True Anon Truth Feed - Episode 399: We'll Always Have Paris
Aired: 2024-08-15
Duration: 01:29:42


=== Air Sex Olympics (14:50) ===

[00:00:02]  you should have a fuck olympics but you know what it is What?
[00:00:31]  Is it's not actual, like real, real what?
[00:00:36]  Penetrative sex.
[00:00:37]  But it's these guys doing the bed thing.
[00:00:40]  Well, so there's a fuck.
[00:00:41]  Every explanation.
[00:00:42]  For a couple years I try to find this video.
[00:00:44]  There's like six young brothers who like are like filming themselves and it's like their sex team.
[00:00:50]  They're just like doing undulations.
[00:00:53]  Well, some are undulations.
[00:00:54]  Some are just yeah, but they're going at it on it's air sex.
[00:01:00]  Yeah, air sex.
[00:01:01]  There should be an air sex in the Olympics.
[00:01:03]  I would actually agree with that.
[00:01:04]  I think there should be air sex in the Olympics.
[00:01:06]  But I also think there should be a real sex Olympics.
[00:01:09]  But that's neither here nor there because we have a guest and I don't want to.
[00:01:13]  I think that was a terrible idea.
[00:01:14]  And also I don't even want to ask any questions.
[00:01:16]  Real sex Olympics?
[00:01:16]  Why you don't think, why?
[00:01:18]  Because you think I would meddle, right?
[00:01:20]  You think I get gold?
[00:01:21]  Every category?
[00:01:22]  Every kind of category?
[00:01:24]  Why are you making me and our listeners think about this?
[00:01:26]  Sex Paralympics.
[00:01:28]  I'm not even going there.
[00:01:30]  That's for circumcised people.
[00:01:31]  My name is Brace.
[00:01:32]  We are, of course, joined by producer Young Chomsky.
[00:01:35]  And the podcast is called Truanon.
[00:01:38]  I actually, I have some sports stuff I need to talk about.
[00:01:40]  Really?
[00:01:40]  Because I would love to.
[00:01:42]  Well, okay.
[00:01:44]  What would you love to talk about, sports-wise?
[00:01:47]  Anything.
[00:01:48]  Let's talk about how the Saudis offered Vinny a billion dollars.
[00:01:52]  Vinny?
[00:01:53]  Yeah.
[00:01:53]  Vinny even.
[00:01:54]  Who the fuck is Vinny?
[00:01:55]  One of the best soccer players in the world.
[00:01:57]  Oh, he plays a bit of soccer.
[00:01:59]  Yeah, but for Real Madrid, and he's Brazilian, so no need to do the British.
[00:02:02]  Oh, so Real Madrid, Brazilian?
[00:02:05]  Fake Madrid.
[00:02:08]  A billion dollars.
[00:02:09]  One billion dollars.
[00:02:10]  One billion dollars to play for this.
[00:02:13]  One.
[00:02:16]  Well, it's not Austin Powers.
[00:02:17]  It's fucking Dr. Evil.
[00:02:18]  Okay, thank you.
[00:02:19]  What do you think of that?
[00:02:20]  I know everybody.
[00:02:21]  One billion dollars.
[00:02:24]  One Brazilian dollar.
[00:02:26]  Yeah, see?
[00:02:27]  A billion dollars.
[00:02:28]  The Saudis are fucking crazy.
[00:02:30]  Did he take it?
[00:02:32]  I know.
[00:02:33]  I mean, this just came out like yesterday or something, two days ago.
[00:02:36]  He should take it.
[00:02:37]  Yeah, but then you have to play for the Saudi.
[00:02:38]  The Saudis stink, and you have to live in Saudi Arabia.
[00:02:42]  Crazy.
[00:02:42]  Do you really have to live there?
[00:02:44]  Yeah.
[00:02:45]  Neome?
[00:02:47]  You know, someone I follow on Instagram is going there for vacation.
[00:02:50]  To Neom?
[00:02:51]  No, to Saudi Arabia.
[00:02:53]  Is that someone I know or someone you're like, like one of those people?
[00:02:56]  Someone I know, but not someone I know in a way that would be listening to this podcast.
[00:03:00]  Yeah, like someone you're just like, whatever.
[00:03:02]  But she was posting that she was like getting ready for a trip to Saudi Arabia.
[00:03:07]  And I was like, I can't wait to get vacation.
[00:03:10]  Just like, go have fun.
[00:03:12]  Like, because she's like, I'm going to see the world.
[00:03:14]  She's like very weird travel stuff, but she's like, I'm going to see the world.
[00:03:17]  And she's like, oh, it's only been open to tourists since 2014 or something like that.
[00:03:24]  And I was like, oh, that's the but yeah, she's like, you know, showing all these like ruins that she was going to visit.
[00:03:30]  I'm just like, what the fuck are you going to do in Saudi Arabia?
[00:03:32]  Why?
[00:03:33]  Why would you go to Saudi Arabia?
[00:03:34]  It sounds like British High Commanded T.E. Lawrence.
[00:03:36]  British High Command and motherfucking T.E. Lawrence.
[00:03:38]  And you know what?
[00:03:38]  Maybe she'll change the course of the war.
[00:03:41]  Maybe she will.
[00:03:42]  She could.
[00:03:43]  Maybe she'll make some friends out there.
[00:03:45]  She should.
[00:03:46]  I went, I went to Philadelphia last Saturday, which is kind of Saudi Arabia, Pennsylvania, I would say, right?
[00:03:53]  When you think about it.
[00:03:54]  Brian.
[00:03:55]  Well, actually, I was thinking about this.
[00:03:57]  Philadelphia is New Jersey's New York, kind of.
[00:04:00]  Yeah.
[00:04:00]  Doesn't that make sense?
[00:04:01]  Well, South Jersey's.
[00:04:02]  South Jersey's.
[00:04:04]  But that's New Jersey.
[00:04:05]  North Jersey is not real.
[00:04:07]  Yeah, but yeah, because New York is Jersey's New York.
[00:04:12]  Agree to disagree.
[00:04:13]  But I go down there and I'm like, I don't know what the hell this is going to be, right?
[00:04:18]  Like the town of Philadelphia?
[00:04:19]  I know what the town of Philadelphia is going to be.
[00:04:21]  Bunch of people who are too drunk and fall on their face at 8 p.m. on a podcast live show, which is insane.
[00:04:27]  It's a fucking podcast live.
[00:04:28]  You're too drunk at the podcast live show?
[00:04:32]  You're throwing stuff at the stage.
[00:04:33]  You're nervous?
[00:04:34]  I get that.
[00:04:35]  I get, I honestly get the impulse to hurt us physically.
[00:04:38]  I'm not saying I agree with it and don't, please don't do it, but it comes from a place I understand.
[00:04:42]  No one threw anything at you.
[00:04:44]  Well, that's because they knew I would fucking kick it out of the air and I would hit it back at them with such velocity that it would cause a mass casualty event because it would through multiple people.
[00:04:56]  I go down there and there's this man Rascal that's playing and I'm supposed to do a hot dog eating contest at the end and I'm like, what are these guys got?
[00:05:02]  Sorry, you're not going to be in the hot dog.
[00:05:05]  I want to clear this up for the listeners.
[00:05:06]  You're not competing in the hot dog.
[00:05:08]  I'm not competing in the hot dog eating contest.
[00:05:10]  No, I'm hosting, it's a gig.
[00:05:12]  I'm hosting it.
[00:05:13]  Okay.
[00:05:14]  And I go down there and I'm like, I don't know, because I've seen, have you seen an eating contest before?
[00:05:18]  Like in the TV?
[00:05:19]  No.
[00:05:19]  Well, if you watch one on TV.
[00:05:21]  Like, sometimes they show the hot dog eating contest on Thanksgiving.
[00:05:24]  It's not Thanksgiving.
[00:05:25]  July 4th.
[00:05:26]  Oh, 4th of July.
[00:05:28]  Well, whatever.
[00:05:29]  On Thanksgiving.
[00:05:30]  They should have a turkey eating contest, though.
[00:05:32]  That shit could use some Dunkin' in water.
[00:05:34]  People get too sleepy.
[00:05:36]  But I was like, I don't know what's going on.
[00:05:40]  Because I've seen two eating contests before.
[00:05:42]  I've seen a pie eating contest, and that was a joke.
[00:05:45]  Because pie is so thick.
[00:05:47]  And so people, and people kind of just want to sleep.
[00:05:49]  It was very like, What I was afraid of what was going to happen is that people would go up there and try to be, I'm center of attention, I'm on stage, I'm going to eat one hot dog in a funny way and like stand and try to be goofy while like other people suffer.
[00:06:03]  Because I've seen a pie eating contest where kind of everybody who was doing it went just like, I just want a pizza pie and to be funny on stage.
[00:06:09]  So I was like, let's, if are these real athletes or not?
[00:06:13]  Well, let's not throw the word athlete around.
[00:06:15]  Let's throw the word athlete around.
[00:06:17]  Were these real athletes or not?
[00:06:19]  No.
[00:06:19]  Yes.
[00:06:20]  They were.
[00:06:21]  I was shocked.
[00:06:24]  There was about 400 hot dogs.
[00:06:25]  Do you think this is because they're from Philadelphia?
[00:06:28]  Does this have more to do with are they athletes?
[00:06:30]  No.
[00:06:30]  Are they from Philadelphia?
[00:06:32]  Yes.
[00:06:32]  Well, I'll say this.
[00:06:34]  I realize that Philadelphia is a little Portland.
[00:06:36]  You know what I mean?
[00:06:37]  Like, remember that motherfucking...
[00:06:38]  It is so fucking Portland.
[00:06:39]  Remember that motherfucker?
[00:06:40]  It's a little Portland.
[00:06:41]  It is the most Portland place outside of Portland.
[00:06:43]  It's a little Portland.
[00:06:44]  It's a little Portland.
[00:06:45]  But it's also like, I realize there's a certain kind of person in Philadelphia.
[00:06:51]  They've maybe never even seen a hot dog before.
[00:06:53]  That's not a person.
[00:06:54]  There's no single person in Philadelphia who has not seen a hot dog before.
[00:06:57]  To them, that's.
[00:06:58]  Philadelphia is hot dogs.
[00:06:59]  That's like the tomahawk steak to them.
[00:07:01]  Like they've never seen that before.
[00:07:03]  Oh my God.
[00:07:04]  And so, and so actually, it felt like they were really grateful to be there so that they could have some hot dogs.
[00:07:10]  It was eight contestants, all men, which I found interesting.
[00:07:13]  That seems not interesting to me at all.
[00:07:16]  And, you know, you don't really see women doing this.
[00:07:18]  You don't see women eating competitively.
[00:07:20]  And I just think that's interesting.
[00:07:21]  Well, who's making the hot dogs?
[00:07:24]  There was a group of women making it.
[00:07:25]  And it was actually, it was a diverse array of genders making the hot dog.
[00:07:31]  And it was not just women back there.
