good place for sports. We're going to
Speaker 1: find out, Okay. So whatever the process, they decided to
Speaker 1: pick a more stable democracy instead, and so they gave
Speaker 1: the nine six Olympics to Vimar, Germany. Yeah, which actually maybe, uh,
Speaker 1: do you know what what won't collapse into a genocidal
Speaker 1: fascist regime A pile of turtles, that's right, turtles all
Speaker 1: the way down. Yeah, here's an advert for turtles. We're back.
Speaker 1: Have you enjoyed those turtles? So in the years that
Speaker 1: followed ninety one, Margaret, some some stuff happened in Vimar Germany.
Speaker 1: Some things occurred. It's stopped being Vimar Germany. I feel like, yeah,
Speaker 1: that was the main That was the main thing that happened.
Speaker 1: Was it stopping via my Germany? They went from interesting
Speaker 1: and good into interesting and bad. Yeah. Yeah, that's a
Speaker 1: that's one of the most distinct sumations of German history
Speaker 1: in the nineties. X. Yeah, yeah, that's all you need
Speaker 1: to know about it. Everyone, we've done now, Okay, So
Speaker 1: Catalonia actually remained pretty stable under the earc relations in
Speaker 1: Madrid got much worse than nineteen thirty three when the Data,
Speaker 1: which is a Catholic right wing party took power in
Speaker 1: Madrid and began to crack down on Catalan autonomy and
Speaker 1: social progress. And they were extremely progressive. Right, we're going
Speaker 1: to talk about what the sports, but like the legalized abortion,
Speaker 1: you could divorce with no particular preconditions if you wanted to.
Speaker 1: They were massive on literacy, and we're going to see
Speaker 1: really big on eradicating tuberculosis as well. Okay, is this
Speaker 1: the Spanish Republic or is this Catalonian specific This is
Speaker 1: Catalonia specifically, So like throughout the Spanish Republic, Catalonia has
Speaker 1: this left wing liberal left progressive party, and in Madrid
Speaker 1: they have liberal left progressive super Judge for two years
Speaker 1: and then liberal left Progressive and then when the liberal
Speaker 1: left regressive party get elected the second time, or party
Speaker 1: sorts of Popular Front elected the second time, the civil
Speaker 1: war begins because the army ain't having that ship, which
Speaker 1: if you want to hear more about, we did a
Speaker 1: whole episode on that Jamie loft Us last year which
Speaker 1: I read James's work to do a good chunk of
Speaker 1: thank you for being one of the least dozen people
Speaker 1: who Yeah, and some of them are not related to me,
Speaker 1: I say, because I've given it to my family. But
Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure they haven't cracked it because yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: but they own it. Yeah, the same thing. Okay, So
Speaker 1: relations between the anarchists and the e f C were
Speaker 1: not super great at this time. The e C. The
Speaker 1: anarchist didn't like the government. Yeah, it was. It was
Speaker 1: strange stuff. Well that this definitely ends with the anarchists
Speaker 1: being partly with the government for a bit, It's true, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I know that the go ahead. Yeah, then ends
Speaker 1: with them are getting England, which that will happen. Uh.
Speaker 1: So it wasn't a call uncommon for anarchist cops and
Speaker 1: high guns acting on part of employers to get into
Speaker 1: shootouts in the raval working class neighborhood they called the
Speaker 1: Bardi Chenz, which means Chinatown, not because there was any
Speaker 1: particular concentration of Asia or Chinese people there, but because
Speaker 1: they've seen gangster films about Chicago's Chinatown and figured they
Speaker 1: had kind of the same vibe, which they kind of
Speaker 1: love for them. So one way, the Catalan government did
Speaker 1: try and reach out to the anarchists working class was
Speaker 1: through sport. Okay, Both anarchists and liberals, as well as
Speaker 1: a smaller socialists and communist factions, had a history of
Speaker 1: organized sports in Barcelona. The Catalan Olympic Committee predated the
Speaker 1: Spanish one, and Catalan teams had helped to advance, accord
Speaker 1: to Catlin nationalism wall around Europe. But the e f
Speaker 1: c U sport kind of differently. It wasn't about like
Speaker 1: elite sport. It wasn't about like sending your national team
Speaker 1: of like sporting freaks somewhere else. It was using sport
Speaker 1: to bring working people into its its Catalan project, right, Okay,
Speaker 1: Anakist sports slightly different. Anarchist sport had always praised itself
Speaker 1: more in terms of public health. They were bigger to
Speaker 1: teach your kids to swim so they wouldn't drown, And
Speaker 1: they were really big into the eradication of tuberculosis. Actually,
Speaker 1: the anarchists, Yeah, yeah, fun tuberculosis. Yeah, let's the official
Speaker 1: stance of this podcast. That's all of cool Zone media
Speaker 1: were an anti fuberculosis, which still kills a bunch of people.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I had no idea it kills so many
Speaker 1: people just because of different levels of access to care
