Olympic Torches: Remember Those?

Back in the pre-pandemic days we had a sporting event called The Olympic Games. And at those games there was an opening ceremony that featured the lighting of a cauldron from a torch. Let's chat about that, eh?

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, everybody. I don't know if you've heard, but we
have a book coming out finally, finally, after all these years.
It's great, it's fun. You're gonna love it. It's called
Stuff You Should Know Colon, an incomplete compendium of mostly
interesting things. Ye, and it's twenty six jam packed chapters
that we wrote with another guy named Knowls Parker, who's

(00:22):
amazing and is illustrated amazingly by our illustrator Carl Manardo.
And it's just an all around joy to pick up
and read. Even though we haven't physically held in our
hands yet, it's like we have Chuck in our dreams
so far. I can't wait to actually see and hold
this thing and smell it. And so should you, so
pre order now. It means a lot to us. The

(00:43):
support is a very big deal, So pre order anywhere
books are sold. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a
production of My Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, and
welcome to the podcast. So I'm Josh Clark and there's
Charles w Chuck Bryan over there, and this is Stuff

(01:04):
you Should Know. Don't don't do it, Dad, What is
this gonna do with the Olympics. It's it's it's equally stirring.
I thought you would have done the Olympic Games song.

(01:25):
That's what I started out doing, and then about two
duns into it, I realized they could not bring it
to mind. So I just wanted the Rocky theme instead. Uh,
you know. The Olympics, well, I don't know if they would.
They still be going on right now. I don't know.
They could have just wrapped up. Actually, it's kind of sad,
you know. It's sad for now. It will be encouraging later.

(01:47):
I think the Tokyo Olympics, whenever they happen, are going
to be a global coming together and celebration of beating coronavirus. Yeah,
totally those ceremonies, yes, but from what I read, the
Olympic flame is still alive and well in Tokyo. What

(02:08):
if the opening ceremonies had little, you know, corona crowns
running around and people smashing them with like big inflatable hammers.
And that's right. They tell the story of the of
the coronavirus pandemic through interpretive dance. It just has like
a big giant bat at the beginning, and exactly it's
the villain. Maybe plenty of villains in that one. That'd

(02:31):
be fun for sure, for sure. Um, so we're obviously
talking Olympic torches. If you hadn't guests or hadn't bothered
to look at the title of this episode, everybody. And
I'm kind of excited about this because it's it's a
just died in the wool s y s K episode
and that it's very niche. It's about one specific thing

(02:53):
that's a part of a much larger thing which we've
not yet done an episode on. Yeah, and the kind
of thing where one day, when you're watching an Olympic
ceremony again you see that flame. Yeah, you'll have that
that insider knowledge. Yeah, you'll think didn't did it, didn't
did do? Goodness. So, um, chuck, I didn't know much

(03:18):
about Olympic torches. I've seen a torch lighting or two
in my time on television only. Um, but there's a
pretty it's pretty interesting actually, the kind of the history
of it and how the things are made. I was
reading over like, um, I guess you'd call it like
a request for proposal PDF from like the London Olympics

(03:41):
Committee from years ago. Um, basically saying hey, this is
a call out all designers who want to try their
hand at at UM designing the London Olympic torch. Here's
all the details you need to know. It was really
fascinating stuff, and we're going to convey that fascination post
taste of that RFC or of just torches. Maybe a

(04:03):
little bit of both actually, so uh, the history of
the torch we're talking. You know, you've got to go
back to Greece if you're going to talk about anything
Olympic history wise, and if you go back far enough,
you're gonna hear a story about Prometheus stealing fire from
Zeus giving that to humans. That's how they say we
got fire. And in order to commemorate that, the Greeks

(04:27):
had these relay races like we all know and love,
except instead of passing a little aluminum baton, they would
pass live fire and flame via torch. Yeah, they would
set a cow on fire, push it to the next person.
I actually the one thing on Prometheus. I was looking
him up. So he was punished by Zeus um for

(04:48):
stealing fire and giving it, being a bad boy for
a naughty monty and Um he had his liver eaten
out by an eagle every day and because he was
an immortal titan. His liver would grow back each night
and then it would be eaten now even by an
eagle again the next day. That's so when I feel

(05:09):
these days and eagles eating your liver every day, yeah,
it is kind of yeah. So, but I mean, the
I guess the the upshot of all this is that
the fire was extremely important to the Greeks and they
showed it off as much. So when they started having
Olympic Games UM back in I guess seven seventies six

