Is there good and bad about the Olympics? Listen to this episode of Good or Bad with my good friend A.J. Jacobs to find out!
It's the Olympic season! There's excitement and disappointment in Olympics! However, do you think there's good and bad about the Olympics? Not a particular year? Just in general!
In this episode, A.J. and I sat down and discussed the good and the bad about Olympics!
Listen to the episode, tweet us at @jaltucher, and @ajjacobs, and tell us, what do you think about Olympics!
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James Altucher 0:02
back with another episode with AJ Jacobs on good or bad. AJ, welcome to the show. This one is the Olympics good or bad. And normally, when I think of the Olympics, I only think of good like, it's this thing we all every, every two years basically, because you know the summer and winter rotate every two years, we tune in, we get so excited, who's gonna win who's gonna win the gold medal and you feel so inspired by these acts of incredible athleticism. What could be bad?
AJ Jacob 0:32
So there's lots of good, but let's trash the Olympics for a few minutes before we get to the good. Yes. Are you ready?
James Altucher 0:39
Yes. Well, and I just want to mention for each bad that you're going to mention later on, we'll discuss the good side of it. But I encourage the listener to challenge our thinking on the bad a little bit while they're listening to this. There you
AJ Jacob 0:52
go. Alright, so the first band for me as a nerd, I find the the glorifying the physical over the mental to be troubling, like why, why? Why is there no chess? Why is there no chess,
James Altucher 1:08
although for many, many years. So the so the Olympics, I think there's about 204 countries involved. So the international chess organization, which is called Feed A, is has 189 countries involved. And it's taken very seriously in each country. And they've really been lobbying the Olympics, to include them. Up until now, the Olympics have considered it but have not included them. And for 2024, it's still being considered. I don't know if it's likely or not. But there's a very, I think it's the most respectable push by the chess organization to be included in the Olympics. I think it will happen, it might
AJ Jacob 1:49
happen. Well, have you ever seen on YouTube? You ever watch? chessboxing? No. Oh, it's awesome.
James Altucher 1:55
What is chessboxing? Well, they
AJ Jacob 1:56
do one round of boxing. And then they sit down and play five minutes of chess and then they
James Altucher 2:02
end RVs is the boxing or the chess good? Is it mostly boxers who play chess or chess players? Who box? Good
AJ Jacob 2:09
question. I have not researched it deeply enough. But I do just love the idea of, you know,
James Altucher 2:14
their Olympic sport.
AJ Jacob 2:16
Yeah, there you go. They're doing brain damage. And then they're trying to use their brains. So maybe that's the solution. So but you were saying before we recorded that, actually, in the early history of the modern Olympics, like the 1900s. They actually did have some non athletic sport. Yeah, there was efficient
James Altucher 2:40
architecture, literature. There was a music, painting and sculpture. And I think these were abandoned in the 1954. Olympics. But it was there was medals awarded for all of these all of these things, and they weren't in the competitions were inspired by sport, and in fact, the very first So organize the Olympics. Oh, yeah. Baron Pierre Gilberton. Dig, submitted for I think it was for literature under an assumed name. And he won the gold medal
AJ Jacob 3:12
that is, and what was the you know, what the writing was about? No, I don't know. Because it all had to be sports themed, right? So it was like paintings of a rugby player. I saw Oh, I
James Altucher 3:21
didn't know that. I didn't know that part.
AJ Jacob 3:23
But that makes sense. I mean, on the one hand, that is insane. Because how can you judge? What is the greatest work of to me? I mean, we can do an episode on award shows, but it is kind of crazy to try to quantify art as this is the best. But
James Altucher 3:38
that's very common, though. Like Pulitzer Prizes. Every Booker prize, the National Book Award, tons of art, you know, fellowships and foundations. So that's it's common in in the world to judge works of art and in the Olympics for sports. We judge ice skating, we judge synchronized swimming. Yeah. All right. There's a lot of subjectivity in the judging which could be considered under the bad too.
AJ Jacob 4:06
And remember, back in the days the joke was the East German judge was always giving the American a four out of 10 because they had a grudge
James Altucher 4:15
what's to incentivize judges not to do that?
