Happy Olympic Opening Ceremony Day!! How did we get here? Join us as we present all four of our Olympics episodes! Ep 1 - Ancient Olympics & Pierre de Coubertin bringing us the modern games in 1896 Ep 2 - Hitler's 1936 Olympics & The Domination of Jesse Owens Ep 3 - Munich 1972 - The Massacre of the Israeli Olympic Team by Terrorists Ep 4 - Atlanta 1996 - The Atlanta Centennial Park Bombing & The Case Against Richard Jewell Woo! #teamusa
Happy Olympic Opening Ceremony Day!! How did we get here? Join us as we present all four of our Olympics episodes!
Ep 1 - Ancient Olympics & Pierre de Coubertin bringing us the modern games in 1896
Ep 2 - Hitler's 1936 Olympics & The Domination of Jesse Owens
Ep 3 - Munich 1972 - The Massacre of the Israeli Olympic Team by Terrorists
Ep 4 - Atlanta 1996 - The Atlanta Centennial Park Bombing & The Case Against Richard Jewell
Woo! #teamusa
See our individual episodes for sources!
https://www.doomedtofailpod.com/
Hi Friends! Our transcripts aren't perfect, but I wanted to make sure you had something - if you'd like an edited transcript, I'd be happy to prioritize one for you - please email doomedtofailpod@gmail.com - Thanks! - Taylor
Taylor: All four of our Olympic episodes in one long episode
>> Taylor: Hi, friends. Taylor from doomed to fail with the podcast that brings you history's most notorious disasters and epic failures twice a week, every week. And surprise, I'm here just to drop one more omnibus ish re release in all four of our Olympic episodes in one long episode. If you want to listen to it this way, because today is July 26 and this is the day that the Paris Olympics starts. So join us. We have episode one on the history of the Olympics, how you get in the Olympics, and how Pierre de Cobertin brought them back. Episode two on the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, episode three on the 1972 Munich massacre, and episode four on the 1996 Atlanta bombing, and Richard Jewell's, the accusation of Richard Jewell. So hope you enjoy. Here's to a peaceful, sportsmanlike Olympics, and, we will see you on the other side. Thank you so much. If, you have questions or things you want us to cover, we're at doomtofillpodmail. Uh.com. please tell your friends the matter of the people of state of California versus Orenthal James Simpson. Case number ba zero nine six.
>> Farz: And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you.
>> Taylor: Ask what you can do for your country.
>> Farz: And we are live and recording.
Welcome to doom to Fail, a twice weekly podcast about things doomed to fail
Welcome to doom to Fail, the twice weekly podcast hosted by myself, fars, and Taylor about things that are doomed to fail. Hi, Taylor, how are you?
>> Taylor: I am good. How are you? That was a great intro. I got feedback from my husband that was very like, your intro sucks. Do better.
>> Farz: Was that a better intro?
>> Taylor: That was for sure.
>> Farz: Should I ask Juan to rate it?
>> Taylor: Yeah, maybe write us one or something. Yeah, cry about it.
>> Farz: Yeah. Juan, why don't you do one better?
>> Taylor: Yeah, yeah.
>> Farz: Make your own twice a week podcast about items that are doomed to fail, and then you do your I'm derailing. Okay, anyways, so happy Sunday.
>> Taylor: happy father's day to all the fathers out there.
>> Farz: And dog fathers count. So happy father's day to me. and Juan, who I just, railed against. happy Thursday. It's my victim.
Taylor: I'm going to do a four part series on the Olympics
Okay, anyways, so we are off to another topic, and I think, taylor, I go first this time.
>> Taylor: I thought I did, but you can, I don't care. because we did last week. I went. You went first. You did usero the advent. So I go first.
>> Farz: You go.
>> Taylor: Okay. okay. Now I feel like I'm not ready. Now I feel kind of thrown into this. cool.
>> Farz: You were going to go first anyways.
>> Taylor: I know, I'm just kidding. Okay. I I. As I told you last week, I'm going to do a four part series starting today. and this should be an entire podcast, but on its own. And I'm sure that it is because there's, like, a thousand different stories to tell about this thing. But I'm going to do. I'm going to tell you some stories about an event that is about to happen in Paris. Do you know what I'm talking about?
>> Farz: Oh, olympics. Olympics.
>> Taylor: The Olympics, indeed. So, today, let's talk about the ancient Olympics. What they looked like, who was there, and then their revival in the late 18 hundreds, early 19 hundreds. How you get in the Olympics. And then what's going on in Paris right now as they're getting ready to host the Olympics starting in July, then part two will be Olympics, but now Hitler is here, which will be pre 1950 Olympics. So I'm going to tell the story of the 1936 Berlin Olympics and some other anecdotes that happened between then and then. Part three will be. They're even more political. There's going to be civil rights involved. There's going to be the massacre, at Munich involved, and that will get us from 1950 to 1980. And then part four will be about Los Angeles and the police, the Atlanta bombing, and honestly, I can't remember what that was about, so I'm excited to remember that. I don't remember at all. Who did that?
>> Farz: Richard Jewell. Was that his name? Yeah.
>> Taylor: Was that him? Or was it the guy who we thought did it?
>> Farz: That's the guy that we thought did it. But really, it was, a white supremacist who is now at the supermax ADX in Florence, Colorado.
>> Taylor: Nice.
>> Farz: I know that because I was, like, I started, like, looking up weird prison stories, and I found out what ADX Florence was. I was like, this sounds like hell on earth. Who would possibly be here? It was like, okay, yeah, that makes sense. That makes sense. That makes sense. All the days.
>> Taylor: We'll talk about that in part four. There's also gonna be some fun stories. You know, we're like, we'll talk about the jamaican bobsled team, because that's a delight. And, like, all the things. So we'll talk about little things, but then some big, mean stories.
Do you enjoy the Olympics farce? I do not. I cry every time
But today it starts off with what the Olympics were, where they were, and then how they were done. Cool.
>> Farz: Sweet.
>> Taylor: Do you enjoy the Olympics farce?
>> Farz: You're gonna be shocked to hear that. I do not.
>> Taylor: Oh, my God, I love them. and I know it's stupid, and I don't care. I cry every time. I'm gonna talk more about that later.
In ancient Greece, the Olympic games took place every four years
So, in ancient Greece, the Olympic games took place every four years. Four year time span is called an Olympiad. If you ever want to put your life into those quadrants, you can say, I went to high school for an Olympiad. I think you can say that because it's four years.
>> Farz: You are. You are a total nerd.
>> Taylor: Don't you sound cooler? Anyway, they took place every four years from 776 BC to 339 AD. So a long time. they were mostly a religious event. Like, yes, there were sports, but it had a religious context, and it was to celebrate Zeus. There's a few myths on why they do this for Zeus and why this came up, but essentially, the greek and roman gods, they're always wrestling each other and fighting and trying to figure out who's the strongest. So sports were the same thing for humans. and all free greek males could compete. So, it was all dudes. They had to be free, so they couldn't be a slave. But anyone from, like, a poor person working in a shop to a king or an emperor could compete, and eventually they would become the panhellenic games, which means, like, more of Greece. But this is basically thinking Olympics. In Olympia. women had their own games. They were called the Herrera games, and they would have one race every time the Olympics was done. And they would. It was a 190 meters race, and it was divided into groups based on age. So, like, you would win based on your age group, just like the five k that I was in, that did.
>> Farz: Not win, but that you did participate in. And then newspaper did not recognize.
>> Taylor: Indeed.
>> Farz: Got it.
>> Taylor: Thank you for remembering. so the one thing that women could do is they could own a chariot. And when a chariot won a race, the owner was the one who got the prize. And so in 396 BC and 392 BC, Kiniska, the daughter of a. A spartan king, did win the victory wreath, which is like an olive wreath, those two years. So she's the only woman who won in the ancient Olympics. It's because she owned a chariot, and that was something that she was allowed to do. So there were games, like, all over Greece. These people were sporty. Like I said, the most common one was Olympia. So now they have, like, excavated stadiums. It could hold 40,000 people, like, the big stadium that they had there. It's also where the great statue of Zeus, which is. Which was one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, was as well. So it sounds like it was pretty fun. Pretty awesome there. They had a lot of stuff. Huge stadiums. They probably had a ton of infrastructure. it was, like a big party for Zeus, obviously. They're, like, slaughtering all these animals to Zeus, but really, that means it's a barbecue.
>> Farz: Lots of meat.
>> Taylor: Yeah. Everyone's eating. There's, like, vendors outside selling stuff, like dumb t shirts, you know, like you get at a concert. Probably scalping tickets. Yeah. So all this stuff is happening. They're probably tailgating in some way as well. the stadium in Olympia would be rebuilt a few times during, like, the thousand years of the ancient Olympics. And when it wasn't a stadium, it was a wheat field, because Olympia wasn't really populated except during that time. So they would grow wheat in the field and then harvest it and then have the Olympics again, every Olympiad, which is how long?
>> Farz: Four years.
>> Taylor: Perfect. So. And we're basically talking the Summer Olympics.
A book on the ancient Olympics doesn't talk about the Winter Olympics
So there was a book that I did not read that I was trying to find a book to read about this, and I found one on Amazon, but I couldn't find it at the library and, like, all the things, so I read some articles instead. But one of the reviews was, like, this book on the ancient Olympics doesn't talk about the Winter Olympics at all. Like, do you think they were fucking skiing in Greece a thousand years ago, 2000 years ago? Because. No. What are you talking about?
>> Farz: I m mean, yeah, I guess if it's invented in Greece, it doesn't make sense.
>> Taylor: There's no, like, bobsled. There's no luge in ancient Greece. You know, it's just, like, obviously that I'll talk about when the Winter Games came. But we're talking Summer Olympics. We're not talking winter.
>> Farz: And honestly, it's really the Summer Olympics that we're excited about. Like, the Winter is, like, whatever.
>> Taylor: But winter has figure skating, and that's always fun. And we had the figure skating, ski skating, also fun. but. But, yeah, no, we're just talking summer Olympics. Everyone who participated in the Olympics was naked, which seems hard. Like, I don't have. I have girl parts. But, like, if I'm not running with, like, seven sports bras on, it's really, really hard to run. So I. It feels like it'd be hard to run a race naked.
>> Farz: I don't know. I mean, I could.
>> Taylor: I could okay with it.
>> Farz: I think I'd be okay with it. I think I'd probably do better naked.
>> Taylor: All right.
>> Farz: Cause I'd want to, like, be out of eyesight as quickly as possible.
>> Taylor: So I. That's fair. Everyone's looking at you, and you're, like, terrified. Running as possible. I like that. That makes sense. Some of the things that started off in the ancient Olympics, some of the, games that were played, there was wrestling, obviously, and boxing. There was something called the pancreaton. Pan Crashan. I didn't not. Look, how I say it. P a n k r a t I o n, which is both wrestling and boxing. And there are no rules. It's kind of like Mma, I feel like. But, like, really, there are no rules. So some of the people who are, like, famous for being ancient people who were in this, in this event, one guy, his name was Archeon. He was in the middle of this, like, wrestle punch battle, and he was being strangled. I'm m acting this out for you. He was being strangled with, like, one. One, arm from the guy that the guy was strangling him. Then Archeon took his hand and crushed the guy's foot, and the guy screaming out in pain, and he gave up. Like, raised a finger to, like, be like, I give up. And as soon as he did that, the guy died anyway, so he won postmortem.
>> Farz: The guy who crushed the foot is the one who died.
>> Taylor: Died. Mm Weird that he took his last bit of strength to crush the foot, and then he died, but he won because the guy had surrendered or, like, tapped out. Tapped out. one guy named Milan of Croatan. He was huge. He was a famously huge guy. He would bring in his own cow when the Olympics started. Like, on his back. Like, he would hold it like Paul Bunyan.
>> Farz: This all sounds like bullshit. This all sounds like weird myth building.
>> Taylor: He would hold the cow on his back, and then he would eat the whole cow in one day just to prove how big and strong he was. Then he would drink nine bottles of wine, and then he'd go out and do this event, and then eventually he. When he was, like, 40, he couldn't do it anymore, which is fair. And, he lost his last. His last fight in the Olympics. But even though he lost, they, like, held him up, and they were like, he's a champion. Like, we really like, you know, he's a legend. And then later, he died because he was trying to pull up a tree stump by himself with his bare hands, and he got tangled up in the tree, and he got eaten by wolves. Probably not true, but it's fine. Okay, I know, but what a fun story. Yeah.
>> Farz: But anybody, anybody could be anybody back then, because whoever makes the most audacious, stupid lie is, like, only, I don't know, whatever. We can move on.
>> Taylor: I know. That's what makes it fun. yeah. Even if ancient history isn't true, you have to believe it.
>> Farz: Yeah, I think that's the Dan Karlan thing.
>> Taylor: another guy named Sostris of scion. His signature move is he would break fingers. So I feel like he'd be like, oh, man, I don't want to go in there with that guy. Gonna break my hand, you know. so there was that, there was a long jump where you would hold weights that were like, kind of like a, like a curve, like half a half circle with, like, a handle. And the weight would help you jump further, you know, so you would, like, throw yourself forward with the weight. That's how they would long jump. Does that make sense? I did watch a recreation of it, and it kind of worked.
The ancient Olympic games stopped around 393 AD, according to legend
>> Farz: I feel like you weighted down so you can't even get enough inertia, but.
>> Taylor: You'Re, like, throwing yourself with the weights. I feel like that would totally work. Yeah.
>> Farz: Do we know why they stopped doing it?
>> Taylor: Well, they stopped doing the whole thing, so I'll tell you why they do. Yeah. So there were, ah, javelin and discus, which we still have today, chariot races. the very first Olympic game was probably the stadion, which is that 190 meters race. And, that's where the word stadium comes from. So that 190 meters race was called the stadion. That's where we get the word stadium from. There's also a pentathlon. and I think there's a modern pentathlon that is a little bit different because the ancient one was running long jump, discus throw, javelin throw, and wrestling. I think we took out wrestling and added something else in the pentathlon. but there's that people actually, I mean, actually, and obviously died in these little big games, whether it was from, you know, exhaustion or being beat up or being murdered or whatever. and technically, the Greeks invented sports medicine because they had a lot of people to take care of after these, you know?
>> Farz: Yeah, of course.
>> Taylor: Imagine all the shins. other countries weren't there, obviously, but it was just like different greek city states against each other. So there's a lot of nationalism. Like, there's now, like, you're excited for your country. another thing is, like, when you were running races, it wasn't to break records, it was just to win. That's probably because you couldn't, like, accurately time something, you know?
>> Farz: I mean, yeah, there's no photo finish. You're not going to, like, break it down to the seconds or milliseconds, really?
>> Taylor: Yeah. sometimes emperors would do it. So a little bit toward the end of the ancient Olympic games, Emperor Augustus held a revival, and King Herod, from the Bible, he helped pay for it. So it's happening around then. you'll remember that Nero, wanted to win everything, and he would win a bunch. He won a chariot race, even though he fell off his chariot.
>> Farz: I mean, he's Nero.
>> Taylor: Good for him. so obviously he did a bunch of it. but the ancient game stopped in 393, because Theodosius the first, or maybe his son, they're not 100% sure, just says, cut it out. It's probably because, polytheism was going out of fashion and it was a thing for Zeus. Also, the temple burned down, so they just stopped doing it around then. and there were still games around the area, but nothing like the Olympics. Hundreds of thousands of people would come to these games to watch them, to sell their things. It was like a huge deal, and they stopped doing it around 393 AD.
Jayla: I love the Olympics. I think they're super fun
so let's talk about the modern Olympics for a little bit. So, like I said, I love the Olympics. I think they're super fun. They're almost impossible to watch because cable stations will have them. Some of them have commentary and some of them won't, and they'll be at weird times. And she's like, they make it as hard as humanly possible to watch them. Hm. On tv.
>> Farz: Let me ask you, Jayla, what do you love about them?
>> Taylor: I like a sporting event. I like stories of people who work really, really hard all their lives for their one thing, and then they get it. And I like the part where all of the countries come out and they're all dressed differently and they're all really excited and happy to be there, really proud. And I like when I like watching the metal, I do the whole thing. I like watching the metal count. That's really exciting. I'm just happy for people who have, like, something to do.
>> Farz: Yeah.
>> Taylor: Does it make sense? I don't know. I just, like, I think it's fun that people get together and do a thing and then, like, as we're going to talk about in the next month, we can't just get together and have a good time because people are terrible. But if we could, how fun would that be?
>> Farz: I mostly like the things that are fun and cool to watch. Like, I think, you know, like, that figure skating is incredible. I think that the gymnastics, it is always incredible to watch that. But m. I also think about, like, the people who've spent, like, 1520 years becoming the best. It's something kind of useless. I mean, like, the curling people or, like, the archery people, where I'm like, you're never gonna be on a cereal box. You're never going to. How are you going to turn this in? Like, you could have literally just learned a skill in that time.
>> Taylor: Well, no, I get it, but, like, then what? They'd be, like, the best accountant at their accounting firm. Who cares to.
>> Farz: Well, no, I just look at, like, It sucks that somebody could become the best at something that is kind of useless and leaves them high and dry, sort of, you know?
>> Taylor: I know, but I. But I'm laughing because I'm like, yeah, but, like, I'm not the best at anything.
>> Farz: Well, I mean, you know, like, if.
>> Taylor: I agree with you, I'm the best at, like, one ran, random ass sport. Like, that's really cool.
>> Farz: But I, So the other thing, Taylor, is like, I look at basketball in the. In the Olympics, and I just do not understand that because it's supposed to be amateur. It's supposed to be amateur sports. That's the whole point of the Olympics. And then the US takes LeBron James, Steph Curry, like, the greatest. Bye. Leaps and bounds in the sport and puts them on a team and calls the Team USA. And it's like, what is. How is this amateur sports? Like, these are the.
>> Taylor: Well, I think that they changed that in 1994. Right? Let's talk about it later because we'll talk about the dream team. And I had that really great cd that. A bunch of songs on it, including, I think possibly songs lost songs by Will Smith on it. But, They changed that rule. But it's amateurs on purpose. And I'm going to tell you who decided it should be amateurs. And then we can.
>> Farz: Yeah, we can go from there. Let's keep learning.
>> Taylor: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because I agree that that is weird. And also, we, like, didn't win last time.
>> Farz: I don't remember. I definitely don't watch the basketball stuff. I watched ice skating and the, Anyways, go ahead. Yeah.
>> Taylor: So. Okay.
The next Summer Olympics will be in LA in 2028
Ancient Olympics, done. Things are Romans, the Greeks, empires, blah, blah, blah. But not doing it anymore. So, modern Olympics. I did go to a special Olympics opening ceremony in LA, and I cried the entire time. It was lovely. It was so fun. Everyone was so excited. Stevie Wonder sang a song. Michelle Obama was there. It was great. And the Kevin was that it was in Florence was a baby, so it must have been in 2015.
>> Farz: Wait, the Olympics were in LA when we were there?
>> Taylor: The Special Olympics.
>> Farz: Oh, the Special Olympics. Okay.
>> Taylor: The Olympics are going to be in LA in 2028. No, the next Summer Olympics will be in LA, and we're definitely going to. Something weird. Like, something weird that you can't get tickets to, you know, like that you can get tickets to.
>> Farz: Yeah. Okay. That was the other thing I was going to say that, like, I am turned off by the Olympics. It feels like a luxury thing to attend. It feels like you have to be, like, in the upper, upper, upper class to even consider attending.
>> Taylor: I mean, especially if you travel. You know, if I'm like, oh, I'm going to travel to Paris to go watch the Olympics, it's going to cost me so much more than normally would to travel to Paris because of the Olympics, you know, and then I have to, like, buy the tickets and stay in an expensive hotel and, like, blah, blah, blah, blah.
>> Farz: Right.
>> Taylor: I'm sure that, like, you can't get an Airbnb in Paris in July at the moment, so, yes, it's a very privileged to be able to go to, for sure. And it's a privilege. I think there are some, you know, obviously, like we've seen in films, I'm thinking of the cutting edge, but, like, you know, if your child wants to be an Olympian in something and they look good, if you keep doing it, it is such a time and money commitment. It's, like, crazy for a family, you know?
>> Farz: Yeah. Like, I mean, yeah. Like. Like, if you want your kid to be a master figure skater, like, that's like, yeah, we've all seen the Nancy Kerrigan Tanya harding movie.
>> Taylor: Yeah, exactly. Oh, gosh, I didn't think about that. I'm gonna put that on my list of things to talk about.
The first modern Olympics were in 1896 in Athens
So now it is 1894, and we are in France. And there is a dude. His name is Pierre de Cobertin. We'll call him Pierre. He's an aristocrat. He's a rich guy. He goes to boarding school. Most people at the boarding school go home, you know, sometimes he stays there the whole time. It becomes pretty religious, and after he's done, he's like, okay, what do I do now with my life? He could pretty much do anything. He has a lot of money, and he goes to England, like, on vacation, and he sees all. He's like, oh, the people here are in much better physical shape than the French, and they work well together, and he attributes it to physical education. So he sees, like, people in England, you know, playing sports and doing things as a team, and he's like, this will be helpful when there's a war, that they already know how to work together, and we're not doing that in France, and we're not prepared to work together in this way. So he goes back to France and tries to start a physical education, revival thing in France, but it doesn't really work out. But, it does give him an idea to start the modern Olympics. So he's like, let's give people an opportunity to work in a team, to train, to be physically active, because it really wasn't that in France. This is what's why he did it. So there's a lot of back and forth, but he creates the International Olympic Committee, which is still around.
>> Farz: Wait till basically saying that from 300 whatever ad until the 18 hundreds, there was no Olympics.
>> Taylor: Yes.
>> Farz: That's wild. Okay. Yeah, I mean, it was like, frenchman that did it.
>> Taylor: Yeah.
>> Farz: Weird, right?
>> Taylor: because he was like, these french guys need to up their ante and start working out.
>> Farz: Yeah. Like, stop just having wine and cigarettes and baguettes.
>> Taylor: Run with your cigarettes.
>> Farz: Run with your cigarettes. There we go.
>> Taylor: Get naked and run because you're embarrassed until you're not embarrassed anymore. so, the first Olympic, first modern Olympics were in 1896 in Athens. The second were in Paris in 1900. Sometimes they were coordinated around the world's fair. So it'd be like the same time that the world's fair was. but finally in 1906, it kind of, like, gets going and rolls into more of what we know today. Somehow, Pierre, the man who brought the Olympics back, won a gold medal in poetry, which feels like that is not currently an event, but that is the.
>> Farz: Opposite of a sport.