(05:31):
BC UM, they wanted to make fire kind of a
prominent part of it, and so they they they celebrated
this theft of fire from Zeus by Prometheus by having
a torch relay where there was basically like um, like
today's baton relay marathons or runs or whatever you call them,

(05:53):
but it was with the torch and whoever reached the
end with their lit torch one that that relay race.
And that's how kind of the Olympic torch was born. Yeah,
And you know, the games back then were a very
big deal and that they would stop war, which is
something they loved to do, just to take part in

(06:13):
these games. And they had these runners. They call them
heralds of Piece that would go all through Greece saying,
you know, truce everybody, right, and they would hope they
don't get speared, and if they made it through, that
truce would remain all during the Olympics until the flame
is extinguished, and then they started spearing again immediately. Yeah.

(06:33):
And the point was so that anybody who wanted to
go watch the Olympics could make it through Greece um
unkilled to go watch and then make it back home unkilled,
hopefully too unkilled. Yea. Uh So, if you go back
to Olympia, there was an altar there dedicated to Hera,
who was the goddess of birthen marriage. And at the

(06:55):
beginning of those first Olympic Games, they would ignite a
called in at Harrah's altar and they would light it
with with a parabolic mirror. They call it a scaffia,
and it's sort of like you know an Archimedes deathray
where you are a magnifying glass or something where you
focus the sun down to that you know, single spot.

(07:16):
If you're a sadistic child, you burn ants that way.
Should never ever do that. It's not nice. No, we
leave the ants alone, leave the ants alone, but they
would that's how they would ignite that initial flame, and
that flame the idea is that it stays lit throughout
the Olympics. Yeah, so this is a pretty cool tradition
if you think about it. I mean, just because the

(07:37):
Olympics have been around for so long today, the modern Olympics,
we kind of take this whole thing for granted. But like,
this is a pretty neat tradition that I guess just
came up out a whole cloth among the Greeks. And
so they were like, we're going to keep this going,
and they did for another thousand years while they did
the Olympics. But then when the Olympics kind of died

(07:57):
out after a millennia, um, no millennium, the torch and
all of that stuff died out with it. Fortunately, the
Greeks were a highly literate society and they wrote a
lot of this stuff down and um it was rediscovered
when the Olympics were revived in the nineteenth century by

(08:19):
a guy named Baron Pierre de Kubertan, and he um
one of the things that he did was to say, um,
I really loved the Olympic Games. I'm not necessarily aware
that there was a torch relay or anything like that. So, um,
we're gonna wait another thirty years or so before we
introduced the torch again. That's right. That came in n

(08:43):
and amstra Dam and there they had the cauldron on
fire on purpose, but there was they weren't relaying that torch. Still.
It took till ninety six in Berlin when Carl Deem
he was the Secretary gener role of the Organizing Committee
of the of the Games there and he said, hey, guys,

(09:05):
we gotta bring this back to to the O g
S and we gotta get that torch relay going, and
we gotta light it in Olympia and get it here
to Berlin. We gotta do it right. Yeah, he definitely
did it right for sure. I mean, not only was
like the whole thing revived, like the idea of the
torch relay, but igniting that torch in Greece and then

(09:28):
make having it make its way all the way to Berlin.
That's pretty cool stuff. And from what I read that
was also right up the Nazis alley and that it
kind of connected the Third Reich to the Great Greek
and Roman Empires. Um of your which they were super
into to try to legitimize themselves. UM, so they went

(09:50):
for it. Fortunately, that first Olympic torch, which we'll talk
more about the torches, um it did not have a
swastika anywhere on it, which is wonderful that they managed
to keep that off of there. I know that's kind
of surprising too, Huh. It is extremely surprising, but I
mean it really is genuinely surprising, and I'm like very pleased.

(10:11):
I was really pleased. I looked at pictures of that
torch with like one eye closed, just trying to find no, no,
just I was afraid I was gonna see it. I
couldn't believe it, and little by little I was like,
it's not there. So I was pleased by that. You
have been my eyes eyes. I just turned into tothe
from the end of Raiders that lost dark and melt.