AJ Jacob 4:18
That's a great question.
James Altucher 4:19
And you know, considering that the difference between gold and silver on the career aspirations of the athletes is so important. Any kind of incentive to be unfair is really critical for people it's almost like people should ignore the metals because there's always going to be some slight knock call not crushing necessarily but bias.
AJ Jacob 4:42
Maybe it should be like you know, gym class for third graders and everyone gets a gold medal. The
James Altucher 4:48
whole world is moving towards a participation your participation trophy. Hey, it's because here's the thing. I I have nothing against life is pretty hard. If my third grade kid gets a participation trophies, I will applaud him or her because, believe me when he's 25. It's it's not there's no participation trophies anymore. So let them get a trophy when they're younger.
AJ Jacob 5:11
What about nationalism, and tribalism? Because it's all about what country can be what other country, and I think we're in an era where the world's problems like climate change are not national problems, we've got to work together. So is this sending the wrong message about how important nations are? Well, well,
James Altucher 5:35
it's interesting, because I think if you look at the two original inspirations for the Olympics, back in 1896, and not the ancient Olympics in Greece, but the modern Olympics, kind of based on those, the two inspirations are, how sports and education should be encouraged and having this inspirational international event will encourage more sports among youth and an education. And the other inspiration is peace, bringing, you know, even countries that are in conflict with each other kind of have to have a little truce in order to participate against each other in the Olympics. So there's, there's this globalist objective in the Olympics. But often, that comes out in this national sway the most extreme being 1936. When Hitler, of course, in the Olympics were in Berlin, Hitler viewed the Olympics as his Olympics, I wanted to use it as a platform to show that, you know, the mother, then modern German was superior to everyone else. And I, and you know, we, it's fascinating, when you look down the boycotts of the Olympics, each Olympics, I think of the main ones like 1936, or, you know, during the wars, or, or 1980, when we boycott boycotted, because of Russia's invasion of Afghanistan. But it turns out every single Olympics has some nationalist based boycotting, but I think again, it's like it mirrors the world. There's this kind of constant battle between nationalism and globalism. And you've all Harare points out in Sapiens, how the world has been, in general moving towards globalism, you know, move from the tribe, to the village to the kingdom to the Empire to nation states, to you know, potentially, you know, worldwide companies, organizations like Facebook, which has 2 billion members around the world and, and potential currencies like Bitcoin, which is a more international currency or the EU, which, you know, throw away all the trade barriers between European countries, but then you have a little bit of nationalism like Brexit, and, you know, Trump being a bit more or a lot more isolationist than other prior US presidents. So I think it's the Olympics kind of mirrors the general trend towards globalism, but you know, occasional backlashes of nationalism,
AJ Jacob 8:01
I think a lot about nationalism, there are probably lots of good things about it. Generally, my gut is more in the uvala, Sam Harris camp that we need to eventually move beyond nationalism. So that national that nations to almost treat each other like you know, New Jersey and Pennsylvania like it's no big deal. Yeah, I like the idea of getting all the countries all people, people from all over the world together. But how else could you split it up besides nations? And my mother suggested, Why don't you do it by last name, like a Bar Mitzvah or a gym class, like people with the names A through C are in one team and D through might be let you know, I wonder
James Altucher 8:45
if some nations have a bigger proportion of letters and other so it ends up being a national
AJ Jacob 8:50
that it would be complicated. It's hilarious how tribal we are. And you know, those experiments where they take kids and put them in two different color T shirts. And then they just start hating on each other.
James Altucher 9:01
But just thinking like when I watched like the soccer like the World Cup, and I feel it a little bit, even though I don't watch a single game, if someone tells me, the US is playing Italy, like somewhere deep inside me, I want the US to win. Even though I've never played soccer. I don't care about the World Cup. I don't feel anything towards the sport. I still want the US to win. And it's not like I'm involved in any way at all. It's not like I can say we won. But people say we would.