[00:07:34]  And I asked, you know, of course, I go up there because I usually refuse to go on stage unless there's several women up there.
[00:07:39]  And I asked, and they organized that.
[00:07:40]  We asked a bunch of women.
[00:07:42]  No woman wanted to do it, which I understood.
[00:07:45]  But I talked to all the contestants before and I was like, you guys, if I see you just eating one hot dog and being funny, I'm going to kill you.
[00:07:53]  And they were all like, one guy, one guy was like, oh, I was kind of planning on being funny.
[00:07:58]  I'm like, don't be funny.
[00:07:59]  That's good advice for everybody.
[00:08:01]  Exactly.
[00:08:01]  It really is.
[00:08:02]  You think you're being funny?
[00:08:03]  You're not going to be funny.
[00:08:04]  But I had my eye on this guy.
[00:08:06]  I had my eye on this guy.
[00:08:06]  I was like, don't be fucking funny.
[00:08:08]  And I was like, I get up there.
[00:08:11]  They had 10 minutes to eat hot dogs.
[00:08:12]  They're initially given a plate of 15 hot dogs.
[00:08:14]  And it's a race.
[00:08:15]  And also indeed.
[00:08:16]  I think I could eat 15 hot dogs.
[00:08:18]  Dude, I don't think you could, Liz.
[00:08:20]  You would be surprised.
[00:08:21]  You don't.
[00:08:21]  You don't eat the buns?
[00:08:22]  No, and the buns.
[00:08:24]  Yes.
[00:08:24]  It's hot dog and bun, 15.
[00:08:26]  Liz, you think that is true?
[00:08:28]  And actually, up until the moment.
[00:08:30]  I think I could do four.
[00:08:31]  Yeah.
[00:08:32]  And I would feel sick.
[00:08:33]  I had two and I felt a little sick.
[00:08:36]  I really like hot dogs.
[00:08:37]  I know.
[00:08:38]  But Liz, these are boiled hots.
[00:08:40]  These are boiled hot dogs.
[00:08:42]  And there was this big tray of them.
[00:08:45]  And I got to say, the smell of a hot dog doesn't excite me or disgust me in any particular way on a normal day.
[00:08:50]  A little ambivalent there, huh?
[00:08:51]  Ambivalent.
[00:08:52]  I'm neutral on a dog.
[00:08:53]  I like hot dogs, but I'm not like and going one way.
[00:08:56]  They're both gross and good smelling.
[00:08:59]  They are.
[00:08:59]  Yeah, it's yin gang.
[00:09:01]  But I fully agree with that.
[00:09:02]  But when you're on stage with that many hot dogs, the smell is horrible.
[00:09:08]  Yeah.
[00:09:08]  It's too strong.
[00:09:09]  Yeah.
[00:09:10]  And I got to say, these guys, you know, they did the classic dunk in a water, eat.
[00:09:15]  One guy.
[00:09:16]  One guy.
[00:09:18]  I was impressed.
[00:09:18]  He brought, and I was like, he's going to try to be funny too, but he really did it.
[00:09:22]  He brought a glass of wine on stage, of red wine, and he dunked in there and ate.
[00:09:27]  That sounds disgusting.
[00:09:29]  Here's my thing with the dunking technique.
[00:09:31]  I think that should be illegal.
[00:09:32]  There's no other technique, Liz.
[00:09:34]  You can't do this regularly.
[00:09:35]  I'm saying, what I'm saying is you cannot use that.
[00:09:38]  That's like a little trick to make it easier.
[00:09:40]  What I want to say is I want to see how many hot dogs you can eat without your little tricks.
[00:09:44]  Natural.
[00:09:44]  Yes.
[00:09:45]  Eat the hot dogs.
[00:09:46]  Don't dunk.
[00:09:47]  Don't do all these things.
[00:09:48]  Don't try to game the system and be all like, oh, these are my, this is my like strategy.
[00:09:53]  No strategy.
[00:09:53]  The strategy is eat the dogs.
[00:09:55]  So you eat the hot dogs.
[00:09:57]  I will say this.
[00:09:57]  I think there should be, I think they should add some differences in it.
[00:10:00]  You know, like hot links, like links that are attached by a little thing at the end.
[00:10:03]  Yeah, yeah, like cartoon style.
[00:10:04]  I think that we should do away with buns entirely and see, we're talking just sheer distance.
[00:10:09]  I think we should see who it's like long distance.
[00:10:12]  Yes.
[00:10:12]  Yeah.
[00:10:13]  I want to see who can do that.
[00:10:15]  I think the bun is a really tough hurdle for people.
[00:10:17]  I think that's a lot of coach Willie style.
[00:10:18]  People to get over.
[00:10:19]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:10:20]  And yes, exactly.
[00:10:22]  So they had eight of these guys up there.
[00:10:24]  We shoot the gun off, which actually turned out to be a really big deal.
[00:10:27]  Like police came and arrested several people.
[00:10:29]  I'm sorry, you shot a gun?
[00:10:30]  Yeah, I shot a gun.
[00:10:31]  Why?
[00:10:32]  Just kidding.
[00:10:32]  No, no, no, no.
[00:10:33]  It was the starting, you know, so we started, we started off.
[00:10:36]  And people, people were eating.
[00:10:37]  I was like, oh, maybe like there was buckets under everyone.
[00:10:39]  I was like, maybe no one will puke.
[00:10:40]  Like, they're doing pretty good.
[00:10:41]  No, don't tell me that.
[00:10:42]  About eight minutes in, I realized that everyone looked really not good.
[00:10:45]  They were not doing well.
[00:10:48]  And we get to the end.
[00:10:50]  And there's, I think, two pukes.
[00:10:53]  Now, this is where some controversy comes in.
[00:10:55]  You could not puke and you were disqualified if you puked.
[00:10:59]  But we had never stipulated if that counted after the contest ends, but before the dogs are counted, right?
[00:11:07]  I think that's fine.
[00:11:09]  I think it's personally fine as long as the clock's not running.
[00:11:12]  I think you can puke and not get DQ'd.
[00:11:14]  Liz?
[00:11:15]  I don't want to have an opinion.
[00:11:16]  I don't have an opinion on that.
[00:11:17]  Yeah, okay.
[00:11:18]  Well, this is why you guys have never, this is why the Women's Eating League has really just suffered.
[00:11:22]  Yeah, because this is dumb.
[00:11:25]  One guy, the winner, there was one guy who ate a lot, and then the goof guy who I thought was going to goof, he ate an extraordinary amount.
[00:11:33]  These guys were tied.
[00:11:35]  How many?
[00:11:35]  How many dogs were I in?
[00:11:36]  We're talking, like, I think it was nine dogs each.
[00:11:39]  That's a lot.
[00:11:39]  It seemed like that many.
[00:11:40]  In 10 minutes, though?
[00:11:41]  Liz.
[00:11:42]  Man, dogs are.
[00:11:43]  It's so gross to see someone shove.
[00:11:46]  Yeah, I don't want to see it.
[00:11:47]  Certain point, they're trying to beat the clock of their own like nervous system, and so they're shoving, they're physically shoving these in their mouth.
[00:11:55]  And uh, how much do they so do they like starve themselves before?
[00:12:00]  I asked several people because, all right, so I gotta, and I gotta say, I just assumed, and this is my own bad, my own prejudices in coming in.
[00:12:08]  I thought the fattest guy was gonna win.
[00:12:10]  Yeah, but that's it never is, though.
[00:12:11]  It never is, it's always the tiny Japanese fellow.
[00:12:13]  But I was like, we don't have a Kobayashi, we don't have a Joey Chestnuts.
[00:12:17]  We have Joey Chestnuts is not, I'm gonna call him thin.
[00:12:20]  Also, I don't know what he looks like, to be honest, but he did also sell out to Big Veggie Dog, which is, I believe, why he's not competing anymore.
[00:12:26]  He was paid $5 million.
[00:12:27]  This is what I was told at Barstool yesterday: that Joey Chestnuts was paid $5 million beyond meat, and he was canceled by Nathan's because of that.
[00:12:33]  So, I hope you're enjoying that fucking fake, that fake dog money.
[00:12:36]  You know what?
[00:12:37]  If I was the fucking Joey Chestnuts, I would have taken the money too.
[00:12:40]  Absolutely, I would have.
[00:12:41]  Yes, here's a tip: true and on tip, add it to the list: always take the money, always take the money.
[00:12:49]  Don't leave it on the table.
[00:12:52]  There is no sanctity of sport or whatever.
[00:12:54]  Take the motherfucking money, throw the fight.
[00:12:56]  If you don't throw the fight, you might not only not get the money, they're gonna kill you.
[00:13:01]  Take the money, sell out to Big Veggie.
[00:13:04]  Take the Veggie Dog money, buy your wife something nice, buy your wife something nice because you made your fortune becoming a competitive eater, which is fucking disgusting.
[00:13:15]  He might not be married.
[00:13:16]  Wow, that'd be that's a but if he is, if he is, listeners, and you aren't, consider it.
[00:13:21]  What's up with you?
[00:13:23]  So, these guys, so we had a tie between a like six foot four Latinx motherfucker named Jesse James from Texas, who was dressed like a black jack dealer, okay.
[00:13:36]  And then a, I will say, a you guys show peep show, the British television show, yeah.
[00:13:42]  Did they call him the coward like when they were doing no, no, no, no, they were it was too loud to talk shit, and then we had um a sort of guy who looked like the dumpier guy from Peep Show, no disrespect, uh, who was sort of slump-shouldered and who is the goof who sit up straight hat.
[00:13:58]  Yeah, well, I'm slumped, I'm hunched.
[00:14:01]  And then we had a amateur jackass guy who does his own jackass style YouTube video who was a crowd favorite, who was brought into sudden, sudden death.
[00:14:10]  Very Philadelphia for the crowd favorite to be a YouTuber.
[00:14:13]  Yeah, well, he actually really liked this guy, but he was a uh, he he was, he does he did show me his amateur prank uh YouTube channel, which was there was some difficult pranks in there.
[00:14:23]  Um, we had sudden death, first to first to finish three dogs, wins interesting.
[00:14:30]  Jesse James wins outright.
[00:14:32]  The man can eat, the man can eat.
[00:14:34]  He ate these dogs, finished.
[00:14:36]  Did he dip them?
[00:14:37]  He dipped them.
[00:14:38]  It took these guys a lot longer to eat these three last dogs than it did.
[00:14:42]  Yeah.
[00:14:42]  Yeah.
[00:14:43]  Because they're full.
[00:14:44]  We had the prankster second, and then we had the slumpy guy third.
[00:14:49]  Interesting.
[00:14:50]  Obviously, Jesse James gets a big trophy.