(10:33):
So h the relay at the Winter Olympics. I think
it took until nineteen fifty two to introduce it at
the Winter Games, and they did not light it in
Olympia that year. They lit it in Norway because that's
where the skiing was born, so they thought they would
honor Norway in that way. But finally, finally, in nineteen

(10:54):
sixty four in Austria at Innsbruck, they said, we gotta
get it together, every addie, we gotta get on the
same page. We gotta go winter and summer and started
out in Olympia and relay that thing to wherever the
heck We're gonna have these games, that's right, And they did.
And I actually looked a little bit into the I
guess the nineteen fifty two games where um they lit

(11:18):
it in Norway. They lited it in the heart of
the home of nineteenth century Norwegian skiing legend Sandra Norheim.
It's either Sandra or Sandr so n d r E.
And he was apparently quite the daredevil skier. I saw
a quote about him that he was fearless and daring.
He ran straight down the most dangerous and challenging hills,

(11:41):
rudely waving his cap, which is made me love that
guy immediately. And I think those games ended up in Helsinki.
But well, there's a little nugget I'll drop in the
next uh segment here after we break. Oh, I can't wait. Well,
I've got another segment or another nugget on that this
there's one other time in history, when the Winter Olympic

(12:03):
torch was lit in the heart of the home of
nineteenth century Norwegian skiing legend Saandr Norheim was in Squa
Valley in nineteen sixty. Because the Olympic committee couldn't get
their act together fast enough to organize the lighting ceremony
in Greece, so Norway stepped in again and said, she's
got a fireplace. We've seen it in action. He he yeah,

(12:26):
party at Sundry's house. I'm sure we're mispronouncing it, probably
so rudely waving his camp. Do you want to take
a break yet, Let's do it, all right, everybody, We're
gonna take a break and we're gonna come back and
guess what we're gonna talk about Olympic torches some more, alright, chuck,

(13:17):
So let's talk about um, those r fps that thrilled
me so fully. Yeah. If you want to be the firm,
the design firm that builds, designs and builds the torch,
you gotta get in there and you've gotta submit your proposal.
You gotta Greece and palms. You gotta gotta tip the

(13:39):
right doorman, if you know what I mean. You have to.
You have to spread many goats around. That's right to
the right people. No, I think. You just submit a
proposal and the Olympic Committee looks at it and they
sort of sit there like at the beginning of planes,
trains and automobiles, for three hours in silence, kind of
twiddling their thumbs, looking, looking, looking, and finally they say,

(14:02):
the bid goes to you. You win the assignment. You've
got to have a torch that looks great, of course,
and you've got to have a torch that works, because
this thing has gotta it's gotta stay lit under any
condition it can be. You can get this thing through
a hurricane, supposedly, and it'll have to stay let. Yeah,
I mean they're pretty serious about this thing not going out. Um,

(14:26):
So they build in redundancies. UM. Oftentimes there's a couple
of different flames working in conjunction to to make this
thing work. Um. But in addition to the actual feel
of it and the look of it, like, you want
to make it so that anybody, anybody basically alive on
Earth could carry it. So it's gotta be lightweight typically

(14:48):
UM I saw usually about a pound or so. UM.
It has to all most of the ones in that RFP,
the Golden RFP for from the London to Olympics. It
had a list. Actually, you gotta look this up, everybody
I cannot remember. Just search um London Olympic Torch Proposal

(15:10):
Design Proposal. I'll bet that would bring up this PDA anyway,
some sleepy corner of the internet worse. Yeah, I found it,
and I'm proud as punch about that. But um, I
had a list of like some of the specs of
past torches, and most of them seem to be around
one to two pounds. This article from How Stuff Works
is three to four, but I saw one to two pounds.

(15:33):
Maybe that's without being fully loaded with fuel. Sure, And hey,
if you can carry something this two pounds, you can
probably put two hands on it and manage the four pounds,
although they like you to hold it with one one hand. Yeah,
just because it looks cooler. Uh. These these modern torches
that we're looking at, we're sort of originated at those

(15:55):
Squall of Valley games in nineteen sixty when a Disney
artist named John Hinch designed this, you know, sort of
the first modern torch that everyone else said, yeah, that's
a good idea. That's what we should do. We should
have fuel inside of it, and we should have some
backup flame inside of it. And they kind of function
like a like a camp stove. Sure, a fancy camp

(16:19):
stove basically is what it is. And then and we'll
get into the fuels and stuff. But in that there
is a liquid fuel that becomes a gas. Uh you know,
it's under pressure and then it comes out these tiny
little holes just like a camp stover, like a Colman lantern. Yeah,
and I didn't know this. This is pretty cool. Um.
There are two two things that have to be designed
into it, well, a couple of things that have to