AJ Jacob 9:32
I agree I like every four or every two years. When the Olympics come like my patriotism reaches a peak. This will never happen. But maybe it would be good for World pieces. If they all participated. If it was like one big Amish barn raising. So instead of competing, they're all cooperating they can build the they can all compete build like this the Olympic Stadium like the two weeks then they all build Absolutely no one would watch that. But if they like competition,
James Altucher 10:02
I feel like the UN is supposed to be like an intellectual Olympics version of that, like they're all supposed to cooperate to create for the one goal of making a better world. And it doesn't really work out that way.
AJ Jacob 10:16
That is true. All right, another bad is they are rife with cheating and corruption and, and is it so baked into the Olympics, that there's just no way you'll ever get a clean Olympics. And it's so bad that we should just say, give up
James Altucher 10:34
your entire childhood from like the age of five, to, let's say, 20, you're, you're told, if you work really hard and do really well, you're gonna achieve national or international prominence in your favorite sports. So you work hard, hard, it's the only thing you focus on, it's the only thing you do to the, you know, you leave behind everything else, and you just focus on on your one sport, and your parents pushed you and your teachers push you and your coaches push you. And then finally, at the age of 20, when you're hitting that peak professional level, somebody comes up to you and says, Hey, if you want to move any further, you need to talk to this doctor and start doing what everyone else is secretly, quietly doing, which is this illegal doping. And by then it's too late. You're, you're all you've done, your entire life is this sport, and you've had this one dream. And so you do it, because that's what everyone you're told, that's what everyone else is doing. And there's nothing else for you to do. You haven't focus on anything else in your life. So he says that's how he and many others and many Olympic athletes get trapped into doping. So it's an interesting, it is a bad thing that there's that there's this corruption, and then there's cheating. And it ends up being a competition who, who have the who has the best scientists,
AJ Jacob 11:50
only one crazy solution is just saying, and all bets are off, ever let everyone dope as much as they want. Yeah,
James Altucher 11:56
I actually agree with that for because A, it it communicates correctly and honestly to children who are about to and parents and coaches and teachers who are about to make this major push for a child to be a success in some sport that he or she shows talent, and it tells them honestly, what what is involved at a at a professional or a peak performance level. And to it might encourage better research means you there is a line on doping, where above that line, you could die. And below that, because the doping is so much the drugs are so much in your system. And maybe there are benefits to scientific research on these drugs, like let's reduce side effects. Maybe you can have better performance of all humans, and reduction of side effects if there's if there's more considered research on doping, because it's because now it's legal. So it's encouraged. The other thing is, let's say, you know, these Olympics are making these athletes are making their choices. And even though I said they're encouraged to do so. And there's bias to do so. Maybe if the Olympics become this is one big, you know, laboratory of, you know, which doping is safe and which isn't certainly we do it we allow football players it that the National Football League is one giant test tube about concussions. So you know, is that any different than what's happening? what's already happening in the Olympics, but secretly
AJ Jacob 13:25
I like it, you're just pro science. You just that's all you I am and I'm
James Altucher 13:29
also but I'm also pro performance. And if there's a way to enhance performance in any area of life, that's safe, scientifically researched, and even encouraged, I think that should be pursued look, every most high school students now there's so much pressure to get into a good college, you see their parents doing, you know, illegal, you know, paying essays, you know, for LSAT scores to be cheated and, and whatever. So, so every kid takes Adderall when they're taking their ascites when they're taking their AP tests. My kids are doing homework until four in the morning, sometimes it's insane. It's so much more than when we were kids. And you know, so there's certainly there's doping in other areas of life, I think, because it is considered legal and acceptable and even a positive in other areas of life. Why can't we find the right balance where it's positive in sports?