>> Taylor: But whatever. and so there's no criticism about him. Like, he was definitely, like, a romantic and idealized ancient Greece and was like, this is going to bring world peace. This is going to bring people together, that people are going to love this. And, it does not, obviously, but.
>> Farz: Humans don't want world peace. Humans don't want peace. It's not in our DNA.
>> Taylor: No, but, I mean, bless his heart, I can see how you would think that it could, you know. but it didn't. So a little friendly competition between all the people. So that's going. The Winter Olympics start in 1924, and, those include the things like bobsledding, curling, ice hockey, nordic skiing, which is like the one where you cross country ski and then shoot a gun. I have you seen that one.
>> Farz: No, you like cross country.
>> Taylor: Yes. You cross country ski, and then you shoot like a target.
>> Farz: Okay, that's what I'm talking about. Like, if you had just worked at Burger King, the griddle at Burger King for, like, those 25 years, you could have owned a Burger king, but instead, all you learned how to do was a leisure sport, like ski and shoot a gun. Which points to the fact that, like, why I'm kind of against the Olympics in this context. Because it's like, only the uber, uber, uber, uber rich can possibly have. That is their only thing they do for, like, 20 years.
>> Taylor: A, thousand percent. So I agree. And yes, I totally agree with that. It's definitely a rich person's sport. A lot of these things are like Princess Zara, who has Prince William's cousin. She was, like, in the Olympics for, like, horses. You're like, well, of course you were a fucking princess. You can have a horse and be in it all the time and learn how to ride it really well, you know, whatever. but the,
>> Farz: Sorry. Dogs were barking. Yes, understood.
>> Taylor: Well, you know what I mean? And then, like. But also, like, you only have one life. Shit. You like something, go do it. We'll talk about Morris inspirational stories. We'll talk about inspirational stories of poor people doing this.
>> Farz: I mean, the vast majority of my resentment towards everything has to do with the fact that it's rich people can do it, so I can't, and therefore my m. Resentment builds.
>> Taylor: No, that's totally fair. Totally fair. so, yeah, there's. There's a.
Taylor Swain talks about the Winter Olympics versus the Summer Olympics
The whatever. Whatever. It's called. Like, the cross country skiing and shooting. I'm gonna look it up. It's called something. Oh, it's called the bia. The biathlon. It's just skiing and shooting anyway. Bias. Okay, cut that out.
>> Farz: No, no, we don't. Do you really want me to cut that out?
>> Taylor: No, it's fine. There's, like, 20 minutes where I was googling. You can. Cutting that out.
>> Farz: If I told you that my hobby is to fish, and then when I catch a bass, detonate a bomb, it's like. You don't mean like, it's like.
>> Taylor: No, no.
>> Farz: Like.
>> Taylor: Well, it comes from. Okay, so it comes from the norwegian military, because they. That's how they would have to learn how to fight, is they would cross country ski and then shoot because it's cold as shit up there.
>> Farz: Charming. I wish I was in a war as, like, a nordic soldier.
>> Taylor: You've come around. no, and then there's also, like, I remember one time. Oh, gosh. I'll talk about this maybe later. But there used to be, like, ski dancing. People would, like, dance on their skis in, like, the eighties. So there's, like, some sports come and go. Some are more popular than others. But, two things I wanted to note about the winter versus the Summer Olympics. One, these both come from my childhood. So, one, I did report on speed skating in fourth grade, and I had to write a letter to the American Speed Skating association, and they sent me back, like, a bunch of pamphlets and a poster. And it was very cute. That's very cute. That's how you researched in the eighties. And then. Oh, my God, I remember. So the last Winter Olympics, they used to be the same year as Summer Olympics. Do you remember this? So they were always held the same year. The last one was in 1992, where the Summer Olympics and the Winter Olympics were held in the same year. Then they'd wait four years, and then they would, you know, do it together again. They changed it so that then the next one was in, 1996. So it kind of, like, pushed it out a little bit. And now they're. Every two years, it's one or the other. But it changed in the nineties. And I remember I had this fucking bitch of a english teacher in 6th grade, and this is when people were, this was like, a thing that was in the news. And she was like, let's talk about something that is in the news right now that is like, we could have, like, a debate about or whatever. And I, like, raised my hand, and I was like, what about the Olympics? And she was like, the aria decided that that's dumb. And she told me I was dumb. She was such a bitch. And so I always think about her when I think about the Winter Olympics, and I wish I didn't. And then last night, I was like, I hope she's dead. And looked it up. She's dead. She died in 2021. I read her obituary, and I smiled, like, three times. That was like, I'm so glad that bitch is dead, Taylor.
>> Farz: When I was in, like, second grade, it was like a weekend, and my mom took me, my brother, to, like, the local park, and it was like, springtime. And so blue bonnets were everywhere. And I picked a blue bonnet so I could take it to my teacher on Monday. And I took my teacher, and she took me outside of the classroom. She grabbed my arm and took me outside the classrooms, like, picking up blue bonnet, which is a state, state flower of Texas is illegal, and this is a crime. And she basically made me seem like I was a criminal trying to give her a flower, and I don't remember her name. I cried for, like, fucking weeks after that. And I now, as an adult, I'm like, I hope you're dead.
>> Taylor: I hope she said too. I'm so sorry. What a piece of shit.
>> Farz: No kidding.
>> Taylor: Yeah. What a bitch.
>> Farz: Anyways, if you're a teacher, if you're a teacher, be better.
>> Taylor: Yeah. And you know that we remember you.
>> Farz: Yeah. We will remember you, and we will swipe you, and we will wish badlandhouse karma upon you.
>> Taylor: I know being a teacher is hard, but she was terrible. so that's when they separated.
Hosting the Olympics almost always inevitably bankrupt the host city
So now the question you're asking is, how do I get my city to host an Olympics? Taylor, that's what I was. Because I would love to do this. Yes. I would love to have all of this. I'd love to spend billions of dollars. Really? I'm, like, itching to do it.
>> Farz: Doesn't hosting the Olympics almost always inevitably bankrupt the host city?
>> Taylor: Yeah, it's horrible.
>> Farz: Yep.
>> Taylor: So the IOC will have a bid. The International olympic Committee has a bid for the game. So you have to kind of, like, fight for the game, even to bid. It's tens of millions of dollars. So you have to put together infrastructure plans. You know, you have to, like, do marketing, put up your case, all the things. it settled about seven years in advance, so Paris announced its intention to bid for this year in 2015. And, it ended up going down to Paris and Los Angeles for this year. And they made a deal that Paris got this year and LA gets 2028. so once you get it right now, you're in trouble because you have to build Olympic villages. You have to build more transportation. You have to build, like, the Atlanta airport was new in the nineties because of the Olympics. You have to rebuild everything. Some of the Olympics had that have, like, absolutely insane price points. The Beijing. The Beijing Olympics in 2008 reportedly cost around $45 billion. And the Sochi Olympics exceeded 50 billion.
>> Farz: In 2014 because that was in Russia also had no. They probably had nothing infrastructure wise to begin.
>> Taylor: Exactly.
>> Farz: But I will say if you're the mayor of a city, a really incredible way to completely fuck over your successor is to win the Olympic bid, because.
>> Taylor: You don't have to do it. Yeah.
>> Farz: You're gonna look like a superhero. Like, oh, my God. He believed Paris. The guy at Paris did this. And, like, fuck the guy in seven years who Esther has executed on all this.
>> Taylor: Oh, my God. Let me tell you, what the Paris mayor in a little bit, which, what her deal is. So, so, yes, and of course, also, like, there to build these things if they're like, aren't you things already? Because you have to build, like, all sorts of stadiums. So the, you have to move people around. So in both Rio and Beijing and everywhere they're doing it in Paris right now, they're displacing unhoused people and people who, like, live, in the areas that they need. In Beijing, they displaced 1.5 million people, and they were doing things like, just putting up walls between the Olympic stadiums and, like, really poor neighborhoods so you.
>> Farz: Couldn'T see them, of course.
>> Taylor: so how else would you do it? No, I know, but there's also, then.
>> Farz: You'Re going to displace the rich people.
>> Taylor: I know, but, like, but so that's what I'll tell you. That's what people in France are protesting right now is they're like, couldn't we use this money to help the poor people rather than, like, box them up behind a wall?
>> Farz: Like, like, you're the first one kicked out of this behind the wall.
>> Taylor: Yes, exactly. So they're building these huge buildings in record time, so they're cutting corners. And what do you do with them afterwards? Like, do you need 17 stadiums in New York City? You probably don't. So a lot of the ones, like, in Beijing, are, like, in ruins already. Like, they're, like, falling apart. No one needed them. No one uses them. So now it's 2024 for everyone listening to this in the future. And Paris, France had Olympics in 1900 and in 1924, so it's been 100 years since they've had their last olympics. This year, they're hosting the Summer Olympics. It starts on July 26, and the Paralympics start right after. So the Paralympics is for people with, like, physical disabilities. They'll be right after. Also in Paris, they're going to be games in 16 other cities around Paris, like, in the Paris metropolitan area, and one in Tahiti, which France technically still owns. Part of some of the stadiums, already existed and were renovated. Some fun things is beach, volleyball. It's going to be held in the, in a park in front of the Eiffel Tower.
>> Farz: That was fun.
>> Taylor: Yeah, that'll be delightful. The equestrian events and the modern pentathlon will be held at Versailles. Super cool.
>> Farz: Very cool.
There are some security concerns about the opening ceremonies of the Paris Olympics
>> Taylor: oh, guess what the first. Do you want m to know what the new sport is this year?
>> Farz: I could not even venture to guess.
>> Taylor: Breakdancing.
>> Farz: I guess that's as much of a sport as skiing downhill and fucking shooting a gun is.
>> Taylor: Yes. so, break dancing for the first time, which will be super fun. And, the mascot, John Oliver, talked about this the other day. The mascot is this cap called the Thierrygon. It's a french cap. It's a red cap that kind of flops over so it looks like two weird droplets of blood, but it's like a captain. It's very strange, but there's, like, people dressed like it and, like, waving. That's their mascot this year. there's already some problems happening already. There are some security concerns. France, obviously, they are, they are. They love protesting. They're big protesters. There's gonna be a lot of protests. the qatari emir is coming, so there's gotta be extra, security for that. Japan and the United States are modernizing their command structure that's supposed to be able to, like, help with security. Do you know who the US ambassador to Japan is right now? Now?
>> Farz: No clue.
>> Taylor: It's Rahm Emanuel. I just feel like I didn't know that.
>> Farz: Weird.
>> Taylor: Weird, right?
>> Farz: Man, that guy did good for himself, huh?
>> Taylor: What a fucking job.
>> Farz: He's been crushing it since, like, 2008. Like, good for him.
>> Taylor: I know. they are worried about the opening ceremonies. that there might be some sort of, like, attack or violent protest or something. So it's been cut down. Initially you could just show up, and now you have to have, like, a special ticket. Like, they're gonna be really careful and hopefully everything is okay. but the fun thing that involves the mayor of Paris and Macron, the French, ah, president, is that they want the swimming events to be held in the Seine, which is the river that goes to Paris.
>> Farz: Did you just watch under Paris?
>> Taylor: No. What's that?
>> Farz: Oh, my God. It is Netflix movie.
>> Taylor: All of the dead bodies?
>> Farz: No, it is a shark movie, and it's based on people doing a competition in the sun, which is incredible. Yeah, you gotta watch it. It's very, very stupid. It is dumber than shit. Open, like, three bottles of wine for you and Juan, and then have the kids asleep. And then just like, after your first bottle is done, when you're a little bit tipsy, then start playing it. It's fun.
>> Taylor: This looks really fun. No, I like, I love that one. But, like, the crocodiles are like. Or the alligators were all over Florida, like, eating people in a hurricane. It was great. No, that's exciting. but yeah, it's in the sense, so that you have not been able. You have not been allowed to swim the sun since 1923. And that was before the last time that Paris hosted the Olympics 100 years ago. That's how dirty it is. It's like, parts of him. Parts of it have, like, no life. It has no life in it. Like, there's no fish. There's no, like, it's. It's full of E. Coli. It's like, really, really gross. And it's not ready. So it's today's June 16. It's going to start in a month or so. The river is not ready. They're going to spend $1.2 billion to clean it up. And the mayor of Paris has said that she will swim in it, and so did Macron. But they're both keep pushing their dates back because it's just, like, still disgusting. And then people are protesting. And there's a hashtag that's in French that I do not. I'm not going to venture to say out loud, but the hashtag is, I shit in the Seine on June 23, which is a whole bunch of people are planning to shit in the Seine prior to the mayor swimming in it. And there's, like, a website that you can go to to show where you are in the Seine. Like, upriver and what time you should poop so that your poop gets there at the start at the right time.
>> Farz: People are nuts. Nice things.
>> Taylor: Yes. This is what I can sing. So that's. That's what's happening in Paris right now. We will see what happens. And of course, other things are happening, like underpaid illegal immigrants are building the buildings. A lot of unhoused people have been displaced. they're definitely not prepared for the influx of people and events. So we'll see how they do, but we'll learn all about it as we move up to it.
Next week, we will talk about the 1936 Berlin Olympics, which were hosted by Hitler
And I think then I should be. We should be pretty much done with this series by the time it starts. So we'll know a lot about it by the time we get to those Olympics. And we can talk as a group about our favorite events and what's happening. If we can figure out how to watch it without, like, getting our parents cable password and trying to figure out how to get it on tv and then watching it without commentary in some ways. And that's always so annoying. But I'm super excited for gymnastics. I'm excited for the running. I'm excited for a lot of it.
>> Farz: Wait, the mayor of Paris is a hispanic socialist woman?
>> Taylor: Yeah.
>> Farz: When did this. I do not keep up with other.
>> Taylor: Countries, politics and Hidalgo. Spanish born french politician. She's been mayor of Paris for ten years, so we're way behind.
>> Farz: We're way. She's from the socialist party. Oh, yeah. She's literally. Wait, she was born in Spain. That is, like, weird. Like, I'm shocked that french people are that open about things. They seem like an uppity people, right?
>> Taylor: Yeah, it looks like she moved to France. There were refugees in France after the spanish civil war.
>> Farz: Man, they must be super liberal in France or in Paris.
>> Taylor: I think they are. That's part of all the. All the protests and such. She gets to live. Oh, my God. She gets to live in this huge palace.
>> Farz: Really?
>> Taylor: Yeah, the Hotel de Ville. Super fun. Anyway, I'm excited. That's how it started. That's what's going on right now. And then next week, I will talk about the 1936 Berlin Olympics, which was hosted by Hitler. And also, I learned in this research that Berlin tried to host again. And they've been on the thing a couple of times, and people are like, no, you can maybe do it in Hamburg, but, like, you cannot do it in Berlin again. So.
>> Farz: Berlin's dope, though. I love Berlin.
>> Taylor: I know Berlin's awesome, but, like, you know, we'll see if they ever let them do it again.
>> Farz: This, palace the mayor lives in is insane.
>> Taylor: I know.
>> Farz: Like, what on earth is this thing?
>> Taylor: Oh, my gosh.
>> Farz: It looks like Versailles.
>> Taylor: It does. I just want, like, higher ceilings.
>> Farz: You should, You should watch that movie. It's really fun. I will. The whole thing is about swimming in the Seine and how they find this shark and the shark tracks itself into the seine and. Yeah, it's a whole. It's a whole thing.
>> Taylor: That sounds amazing. I love that. I love, the. I mean, I love. Well, I love thinking, talking about Paris and how the catacombs of Paris is, like, built on top of a bunch of dead people. Anyway.
>> Farz: Terrifying.
>> Taylor: Yeah, I thought it was super fun. And then, Yeah, I love the idea of being chased by a shark. I had a friend who was going to swim from Staten island to, Ellis island one time, and she asked me and Juan to be her partners. We would be in a canoe and she would be swimming, but then she ended up getting sick and not being able to do it. But I was like, 100%, yes, I will be your canoe person. We would, like, canoe next to her and, like, give her snacks. That's.
>> Farz: That's a lot of responsibility, I think.
>> Taylor: I know, but I was like, this seems awesome. I'm bummed we never did it because I think that would've been really fun.
>> Farz: Well, as always, next time. M sweet.
If you have something about the Olympics that you love, let me know
Well, this is exciting. Our topics are actually gonna overlap this week, kind of like sort of almost, but they're like, sweet. Little bit, little bit. There's something there.
>> Taylor: So, please, yeah, please, friends. If you have something about the Olympics that you love or like a little story that you want to, want to hear more about, let me know because I'm going to do like, the big ones, but also some other fun little stories in there too. So, let us know what you think. We're at doom to philpodmail.com. we had a couple people write in Chiara sent us a bunch of ideas that I'll forward over to you, Farz. So you can, you can have that. And then Nadine, our friend Nadine is in London right now and she was just telling me that she was in London, which is super fun. So I asked her to report back if she sees that weird ass painting of the king.
>> Farz: So creepy. Did you hear it got vandalized?
>> Taylor: Yes. It's so stupid. It has a walls and grommet on it about cheese or something. yeah, it is what it is. but yeah, find us on all of the socials at doom to fail pod. I swear to God, I'm going to get our website working. I'm going to potentially murder someone. But now I have stopped even trying to do cnames and text records, and I'm now moving the URL over to squarespace.
>> Farz: All right, there you have it. We will have a website soon, seemingly.
>> Taylor: Who the fuck knows?
>> Farz: We'll try the fuck knows. well, thank you. Thank you, Taylor. Thank you for sharing. Excited. Always love your multi part series. And this one's actually topical, given the Olympics. and yeah, there's a, there's so much rich nest. Like, the topic you got, like, what happened in Munich, you got like, the Nancy Kerrigan situation I just mentioned. You got the Atlantic bond. There's a lot that's wrapped up in Ithoodae.
>> Taylor: So, you know, I might have to add, like, just like fun scandals as like a last one or something that we talk about because there's like, all.
>> Farz: Of the drugs, the doping, project icarus, all that stuff, like, yeah, there's a lot to it.
>> Taylor: Yeah, we'll see.
>> Farz: sweet. Anything else you want to, say, before we wrap?
>> Taylor: Nope.
>> Farz: Alrighty. Write to us again@diminfelpodmail.com. and we will join you again in a few days. Thanks, Taylor.
>> Taylor: Thanks.
Taylor: Happy Wednesday. Nice, smooth, easy week so far
For the matter of the people of state of California versus ornithal James Simpson, case number ba zero nine six.
>> Farz: And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you.
>> Taylor: Ask what you can do for your country.
>> Farz: Ben, we are back. Taylor. Happy, happy Wednesday.
>> Taylor: happy Wednesday.
>> Farz: Nice, smooth, easy week so far. Hopefully it's been easy, for all of our listeners as well. And for you, Taylor, I mean, they're.
>> Taylor: All exactly the same.
>> Farz: They're exactly the same. I know. This is our life. Taylor, are you going to be introducing us because you fired me from that role.
>> Taylor: Welcome, friends, to doomed to fail. We're the podcast that brings you, twice a week, history's most epic disasters and notorious failures. I am Taylor and joined by Fars. Fars doing well.
>> Farz: I'm doing well. is Juan, like, revising and writing scripts on this or.
>> Taylor: He needs to be.
>> Farz: I mean, he's the one with the opinion.
>> Taylor: So tell your friends. yeah, yeah.
We're talking about the Olympics between the beginning and 1950
Anyway, it's my turn today.
>> Farz: It's your turn. Are we gonna do a guessing game or is it gonna be futile?
>> Taylor: well, I told you I was gonna do last week because I'm doing a four part series, Olympics. We're in part two. Thank you, part two. so we are going to talk about the Olympics between the beginning and 1950. And a lot of stuff happens. And I read several books this week. I have a lot of articles in the notes, but the two books that I read, one of them was called games of the true story of the first US Olympic basketball team. And then I, I read triumph, the untold story of Jesse Owens and Hitler's Olympics. I also. Not for this, but in the last couple of years, I have read a book called Hitler's American, the United States and the making of nazi race law. So I'm going to talk about that a little bit. And then I have some articles as well that I read. So, we will kind of get to all of that. I kind of go back and forth in this story. I'm not sure how organized I am, but it's super interesting.
Last week we talked about the ancient Olympics, how you get an Olympics
So let's talk about it last. To recap, last week we talked about the ancient Olympics, how you get an Olympics and some stuff to prep for the Olympics this year. Have you seen more Olympics news since then, Fars? Is it like in your algorithm now?
>> Farz: It is not. it is not. Luckily, the. My overlords have not discovered this.
>> Taylor: Well, hopefully we'll get there. So we're going to go to Germany, to Hitler's Germany, specifically for the 1936 Olympics. And before that, let's talk about other things that happened up until 1936. So, as we learned, the Olympics were sort of restarted at the very, very end of the 18 hundreds. And there were a couple, they were tied to, like, world's fairs and trying to get it to, be popular again. in 1906, the Olympic games were held in Athens. They're not officially recognized as Olympic games now because of, like, some rule thing that I don't understand. But they were more organized than the other ones and got people kind of to be like, okay, we actually can do this every four years, you know, and what?
>> Farz: No. Sweet.
>> Taylor: Sweet. So a couple of things that we know that we, like. Well, we people who have seen the Olympics and, like, remember parts of it that you kind of, like, think have always been there. One thing is this one, in 1906, started the parade of nations. So do you know what that is? Everyone walks in together. so Greece will always start and the host nation always ends, and everything else is in alphabetical order. So to just sidetrack about that tradition. So someone will, every country has someone carry the flag. And in the beginning, you would. When you passed the host city's leaders, like the people in charge of the host committee, the president, whatever, the people in charge of the country, you would diphthere your flag. So one person's carrying your country's flag, you would dip the flag. That is something that almost immediately stopped happening, because in, like, the early 19 hundreds, there was. There were games in London, and an irish american person was a flag holder, and he was like, fuck you, England. And he did not dip the flag to the king because he's irish, obviously, like, a lot of. A lot of animosity between those folks. So and then, so they kind of stopped doing it. And so you kind of don't. So you don't really see that any anymore. There's also an Olympic salute, which is raising your right hand kind of off to the side, but it looks a lot like a nazi salute. Sounds like a sick hill, like, almost exactly. So they stopped doing that in, like, the, 1940s because they were like, yeah, this looks a little bit too much like the Hitler salute, and we don't want anyone to do that. So now you just kind of, like, walk by and, like, maybe wave, maybe have your hands over your heart, something like respectful, but you don't do any sort of, like, special salute. In the 1912 Olympic games were held in Stockholm, and the big thing there. Jim Thorpe won gold medals in both the pentathlon and the decathlon. He was stripped of his medals due to the amateur rules, but he got them awarded post human, post death in 1980. 319. Twelve was also the first time they used electric timing, start timing things so things can get a little bit more accurate because people are winning by, like, speaking of, like, measurements by, like, tenths of a second, you know?