(16:39):
be designed into it. UM. In addition to being um
easy to carry by, basically anybody has to be very light,
has to be aerodynamic. Ergonomic, I think is another. If
you threw that word around in your bid, they would
probably be like, oh, this guy knows what he's talking about. UM.
But you you also have to at least as far

(17:00):
as London was concerned. But I got the impression that
this was a standard thing that you have to design
in a way to permanently deactivate it after it's one
time use, so that it can never be lit again.
Which I thought was kind of cool. I bet you
could hack that though. Funny enough, I found another weird
corner of the Internet researching this one at Olympic Torch

(17:23):
Repair dot Com, which is possibly the most niche retail
website I've ever seen in my life. They sell one
part and it is a part design to fix the
Atlanta Olympic torch. And they don't use the words that
you will be lit again, But just from the pictures,

(17:44):
from the text, from everything that I'm seeing, I believe
this is a rogue website dedicated to making Atlanta Olympic
torches burn again after they've been purposefully disabled. Well, and
you might be laughing saying how much could this person
be making off this? But here's another little fun fact.

(18:06):
There are anywhere from ten to fifteen thousand of these
torches that are built. Uh if you'll notice when you
see these, you know, and they don't cover all of
this thing, or maybe they do in some dark corner
of the Internet. I'm sure somebody does cover might end
up doing it in the future as a hobby. Covers
each and every passing of the torch, but they don't
actually pass the torch. They light the other person's torch

(18:30):
and then they run away, and then you never the
camera doesn't hang on the person who just you know,
standing there with their torch, and you think, what happens
to those things? Well, you're allowed to buy it if
you want. The one from Japan this year was gonna
cost about six hundred, six hundred fifty bucks American. That's
a steel. Have you seen that thing? Yeah, it's good looking.

(18:52):
They're beautiful. Have you seen the overhead shot where it
looks like a cherry blossom. It's wonderful too. And that
is a price that's basically at cost. Because the a
the IOC nor the AOC can profit from the sale
of Olympic torches. That is not a side hustle for her. No,
so don't believe what the right says. She can't actually

(19:16):
make any money off of Olympic torchi. So um, that's
basically cost. And it turns out there's quite an aftermarket
for these things too. I think they're right now too,
complete collections for individuals in the world and another guy
that's close, and they cost anywhere from fifteen hundred four
thousand for the newer ones, fifteen to seventy grand for

(19:40):
older ones. And I think the pricest ever was that
nineteen fifty two Helsinki one eight hundred and eighty thousand
dollars because they only made twenty two of them, so
obviously rarity is is going to drive that price up.
The highest I saw was less than that is two
fifteen thousand for the ninet in sixties Squaw Valley one

(20:02):
that Disney designer made um and I think I saw
like they made a hundred of them, so you'd have
to have some coin to to have a complete collection.
And that's a very niche collection as well. I mean,
and I have to say, like a lot of them,
you just they're not very pleasing to the eye. There's

(20:22):
some ug Olympic torches out there. I mean Mexico City is.
If it's not a hand whisk, I don't know what
it is. Well it is and it was cool it
actually according to the two thousand twelve London Olympics UH
Torch RFP PDF, that is the longest I'm making t

(20:47):
shirts out of different pages. That is the longest burning
Olympic torch in the history of Olympic torches. Most of
these things are designed to burn ten or fifteen minutes
which is alarming if you're like, well, wait a minute,
we want the Olympic flame to burn out. But as
we'll see, these relays are actually super short. Um, this one,
the Mexico City torch, could burn up the thirty minutes. Dude.

(21:11):
I like this torch, the whisk. I think it looks great.
I think it looks like a whiskey. I don't think
it looks bad. I just think it looks like a
kitchen whisk and I can't think of anything else but
whipping cream when I look at it. I'm looking at
two different torches though, for Mexico, one looks like a
whisk and one looks like sort of like an Aztec club.