Speaker 1: found not in certain parts of the world anyway. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's bastard in its way. I have to get a
Speaker 1: chest X ray every time I wanted to teach at
Speaker 1: New University, okay, because you have to pass the tuberculos
Speaker 1: test to teach in California. And I guess that's fair. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I've been vaccinated, so I don't pass the test. See. Instead,
Speaker 1: they're just like take some of these rays and you
Speaker 1: know you're not. You're looking at it like if I
Speaker 1: get cancer, please to them. Okay, so um. And it
Speaker 1: supports also about this idea of the three eights, right,
Speaker 1: which I'm sure you've talked about before. I can't remember
Speaker 1: the three I don't think so okay lost tress or
Speaker 1: just the three eights is like three hours for work,
Speaker 1: three hours for work, eight hours for work, yeahs for
Speaker 1: like sleeping, and then eight hours for playing self improvements
Speaker 1: of education. These guys are fiercely educated, like the Catalan
Speaker 1: anarchists are amazing like autodidacts. They're reading like all the
Speaker 1: Their theory comes from working people educating themselves in each other, right,
Speaker 1: and they're super big on speaking Esperanto, yeah, which yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't think we've spoken about this before, but it's
Speaker 1: so cool. They're like, well, the thing that's holding back
Speaker 1: the global working classes kind of talk to each other.
Speaker 1: So we've gotta learn Esperanto, and and so they would
Speaker 1: teach themselves esperanto. The only person I've met who told
Speaker 1: me that he spoke esperanto was the Dutch squatter lawyer
Speaker 1: who wore a like huge fur coat and was super gay.
Speaker 1: At like every squad action he ruled. He was always
Speaker 1: like the police liaison and he would just like go
Speaker 1: up and talk to the cops, probably not in Esperanto
Speaker 1: because it's the working class language. Yeah, you shouldn't done.
Speaker 1: He could have just drive it out. Yeah anyway. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So the two e f C and anarchist concepts of
Speaker 1: sport met in this thing called popular sport, which is
Speaker 1: kind of like the popular Front, right, Okay, it's not
Speaker 1: the socialist and workers Socialist workers sport was pretty much
Speaker 1: limited to socialists. Communist spark tackiads are for communists, right,
Speaker 1: popular sport the idea was for everyone, and the idea
Speaker 1: was for people just to get healthy. Have found it
Speaker 1: like this is a time in the thirties where people
Speaker 1: going like are dying very quickly because of the jobs
Speaker 1: they are doing, right, Like, it's Barcelona is a very
Speaker 1: industrial town. Catalonia is more industrial than the rest of Spain,
Speaker 1: and their jobs are killing them. Okay, were they shin kicking? Yeah?
Speaker 1: That was the shin kicking factory. Really, it's a short career, rock. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's not as short as you are once your shins
Speaker 1: get kicked off, I guess. Oh yeah, bang my gong.
Speaker 1: Things weren't really going so well in Berlin, so real
Speaker 1: history buffs may be aware that the Fimar Republic did
Speaker 1: not in fact make it. Instead, the country was under
Speaker 1: the increasingly ironclad fist of Madison Cawthorne's favorite author, Adolf Hitler.
Speaker 1: He used to be my fucking politician where used to live?
Speaker 1: Oh god, yeah, okay, well I'm glad he's not anymore. Yeah. Sorry.
Speaker 1: Despite this dramatic pivot for Germany, the IOC saw no
Speaker 1: reason to take the games away, okay, which is like
Speaker 1: such an interesting inversion, right, because they show up at
Speaker 1: a monarchy and they're like, whoa, whoa, whoa. I don't
Speaker 1: know about this democracy ship. That's a little messy. Let's
Speaker 1: go to that democracy and then that democracy becomes an autocracy,
Speaker 1: and they're like, that's that's shure, that's fine. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: called the trains run on time famously, so it's fine,
Speaker 1: which they didn't but no, no, yeah, but that's it's
Speaker 1: it's more about what we tell ourselves, isn't it. Across
Speaker 1: the world, people decided that taking an international event which
Speaker 1: claimed to be about fraternity and fair play to a
Speaker 1: regime that explicitly about anti semitism and fascism wasn't a
Speaker 1: good idea actually, m and so this boycott movement begins
Speaker 1: to coalesce in the United States. It's really cool. Actually,
Speaker 1: it brings together like liberal Catholics, Jewish groups, Communists, and most,
Speaker 1: if not all, of the black press and black political organizations. Okay,
Speaker 1: it really coalesces these these groups in in a way
Speaker 1: that hadn't they hadn't done before. And in the U
Speaker 1: S they're very very nearly succeeded in achieving a boyco Actually,
Speaker 1: the US very nearly boycotted the Olympics, and if the
Speaker 1: U S had, like I've looked at British Cabinet papers
Speaker 1: about this, Britain was like by Olympics for an American
Speaker 1: thing in two. L A had hosted the olymp picks
Speaker 1: and like it was amazing. It was very l A.