>> Farz: Right.
>> Taylor: So they're in 1920, they were in Antwerp, and this was the introduction of the Olympic flag, which is those five rings that we see all the time, and the first Olympic oath. So every Olympics, one athlete will take an oath on, behalf of everyone. It's basically like, I'm going to be a good sport and try my best, and blah, blah, blah. Great. That was. That still happens. That happened in 1920.
>> Farz: Was the flame around this point?
>> Taylor: Not yet. Not yet. Good question. So, in 1924 was the debut of the Winter Olympics. So they were held separately, but, it's the first time, like, figure skating was in the summer Olympics. I was kind of, like, figuring that out. In 1924, there was a man named Pavo Normie, who was the flying Finn from Finland, who won five gold medals in track and field, which was like a huge, So he became, like, really famous from that. in 1928 in Amsterdam was the first time women were allowed to compete. So before this, it's just been. Just been dudes. So now women are allowed to compete. And this is when the Olympic flame is, introduced.
>> Farz: Sorry, what year?
>> Taylor: 1928.
>> Farz: Got it.
>> Taylor: And the Amsterdam games in, 1932, the games were in Los Angeles. And another person, ah, a woman named Mildred Zaharias, she won two gold medals. That was a big deal. it was obviously, 1932 was the Great Depression. So the games, they actually did a really good job organizing them, and it was the first time they built an Olympic village for the athletes. And so that was, like, something that, Los Angeles was credited for. So those are just some, like, fun facts about things that happened at the other Olympics. I'm sure there's, like, inspirational stories, but we're not going to have time for that, but I'm sure they exist.
This was the first time that the Olympics were televised live
So, 1936, we are in Berlin. This is what we're going to talk about for the most part today. Some of the fun facts is, this was the first time that the Olympics were televised live. So this is like a new, a new technology. It was only. You could only really see it, like, in and around Berlin, but still it was a technology. So, like, there's a story where, like, the athletes are in the Olympic village and they're able to watch the competition. And that's the first time that it ever happened. People were like, this is happening now. Like, super big deal that it was.
>> Farz: Just for context, 50 years after the first time we can televised Olympic game in the immediate vicinity where the game is taking place, we launched the Hubble telescope that can take a picture of 250,000 galaxies in deep space and show us the origination point of the earth.
>> Taylor: Things are moving too fast.
>> Farz: Crazy. Anyway, go ahead. Sorry.
>> Taylor: I know. You're totally right. and then this was also the first time that the flame was lit in Greece and brought to the host city. So that tradition started here, and they still do that now. So, like, someone in Greece will light it and they run it all over the world and then they bring it to the final place.
>> Farz: Did you know that?
>> Taylor: Yeah. That's pretty cool.
>> Farz: So is it true, though? Is it really true? Has that really been the same flame for all those years?
>> Taylor: I feel like it's a new flame every time, but it, like, come. But maybe it is the same flame. It just keeps going. I mean, who would know if it wasn't?
>> Farz: What are you DNA test the flame?
>> Taylor: Exactly. What are you going to do? Like, I feel like someone's probably fallen or, like, dropped it or left it at a bar. You know, I'm sure there is something. My dad told me this story. I don't know if it's true, and I have no sources for this, where, like, a canadian team won the Stanley cup, and they had a party, and the next morning, like, one of the guys, neighbors called him and was like, dude, you left the Stanley cup on the lawn.
>> Farz: I do love the idea of, like, some german runner getting drunk at some beer hall and leaving the Olympic flame there.
>> Taylor: Yeah, I feel like someone didn't. Someone recently dropped, like, the World cup trophy off a bus, like, in the middle of the parade. I feel like he, like, dropped it, and it was pretty funny.
Berlin got the Olympics in 1931 before the Nazis took power
So we're in Berlin again. Berlin got the Olympics in 1931. So we talked about before you get the, okay, to host the Olympics, like, ten to five years before you actually host them. So 1931, Berlin got the games. And that was a very different Germany than the Germany of 1936. So Hitler became chancellor on January 30, 1933, and the Nazis are now in power, and they're starting to do. They've done already done a ton of stuff. It's before Kristallnacht where they destroy just, like, thousands of jewish businesses all over the country. But it is, after the Nuremberg rallies, so people can see that the nazi regime is really, really strong in Germany. And they do, of course, like, every city that hosts the Olympics try to hide their bad things. So they do things like declare the week of the opening ceremonies the week of laughter. They want everybody to just be in a good mood. They hide their anti semitic posters so they're like, we still believe this, but no one else is going to understand. So let's, like, take these posters down. They send, thousands of romani people to concentration camps. They send unhoused people to jail. They are just like, you know, cleaning up the streets any way that they can. And again, like, everybody who hosts the Olympics, they always do this. so they're also very, very obviously prepping for war. So they're like, oh, no, no, no. We're super cool. We just are Germany, whatever, no big deal. But people are getting there to compete in the games and they're like, are they building tanks next door? Because they totally are. It's very clear that they're prepping for war, that they're going to instigate something big, but they're trying to hide it. they brought back banned books, which is ridiculous, but they have them back on the shelves for a little bit, so people don't realize what is happening. And some big concentration camps have just opened. Sachsenhausen just opened. So nobody ever didn't know that this stuff was happening, but they were trying their best to hide it. a little bit of just history is that eventually 30 people who had won olympic medals from around Europe were killed in concentration camps eventually because they were jewish. One really good. A couple examples. They're just so sad. A young man. They're all very, very young. Named Broniso Czech. He was an alpine jumper from Poland. He died in Auschwitz. Victor Perez was a french boxer. He died in the walk out of Auschwitz in 1945. He was only 33. But while they were in the concentration camps, they would make him, like, box other people, even though he was, like, an olympian, you know, and, like, make him hurt people for, like, their sport. Bronze law check. They offered him, clemency if he would coach the german high jumping or alpine jumping team, and he said no. So he ended up dying there as well, which is.
>> Farz: I probably would have done it. My prize is not worth that much.
The 1936 Winter Olympics were held in Germany before the war
>> Taylor: so we're going to focus on the 1936 Summer Olympics because that's the big one. But there was a 1936 German Olympics. It was in Garmisch Partenkirchen, Germany. From February 6 to February 16, it was the only Winter games that have ever been held in Germany. It was the last one before the war. It was really militarized. So by the time the Summer games happen, there will be less military. So, like, in the first, the Winter games, they had, like, everyone was wearing their uniforms. Like, the SS was there. Hitler Youth were all wearing their uniforms. So they really, it was really intimidating and scary. And people were like, they said it and they saw it. So by the time the Summer Olympics happen, they're a little bit less militarized. Like, they just, like, they're not, but they look a little bit less. So, like, the Hitler youth get to wear, like, leiterhosen instead of their terrifying uniforms just to kind of balance it and look less scary.
>> Farz: It's kind of more scary when they're not wearing the uniform. It's like when a kid is evil and it's like the fact m that they're a kid and don't look evil is what makes it more scary.
>> Taylor: And, like, also, I don't know. Have you, you've been to Germany?
>> Farz: Yeah.
>> Taylor: Everyone looks the same. Like, I think even now. But you don't know. Not, you can't. Everyone German is tall and blonde. Like, they look the same.
>> Farz: They kind of engineered it that way, though.
>> Taylor: Exactly. So, like, they, like, this is like, going there and see everybody, like, being like, we're super happy. You'd be like, okay. Like, you're very. You're really stressing me out. German children, especially in this time. so some of the, some other just facts about those Winter Olympics. there were 28 countries that participated. It was Liechtenstein's first time. And everything, like, kind of went okay, but everything was covered in swastikas. People were a little bit creeped out. So that there was.
>> Farz: But why were they creeped out? They didn't know what that meant at that time.
>> Taylor: They did. They they knew, like, they didn't. They knew that they were, like, persecuting jewish people. They knew that they were, you know, fascists. Like, they knew those things. And then they, like, saw the way that they were acting, you know, like, it was creepy and weird.
Has there ever been a time when a political symbol was a good thing
>> Farz: Has there ever been a time when a political symbol being used or by a country was a good thing?
>> Taylor: I don't know.
>> Farz: I can't think of a single time.
>> Taylor: When you get, like, national. I know that Ben Franklin wanted our national bird to be a turkey. Did you learn that in elementary school?
>> Farz: That's a little different.
>> Taylor: That would be cute instead of, instead of a bald eagle.
>> Farz: That would have been very cute.
>> Taylor: in super troopers two, Farva shoots a bird and it, like, falls out and they go far. That's a bald eagle. It's, like, really funny.
>> Farz: Well, I'm thinking, okay, so the hammer and sickle, that was the communist symbol, and that became the national flag of the USSR. The swastika was a nazi symbol that became the national flag of German. Like, I don't think it's ever been a good thing.
>> Taylor: And so, actually, I wrote this down later, but let me skip to it because we looked this up last night. Juan asked a good question. So, last night, Juan and I were watching a movie that I'm going to tell you about in a little bit. But, so the current german flag is three colors. It's black, red and gold. Like, three bars.
>> Farz: Yeah.
>> Taylor: That flag was, adopted after world War one because you'll remember that Germany is just newly unified. So before world War one, it barely had time to be a country. Before World War one happened, it was a bunch of little principalities or whatever, and then it became one thing. So that was a german flag. Then when the Nazis came into power, they changed it to black, white, red, so their colors, but still the three bars. And then it just became the swastika that we all know, like, the red with the white circle and the swastika, and that became Germany's flag. And then after World War I wrote, then they just said, fuck it, it's a swastika. That's like, they made it that. And then after world War two, it went back to where it had been. That's what it is today.
>> Farz: Interesting. Well, I guess, yeah, given how new a country it was, nobody's attached to the flag at that point. Like. Yeah, like, whatever. Making a swastika. Who cares? I mean, it's not good.
>> Taylor: I also follow a, Instagram account called old Hollywood swoon, and they always talk about how handsome Captain von Trapp is from sound of music. Have you seen sound of music?
>> Farz: Yes. Guess the answer to that.
>> Taylor: I don't know. You surprised me. So there's a part where he gets home from his honeymoon in Austria, and they have put nazi flags up on his house, and he takes them down and tears them up. And then I. The Instagram account is always like, girls only want one thing, and it's Captain von Trapp staring, like, tearing up a nazi flag.
>> Farz: Wait, was Donald Sutherland this guy?
>> Taylor: No.
>> Farz: Oh, okay.
>> Taylor: No. anyway.
>> Farz: Anyway, he's a real person.
>> Taylor: Yeah.
>> Farz: Wait, the Sound of Music's a real story.
>> Taylor: Yes.
>> Farz: Okay.
>> Taylor: I went, yeah, we can talk about this later. I know a lot about the sound of music, but, yes, the von traps are real. and Captain von Trapp, he did a thing in world war one where he killed a lot of people in a submarine. And there's a couple things about his past that are interesting that we can talk about later. We're in the Summer Olympics now. There's swastikas everywhere. Some of the stuff that happened in the background is Hitler's obviously super excited to have Aryans win everything. Cause that's his philosophy. Deal.
>> Farz: Yeah, he's kind of known. He's kind of known for this.
>> Taylor: Yeah, that's his thing. And so it's fun to be like, we really showed him because we have, some, you know, black people from America won a bunch of events, and, like, that's great, but we have to remember, and we'll talk about this a bunch, that in America, Hitler was literally looking at the way that we segregated race as a model for what they were going to do in Germany. They obviously went further, but that was like, it was. He knew that that was, like, America had no moral ground to stand on when there's segregation and horrible inequality in America in 1936, you know, so there were, like I said, black and jewish athletes on the american teams, but it wasn't, like, easy for them to get on there. And they were treated differently. Some of them didn't go out of know. People knew what was going on in Germany, and people would say, like, don't go, we should boycott this. And then some of them were like, let's show them that we can do this, you know? So there's, like, one jewish person on the us basketball team. Like, he was very brave to go, you know, but he was like, we have to show them, like, we're not. We are athletes. And all in all the things, the. It's all amateurs, like, like we said, before. But, there are, like, amateur leagues that people are in, and if you're, like, a couple ways to get in. If you're really, really good, you're going to get, like, sponsored and be able to get in. If you are, like, oak, if you're rich, you can also get in. You know what I mean? Like, if you're rich and you have the time to, like, practice and do all these things, you'll be able to get in. So in Germany, they were like, yeah, yeah, yeah, totally. If you're a member of an amateur club, you can be in the Olympics, like, we're not discriminating against anyone, but, like, no jewish person could join the amateur clubs. So it was like, they didn't say that, you know, but obviously there was no jewish people in there. 49 countries were in the Olympics. Around 4000 athletes competed.
The Soviet Union didn't go. Some athletes did boycott the Olympics
The Soviet Union didn't go. I feel so bad for athletes when there's, like, even, like, the one that was moved for Covid or when they, like, their country decides to boycott it. Because, like we said last week, like, you train your whole life for this, like, one thing, and the four years difference is huge.
>> Farz: Yeah. You're not going to be the same person when you're, like, 28 that you will be when you're 32.
>> Taylor: Yeah. So some people did boycott, but let's talk about some things that happened before we talk about some other stories.
The biggest question was who was going to do the nazi salute
So there were the opening ceremonies, obviously, which is like, the big pomp thing. And the biggest question was, like, who was going to do the nazi salute because Hitler was there. And, you know, in the book I read talks about, like, you could tell when Hitler was coming because people were, like, losing their fucking minds on the street. You know, like hundreds of thousands of people, like, giving the nazi salute, so excited to see him in the arena. They're so excited that he's there. And so who is going to salute him and who isn't? Most countries didn't. some of them did. Like, obviously, like, Japan did the nazi salute. The Bulgarians fucking loved it. And they stepped it up and did goose steps. They were like, we love you. They were super into it. the US walked by with their hands on their hearts. some of them did the Olympic salute, which was close, but it's easy for them to.
>> Farz: On television. 1936, it all looked the same.
>> Taylor: Exactly. So they were like, oh, no, the Olympic salute. You're like, yeah, whatever. So there was a lot of that happening. Also. the Hindenburg was there, which is kind of fun. The Hindenburg flew over a couple times. so all of this is being recorded by Leni Riefenstahl. Have you ever heard of her?
>> Farz: No.
>> Taylor: Okay, so I wrote, this bitch deserves her own episode because. And I will probably talk about her maybe next year on women's history month because she's so interesting. But she was a german filmmaker, and so she made the movie the triumph of the will, which is about the Nuremberg rallies, like, the big nazi rallies. And she made a movie called Olympia about the Olympics. So she was Hitler's, like, documentarian, and she got to live to be 101. Like, she got off. Like, she was, like, at Hitler's house, like, good friends with him and making this propaganda for him. And she got to live to be 101, which I think is absolutely bullshit. And I did read a book called Hitler's fury is about the women in his circle. And then another one that pisses me off is Ilsa Koch. She was, the bitch of Buchenwald. She was just a terrible, terrible, terrible person. And she died by suicide in the 1960s. Fuck her to the moon and back. So buckle on your finch doll. But I did watch her movie last night on YouTube. You can see it's, a triumph of the will. No, I watched Olympiad. I think I've seen parts of triumph of the will, but I watched Olympia, which is the one that she made. So there's, like, stories of her, like, you know, running around with her cameras, fighting with garbles, trying to, like, make sure that she could see everything. So she recorded the opening ceremonies. The first, like, ten minutes are, like, this really weird, like, artsy thing with, like, scarves in the air and the acropolis and, like, all these things. And then she has, some of the athletics in there. So she. There's no way to understand how excited the Germans were about this. So, like, nobody, like, understand, underestimate or underestimate. But, like, they were so excited about this. And so the movie shows them, you know, like, in the streets and in the crowds, just, like, being super excited. another fun thing is they let out hundreds of birds at the end and they pooped on everyone, which is hilarious, predictably. but I. If you do watch it, I'll put the link to the YouTube version I watched. There's a bunch of them, but at a minute, 58 is when you can see Jesse owens doing the long jump that we'll talk about. But that's what you'll want to see after this episode. So that's where you want to go.
>> Farz: Taylor. Lenny. thank you. she has a website that's still up and active, and the homepage looks like a Nazis site. Like, the font and the colors and everything look good. But then if you click on her biography, it just shows all these, like, pictures of her being a, full, awesome, having a great life. There's pictures of her with Mick Jagger for some reason. Yeah.
>> Taylor: Can you believe that she, like, saw September 11?
>> Farz: There's her with those two tiger guys. What are their names?
>> Taylor: Sick, fried and Roy.
>> Farz: Thank you. Yeah, she lives a great life. I mean, not a well lived life.
>> Taylor: No. But it's absolute bullshit that she got off. Yeah, totally.
Jesse Holick: Several black people were on the 1936 Olympic teams
I definitely want to talk more about her later. so there are several black people there. there were other black, especially track and field folks on, the us teams, and I'll talk a little bit about them later. Oh, one more thing. Oh, in 1955, re finish doll agreed to remove some Hitler from her movie so she could have it, screened in the museum of modern Art in New York. I hate her. Oh, guess who else was there? the Nazi, Charles Lindbergh was there, and he sat next to Goering the whole time and talked about the air force.
>> Farz: Wait, the actual Lindbergh was there?
>> Taylor: Yeah, yeah, because he was, like, an American, but he was obviously also a Nazi, which we've mentioned in passing before. So he was super excited to be there and, like, meet with, especially goering, who was in charge of the, German air force. Yeah. so that's opening ceremonies. Another thing to note is Hitler's plan was for the next 119 40 Olympics were planned to be in Tokyo, and then after that, they would just all.
>> Farz: Be in Germany, of course, because they would win everything.
>> Taylor: Right? Like, that would. They would be in Germany for, you know, the thousand years of the Reich or whatever. also to note these stadiums that they built in 1936, later, they would be the places where they would do mass shootings. You know, like, as the world was ending, as, like, their world was crumbling, they would do, like, last minute shootings in there. the. I read a book about basketball, because there's, like, a big basketball story here that I'll tell you about. But the Nuremberg, After the Nuremberg trials, the people who were hung, they were, It was on a basketball court. So it's like, basketball became, like, a national sport, and it's where, they ended up actually, like, executing a lot of the Nazis on basketball court, which is just creepy interesting. Yeah. So let's talk about the us team. So the United States team, again, they're amateurs. they got there in kind of a roundabout way because Olympics is pretty new, but, like, track and field is actually pretty popular people. Like, no good track and field people. So other sports are starting to get more popular and the teams would qualify, but then, like, not have enough money to get to New York because they had to take a boat from New York to Europe. So they would do things like fundraise in their communities to be like, you know, we need $1,000 to get this basketball team all the way over to New York City. there were qualifiers on Randall's island, which is right next to Astoria, Queens, like on the Triborough bridge. And, the swimming trials were in a pool in Astoria, queens that I used to live right next to Juan and I lived right next to this pool. It was like a beautiful outdoor pool and it had, like, a diving area and, like, an Olympic sized pool. And it would be open in the summer for people to go in and swim. That was built specifically for, for that. During the, qualifiers on Randall's island, President Roosevelt was there to help kick them off. And also, a young boy from Queens named Anthony Benedetto sang at the opening of the Olympic trials in 1936. And later he would be Tony Bennett.
>> Farz: No way.
>> Taylor: Yeah.
>> Farz: Wait, what was his name?
>> Taylor: Anthony Benedett. Anthony Benedetto.
>> Farz: That's so cute.
>> Taylor: Isn't that cute? So he, he was nine years old and. No, he just died, like, last year. I just looked it up. Yeah. but he. I saw him sing one time and he was. I mean, obviously it was insane. but, Yeah, I thought that was fun. So this little italian boy from queens, so the us team, once everybody qualified, like, you know, whatever, and they get to New York to go to Europe, they take a ship called the SS Manhattan from New York City. So once on board, they had a ton of food, and that's something that they talk about in every book I read. Like, the food was really good. They had a bunch of drinks. Jesse Owens was a little bit seasick, so he didn't eat a lot. one fun story. There's a woman swimmer named Eleanor Holm. She seems fun. She got kicked off the team for being drunk every night. And she was like, even drinking, I'm going to beat every world record. Like, what is wrong with you? She said, quote, this chaperone came up to me and told me it was time to go to bed. God, it was about 09:00 and who wanted to go down in the basement and sleep anyway? I said to her, oh, is it really bedtime? Did you make the Olympic team or did I? And I had a few glasses of champagne. I love that for her. so, seems fun. She was married a bunch. She was in movies with another olympian that was there who won the decathlon. she was married to a Hollywood guy. This is like, later, just like a funeral. And she got divorced. And her, alimony was $30,000 per month, which is equivalent to $340,000 today.
>> Farz: Shit.
>> Taylor: Which is dumb and amazing. So, she's great. She's in the swimming hall of fame. She seems fun. at the pier, when the SS Manhattan was going off to Europe, one dude. There's one dude with a sign that was like, don't go.
The men got to stay in an Olympic village that was very nice
The Nazis are bad. Don't go. But obviously, they went. Once, they got to Germany, there were bunch of Germans there waiting for them, looking all the same, you know, being really happy to see them. The men got to stay in an Olympic village that was very nice. And I have pictures of, like, Jesse Owens's room. Olympic village is now, like, a museum. but it was very nice. they had chefs that made food from all over the world, which is very interesting that, like, they had german chefs making, like, indian food. You know, like, I'm really impressed.
>> Farz: I'm sure it tasted amazing. I'm sure they said Germans cooking indian.
>> Taylor: Food came out, that Germans, like, they made japanese food. Like, that is pretty impressive that they would bother to do that. the women, of course, were in a shitty dorm with no food, and they slept on straw mattresses. But the men's dorm was really nice in the Olympic village. Fun. M. Yeah.
Hitler allowed one jewish woman to take part in women's foil
So, okay, till, can I ask a question? Yes, please ask questions.
>> Farz: Are you going to talk about Helen Mayer more?
>> Taylor: No.
>> Farz: Okay.
>> Taylor: Who is that?
>> Farz: So when the boycott was being kind of bandied about from other countries, Hitler allowed one jewish woman to take part. Her name is Helen Mayer, and she ended up having to flee the country after.
>> Taylor: I bet she did.
>> Farz: She won silver, and I have no idea what she wants to over. And it's called women's foil. I don't know what that means.
>> Taylor: I think it's fencing. M. It says German Fincher. Fencer. That's cool. Good for her. I mean, it's. Yeah, really crazy.