=== Third Place Trophy (15:46) ===

[00:14:52]  Prankster is getting.
[00:14:54]  Does this trophy a big golden hot dog?
[00:14:56]  It was an actual giant trophy with the hot dog that said, I believe first hot dog invitational, I believe it was.
[00:15:03]  It was nice.
[00:15:04]  Yeah, it was nice.
[00:15:06]  It was this guy's fourth, but they put it.
[00:15:08]  I was very impressed.
[00:15:08]  You should get a golden hot dog.
[00:15:10]  You should.
[00:15:10]  We also had a second, second, like a smaller trophy for second place.
[00:15:14]  Okay.
[00:15:15]  And I brought a third place of the ribbon, but I forgot to give it to the guy who got third place.
[00:15:18]  But this is.
[00:15:18]  Third place or last place, whichever.
[00:15:20]  This is where it gets crazy.
[00:15:22]  Deacon, the YouTube prank guy, and they were like pranks where he physically hurts himself.
[00:15:29]  I want to be clear on that.
[00:15:31]  But I thought he got second, it looked like.
[00:15:34]  And then the slumpy guy got third.
[00:15:36]  And I'm awarding the prankster his second.
[00:15:40]  And the slumpy guy points me to the prankster's pocket.
[00:15:43]  And I see a fucking hot dog sticking out.
[00:15:47]  Not a bun hot dog.
[00:15:49]  A fucking.
[00:15:50]  Wait, wait, who was judging this?
[00:15:53]  Well, I was judging it.
[00:15:56]  So how did you miss him slip the dog in the pocket?
[00:15:58]  There's eight guys on stage.
[00:15:59]  And I'm also, I was going up behind everybody.
[00:16:01]  And when they looked like they were feeling really uncomfortable, I was getting really close to them and asking them questions for the crowd.
[00:16:06]  There's hundreds of people there.
[00:16:07]  Well, you didn't see in the pocket there was a hot dog?
[00:16:10]  It's dark on stage.
[00:16:11]  There's eight people.
[00:16:11]  I'm not looking.
[00:16:12]  I'm not pocket watching.
[00:16:13]  You thought they were happy to see you, but it was just a hot dog in the back.
[00:16:15]  Well, it was a back pocket.
[00:16:16]  And it was, I will say, there was only a nub of the head, if I may, of the hot dog poking out of the pocket.
[00:16:23]  So how did he slip it back there?
[00:16:26]  This is, there's a lot of questions on this.
[00:16:28]  But the slumped fella points to it.
[00:16:31]  And I'm like, oh my God.
[00:16:32]  I reach my hand in this pocket and I come out with a fist full of hot dogs.
[00:16:37]  How many hot dogs?
[00:16:38]  One and a half.
[00:16:39]  But that I have small, very small hot dogs.
[00:16:42]  Was the other half in the pocket?
[00:16:43]  The other half was in the pocket.
[00:16:45]  Who knows how many others were maybe kicked under the table?
[00:16:47]  So it was two hot dogs in the pocket?
[00:16:49]  Two fucking hot dogs in the pocket.
[00:16:50]  Meanwhile, there's also.
[00:16:51]  Did you hold them up to the crowd triumphantly?
[00:16:53]  And I yanked the second place trophy away from him and I awarded it to the guy, the slumpy guy.
[00:16:59]  So what did the, so the kid was, was he like, ah!
[00:17:03]  Yes, but he was a really good heel.
[00:17:07]  So I think it actually worked better than if he had a headache.
[00:17:10]  What was his emotion?
[00:17:11]  Was he embarrassed?
[00:17:12]  Did he like play?
[00:17:13]  Did he deny it?
[00:17:15]  Yes, he did deny it.
[00:17:16]  Was he like, you planted the dog?
[00:17:18]  Well, it was very loud in there, but he implied he had no idea how they got there.
[00:17:24]  Interesting, because how could a hot dog?
[00:17:26]  I've had pockets almost my entire life.
[00:17:29]  He should have pointed at the other guy and said, he should have put those in my pocket.
[00:17:32]  This is a planted dog.
[00:17:34]  Those are my emergency dogs.
[00:17:36]  I brought this hot dog from home.
[00:17:38]  Oh, no, this is for later.
[00:17:40]  Yeah, and it was, it was, I've never seen such a scandal in my life.
[00:17:45]  So while you were watching this guy eat the hot dogs, what was he eating?
[00:17:50]  He was, he did eat hot dogs.
[00:17:52]  He just didn't eat exactly.
[00:17:52]  But so was he just like putting being like acting and you like put one up and then the other one slips down and he puts it in his pocket?
[00:17:59]  And what was he just eating the buns?
[00:18:01]  No dogs?
[00:18:02]  It was a chaotic situation on stage.
[00:18:03]  There's eight guys here eating like motherfuckers.
[00:18:06]  There also are people vomiting.
[00:18:08]  Frankly, no one really made it into the buckets.
[00:18:10]  Several people ended up having to just vomit on their hot dogs.
[00:18:14]  An awful event.
[00:18:15]  And well, I was trying to get people to say, vomit, pig, vomit, pig, while they were doing it.
[00:18:19]  But I did get, I did.
[00:18:20]  That's me.
[00:18:21]  I was trying to, well, you know, a pig is a good thing in the hot dog world.
[00:18:24]  Why not like, go, you?
[00:18:28]  Well, I did get them.
[00:18:29]  I did settle up.
[00:18:29]  You were doing really well.
[00:18:31]  I was able to settle up.
[00:18:32]  You wouldn't be proud.
[00:18:33]  That was not.
[00:18:34]  No, no, no.
[00:18:35]  If a woman was proud of a man on that stage, then I got to go back to my Jordan Peterson book.
[00:18:40]  I hope they feel a bit better about the whole thing.
[00:18:42]  Yeah.
[00:18:43]  Well, I got to say, it's one of the sports that it's very unlikely that you're impressing the women out there.
[00:18:50]  Wow.
[00:18:51]  There's plenty of sports.
[00:18:52]  The crowd was, I did get them to chat.
[00:18:54]  Eat, which I think cuts to the quick there.
[00:18:57]  Like, I think that's, that's, it cuts to the quick, cuts to the chase there.
[00:19:00]  I think that's really what we want to hear from a crowd there.
[00:19:04]  But it was a chaotic situation and the vomit.
[00:19:07]  No, we don't need to get into that.
[00:19:08]  Now, I'm curious if, so there were no further inspections to find out if there were other dogs hiding.
[00:19:13]  No, but nobody else was in the final.
[00:19:15]  So were the two dogs from the final?
[00:19:17]  So we only ate one dog?
[00:19:18]  No, no, the two dogs were from the regular.
[00:19:20]  He shouldn't have been in the final.
[00:19:21]  He should have been dequeued from the get.
[00:19:23]  So it should have been a one-two.
[00:19:25]  It should have been a head-to-head.
[00:19:26]  But I'm glad it was three because that means that there can be a loser.
[00:19:29]  And you should be glad that you didn't bring a third place because that guy who was hiding the dogs certainly didn't deserve it.
[00:19:35]  Actually, I did bring a third place, but it was a ribbon that said, I guess I got it in the mail with something.
[00:19:40]  It says petite moi null.
[00:19:46]  And then it's like big loads only.
[00:19:48]  And it's got like a hurricane of, I don't know, it's just been in my desk for a while.
[00:19:53]  Why?
[00:19:54]  What do you mean you got it in the mail?
[00:19:55]  It says, I have it in my backpack, maybe.
[00:19:58]  But why?
[00:19:59]  Who sent it to you?
[00:20:00]  I don't know.
[00:20:01]  I don't know.
[00:20:01]  I got a lot of stuff at home.
[00:20:05]  And so I think it was just in there.
[00:20:06]  It might be in.
[00:20:07]  I'm looking at my backpack right now.
[00:20:09]  I was covered.
[00:20:10]  Oh, yeah.
[00:20:11]  Here's my deodorant.
[00:20:13]  I've been looking for that.
[00:20:14]  I was so sweaty.
[00:20:15]  Liz, I was drenched.
[00:20:16]  It was crazy.
[00:20:17]  And you weren't even competing.
[00:20:19]  I wasn't even competing, but you know what?
[00:20:20]  It's like James Brown style.
[00:20:21]  I think I lost about five pounds that night.
[00:20:23]  Not that I need to, but I think I did.
[00:20:26]  But yeah, it says petite calm, moi, null.
[00:20:28]  I think I got it because I got this like, I don't know where it came from.
[00:20:32]  I think it just came with something.
[00:20:33]  Hello, everyone.
[00:20:34]  We actually do have an episode.
[00:20:35]  We have a whole episode today.
[00:20:36]  Anyways, I gotta say, the whole point of that story is this.
[00:20:41]  I feel sick.
[00:20:42]  A lot of people, also, I just found, I found the guy's thing.
[00:20:45]  This is the guy.
[00:20:46]  He gave me a sticker for his prank show.
[00:20:48]  I'm hungry.
[00:20:49]  I gotta say, I think competing and winning is fine.
[00:20:54]  But I think if you can cheat in an entertaining way, this goes for relationships too.
[00:20:57]  I think you can cheat in an entertaining way.
[00:21:00]  That actually brings as much to the viewer as winning traditionally does.
[00:21:04]  Would you say like Barry Bonds is an example of that?
[00:21:07]  Barry Bonds was never on steroids.
[00:21:08]  And in fact, he was just the best at what he did because everyone was on steroids, except for, okay, so Barry Bonds was on steroids.
[00:21:16]  But everyone was on steroids.
[00:21:18]  Barry Bonds deserves to be in the Hall of Fame.
[00:21:20]  Barry Bonds deserves to be the Hall of Fame.
[00:21:21]  That is, there's no other single true or not.
[00:21:26]  That is on the list of true and unbeliefs.
[00:21:30]  It is straight up insane.
[00:21:31]  Which will slowly reveal to the core beliefs.
[00:21:35]  It is straight up insane that Barry Bonds isn't in there.
[00:21:37]  But he didn't cheat because everyone was doing that.
[00:21:40]  He just did it better than everybody else.
[00:21:42]  But I will say, if you can cheat in a crazy way, I think that is its own reward.
[00:21:47]  I don't think he cheated in a crazy way.
[00:21:48]  You can't just put hot dogs in your pocket.
[00:21:50]  I wouldn't put a hot dog in my pocket.
[00:21:51]  Can you, Matt?
[00:21:52]  You have to, ugh, the smell of a crazy thing.
[00:21:54]  I grabbed a fistful of hot dogs out of a man's pocket.
[00:21:56]  I would have touched his dick if I had to.
[00:21:58]  Okay.
[00:21:59]  We have an episode.
[00:22:00]  We do.
[00:22:01]  A real, with like a professor.
[00:22:03]  Yeah.
[00:22:04]  Yeah.
[00:22:05]  Well, he was, so my thinking is he was already on the episode, so there's no way he's going to listen to this part of the episode.
[00:22:11]  Yes, he will.
[00:22:13]  Jules, if you're listening to this, I would like to make a formal apology for all of the episode that's not the part you're on.
[00:22:20]  I'm just going to go ahead and say, my bad.
[00:22:23]  My bad on that.
[00:22:24]  But maybe you agree with me.
[00:22:27]  Anyways, here's Jules Boykoff.
[00:22:29]  We're talking Olympics, ladies and gentlemen, a firm apology.
[00:22:46]  Due to my lack of knowledge about, frankly, any sports, let alone soccer, or as they call it everywhere else in the world, football, I was unable to come up with a sufficiently annoying introduction for this episode.
[00:23:02]  So I'm just going to read him here.
[00:23:04]  Some stats from our guest.
[00:23:07]  He played professional soccer for four years and scored 7,000 goals.
[00:23:14]  At one point, he was arrested by FIFA, tortured in a secret FIFA facility in Montenegro for several years, where they not only broke his knees, but a bunch of other bones that I'm not aware of that exist in the leg, but I believe professional athletes are very cognizant of.
[00:23:34]  Due to experimental soccer-type technology that he was furnished by the Serbians, for the next several years, he moved through the world on a spider-like chassis.
[00:23:44]  I don't remember how many legs spiders have, but it's either six, I believe it's eight, maybe eight legs.
[00:23:50]  Because of this, he was banned from public appearances and forced to go into academia.
[00:23:57]  Go into the freak city of Oregon, which is actually a state, but I was unaware of that until I started speaking that sentence.
[00:24:04]  He was forced to teach at a university there where he taught sports politics.
[00:24:09]  Because of his crazy, arachid-style lower body, he retreated into writing books.
[00:24:16]  And he has written six books about the Olympics.
[00:24:19]  Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the show.
[00:24:22]  Former actual professional soccer player was on the Olympic teams, but not in the Olympics.
[00:24:27]  Although now I sound like a dick saying that, but that's a real, it's a real thing.
[00:24:30]  He's just an actual athlete.
[00:24:31]  I can barely walk up five flights of stairs to get the studio.
[00:24:35]  Professor Jules Borkov, live from Paris.
[00:24:37]  Jules, how you doing?
[00:24:38]  Wow.
[00:24:39]  Best introduction ever.
[00:24:40]  I'm doing great after that.
[00:24:42]  Thank you.
[00:24:43]  I really hope someone transcribes that and like puts it in the Wikipedia and just because there'll be a citation.
[00:24:49]  So I feel like as long as there's a citation, then you can put it in there.
[00:24:53]  Don't correct me on that.
[00:24:54]  Jules, you're in Paris right now, right?
[00:24:57]  I am.
[00:24:57]  The Olympics are over.
[00:24:59]  I'm checking with Liz on that because she watched the Olympics.
[00:25:02]  The Olympics are over.
[00:25:03]  There was a closing ceremony that from what I'm aware of, from vaguely picking up on social media, was supposed to feature the red hot chili peppers, but I think they zoomed in from what I can gather.
[00:25:15]  I think it was previously recorded.
[00:25:17]  I didn't see that part, but it did have Tom Cruise on a motorcycle.
[00:25:20]  And bizarrely, a performance of the song My Way, which I, just as a fun fact, and I'm sure this is completely unrelated, the rights to that song are owned by the son-in-law of Bernard Arnaud, who underwrote the games.
[00:25:38]  And I'm sure it is not a coincidence that perhaps a hefty sum was paid in order to sing that song on, you know, for the broadcasting rights.
[00:25:46]  That would be Xavier Nial, who is co-owner of Lamont.
[00:25:49]  He owns part of that song.
[00:25:50]  And that's the only reason I can understand why the French decided to do a performance of My Way, the Frank Sinatra song written by an American, on the closing ceremonies.
[00:26:02]  Sorry, I just had to get that out there because it's so weird.
[00:26:05]  And I haven't seen anyone talk about it.
[00:26:07]  But yeah, they're over.
[00:26:10]  So, Jules, you have been visiting, I mean, you've been writing about the Olympics for a long time.
[00:26:14]  I think your first book on the Olympics came out in 2013.
[00:26:18]  And I, you know, this is such an annoying interview kind of question here.
[00:26:22]  What made you start writing about the Olympics?
[00:26:25]  Because now, obviously, there's a, I mean, there always has been, but now there's especially, I think, a lot of on the left activism around we don't want the Olympics in our city.
[00:26:32]  But back then, I don't really recall any of that.
[00:26:35]  What got you interested in this kind of stuff?
[00:26:38]  Yeah, well, at the time, I was writing about state repression.
[00:26:41]  How does the government suppress political dissent?
[00:26:43]  How do media suppress political dissent?
[00:26:46]  And I live in Portland, Oregon, and just up the road is Vancouver in Canada.
[00:26:50]  And they were hosting the 2010 Winter Olympics.
[00:26:54]  And some activists and avant-garde poets who I know up there told me, hey, you got to get up here.
[00:26:59]  There's an incredible amount of suppression of dissent happening up here.
[00:27:02]  They're passing laws and ordinances that say that if you put a sign up in your house that says no to the Olympics, the authorities can come in and take it down within 48 hours if you don't do so yourself.
[00:27:13]  So I said, okay, great.
[00:27:14]  I took a train ticket up there to check it out for myself.
[00:27:17]  And sure enough, you know, the suppression of dissent was rampant.
[00:27:20]  That's one of the big features of the Olympics, in fact.
[00:27:23]  And as I was there, I realized, wow, there's a lot more going on here with the Olympic Games.
[00:27:28]  And studying it allows me to ask a lot of big questions about things I care about, you know, displacement of unhoused people.
[00:27:35]  How is public money spent?
[00:27:37]  What about environmentalism and greenwashing?
[00:27:41]  What about corruption?
[00:27:42]  And so the more I jumped in, the more interested I became.
[00:27:45]  I got to learn a few languages along the way as well.
[00:27:48]  It's kind of fun because it bounces all around the world.
[00:27:50]  And so that kind of brought me up to the moment.
[00:27:52]  But I guess I can thank some avant-garde poets and activists who I know up in Vancouver for helping me figure out something was going on there.
[00:28:00]  Yeah, because you went to the Olympics.
[00:28:01]  You went down in 2016 also to Brazil, where they had the Olympics.
[00:28:07]  Have you seen since then a ramping up of security measures, of repression of dissent, all these kinds of things?
[00:28:17]  Or is it kind of, does it differ from country to country?
[00:28:21]  I would say the general rule is that local and national police forces in the host city and country use the Olympics like their own private cash machine to get all the special weapons and laws and monies that they would never be able to get during normal political times.
[00:28:36]  That's just the way it happens now, especially since 9-11.
[00:28:40]  There was an Olympics in Salt Lake City right after that, where you can see, if you look at the graph, the number spent on security just went through the roof at that point.
[00:28:49]  And we learned later that the NSA was basically doing indiscriminate blanket surveillance at those Olympics.
[00:28:55]  Thanks to Thomas Drake, a whistleblower, we learned that.
[00:28:58]  But that kind of becomes the norm pretty quickly.
[00:29:00]  I mean, if you're a member of the police force, you're thinking this is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to get everything I always wanted, all the new funding.
[00:29:09]  So that's kind of become the norm.
[00:29:10]  You know, Brazil, that definitely happened.
[00:29:12]  There were 85,000 security officials on hand.
[00:29:16]  But I would say that it's just what happens everywhere.
[00:29:18]  You know, here in Paris, the policing has been intense.
[00:29:21]  I've been in numerous Olympic cities in the past, but it's really in your face here.
[00:29:25]  I mean, you have people walking around with military-grade weaponry.
[00:29:29]  Every single time that my colleague Dave Ziren and I have tried to do an interview for the nation or for the Real News Network, every single time we're interrupted by the noise of a siren.
[00:29:39]  I thought today I was going to get away with it.
[00:29:41]  I was interviewing a French journalist here.
[00:29:43]  And of course, right like three minutes left in the interview, the sirens go flying by.
[00:29:47]  So, you know, the police siren has essentially been the soundtrack to these Olympics.
[00:29:51]  And I was on French television last night with a couple of people from France who were just elated about how great the Olympics went.
[00:29:58]  They were so thrilled that the security officials were dancing with the people in the streets and they were posing for photographs and all that.
[00:30:04]  And I was like, whoa, slow down here.
[00:30:06]  You know, I'm in my 50s.
[00:30:07]  I'm a white man and I was nervous about it.
[00:30:09]  You know, you think about if you're a young man of color in the city, you're on high, high alert.
[00:30:14]  And let me just say last point is that every single time, every single time that I saw police apprehending somebody, detaining them, every single time it was a young man of color.
[00:30:25]  And I'm talking like dozens and dozens of times.
[00:30:28]  So the general trend is the police use the opportunity.
[00:30:32]  And after the games, then they're enabled to have intensified racialized policing in the wake of the games.