Speaker 1: The Olympic village was patrolled by cowboys and funded by
Speaker 1: real estate speculators, which is the most l A thing. Right.
Speaker 1: The pentathlon is now no more swords. You just have
Speaker 1: to shoot the guns wall on the horses, you know.
Speaker 1: General MacArthur competed in the modern pentathlon earlier Olympics, but
Speaker 1: with just qualifacts. He was using a handgun so large
Speaker 1: that they couldn't tell if he'd shot a good grouping
Speaker 1: or just destroyed the target. Rules again, Yeah, it was
Speaker 1: kind of a chad move. Just the shotgun. Fucky, you're
Speaker 1: just turning up with a hand cannon and yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: taking the whole target ten feet backwards every time. So
Speaker 1: this is where our boy Every brandage comes in, right,
Speaker 1: every brand age leads to don't boycott movement. I guess, okay,
Speaker 1: it's I don't think he went into the let's go
Speaker 1: to the Olympics. Nine Nazi Germany things an anti sem
Speaker 1: might be. He sure as funk came out as one. Okay.
Speaker 1: He becomes convinced that he's being taken down by a
Speaker 1: Jewish communist plot that that's a quote from him. He
Speaker 1: which is I think it used to be able to
Speaker 1: say in an interview to the newspapers and just still
Speaker 1: become chair of the International Olympic Committee later. I'm just
Speaker 1: laughing as the thing that is always funny is not
Speaker 1: the right world, but I'm gonna use it. Funny about
Speaker 1: anti Semitism is that it's it's Schrodinger's capitalist you know,
Speaker 1: like the Jewish person is either a capitalist or a communist,
Speaker 1: whichever one you hate. That's what they are. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: Sing is a bad guy. Yeah. So to find out
Speaker 1: what was going on in Germany, every brand, a dude
Speaker 1: who didn't speak German decided to take a fact finding
Speaker 1: tour around Nazi Germany accompanied by Nazi Germans. It's shocking,
Speaker 1: pure unfiltered truth. Yeah. He just went in there like
Speaker 1: like so many cringey journalists, you try and do that.
Speaker 1: I can't. So through his trans eighty discussions translated by
Speaker 1: his Nazi mind, he didn't see any red flags, shockingly,
Speaker 1: and he became a strong supporter of keeping politics out
Speaker 1: of sport, which is always a way of moting the
Speaker 1: status quare right. It's always bullshit in Europe. The Olympic
Speaker 1: movement didn't really bother with reaching out to like national
Speaker 1: Olympic committees that were all run by counts and marquees
Speaker 1: and things, but they just got on with taking their
Speaker 1: alternative setting up an alternative. So I realized that we
Speaker 1: are like two thousand words in now, but this is
Speaker 1: where we give us to talk about the thing that
Speaker 1: we're talking about. To say, the thing that we're talking about, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's called the Popular Olympics. We touched on it in
Speaker 1: the Spanish Civil War episodes, so I'm really excited to
Speaker 1: learn more about it. Chess and yeah, there was no
Speaker 1: shin kicking, there was human human tower building. I love
Speaker 1: that we're like thirty minutes in, here's what we're talking about.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, this is this is my like perpetual lot
Speaker 1: as a recovering academic. That's where you're like, I'm reading
Speaker 1: all about these autodiet acts. They're so like, I know,
Speaker 1: if I know one thing, I know that James is
Speaker 1: not about to compliment academia. I know that it can
Speaker 1: fuck off. But as I did for me, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know what you shouldn't abandon and walk away from
Speaker 1: after after ten years of wasting your life turtles. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they don't abandon the turtle. Because I've been thinking about this,
Speaker 1: and I've been thinking about how it really is a
Speaker 1: new year and it's time for a new sponsor. Here
Speaker 1: are cool people did cool stuff. And I'm not gonna
Speaker 1: stop loving potatoes. I'm not gonna stop growing potatoes badly,
Speaker 1: but turtles. What if? My what if my Instagram turning
Speaker 1: message in box was full of memes about turtles instead
Speaker 1: of memes about potatoes. I'm tired of the potato memes.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry. Videos Watching turtles eat food is one of
Speaker 1: the most beautiful things on this planet. You know, they
Speaker 1: also do eat potatoes. As soon as I oh, I
Speaker 1: told someone I was going to do this and they
Speaker 1: were like, and they immediately sent me a meme oft
Speaker 1: potato and I'm like, that's that counts. This does warm
Speaker 1: my heart. I stopped in a bike race wants to
Speaker 1: rescue a turtle hero. It was upside down. He won
Speaker 1: the real that at the end they gave you an award. Now, yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't think you've met bike people, Margaret and hit
Speaker 1: their shins themselves. No, no, they said that organization. It's
Speaker 1: not given me any woods. I turned out their name
Speaker 1: was extremely racist, and it's probably well let's let's let's
Speaker 1: hear from the turtles. We're back, and yeah, turtle wax
Speaker 1: made some turtles. So in Europe, as I said, right,
Speaker 1: they they had a little conference actually in Paris in
Speaker 1: April of nineteen thirty six, and this conference welcomed people
Speaker 1: from the workers Sport movement who actually weren't going to
Speaker 1: Germany because Germany was in the process of violently suppressing
Speaker 1: any workers movements. Yeah, Jewish groups who weren't going to Germany.