>> Farz: And she. Yeah, she looks cool, because I'm, also, like, do you win or do you lose? Because if you lose, you prove to them you're not superior. But if you win, you put it in their face that you are superior. What do you do?
>> Taylor: You leave as fast as you can.
>> Farz: You leave as fast as you can. Exactly right.
>> Taylor: Oh, poor thing. She died of cancer. Yeah. No, there's so many stories of, like, little ones that I'd love to talk about, and I didn't get to that one, but, yeah, that's super interesting. yeah.
This was the first time basketball was in the Olympics
so, okay, I have a couple sports to tell you about basketball. So I read a book about basketball, because basketball was, like, relatively new during this time. This was the first time basketball was in the Olympics. James Naismith, who's the dude who invented basketball. He did it similarly to the peer who started the Olympics. Like, he thought that people needed more sportsmanship, more physical activity. He introduced it at a YMCA and they would bring it around to college campuses. The rules would change a little bit, but essentially he's a person that, like, invented modern basketball. He, The people on the basketball team played for amateur basketball teams, which, like, they're still playing on like a team, which seems rational, but whatever. And a lot of them came from the universal pictures basketball, team, which is fun that they had one. And, there were, these were the guys who needed to fundraise and, eventually they would lose their, lose their jobs and when they came back, there wouldn't be a team anymore. But they did get to go, to do it. the team was entirely white. There was one, one jewish person on the team. James Naismith actually got to go. So when he got there, no one really knew who he was. And then someone said, he's a guy, invented basketball. And then he got like, more of a welcome and he got like, tickets to go see it, but he, he was there. And, the US did win. They won the gold, but they, they played against like a bunch of other teams who played it a little bit differently against. It was like brand new, the way that they had made the ball. They made it have like, stitches. Like a football. You can't dribble that because the stitches are in the way.
>> Farz: Yeah.
>> Taylor: You know, the. Philip, the team from the Philippines was so good, they considered having a separate category for short people because they were so good, but they didn't stand a chance. And, the final game was in, outside in a flooded field that was like covered two inches in mud. And then they had, like, the ball was like totally waterlogged and they had to, like, tried to get it to work. And they, the US beat Canada 19 to eight in the final game and won the gold medal.
>> Farz: So, right now, if you were, you could put LeBron James against all ten from, actually put him against every person combined, and you just push it.
>> Taylor: A thousand to 1.1 thousand%. Yeah. But it's brand new, which is kind of fun that it's a good brand new sport. Pretty, like, pretty much for the world. And then it gets into the Olympics. another thing about boats, George Clooney made a movie called the Boys in the Boat. I didn't watch it, but it's like another Olympic feel good movie. It was kids from the University of Washington. They ended up narrowing this one.
>> Farz: Yeah.
>> Taylor: Do you know what I mean? They ended up beating, the Germans and the Italians, which was great. But, that's what happened. I'm sure there's personal struggles in there as well. In the movie that I did not watch.
>> Farz: Doesn't matter. Yeah, the personal struggles of people that have been dead for 100 years don't really matter. Germany's metal count, like, they kind of blew it out of the water. 101 to the US, which is number.
>> Taylor: Two of 57 in 1936.
>> Farz: Yeah.
>> Taylor: Nice. Yeah. Probably as.
>> Farz: I mean, home team advantage, that's probably a thing. But I guess what it really boils down to is, like, you don't really care that your country was number one. And again, not to make fun of curling, I know we have a lot of curling listeners out there, but if you win gold and curling, it's not. Nobody's going to care as much if you win gold in figure skating or in gymnastics. Right?
>> Taylor: Yeah. And I think it's a matter of percentages, too. Of course, the United States and China and Russia always have the most medals in all of the Olympics because they have the most people. And if you're, like, if zero, zero, 1% of the population is great, as great at, gymnastics, like, you know, that's a lot more people here than it is in France.
>> Farz: Right.
>> Taylor: You know? so, yeah, I think that a lot more athletes, too, just in general, but, like, I think that's on purpose because they were, you know, trying to prove that they won. So.
Jesse Owens was the fastest man in the world in 1936
Okay. The reason that we're here is to talk about track and talk about Jesse Owens. Do you know who Jesse Owens is?
>> Farz: Yeah, of course.
>> Taylor: So my cousin and I, Juan's cousin, both went to the Ohio State university where Jesse Owens went. And, I texted them both, and I was like, is there Jesse Owens stuff at Ohio State that, like, talks about him? And one of the cousins sent me back, said, yes, every single sports thing is named after him, and sent me a website to an archive that has, like, his papers from when he went to Germany, tons of pictures from his life. It's super, super helpful. And then the other cousin said, is that a football thing?
>> Farz: Which I can almost understand because Ohio State is so up and up its own ass about.
>> Taylor: About football.
>> Farz: Yeah.
>> Taylor: The Ohio State University. I know. yes. Jesse Owens is. Was the fastest man in the world, during. In 1936. Who is the fastest man in the world today?
>> Farz: Still got to be Usain Bolt, right?
>> Taylor: Yeah. Oh, yeah. Have you seen the videos of him, like, slowing down and laughing because he's just so fast.
>> Farz: He stops and does a thumbs up. It's so cool.
>> Taylor: He's so fast. Yes. Usain Bolt is the fastest man in the world right now. Jesse Owens was the fastest man in the world in 1936. And, like, it's a shame that we can't put them in the same circumstances and have them race, you know? Like, if Jesse Owens had access to trainers or even, like, skin tight clothing, you know, what could he have done differently and who would win? Like, all that stuff is really fun to think about. So, James Cleveland Owens was born September 12, 1913, in Alabama. He was the grandson of an enslaved person, and his parents were sharecroppers. They moved to Ohio when he was nine for, like, better opportunities. And when he was in school, his teacher asked him his name, and he said Jc, which is James Cleveland. But she heard Jesse. That's what she wrote down, and that became his name. He didn't, because he had, like, a really thick southern accent, and she didn't understand what he was saying, so he became Jessie. Jesse Owens will always be working besides doing track and besides going to school and besides having a family, he had a ton of jobs his whole life. Well, he was in junior high. He was working to deliver groceries after school, but his track coach, Charles Riley, knew there was something special. Like, saw him running and was like, this is. This is different, and convinced him to run before school. So before school, he would run, he'd go to school, then he'd work all night, just like always, always busy. he met his wife, Minnie Ruth Solomon, when they were in junior high. So they were, like, always together. They had their first child in 1932, and they didn't get married until. Until 1935. But during this time, while he's in high school, he's a new dad. He's working all these jobs. He is breaking records. Like, unbelievable. He equaled the world record in 100 yard dash in the long jump in 1933 at the national high school championships. In college. He's going to get a whole bunch of other awards I'll talk about in a second. just to note him and Minnie, they get married on July 5, 1935, and they'll be married until his death, so. And he has two more children with her. Do you have a question?
>> Farz: No. Okay.
>> Taylor: So he's at Ohio State. He is great, but he doesn't get a scholarship because he's black. You know, like, that's just. He's still, like, fighting against that. The team is a traveling team, but he has to travel separately from everybody else. He can't stay in the same hotels that they stay at and he can't eat the same food that they eat. Cause there's a lot of places that just like, literally won't let him in.
>> Farz: Yeah, sorry, the green book situation.
>> Taylor: So he has a job with a local legislature, he has a job at a gas station, just like a bunch of other jobs. While he's running track, while he's in school, while he's on the traveling team, he goes to LA and is in the papers that he's hanging out with this woman who's like a socialite. And then his wife is pissed, obviously, because she's at home with a baby. And as soon as he gets home, they get married because he was like, sorry. in 1935 and 1936, he won eight gold medals in the NCAA championships, four in each. That record wouldn't be beaten until 2006. So he was just like winning medals. one of the biggest days in sports was March 25, 1935. During the big ten track meet in Ann Arbor. He set three world records and tied a fourth. So he's like this college kid, just like literally setting world records. He did a world record for the long jump at 26ft and eight and a quarter inches, which would last 25 years. He got a gold in the 220 yard sprint, the 220 yard low hurdles. Like, the way he would run the hurdles wasn't like the right way to run it. He would just like run really fast and kind of hop and like do it again. But he was still so much faster than everybody else, that didn't matter.
>> Farz: I, do, when I see them do the hurdles and I see them kick their legs up, I'm like, that looks so much harder to do it that way than like, yeah, over it.
>> Taylor: Totally. So he would just like, hop over it, but he was still faster than everybody else. and a lot of those records are actually like double records because like 220 yards is like x amount of meters or whatever. So he was just like kicking ass.
The NAACP wanted black athletes to boycott the Olympics because of nazis
so now it's time to get ready for the Olympics. Like, he knows that he's going to go and he qualifies, obviously, pretty easily. A couple people try to get him not to go, specifically, the NAACP, you know, want the black athletes to boycott it because of nazis. and the. I know this because I know a lot about the Roosevelt administration, but the president of the NAACP at this time, wrote Owens a letter, but he didn't end up not sending it. But his name is Walter White, and that always makes me laugh because I think I'm breaking bad, of course. Yeah. so. But he is going. He does go. He passed all the trials. Obviously, there's a bunch of other people that are with him. He's on the ss Manhattan with everyone. He was very seasick, the whole time. But he gets there and, like, gets his balance again and is, like, ready to run. there's two conflicting stories I read about shoes. One of them is probably not true that Adi Dassler of Adidas sponsored his shoes. Like, gave him shoes. and then another one that he didn't have any shoes, so his coach bought them off the rack for him. Just like regular shoes. They didn't have to break them in. That one's probably more true than the other one. he sent the Olympic village his diary. I read that in the Ohio archive. He's having a good time. He's like, the food's good. Everyone's super nice, because that was true. So it's also important to note that he's not the only black person on the team. There are 18 black athletes that go to Germany. I have a link to an article from the United States Holocaust memorial museum that has some notes on them. But, you know, these were all, like, young men, like kids who were going to Europe to win these awards for their country, and he's going home to a segregated America, you know? So, John Woodruff, who won the 800 meters after he got home, he said, quote, after the Olympics, we had a track meet to run in Annapolis at the naval academy. Now here I am, an Olympic champion. And they told the coach that I couldn't run, I couldn't come. So I stayed home because of discrimination. That let me know just what the situation was. Things hadn't changed. Things hadn't changed, you know?
>> Farz: Yeah, it's nuts.
>> Taylor: Nuts. So, against all odds, the Germans are pumped about Jesse Owens because it's just so fast, and they're just, like, really excited to see him, you know? And so Hitler gets pissed because they cheer for him all the time, and Hitler's there, and he's always mad about it. Hitler does greet the first handful of gold medal winners. And I think, like you said, far as a lot of the gold medal winners are german. So the first couple events Germans win, he greets them in, like, his box or whatever, and then he leaves before the first black person wins something. And they were like, oh, he's busy, or whatever. And then someone was like, you can't do this. Like, this is a bad look. So he didn't greet anybody else. So he didn't look like he was discriminating. Obviously, he was.
>> Farz: Did he think that only Germans were gonna win or only white people were gonna win?
>> Taylor: That was the hope. And that was what it would be like. That was his Olympics. His Olympics would be like, white people against white people forever. That was a plan. I know. And so he, There are rumors that he. Wait, he did wave at Jesse Owens when he started winning his medals. He may have. He may have done his little half hile that he does sometimes. Who knows what really happened? But, like, they never met. He never actually shook his hand. Like, they never talked to each other. Jesse Owens did say, quote, Hitler didn't stub me. Stub me. It was our president who stubbed me. The president didn't even send me a telegram, which is true and fair. Roosevelt didn't send him anything. He should have.
>> Farz: What, FDR?
>> Taylor: Yeah.
>> Farz: Weird.
>> Taylor: so. And then Hitler later was like, oh, he was later. He was like, yeah, we definitely need to ban black people from the future olympics because they have an unfair advantage because they're closer to living in the jungle, which is exactly something that Hitler would say when he was losing, you know? Got it. I don't need to say what an asshole, but you know what I mean.
Jesse Owens won four gold medals at the 1936 Olympics
So, back to running. Jesse Owens easily qualified for each of the things. So he didn't just run. He did a couple dashes. He did a long jump, and he ended up doing the relay as well. So he made a good friend with a german man named Loose long. L u Z.
>> Farz: And I'm literally on his Wikipedia page right now.
>> Taylor: Are you so loose long and Jesse Owens were legitimately friends. There's a couple stories. Like, Jesse has said that, Luz helped him with something, but that's probably not true. Like, they probably met after. After the meet. That's. This is what, That minute 58 on the Lenny Riefenstahl movie shows them doing the long jump together. And they show, like, Jesse Owens, he wins. But there's pictures of them walking arm in arm. And this is, like, a tall man who looks like a Nazi. He's, like, blonde, you know, very german. Yeah, his. I mean, his. Their tracksuits have swastikas on them. I mean, obviously. But, like, it's just wild.
>> Farz: Oh, you can make it out in the picture, but I.
>> Taylor: It's in, like, the middle. Yeah. So Luz and. And Jessie become friends. They would write letters back and forth. after the Olympics, the last letter he sent to Jesse Owens said, can you tell my son about the time that we ran together and people got along. And then Luz was killed in Italy in the invasion of Sicily in 1943. And in the 1960s, Jesse did go back to Germany, and meet with his son and tell him about his father, which is lovely. Yeah. so Jesse Owens wins four gold medals. On August 3, he wins 100 meters dash with 10.3 seconds. On August 4, he wins a long jump. He wins at 26ft, five inches, which is still three and a quarter inches short of his own world record. So he didn't beat himself, but he beat everybody else. On August 5, he won the 200 meters sprint with a time of 20.7 seconds. The second place silver, medalist in that event was Mac Robinson, who was the older brother of Jackie Robinson. So the sporty family, the Robinsons. in August 9, he won his fourth gold medal in the four by 100 meters sprint relay. He, him and another black runner replaced two jewish runners, and it's a little bit of controversy, like, why did he replace them at the very end? Usually they don't put their best one runners in the relay because they were so good anyway that they were going to win no matter what, even if they weren't the very best. But also, then, like, why wouldn't you just put your best runners in the relay? So there's like a whole bunch of back and forth as to why. But either way, he got his four gold medal, and no one would get four gold medals in track until Carl Lewis did in 1984. So he did great in. In the. In the Olympics. Came home with. With four. With four gold medals. And, Yeah. Do you have a question? You okay? Maybe. Weird.
>> Farz: Well, no, I'm. I'm like, now, you know, I was actually looking up Usain Bolt, and, I mean, like I said before, like, there's some. There's some sports where if you're the best at it, you are set, right. Like, m Usain Bolt's gonna get 50,000 different contracts from shoe companies to cereal, all that stuff. What did this guy get?
>> Taylor: Nothing.
>> Farz: Yeah, that's what I'm thinking. I'm like. I'm like, man, all this, like, for what?
>> Taylor: I'm gonna tell you what he got. He got nothing. Yeah. I mean, today, I think I wrote this down. Everybody be wearing Jesse owens track shoes. You know, like, it'd be. He'd have all of the endorsements. It'd be a huge deal. but I. Yeah, no, so, at the end of the Olympics, Hitler was embarrassed that all white people didn't win which is great because he sucks. but Jesse Owens doesn't, like, have a full time job. He's still in college. He's in college during the 1936 Olympics. He goes back to Ohio State. And this whole time he's been in college, there was a semester where he wasn't allowed to be on the track team because his grades were failing. And I'm like, when does this man have time to go to class? You know, like, he's a father. He has jobs. He is on the track team, but he also is going to school. after the games are over, he gets sent around Europe to do, like, exhibitions with the team, but he doesn't make any money from that. It's sort of like a way for the American Olympic Committee to, like, make back some of the money they spent, but it doesn't go to the athletes. He does take a few. He gets offered some things, like some big endorsements, but they're all not real. They're just to, like, get in the paper, you know, to be like, oh, we offer Jesse Owens $50,000, but they don't.
The History Channel has a new show about what happened when Jesse Owens returned
No one really, like, was going to follow through on that. he does take a couple low level endorsements, which means that the amateur league kicks him out, and now he can't run anymore. Like, he just, like, can't win. Like, there's just no. We're waiting for him. when he gets back to New York, like, literally, the day he gets back to New York, him and his wife can't get a hotel room because no one will let him in because he's black. Finally, the hotel Pennsylvania lets them stay, but they have to go in through the service entrance. So he comes home, and this is actually something that I just saw via my algorithm on Instagram. But History Channel has a new show that just premiered this week about what happened when he gets back. Because he gets back and he's just a black guy in racist America, you know, like, it doesn't matter that he was an Olympic hero. he works at gas stations. He would race horses. Like, he would run a track next to a horse. Like, the horse. He'd get, like, a little bit of a head start and just, like, run next to each other. he said, quote, people say it was degrading for an Olympic champion to run against a horse, but what was I supposed to do? I had four gold medals, but you can't eat four gold medals. So, he did a lot of work. He had a dry cleaner that failed. He had work at Ford for a while in the civil rights division. he campaigned against President Roosevelt. he filed her bankruptcy in 1966 and got in trouble for tax evasion. So he was never rich. He never had a lot of money. Eisenhower sent him around the world as a goodwill ambassador, which is fun. So he became a speaker and would talk. He would speak at colleges. Ah, he got an honorary degree from Ohio State, I think, later. So he was famous for those things, but it wasn't lucrative. when Jesse Owens was 35, he started smoking cigarettes, and that's what killed him. So he smoked a pack a day from when he was 35 until he died in 1980 of lung cancer. and he is buried in Ohio. And, he died on March 31, 1980. Jimmy Carter said, perhaps no athlete better symbolize the human struggle against tyranny, poverty, and racial bigotry. after he died, so after these Olympics, there wouldn't be another one. the Olympics in 1940 got canceled. In 1944, it got cancelled. And then the next one would be in 1948 in London. But guess who wasn't invited?
>> Farz: Germany.
>> Taylor: Yep. In Japan.
>> Farz: I mean, I don't feel bad for them.
>> Taylor: I don't either. They were not invited. so I definitely. There's m a bunch of movies about Jesse Owens. Ah, that look good. the book triumph was really good. It's just so exciting to see someone just be excellent at something and so insane to see them not get Eddie to get treated so terribly when they get home. It's such a big discrepancy. Next week we're going to go from 1950 to 1980 and talk about stuff that happened, during those Olympics.
>> Farz: so one thing on the Jesse Owens Wikipedia page that I found really fun and interesting is that the movie get out, the girl's dad who played. Oh, God, I forgot his name. He was on, west wing.
>> Taylor: Yeah, bradley something.
>> Farz: anyways, he's like the bad guy. he apparently said that he lost a qualification round to Jesse Owens in 1936, and that is when he started researching how to replace his brain with the brain of a black person. Crazy, right?
>> Taylor: Yeah, that movie's wild. I should watch that again.
>> Farz: It's pretty good.
>> Taylor: Yeah.
>> Farz: Fun. Well, that's, well, not fun. It's not good. it's wild.
>> Taylor: I mean, I recommend watching Olympia. Just like, having. It's not. Aren't a lot of words in it. It's mostly just like sounds. But watching that, him, Jesse Owens and Lu song do the long jump is really cool.
>> Farz: I'm sure.
>> Taylor: I'm sure.
>> Farz: Yeah. Looking at the pictures of them, it's, You know, it kind of. Kind of speaks what you mentioned before to, like, the whole point of. Of the Olympics, of bringing people together. But m that's kind of how always felt, like, on a political level, too. It's like if the people could talk to each other without the governments, then the people would be fine. It's. The government's getting the middle of it that causes issues.
>> Taylor: I agree.
>> Farz: And that. That relationship you had with that guy, Louise Long was a good example of that.
>> Taylor: Yeah. That's cute. Sweet.
Taylor: I'm excited to read the Challenger book
>> Farz: So our four parter is down to two more parts. We're gonna kick this off again next week. And which parts we're getting to next week.
>> Taylor: So I know something happened in 1960s. So I have a book that I'm gonna read. what is it called? It is called. It's about 1960 in Rome. It says. Let's see, I have my thing here. Oh, it says Rome, 1960. The, Olympics that changed the world. I don't know how it changed the world. I'm going to read that book and tell you. And then I'm also going to talk about the Munich,
>> Farz: Oh, I was going to ask about the Munich one. That movie is amazing.
>> Taylor: I know. I don't think I've seen it, but I think I should obviously see it for this.
>> Farz: It is very, very, very well done. I was Spielberg that did it. It stuck my memory. Like it was one of those movies that I just. You just, like, every now and then are like, what was that memory of? I have. And it's like, oh, yeah, that thing. That movie.
>> Taylor: Yeah. 2005. yeah.
>> Farz: With Spielberg.
>> Taylor: Yeah. something else I wanted to tell you when you were talking about yours is the guy who wrote the book Chernobyl. That was, like, what the show was, like, based off of, not like, based off of, but like, that book was, like, used to, like, do the HBO show. Just. Just, wrote a new book on the challenger, and I'm on the list to get it.
>> Farz: Sweet.
>> Taylor: from the library I'm on in 14 weeks. I can. I can listen to it. He wrote minda in Chernobyl. Adam Higgins Botham. but I'm excited to read the Challenger book.
>> Farz: Really? Cool.
>> Taylor: That's crazy.
>> Farz: I would do the space shuttle ones, but they're so dumb. I mean, it is so not obscure. Like, everybody who's paid any attention knows every detail.
>> Taylor: Yeah.
>> Farz: So I know. Well, Taylor, thank you for sharing. And we have plenty more olympic news to look forward to in the next two weeks.
>> Taylor: I haven't heard anything about the, hoop in the sun yet. Oh, we almost watched the sun movie last night. I think we'll watch it tonight. The shark one.
>> Farz: It's so stupid. You'll love it.
>> Taylor: I can't wait.
>> Farz: and hopefully by the time we join you again. Those two poor bastards on the international space station are on their way home.
>> Taylor: Godspeed.
>> Farz: Godspeed.
>> Taylor: Seriously, I wonder what they're doing right now. They have like, cards. Like, what are they doing?
>> Farz: Is there nothing like praying that this all works out?
>> Taylor: I wonder if the Internet speed is up there, I can download our show.
>> Farz: anyways, anything else to say, Taylor?
>> Taylor: That's it? No. Thank you so much. If you need anything, have any ideas for us, we're at doomdefellapodmail.com. find m us on social media, and please, please, please review us on Apple podcasts because that helps people find us. I'm also doing a TikTok every day, and some person was like, I love this. And they downloaded all of our episodes, so we got a huge bump in downloads one day. So that was super exciting. so thanks for continuing to do that forever.