(21:34):
So there's two torches. Well, I don't know. I'm gonna
have to I'm gonna have to get to the bottom
of this because I'm seeing let me know what you find,
because I'm gonna have to add it to my niche
website about Olympic torches. Oh goodness, so um, I don't
remember where we were going with that. Oh, you're talking
about the Tokyo one where you can buy it. So

(21:54):
when you when you have the torch, when your torch
relay is done. It's taken from you this able, put
in its packaging and then presented to you. If you've
vindicated you want to buy it, and if not, they
throw it into the nearest river. But I think that's
pretty cool that you can you get to buy it
if you want to, and it's disabled so you can
never let it again unless you know the guy who

(22:16):
runs Olympic Torch Repair. But one of the other things
too that they they has become kind of a thing,
especially in the last like thirty thirty years, maybe more
is sustainability built into these and you want to it's
not a requirement, but I get the impression that's exactly
where I got it from, that you you're probably doing

(22:38):
nothing but helping your bid if you have figured out
some sort of sustainable angle to it. Like the Tokyo torch,
which again it's just gorgeous rose gold looking, but it's
actually aluminum, and the aluminum is made from former temporary
housing that was used after the Fukushi a disaster to

(23:01):
how some of the residents who have been displaced the
strings there. Yeah, yes, I'm sure the person who designed
that was like, I got it. I got the thing
that's going to get we're gonna win this bid with
this and is it true now? But they don't know
I made no I shoot down airplanes in my spare time.
I have a bunch of them in my backyard. Now
I know what to do with I like to be

(23:22):
from the top better. Yeah, it's Gord's on the side. Yes.
And one of the things I mean we talked about
flames and then being redundant um the the you don't
want that flame to go out. So one of the
things that that that torch has is from each of
those rounded petals that looks like the petal of a

(23:43):
cherry blossom flower, provides a flame and they all come
together to to build one big flame. But because you
have five different smaller flames, that big flame, even if
it flickers or wins, it's never going to go out.
You've got five redundancies exactly. So the fuel they've used
a bunch of things over the ears, because you want

(24:03):
something to burn bright, something that you can see during
the daytime. You want something that's not dangerous. But there
have been some dangerous torches over the years. They they've
used gunpowder, they've used olive oil, they used to use
something called hexamine, which is formaldehyde and pneumonia can't be
safe and uh, naphthaline. So in our soap episode, Chuck,

(24:27):
one of the things I didn't get to talk about
was that Fell's naptha laundry soap. Yeah you ever seen
that stuff? I don't think. So it's like this hips
terrific laundry soap that's old timey that they still make.
But naptha is benzene and it's actually really really bad
for you. So they're basically burning benzene in this stuff,

(24:48):
and you can all sorts of bad things can happen,
like your red blood cells can rupture. Yeah, that's no good.
You can also have nasty smoke, like in the case
of Atlanta's was pretty smoky. Uh in Fi D six,
they had magnesium and aluminum uh lighting the flame, and
there were chunks of flame that fell off. So you

(25:08):
don't want that either. You want something that burns clean,
that looks good. I think now they use propane and butane,
which makes a lot of sense. Uh. You know that's
what you use in lighters and gas grills. Uh. And
you know, like I said, it works like a little
like a little camp stove. You've got this fuel being
pushed through a valve. There's a fuel reservoir, and then

(25:29):
you have all these little tiny openings just like a
camp camp stove will and once it squeezes through there,
it builds up that pressure. Then finally, once it's out
the other side, that pressure drops, turns into a gas
and it's ready to burn at a consistent rate. Right.
And again there's a couple of flames, typically one that
burns really hot but small that is almost like a

(25:51):
pilot light for the bigger ones in that there's five
of those things. And then you've got the bigger, brighter
flame that big and bold and just says in your face, world,
I'm the Olympic flame. Um. But it's much less stable.
It flickers a lot more in the wind, but it's
not going to go out because you get those pilot lights.

(26:12):
It's sort of like the understudy to the Broadway star. Yeah,
but the understudies really the one who's giving the star
all of the suggestions and notes that are making the
star a star. And uh, we'll get to the route
here in a few minutes. But this thing, you know,
goes a long way, and sometimes even across oceans, and

(26:32):
sometimes underwater, which is what happened in two thousand when
it went across the Great Barrier Reef very symbolically, and
they had a flare inside this thing to keep the
flame burning in the water, which is pretty amazing. Yeah.
Did you see video of that? Yeah? I mean I
saw it live. Oh you did, huh. I'm an Olympics guy.