Speaker 1: They don't think we have to explain that one. Anti
Speaker 1: fascists similarly, and some genuinely concerned liberals, like there were
Speaker 1: a few liberals who were like, yeah, it doesn't seem right. Uh,
Speaker 1: something up with those Germans, especially the Nazi Germans. They
Speaker 1: all meet in Paris at this confidence international conference with
Speaker 1: the respect of the Olympic ideal, which it's very clear
Speaker 1: that they know that the Olympic ideal is bullshit because
Speaker 1: they write about it being bullshit before and after. But
Speaker 1: they they're quite smart in being like, hey, you're not
Speaker 1: doing the thing you said you would do, Like we're
Speaker 1: going to call you out of the ship activists never
Speaker 1: a change. It was I think quite smart and I
Speaker 1: think it probably Yeah, it brings in some liberals who
Speaker 1: who may have not wanted to play with the anarchists otherwise,
Speaker 1: So in April they come to the enimous decision. Instead
Speaker 1: the Catalans, the people who wanted to host the games anyway,
Speaker 1: had all the stadia to do it, they should host
Speaker 1: the games. That's right, Yeah, it does. The problem is
Speaker 1: it's April, and it's not possible to do anything in
Speaker 1: Spain in August because it's not a month that people work,
Speaker 1: and that is a good thing. But they yeah, you
Speaker 1: take August off. It's not working, is good, not being
Speaker 1: productive to capitalism. It is a way to spend your
Speaker 1: time that is laudable. And so they have to do
Speaker 1: it in a summer. So they're going to do it
Speaker 1: in July, right, They want to get there ahead of
Speaker 1: the Berlin Games, so that gives them three months to
Speaker 1: organized Olympiad, which sports fans will know it's not really long.
Speaker 1: So by this time the Popular Front policy of the
Speaker 1: Soviet Union in the comment Tern had resulted in alliance
Speaker 1: of leftists and Borgia liberals against fasciston By May a
Speaker 1: Popular Front coalition of leftists and anti fascist parties helped
Speaker 1: power in France, Spain and Catalonia, so they all came
Speaker 1: together to support the games. So normally at the Olympics,
Speaker 1: nations compete for prowess, right at this Olympics they co operated.
Speaker 1: So Spain and France paid three hundred thousand Pacentos, Catalonia
Speaker 1: a hundred thousand. And the facilities were already there. They've
Speaker 1: been used for the World's Fair, which is another gathering
Speaker 1: of the transnational bourgeoisie. Yeah, and some really really weird
Speaker 1: racist stuff happened at those, which will talk about another time.
Speaker 1: So they had the facilities already, They had a hotel
Speaker 1: which they renamed the Hotel Olympic, and they started refitting
Speaker 1: it to house as many people as possible. They want
Speaker 1: to read a little bit from one of the letters
Speaker 1: they sent out trying to recruit people, right, they were
Speaker 1: very quickly they were like, uh, this this is big.
Speaker 1: Then we have to have to people who can actually compete.
Speaker 1: So it is necessary to give a practical demonstration of
Speaker 1: the international anti fascist sport. And it is just this
Speaker 1: that the People's Olympiad is going to do. Popular Old
Speaker 1: people's like the same thing. I prefer popular actually the
Speaker 1: organizing committing one of their letters. So what they're trying
Speaker 1: to do here is they're trying to show the ability
Speaker 1: of the Popular Front to organize and the strength of
Speaker 1: the Popular Front, right, Like we're not just a few
Speaker 1: like old socialists men like smoking pipes in rooms talking
Speaker 1: about a popular front, Like we have thousands of young
Speaker 1: people who will kick your ass when we when we
Speaker 1: do a war. Yeah, oh I never even thought about that.