>> Farz: Thank you, person.
>> Taylor: And Taylor, thanks. Try my best.
>> Farz: Awesome.
Taylor: Hi, fellow Americans. How are you doing today
Okay, well, I'll go ahead and cut it off.
>> Taylor: In the matter of the people of state of California versus ornithal James Simpson, case number ba zero nine.
>> Farz: And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what you country can do for you.
>> Taylor: Ask what you can do for your country.
>> Farz: There we go. We are back up and running. My audio is probably gonna be kind of crappy because I'm in Dallas, but that's the way it goes. Hi, Taylor. How are you?
>> Taylor: I'm good.
>> Farz: How are you?
>> Taylor: You're also, like, laying in bed, like, very relaxed.
>> Farz: I know, I just, like, what's the point? Why am I going to get up and go sit in an office? I'm just going to be holding the laptop one this way instead of on a, on the desk. So anyways, that's right. How's your weekend?
>> Taylor: Pretty good. I slept all day yesterday, and then today my family's going to see Planet of the apes, and I'm jealous, but I couldn't make it because I had to do this. M I know. Happy to be here with you.
>> Farz: Yeah, I'm sure. This is so much better than being in the movies.
Taylor: Welcome to Doom to fail podcast, hosted by Fars
>> Taylor: all right, well, Robbie, intro us.
>> Farz: Yes, yes.
>> Taylor: Hello.
>> Farz: You're way better at this than me.
>> Taylor: Hi, everyone. Welcome to Doom to fail. We are, the podcast that brings you history's most notorious failures and epic disasters twice a week, every week. I'm Taylor, joined as always, by Fars. Hello, Fars. And I just got mad at Fars because he wants to talk about the debate, and I just don't think that it's over yet, and I just don't want to talk about it. It's, like, all I've talked about for the past, like, six days with people, and I'm just like, I can't.
>> Farz: It's going to be a bit of a disappointment for you because I'm going to be discussing presidential debates later.
>> Taylor: Oh, perfect. Are you doing Nixon? Kennedy?
>> Farz: No, no, no.
>> Taylor: That's, like, all people talk about this week.
>> Farz: No, I'm kind of exaggerating. Only a little bit. I'm really talking about residential races and, you know, the way things have worked out. I mean, I'm going to address one specific campaign. but I'm not going to spoil it, because I think you're first this week.
>> Taylor: I do. I do. And I'm going to continue talking about the Olympics. if you log into our instagram as us, all of. All of our algorithm is just Olympics, and it's very, very fun. There's trials happening right now. There's divers. There's videos of divers parents crying because they're so excited, people breaking records. Everyone's really fit. It's just. It's very exciting. so everyone's in trials right now getting ready to go to Paris.
>> Taylor: I bought. Well, I had to buy two pairs of new jeans, so I bought new jeans for old Navy because I'm. I don't know. I still feel like that is where I buy jeans. And I bought a Team USA sweatshirt, and then I was like, I have too many sweatshirts. But I was like, I would literally never wear one of those old navy 4 July T shirts. But I was like, I will 100% wear an old Navy team USA sweatshirt for no reason. So that's coming because I'm very Olympic out right now.
You have a lot going on in your weekly presentations at work
>> Farz: Is it in, like, 100 degrees where you are?
>> Taylor: It is, yes.
>> Farz: Okay.
>> Taylor: It's cold in here. Cold and expensive in this. In this house. I don't care. My, friend at work, we have, like, weekly presentations, and sometimes it's about work. It's about data and the Internet or whatever, but then sometimes it's about fun stuff. So I actually did our able Archer 83 episode on, I did it for my work. I had a presentation and did it again. And then my friend Taylor at work, she did one this week about Mothman and other cryptids. And to support, I made a tinfoil hat. So my husband walked by the office, and it's, like, pitch dark in here because I keep it really dark. And I've, like, I have my satanic temple candle lit, and I'm staring at the computer, and I have a tinfoil hat on, so it's a great picture. It really encapsulates what's going on.
>> Farz: A lot going on there. Yeah.
>> Taylor: He said it to my family. He was like, I don't. I don't know.
>> Farz: We'll keep this door closed from now on.
>> Taylor: Yeah. so, yeah, it's a lot, I don't know how I got there. Oh, because it's cold in here, and I bought a sweatshirt.
Last week we talked about Hitler's 1936 Olympics and Olympics up to 1950
But anyway, let's talk about the Olympics again, and this story is fucking horrible, so I apologize to literally everyone that I have to tell you this. we talked about the origins of the Olympics. We talked about ancient and the modern. Last week, we talked about Hitler's 1936 Olympics and Olympics up to 1950. So today we're going to do Olympics from 1950 to 1980. There's some fun things, there are some bad things, and there's a very, very, very bad thing. And I've been, like, kind of stuck to my stomach for the past couple days.
>> Farz: I'm kind of nervous. You're kind of setting this up the way I set up the Tote family murders.
>> Taylor: Like, it's really fucking, honestly, the most terrible thing. One of the most terrible things I've ever heard. So I watched a bunch of videos. I couldn't find, like, a really, like, the book that I wanted to read. Like, I wanted a book about this, and I couldn't really figure it out. I couldn't get vengeance, which is the book that the movie Munich was based off of. it didn't come in audiobook. And, like, I don't have time to actually, like, sit down and read a book with my eyes. So I listened to another book, and then a book about the 1960 Olympics, and then a bunch of videos that I will, I'll share in the notes.
Every Olympics has a political undertone, Clay says
Oh, my first thing is, okay, this has been an awful week for me. I think this may be why. I've been, like, depressed and sad all week, and this might very, very well be why. But let's talk about some fun things or other things that happened in the Olympics before we get to Munich in 1972. every Olympics or every Olympics. And I'm sure I'm going to miss some of the highlights has like really heroic, exciting things. Everything has a political undertone, which we know. I think that like the, the dream of Pierre Cupertin was like, this will be something that transcends politics, you know, just athletes and the beauty of sport. And it's not that, and it can never be that. It's always going to be something political happening. But a couple fun things. I'm going to list where the Olympics were and then some, one, some things that happened that were fun. So in the fifties, the Winter Olympics were in Oslo, Norway. and in those games, Emil Zapodek of Czechoslovakia won the gold in the 5000 meters, 10,000 metre and the marathon, which has never been repeated before. So he's like a runner, which is cool. Or, again, then, they were in Finland and they were in Italy. In 1956, the Summer Olympics were in Melbourne. The equestrian events were in Stockholm, Sweden, which led me to search, how the fuck do the horses get to Paris? And the answer is very, very fancy planes. And, yeah, so for all of the equestrian events, like, I think I mentioned this, in the first episode on the Olympics, but they're going to be at Versailles, which is like real cool. So like in front of Versailles in the gardens, they're making the whatever for the horses to like jump and shit. But the horses get there. you know, through Europe they can probably take a train, but for everywhere else, they have to take like really nice, really fancy airplanes.
>> Farz: Once again, showing that many of these Olympic sports are just for the everyman to do.
>> Taylor: I actually also, just like, my husband was sharing me a story of a man who had like taken a little boat across the Pacific and he was like, oh, he did it. He got there in like 46 days. And I said, that sounds like some rich kid shit. And he said, it looks like his parents are rich. And I was like, yeah, poor people aren't doing that. Like, that's. The guy was like, an interview with him and he was like, yeah, dude. I was like worried and I was like, I just hit that, right?
>> Farz: You probably get like sponsorships. I mean, I don't think Greta Thunberg is like a millionaire, but like she takes like a private yacht everywhere or sailing yacht or something. She doesn't want, she wants to do carbon neutral. So I think that she just gets sponsored by a bunch of like sale everywhere.
>> Taylor: Yeah, I love that about her. so anyway, exactly, equestrian events for the everyday folk in Melbourne also a couple countries had boycotted that due to political reasons. There was a Suez canal crisis, and the soviet invasion of Hungary. So things were happening in the fifties and sixties. Obviously, the sixties is going to be the cold war. The Winter Olympics in 1960 were in Squaw Valley, United States, and in the summer, they were in Rome. So I read a book called 1960 Rome, the Olympics that changed the world. And, like, after I was done reading it, I realized that I read the abridged version, and I was like, did they abridge the world changing out of it? Because I didn't really see it. Like, I didn't.
>> Farz: Shooting out of what?
>> Taylor: Out of the book. Like, I didn't see any world changing in the book. It was just like a typical Olympics, but whatever. I read the whole book, and I learned a lot about the 1960 Olympics.
>> Farz: Added to, like, this feat of m. It's probably one of those things.
>> Taylor: It's fine. Like, they. One thing that is fair, the USSR, they hosted the trials in 1960, and they were calling out the racism in the United States, which is absolutely fair, because it was, you know, the 1960s. Cassius Clay was there for the first time. He's obviously going to become Muhammad Ali. And, as all accounts are, he was very full of himself and, like, very excited. Another fun story is that he screamed the entire flight there because he didn't want to do it and he was scared.
>> Farz: Oh, he didn't want to fly? Okay.
>> Taylor: Yeah, you want to fly? it's a cold war.
Mark Sapperman: Interesting things happened at the 1960 Olympics
I'm not going to talk about doping at all, I think, during this series. But one of the big things that happened at the very first day of the 1960 Olympics, Knud. Knud. Knud Yensen. he was, ah, must have been from Sweden or Norway. He, was competing in the 100 kilometer team trial on his bicycle, and he passed out and died. And he had traces of amphetamines in his blood. So that was, like, one of the. That happened before. But it was like a first, like, really high profile thing where someone had died and potentially had done it because they were. Because they were doping. And I know that, like, there's also, like, you know, when Lance Armstrong was doing it, they were, like, getting new blood every day, you know?
>> Farz: Oh, yeah.
>> Taylor: Like, really weird. Like, really weird shit. So that happened in 1960. Ethiopia was there, and that was a big deal because they had been invaded by Italy, but they were there in Italy for the, for the games. And ethiopian Abibe Bicola won the marathon with no shoes on, which is incredible because Rome is very cobble y, and he did it again in Tokyo the next year, which is super cool. Or the next time, why do we.
>> Farz: Invade Ethiopia for land?
>> Farz: Weird. Do you know that, or are you just saying that?
>> Taylor: Resources, probably. I don't know. Weird. Okay, I can look up later. there are the boxing finals where the US versus Italy and the Italians were getting really rowdy and everybody was kind of mad. And Bing crosby stood up and sang the Star Spangled Banner to calm everybody down, which would totally work. And I love that because he has such a beautiful voice. So I love that. And then also in 1960, there's a lovely story about, a track team of black women, the Tiger Bells. And Wilma Rudolph was the first american woman to win three gold medals, and she won it in track and field during 1960. So that was really fun. I feel like it was world changing, but fun stuff happened in 1960 in Rome. 1964, they were in Tokyo. That was the first in Asia and the first televised via satellite. So that was the first time you could actually see it. not live, but like, near live for like the same day in 1968, it was in Mexico City, Mexico, where there were also a bunch of high altitude records were broken because Mexico City is high. It's also, I think it's also a mile high, just like Denver. It is. Could you tell me that?
>> Farz: Yeah, it's one of those things. I watch a lot of, like, fighting stuff, and anybody who goes to Mexico City when they have an event, like, they always just gas out immediately. It's like, what just happens? Oh, they're in Mexico City.
>> Taylor: Oh, it totally makes sense. Yeah. you can talk about how Barack Obama did that shitty debate in Denver.
>> Farz: Was it the Mitt Romney one? Yes, I should, I should.
>> Taylor: so another thing that happened in 1968, the summer, was a black power salute. Do you remember that?
>> Farz: Yes. Yes, I.
>> Taylor: So Tommy Smith and John Carlos, they won the 200 meters. They were gold and bronze. They raised their fist in a black power salute. The other guy who won silver was an Australian named Peter Norman. He obviously, he was. Seems he got it. He was like, I'm not going to do that because I'm a white guy. But they all wore human rights badges. He was definitely in solidarity with them. Tommy Smith said later, quote, we were concerned about the lack of black assistant coaches, about how Muhammad Ali got stripped of his title, about the lack of access to good housing and our kids not being able to attend the top colleges. So, you know, it was, it kind of brought that to the forefront, and that was a big deal as well. into the 1970s. In, 1972, the Winter Olympics were in Sapporo, Japan. In the summer, they were in Munich, which we'll talk about in length in a second. But two other or one other fun thing that happened in Munich. Nope. The only not other a fun thing that happened in Munich in 1972 was nice recovery. Yeah. No. Mark Spitz was the american swimmer. He won seven gold medals, and he set world records with each one. And I just want to note that he had a mustache.
>> Farz: Yeah, I know, Mark. I actually do know what Mark Spitz.
>> Taylor: Looks like, but, like, don't you feel funny that he had a mustache? Like, isn't the idea now to be as hairless as possible?
>> Farz: If I could have won, he was.
>> Taylor: Like, I have to have a mustache. It's, like, seventies.
>> Farz: My identifying characteristic and trait, all my powers. What if his power is in the mustache?
>> Taylor: I think it is in the mustache.
>> Farz: I think so.
>> Taylor: I think maybe that was it. Maybe it was, like, pulling him forward somehow. so I thought that was lovely. the 1976 Winter Olympics were relocated from Denver. Denver. They ended up being in Innsbruck, Austria, a couple years before. Denver was like, no, no, no. We can.
Next week, we'll talk about the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal
Can't do this, because it was just, like, too fucking expensive. And the people were like, stop doing this. So they stopped in Austria was like, we'll take it. the 1976 summer Olympics for. In Montreal, Canada, romanian gymnast Nadia Komnency scored the first perfect ten in Olympic gymnastics, and she won three gold medals, which is fun. And this is also where Caitlyn Jenner won the gold. And the decathlon. and, yes. and the decathlon is fucking insane. So I read about it a little bit in the 1960 book. And just to tell you what the decathlon is, it's a two day event, and it's a point system, so you could have, like, something you're really good at and something that you're not very good at. But you m. Day one, you do the 100 meters, the long jump, the shot put, the high jump, and the 400 meters. On day two, you do 110 meters hurdles, discus throw, hole vault, javelin throw, and 1500 meters. It's just like the two most exhausting days you could possibly think of.
>> Farz: It kind of reminds me of field day in elementary school, which is, like, the funnest day.
>> Taylor: Yeah, exactly. Hopefully you get popsicles at the end of it.
>> Farz: Oh, yeah, we did.
>> Taylor: Oh, no. I mean. I mean, the decathletes. I know you do. the last Olympics of, like, this time period, the eighties. the eighties Summer Olympics were in Moscow. And several countries, including the United States, did not attend, which led the Soviet Union to win most of the metals, which makes sense, if you think about that. So, next week, we'll talk about 19, 84. Because there's a lot of stuff with Los Angeles in 1984 that resulted in the way that LA is policed. That kind of ties sort of set the stage for, like, race riots of the 1990s. So we'll talk about that, and then also the Atlanta bombing. So I will. That's where we'll end, I think, next week. because it's a lot. I feel like I'm really.
>> Farz: That's a lot. Yeah.
>> Taylor: I'm overwhelmed by this. By these stories.
This is a revenge story, and there are no winners
So, let's talk about Munich and what happened.
>> Farz: Is Munich the thing you were prefacing this with?
>> Taylor: Yes. Okay, this is the bad thing. this is. Okay, ultimately, this is a revenge story. This is a story of revenge for all sorts of wrongs, and revenge after revenge after revenge.
>> Farz: We have not talked about still happening right now.
>> Taylor: Exactly. So we have not talked about Israel and Palestine, because, like, this is a fun podcast, and who cares what we think? It seems to me that anti terrorism, becomes terrorism very, very quickly. And an eye for an eye for an eye for a thousand eyes is always going to lead to innocent people dying. And that's what this does. Innocent people are going to die all over this story. The families of the murdered athletes in 1972. They wanted the truth, they wanted justice, and they wanted help. They wanted to be compensated for their loss. There were huge.
>> Farz: Well, are you going to get into what happened, though?
>> Taylor: Like, okay, I mean, I'm just prefacing, like, what? Okay, I want to share about, like, this. Like, they didn't want revenge. They wanted justice. They wanted to know what happened. And they wanted money, because, like, their husbands were. Had been killed, and it was ton of people's fault, and they didn't get any of that. Eventually, they would get a little settlement in 2004, I think, but they didn't get what they deserve out of this. But they did not want revenge. They were like, that will only lead to more innocent people dying. And it did. So I just wanted to start with that. there was huge errors on behalf of anyone, but this is just revenge is for revenge, and there are absolutely no winners. So the 1970s sounds fucking terrifying. There are so many terror groups around the Middle east and Europe, and they're, like, very, very active. There's the Red army from Asia. There's a Baderbeinhof from Germany, the Muslim Brotherhood, which is the predecessor to Hamas, the IRA. It's a fucking scary time. In the fifties and the 1970s, there was a plane hijacking one every five days. Like, would you, What? Like, there are. There have been zero for many, many years now.
>> Farz: Yeah, but that's probably not, like in the US, right? Like, that's.
>> Taylor: No, but all around Europe.
>> Farz: Yeah.
>> Taylor: So in 1969 there were 86 hijackings. In 1970 there were 78. So your Idi Amin story with the hijacking is part of the, like, revenge part of us story that I won't even get into. But, like, that kind of shit was happening all the time, which is, like, crazy. So there's, like, a lot going on, like, a lot of tension in Europe and in the Middle east. Like, in part of their event story, people are going to get shot in, like, cafes in Italy. You know, like, there's tons, of tons of going on.
There was almost zero security at the 1972 Munich Olympics
So to preface, which is, like, not at all doing it justice, but a lot is going on here. Yes. Yasser Arafat is the president of the. Of the PLO, which is a palestinian liberate, liberation organization. He would lead a nationalist party that he founded in 1959. Their goal was to destroy Israel. They still exist, although in 1993, they said their goal was for arab statehood for Palestine. The prime minister of Israel was a woman, which I find interesting, named Golda Meir. And in 1970 to 1971. So in, like, the immediate prelude to the Olympics, there was a jordanian civil war that was led by the PLO. And this is a long story, but, like, Jordan's involved, Gaddafi, is there a, Egypt's involved, Israel's involved. One day they hijack a swiss air flight, a TWa flight and a Pan am flight, and they bring them all to one, airstrip and blow them all up. And there's a really dramatic thing. No one died. No one was in the planes, but they blew them all up after the hijackings. So just like a wild time to be alive. And in September of that year, the worst of it, and that became known as black September. And a whole bunch of stuff happened during black September. But just remember those words together and we'll talk about them in a second. So all that stuff is happening, as always, in the background. But think about the Germans in 1972. They are like, everything is fucking fine. We are great. Look how fucking nice we are. So the german Olympics in Munich, they called them the Olympics of peace and joy. They were like, do you remember the last Olympics? We do nothing. No, no. They were like, everything is wonderful. Everything is fine. So because of that, and then far as you'll remember, last time that we talked, in 1936 in the Winter Olympics, like, everyone wore their SS uniforms and people were like, that's a little much. So in the summer, they were, like, trying not to show that they were SS people, but they were very clearly the SS, you know.
>> Farz: Of course, you can't really hide that.
>> Taylor: Hide that. So in 1972, there is almost zero security. The cops and the olympic security do not have guns. They, like, they have nothing. They wear these, like, powder blue suits and they're like, everything's fine. And there's not very many of them. So some people had the assumption that, like, behind the scenes, there was more security and they were just hiding, but that wasn't true. There was really, like, almost no security at the Olympics.
>> Farz: It literally just dawned on me that this is Germany, like, 30 years after.
>> Taylor: It's so not that long ago. So not that long ago from it. Exactly. So, yeah, it's 1972. Like, I mean, they're, like, barely repairing. You know, it's just like, not even 30 years ago.
>> Farz: It's like 23 four years ago or something.
>> Taylor: So there's like, everything's fine. So they are. That is, you know, that's the mood in Germany. Is that they are.
The israeli team was in Munich for the 1972 Olympics
Okay, so it's 36 years. It's in 36 years since 1936.
>> Farz: Got it.
>> Taylor: I just did the math because I think that doesn't sound right.
>> Farz: I'm gonna have to fill this out.
>> Taylor: So, They're like, everything's fine. We're fine. Every country did have their own, like, security team that would go beforehand and be like, everything seems fine. The israeli security, they seem to be more worried about the security of their press than the athletes themselves. And they seemed not concerned either. One of the coaches did go early and he said, this is not safe for our athletes. The israeli team, the women, were somewhere else, but the men's team was in an apartment on 31 Connolly Strasse. They're in apartments one through five in the olympic village. So they had five apartments. They were all first floor apartments. Apartments, but they were two story, apartments. And they housed, some wrestlers, some fencers, and a lot of coaches as well. So one thing that was, if you look this up, you're going to see pictures of someone looking over a balcony. And that was confusing to me for a second because I also. Because the first thing you also see is that it was a first floor apartment, which seems very, very unsafe. But they were two story apartments. I was confused?
>> Farz: Yeah. That is a scary picture of the.
>> Taylor: Guy with the mask on.
>> Farz: Yeah, it looks like straight. The strangers.
>> Taylor: I know. I'll tell you what he was doing in a second. You'll be like, jesus fucking Christ. That's what you'll say when we get there. so there was no security, like I said. And the door to this part of the apartment block was always left open because it also led to the apartment garage. Garage. or. I'm sorry, the car gar. Garage. The parking garage. So you would. You could always get in, like, you'd always get up to the door of the. Of the apartment. So this is terrible. it is a long operation to get the people from the PLO, who are a group called Black September. That's the name that this specific terrorist cell gives themselves as black September in relation to the war that had happened the year before. They had spent some time, like, faking passports and getting into the country. At one point, in one of the airports in Germany, there was, a couple. And they had five bags, and they got pulled over by security. And security was like, what's in your bags? Open them. And they were like, no, we don't want to. Whatever. And then they opened up the. He's like, which bag do you want to open? And then the guy pointed to one, opened it up, and it was full of lingerie, you know, so the Germans were kind of embarrassed, and they closed it, and they were like, fine, you can go. The other four suitcases were full of AK 47s. So they just were shit. Lucky that those weren't the ones that they saw. And that's like. And then they took the four suitcases, put them in, lockers in the train station in Munich, and then they went on to the next person. So it was, like, one thing after a thing to get the guns, to get the people there. And it all come later on September 4, 1972. So the athletes, who. I will tell you all of their names, they were out in Munich seeing Fiddler on the roof, which is fun. They went to a show. they saw a very famous person who played the lead role. it was a mix of athletes and coaches. one of the doctors that was a teen doctor, his 13 year old son had asked to stay in the. In the Olympic village with the athletes, and he said no. And the sun was really mad, and he. He didn't stay there, which is, like, obviously saved his life. But it's really just, like, a gross side story, you know?