AJ Jacob 14:27
i It's fascinating. I feel I should just stick up for doping as maybe not the greatest thing for the I got to throw that in or else we're gonna get 100 emails, but so but what's your reason? Well, I would say the critics would say it's dangerous. Your testicles shrink to the size of a raisin. It is cheating in a sense that if the goal is to see how much you as an individual can excel then Having a scientist shoot you with drugs, that's, that takes away all of the fun and naturalness of this competition, because then it's all about who has the better scientists,
James Altucher 15:12
I agree with you, in an ideal world, just like in an ideal world, the Olympics should lead to world peace and partnership and so on. But the reality is, even if doping is bad, better, to be honest, that, hey, you're probably going to be encouraged to illegally dope, and the people who are illegally doping are probably going to beat you. Because all things being equal, even for kids, if two kids have the exact same educational background, and IQ, one takes out all the other doesn't. The one thing ero will probably do better on the essay to that day. And so so you're not going to be able to avoid this kind of corruption, sometimes legally, sometimes illegally. So yes, I agree with you. You're right. In an ideal world, it feels like cheating, it feels like it's not a fair test of skill and hard work and talent and endurance. But on the other hand, it's it's happening, and there's nothing we can do about it. And the scientists are always going to stay one step ahead of the people trying to stop it.
AJ Jacob 16:11
Interesting. Well, I did hear I liked this argument. I heard from someone I can't remember who made it. But he said, You were never, we're never going to have a fully sanitized room, there always going to be some germs in it. But that doesn't mean that we should do surgery in a sewer. So there's always going to be some doping. But should we fight against it?
James Altucher 16:36
So it could be the case that there's just nothing we can do about it? And an already is having I agree with you, again, I will, I will state for the record that doping doesn't seem like a good thing. It's feels like cheating. At the same time, there's, there's reality and maybe there, maybe we should focus on work or potential medical, long term benefits be of studying these things.
AJ Jacob 16:58
I just had a good idea though. Maybe there should be a separate competition for the scientists who come up with these drugs. So like you get a gold medal. If you develop a steroid that increases performance by like 8% versus 7%.
James Altucher 17:14
Yeah, I guess I guess that's what the Olympics would be if doping was legal. Because then the scientists would be upfront, get it, you know, sitting next to the coal miner, where I had this new, anabolic steroid. It's incredible. It's four and a half percent increase.
AJ Jacob 17:30
We've got a great idea. Like you have the platform, you have the athlete, and then you have the scientist right next to him on the platform, getting his own gold or her own gold medal. Yeah, it's a very much a gray area, what is doping? And actually, I loved researching the history of cheating and doping, because in the first Olympic modern Olympics in Athens in was it at 96? Yeah. The winner of the marathon, stopped at a cafe and had a glass of wine to keep him going. Um, no, I'm not sure wine is really versus coffee. Yeah, well, yeah, he might have but no, but he had wine. And
James Altucher 18:11
I also heard, did you hear this too? And I think it was in the 19 184 Olympics. One, I think, was a marathon runner. It was given strychnine and I'm not quite sure. Why is that
AJ Jacob 18:21
I saw that. That was hilarious. Yeah, they they mistakenly thought that that was like going to help him but I think it just nearly killed him. I mean, my favorite was in the 1968 games in Mexico City. There was a Swedish pentathol lead. Who's who confessed that for the pistol shooting competition, he drank two beers to calm his nerves. And I just think anytime you combine alcohol, firearms and competition, it's a great idea. All right. Alright. So in addition to cheating, there's also corruption. I don't think we need to get into it too deeply. But I mean, they're all these stories of the Olympic Committee being bribed by everything from school tuition, to hospital bills, for their family, so that they'll vote for a certain city, like the Salt Lake City Olympics in 2002, are notorious for the corruption,
James Altucher 19:21
not to mention the bribes. Once the city gets the Olympics. You know, there's all you know, there's all sorts of bridges to nowhere that are built, you know, with the Olympic funds. I mean, the modern Olympics could cost, I don't know, up to $40 billion to put on in terms of like all the infrastructure that has to be created. And so that's a lot of a lot of people becoming incredibly wealthy. Like, we think like oh, and Olympics cost $40 billion, and that's this abstract number. But that $40 billion ends up in the hands of real people in those fields go from being, you know, mediocre businessmen to potentially billionaires.