Speaker 1: How it's like a flexing. It's like no, no, no,
Speaker 1: you don't understand. There's a big war coming between fascism
Speaker 1: and anti fascism, and we're gonna win. Yes, we will
Speaker 1: take Like I mean, if you look at many of
Speaker 1: the modern Olympic traditions, right the opening ceremony with the flags,
Speaker 1: the national anthems have done when the medal is awarded,
Speaker 1: these are creations of Carl D. M a Nazi German
Speaker 1: like and it's very specifically to be like we we
Speaker 1: are the alphas here, we will kill you. They last. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they didn't win, not win famously there for two in
Speaker 1: World Wars. So the poor stets, the the infrastructure of
Speaker 1: the games communicates a message, right, you've got Beijing had
Speaker 1: a bird's nest. Berlin had a bell tower with this
Speaker 1: bell that summoned the youth of the world on it
Speaker 1: engraved in it. I told you l A had the
Speaker 1: Olympic Village controlled by cowboys and sold off by real
Speaker 1: estate developers. But but Lind's Olympic Village is kind of interesting.
Speaker 1: How did the volunteer pilots of the Condor Legion? Do
Speaker 1: you know the Condor Legion, O Margaret, they're the ones
Speaker 1: who ended up bomb in northern Spain during the Civil War.
Speaker 1: They are, Yeah, they're the first. That's not true to
Speaker 1: say that they're the first people of the carpet bomb
Speaker 1: cities in Europe. Oh so nice people. They were living
Speaker 1: at the Olympic Village in Balin. I mean, while Barcelona
Speaker 1: didn't have Olympic Village, so you used the stadium they
Speaker 1: already had and the ability to athletes wherever they could.
Speaker 1: You can see one of the things I found in
Speaker 1: the archive, which is kind of cool. It's just a
Speaker 1: little questionnaire that they put through people's doors and be like,
Speaker 1: we are having an anti fat Olympics. Would you like
Speaker 1: to host someone? How many beds do you have do
Speaker 1: you have a sofa? It's really sweet and you can
Speaker 1: take sweet. I'll give them breakfast and like they would
Speaker 1: be compensated accordingly, right, And this is okay, I really
Speaker 1: like because it's like you can actually organize things in
Speaker 1: a decentralized way. It's still an organizational system, like people
Speaker 1: will be like the only way to organize as you
Speaker 1: set up a village, and you like otherwise it's just
Speaker 1: pure chaos, and instead you have these organizational systems that
Speaker 1: harness chaos. You just are like, okay, well, yeah, we'll
Speaker 1: go around and ask every that rules instead of like
Speaker 1: I don't know. And that's a weird minor point, but
Speaker 1: that that seems like an important way of doing it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Everything they did with like this, everything they did was
Speaker 1: communal and sort of like ground up organized. It was
Speaker 1: organized by an organizing committee that comprised some government officials,
Speaker 1: a lot of union officials, and then people from these
Speaker 1: various sports organizations. So they did it like you would
Speaker 1: do your your union stuff. Um so the French rail unions,
Speaker 1: for instance, also club together and they won't got a
Speaker 1: charge anyone coming through France on the trains, right like free?
Speaker 1: Then yeah, it was amazing everyone who they could travel
Speaker 1: on the trams free in Barcelona because the Transport Union
Speaker 1: were down with it with the Olympics, Like, they could
Speaker 1: eat for free in various places. So what if we
Speaker 1: had a whole society built on this idea? Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: well we would tried, didn't we really? Yeah, we tried,
Speaker 1: really tried. So they could take free buses around town.
Speaker 1: The stadium held seventy two people, the Botanical Garden for
Speaker 1: another venue, and they had a network of esperantist translators
Speaker 1: right to bridge the language gaps between participants, so that yeah,
Speaker 1: it's very cool. And the last living participant in the
Speaker 1: Popular Olympics with a guy called it Guidor Vivanco's he
Speaker 1: was an esperantist and he died last year in Canada
Speaker 1: before I was able to go and meet him because
Speaker 1: of the pandemic. He was living in an old folks home. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: but this is deeply cool guy who's like he was.
Speaker 1: He was sixteen when the Popula Olympics happened, right he was,
Speaker 1: he'd already tat himself esperanto. He was out there trying
Speaker 1: to translate, so you know, working people of the world
Speaker 1: could could meet each other and then obviously gets swept
Speaker 1: up into Spanish Civil War ends up living in Canada.