>> Farz: Yeah.
Eight members of Black September scaled fence to get into Israeli athletes' apartment
>> Taylor: so at 04:30 a.m. eight members of Black September scaled the fence, which was only 6ft high and got.
>> Farz: Can I pause? How do they know? Were they trying still. I saw the movie Munich, but I saw it like I was in college. I remember only that Steven Spielberg corrected it.
>> Taylor: Yes.
>> Farz: And Eric Bannon was in it.
>> Taylor: They knew who they were going after. They wanted to go after the Israelis. That was the point.
>> Farz: And they knew they were there.
>> Taylor: Yes. They had spent a lot of time sneaking around. They didn't really have to sneak around. They could just kind of walk in and see. And they knew exactly where they were saying. They had a. A Set of copied keys to the room. They were like ready. They're dressed in tracksuits and they had all of their. Excuse me. All of their stuff like their weapons. So they specifically wanted to target the Israelis. And I'll tell you what they wanted, what their demands were. But they scaled the thing. Two drunk Canadians helped them. Isn't their fault. They were like helping them get over it because it's like just imagined that everybody couldn't get in. And it was 430 in the morning. They had stolen keys and they opened the door. So one of the Wrestling referee named Josef Gutfreund, he heard a noise. And you might remember this from the movie. He. Cause one of the clips that I saw, I just couldn't watch it because I'm just so upset. But he heard the noise, went to the door, saw them opening it, saw men behind the door wearing ski masks and threw his body against the door to try to stop them from coming in. Guttfriend was 300 pounds like a really big guy. And he was. Tried his best to keep them out. He doing that a lot? Enough time for his roommate. Wait, Coach Tuviakovsky to escape through a window. So he went running out to start to try to tell people what was going on. And tried to. I think he ended up at a hotel calling people. Tried to figure out like what to do. But there was no like security patrol that could have helped him. There's like no one there that should have been there. Coach, Moisha Weinberg fought them. As soon as they got in, he started fighting the terrorists. They shot him in the cheek and he lived from that shot. It was a terrible. Obviously it went through his face. And then he did a very brave thing that makes me want to cry. The terrorists asked him where the next group of israeli athletes were and he said because they were in apartment one. And he said they're not in apartment two. They're in apartment three. And he walked them past apartment two to apartment three. Because apartment three was where the bigger guys were. That's where the wrestlers and the weightlifters were. So they think that's what his thought was. Like, hopefully these guys can stop them. Which is, like, I don't know. It just, like, gives me the chills and makes me want to die.
>> Farz: He got shot in the face with an AK 47.
>> Taylor: Yeah. Or some sort of gun. Probably not.
>> Farz: Yeah. His head would explode.
>> Taylor: Yeah. because he was able to do that and kind of like, at least the big guys in apartment three, they were startled awake. So they weren't really ready to, like, help. It was very confusing. the last guy to escape was weight coach Tuvia Skakovsky. Wait. He escaped? One more person escaped. gaddaf. tosabari, a wrestler. He actually he got to escape as well. So two guys escaped. he was the last person to escape. Weinberg is going to be shot and killed almost immediately after this. After they gather everybody together in an apartment. and I think that this is the body that they show, like, the press and show people to be like, we're serious about this. Like, we're actually killing people in here. Weinberg's son, Guri, plays him in the movie Munich.
The hostages wanted food and some prisoners from different jails around the world
>> Farz: Oh, wow.
>> Taylor: He was born on August 1, 1972. So he never met his father. His father died when he was a month old.
>> Farz: That's crazy.
>> Taylor: Isn't that crazy? It's so sad. I don't know what to do. another person that was killed in the apartment's weightlifter, Josef Romano, was so cute. He's just, like, cute. He's big. He has curly hair and these big, fun seventies, mutton chops. And he had three little girls. And he was killed trying to fight. he was on crutches because he had just hurt, like, a ligament in his leg. During one of his, like, last weightlifting competitions. But he tried to fight. He ended up being. His body was mutilated. He was castrated. And his body was, like, put at the feet of everybody else. And they had to sit next to his dead body all day long. So the people that were there, the terrorists, I think there were eight or nine of them. some of them. The guy who was in charge, his name was, Lutif Afith. But they called him Issa. So their names are Isa, Tony, Paolo, Saleh and Abu Hala. Those are their, like, fake, names that they used. So you saw they were they wore, like, a lot of, like, ski masks and face masks so that people couldn't see who they were. they were kind of stand outside on the balcony with their guns, and they knew that they were there and they were trying to negotiate with the german police. What they wanted was the release of 200 palestinian prisoners as well as some Red army prisoners, from different jails around the world. This was going to be something that was, like, really hard to do. They were in a bunch of different places.
>> Farz: You know, it's like air force one.
>> Taylor: Yeah. They wanted something that was, like, nearly impossible. they said the first deadline was like, 09:00 a.m. but that was impossible. And they kept moving it and moving it, and they ended up being there kind of all day long. the Germans fucked up so hard during this entire thing. even though this was a huge deal, they didn't get the federal german government to help. Bavaria didn't necessarily have to do that based on the rules. So they used the bavarian government and law enforcement to negotiate. But nobody was really a hostage negotiation person. Like, they didn't have anyone who was actually, like, qualified to be doing these things. one thing that they do. And so the picture that you see, on the COVID of the book one day in September, and the one that you just looked up with, the person on the balcony, with the guy in the tracksuit with the mask and his gun, ah, on the balcony looking up was because the freaking Germans, in the afternoon, they had an operation called Operation Sunshine, which was to have snipers, at different places all around the apartment to try to shoot them. But this is literally being broadcast live across the world. And they had tv in the apartment. So what that guy is looking at is, he's looking at the balcony being like, are, You guys fucking kidding me? I know there's a sniper up there. I can see him on tv.
>> Farz: That's the guy in the hoodie or whatever it is. Yeah, the mask.
>> Taylor: Yeah. He's saying, like, I know they're there. I can see them on tv. Like, they didn't turn the tv off for any reason. So, like, they knew. So that was a total blumber. Blumber, but didn't work at all. They tried to sneak cops in with the food, but they're like, no, we're not gonna let you do that. Obviously. I'm gonna have you, like, drop the food and then we're gonna bring it in. Like, they're not gonna, like, do a thing. for some reason, Walter Trogher, who was the mayor of the Olympic village got to go in the apartment and see the hostages. And he was like, are you guys okay? And he was like, they seemed very resigned to their fate, and I'm like, help them. Like, what is happening? You know what I mean?
>> Farz: Like, what's that guy supposed to do?
>> Taylor: I don't know. Why was he even, like, allowed in there? It was just such a weird thing to have happen.
David Berger: All of the hostages died in the hostage negotiations
and meanwhile, the Olympics are going on. There will be a 36 hours break, but eventually Avery Brundage, who is the president of the IOC, asks them to continue, which I feel like makes sense, you know? Like, I don't.
>> Farz: I don't agree with that. I think, like, it's a big deal. Like, there's athletes, like, can't.
>> Taylor: I mean, I know everyone's already there. I mean, obviously, like, the rest of the Israelis went home, but, like, I don't know. But. But I think even worse than that is, like, while it's happening, you can see in, like, the news reports that, like, 200 yards away, there's a, like, a green area with, like, a fake pond where athletes are, like, playing ping pong and sunbathing, you know, like, life is going on even in the Olympic village while this is happening, which is pretty wild.
>> Farz: Yeah.
>> Taylor: So the Germans do things like, we're going to get them a helicopter. They were like, fine. We want to be taken to an airfield, to be taken to an arab country to continue these negotiations, you know? And the Germans were like, that's fine. You can definitely do that. That sounds great. So they wanted at first to get them there through the parking garage that was below, but then the guys were like, like, obviously you're going to try to shoot us in this parking garage. So they, like, ended up getting on a bus and going to a smaller airfield that had helicopters and taking those helicopters to a larger airfield. The helicopters didn't have to go very far, but they, made them. They were full of gas. They filled them up with gasoline. They didn't have to do that, but they did. So they were, like, very flivable. Keep that in mind. There's four hostages now left alive. They're on each of the different helicopters. they are taken to. It's 10:00 p.m. so it's dark. they're taken to the first in Fieldbrook, air base. It's a NATO air base. They're taken there in helicopters. When they get there, the Germans have a 747 that's ready to take them wherever they want to go. 747 has cops dressed like flight attendants. But it's very clear that they're cops. They don't even change their pants. They just put on a flat and a jacket and try to do it in the middle of it. They give up. Nothing even happens. But the cops in the plane quit and leave. So by the time the terrorists get there, Issa, the main terrorist, gets there and he goes into the plane and he's like, this plane is empty. This is weird. We can tell that you all are lying to us. They also had snipers that were, obviously around the air base. But none of them were actually snipers. They were guys who maybe you knew how to shoot a gun. But none of them were trained. None of them were snipers. They didn't know the thing to, like, coordinate with each other. Like, there was like nothing. They were never, ever going to shoot these guys. So now that. Now that they know that they're duped, it's chaos. Everyone starts shooting. So the terrorists are shooting, the, Germans are shooting. And they end up throwing a grenade into one of the helicopters, blowing up half of the hostages. And the other half, Issa, the main terrorist guy, goes in and shoots, them all point blank, really close, and kills them all with the AK 47. And they all die in the helicopter. So all of the hostages died, just to go through who they are, again. And everyone who died in this, during the initial break in, Moishe Weinberg and Josef Romano. They were both killed later, killed by a grenade in the helicopter. they were seated from left to right. Zeb Friedman, David Berger, Yaakov Springer and Eleazar Hofland. David Berger was actually an american, but he, was competing, as a weightlifter for, the israeli team. He was so young, he died of smoke inhalation. He didn't even die in the grenade, blast. The next day, President Nixon called his parents and said, what can I do for you? And they said, can you bring him home? And his body was flown to America and everybody else was flown back to Israel, which is so sad. shot the people who were shot on the other helicopter, seated from left to right. Josef Gutfrend, Tahat Shore, Mark Slavin, Andre Spitzer, Amit Sir Shapira. they were a wrestling referee, a shooting coach, a wrestler, a fencing coach and a track coach. during the gunfight, a west german police officer named Anton Fliegerbauer was killed. and then five of the terrorists were killed in that, in the fight at the air force base. Like, in all of the chaos of the air force base, including Issa, who was the leader. Andre Spitzer's wife. He's a fencing coach. She is dope as shit. She's in one of those documentaries I watched and she speaks seven languages, like wildly smart, wildly on all of us. And she's the one who's going to fight for the families to have, you know, any sort of justice, to get to know anything that actually happened. They don't tell them anything. and the saddest thing, I think that happened is, I mean, one of the saddest things ever is that they were live on ABC and they had said that everyone was okay, that they had gotten all of the remaining hostages out, at the airfield. And that was the last thing they said before they ended broadcast for the night, like the night before. So they said that. And some of the people celebrated, like the families across Israel and across the world were celebrating that the hostages had been let go. And some of the wives were like, I will believe it when I hear his voice. He will call me as soon as he's okay. Like that will be the first thing that he does. I know he will call me. And then in the morning, Jim McKay on ABC, he. I don't know why this, like, really, this has upset me so much this week. I don't even know what to do. But, in the morning, when they found out that everybody had died, Jim McKay on ABC said, when I was a kid, my father used to say our greatest hopes and our worst fears are seldom realized. Our worst fears have been realized tonight. They've now said there were eleven hostages.
Israel wants to avenge the deaths of 9 Palestinians killed in Munich
Two were killed in their rooms yesterday morning. Nine were killed at the airport tonight. They're all gone. And that's how the world found out that they were all, they had all died, right away. Israel wants to avenge them. And like I said, the families don't want that. They want compensation for the shit job everybody did keeping them safe. They want to know what happened, and they want justice. They want to know what happened in the last hours of the lives of these guys. and they will fight for decades for this. Misses Spitzer will end up. Bavarian government tells her that they have no information about this, that they don't know anything that happened. And she, will have like some person calls her like an informant says this information is in the archives in Munich. And then so she's like on the news talking to someone about it. Someone's saying that it's not true. We don't have it. She starts reading them some of the documentation that she got sent by this person, and they're like, fine, we have it. And they had, like, 50 boxes of stuff that was just, like, talking about what had happened. That was all she wanted to know, you know, like, what had happened. and then, you know, in the aftermath of all of this, some of the terrorists are still in jail in Germany for a few months. They end up being, taken back to Palestine because there's a hijacked Lufthansa flight and they want to trade. the three terrorists are in jail in Germany for, the Lufthansa flight. But the Lufthansa flight only has twelve people on it. And they're all dudes, which is very suspicious and doesn't make any sense. So it's pretty clear that Germany was like, we don't want to deal with this anymore. Get them the fuck out of here.
>> Farz: so they weren't arrested?
>> Taylor: They were.
>> Farz: They were arrested. Okay.
>> Taylor: Yeah. They were in jail in Germany. Like, one of them ran away. They found him, like, 40 minutes later. Some of them. The rest of them were taken into custody, extradited.
>> Farz: They were being extra. They. Germany wanted them extradited to get this whole mess out of their hands.
>> Taylor: Yeah. And they did it through this, like, ruse of this, like, fake hijacking. You know, they, like, had to do it, you know, like, traded Lufthansa plane for that. So they went back. eventually, though, the. The thing to avenge these deaths is called Operation Wrath of God by the israeli government. And they will go all over Europe. They will kill people who they think were tangentially involved. they kill historians and professors who talk about this in ways that they don't like. They kill, at one point, a thing called the Lilyhammer affair. They go to Lilyhammer, Norway, which is a really small town, and they think that they found one of the guys who's involved. They follow him around. They find that he is. He works at, like, this small shop. He has a pregnant wife. And him and his wife seem totally normal. They go to the movies one night, they take the bus home. They're holding hands. She's very pregnant. And someone jumps out of a car and kills him, shoots him in the head. And he was totally the wrong person. He wasn't even the guy at all. And so many things would have been, like, that guy was married and had kids. Like, why would he also have this, like, pregnant wife there? Why wouldn't he have any security, like, all these things? there are people who are, like, who know that they're targets and they will, like, you know, move every day and, like, try to do all these things. And one of the ways that they, that they kill people, and I did it. Several people in the book that I read, they would put a bomb on their telephone in their apartment. They go to their apartment, break in, put a bomb on their phone, and then call them, like, at a weird time when they knew they were home. So they pick up the phone and go, hello? And they would know that they were there. And then they blow up their phone and kill them, which is wild. So a lot of, like, car bombs, a lot of being, like, mafia style, shot in restaurants, shot on the street. many, many people will die for this. And I think. I think that's the end of that, which is, I mean, I think there's, like, a lot more to the operation wrath of God and, like, the justice and all of that. But, man, it's just a tragedy of so many levels.
>> Farz: It shows, like, how we get to where we are and why, you know, I was. It was, I was talking to someone, like, a strategist in politics, and someone was, like, in the weeds on this stuff, and, like, listen, like, the reality is, this is never. You can't have. You can't unwind the tape that's already there because there's way too much water under that bridge to ever get unraveled, and I don't.
>> Taylor: Yeah.
>> Farz: and the thing is, like, how far back do you go to identify who was right and who was wrong?
>> Taylor: Yeah.
>> Farz: Like, do you punish the people, their grandparents, their great grandparents, their great great grandparents. Do you punish the allied forces?
>> Taylor: Do you.
>> Farz: Punish, like, Germany still? I mean, what do you. There's no.
>> Taylor: Yeah, I don't know.
Weightlifter, his mom and brother apparently committed suicide after this incident
It. It's such a long story. This is just such a fucking sad, sad story. Like, those poor men, they were. Just had to sit there all day, you know, knowing that they were gonna die, knowing that no one was gonna help them.
>> Farz: And Yosef Romano, the weightlifter, his mom and brother apparently committed suicide after this.
>> Taylor: So sad. This is such, such a horrible, horrible way to die and a horrible, you know, I think, I guess, as we'll see in, like, other stories, like, even though it wasn't a safe space in many ways, because, like, it was the seventies and there were no. There was no security and all these things, like, it was supposed to be a safe space, you know, it felt like a safe space also.
There's a thing around how citizens are punished for government actions
>> Farz: There's a thing around how citizens, like, when average people are being punished for their government's actions. You know, it kind of touches on some things that we talk about every now and then. It's like. Like, the people aren't the government. Like, Iranians aren't. Like. Like, you talk to the average Iranian, they don't agree with any of the stuff that goes on Iran. but they can't vocalize that. They can't say that. All they can look at is, again, who do you punish? It was their great grandparents who ended up getting these people into office. Right. And so how do you punish the kids with that? So, yeah, touchy, touch, your all around subject, but I'm glad you covered it because it's, Again, I saw the movie, but I saw it so long ago that I didn't really recall all the nuances. I forgot about the helicopter situation. M. Yeah, there's a lot to it.
>> Taylor: there's also. This just reminded me, like, really quickly, and I'm reading this, So in Derry girls, it's like, with. It's a. It's on Netflix. It's like a show about these sweet, girls in Derry, Northern Ireland, and they talk about a lot of Northern Ireland during the time when, like, all of their. Tons of terrorism in Northern Ireland and all these, like, terrible things were happening. And they're catholic and then there's, like, the Protestants and all these things, but at the very, very end, they do a vote to decide to, like, move on, essentially. And it's like, in the show, they show it that, like, it's. There's people that they know that were, like, in jail for being IRA terrorists, and they're going to, like, be forgiven because they want. The country needs to move on, you know? And it was like 71% of the people. People voted and they chose to move on. They're like, we need to get past them. You know, I don't know if that, like, worked, but it's like, that reminded me of that, you saying that.
>> Farz: I think that until we get to the point where, I mean, we can probably get there if we get to the point where we have to be governed by AI, and AI is making our decisions.
>> Taylor: Honestly, I was thinking, like, the best thing would be aliens, maybe, but I don't even know if we could agree to fight aliens together. maybe the nuclear war. When we see each other again in 10,000 years, when we can communicate across the world, we can be like, let's forget about it.
>> Farz: It says a lot about our psyche. That when you said aliens, my first thought was, I guess if, like, really smart beings landed here, we probably listen to them and they probably tell us, stop fighting. And your mind went to, how do we kill them?
>> Taylor: No, no, no. I mean, no, no. That's what I was thinking. I was thinking, well, yes, I guess, right? Like, we work together, because they're probably trying to kill us because we're stupid. Like, if I land on a planet full of idiots, I'd be like, you guys are idiots.
>> Farz: Yeah. Yeah.
>> Taylor: And that's what this planet is full of. So, yeah. it's just. Just, I'm gonna do something fun after this is over. Like, I'm so excited for the Olympics, and, like, I love all the sports stuff, but I'm just like, we can't have nice things, can we?
>> Farz: It makes you feel better. My episode is actually pretty fun. But given that you started this conversation by saying you don't want to hear anything about presidential debates, I don't actually think you're going to have fun. I think you're actually m a break.
>> Taylor: I have a master's degree in political communication. The only thing we talk about is presidential debates. So I'm ready. Tell me what color tie Bill Clinton was wearing in 1992. I would love to hear that. yeah, I don't know. I'm sure it was blue.
>> Farz: We'll get into it. So we'll leave it on a more upbeat note, I guess.
>> Taylor: Yeah. This is sad. It's a devastating story.
>> Farz: Yeah. Yeah. Well, hopefully eventless.
>> Taylor: I know. I hope so, too. I mean, knock on wood, just, like, have people just fucking run and do a great job and twirl and shit and. Let's do it. There's a lot of videos of Simone biles in slow motion, and I still can't figure out what the fuck she's doing in the air. It's so amazing.
>> Farz: Is she competing this year? I thought she retired.
>> Taylor: No, no, she's in it. Yeah. So super good. Yeah. yeah, we.
Doomed to fail podcast is looking for doomed to fail stories
I have a. Have a listener mail.
>> Farz: Okay.
>> Taylor: From Morgan. a bushel and a peck is from the musical guys and dolls, which I didn't know, but we talked about that song.
>> Farz: Yep. Is that the male?
>> Taylor: Yeah. Because I told you I sang that song, and you were like, I don't know what you're talking about. Do you remember that?
>> Farz: No.
>> Taylor: You said the british measure things in bushels and pecks, and I said, I sing the song.
>> Farz: Oh, that's right. That's right.
>> Taylor: You did. On the neck to my kids. All the time. And you were like, that sounds insane. And Morgan was like, that's from guys and dolls. So her Grammy used to sing it to her, too, so I didn't make that.
>> Farz: The correlation is that you are into. You actually know musicals and plays enough to, internalize some of the dialogue, but not the musical itself. And I just don't know many of it.
>> Taylor: Cool. Well, thank you, Fars. thank you, friends, for listening. please continue to tell your friends about us. our website is up and running. You can go there, doomtofailpod.com. do sign up for our newsletter to our merch to, see all of our episodes and different places to listen. Learn a little bit about us, us on there as well. And then if you have any questions or suggestions, we're at doomtofailpodmail.com. and we also had someone ask if we ever have a call out to ask people about their own doomed to fail stories. So please tell us if you have a doomed to fail thing that happened, like, maybe in your family, like, a weird thing that happened to, like, get to you all to where you are. we'd love to know.
>> Farz: This all started with the idea, we were going to cover some of this. Then we're going to ask people to call in with their own relationship. Doomed to fail. Like when they started dating someone red flaggy. What would I think of that? Never vocalized it to you?
>> Taylor: I don't know. We had a lot of ideas.
>> Farz: We have a lot of ideas. We're very smart people.
>> Taylor: I am going to go get a drink before you go and hope for a much less horrifying week this week.
>> Farz: Than I did last week. Okay, go ahead and cut us off.
Taylor: We are waiting for a hurricane to hit Texas
>> Taylor: And the matter of the people of state of California versus ornithal James Simpson, case number ba zero nine six. And so, my fellow Americans, ask not.
>> Farz: What your country can do for you.
>> Taylor: Ask what you can do for me.
>> Farz: And we are back. hi, Taylor. How are you?
>> Taylor: Good farce. How are you?
>> Farz: I am doing well, as always. Do you want to go ahead and introduce us before I start bantering?
>> Taylor: Yes. Hello, everyone. Welcome to doomed to fail. We have a podcast that brings you history's most notorious disasters and epic failures twice a week, every week. And we had a story about serial killers from South America on Monday. And then today I am going to finish my series on the Olympics. Are you excited?