=== Police Surveillance Legacy (10:28) ===

[00:30:39]  That's sort of the underbelly legacy, if you will.
[00:30:42]  Yeah, I think we've done an episode in the past on, it was on Macron, but we went over a lot of the kind of militarization of the French police in particular, like under his watch, under his purview.
[00:30:54]  And I was coming into the Paris Games and knowing how protected the police are.
[00:31:00]  They're kind of basically a protected class.
[00:31:02]  I mean, they're a protected class everywhere, but in Paris, it's like, you know, you can't even take a photo of the police and identify them by name.
[00:31:10]  You can't, I mean, they wear like Terminator outfits.
[00:31:13]  I mean, it's very like, I mean, it looks like something out of a sci-fi movie.
[00:31:18]  And to be clear, that's before the Olympics.
[00:31:20]  Yeah, that's just like normal, right?
[00:31:23]  It's such a scandal.
[00:31:24]  I mean, it's a really, really big scandal.
[00:31:26]  And so I was very nervous and, I mean, fearful about what they were kind of putting into place, knowing that, I mean, this word gets thrown around a lot, especially, you know, in the past, since, I don't know, especially with Twitter and everything, but state of exception, right?
[00:31:43]  You talk about what the Olympics provide, which is basically what you're saying, that there is this sort of, you know, it's this moment where it's, you know, touted as a celebration, and yet everyone from the police to real estate developers to everyone in between, local government officials and all of their crony friends can come in and get a bunch of contracts and try out a bunch of new toys and just have a referral.
[00:32:06]  And so, you know, seeing what was getting implemented in Paris as a kind of trial run, I know that they've said, oh, well, you know, all of this like, you know, enhanced and extra CCTV, all of these like extra, you know, personnel that we've added, this is all going to get rolled back.
[00:32:26]  But it's like, is it really going to get rolled back?
[00:32:28]  I mean, I can't even imagine.
[00:32:30]  Why would they?
[00:32:32]  Yeah, I mean, to put a fine point on it, here in France, a year and a half before the Games, they passed a security law that gave the green light to algorithmic video surveillance, making it the first country in all of the EU to do so.
[00:32:47]  And as you're indicating, there is supposed to be a sunset on that law in March 2025, but it doesn't take the imagination of Henri Matisse to come up with scenarios by which the security officials say, you know what, we thwarted this attack, that attack, and the other attack.
[00:33:02]  We're going to need to keep this moving forward.
[00:33:03]  You saw we didn't have any terrorist attacks.
[00:33:05]  And, you know, thank God we didn't.
[00:33:07]  So that's something I'm going to be keeping my eye on really carefully.
[00:33:10]  Yeah, you know, I was actually looking up some of the AI video camera assisted vision shit that they were touting was going to change the security infrastructure of the Olympics.
[00:33:23]  And I will say that there is a, I actually don't know if this came from officials or just like analysts, but they were like, listen, this technology isn't exactly there yet, but we're going to, you know, we're going to try it out here.
[00:33:35]  And there's, there's one, I believe it's called Wind, or it's by a company called WinTix and WINTICS, French company.
[00:33:41]  And it's supposed to be able to detect if you have a weapon or there's like eight scenarios that it can detect.
[00:33:47]  You know, weapons.
[00:33:48]  Pre-COG?
[00:33:49]  Well, it's just like if it sees it happening and it like says like, this is an abandoned bag, which is kind of pre-cog because maybe I just left it there.
[00:33:58]  And because maybe it's got a little bit of weed in it or something.
[00:34:01]  I'm trying to be, I don't want to get Michael Phelps.
[00:34:04]  But, you know, it has these eight scenarios they can test or they can detect.
[00:34:08]  And I can't remember if it was that system or one of the other basically identical AI camera systems that they're using.
[00:34:14]  But in an actual test they did to like see if it works, the first test, 0% success rate.
[00:34:21]  And the second test, 28% success rate, which is, by the way, that's less than guessing.
[00:34:28]  And so like these things, these things don't even really seem to work, but they want to use them more.
[00:34:32]  And to your point about there's supposed to be sunsetting in March 2025, which does seem a little bit after the Olympics.
[00:34:39]  But I was reading these various other articles and they're French, so I didn't translate them.
[00:34:44]  I can't really, I think I see what's going on.
[00:34:47]  But there was this one government official, which I have to say because I can't remember exactly what his title was, but in his province or whatever, he's like, yeah, we want to start using these in high schools.
[00:34:57]  And so you see this, like it's already, and he's, of course, he's from Les Republicans, Sarkozy's party.
[00:35:04]  These people want to actually proliferate this technology, even though it doesn't work.
[00:35:09]  And even though they actually had to sign all these laws to even allow this kind of stuff, because these are like the first laws of these kind, like this stuff isn't usually allowed in the EU, right?
[00:35:18]  That's exactly right.
[00:35:19]  That's exactly right.
[00:35:20]  And you're also pointing to another really important dynamic when it comes to the Olympics.
[00:35:24]  And that is public money typically funds the Olympic Games.
[00:35:28]  And yet these private companies that you're talking about, these surveillance companies in France, they're there to scoop up all the rewards.
[00:35:34]  It's a bonanza for these private companies.
[00:35:36]  In other words, it's an incredible transfer of public wealth into private pockets for technology that's not even really there yet, like you're talking about.
[00:35:44]  You know, I've called it trickle-up economics and trickles right up into people who are already doing quite well when it comes to their bank accounts.
[00:35:52]  So can you tell us a little bit now that the games are over?
[00:35:55]  You've been there the entire time.
[00:35:56]  They last about, let's say, two weeks, though obviously the preparations are much more intense than that.
[00:36:03]  What did you see on the ground in terms of how, I mean, because it's a dynamic to talk about is that not just being in America, but everyone around the world experiences the Olympics through the broadcast television set, which is a very different version of the games than what working people who live in the city of Paris experience versus people who, and I want to ask about this, who come to Paris to watch the Olympics, which I find to be a very bizarre type of tourism.
[00:36:32]  Wait, Jules did that.
[00:36:33]  No, but you know, I'm not talking about you or reporting or any of that.
[00:36:39]  But the idea of like Olympic tourism is like a very weird phenomenon to me, which I want to ask about.
[00:36:44]  But on the ground, what is the experience like in Paris?
[00:36:50]  Well, you know, it is kind of bizarre to see these different clutches of people walking around with their U.S. gear or France gear or South African gear on.
[00:37:00]  You know, in the U.S., obviously the flag has been co-opted by the right pretty much exclusively.
[00:37:05]  But you saw people here who I presume weren't necessarily like far-right Republicans waving the flag left and right.
[00:37:12]  And it's just kind of an odd scene in that way.
[00:37:14]  You know, my job here, the kind of reporting and research that I do is basically grassroots up instead of like watching from NBC and kind of coming down or talking to members of the International Olympic Committee and coming down from there.
[00:37:27]  So I kind of have historically and still continue to like nestle myself in different communities that are affected by the Olympics and basically learn from them.
[00:37:36]  And, you know, a couple of things that I learned here that I think gives you a feel for what was really happening on the ground, kind of away from the shimmering scrim of Olympism, is there was incredible suppression of political dissent.
[00:37:47]  There were activists who I interviewed, I know personally, who were, all they were going to do, they're from a group called Sacaj 2024, kind of like an anarchist, anti-Olympics group, like no Olympics anywhere type of group.
[00:38:01]  And all they were doing was organizing an informational tour for visiting journalists who were coming from afar so that they could learn about Saint-Denis, this sort of suburb to the north of Paris that was really getting refashioned and gentrified, let's be straight, by the Olympic Games.
[00:38:16]  And so the idea was to do what they called a toxic tour with journalists and walk around the area.
[00:38:21]  There was no megaphone, nothing like that, just some information about how it was affecting the environment and society in this area.
[00:38:28]  Well, before the event started, two journalists and one activist who were on their way to join us, I was at the tour, they got apprehended by police.
[00:38:37]  Four police cars swoop out, surround them, dozens and dozens of police officers grab them, take them to the police station, search their belongings, do identity checks.
[00:38:46]  They find some stickers that are anti-Olympic stickers, which, as far as I know, is totally legal here in France.
[00:38:53]  But they spent 10 hours in detention.
[00:38:56]  Obviously, they missed our tour.
[00:38:58]  And that wasn't the only time it happened.
[00:38:59]  They organized another tour, a toxic tour that was going to focus on police repression in the Olympic City.
[00:39:05]  And ironically, the police swooped in again and arrested the same young man, Noah Farhone is his name.
[00:39:10]  And so I talked to him again.
[00:39:11]  This time, he was only detained for seven hours.
[00:39:13]  And so this you're not going to see on NBC.
[00:39:16]  You might hear a little bit about how Aisha Curry, Steph Curry's wife, got a little bit hassled by the security and that was uncomfortable.
[00:39:24]  But that's as close as you're probably going to get to really understanding what it's like here on the ground.
[00:39:28]  So that's one thing.
[00:39:30]  I would say another thing that is in keeping with my sort of figuring out what's really happening among people who are affected negatively by the Olympics is I got to go out on outreach with this group called Médecins du Monde, Doctors of the World.
[00:39:44]  And they basically do medical outreach to people who are unhoused and have no health care.
[00:39:49]  And during the Olympics, they were having a heck of a time just finding people because the displacement was so intense in the weeks coming up to the games that people who are unhoused basically had to hide in the shadows or literally hide underground in parking lots and maybe come up at night to get some fresh air and sleep.
[00:40:06]  And so I went out with them and we were in an area where there were numerous unaccompanied minors, so like 17 and younger.
[00:40:14]  And they saw that we had a doctor with us, this beautiful man, Bertrand Chatelain, 88 years old.
[00:40:20]  And he's out there serving these young men, 17 and younger, from places like Cote d'Ivoire, from Guinea, from elsewhere.
[00:40:29]  And he's just working through them one by one, giving them medicines, giving them assistance, showing that he cares.
[00:40:34]  This was really eye-opening for me.
[00:40:36]  I interviewed a number of these young men and they told me that the Olympics was just making their lives much harder.
[00:40:42]  Not only did they have to hide during the day, but also it was just impossible for them to get food.
[00:40:47]  Police woke them up every morning at 5 a.m. and not in a pleasant way, telling them to move on and go back into hiding.
[00:40:54]  And so that's another thing that you're not going to see on the news.
[00:40:56]  But in the lead up to these Olympics, some 12,500 people were scooped off the streets and sent elsewhere, sometimes hundreds of miles away in other parts of Paris.