Speaker 1: Like to his dying day, remained dedicated to this idea
Speaker 1: that if we could all speak one language and the
Speaker 1: working people of the world would stick up for one another.
Speaker 1: And yeah, it's it's it's sad that we've kind of
Speaker 1: lost that a little bit along the way. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: and and from a bottom up point of view, right,
Speaker 1: instead of like a top down organization being like you
Speaker 1: now everyone, because like we have this like English is
Speaker 1: becoming the ironically Lingua franco, but like that's this like
Speaker 1: top down imperial and position versus this idea of like
Speaker 1: this thing that can connect us, even if it's like
Speaker 1: I don't know how the Esperanto saw it, but in
Speaker 1: my mind it would be like beautiful if it was.
Speaker 1: Instead of being like this is everyone's first language, it's
Speaker 1: like this is everyone's second language. This is how everyone
Speaker 1: can cross reference and connect without abandoning your culture and identity.
Speaker 1: Yeah that's what. Yeah, Esperanto is definitely like it's not
Speaker 1: supposed to be like your primary language, and it's very simple,
Speaker 1: it's very easy to speak, and it gets designed to
Speaker 1: facilitate that communication without taking a place in another language.
Speaker 1: It's really cool. Yeah, Olympics were very much a other
Speaker 1: place where gender equality was celebrated at lea started Berlin.
Speaker 1: Right after watching women's world record break on the track
Speaker 1: in one reporter for the Pittsburgh Press wrote, it was
Speaker 1: not a very edifying spectacle to see a group of
Speaker 1: fine girls running themselves into a state of exhaustion, and
Speaker 1: probably thereafter they stopped women from running more than two left,
Speaker 1: they I don't know, lose their feminine charms. So his
Speaker 1: face looks deeply sad. So the popular Olympics are con
Speaker 1: slightly different approach, right and one of their letters, they wrote,
Speaker 1: the picture of the People's Olympiad would not be complete
Speaker 1: if women did not have heard you place in it,
Speaker 1: particularly in Spain. It's women far from being free. The
Speaker 1: sport and above all sports of a popular character. It's
Speaker 1: one of the best and most important means of achieving
Speaker 1: women's liberation cannot be open to doubt. The participation of
Speaker 1: many women in the Popular Olympiad is therefore one of
Speaker 1: the most important objects, which is great institution has to fulfill.
Speaker 1: And so they were. They were pretty pretty based in
Speaker 1: their regard. One of the groups that helped organize it
Speaker 1: was called the Catalan Feminists and Sports Club. Okay, so look,
Speaker 1: I think we spent a little bit about before how
Speaker 1: they had overlap with heads libres who are like the
Speaker 1: free women. It's one of these. Like one of the
Speaker 1: women who was part of this was Marina Janesta, who's
Speaker 1: the woman everybody's seen like standing on top of the
Speaker 1: building with the mauser, Like if you've seen one picture
Speaker 1: of interesting, Yeah, she was a war correspondent and she
Speaker 1: wasn't wasn't a fighter. There's actually a really good photo
Speaker 1: of her with the routie and she's translating for the
Speaker 1: routie into French so he can speak to someone else. Oh,
Speaker 1: I've heard such a different That makes me very happy
Speaker 1: because I've I've always heard that that picture as someone
Speaker 1: who was like in the street fighting against the anarchists,
Speaker 1: like during the when the communists and the anarchists were fighting. No,
Speaker 1: she um, she was. She was a walk correspondent that
Speaker 1: we are. That makes me a way happier. The person
Speaker 1: you were thinking of is someone else, And I think
Speaker 1: about different photo. No you're not, you're thinking of the
Speaker 1: same photo and I think it's not an uncommon thing
Speaker 1: to hear, but they're distinct individuals. Okay, great. So the
Speaker 1: Barcelona Games had longer races for women basketball tennis events.
Speaker 1: They also had events so it would consider a lady
Speaker 1: like like shot put and javelin and shin kicking. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but of course that was just a fun everyone went
Speaker 1: to shine kicking. You kind of have medals for it.
Speaker 1: So another unique event they had was a mass relay race,
Speaker 1: which is really cool. The mass relay race pits the
Speaker 1: entire team of a nation against another nation, So like
Speaker 1: there's a twenty by fifty running race and like no
Speaker 1: one had twenty running athletes, right, so you've got like
Speaker 1: boxes and white ship Okay, cool. Yeah, it's got like
Speaker 1: a real school sports day vibe. They also had a
Speaker 1: ten ever so sad because it wasn't chess one of
Speaker 1: the games. They'd be so sad, like, yeah, now the
Speaker 1: relay and I'd be like, I'm sick, okay, go into
Speaker 1: there playing my nails in the corner. Yeah. The mathletes
Speaker 1: really let the team down in a mass running relay.