(26:56):
I love that stuff. That's cool. I didn't see that.
I like the Olympics too. I don't know if i'd
see him an Olympics guy. Okay, but you're an Olympic
torch RF guy. Yeah, thank you. That's way more at
my all, yeah, than than running around. Should we take
another break? Yeah, I think we've reached break time if
you ask me. All Right, we'll come back and we'll
talk about lighting this thing and then and the big

(27:18):
relay right after this. All right, Chuck, So we're back

(27:55):
to talk about the actual lighting of this thing. And
if you guys will remember, we talked about lighting the
torch using a para parabolic mirror to concentrate the sun's
raise all the way back in the seven seventies Specie Well,
when the Olympic organizers of the modern Olympics started bringing

(28:15):
the torch back. I guess what was his name, Carl Bernheim.
Mm hmmm. I think he was so the German guy
from the Olympics. I believe he had this like that's
what he went right to it. He was also a
sports historian, by the way, which gives away why he
was so so privy to all this stuff. But he um.

(28:36):
I guess since that time, every time we've lit a
torch from Olympia, they have used a parabolic mirror to
concentrate the sun's raise and they stick a torch in
there and it catches flame, and then there you have
the official Olympic flame that will make its way from
Olympia to the host city somehow, some way. Yeah, they

(28:57):
make a big show of it. They have an actor
dressed as a ceremonial priestess in these robes and like
the ancient Greeks, and they you know, they acted out
and uh the uh for the winner games, they actually
the relay begins at the monument to the guy who
spoke up earlier, Pierre de uh Cobertine, who founded those

(29:20):
first games. But the Summer Games u a k a.
The other games are carried to a firepot at that
altar of was it Harra, Yeah, Harry Zeus's wife, sister
sister wife, and then the relay begins and you know
how this works out is determined at every Olympics. The

(29:44):
organizing committee determines the route. Uh, there's always some silly
Olympic theme. It's not always silly. Sometimes it's nice. But
I'm not a big theme guy. No, you didn't like
the theme of the Olympics. What's it? I think you're
gonna bring that up. That was the mascot. That wasn't
the theme. Oh, I thought it was both. I think
the theme was red knickery. It was the theme was

(30:09):
get or Done. I was looking online today because remember
they had those have talked about them before, those stainless
steel pickup trucks in Atlanta, and I was like, where
are those things now? And I could find nary any
evidence that they ever existed. So I don't know if
they scrub the internet, but uh, I know you're better
at the dark corners of the of the web. So
maybe maybe we'll go in together and buy one. That

(30:31):
would be pretty awesome actually, So you know, like I said,
the route is determined by the committee. Um, sometimes it
goes from country to country on a plane. Sometimes it's
a train. There have been dog sleds, there's been motorcycles
and horseback And if you are a person who is

(30:51):
tasked with carrying this thing, like I think you have
to be able to go at least four hundred thirty
seven yards four d got to be at least fourteen
years old. I would like to throw our name in
the hat quite frankly for a future Olympic Games. That'd
be fine. I'd be willing to carry it with you.
We could put a hand on it. Yeah, But um,

(31:13):
you're you know, you're you've done something for the community,
or you're a notable human being, or or you or
you work for the company who's sponsoring the Olympics, right right,
you're a you're a sea level executive, which is absolutely true.
We're not kidding, no, no, And I mean like there's
sometimes hundreds, sometimes thousands of people who are involved in

(31:35):
this because I mean if if basically you're running, if
you're running like basically a football field and a half
and you're going you're bringing you're taking this thing kilometers, right,
You're like you need a lot of people to do that.
So there's a lot of people involved in the Olympic relay.
So there's a lot of people who you know, yeah,

(31:56):
I just kind of ended up there because they you know,
they were a sponsor. But there's also interesting people too.
There was in Um. Sometimes they're not even people, Buddy.
I was looking at the Pieong Chang two thousand and
eighteen Winter Olympics relay and there was a robot named
Hubo who was a torch bearer. And Hubo not only

(32:18):
carried the torch, Hubo drove the torch and like basically
a Doom Buggy with a human being in the passenger seat,
and then got out, approached a brick wall, almost fell over,
was righted by some other humans, cut through the brick
wall and then passed the torch through the whole. Hubo
had cut into the brick wall. That's the level of

(32:40):
zany nous that can be achieved with the with the
torch relay, because there's so many people involved. Can you
imagine being that guy? It's like, did you see the
Olympics the other name the torch relay? Oh did you
carry the torch? No? I wrote in the Doom Buggy
of the robot right just looking very nervous. That was
a fail safe, you know, in case he went nuts.