=== Olympics and Hidden Lives (15:19) ===

[00:41:07]  And there's an activist group here called Le Revers de la Medaille, the other side of the metal in English.
[00:41:13]  And they've done a great job really illuminating this incredible amount of displacement that's been happening here.
[00:41:19]  And just one last example, if I may, of something I learned here that kind of blew my mind.
[00:41:24]  You remember if you're paying attention to the Seine River, they were going to fix up the Seine River so that they could have...
[00:41:29]  Yeah.
[00:41:30]  Which, hey.
[00:41:31]  They had the mayor go and swim in it.
[00:41:34]  That's right.
[00:41:34]  The mayor did go swimming in it, which is more than they can say in Rio.
[00:41:37]  They promised to do that in Rio, but they weren't going to touch that nasty water down there in Bonabatta Bay, let me tell you.
[00:41:42]  Didn't a couple of swimmers get sick and have to like drop out of the triathlon because of the conditions of the Seine, which is basically like sewage water, by the way.
[00:41:52]  It's not when they did this like big, you know, photo op with the mayor of Paris, Hidalgo, I think is her name.
[00:42:01]  She, you know, she's in her like little suit and it was very reminiscent of Obama like fake drinking the Flint water, if you remember that, where she kind of like tries to duck her head under the Seine to show like everything is good, but has her lips pursed and is like not trying to get anything in her eyes or her nose.
[00:42:19]  It's like very, very, I mean, it's, it would be funny if it weren't so disgusting.
[00:42:23]  But yeah, I'm sorry.
[00:42:25]  No, great.
[00:42:26]  It's a total spectacle.
[00:42:27]  And, you know, in doing some reporting, I dug in a little bit with my colleague Dave Ziren.
[00:42:33]  And we learned that, you know, when they were testing for the water, it was failing over and over again in the months in the lead up to these Olympics.
[00:42:39]  They finally passed a test in July.
[00:42:42]  But the thing we learned was they're only testing for two bacteria, E. coli and Enterococci.
[00:42:48]  They weren't testing for anything else.
[00:42:50]  And we interviewed some people from the Surfrider, and we were like, so are they testing for like pharmaceutical effluents?
[00:42:57]  Are they testing for pesticide runoff?
[00:43:00]  Are they testing for like toxic metals?
[00:43:02]  They're like, nah, we're not doing that.
[00:43:03]  We're actually not testing for that at all.
[00:43:05]  So when those people got sick in the river, they said, the Olympic officials said, well, it wasn't the E. coli because the levels were safe.
[00:43:12]  But, you know, what happens if you have just below, just barely safe E. coli levels, but then you get hit with like a wave of some nasty pharmaceutical.
[00:43:20]  You know, it was an epic fail, if you ask me, by the people who run the Olympics to basically put the health of the athletes at risk.
[00:43:28]  You know, people that run the Olympics have this slogan.
[00:43:30]  They like to say athletes first.
[00:43:32]  But when it came to putting these athletes in the river, athletes very much came closer to last.
[00:43:38]  I don't want to just put it on the French, but I do want to say it feels like it speaks to a particular sort of French arrogance about like they were so insistent on using the Seine River in the games because there was, I think the whole concept of the games was really like they didn't build a ton of, I mean, they did actually obviously build a ton of like development infrastructure, especially like you mentioned, like in Saint-Denis outside the city and all of this kind of displacement that happened, but they weren't building these like massive,
[00:44:08]  you know, like arenas by like the big starkitex like they did in Beijing or like wherever else.
[00:44:14]  Like there was this like, we're just doing it in Paris.
[00:44:16]  And it becomes this big advertisement for the city of Paris, for France, as a way of kind of like, you know, advertising to different tourists and on the national stage and all these other things.
[00:44:30]  And yet it was so obviously a terrible idea to begin with.
[00:44:34]  And, you know, this is not exceptional to the French games, but none of the people on the ground that live there seem to actually want any of this.
[00:44:43]  It's always like, you know, the government officials and, you know, people either running for election and then not having to deal with the fallout later.
[00:44:52]  I feel like we see that a lot right now in California as we look to Los Angeles, which gives me great pause.
[00:45:02]  But, you know, no matter what the sort of effects happen to be like literally on the ground at the grassroots level, like you say, these games keep going on and get bigger and bigger and become these kind of more ostentatious displays that only seem to kind of enrich the people at the top.
[00:45:19]  Absolutely.
[00:45:20]  That is totally true.
[00:45:22]  And, you know, the people here in Paris really positioned these Olympics as the greenest games ever.
[00:45:28]  They literally said that.
[00:45:30]  And part of the reason they were able to say that was because what you're talking about, Liz, they didn't have a lot of fresh construction.
[00:45:37]  But they did a number of things that very much made these not actually sustainable games.
[00:45:42]  Like they didn't count the 85% of the carbon tab that comes from people like me and others flying from other countries to be there.
[00:45:51]  They certainly didn't count the damage done in Tahiti.
[00:45:55]  And, you know, they held surfing.
[00:45:57]  And this is to your point about the games getting bigger and bigger, these new sports like surfing seems kind of exciting, but there's no surfing along the coast of France.
[00:46:04]  So they sent it to their former colony in Tahiti, where in doing so, they decided, oh, we need a special brand new viewing tower so that we can have NBC get the best pictures of these surfers.
[00:46:17]  And the locals there in Tehupo were like, no, no, I think our surfing tower has been just fine for many, many years.
[00:46:22]  We're a little concerned about doing something big like that.
[00:46:25]  And Olympic officials said, no, no, we're building that tower.
[00:46:28]  And when they started to build it, they brought this barge into the bay there in Tehupo to start the construction.
[00:46:34]  And you could literally hear the barge crunching the delicate coral reefs underneath it and the locals screaming out in agony.
[00:46:42]  You know, it takes like 5,000 years for these coral reefs to grow.
[00:46:45]  And I just don't see how that fits with this notion of a green Olympics while you crushing the coral in your formal, former colony.
[00:46:53]  It just seems kind of wicked to me.
[00:46:55]  Well, I think that the whole green Olympics thing is sort of part and parcel for like all of the rest of the kind of like Olympics spirit, right?
[00:47:03]  Like it's this thing that like, it's like, it's like a sports version of the UN.
[00:47:07]  Like it brings us all together.
[00:47:09]  You know, we're all just like here to enjoy sports and like, you know, fucking throw a javelin, which I'm not really sure what those people are doing between the Olympics.
[00:47:18]  Not really my problem.
[00:47:19]  I don't really understand what people do shot put are doing like next year, but that's neither here nor there.
[00:47:26]  But it seems like it's kind of like, it's like an excuse to have the Olympics, right?
[00:47:32]  It's like you need to say like, oh, yeah, we're doing the green stuff or we're doing like, we're, you know, we're, we're donating this to this and this.
[00:47:39]  But the people who actually run the Olympics, it's this, it's this body.
[00:47:43]  What's it called?
[00:47:43]  IOC, right?
[00:47:46]  And they seem to make these these decisions in part with like these local or not local, but like national governments where they form every four years or every three years, really, because they start before like a state of exception in that country, put in a bunch of money for security stuff.
[00:48:03]  A lot of that stuff gets left behind, or not left behind, but like stays in place.
[00:48:08]  And then the Olympics moves on to the next joint.
[00:48:10]  And with France, you know, something we've talked about, we're doing something else about this, but like, you know, I did not watch the, I mean, I got to be real with you guys.
[00:48:21]  I didn't watch the second of the Olympics.
[00:48:23]  I just got to be completely pushed a lot.
[00:48:25]  You did.
[00:48:25]  I know.
[00:48:26]  I really enjoyed the Olympics.
[00:48:28]  I know.
[00:48:28]  I know.
[00:48:29]  Listen.
[00:48:29]  I really enjoyed watching the athletes.
[00:48:32]  You guys are both sports people.
[00:48:34]  I'm more of a I actually don't know what to oppose sports with in this because books I'm more of into books.
[00:48:42]  Well, no, because he writes books.
[00:48:44]  I'm more into, you know, I'm more into yoga.
[00:48:48]  That doesn't even work either, but and I'm not.
[00:48:51]  But I just don't watch sports because I can't figure out how to work TV.
[00:48:56]  But it's like, for me, something that it's sort of in some other research that we were doing about a related topic, what I thought was so wild is that like Paris was completely transformed into this weird LVMH advertisement.
[00:49:10]  And the Olympics was like a way for France to advertise itself as a luxury destination for rich people from all around the world.
[00:49:20]  Yeah, I mean, the Olympics are an event that feature elite athletes for an elite tourist class and for an elite political class.
[00:49:29]  And there's just kind of no getting around that reality.
[00:49:32]  And often the elites that run it, like here in France, you mentioned Emmanuel Macron, basically try to use it like their own trampoline to sort of elevate their career afterwards.
[00:49:43]  And that was actually something I quite enjoyed here because every time he appeared on screen at one of the Olympic fan zones, I would go there and sit with 3,000 French people and watch the United States men's basketball team take on France in the final of the gold medal game.
[00:49:57]  Very fun, very festive kind of place.
[00:49:59]  Incredible game.
[00:50:00]  But the loudest booze, it was thunderous, I have to tell you, came when Macron came on the screen.
[00:50:05]  It was just like, boo, boo.
[00:50:07]  And he was everywhere with, you know, this little guy kind of like putting his little rippers all over athletes and trying to just like get their shine from them.
[00:50:15]  And there was an athlete here named Hugo Hay who runs the 5,000 meters.
[00:50:22]  And he's finally, that's the guy right there.
[00:50:25]  And he comes out in the press and he's like, look, Macron, the Olympics are about athletes.
[00:50:29]  Just like, back off a little bit, man.
[00:50:31]  You're trying too hard.
[00:50:32]  And that was kind of actually enjoyable for me to watch athletes and others pushing back.
[00:50:37]  But, you know, let's be real, like the Olympians, it might be obvious, but the Olympians are what make the Olympics worth anything.
[00:50:43]  It's definitely not those guys from the International Olympic Committee.
[00:50:46]  I mean, they are a nonprofit organization that is remarkably profitable and they hoard a lot of the profits away from athletes.
[00:50:54]  If I may say, there was an interesting study done by Toronto Metropolitan University a few years back that looked at leagues like the National Basketball Association, the National Football League, the National Hockey League, the English Premier League of Men's Soccer.
[00:51:07]  They compared the revenues that the athletes in those leagues received, and it was between 45 and 60 percent, 45 to 60.
[00:51:15]  With Olympians, it's more like 4.1% of the revenues go to athletes, and less than 1% is directly into their pockets.
[00:51:25]  And so obviously that has a little something to do with unions and some of these other professional leagues, but the IOC is sitting pretty.
[00:51:32]  They rented a hotel here in Paris for the whole duration of the games for 22 million euros.
[00:51:38]  They didn't allow the press to come in.
[00:51:40]  There was actually an interesting worker action by the workers that were in that facility where they were staying in that hotel.
[00:51:45]  But yes, if you want to think about changing the Olympics, a great place to start is by changing the International Olympic Committee.
[00:51:52]  Can we talk?
[00:51:53]  I mean, who are these guys?
[00:51:55]  Because I hate, I mean, if any organization deserves to be called a cabal, I feel like they are very cabal-esque because, and they seem to, from my understanding, the IOC in the past like decade or so has become like smaller and smaller, more insulated, fewer people, and kind of like, you know, more and more centralized into like maybe even a handful of guys who I assume have money in Baku.
[00:52:21]  This is like, I always associate Baku with like bizarre money laundering schemes of international sports bodies, whether it's like F1, people who run F1 or FIFA or, you know, the IOC.
[00:52:35]  That's kind of like a triumph for it maybe right there of international sports cabal.
[00:52:39]  But like, who are these guys?
[00:52:41]  And like, what do they do when they're not doing this?
[00:52:44]  Like, who are these people?
[00:52:46]  Yeah, well, I think actually to understand the current iteration of the International Olympic Committee, we do well to sort of step back and look how it was formed way back in the 1890s by a plucky French baron named Baron Pierre de Coubertin.
[00:52:59]  So aristocrats started the Olympics.
[00:53:02]  Now, the Baron was a basket of isms.
[00:53:04]  He was sexist.
[00:53:06]  He was racist.
[00:53:07]  He was classist, and he brought all of those into the early days of the games.
[00:53:11]  You know, in the early Olympics, if you were a bricklayer or a grape picker, you were considered professional, and so you couldn't participate in the Olympics.
[00:53:18]  You had to be a man of leisure, like the Baron, who actually won the prize in poetry at the 1912 Stockholm Olympics.
[00:53:25]  The games were sexist.
[00:53:26]  The Baron said women shouldn't participate.
[00:53:28]  He said that they're there.
[00:53:29]  They should just place, if they're there, they're placing the laurels on the heads of the victorious men champions or producing baby boys that might one day become Olympic champions.
[00:53:38]  And then he was flat out racist.
[00:53:40]  I mean, he said that Africans should participate in the Olympics, but only because he thought it would cure their quote thousand jealousies of the white man.
[00:53:48]  And lest you think that these sort of isms are some vestige of the past, they're actually present in different ways that maybe we can talk about even today.
[00:53:56]  But the Baron basically kind of cobbled together a bunch of other aristocrats from around the world, dukes and princes.
[00:54:03]  It was all dudes back then, all men.
[00:54:06]  And that was the IOC.
[00:54:07]  Now, you might think, oh, we're in the 2020s now, things have really changed.
[00:54:11]  But basically, around 10% of the International Olympic Committee today is still royalty, like princes, shakes, if you count shakes with that.
[00:54:20]  They have allowed women in now.
[00:54:22]  There's Prince the Princess of Liechtenstein as a member of the IOC.
[00:54:27]  So in 1981, they started allowing women to become members of the International Olympic Committee.
[00:54:32]  So, you know, they are running these Olympics.
[00:54:36]  And as you mentioned, Liz, they have become much more authoritarian, much more insular.
[00:54:41]  And under their current president, a guy named Thomas Bach from Germany, he has really concentrated power in a few pockets of loyalty to him and basically left the rest of the International Olympic Committee to be a rubber stamp.
[00:54:54]  Now, if you want to become a member of the IOC, here's what you got to do: you need to figure out some members on the IOC right now, get in good with them, and they can, what they call co-opt you as a member.
[00:55:06]  Then you have to get voted on.
[00:55:07]  So the members pick their own members, and you can sort of see how that might create a somewhat insular situation, you know.
[00:55:15]  But they have a lot of people who don't seem to know much about sports, but they're handy and they're maybe popular.
[00:55:22]  And they put a happy face on this group called the International Olympic Committee.
[00:55:27]  When I was watching the Olympics, one thing, and I saw this, some other people kind of commenting on this.
[00:55:34]  And I'm curious what you think the future holds when people ask a question like that.
[00:55:40]  But one thing that was so striking about watching the games, and that was so nice about watching, you know, you mentioned the USA France basketball men's final is that there was no advertising, which is great, except for at halftime, but no gambling.
[00:55:56]  Okay, and I'm out.
[00:55:58]  It was like a striking, it's striking, you know, comparison to basically watching any kind of, you know, league in America is that you're inundated by like gambling or any of that.
[00:56:10]  And I'm curious if you think, given how, let's just say how the IOC likes to find new and exciting opportunities and new markets to kind of open up and use to enrich themselves personally and their friends.