Speaker 1: But there's a reason for this, right. They had a
Speaker 1: ten by fifth Do you meet a swimming event as well.
Speaker 1: And the reason for this is because they didn't want
Speaker 1: to reward like one or two exceptional athletes, like genetic freaks.
Speaker 1: They wanted to reward the nation which has elevated the
Speaker 1: well being of its working class the highest right. So
Speaker 1: if if your runners can also swim, that's because working
Speaker 1: class people can swim where you're from. That means that
Speaker 1: working class kids won't drown, and so you you get
Speaker 1: to win, right, Like the goal is to emphasize the
Speaker 1: popular calendar at the Games. There were, yeah, there were
Speaker 1: other weird events. I mean there was a weeklong chess tournament,
Speaker 1: there were folklore exhibitions, the building of Catlan human towers,
Speaker 1: which is a great Catlan tradition, and Scottish country dancing
Speaker 1: would accompany the games. They they were also is why
Speaker 1: why Scottish country dancing? Because I'm like, I've run across that,
Speaker 1: like like the Russian nihilists like sixty years earlier, had
Speaker 1: been really obsessed with like Scottish fashion. Was there like
Speaker 1: some weird Scottish working class thing going on that everyone
Speaker 1: was into, or I mean there were you'll see these
Speaker 1: working class Scots pot back up in like the International
Speaker 1: Brigades and stuff. I think it's more of a celebration
Speaker 1: of the diversity of the Popular Front. So they also
Speaker 1: bought a bunch of bagpipers with them, and they had
Speaker 1: all these folklore exhibitions the way to be like we're
Speaker 1: European and but we were like ethnically inclusive. So here's
Speaker 1: the Scots they were. They weren't killed. Some play bagpipes.
Speaker 1: They're really weird. We like them. Yeah, yeah, they belong
Speaker 1: with it, so I'm just curious. Yeah, So they had
Speaker 1: every so like you had Algerians taking part, where you
Speaker 1: have people from China, like all these people that are
Speaker 1: trying to celebrate the different cultures that form a Popular Front. Read.
Speaker 1: Another thing they were very very keen on was having
Speaker 1: black people from the United States because they felt that
Speaker 1: like the anti fascist struggle with very much inclusive of
Speaker 1: the struggle of people living under segregation in the United States.
Speaker 1: So they actually paid their way. They didn't pay most
Speaker 1: people's way, but they paid for people to come on
Speaker 1: boats from United States. That rules, there was no saluting
Speaker 1: of flags. Instead. Palka sALS, who I think people might
Speaker 1: not be familiar with. He's like the modern He's a
Speaker 1: founder of the modern way that people play cellos. Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: he flips it on the side and plays it like
Speaker 1: a bass guitar. He doesn't do that. I was like, what,
Speaker 1: I've never seen a cell that way. Oh god, I
Speaker 1: can do that as a freakishly tall man. I can
Speaker 1: play a cello like a bass. And it doesn't go
Speaker 1: down well with chellis. If you pick one up, start
Speaker 1: doing purple or something, yeah, and encourage everyone to try.
Speaker 1: If there's a cellist or cello in the home. So yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: what is it without a cellow It's also a great
Speaker 1: home defense weapon. If cellow someone in the face and
Speaker 1: you just start, you threaten to play cello and everyone's like,
Speaker 1: that's why I carry the Equalian. No one nor mess
Speaker 1: with me. They're like, oh yeah, I got my little
Speaker 1: bag pipe chanter right here, like that that will clearer
Speaker 1: room when I have a bagpipe chamber. Then arms reached.
Speaker 1: Also really yeah, no way, oh yeah, outstanding stuff, Sophie. Right,
Speaker 1: let's say just divert it quickly. I don't. I do not,
Speaker 1: and you both are fucking nerves. Don't ever change. I
Speaker 1: can't keep the any drums or anything in the space
Speaker 1: that I record, but other instruments are fine, the cool
Speaker 1: zone media pipes and drums, and now everyone here was
Speaker 1: present for the founding of that. So yeah, they had
Speaker 1: this this song called the Hint of the Popularlympics. Palka
Speaker 1: Salz was going to conduct it. The words written by
Speaker 1: your step money Eddi Sagara, who's Catalan poet, and then
Speaker 1: the music was written by Hans Eisler. He was a
Speaker 1: German Jewish composer who had obviously been forced out of Germany. Right,
Speaker 1: And so you're probably wondering, if you're listening, what you
Speaker 1: haven't heard of these games before? They seem like they're
Speaker 1: pretty cool, and perhaps I think you might have read
Speaker 1: about Well, the reason you haven't heard of them was
Speaker 1: because they were supposed to begin on the nineteenth of July,
Speaker 1: and something else began on the nineteenth of duly th
Speaker 1: six and that thing is the Spanish Civil War. So yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a little bit sad um. So I think that's
Speaker 1: maybe where I want to end this episode with the
Speaker 1: beginning of the end. What we want to talk about
Speaker 1: next time is that what did these twenty thousand athletes
Speaker 1: do when the Spanish Civil War started? Lincoln? They spoiler
Speaker 1: and that didn't go home. And they didn't do sports either.