AJ Jacob 19:58
I want to get to the business This in one second. But yeah, some people make boatloads of money from the Olympics, some people lose but loads of money. So it's all where you stand. But the but I did hear one quote, you know, the reason they only hold the Olympics every four years is because it takes them that long to count the money. So there are people like hotel developers and and, and tourism companies and, and stadium builders who are just raking it in. And there are other people who are incredible losers for the that we can talk. Well, I wanted to pick up on one thing that you had mentioned about these athletes who devote their entire lives to this one, you know, whether it's 30 seconds or 10 minutes of, of competition in the Olympics. And what is that like? Because, you know, you're making these sacrifices in every other part of your life. Academic social dating, and then you know, what, if you have a bad day you eat, you know, eat a bad taco that morning, and you miss your pole vault. And and that's it. I mean, can you imagine the crushing despair that that would cause so is this are the Olympics actually good for athletes? Or are they bad for athletes? I did read another article by an Olympic athlete that shows that just the cost of this and she said she was a gymnast. Her name is Caitlin Ohashi. And she wrote about how the Olympics was the ultimate goal. But it wasn't my goal. It was my, my family and the coaches. And she was miserable. She said that she, by the end was mentally physically and emotionally broken. And she had, she had to eat 500 calories a day, like just raspberries, and then do these incredibly difficult physical challenges. And she quit, she quit. And it does have a happy ending, because she joined her college gymnastics team. And she did this did this routine that on that went viral? Because she was it was to my Michael Jackson song. And she was just having a good time, not caring, smiling. She wasn't so serious as she was going for the gold. And people were like, Oh, you can actually have fun doing gymnastics, it doesn't have to be so. So she's an example of how these athletes are sometimes miserable. And you know,
James Altucher 22:38
you're talking about Olympic athletes. But there's not only the the Olympics affects not only Olympic athletes, there are the many, many multiples of Olympic driven athletes who don't make it to the Olympics who are crushed, and disappointed, you know, they're pushed initially by parents and coaches and teachers. And then they're just crushed because they don't make it or they have an injury. And it just, they've spent 10 years of their life, maybe from six to 16 training for something. And they're only they only make it regionally good or they don't quite qualify or they have an injury or they have anorexia, which happens in a lot of cases with like ice skating or gymnastics or track and field. So, you know, I think it not only applies to the Olympic athletes, it applies to all these child athletes who are being pushed towards the Olympics and don't make it. So there's there's depression, there's physical stress and injury, there's anorexia, there's all sorts of complications. But what's a positive benefit for being an Olympic athlete
AJ Jacob 23:35
there at least two that occur to me. One is just the feeling of being the best in the best point 1% of your chosen skill. I mean, that must be an amazing feeling. I've never had that feeling. But it must be an amazing feeling.
James Altucher 23:52
But But yes, you should have that feeling right. So every one of your books has been on the New York Times bestseller list, which means you're in the point, top 0.0001% of books sold, but it's all relative, right.
AJ Jacob 24:04
But that second advantage of being an Olympic athlete is not for the athlete themselves, but for the inspiration they provide to other people. So I agree with that. But that's a positive to the Olympics. I have like one more bad part before we get to the good parts. One, critics talk about this a lot, that the Olympics are just terrible for the disadvantaged, vulnerable parts of the population. So some people are making boatloads of money. But on the other hand, every city that has the Olympics, they displace the poor people, because they don't want them on TV. So even
James Altucher 24:45
in the US, I forget which city it was, maybe it was Atlanta, they moved 25,000 homeless people to like another city, and there's a lot of argument about wasted funds like they build these stadiums that are never used again. So they might build a stadium for A billion dollars. And it's never used again.
AJ Jacob 25:03
There is the bird's nest Stadium in China is like this gorgeous thing. And it is just sits empty almost all the time and costs $11 million a year to to keep up.