(33:00):
That's pretty great. They also did um paragliding, the paragliding
the torch from one place to another. UM. It's pretty cool.
Like people, they try to outdo each other. Each host
city tries to outdo the last. UM. I think Montreal
is the one that has has everybody beat. Oh yeah,

(33:24):
oh well yeah, let me go on. So in Montreal
hosted the Olympics and they figured out how to take
the flame transmit it into a radio signal. I'm still
not sure how they did this, shot that signal up
to a satellite and then beam the signal back down

(33:44):
from satellite to Canada where it lit another cauldron, another torch.
So they basically transferred the the energy from the Olympic flame,
shot it into space, and then transferred it back to
Earth and converted it back into flame. No one's ever
going to beat that. I think that's cute that you

(34:06):
bought that. Oh well, okay, I guess yeah. I hadn't
really thought that. You didn't see the guy he was
in the buggy. He was also behind there punching the button.
The button. It is a thing for sure, and now,
you hadn't really thought about that. So if you do
notice these people that are actually on the street carrying

(34:27):
these things, you'll notice they have security. There's actually a
medical team, there's plenty of media, they have extra torches
on hand because they don't want that thing to go
out on camera. And eventually it's gonna make its way
to the Olympic Stadium where the big secret. You know,
they keep it a big secret. Now who that final
individual is going to be. Um very much kept a

(34:49):
lid on because you don't want that getting out because
that's the big moment, and that's always a big deal.
Whoever they choose for that final person to light the cauldron.
And there have been a lot of big, big moments
throughout the years, and I think Atlanta's when they came
in there, Janet Evans, she didn't even know who she
was going to hand it to and outcomes Mohammed Ali

(35:10):
and that was really one of the great Olympic moments.
I've watched it again today and I was like, why
am I crying with me? It is amazing to hear
that crowd when they figure out who it is at first,
and apparently no one, no one knew, like, um, uh,
maybe it was cost Us who was doing the Probably
cost Us, Yeah, I think it was because he hadn't

(35:31):
gotten Pink Eye that year, so he was still good
to get to be the commentator. Um, it was cost
Us in somebody else and they they didn't know apparently. Um.
And I guess Dick eber Saul, who was a longtime
NBC executive, Um, have you read that book Live from
New York about Saturday Night Live? But I knew that

(35:52):
he was. He took over for a little while. Yeah,
he he figures big in there. And I can't remember
if he did a good job or a bad job,
but I have a good impression of him, so I
think he did get But anyway, um, he figures big
into that book. And that book is definitely worth reading.
It like goes up to maybe the mid to late eighties,
from the start to the mid to late eighties, and
it's all just like behind the scenes interviews and gossip

(36:13):
and oral history of of the whole thing is really interesting.
But anyway, Dick Ebersol lobbied really hard to get Mohammed
Ali to be the guy because it was originally going
to be a vander Holy Field and holy Field actually
ran it for about ten ft and then handed it
off to Janet Evans. Yeah, and then Janet Evans took

(36:35):
it up this ramp and then all of a sudden
it looks like Janet Evans is going to be the
one to light it, and then all of a sudden,
at the top of the ramp, Mohammed Ali pops out
and the face and the crowd just goes nothing like yeah,
especially when he when he has it lit and he
like holds it aloft and his hand is trembling from
with Parkinson's trembler tremors, and um, they just are going bonkers.

(37:00):
Was It's just like you said, It's probably the all
time great Olympic moment as far as America is concerned.
A few other highlights in Barcelona ninety two, Who can
forget Paralympic archer Antonio Ribolo when he shot that fiery
arrow that was pretty sweet. I can't believe he made
it too like that, just the that the what they

(37:22):
gambled on that, you know, he could have missed, it
could have gone out and it didn't, and he made
it and it lit the cauldron. It's just beautiful. Well,
it actually didn't like the cauldron, but that was the
please stop dashing the Olympic torch in ignition button because
he can't take that chance. Uh. You know, I'll tell
you what, chuck. When I form my weird niche little

(37:44):
Olympic Torch website, it's going to be all fantasy. None
of this behind the scenes trickery, grittiness. It's just going
to be face value stuff. Sixty four Tokyo. When they
hosted their first game, they had the Hiroshima Baby a

(38:04):
K A. H. John Nori Sakai was born on August
the day Americans dropped the nuclear bomb on Hiroshima. He
was nineteen years old at the time he lit that thing.
What about a soul and those cooked doves? That was rough, man,
I did. I wasn't aware of that until we were