=== The Enhanced Games (08:52) ===

[00:56:27]  Do you see the gambling industry as it's gaining like more and more, you know, market share in the U.S.
[00:56:35]  And now with the Olympics coming to the U.S. and we should say the World Cup also, with these games coming, like, is that a possibility in the future, do you think?
[00:56:45]  Because it seems like if I was perhaps a German president of the IOC, which I don't think any German should be a president of any kind of organization like that.
[00:56:55]  Seeing like a true Franz Act.
[00:56:58]  I would be licking my chops to get these draft kings in there and these, you know, all these other guys, these MGMs.
[00:57:06]  It seems like it's right there for the picking.
[00:57:08]  And I'm curious if you think that's a possibility.
[00:57:12]  You know, because the International Olympic Committee talks about the sacred nature of sport and because they have these big corporate sponsors but really curtail their ability to bring their sponsorship into the sacred Olympic zones, I would be a little surprised if the International Olympic Committee turned to gambling outfits, at least at this juncture.
[00:57:35]  But, you know, I think we're at a really interesting inflection point where some of the corporate sponsors, such as Toyota, are deciding that they no longer really want to be associated with the Olympic brand anymore.
[00:57:47]  And so if you see some sort of exodus like Toyota leaving and a bunch of others, then you might see the IOC become more desperate.
[00:57:55]  And who knows what they'd be willing to do?
[00:57:57]  Because if you think about where the IOC gets their money, nine out of every $10 comes from either broadcasters at around 61% of their revenues.
[00:58:07]  And then these corporate sponsors are another 30%.
[00:58:10]  So they need these corporate sponsors.
[00:58:13]  And if they get desperate, who knows?
[00:58:14]  They could turn to it.
[00:58:15]  It's not like they're exactly ethical in general and they have some kind of ethics that's guiding their behavior.
[00:58:20]  I mean, it's only a spectacle ethics at best.
[00:58:23]  Well, I want to talk a little bit more about international bodies in a second, but I actually want to go back to the athletes for a moment because as many people who see me in person realize that like, yes, well, I don't watch sports, I am a natural athlete.
[00:58:37]  I'm not a natty athlete.
[00:58:39]  I want to make that distinction very clear.
[00:58:40]  I'm on a lot of performance enhancing and frankly, performance diminishing drugs.
[00:58:45]  But I balance each other out.
[00:58:47]  I'm sort of, they call me yin yang.
[00:58:50]  But athletes themselves.
[00:58:52]  So again, I'm coming to this.
[00:58:53]  Liz, you watch the Olympics.
[00:58:55]  Jules, you've written six books about the Olympics.
[00:58:58]  I you have more than more knowledge than either of us.
[00:59:02]  Well, it's innate knowledge given to me from God, which is like a special type of relationship that, frankly, Polish people are very capable of feeling.
[00:59:10]  But, but, but, but what's up with the athletes?
[00:59:14]  Because I get it.
[00:59:15]  Like, you know, obviously countries, a lot of people, rich countries send like usually a lot of athletes.
[00:59:21]  Poor countries usually send like a few athletes and then whatever random loser like white men for America who'd be paying Barbados to be like a citizen for two years so they can go in there for whatever sport.
[00:59:33]  But what's it like as an Olympian?
[00:59:36]  I don't even know if these guys are paid, to be completely honest with you guys.
[00:59:40]  But like, is it like, I know, obviously I saw footage of the cardboard beds to prevent Hanky Panky from going on the Olympic village, also probably to save money.
[00:59:51]  Are they treated well?
[00:59:52]  Like, what's up with them?
[00:59:54]  Does it differ from country to country?
[00:59:56]  Exactly.
[00:59:56]  It's very different from country to country.
[00:59:59]  And some of the athletes that get the least are actually from the United States.
[01:00:02]  We don't really have a strong federal funding program for athletes.
[01:00:06]  And that's why you see dozens and dozens of them starting GoFundMe pages to try to realize their Olympic dream.
[01:00:12]  So there's that.
[01:00:13]  But, you know, there's a massive chasm now in the Olympic athlete sphere between LeBron James on one hand and the person just barely making it by so they can qualify in badminton on the other.
[01:00:27]  And, you know, LeBron James is fine.
[01:00:29]  The Olympics need LeBron James a lot more than LeBron James needs the Olympics.
[01:00:33]  But for the badminton player, this is kind of like your one chance to make a name for yourself, maybe get a few sponsorships to kind of sustain you in your career as you go for your next Olympic Games.
[01:00:43]  To spell it out a little bit, you know, you're not going to get rich in the United States by winning a medal even.
[01:00:48]  The last statistics that I've seen say that if you win a gold medal, the United States pays you about $37,500, $37,500, $22,500 for silver and $15,000 for a bronze.
[01:01:02]  World Athletics just this year started paying their track and field gold medal winners $50,000 just for the gold medal.
[01:01:10]  And so we're starting to see a little bit more money circulating.
[01:01:13]  I have to say, I think part of this is response to something that's cropped up that's a bit of a threat to the Olympics.
[01:01:19]  And actually, Brace, this could be a real opportunity for you.
[01:01:21]  It's something called the Enhanced Games.
[01:01:24]  I'm not sure if you've heard about this.
[01:01:25]  Oh, yeah.
[01:01:26]  Yeah.
[01:01:26]  Okay.
[01:01:27]  Yeah.
[01:01:27]  This could be you.
[01:01:28]  But explain, explain to our audience.
[01:01:30]  Is this the teal thing?
[01:01:31]  I don't know if it's, I feel like it's a teal.
[01:01:33]  It is, it is.
[01:01:33]  Is it teal himself?
[01:01:34]  I thought it was a teal type guy, like the young, like Brian Johnson or something.
[01:01:38]  It's teal himself.
[01:01:39]  Teal is bankrolling it.
[01:01:41]  There is a young, handsome, and charismatic guy named Aaron D'Souza who is the brains behind it.
[01:01:50]  Well, if it's a D'Souza, you know.
[01:01:51]  You know, it's juiced.
[01:01:52]  Yeah.
[01:01:55]  Actually, you know, I talked to him and he said he was at that time he was aspiring to participate in the enhanced games.
[01:02:00]  And what it is, is basically it's a doping free-for-all.
[01:02:04]  So you can just dope to the gills.
[01:02:07]  And their argument is that a survey recently among Olympians found that I think it was more than four in 10 admitted that they were actually using performance enhancing drugs.
[01:02:16]  And that their argument is, you know, the people from the rich countries are the ones that know how to get away with it.
[01:02:20]  And the ones that get nabbed are from poor countries that don't have the resources to figure out the masking agents.
[01:02:25]  And so they're just like, rip off the scab and let everybody dope to the gills.
[01:02:29]  Now, they actually have a lot of the same critiques that we've been discussing tonight.
[01:02:34]  But their answer to it, Hall, is to have athletes, you know, use these performance-enhancing drugs.
[01:02:39]  And they're talking about paying athletes a lot.
[01:02:42]  The top 10 athletes in each one of the sports, they're saying, will make upwards of $100,000 a year, which is, you know, much better than Olympians are making.
[01:02:51]  And, you know, I think my reading on that is that when people inside of the Olympic circle or world athletics, you know, for track and field, when they saw this money being talked about, they kind of knew they needed to do something to improve the payments.
[01:03:05]  So you're seeing some athletes promise to come out of retirement and engage in the enhanced games.
[01:03:10]  I think the first one's scheduled for next year.
[01:03:12]  I will say, though, I am not convinced, like from the athlete perspective, this is a great idea.
[01:03:16]  So Brace, maybe think about it a little more for you guys.
[01:03:19]  It reminds me of the XFL.
[01:03:21]  Yeah, well, it's very.
[01:03:22]  I think the thing that the thing that, well, which is interesting, because I think some PayPal Mafia people got involved with XFL as well, or like the second, some other iteration of it.
[01:03:31]  It does, it does pain me to hear that Teal is bankrolling it because that's a bridge too far for me, unfortunately.
[01:03:39]  But maybe I can just make my own sort of well, I guess performance enhancing drugs, that's already taken, but maybe just drugs.
[01:03:50]  You're just on drugs.
[01:03:52]  And so it's actually, you are a top athlete, but we are giving you handicaps by like giving you like, like, not even, we don't have to doesn't have to be like, we don't have to load you up with like several perk 30s.
[01:04:04]  We can even stop some, like put some fucking blood pressure medication patches on you.
[01:04:09]  Maybe have you smoke a cigarette and sprint.
[01:04:11]  So you don't know what it's going to be.
[01:04:12]  You don't know what it's going to be.
[01:04:13]  No, no, you find out that.
[01:04:14]  You find out that there's a giant wheel that we spin.
[01:04:17]  And so it'll be like, okay, 15 minutes in.
[01:04:20]  Now, LeBron, you got to light up 2-6.
[01:04:22]  Yeah, you got to fight smoked cigarettes.
[01:04:24]  There should just be the cigarette games.
[01:04:26]  And everybody's just got to do it while, and you have to, obviously, like, you have to make sure they puff.
[01:04:30]  So they're smoking the entire time.
[01:04:32]  There's a certain amount of cigarettes you have to smoke.
[01:04:36]  Yeah, that is.
[01:04:37]  Yeah, I like that.
[01:04:38]  You know, actually, so I was, I was, I was actually, I went, I was at Barstool yesterday and was able to talk to a just like, I was on a sports guy's show.
[01:04:48]  And I just asked him questions the entire time.
[01:04:50]  I will say the one thing that I learned that gave me pause about the enhanced games now is TREN, the, what do you call it? Antibiotic steroid that Young Chomsky swears he no longer uses, actually can give you schizophrenia in the same way that like, or like mimic the effects of schizophrenia in the same way.
[01:05:10]  I'm sorry, now you're just making the enhanced game sound that much like a better bet.
[01:05:14]  Now we're doing the crazy games.
[01:05:15]  Now we need just like a ton of guys on steroids and that are schizophrenic.