Speaker 1: Sport you get to shoot guns, that's the sport they
Speaker 1: probably Yeah, they probably did some running. Yeah, and then
Speaker 1: then you could really if you could have employed a
Speaker 1: shot putter like tactically, that would have been quite quite strung.
Speaker 1: You big circle bombs, just ht just start eating. Look
Speaker 1: at giant stones, and just to say that in Barcelona
Speaker 1: the pavement was never like that because it's cobbled, right,
Speaker 1: but they they know the bother fixing it down because
Speaker 1: they're always building barricades around here. Yeah, so like people
Speaker 1: would just people would crowbar up the stones and throw
Speaker 1: them at cops when they were on strike, which I'm
Speaker 1: sure they still do this and that makes me happy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I haven't seen it. I think they haven't seen I've
Speaker 1: seen barricades. I'm trying to think I've seen a stone barricade.
Speaker 1: I went to bust Only with a friend a while
Speaker 1: ago now and we've been there for about twenty four hours.
Speaker 1: The first time we got tear gas again. It's great.
Speaker 1: I missed just so much. Well, do you have anything
Speaker 1: like to plug James and or Margaret James e go first. Yeah, sure,
Speaker 1: there's a podcast that I do it's called It Could
Speaker 1: Happen Here, and you can listen to that also on
Speaker 1: your telephone or of a hearing device. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: that's already. I'm unbanned from Twitter again, so you can
Speaker 1: find me there. Congratulate. I enjoy posting pictures of Ussolini
Speaker 1: hanging out with his friends, and sometimes I get banned
Speaker 1: for those. So yeah, James stout, what are you gonna do?
Speaker 1: Can't change? Well, how about you? Margaret. Margaret is a
Speaker 1: book that's out I know. Well, what's funny is it's
Speaker 1: supposed to be out of pre order as of a
Speaker 1: week ago. When you're listening to this, but it might
Speaker 1: still be in pre order. You might have a last
Speaker 1: chance to get a free poster with it, because the
Speaker 1: publisher may or may not have um not the printer
Speaker 1: of the posters is taking some time. It's called Escape
Speaker 1: from Insul Island. It's about people who want to no
Speaker 1: longer be on Insul Island. If you want to hear
Speaker 1: James play a game based on Escape from Insul Island,
Speaker 1: you should check out the podcast Strangers in the Tangled
Speaker 1: Wilderness that ran a live play of the gang from
Speaker 1: It Could Happen Here playing Escape from Insul Island and
Speaker 1: it's more fun than it's actually I think that sounds fun.
Speaker 1: I'm just not saying it very enthusiastically. I know. I'm
Speaker 1: sad Sophie wasn't playing. Yeah, Sophie hates roleplaying games. I
Speaker 1: was the people who played him. Yeah, somebody has to
Speaker 1: work around here, Margaret, Sure, it's fun commiss No, it
Speaker 1: certainly can't. And you can follow me on Twitter, where
Speaker 1: I somehow have not banned. I feel like I'm not
Speaker 1: trying hard enough at Magpie Killjoy or Instagram at Margaret Killjoy.
Speaker 1: And you can learn about turtles by observing that you
Speaker 1: can from a distance. Yeah, don't work with turtles or
Speaker 1: send me pictures of your plants. That's my plug. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I want to see them, especially turtle plant. Send them
Speaker 1: to me on Twitter. Yeah, if you have a string
Speaker 1: of turtle, send it to me. But not someone making
Speaker 1: one out of real turtles. That will make everyone very angry. Plant. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's there, Like like one of them is chomping on
Speaker 1: the next one's tail, and then the next one chomping
Speaker 1: on the next one's time. God, turtles are so cute,
Speaker 1: I know. Could you imagine them doing well We'll be
Speaker 1: back Wednesday for the next episode of Teenage Mutant. That's
Speaker 1: trademarked talk to You Later. Cool People Who Did Cool
Speaker 1: Stuff is a production of cool Zone Media. But more
Speaker 1: podcasts on cool Zone Media, Visit our website cool zone
Speaker 1: media dot com, or check us out on the I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your
Speaker 1: podcasts and I see up y