>> Farz: I am very, very excited.
>> Taylor: Yeah.
>> Farz: I will also note that we are waiting for a hurricane to hit Texas. And so if you're in the path to hurricane. Get out of the path. Go somewhere else. It's been different.
>> Taylor: That's it. Is it gonna hit? It's not gonna. Is gonna hit you. It's gonna rain if you're like.
>> Farz: It's gonna rain if you're in Houston. Yeah. If you're like, Houston Galveston area, like, it's not gonna be good. I think that, like, what we're gonna experience is gonna be a ton of rain. which is great. We need it. But, But, yeah, hopefully it doesn't veer any further off. So TBD.
>> Taylor: I mean, it is record hot here. It's like, just. You can't even go outside. It's in the 110s.
>> Farz: Seriously?
>> Taylor: Mm It's terrible. So we're here it is. Right now it's 100, and it's 06:00 at night. every day this week, it's gonna be okay. It goes back to 90 next week. Every day this week is gonna be over 100. Today, the high was 107.
>> Farz: So high. That is worse than here, which is really weird. Usually we get it. Texas gets it worse, but when you're.
>> Taylor: It's humid there, and it's not humid here, but Palm Springs is. Right now it's 111. Tomorrow's high. High is 117. Palm Springs is so. Pop.
>> Farz: So bad.
>> Taylor: I'm like, I don't know how. How much longer can we go on like this?
>> Farz: It's. I mean. Yeah, yeah.
>> Taylor: You know, like, what do you do? Yeah. Is it gonna just go up, forever and then, like, we can't live. Live here?
>> Farz: I think so. I think that's probably the most likely outcome, unfortunately.
>> Taylor: Yeah. I, don't want to bummer, but we'll see what happens. But, yeah, no, it's bad.
>> Farz: It looks like. What?
>> Taylor: Well, it looks like it's going to rain for you tomorrow. So dumb. Sorry, everyone. Rain for you tomorrow. But that's it. It's only 65% chances of rain, so still.
>> Farz: Can I. Can I claim to be a victim of this hurricane or no?
>> Taylor: Sure, sure. Go ahead.
>> Farz: Thank you. okay.
There's so much more that I would like to talk about at Olympics
And today. So, yeah, we're gonna get into part four of Olympics. This is the last one you said, right?
>> Taylor: Oh, yeah. I can't do it anymore.
>> Farz: Has it been that trying for you?
>> Taylor: Well, I just feel like I've learned a bunch of these are. There's just, like, so much more that I would like to talk about, and I'm not gonna get to it, and that is a bummer, you know? But I'm like, with every Olympics, there's like all these little stories. So I'm not going to talk about like, all the doping scandals, I'm not going to get to the Winter Olympics. Things like cool runnings and Nancy Kerrigan. maybe in two years, in 2026, when they're having the Olympics in Milan, I can come back to those, you know.
>> Farz: Yeah, Nancy Kerrigan was a. Was a fun one.
>> Taylor: Yeah, no, definitely, we should talk about that. But, like, I didn't even. Not even going to get to it.
Today in our final installment, we're going to talk about the Atlanta bombing
It, because today in our final installment, we're going to talk about the Atlanta bombing in 1996. And Richard Jewell, who is the man who was suspected, of being bomber.
>> Farz: Poor bastard.
>> Taylor: Poor bastard. Jesus. So we've talked about the origins of the Olympics. We talked about Pierre de Coubertin, who brought them back. it's kind of fun because now every book I readdeze, it recaps what the Olympics are. And I'm like, oh, we already know all that, which is fun. We know about the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. We know about the 1972 Olympics in Munich. And now we'll focus on 1996. So some of the things that happened between 1980, which is where we cut it off last time, and now just to kind of go through what they had, in 1980, the Winter Olympics were in Lake placid in the United States. And that was a miracle on ice. And I know there's a movie with, is it Kurt Russell, probably win? I think it's called miracle on ice, but the us team beats the Soviet Union, and it's very exciting in the 1984 La Summer Olympics. actually. And, So the 1984 Winter Olympics were in Sarajevo, the summer Olympics were in LA. And those are the ones that I wanted to talk about just a little bit. So some fun things that happened there. Mary Lou Retton became the first american woman to win an individual all around gold medal in gymnastics. So that's super exciting. She's like super cute, has like, cute little eighties short hair. That was a big deal. there is a woman named Madeline DeJesus, and she had an identical twin sister who was also in the Olympics. And Madeline hurt herself during the long jump, so she had her sister pretend to be her during the relay. Seriously, just super fun. Yeah. And they got caught, and then they got the medal taken away. But like, like, that's hilarious. and kind of fun. the opening ceremony for the LA Olympics was in the, What's it called? The Colosseum by UCLA.
>> Farz: Yeah. Muhammad Ali was the one who.
>> Taylor: Yep, he lit. He lit it at the end. no, no, that was in Atlanta.
>> Farz: Was it? Okay, sorry.
>> Taylor: Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, he did it in 1996, but I don't, I don't know who did it in Ladenhe, but there was a guy in a jetpack. I don't know if you've ever seen this video. Watch it later. just Google 1984 Olympics jetpack. It's like the. It's so lame. He just like, kind of goes up in the air like 10ft and like, moves around and it's just like, hilarious and like, very fun. You can look it up now. Jetpack guy, 84 Olympics.
The Olympics are coming back to Los Angeles in 2028
so I wanted to mention this in general because obviously, as you know, the Olympics are coming to LA again.
>> Farz: Is, is it? So this is not a jetpack. So he's not actually being propelled by a jetpack. He's just on a string or wire.
>> Taylor: No, it's a jetpack, isn't it? Like from the bottom?
>> Farz: I mean, there's no flames coming out of it.
>> Taylor: I don't know. I don't pretend to know the science, the schematics behind jetpacks. Okay, got it.
>> Farz: But we'll come back to this.
>> Taylor: So, the Olympics, as we know, is coming back to LA in 2028. And there I found a website called nolympicsla.com that goes over all the Olympic. All the reasons why LA shouldn't have it. there's a lot of them, obviously. Like, we've talked about how having the Olympics, like, a bunch of unhoused people get displaced. it doesn't really help the community. It costs a lot of money. The, 1984 Olympics actually was one that made some money for the city because they had just insane sponsorships and things that they hadn't had before. But, there's also an article that I'll put into our, our sources from the nation. It's called want to understand the 1992 LA riots. Start with the 1984 LA Olympics. So the gist is that the police got so much funding. So this is like a couple years. Well, it's like a decade after Munich, but they want it to be like, you're safe because there's so many police here. Right. So there were just like a huge police presence with tanks, with all this stuff. And the police became like very aggressive because they had so much money being funneled into them and that would eventually, lead to Rodney King.
>> Farz: Yeah, that's. I'm on the no Olympics page and that's. Yeah, what they're saying is likely going to happen this time.
>> Taylor: So, yeah, so it's fair to say that they were, like, worried that something might happen during that time. It went off without anything really terrible happening. There was a thing where this is important for our story. An, officer, a police officer named Jimmy Wade Pearson discovered a bomb on a bus. And he, like, very heroically took out of the bus and, like, ripped all of the cords off like in a movie. But, it wasn't a real bomb. He had planted it to be a hero, so.
>> Farz: Oh, so there was some precedent for jewel.
>> Taylor: Yeah.
>> Farz: Okay.
>> Taylor: I didn't know that exactly. Yeah, so it had happened. It happened recently and in the us. So just kind of remember. Yeah. Remember that? That had happened. So that's 1984. In 1988, the Winter Olympics were in Calgary, Canada. This is the cool runnings Olympics and the Eddie that Eagles Olympics. So m like silly comedy movie Olympics. Those happen then. in the summer Olympics in 1988, they were in Seoul, South Korea. And Ben, Johnson won the men's 100 meters sprint, but he was disqualified for doping, giving the gold to Carl Lewis. And Carl Lewis is going to dominate track and field in the next four to five Olympics. in 1992, they were in Albertville, France, and the summer Olympics were in Barcelona, Spain. This was the dream team Olympics, when Michael Jordan and magic Johnson got to actually, like, and crew got to actually be in the Olympics. and also I posted something about, I have this amazing cd called Barcelona gold and had all this, like, great nineties music on it. So that also happened in 1992. Not that that matters, but I thought it was really fun. in 94, they were in Lillehammer, Norway. In 1996, they were in Atlanta, which we'll talk about in a second. some fun things that happened during that one. I think the funnest is Carrie struggling. Do you remember when she did the vault with her hurt ankle?
>> Farz: Oh, my God. Yeah.
>> Taylor: How exciting that was.
>> Farz: She landed in her ankle, right? Was that the one?
>> Taylor: It was already hurt. Oh, it was already hurt. And then she landed on 1ft because it was hurt, you know?
>> Farz: Yeah, I remember that.
>> Taylor: And then, like, the coach carried her to get, to get the gold and it was like a whole thing. So that was super exciting and cute. and then in 1988, I don't know where that was. In 2000, they were in Japan and Australia. 2002, they were in Salt Lake City. So in the US in 2004, the Summer Olympics were in Athens, Greece. And that's when Michael Phelps comes on stage. he won six gold and two bronze medals, in his first olympics. And then 2008, they'll be in Beijing. Usain Boltzen.
>> Taylor: That's his first olympics. He won three gold medals. Michael Phelps won eight gold medals in 2008.
>> Farz: Remember that?
>> Taylor: Incredible. 2010.
>> Farz: Yeah, these,
The dream team. If you look up the scores that they racked up against other countries
The dream team. If you look up the scores that they racked up against other countries, it's.
>> Taylor: Was it just, like, dumb?
>> Farz: It's so stupid. Yeah. So the one game, June 28, 1992, us points 136 to Cuba's 57.
>> Taylor: Oh, my God.
>> Farz: I mean, I'm shocked that even got 57, actually.
>> Taylor: Me too.
>> Farz: So could,
>> Taylor: One day you're just, like, playing a basketball team, and the next day they're like, oh, hey, Michael Jordan's here against you. Good luck. And you're like.
>> Farz: I remember being a kid and playing at the YMCA, like, the basketball. Every now and then it's like. It's like the other kids will, like, the other team will have someone that's like. Like, crazy good and crazy dominance. Like, nobody wants to guard that guy. It's like, yeah, he wants to be the guy who, like, is obviously going to lose the game for you. And, I just can't imagine being like, this Cuba team and be like, so who's got Michael Jordan?
>> Taylor: Yeah. Do you want to cover him or Michael Jordan?
>> Farz: Do you want Karl Malone or do you want Patrick Ewing? Or do you want Scottie Pippen? Who do you want to cover today? What a nightmare.
>> Taylor: I don't know. not news, but, man, these guys are tall. Patrick ewing is 7ft tall.
>> Farz: She's so tall.
>> Taylor: Insane. yeah, so that was a really fun year for America. what else? So, just in general, 2012, Gabby Douglas, she's the first african american woman to win the gold medal in gymnastics, which is super exciting. they're in Russia in 2014. They're in Rio in 2016 where Simone Biles, comes to stage. She wins four gold medals and one bronze. Usain bolt completed the triple triple. He won the 100 204 by 100 relay for the third Olympics in the row. Like, he's just insane. He's so fast, out of control.
>> Farz: That's what he's doing.
>> Taylor: then they were in Pyeongchang, South Korea, and then they were in Tokyo. I, think it's super cool of Simone Biles that she withdrew because she was having m mental health issues. I think that was a good thing for her to do, take care of herself. So she did that. But she's back this year. And then in 2022, they were in Beijing, and then this year, of course, they're in Paris. I'll let you know. I'll do a follow up if anything crazy happens. But I'm following so many Olympics accounts on our instagram, it's wild. And I'm excited about track, of course. and swimming. Katie Ledecky is back. She's insane. Every, like, the top 15 records for her events are all her. She's just, like, out of control. There's also a woman's rugby player named Alona Mayer who I love. She has a great instagram account. She's super making me super excited about that. And I only know about women. I don't know. That's also what's happening on our algorithm. a woman named Sunny Choi is on our breakdancing, team. There's 16 men and 16 women. And Sunny Choi, I watched a little documentary on her. She was a global marketing director, at Estee Lauder and quit to be on this breakdancing team, which is really fun for her, and I'm excited. Yeah. So that's what's coming up in the next, I don't know, a couple weeks when it actually starts.
Let's talk about 1996. So far, it's 1996. And a lead up to the Olympics
But let's talk about 1996. So far, it's 1996. You are a preteen.
>> Farz: I'm a little twelve year old fars.
>> Taylor: Lil fars. So, lest we start thinking that our times are uniquely turbulent. All times are turbulent. And a lead up to the 1996 Olympics, a bunch of crazy shit's happening, like, in the world. So there's a few things that you have to remember that. That backdrop this story. and they happen in quick succession. So, in August 1992, there's Ruby Ridge. And you know about that, right?
>> Farz: Oh, yeah. Yep.
>> Taylor: Do you want to say what that is?
>> Farz: That was when the FBI and the Bureau of Tobacco Firearms, raided this compound where this white nationalist was living with his family, off the grid. and sure, he's a bad person overall, whatever, but he wasn't actually committing any crimes. It was entrapment. and they ended up actually killing his wife. I think they might have killed this kid, and arrest the guy. Ruby Ridge was basically the precursor in the setup to domestic terrorism as we know it. Like, that was the tee up to the, Olympic bomb or the, God, what was it? Timothy McVeigh bombing. Yeah. And all that stuff, so.
>> Taylor: Exactly, exactly. Thank you. Exactly right. Because in April 1993 is the Waco branch davidian standoff. that ended up killing a bunch of those folks in that cult. In April 1985 is Oklahoma city bombing. So there's a lot of domestic terrorism, like you said, and a lot of tension between the government and people who want to live off the grid. So that's what's happening right now. And so that's in the zeitgeist. there's also one thing that happens right before the Olympics start. On July 17, 1996, TWA flight 800 exploded twelve minutes after takeoff. Have you heard about this one?
>> Farz: That's not Lockerbie, is it?
>> Taylor: No. So it was flying to Rome from JFK via Paris. So it was headed to Paris for, a layover, and it ended up being just like, a short circuit in the engine. So the flight took off fine. Twelve minutes later, other planes were calling in, saying they saw an explosion in the sky and the burning wreckage was on. On the ocean. everyone died. like, almost 300 people died. in addition to the people on the plane, like, one of the groups on the plane was a group of 16 students and five adult chaperones from the french club of Monteursville High school in Pennsylvania. And that is inspiration for final destination.
>> Farz: No way.
>> Taylor: Yeah. Which is kind of fun because foundation is fun because it's like a group of kids going to France, you know, and then their plane explodes. So great.
>> Farz: Those movies are awesome. Everybody should see.
>> Taylor: They're so good. They're great. I love all of them. and the first time I saw them, I was so scared. I want. I didn't know what to do, but then I was like, I need to face my fear and watch them. And they're great.
>> Farz: When they tied the last one.
>> Taylor: Exactly. They pinned it all together.
>> Farz: Yeah. This is way. You didn't have to do that like you did.
>> Taylor: We.
>> Farz: We loved it anyways. But, man, y'all really care about us. Thank you.
The Atlanta Olympics were inspired by a tragedy that happened in 1990
Final destiny.
>> Taylor: Yeah. So this is. This is the inspiration for it, which is a terrible tragedy, but really naruting out a lot. It's a tragedy. I think Andy Warhol's boyfriend was on the flight. A couple other, like, higher profile people were on it, so definitely tragedy. But finally we got final destination. m but by the time the Olympics start, the investigation is not done, and they think it might be a terrorist attack. Like, it isn't, but it's still out there. That could be, you know, basically.
>> Farz: Are you just framing it as, like, the world is topsy turvy?
>> Taylor: Yes.
>> Farz: And nobody. Okay, got it.
>> Taylor: And no one knows what's going on, you know, so that's, like, in the background, but the games are in Atlanta, and there's a lot of background reasons to why. but, you know, some. A couple people were like, we really wanted to be in Atlanta. They put out the bid. They spent a lot of money, like, wooing the people who get to vote. it's the 100th anniversary of the modern games, so Athens was, like the favorite to get it because, you know, Greece 100 years, all the things, in Atlanta did the Abraham Lincoln thing and made themselves everybody's second choice, you know, so that's how you win things. So in 1990, it's like 200 people on this committee get to vote on which city, and they vote on, like, all ten. And then the two have the least votes are out, and they do it again, and then they do it again and they do it again until finally it was Atlanta. And they got that in 1990. The games are in Atlanta now. they got voted in. They were everyone's second choice. They wanted the park and Olympics to be open to everyone. They expected bomb threats, but they had a lot of security. They, did a training in the airport before with, like, fake gas. There was a bomb in the airport. So everybody was, like, really ready. lots of famous people from the nineties were there. the Brian Setzer orchestra played. That's fun. It's very nice.
>> Farz: I don't know who that is.
>> Taylor: It's like, it's like nineties swing. Remember, whenever we, like, swing in the nineties, everybody was swinging. there's a very on brand story that Donald Trump was at the cheesecake factory, and he dropped his wallet, and a kid picked up his wallet and gave it back to him. And to thank him, Donald Trump asked the kid for a dollar 20 bill, and he signed that one.
>> Farz: I mean, I guess that's kind of nice.
>> Taylor: He didn't even give him any money for returning his wallet. He took the kids money and signed it.
>> Farz: Oh, he took. I thought you meant he took money out of his own.
>> Taylor: No, no, no, the kids.
>> Farz: That's funny. That is funny.
>> Taylor: It's very. Makes sense. so all that's happening, everyone's excited. Atlanta is excited. and so is a security guard named Richard Jewellen. And if you have seen this man or heard any of the story, for better or worse, Richard Jewell is Rod Farfa.
>> Farz: Yeah.
>> Taylor: M, and I mean that in a very loving and endearing way.
>> Farz: Yeah, looks like him, too.
>> Taylor: Well, so Jay Leno is being an asshole this whole time and, like, talking about Richard Jewell when he's not convicted. But, jay leno will liken richard jewell to the person who hurt nancy kerriganheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheh. You know, with the bat or whatever he hit her with. And the same actor, Paul walter hauser, plays both those men in the movies, so it does make sense that those two looked alike. The same actor plays him, and Paul walter hauser also plays Loni Lalouche, who's the canadian farva in super troopers two, so.
>> Farz: Right, well, then he was right.
>> Taylor: It's a brand. So he's like a fat guy with a mustache who just, like, loves being a copy. And that's all he wants to talk about, you know, like, he's so excited about it. He wants to tell you about his training. He wants to tell you how he could, he could stop a bomb, he could do these things, all of that. that's just like his personality, so he's probably like, a little annoying, but he's, that's just who he is, you.
>> Farz: Know, he just likes what he likes. And, Yeah, we don't have to understand it.
>> Taylor: Yeah, exactly. Exactly.
Richard Jewell was born Richard White on December 17, 1962
So, Richard Jewell was born Richard White on December 17, 1962. His mom Bobby, and his dad, Robert, divorced when he was four. His mom remarried a man named John Jewell, which is why he changed his name, because he adopted. Ended up adopting Richard. Things are going well. Until one day, John Jewell, his stepdad, just leaves. He just abandons the family. He leaves a letter that says, I think I'm a failure. I can't do this anymore and just leave. So Richard, who had just started college, moves back in with his mom to help her. And he has some law enforcement jobs. he got fired from two of them. One was because he pretended to be like, an on duty officer when he was being a security guard. He had like, a side gig doing security at an apartment building, and he sort of overstepped. So he got, in trouble for impersonating an officer. And then he also wrecked a police car because he was kind of a reckless driver. So he always considered himself law enforcement, but he had been fired from a couple of law enforcement jobs.
>> Farz: With the way things at this point, he kind of sounds like that Zimmerman guy. Like who Zimmerman, whatever was. The guy was like just a fake police officer and he shot Trayvon Martin, remember?
>> Taylor: Yes, but like, minus the racism.
>> Farz: Yeah, right, yeah, I wasn't going with that. I was just being like, he's a rent a cop who's just like, thinks too highly of himself in that capacity.
>> Taylor: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And his goal is to go back into law enforcement and get a police officer job eventually. He's also overweight, which, like, doesn't help, you know, like, you can be a fat cop if you've been a cop for, like, 25 years, but, like, on your first day, you can't be.
>> Farz: You'd be a fat detective.
>> Taylor: That's true. They don't run after anything. That's fair. but he wanted to be, like, a cop. He wanted to be, like, on the ground, right? so during the Olympics, he got a job as a night guard at, on a tower at Centennial Olympic park, which was this big park that was supposed to be, like, the central park of the Olympics, where there were bands and there were gatherings and there were parties and all the things. He had the night shift, which was, like, not boring because things went into really, really late and at night. So it wasn't, like, just quiet evenings. But he had, like, a very strict, thing that he would do every day. He would, like, check the perimeter. There was a bench next to him where he would let. Let police officers sit there, and he wouldn't let anybody else sit there. He'd be like, that's reserved for the police. You know, just, like, a little bit annoying. Taking his job a little bit too seriously is how people, like, had perceived him.
>> Farz: He sounds very obnoxious. He sounds like an absolute fucking dweeb.
>> Taylor: He's a dweeb. But he's, like, not a bad guy. He's just a dweeb, you know?
Security guard Richard Jewell helped with evacuation after 1996 Atlanta bomb attack
so on July 27, 1996, Richard took a break from work. He usually never took breaks, but he had food poisoning, and he had to go to the bathroom. So he went to the bathroom, which is, like, gonna be suspicious later because he never took breaks, but he had food poisoning. he would remember everything in, like, such intense detail because that was his, like, I'm gonna quote, quote, training, you know, like, he was like, I'm trained to remember faces and remember this, and it's, like, annoying, but also helpful if you need someone, you know, such a dork. So he remembered that there were some drunks, and he was trying to get them to move. it was, like, 01:00 in the morning, and there was a bandaid called Jack Mack and the heart attack playing. And, Richard noticed that there was an alice pack, which is a very big green army backpack underneath a bench. And they had had people leaving their bags, you know, like they do, like, all over the place before. but he got closer to it with another guard, and they kind of opened it, like, poked at it, and saw that it really was a bomb. So Richard alerts the GBI, which is the Georgia Bureau of Investigations, like the state place. And meanwhile, so this is happening, and him and the guy that he's with are trying to get people to leave, but also not cause a panic. So he's, like, trying to get people to move away from the bench, trying to get back up, trying to figure out what to do next. He's doing everything right. He is trying to get people to move. And meanwhile, someone calls 911 from a pay phone and says, there's a bomb in the Olympic park. You have 30 minutes. And this is, like, one of the dumbest things I've ever heard. But the 911 operator doesn't have the street address for Centennial park because it's a brand new park. So she has to call around for, like, 13 minutes to find someone who will tell her the address because she can't send people there if she doesn't have an address.