=== Olympic Funding Paradox (02:09) ===

[01:05:20]  Exactly.
[01:05:20]  And so, so, but one thing, one thing he actually was like, because the dude did know a lot about sports, one thing he did tell me is like, yeah, a lot of athletes who aren't like part of professional associations between the Olympic Games, whether it's like obviously like the basketball, et cetera, have like no money.
[01:05:36]  And like, have, and like, he was actually, he was giving me an example, not even like in a, in like a funny way, is like, literally, like, a bunch of people like started OnlyFans so that they could go.
[01:05:44]  They have to do GoFundMe so that they can go.
[01:05:46]  It's like all these ways that people you know who like fundraise for rent and shit like that have to do it in order to just go compete in the Olympic Games.
[01:05:54]  And some countries, you know, pay and give people all this money, but in America, it's just, it's crazy they don't.
[01:06:00]  I also found out in Norway, I believe it is, even if you get a gold medal, you get zero dollars.
[01:06:05]  They're just like, it's got to be for the love of the game.
[01:06:07]  Well, there's always like, I always find every, I don't know, I feel like every couple years, everyone notices that Serbia keeps fielding like really incredible athletes.
[01:06:17]  And they're always like, how do the Serbians always do that?
[01:06:19]  Like, there's always these guys that come up and, you know, people point out like, oh, this is a legacy from the former Yugoslavia.
[01:06:28]  And, you know, having a kind of like Soviet model of having a fully funded like national sports program where athletes, you know, talent could be found in all kinds of places.
[01:06:40]  And it wasn't, you know, because like in America, you know, we, you know, getting your kids into sports can be an incredibly expensive venture, depending on, you know, what, what we're talking about.
[01:06:52]  But usually it's like very, very expensive and demanding.
[01:06:55]  And there is not, and it's professionalized at a really young age.
[01:06:59]  Like there's a kind of, you know, market that have, that have continually opened up in different sports and avenues for young kids to like try to make money at sports rather than just becoming good at sports and in a kind of more holistic way.
[01:07:16]  And so, but you see in these like former Soviet countries, like a lot of these legacies of having these big, you know, big nationally funded and well-respected, you know, sports and athletic programs.

=== Los Angeles Looms Large (05:49) ===

[01:07:29]  Absolutely.
[01:07:30]  I mean, money very much matters when it comes to the medal table.
[01:07:33]  I mean, if you look at the final medal table, it correlates pretty nicely with GDP.
[01:07:38]  You do have other countries like you're talking about that really zero in on particular sports and fund them really heavily and have done so historically.
[01:07:45]  There's no magic trick to becoming an Olympian and having a lot of successful Olympians, except money.
[01:07:52]  I mean, I don't mean to be too productive, but that's just the way it is with the Olympic sphere.
[01:07:57]  So let's talk about Los Angeles because that is now looming large.
[01:08:03]  And we have, I mean, we're both from California.
[01:08:06]  We have had a long and tenuous relationship with old Gavin Newsom bringing the Olympics to California, to Los Angeles.
[01:08:16]  Feels like they've already started.
[01:08:19]  You know, he started all of these big sweeps in California.
[01:08:22]  Los Angeles itself, the development boom has been booming now for a couple years leading up to this.
[01:08:29]  But what can we expect from the LA Games, from the U.S., and also from pushes on the ground against a lot of what's going on?
[01:08:40]  Way back when Eric Garcetti, then mayor of Los Angeles, appeared on Seth Meyer's late night show, and he said, by the time the Olympics arrive in Los Angeles, we have eliminated homelessness from the streets of LA.
[01:08:54]  Now he's long gone, of course, and Karen Bass has inherited this problem that is very much not going to be taken care of by the time the Olympics roll around.
[01:09:03]  You know, there was an interesting post the other day by an elected official in Los Angeles, Kenneth Mejia.
[01:09:10]  He's the Los Angeles controller, and he made this graphic that compared Paris to Los Angeles in key areas.
[01:09:17]  You know, Paris has a really great transit system that a lot of people use.
[01:09:21]  I used it the entire time I've been here, the metro system.
[01:09:24]  It's fabulous.
[01:09:24]  LA, not so much.
[01:09:26]  They promised they were going to have 28 transit projects done by 28, 28 by 28.
[01:09:31]  That's definitely not happening.
[01:09:32]  They talked about the number of unhoused, unsheltered people living in the streets.
[01:09:36]  Los Angeles has a much more challenging scene in that regard.
[01:09:40]  And, you know, there is a long ways to go for Los Angeles in the next four years.
[01:09:44]  And I hope that they had the wake-up call that they needed.
[01:09:47]  But what I fear the lesson they might have learned is that you can basically scoop people off the streets like they did here in Paris and send them to different parts of the country.
[01:09:56]  And you can basically ramp up policing.
[01:09:59]  You know, Los Angeles has, we were talking about algorithmic video surveillance.
[01:10:03]  They're talking about bringing facial recognition systems to every single venue to check our tickets, sort of the soft launch of this incredibly invasive technology.
[01:10:12]  There's a thing in the United States called National Special Security Events, NSSEs, and they're put into place in front of big events like the Super Bowl or the World Cup or the Olympics.
[01:10:24]  And you might remember a few years ago, 21 Savage got arrested at a Super Bowl for an immigration violation.
[01:10:31]  Turns out he's from England.
[01:10:32]  He had overstayed his five years.
[01:10:34]  I forgot about that.
[01:10:36]  And there was a minor scandal in the rap community where it turns out you're a yob.
[01:10:41]  Exactly.
[01:10:42]  And the reason why he got nabbed was because of a national special security event where more than a dozen different federal intelligence agencies basically have free reign, including immigration and customs enforcement.
[01:10:54]  Now, in Atlanta, that was one thing where 21 Savage got nabbed.
[01:10:57]  But think about that in the context of Los Angeles, where you have a lot of undocumented residents in that city, and you're going to have ICE basically running free.
[01:11:04]  And not only that, but they already started the NSSE in Los Angeles.
[01:11:11]  It's the earliest that I can ever remember having an NSSE started four years before the actual event happened.
[01:11:18]  So that's something definitely for people to keep an eye on.
[01:11:21]  They put in charge as the new CEO of LA 28, as they're calling it, the Los Angeles 2028 Olympics, a former CIA guy.
[01:11:30]  And I think that says a lot about kind of what these Olympic events are.
[01:11:35]  I mean, they're basically massive security events with some sport attached to the side of it.
[01:11:40]  And, you know, let's talk about the cost of LA because they always say, oh, the cost is just, it was just $5.3 billion when they were doing their bidding.
[01:11:48]  Well, okay, it was only $5.3 billion.
[01:11:50]  Then after a little while, they said, well, actually, it's going to be $6.9 billion.
[01:11:54]  And they don't even include the security price tag.
[01:11:57]  You might remember Donald Trump sat down at a table when he was president with Casey Wasserman, who's running the LA 28 Olympics.
[01:12:04]  And he promised him, whatever you need, Casey, whatever you need for security for the Olympics, the federal government will supply it.
[01:12:10]  So we're talking to the tune of $2,3 billion.
[01:12:12]  So they went from $5.3 billion to $6.9 billion.
[01:12:16]  Let's just add three more billion.
[01:12:17]  They're at $9.9 billion.
[01:12:19]  We still got four more years to go here.
[01:12:21]  They've basically almost doubled their price tag in a games that are supposed to be like just a very low price tag thing.
[01:12:27]  So I think there's a lot on the table here.
[01:12:30]  Now, the good thing about all this, though, is there is resistance already on the ground in Los Angeles.
[01:12:37]  There's a group called No Olympics LA, which is a savvy band of activists that emerged out of Democratic Socialists of America, LA chapter, their housing and homelessness committee.
[01:12:46]  And they've been on the case for a long time.
[01:12:48]  They've been organizing internationally.
[01:12:50]  They have a lot of local partners.
[01:12:52]  They have some celebrities that have kind of come on board.
[01:12:54]  I think this is an area where they could really push things.
[01:12:57]  They can learn lessons from the union work that's done here.
[01:13:01]  I interviewed a number of members of the union here who basically leveraged the Olympics in Paris to get massive raises and earlier retirements.
[01:13:09]  And any self-respecting union in Los Angeles better rev up their machine to try to get some benefits for their members because there was threatened strikes here in Paris and they absolutely worked.

=== Sifan Hassan's Bronze Medal Win (03:32) ===

[01:13:19]  So, you know, I think there's a collision course, but the recipe for the Olympics is a festival of injustice.
[01:13:27]  But it's up to the people of Los Angeles to kind of realize that for starters and then to try to organize and push back against this because the juggernaut is coming.
[01:13:54]  Well, Jules, thank you so much for joining us.
[01:13:56]  I think.
[01:13:58]  I think our final question has to be this.
[01:14:00]  Actually, this is a question for both of you.
[01:14:04]  What's the craziest shit that you saw someone do physically style during the Olympics?
[01:14:13]  Shit, that's tough.
[01:14:15]  There's so many.
[01:14:16]  I'm not going to make a joke about the breakdancing, obviously, but I do, I hate to give it to the French, but that fucking swim, was it the 100-meter fly that Leon Marchaud, when Marchaud, however you say his name, the French Phenom swimmer, when he came from like a full lap, like a full body behind, I think it was, I can't remember, it was the German, he was behind a German, no,
[01:14:44]  Hungarian swimmer in that last, you know, in that last lap, it was like really, really impressive to watch that kid swim.
[01:14:53]  I was like, oh shit, this guy is potentially, you know, the next Phelps or maybe even bigger than Phelps.
[01:15:00]  That was impressive.
[01:15:01]  Yeah, and he's bigger than Jesus here, as you'll know.
[01:15:04]  I would imagine.
[01:15:05]  I saw him in his little French suit and I was just like, oh, this little French playboy, the fucking asshole.
[01:15:10]  What an incredible swimmer.
[01:15:13]  You know, I'm going to go with Sifan Hassan, the runner from the Netherlands.
[01:15:18]  On the marathon.
[01:15:20]  Yes, that was amazing.
[01:15:22]  Yeah.
[01:15:22]  I mean, for starters, she wins a bronze medal in the 5,000.
[01:15:26]  She wins a bronze medal in the 10,000.
[01:15:29]  And then she runs the marathon and wins it with an Olympic record time.
[01:15:33]  Yes, and it came from behind, like right at the end.
[01:15:36]  And she kind of like pushed it.
[01:15:37]  It was like almost, it was crazy.
[01:15:39]  Sorry.
[01:15:40]  And no, I totally agree with you.
[01:15:42]  I mean, it was incredible.
[01:15:43]  And just on top of all that, you know, I'm a political scientist, so I'm obligated to point this out.
[01:15:47]  Of course.
[01:15:48]  At the closing ceremony, when she's getting her medal, you'll notice she wore her hijab.
[01:15:54]  And French athletes here in Paris were barred from wearing their hijab.
[01:16:00]  And you might have seen the French runner who was running the 400, she had to wear her hijab under a cap, like tuck it in under there.
[01:16:08]  It's crazy.
[01:16:09]  They blame it on secularism.
[01:16:10]  They say we're a secular society, and so you can't show your religion.
[01:16:13]  And so women were not allowed from France to wear their hijab.
[01:16:17]  So I thought it was just awesome that then she got her big moment on the world stage and she said, you know what?
[01:16:22]  I'm wearing my hijab.
[01:16:23]  Not wear it when I run, but I wear it when I want to, and I'm going to wear it for the whole world to see.
[01:16:27]  So I'm going to give it up for Sifan Hassan and her athletic accomplishment, but also the politics.
[01:16:33]  That's great.
[01:16:34]  Well, thank you so much for joining us.
[01:16:36]  I just want to say all my favorite Olympic moments.
[01:16:38]  What else did you see, Liz?
[01:16:39]  Well, obviously, Steph Curry is crazy to amazing games.
[01:16:42]  Jules, I got a career-making game.
[01:16:43]  I gotta mention, every time Liz has mentioned the Olympics, she's like, I've been watching the Olympics, and then I just unfortunately don't respond.
[01:16:50]  And so I think she just has to think these things.