James Altucher 25:13
But I think I look at it two ways. There's kind of micro economic benefits and disadvantages, which is, does the do the Olympics themselves show a profit or loss that year? And is there corruption or no corruption around the Olympics that year. So that's one issue. But then there's a macro economic issue, which is that, if, you know, it's, it's a multi year, maybe even a decade long process of getting the rights to host the Olympics in your city, so many cities compete. And often cities in order to win the Olympics, they'll spend billions of dollars boosting their infrastructure like improving roads, improving bridges, building buildings, building hotels, so that creates draw jobs and spurs economic growth. on a macro level, it's hard to kind of measure this is because the Olympics, on a macro economic level, there are sometimes 10s of billions of dollars being spent on things that are only positive for the city increases jobs builds infrastructure, and who knows what else benefits. The other thing is often cities and countries in order to win the Olympics will signal that they're good actors in the world domain and will will lift trade barriers, so they're more friendly with other countries. And so that has a global economic effect and even a country wide economic effect that again, can't be quantified exactly how much of it traces to the Olympics, but does have a positive effects. I feel like macro economically, due to the importance of the Olympics. There's a net positive there's economic growth around a country in and around the year that they're hosting the Olympics. But probably on a micro economic level. There's a lot of corruption, most Olympic seem to have lost money over although some have made money like salt lake city made money, it is a couple Olympics that have been have made money. And but you know, then it's you can say that it's like any major event.
AJ Jacob 27:17
Yeah. Well, it's interesting. From my research, it's really hard to tell whether it's a good idea for a country to host the Olympics for and macro economically, you're talking, they're spending billions of dollars. And they're hoping that the tourism and their brand will increase from from my research, it seems that it depends on how well the Olympics are run. So some countries did great, like Los Angeles, it turned a profit. And it got all this good infrastructure and roads. On the other hand, you've got the the Greek Olympics, which some say was so bad. This is the Athens, the the Olympics in Athens, in 2004. Sounds like it was so bad that the debt they incurred helped cause this crazy economic crisis.
James Altucher 28:17
But when you're talking on a macroeconomic level, it's sort of like the Olympics is a form of quantitative easing, you know, similar to, let's say, an extreme level, similar to the the bailout of banks in 2009, where money is just simply printed and given to the economy. And so in the US, that tends to work for whatever reason, in Greece for a lot of complicated reasons. It doesn't work, or China, it may or may not work. It's it's unclear because of the shady numbers. But I think I think in general, on a macro economic level, you have to work you have to look at does quantitative easing, does quantitative easing work for this country? Or does it simply increase debt levels? Or does it increase inflation? Or where because when billions are spent, that means billions are made, someone is making every one of those dollars, and then they in turn spend those dollars? They buy new houses, they hire construction workers, they buy new cars, so So just in general, that should have a net positive on the economy. But there's there's negative side effects too, and it gets too complicated to measure?
AJ Jacob 29:24
Well, I know critics would argue that there really is very little trickle down effect from these Olympics. So when you improve the infrastructure of a city, for instance, like in Rio, it wasn't like they were building roads so that poor people could get to their work. They were building roads from the airport to the fancy hotels. So that's helping some people, but it's not. Yeah, so it's making the rich richer, but everyone else gets screwed,
James Altucher 29:51
right? And it depends too. When there's corruption put in particular, it depends to what the rich are doing with the money so like, if they then take the money and hide it in Swift bank accounts, then that doesn't affect the economy at all. It's a net negative on the economy. So again, it sort of depends on the level of corruption involved as well. Yeah.
AJ Jacob 30:14
Well, I have plenty of other things that I can trash the Olympics with, but I feel bad for the Olympics. I feel we should start talking about the good because there's plenty of good. And can I tell you my favorite good thing to come out of the Olympics? Yes. Is all of the sex that the Olympic athletes have at the Olympic village, and it is apparently it's just like an orgy. It's like a free, it's like Woodstock. And
James Altucher 30:41
I feel like this is a negative. You know, because A, I feel like a little jealous. Okay, it's negative for you. There's like a little bit of sexual jealousy there. And be I wonder how many divorces occur as a result of Olympic frolicking. So their, their whatever their testosterone and energy is right revving up so much. What was the number on the number of condoms given out at the last Olympics?
AJ Jacob 31:06
Oh, yeah, it is unbelievable. The amount of content at the Rio Olympics Brazil handed out 450,000 condoms to the Olympic village that is 42 condoms, per athlete.
James Altucher 31:20
And they're using them right. The reason they handout that much is because the prior Olympics 100,000 condoms were bought and disposed of in the first week.