>> Farz: Kind of wild. Wow. It also sounds very, like diehard.
>> Taylor: Yeah, exactly. Like, someone's on the phone, they can't do it. Everyone's panicking. and so Richard Jewell and another guard are trying to get people to move. but the bomb explodes at 01:20 a.m. and it is a shrapnel bomb. So, like, the boom, obviously, people hear it from all over, but the real damage is going to be in the shrapnel. So people get, like, you know, nails and pieces of metal, like, thrown into their bodies. Only one person dies from the bomb. Her name is Alice Horace Hawthorne. She's 44 years old. She was there with her daughter, who was also injured, a cameraman with turkish radio and television. His name is Melia Ouznyol. He was 40. he, quote, survived coverage of wars in Azerbaijan, Bosnia, and the Persian Gulf, but died of a heart attack, running to get coverage of the bombing. So, technically, only two people died, but 111 people were very severely injured. Richard, so Richard is there, you know, from before the bomb went off and after the bomb, went off. He's doing everything right. So he's like, if you can walk, come with me. Like, getting the people who are okay out of the way so that anyone else can, like, get help quickly. and he's just being a hero. Like, he, you know, got people away from there. He helped people who needed help. He had all this information that he had remembered from. He scanned the perimeter, you know, all those things. And everything that he does is very helpful. And, you know, everything that you should do, what you would expect an officer or a security guard to do. he did all those things, but then people start thinking maybe he's helping too much. Maybe he knows a little too much, you know? And that starts the whole thing.
Two people who deserve blame for this debacle are reporter Kathy Scruggs
So the two people who deserve blame for this, for this debacle are, reporter Kathy Scruggs and FBI agent Don Johnson. So Kathy was like, a reporter for the Atlanta Journal Constitution. She was like, a cute female reporter who would always be at the bar with the police, trying to get there, get them to give her information and tell her things. She m was the first person to report that Richard was a suspect. And was it true? It was. But she's going to be in court later when, this is all kind of over. And they try to get her to tell her source, because someone involved in the case told her at a bar that Richard Jewell, the hero, was the main suspect. And it finds out later that the person who told her this was Don Johnson, the FBI agent in charge. So Don Johnson thinks. Thinks that Richard Jewell did it. And he will not give that up. He won't even look at anybody else. You know, Johnson, had, you know, had some, like, kind of bad moves in when he was in the FBI in New York and ended up in Georgia. and Kathy, her career is going to be destroyed by this. she eventually is going to die by suicide in early September 2001. And, Don Johnson is going to die of lung disease. and they both die before this case is closed. They. He, Don Johnson dies thinking that Richard Jewell did it even after he was let go.
>> Farz: What was named the woman again?
>> Taylor: Kathy Scruggs. S c r u g g s.
>> Farz: I mean, it's sad.
>> Taylor: Yeah. It ruined her life, essentially, but it.
>> Farz: Probably shouldn't have because she was taking the advice of an agent or an, investigating officer.
>> Taylor: Yeah, he sounds like a real piece of work, this guy.
>> Farz: Yeah, it sounds like it was mostly his fault.
>> Taylor: Yeah. So, but Richard was, like, on good morning America. He was on Katie Couric. He was like a hero, like, in the news, in America, all over the world. And. But once he becomes a suspect, they make his life like a living hell. The FBI goes to his house. They take all of his things. It takes him 10 hours to go through his house and, like, take all this evidence out. It takes him four minutes later to return it. They just give it back to them in boxes. His poor mother, Bobbie, she's not just like a dumb woman. Like, she's very smart. She has a career, all these things. She had a tupperware collection that she'd been, like, working on for, like, 30 years, and they ruined it. They, like, wrote on it with sharpies. Isn't that terrible? So mean. And so she ended up suing them and got $2,000 in the end. but Bobbie is a great mother to Richard, and he's there to help her, and she's going to be with him during this whole thing. so after they do this raid on his apartment, he lives with his mom. They do this raid. They bring him in. And Don Johnson, the FBI agent, is the one that interviews Richard for the first time, and he does something weird. He does the Miranda rights in the middle of it, which you can't do. You know, he, like, does it at the wrong time. And at first, Richard is like, I'm here to help. Like, I'm super excited to be with fellow law enforcement and help you find this person. And then he realizes that they are interrogating him, thinking that he did it, and then they do the Miranda rights, and then it's just like, that's going to be part of the reason that, don Johnson's career gets destroyed, as it should be, because he did this in absolutely the wrong way. he will. Richard will call his lawyer, Watson Bryant, who's, like, a person who he had known at a previous job, like, an older man, who was he? Who he had a friendship with. And Watson's gonna be in over his head. He's not really a criminal lawyer, but he's his first lawyer, and he's like, stop talking to the FBI right now. You know, as a lawyer would tell you to do.
>> Farz: Right.
>> Taylor: When he gets home, after his first interrogation by the FBI, Richard Jewell's mom, Bobby, asks him if he did it. He said, no, mama didn't do it. And she never asked him again. She believed him, you know, the whole time.
>> Farz: I'd be pissed. My mom even asked me that. What are you talking about?
>> Taylor: I know. She's like, can I help? Like, she's. I think she's like, how can I help you, you know, from here on?
>> Farz: Yeah, yeah. It's tough situation.
>> Taylor: And she believed him, you know?
>> Taylor: They are, like, 100% sure that it's him. And the media loves it. It. At one point, there's a reporter on tv kind of yelling about it. This woman, in Atlanta yelling about it. And the assistant us attorney calls the attorney general in Atlanta and says, get this woman off the air. Now she is making this into a scandal that it, like, she's like, way going overboard. and guess who that woman was.
>> Farz: No clue.
>> Taylor: Nancy Grace.
>> Farz: No.
>> Taylor: Yeah, yeah, that was her first. Her first big thing.
There's no evidence that Richard Jewell did this. There's just no evidence
And by the end of the year, she'll have her job on court tv and become, you know, be the yeller that she is.
>> Farz: So annoying.
>> Taylor: Yeah. so now people are interviewing Richard Jewell's friends as well, and they are saying things like, yeah, it's weird. They talk about being a police officer so much, you know, like, he does want to be a hero. That is true. So things like that, I think, make it more suspicious, especially because the guy who did it in LA, you know.
>> Farz: Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He kind of set the precedent.
>> Taylor: Yeah. So he gets a new lawyer named Jack Martin, who's more of a criminal lawyer, to help him. they're making him do things like pretend to make the phone call. Like, there's a bomb in the park. You have 30 minutes. But, like, it doesn't match his voice. when he does meet with his new lawyer, his lawyer does the thing where he's like, is there anything that you want to tell me before we go off? You know, and do this, like, at the end? And, Richard Jewell says, yes, I haven't done my taxes in two years. Which is.
>> Farz: Poor guy.
>> Taylor: Yeah. the FBI is constantly trailing him. They are at his house. They're listening to his phone calls. He has a friend who's in the GBI, and he wants his friend to come over because he's like, hey, I made a lasagna. Will you come over so we can chat about this? And his friend is like, okay, he comes over, but his friend is wired, so he can't even trust anyone. And they, like, you know, he orders pizza and they bribe the delivery guy to hold the door open so that he can, like, they can get pictures of him. They're just, like, camped outside of his apartment. They're making it. He can't also, he doesn't have a job. You know, so he's like, he doesn't have a job. He's, like, really trying to figure out, like, how he's gonna live his life. Now, there's jailhouse informants who are saying that they know that he did it, but all those didn't, obviously didn't pan out. and then he also passes. Passes a lie detector test. There's just no evidence that Richard Jewell did this. You know, like, there's nothing.
>> Farz: No, it's just. It's just if you're kind of like an annoying pain in the ass.
>> Taylor: Yeah.
>> Farz: You're just an easy target. Don't be an annoying pain in the ass.
>> Taylor: Yeah, yeah, exactly. He's definitely an easy target on this. So also, just to note, he has a best friend named Dave Duchess, and he's often there to help him. Dave, Dutchess died in 2021 of COVID But, I just want to bring up that he was a good friend to Richard Jewell during all of this. so this is only a few months. So the bomb goes off in July. By October, the us attorney general in Atlanta sends him a letter saying that he is no longer a suspect. They don't apologize. They don't, like, you know, they just say you're not. You're not a suspect anymore. in 1997, Janet Reno did apologize. she said, quote, I'm very sorry it happened. I think we owe him an apology. I regret the leak. The leak being. The leak that, like, he was a suspect at all. So he's.
>> Farz: Jan Reno didn't leak it?
>> Taylor: No, no, no. But, like, the FBI did.
>> Farz: Right, okay, got it.
>> Taylor: Yeah, exactly. so Richard tries to get his life back. He does get a job offer in Pendergrass, Georgia, which is like a very, very small town. He becomes a police officer there. Eventually, he'll be deputy sheriff in Meriwether County, Georgia. he gets to be on Saturday Night Live. Norm Macdonald interviews him, during weekend. Ah, update. And asks him if he also killed Lady Teresa and Princess Diana, or brother Teresa and Princess Diana, because they just died as well. It's a joke, right? he does sue, the Atlanta Journal constitution, which is the newspaper, because they were comparing him to Wayne Williams, like, the guy who killed a bunch of children. They were, like, doing all this stuff. Like, Jay Leno apologized to him. Tom Broca had to apologize. Like, they did make some money from those things. but he had a hard time meeting women. And, like, one time he met a woman on a plane, and they went on a date, and she turned out to be a reporter who wanted to write an article about him, which is shitty, you know, he, does meet a social worker named Dina, and they get married in 1998. They move to a farm. He's deputy sheriff. He's doing great. He's actually feeling healthier. He lost a bunch of weight, but he still has diabetes. and on August 29, 2007, his wife called him a couple times and he didn't answer. And she rushed home and found that he was dead. In their bedroom. He had died of a heart attack. He had heart disease. And Richard Jewell died at the age of 44.
>> Farz: I mean, kind of sad life overall.
Who planted the bomb in Orlando? Who actually did it
>> Taylor: I would say very happy that he met Dana. It sounds like they had a lot of fun. He was very sweet to her. Richard would bring a rose to the spot where Alice Hawthorne was killed by the bomb every year. And Dana continues to do that, the years since Richard passed.
>> Farz: That's very sweet.
>> Taylor: Yeah. So, I mean, he sounds like. I mean, he was in the right place at the right time to help, but he was, like, the kind of guy that was easy to pick on. And obviously, they wanted to get this solved really fast and all of that, so they just focused in on him and really just ruined his life for the rest of it.
>> Farz: I mean, he probably wasn't going to last that long anyways.
>> Taylor: Yeah.
>> Farz: Pictures of him. He does not look like he's doing good.
>> Taylor: Zachary. He looks good toward the end. He looks thinner when he doesn't have his mustache on. He looks a little bit healthier, but it, like, wasn't enough. You know, he's just like a guy.
>> Farz: He's just like Farva, you know, he lost 40 pounds.
>> Taylor: Yeah. but, fars, what are you thinking right now at the end of the story?
>> Farz: Who actually did it?
>> Taylor: Who actually did it? That's a great question. This isn't like, oh, God, there's a murderer out there that murders children and killed Kissy Anthony's daughter. You know, like, she did it. Like, it's not like OJ Simpson where you're like, there's a murderer out there if you didn't do it, dude. But of course there isn't. You know, but in this case, like, there is someone out there who planted this bomb. And guess who it is?
>> Farz: it's gonna be one of those white nationalist groups, right?
>> Taylor: A thousand percent. It's a dude. It's one dude. But he is a white nationalist dude. His, name is Eric Robert Rudolph. So Eric Robert Rudolph is mad about everything in his life. He joins the army, but he gets kicked out, while he's there, he just says a bunch of racist shit. You know, he's just, like, a piece of shit guy. He is mad at the Olympics later, he says this because of global socialism. He also hates the official Olympic song was imagined by John Lennon. And he hates that song so much.
>> Farz: I mean, I kind of get it.
>> Taylor: And he wanted them to cancel the games. They did not cancel the games for the bombing. They just amped up security and people were okay with that. so the FBI, in trying to find this person, actually did some, like, like, funny things. One, thing that I thought was hilarious is. So he had. He was kind of on the run for a while. Eric Rudolph lives in the forest. He only has a driver's license. He has no other identifying, information. He's very as off the grid as you possibly can be. Literally starving to death in the woods for a big part of the story. But he, when he snuck into Orlando, like, walked into Centennial park to plant the bomb, he has a goatee and he has, like, a hat on. And the FBI has, like, pictures where they think they might see someone dropping off the backpack, and they send them to NASA to enhance them, and NASA can't. Isn't that hilarious?
>> Farz: I mean. Yeah, I mean, what? I don't think their technology is going.
>> Taylor: To help in, but I just imagine. Yeah, they do it in supertrust where he's like, enhance enhancement. Enhance. Yeah.
>> Farz: That's why they did do it in super troopers.
>> Taylor: You're right. Yeah. So he, would do a couple other things. So he's just, like, basically a white supremacist, nationalist piece of shit who, like, you know, wants to make this global statement. He sets out this bomb. He also will do two other bombs, in the next couple of years, because they don't find him him for years. he bombs a lesbian nightclub, he bombs an abortion clinic, killing a security guard, which is the first murder at an abortion clinic, in America. and then. But he, like, really, really is on the run. So he, like, camps in the. In the woods. He first becomes a suspect, in the abortion. The abortion clinic bombing, on February 14, 1998. So it's two years after the Atlanta bombing. He's not a suspect there yet, but he is in, Alabama for this one because two witnesses, and these two are also heroes. So Jeffrey Tikal and Jermaine Hughes, they see him leaving this place where a bomb went off. And they're like, that guy's weird and suspicious. So they follow him. One of them follows him when they get his license plate. And then they were able to find that the car was registered to him. And that's how they get his name for the first time, which is fun, that they, like, went out and did that.
>> Farz: Sorry, when year was that?
>> Taylor: 1998.
>> Farz: Okay, so two years later.
>> Taylor: Okay. Yeah.
Eric Rudolph spent five years in the wilderness before being caught in 2003
So two years later, he also does stuff where, like, he's planting bombs all over, but he remembers where they are. But when they do end up catching him. They have to, like, make deals with him for him to tell them where all this hidden dynamite is, because he's like, oh, this is at, like, the FBI headquarters in Birmingham, or this is, like, somewhere else. And, like, at one point, he gets scared, and he has a bunch of other bombs, and he just sets them off in a garbage can. So he, like, there was a chance that he has bombs in parks and in forests and someone else could, like, accidentally set them off, you know, that's dangerous. So, on, May 5, 1998, he becomes the 454th person on the ten most wanted list. So he's, like, the. The 454th person to get on the list. He's on the ten most wanted list. They're looking for him. They know he's dangerous. and he spends five years in the wilderness. He does stuff like, he kills animals to live. He has a friend who lives in. Who owns a food store, and he starts stealing stuff from him and ends up stealing his car. And his friend calls the police and says, like, you know, he's out here. He's out here in the woods. eventually, they, Eventually, they find him. And, when they find him, he kind of, like, walks out of the woods, and he's, like, behind a convenience store, like, dumpster diving. And in the middle of the night, a cop, like, sees him and finds him, and, you know, and apprehends them, and then they figure out who he is while they're trying to find him. Just as an aside, like, how. We were saying how a lot of these, you know, people come from families that are fucked up. His brother record. His. His brother Daniel recorded himself cutting off his hand with a saw to send a message to the FBI.
>> Farz: What was the message?
>> Taylor: I have no idea. Like, just to be, like, I don't know, honestly. And then, like, his hand got reattached because. Because someone went and found it, and they put it back on, and it was fine. But he's just like, I guess doesn't come from a great background.
>> Farz: Maybe the message. Maybe the message is, if I'm going to do this to me, imagine what I'll do to you, I guess.
>> Taylor: But it's not even the guy. It's his brother.
>> Farz: So weird.
>> Taylor: You know what I mean? So they end up, you know, they find him. He would do things. Like, one thing. He was, like. He was, like, eating salamanders and acorns and, like, stealing food from people's houses and dumpsters and things. And eventually they catch him. and he goes to court and he is convicted, and he is at the ADX Florence supermax in Florence, Colorado, which I think we've talked about before.
>> Farz: Yeah, it's like the crazy prison.
>> Taylor: And that that's where Eric Rudolph, I think that he has been there since 2003, like, a lot later.
>> Farz: Why do you have techaczynski?
>> Taylor: Yeah, yeah. Very similar vibe. Like, I'm living in the. I'm living in the woods, you know? He was caught on May 31, 2003, which is wildly late.
>> Farz: Yeah, he had seven years.
>> Taylor: Yeah. To like. But he, like, those were shitty seven years for him because he really was starving to death in the woods.
>> Farz: Yeah.
>> Taylor: Just like Ted Kaczynski, though. Also starving to death in the woods.
>> Farz: Yeah. It's, it's interesting how shitty these guys live and how much they take and how they live.
>> Taylor: Yeah.
>> Farz: Just, yeah, yeah. Losers.
>> Taylor: So, yeah, that's it. That that that's the story. That's the 1996 Olympics. And, you know, Richard Jewell, I'm glad we can remember him as a hero because he was, even though he's a dork, you know, he he did he did save lives by moving people out of there. And he was just a guy who wanted to be a cop in, like, a I want to help people way.
>> Farz: Ah, tragic, tragic existence. I mean, yeah, 44 years.
>> Taylor: and so young to die of a heart attack, you know, in a big.
>> Farz: I mean, a not insignificant chunk of that was spent being harangued 24/7 from all angles.
>> Taylor: Oh, another thing I forgot to say is he did. There was remember, when in Japan, when the Amishin Rikyo cult gassed that subway line in Tokyo, there was something else that they had gassed, like a suburb, and a man had found it in a weird way. And he was wrongly accused as well. And he reached out to Richard to be like, hey, this happened to me in the media just like it happened to you. And Richard went to Japan and did spend some time there sometime with him too. He hated the food. Nice.
>> Farz: wait, you said he hated the food.
>> Taylor: He did, yeah.
>> Farz: Yeah. He looks like a pizza hut kind of a guy.
>> Taylor: Exactly. I think he found all the pizza huts in Japan. but that was cool that he got to travel to Japan, you know, and, like, meet another person who had the same thing happen to him. So, you know, I think, I don't know. I feel torn about it because he also, then now we know about him, you know, wouldn't have if this hadn't happened to him, he would just be, you know, another another guy, but we know about him because of this story, which is, you know, kind of fun.
>> Farz: I mean, it's. Yeah. Like, it adds something to the lore of the Olympics, you know?
The 2018 Summer Olympics begin July 26 in Los Angeles
>> Taylor: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So, Yeah, wild. So there's something wild, I think every single time there's an Olympics. and I think because, you know, people want to make a statement. You know, people want to like, you know, the world is watching. It's not ever going to be, like, the dream of, like, a lovely. Everyone gets a long sporting event. It's always something else happening, and they're at times very, very tragic. but, I don't know, hopefully everything goes smoothly this year. We'll see what happens. But we also live in turbulent times, so I don't know, it,
>> Farz: It reminds me of those people who threw. Throw, like, like soup or whatever or paint on.
>> Taylor: Yeah.
>> Farz: Art. It's just like, they just need to get attention in whatever way they need it, I guess.
>> Taylor: Yeah. Yeah. Hopefully there's some cool sporting things that are gonna happen. I'm excited for gymnastics. I'm excited for this break dancing to start. yeah, I want to see. Hopefully. Hopefully it's easy to see. Also, I'll keep you posted on how I'm gonna watch it, but I also have not received my Team USA sweatshirt yet from old Navy, so. So that's a tragedy.
>> Farz: We'll wait with bated breath.
>> Taylor: Yeah, wait till I. I posted something on Instagram because it was someone who's like, how you judge people who wear, like, anything with the american flag on it, but then during the Olympics, they're like, woohoo.
>> Farz: Yeah.
>> Taylor: Which is me.
>> Farz: You gotta flex that pride.
>> Taylor: Yeah.
>> Farz: exciting. Well, very, very fun story, Taylor. Fun little series four parter.
>> Taylor: Yeah. I think I learned. I learned so much and I feel excited because I feel like I can take these little tidbits of things that I learned about the Olympics with me, me for the rest of my life.
>> Farz: Yeah. And the rest of us will as well now that we have it. and probably some really fun, exciting things that are going to be happening here in a little bit with the Olympics starting up in Paris. When does it start?
>> Taylor: Oh, that's a good question. I think the 27th.
>> Farz: so end of this month.
>> Taylor: Yes. At the end of July. Yeah. well, I wonder when the opening ceremony is. It is July 26 at 10:30 a.m. pacific time.
>> Farz: So convenient to be watching tv.
>> Taylor: I mean, honestly, who knows? I hope I. Hopefully I can have it on one of my monitors because I really I do want to see it. and then, you know, stay tuned for 2028 when pharz and I will be broadcasting live from los Angeles during the Olympics. And that will be very fun.
>> Farz: We're going to be, correspondents at that Olympics. Yeah.
>> Taylor: Yes. So that will be super exciting. we're going to get wear blazers and american flag ties and. Yeah, it's going to be really fun.
>> Farz: Totally. I'm so in.
>> Taylor: Can't wait for that.
>> Farz: Very m in. sweet. Well, Taylor, thanks for sharing.
Taylor: Thank you everyone for listening to Doom to Fail podcast
Is there anything else you want to read off for the folks before we.
>> Taylor: I have one note from a listener. Nadine wanted me to tell you that, ah, she loved the operation, Pastorius and I, and likes the idea of like bumbling spikers. So. Plus one for those.
>> Farz: There's actually quite a few of those.
>> Taylor: yeah, those are so fun.
>> Farz: They might have to be like mini episodes or like I just string a couple of them together to make it a full episode, but there is, there's a lot of content there.
>> Taylor: Yeah, those are, they are really fun. So thank you, Nadine. I agree. That was a fun one. cool. Yeah. So please find us on all the social media at Doom to fail pod. Email us doomdofellpodmail.com if you have any suggestions. and please, please, please tell your friends. Thank you to my friend Jen who left us a review on Apple Podcasts. I really appreciate it. if you can do that for us, that'd be awesome.
>> Farz: Sweet. Thank you everyone. Thanks, Taylor.
>> Taylor: Thank you. Thanks for us.
>> Farz: Yep. Bye.