(38:24):
researching this, were you. I don't remember that. I mean
I certainly watched the games that year, but I was
probably too young to understand that those doves did not
make it out alive. Dude, it's yeah. I put my
hand in my mouth, like, oh my god, I can't
believe what I just saw. That was awful. But they
so they released the doves as part of the opening
ceremony and then some of the doves gathered in the

(38:46):
cauldron and it's not funny. I don't know why I'm laughing. No,
it's it's it's said, well, there's a certain element to
it that's funny, but in the worst way, you know
what I mean. And the three people whose job it
was to like the Olympic cauld room at their torches,
they did, and some of the birds didn't fly away,
and you can see some of them sort of dancing

(39:07):
in the flame. It's it's that part's awful, but that
the whole idea of the thing. Is this so preposterous
and its contrary to what they're trying to do with
the Olympic spirit that they sacrifice some doves. Yeah, that
was tough to watch. So then, um, there's one more.
There's a bunch worth mentioning, but it's worth watching again.

(39:31):
Is uh lilahammer where um stein grubin uh ski jumper
skis down a ski jump seventy which is quite a
few feet more than seventy. Well it's the exact same
as seventy meters but in feet. Um just going some
ridiculous speed with the torch that won't go out, and like,

(39:56):
lands this jump just beautifully. That was a little nerve
wracking even knowing that it didn't go out. When I
was watching it the other day, I was like, don't
go out, don't go out, right, yeah, because it's it
looks like it could have at any moment, but no,
it stayed, stayed straight. And then let's see, there's a
couple more mentioning two thousand and two thousand fourteen the
flame went to space, which is pretty cool. Let's not

(40:18):
forget nineteen seventy six in Montreal and then um, it
was on the concorde. Once it flew on the concorde,
and I believe for the Barcelona Games. Amazing. So let's
that for the Olympic torch everybody. We'll talk more about
the Olympics someday when we do an episode on the Olympics.
But in the meantime, I hope you enjoyed this. Uh

(40:41):
And since I said that it's time for a listener, man,
I'm gonna call this chuck check your privilege. Did you
see this one? Yeah? Hey, guys, this is in reference
to your WASP podcast. Great information. I love the podcast,
but at the end it was almost amusing that you
assume people have the means to hire a professional to

(41:03):
remove a wasp nest from their property. I said, almost
almost amusing. Equally amusing, which I guess is equally almost amusing,
is the idea of fashioning a kind of trap. I
don't remember that part. Did you say that? I don't know.
I say a lot of things risk being stung dozens

(41:23):
of times for what. Uh, guys, I don't think you
should be shoving peta style in quotes, non lethal rhetoric
down people's throats. Nay saying the killing of vermin and pest,
especially when your solutions don't accommodate outside the middle class.
Pretty sure there are poverty stricken individuals that love to

(41:43):
learn and love this podcast as well. You very well
could be unintentionally alienating them into thinking that they are
being inhumane, when in fact they have no choice. Think
bigger picture, Chuck. That is from James Huggins. I mean
to do that, James, I'm sorry. I I think the

(42:04):
overarching message was leave it alone, don't do anything to it,
don't spend money. I've never paid money to have a
waspice removed. Do you do you know, Chuck? I have
to tell you. Just yesterday, I was challenged to live
up to my own words. And there was a wasp
in our screen porch and I had a fly swatter

(42:25):
and was trying to just lightly move it out. I
was like, I'm not gonna kill you. I'm not going
to kill you. What that thing is? He wouldn't Number one,
he wouldn't come after me. So we proved that wasps
are not necessarily super aggressive like they have um a
reputation for. But then he wouldn't. He also wouldn't make
his way towards the open door, right. So I thought

(42:46):
of this ingenious method. I grabbed like a little bowl,
which virtually anyone on earth can afford, put the bowl
over the wasp so that it was trapped between the
bowl and the screen. Then I took the fly swater
and I split it up between the bowl and the
screen to create a cover for the bowl, and then
ran that thing right out of the porch. Remove the

(43:07):
flyswater from the bowl, and the wasp flew away like
have a good day. Amazing. That's only smith that she
gets like a magazine and a like a tupperware for
kind of any beast works pretty well? Yeah, and that's
not elite US. No, it's not like I don't disagree
with James's overall message. I think it was more as delivery.

(43:28):
That's a little you know, you know. Sure, Okay, So
if you want to get in touch with us and
we can, we can do what we will with your email, um,
you can send it to us at stuff podcast at
iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a

(43:49):
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