AJ Jacob 31:29
I do think that you could argue the Olympics are a huge force, for good for progress for going in the right direction. And I'm thinking about women, for instance, in the, in the beginning of the Olympics, women were not allowed to participate. In fact, in the ancient Greek Olympics, women were not only not allowed to participate, they weren't allowed out allowed to attend a married woman attending the Olympics was a capital offense, he would be executed. So we've come pretty far from that.
James Altucher 32:03
So why would they be executed? Wouldn't they just be stopped at the door like no women? Are women sneaking
AJ Jacob 32:07
women sneaking dressed as men? I think so. But then you've seen progressively more and more women, and we're almost at 5050. And I think what's great is that there's this global pressure to include women. So you had some holdouts, there were 35 countries who were still sending all male teams in the 1992 Olympics. But they faced so much international pressure, that for instance, Saudi Arabia finally in 2012, sent their first female Olympics, a judo competitor and track and field.
James Altucher 32:46
I wonder how they did? Because I wonder if they got the same level of training when they were younger?
AJ Jacob 32:50
It's a good question. I don't think they won the medal. But they they you know, at least they're in there. And I love that. And and same with with race, that some argue that the IOC sanctions have helped to and South African apartheid. So you want to appear? You don't want to embarrass yourself on a world stage. Right. So
James Altucher 33:15
and this is related to your earlier point about globalism, like I think, on this one, like you say, this world stage, everyone's in plain view to billions of viewers now on on television, and you don't want to embarrass yourself, like you want to participate according to the standards of most of the world. And so there's this, there's this unique world pressure to you know, joined, join the rest of the community get rid of apartheid, or have women participate. So in the 2016 Olympics, the highest rate of female participation was almost 5050 was about 46% of the athletes were female, which was the highest ever.
AJ Jacob 33:58
Yeah, it's like peer pressure for good. And you
James Altucher 34:01
figure that's very inspiring to women, particularly in these more oppressive countries. It shows girls little girls that Oh, I can achieve the heights of peak performance. I don't have to be stopped by my country's laws or those laws are changing. So there's there's hope.
AJ Jacob 34:21
Yeah. I love that. And, and maybe there is some world peace that can come out of this. I you know, there was the North and South Korea marched under one flag in the 2018 Olympics, which was huge. Another good thing I like, you talked about this, the inspiration. I mean, some of these stories are just crazy.
James Altucher 34:42
Yeah, like I was, I was reading one story. There was this in 1960. There was this Olympic runner, a sprinter from Ethiopia, a baby bokeelia Bikila baby Bikila who He goes to the Rome Olympics. And he's from Ethiopia goes to the Rome Olympics. First off his his whole story is great. When he was a kid, I didn't even know this existed. There's a game in Ethiopia, that's like hockey. But instead of the goalpost being, let's say, 50, or 100 yards apart, they're miles apart. So you have to do this extreme running, you know, for long distances to play, even play this game. And so he grew up playing this game, then he takes a job with the Ethiopian Imperial Guard guarding the Emperor. He it's it's 11 miles from his home. So every day he runs to work, you know, because he, there's no transportation, he run in 1960. He runs to work 11 miles and runs home. So he builds up in this weird way this training for you know, marathons or I forget the Yeah, he was a long distance runner, I forget the exact sport that he won the gold medal. And anyway, he gets to Rome, he buys sneakers, he didn't have sneakers, even so you buy sneakers, but they didn't fit, they cause blisters. And I guess he couldn't afford another pair of sneakers, or didn't think to buy another pair of sneakers. So he runs barefoot, and wins the gold medal. And, you know, ever, so a couple of things. One is ever since East Africa has kind of dominated these particular sports in the Olympics. And because he was such an inspiration throughout Africa, I mean, there's statues of him. And then it took a sad turn, although you could argue is still inspirational. Many years or several years later, he had a car accident, he became paralyzed. He was paraplegic, he could use his arms. But then he started participating in sports like ping pong, which he could participate in which ultimately, you know, this led to like Special Olympics and Paralympics and so on. And you know, he died at an early age because of this accident at the age of 41. He passed away. But this he's sort of kind of kickstarted many inspirational stories,
AJ Jacob 36:55
either rights available, because I'm going to make that into a movie. I mean, that is,
James Altucher 36:59
there has been documentaries on him. Oh, yeah. And, but again, I feel like, if you look at any Olympics, there's probably right, many inspirational stories, like that's one, you know, then there's, there's stories like Jesse Owens, Jim Thorpe, in the US. There's, you know, so many inspirational stories
AJ Jacob 37:16
I saw in the 1904 Olympics in St. Louis, the guy who won the gold medal in gymnastics was an American gymnast who had his leg amputated because of a train accident. So he competed with a wooden leg. And I won. And oh my god. Yeah. The other movie I watched in preparation was miracle about the United States hockey team in the 1980 Olympics that beat the Russians. And, and it was, like, you know, on unheard of Russia was they were all these professionals. And these were just a bunch of college kids. And, you know, super inspiring, I do take issue with the name miracle, because it was named after Al Michaels, the who said, and at the end, when they want he said, Do you believe in miracles? And the whole movie was about, it wasn't a miracle. These guys work their asses off.