=== Oh, Sport, Pleasure of the Gods (11:28) ===

[01:16:52]  So go ahead, go ahead.
[01:16:54]  I'm not gonna go off on the basketball games, but they were like really, really incredible.
[01:16:58]  And the front, I do have to say, I was rooting for the French against the U.S. women's because that was like an amazing, amazing game.
[01:17:06]  But also, I really liked watching Rebecca Andraje win the gold in the floor and beating Simone Biles, which you're not supposed to say as an American, I guess, but she was very cool.
[01:17:18]  And she's just an amazing Brazilian athlete.
[01:17:21]  She's now the most decorated Brazilian Olympian.
[01:17:23]  And she's like one of seven, like from a favela, like super poor kid.
[01:17:28]  And she's just like the best gymnast in the world.
[01:17:31]  It's amazing.
[01:17:31]  So I just went.
[01:17:32]  I love that too.
[01:17:33]  And then Simone Biles and Jordan Childs giving her flowers on the metal stand and bowing down to her.
[01:17:39]  That was a beautiful moment.
[01:17:41]  Absolutely.
[01:17:42]  I love that too.
[01:17:43]  I love sports.
[01:17:44]  I think that so you mentioned that the Baron got in for poetry in 1912, which we really just glided over that.
[01:17:50]  When did actually, I got to ask another question.
[01:17:52]  When did they stop having poetry in the Olympics?
[01:17:55]  Yeah, you know, it wasn't long after that, but you gotta look up his poem.
[01:17:59]  His poem is called Ode to Sport.
[01:18:02]  And let's just say, as an avid reader of poetry, it is not scintillating material, but it gives you a lot of ideas of what the Baron thought was important in the world.
[01:18:12]  If I may, if I may, I'm gonna close us out with this.
[01:18:16]  Not the whole thing, because it is very long.
[01:18:18]  Well, not very long, but it's too long for this.
[01:18:22]  Oh, sport, pleasure of the gods, essence of life.
[01:18:27]  You appeared suddenly in the midst of the gray clearing which rise with the drudgery of modern existence, like the radiant messenger of a past age, when mankind still smiled, and the glimmer of dawn lit up the mountaintops, and flecks of light dotted the ground in the gloomy forest.
[01:18:44]  Oh, sport!
[01:18:46]  You are beauty.
[01:18:47]  You are the architect of that edifice which is the human body and which should become abject or sublime according to whether it's defiled by vile passions or improved through healthy exertion.
[01:18:58]  There can be no beauty without balance and proportion, and you are the peerless master of both.
[01:19:03]  For you create harmony, you give movements to rhythm, you make straight strength graceful, and you endow suppleness with power.
[01:19:12]  Oh, sport, you are justice.
[01:19:15]  The perfect equity for which men strive, calling Chris Ruffo, the perfect equity for which men strive in vain in their social institutions is your constant companion.
[01:19:25]  No one can jump a centimeter higher than the height he can jump, nor run a minute longer than the length he can run.
[01:19:31]  The limits of the success are determined solely by his own physical and moral strength.
[01:19:35]  You know what?
[01:19:36]  I'm keeping going.
[01:19:36]  One more time.
[01:19:37]  Just one last one.
[01:19:38]  Oh, sport, you are audacity!
[01:19:40]  The meaning of all muscular effort can be summed up in the word dare!
[01:19:44]  What good are muscles?
[01:19:46]  What is the point of feeling strong and agile?
[01:19:48]  And why work to improve one agility and strength, unless it's in order to dare?
[01:19:53]  But the daring you inspire has nothing in common with the adventurer's recklessness and staking everything on chance.
[01:19:58]  Yours is a prudent, well-considered audacity.
[01:20:01]  One last one.
[01:20:01]  Oh, sport, you are honor.
[01:20:04]  The laurels you bestow has no value unless you have been won in absolute fairness with the imperfect impartiality.
[01:20:10]  He who, with some shameful trick, manages to deceive his fellow competitors, feels guilt to his very core and lives in fear of the ignominious epithet which shall forever be attached to his name should his trickery be discovered.
[01:20:27]  Last one.
[01:20:28]  Oh, sport.
[01:20:29]  You are joy.
[01:20:31]  At your behest, flesh dances and eyes smile.
[01:20:37]  Blood erases abundantly through the arteries.
[01:20:42]  Thoughts stretch out on a brighter, clearer horizon.
[01:20:46]  To the sorrowful, you can even bring salutary diversion from their distress, whilst the happy you enable to fully to savor their joy of living.
[01:20:57]  We just got to do one last one.
[01:20:58]  Oh sport.
[01:21:00]  You are fecundity.
[01:21:04]  You strive directly and nobly towards perfection of the race, destroying unhealthy seeds and correcting the flaws which threaten its essential purity.
[01:21:18]  And you fill the athlete with the desire to see his sons grow up agile around him, strong around him, to take his place in the arena.
[01:21:30]  Arena.
[01:21:31]  Different pronunciation.
[01:21:32]  And in their turn, carry off the most glorious trophies.
[01:21:36]  Just one last.
[01:21:37]  We're almost done.
[01:21:38]  Oh, sport.
[01:21:39]  You are progress.
[01:21:41]  To serve you, a man must improve himself, pause, both physically and spiritually.
[01:21:48]  You force him to abide by a greater discipline.
[01:21:52]  You demand that he avoid all excess.
[01:21:54]  You teach him wise rules which allow him to exert himself with the maximum of intensity without compromising his good health.
[01:22:02]  And let's bring it home.
[01:22:03]  Oh, sport.
[01:22:04]  You are peace.
[01:22:07]  You promote happy relations between peoples, bringing them together in their shared devotion to a strength which is controlled, organized, and self-disciplined.
[01:22:19]  From you, the young worldwide learn self-respect, and thus the diversity of national qualities becomes the source of a generous and friendly rivalry.
[01:22:30]  Jules, this was in the fucking Olympic.
[01:22:32]  This won the fucking Olympics?
[01:22:35]  Yeah, that's championship poetry.
[01:22:36]  And you really captured the lyrical magic, I got to say, from that poem.
[01:22:39]  Well done.
[01:22:40]  For country?
[01:22:42]  Esoteric racism.
[01:22:43]  Well, there was a little bit of classics 1912 eugenic where like, you got to make sure your seed is rocking because you're an athlete and you got to marry a devoted and godly wife, hit her with that seed, get a little more of these motherfucking runners out here.
[01:23:01]  Yeah.
[01:23:02]  And then all the losers perish.
[01:23:03]  All the losers perish.
[01:23:04]  The losers shall perish.
[01:23:06]  everyone remembers that line so wait what that was basically so jules you're telling me that was basically it for poetry in the olympics Yeah, that pretty much almost killed it.
[01:23:14]  But yeah, he actually won that under two fake names, by the way.
[01:23:17]  But the judges thought, you know, the people think the judges knew that it was the Baron.
[01:23:21]  Definitely.
[01:23:22]  Has there been anything else?
[01:23:23]  Obviously, break dancing.
[01:23:24]  Sorry, my last question.
[01:23:25]  Obviously, breakdancing was like a bit of a wild card in the Olympics this time.
[01:23:29]  And it turns out that most countries don't have national breakdancing associations.
[01:23:32]  So it was a bit of a struggle.
[01:23:35]  Are there any other sports that they just tried out and they're like, all right, this isn't working?
[01:23:42]  Well, you know, yeah, they're not going to bring breakdancing to LA, but they are going to try cricket and they're going to try, they're going to be baseball back.
[01:23:49]  And so every host gets to pick a few new sports.
[01:23:53]  Interesting.
[01:23:53]  Yeah, it's been in the past.
[01:23:55]  It was in Tokyo and a few other places, but it wasn't here in Paris.
[01:23:59]  It just isn't a big sport here.
[01:24:00]  So, you know, and just to say that the Olympics are already massive and they should be thinking about cutting down sports, you know, like any sport involving a horse should basically have to go.
[01:24:10]  But they're talking about expanding.
[01:24:12]  So we'll be seeing things like cricket, but we shall see.
[01:24:15]  I'm trying to think of the worst thing that they could add to the Olympics that would provide the most like horror to watch.
[01:24:20]  And I think that's if every synchronized shooting.
[01:24:24]  Well, synchronized shooting would be good.
[01:24:26]  I think if every country sent a stand-up comedian, an amateur stand-up comedian, an open mic, if they did like, if they did Olympic open mic, I think we could get some crazy shit out of it.
[01:24:37]  So who do you think would win?
[01:24:38]  Who do I think?
[01:24:39]  Oh my God.
[01:24:40]  Could you imagine, dude, like a Czech guy winning?
[01:24:45]  More like a Slovenian?
[01:24:48]  I could see.
[01:24:49]  That would be tough.
[01:24:50]  I think there would be a lot of, I think it would be, I think they just maybe just do open mic and whatever you do it on open mic, be it a song, one song, be it a five-minute set, be it poetry, we could bring it back there.
[01:25:02]  I think that that's what LA needs to do.
[01:25:05]  Jules, where can people find your books?
[01:25:07]  Oh, gosh.
[01:25:08]  All right.
[01:25:08]  Hopefully at a local independent book place like Powell's, maybe.
[01:25:12]  But yeah, the most recent one is called What Are the Olympics For?
[01:25:15]  And it's a short primer for the thinking sports fan that sort of outlines a lot of these issues and dives into a lot more detail.
[01:25:21]  So I think that's the one I would recommend starting with is What are the Olympics for?
[01:25:25]  Thank you so much for joining us.
[01:25:27]  And we'll see you in LA.
[01:25:29]  Yeah.
[01:25:30]  All right.
[01:25:31]  Thanks for having me.
[01:25:31]  It was a lot of fun.
[01:25:48]  Liz, I just want your honest assessment for this episode.
[01:25:51]  Who would you give gold, silver, and bronze to of the three of us, including yourself?
[01:25:55]  Oh, I'd give gold to Jules.
[01:26:01]  I was talking about the people in this room.
[01:26:03]  Well, but it's interesting that now we already have multiple losers.
[01:26:06]  Yeah.
[01:26:07]  Well, no, we would only have one loser because there's three medals.
[01:26:11]  Yeah, but two of them are like, come on.
[01:26:14]  If you go to someone's house and there's a bronze medal, you're like, oh, cool.
[01:26:17]  Definitely.
[01:26:18]  No, I would.
[01:26:19]  I think that's cool.
[01:26:20]  I'd take it.
[01:26:21]  My God.
[01:26:22]  What are you going to do?
[01:26:22]  Stop me with your athletic prowess?
[01:26:24]  Bronze.
[01:26:25]  You had to beat me up?
[01:26:27]  Like, oh, I'm giving you bronze.
[01:26:29]  Okay, thank you.
[01:26:31]  And Young Chomsky is taking silver.
[01:26:33]  Thanks.
[01:26:34]  And I am not meddling because I am actually part of the Russian Federation who is not allowed to compete.
[01:26:41]  You were popped under the flag.
[01:26:42]  Why is that?
[01:26:42]  Because they did drugs?
[01:26:44]  No, it was because of Ukraine.
[01:26:46]  Because of Ukraine?
[01:26:47]  Yeah.
[01:26:48]  What about...
[01:26:49]  Which I will say, like, whatever aside, it is crazy watching gymnastics, synchronous swimming, other sports that, like, where the Russians are, like, very...
[01:26:59]  Have, like, a very rich tradition and are very competitive.
[01:27:02]  Like it's weird watching those without them.
[01:27:05]  And Belarus.
[01:27:05]  Wait, if you invade someone, you can't go to the Olympics.
[01:27:08]  No, this is all just U.S.
[01:27:10]  And if you have friends with somebody who invaded someone, you can't go to the Olympics.
[01:27:13]  No, because Israel was there.
[01:27:14]  I know.
[01:27:15]  Yeah.
[01:27:16]  But, and also just like, what?
[01:27:19]  It's not.
[01:27:20]  It's just the U.S. and the EU exerting, you know.
[01:27:22]  That's crazy.
[01:27:23]  Yeah.
[01:27:23]  But like literally, Russia was like, they're just like, there's no acknowledgement of Russia even being a country.
[01:27:31]  They should have sent all their guys to Transnistria or something and then they had them.
[01:27:34]  I guess they're not a country.
[01:27:35]  But like all their guys to like, like one of the Central Asian countries that's like, they exert a lot of pressure on them.
[01:27:41]  It's just all their athletes come from there.
[01:27:42]  That's crazy.
[01:27:43]  Yeah.
[01:27:44]  Wow.
[01:27:45]  Because there was, I was, last time they had to compete under, it was like, you know, they had the athletes were allowed to compete, but it wasn't under the Russian flag.
[01:27:55]  Yeah.
[01:27:55]  It was this family like that.
[01:27:57]  They had like a black box.
[01:27:58]  This was the same thing with they've done in other sports.
[01:28:00]  Like you saw.
[01:28:02]  No, but it was like a black box like Medvedev, the Russian tennis player, he competes like at the, I don't know, like at Roland Garrows or at the front or at the U.S. Open or at Wimbledon or whatever, but it'll be like a black box and it won't be, there's like no mention of Russia.

=== Russian Athletes: The Black Box (01:21) ===

[01:28:20]  He's on his own.
[01:28:21]  It's like very, very weird.
[01:28:23]  I find it interesting that you say you didn't meddle because in my experience, I've never encountered a situation where a woman wasn't meddling.
[01:28:31]  That was very nice.
[01:28:32]  That was nice.
[01:28:33]  That's great.
[01:28:34]  A little Olympics humor there.
[01:28:36]  I, you know, I'm not interested in gold, silver, or bronze.
[01:28:40]  You're in it for the money only, right?
[01:28:42]  You're just platinum, baby.
[01:28:43]  Just platinum.
[01:28:44]  They should add a platinum medal.
[01:28:45]  They should.
[01:28:46]  And you know what?
[01:28:47]  I'll be the first.
[01:28:47]  They should add a diamond medal, too.
[01:28:50]  For like people who like are really good.
[01:28:52]  Yeah.
[01:28:52]  You know, like LeBron.
[01:28:54]  But you call him the fraud, so perhaps you don't think that.
[01:28:57]  Or you call him LeBitch sometimes.
[01:28:59]  I call him whatever I want.
[01:29:00]  I call him all three.
[01:29:01]  Unless he wants to come to Golden State and keep the party going.
[01:29:04]  What team is he on?
[01:29:05]  He's on the Lakers.
[01:29:06]  What are you talking about?
[01:29:07]  Oh.
[01:29:08]  It's in the Golden State.
[01:29:10]  LeBron James.
[01:29:11]  All right.
[01:29:12]  With that being said, my name is Briggs.
[01:29:15]  I'm Liz.
[01:29:16]  We are, of course, joined by producer Young Chomsky, and this has been Truanon.
[01:29:20]  See you next time.
[01:29:21]  Bye-bye.
[01:29:42]  Come out.