James Altucher 38:09
So so the question is, with stories like that, or stories, like when I think it was 1996, when the the NBA players who were on the US Linux baseball team lost, it was stories like that it's interesting to study and break down, like you say, what did they do? How did their training methods improve or change in order to conquer the best in the world? I think looking at the Olympics is also a way to study how coaching and training and peak performance and understanding of performance evolves so that somebody can go from being underdog to the best, or how do we the best not trained correctly in order to fall huge like with the with these professional basketball players? So I think stories like that are, are interesting, from not only inspirational point of view, but from a scientific point of view.
AJ Jacob 39:02
Well, I think the thesis that I've heard is that these hockey players worked as a team, they were not as talented individually as the Soviets. But because they trained, they were so much about not being egotistical. And it was all about the team. There is no I in team and and the problem with the Dream Team in basketball, the US players was that they were all these individuals, but they never had played together so they didn't know how to work as team.
James Altucher 39:31
I will say one other thing that is positive on the Olympics, which we briefly touched on, but the focus on amateurs, so technically speaking, it's not a it's not a professional game. Athletes historically, were not paid to participate. Now many countries do pay their medalists, but I don't think the US does for us, I'm not sure actually. But historically, it's been for amateurs only not for professionals of any sort and I think that comes stems from the roots of the of the modern games in the 1890s, when the idea that this should inspire more sports and exercise in education, and let's show it on a global scale that benefits of, you know, physical health and performance and have that inspire kids. And so I think the focus on on amateurs, even though that's been distorted by both professionalism, and by doping, and cheating, and so on, I think the initial focus on amateurism is, is good, it shows everybody you can achieve something in life, whether you're a professional or an amateur. Yeah, and you could derive pleasure from it. Like you don't have to be the best puzzle maker in the world, you could still derive pleasure from pursuing excellence in something, right?
AJ Jacob 40:47
And then, and that ties into this, this idea of these little known sports that you don't see for 47 months of the year, I mean, that you don't see for 47 months in a row. But then they have their moment in the sun. And these people are not necessarily making a living from their sport, but it's just so fun to see them get their little that their little moments in the limelight.
James Altucher 41:12
Yeah. And to end to our earlier point, again, so many of them, those other 47 months are forgotten while they're in training for the next Olympics. So some of them are in food stamps, some, some of them are in food stamps and work at part time jobs because they have to spend most of their time in training. Hundreds of them have hundreds of these athletes, even medalists have GoFundMe fees to pay for their gym and training. So we're gonna, this proceeds of this episode are going towards whatever athletes we could find out there who have these these gofundraise
AJ Jacob 41:50
Love it. Yeah, I think those are the to me, those are the two nice takeaways of this one, that we can help some like curlers to go back to curling who who need money and to, I think our idea of a science Olympics where you give gold medals to people who develop the best performance enhancing drugs. I think there's I think that's a business idea right there.
James Altucher 42:15
I think it is, and I think just good to shed light on something that is universally adored, but there are always issues it's, there's always a gray area, hence the good or bad podcast. There you go.