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Pushkin Goes to the Olympics · Revisionist History

0:08
Speaker 1: Pushkin. Hello, Hello, Malcolm Glabo. Here here at Pushkin. We
0:19
Speaker 1: love the Olympics. One of my strongest childhood memories was
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Speaker 1: the nineteen seventy six Olympics in Montreal, my homeland's first
0:32
Speaker 1: Olympic Games.
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Speaker 2: I was a kid.
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Speaker 1: My family didn't have a television, but we rented one
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Speaker 1: just for the occasion. Two rabbit ears on top of
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Speaker 1: a grainy black and white set. Who put the TV
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Speaker 1: in the fireplace because there was no other place for it,
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Speaker 1: And I watched everything. The Romanian Nadya Komenitch bewitching the
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Speaker 1: world in gymnastics, my running hero John Walker powering away
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Speaker 1: around the final curve to win the men's fifteen hundred meters.
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Speaker 1: I still get nervous thinking about that race. Lassie Van's
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Speaker 1: improbable double in the five thousand meters, and the ten
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Speaker 1: thousand meters Alberto want to Rena, Cornelia ender Don Cory,
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Speaker 1: and the women's forby one hundred freestyle relay maybe the
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Speaker 1: greatest swimming race ever.
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Speaker 3: Wow.
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Speaker 1: I was a little kid and I fell in love
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Speaker 1: with the Olympics, and I've been in love ever since.
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Speaker 1: There are just so many good Olympic stories to tell.
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Speaker 1: So this summer a bunch of Pushkin shows are giving
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Speaker 1: you their unique takes on the games. Over at the
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Speaker 1: Happiness Lab, Lorie Santos will be talking with the coach
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Speaker 1: who coaches the coaches. Maya Shankar is going deep with
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Speaker 1: a whole suite of swimmers talking about their slight change
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Speaker 1: of plans. And my colleague bend A daff Haffrey and
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Speaker 1: I have done a nine part series about the nineteen
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Speaker 1: thirty six Olympics in Berlin, the Nazi Olympics, and today
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Speaker 1: I'm sharing a taste of some of my favorite stories
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Speaker 1: from Pushkin's Olympic summer. One from Revisionist History, another from
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Speaker 1: What's Your Problem, and to kick us all off, a
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Speaker 1: story from Tim Harford. Over at Cautionary Tales.
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Speaker 4: For sheer myth making about distance running, You can't beat
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Speaker 4: the Marathon. After the Greeks unexpectedly smashed an invading Persian
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Speaker 4: army at the Battle of Marathon, a chap called Philippides
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Speaker 4: ran twenty six miles to Athens with the good news,
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Speaker 4: and then, so the story goes, collapsed and died. Thus
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Speaker 4: began the legend of the Marathon. This is a race
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Speaker 4: so grueling, a challenge so overwhelming, that it could literally
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Speaker 4: kill you. Women weren't allowed to compete in the first Olympics,
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Speaker 4: let alone in the marathon. If it could kill a man,
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Speaker 4: can you imagine what it would do to the fragile
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Speaker 4: frame of a woman. The International Olympic Committee were reluctant
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Speaker 4: to let women compete in any events at all, and
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Speaker 4: when they were finally persuaded to admit female athletes in
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Speaker 4: nineteen twenty eight, the longest women's race was eight hundred meters.
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Speaker 4: It was a disaster. The newspapers of the day reported
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Speaker 4: the disturbing scenes The New York Evening Post.
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Speaker 5: Below us on the Cinderpath were eleven wretched women, five
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Speaker 5: of whom dropped out before the finish, while five collapsed
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Speaker 5: after reaching the tape. The Chicago Tribune added that one
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Speaker 5: finisher collapsed into unconsciousness and required medical attention. A press
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Speaker 5: syndicate reporter commented it.
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Speaker 4: Was not a very edifying spectacle to see a group
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Speaker 4: of fine girls running themselves into a state of exhaustion.
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Speaker 4: Other writers described the race as a disgrace or dangerous,
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Speaker 4: or opined that two hundred meters was surely the maximum
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Speaker 4: distance a woman could attempt without premature aging. And damage
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Speaker 4: to her reproductive capacity. But this is all, of course nonsense,
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Speaker 4: not just the stuff about damage to reproductive capacity, all
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Speaker 4: of it. There weren't eleven women in the race. There
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Speaker 4: were nine. Not only did the gold medalist Lena Radkebatschawer
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Speaker 4: break the world record, but so did the silver and
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Speaker 4: bronze medalists and the three women behind them, Which is,
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Speaker 4: I suppose what happens when an event doesn't have many precedents.
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Speaker 4: Nobody dropped out and nobody needed a doctor, no matter.
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Speaker 4: Rather than celebrating the greatest women's middle distance race in history,
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Speaker 4: the pundits wrote whatever sensationalized nonsense they felt like writing.
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Speaker 4: The International Olympic Committee used the fuss as an excuse
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Speaker 4: to keep the women's eight hundred meters out of the
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Speaker 4: Olympics for the next three decades. If women couldn't be
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Speaker 4: allowed to run eight hundred meters until nineteen sixty, you
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Speaker 4: can imagine what the male dominated athletic establishment of the
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Speaker 4: nineteen sixties thought of the idea of women running a marathon.
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Speaker 4: But there were a few independent, spirited women who liked
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Speaker 4: to run. Then, naturally enough, their thoughts turned to that
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Speaker 4: iconic distance. One of those women was Katherine Switzer. As
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Speaker 4: a girl, she told her father she wanted to be
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Speaker 4: a cheerleader. You don't want to be a cheerleader, honey,
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Speaker 4: he told her. Cheerleaders cheer for other people. You want
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Speaker 4: people to cheer for you. He encouraged her to run
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Speaker 4: a mile each day to get fit for sports, and
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Speaker 4: she did. She became a journalism student at Syracuse, where
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Speaker 4: there were women's sports teams at all, So she asked
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Speaker 4: to train with a men's cross country team. Sure, said
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Speaker 4: the head coach, and then she heard him laughing with
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Speaker 4: the other coaches behind her back. That only made her
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Speaker 4: more determined. More encouraging was volunteer coach Arnie Briggs, the
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Speaker 4: university mailman and, at fifty years of age, the veteran
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Speaker 4: of fifteen Boston Marathons. He was full of stories about
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Speaker 4: the classic marathon, which had first been held in the
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Speaker 4: late eighteen hundreds, and one December night, on a miserable
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Speaker 4: training run through a snowstorm as cars skidded and honked around,
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Speaker 4: Catherine had heard one too many of those tales. Let's
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Speaker 4: quit talking about the Boston Marathon and run the damn thing.
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Speaker 4: No woman can run the Boston marathon. Why not, I'm
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Speaker 4: running ten miles a night, Arney relented. No dame ever
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Speaker 4: ran the Boston Marathon. If any woman could do it,
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Speaker 4: you could, but you'd have to prove it to me.
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Speaker 4: If you ran the distance in practice, I'd be the
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Speaker 4: first to take you to Boston. Now you're talking, she thought,
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Speaker 4: a few months later, and three weeks before the marathon,
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Speaker 4: they ran thirty one miles in training. Arnie turned gray
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Speaker 4: and passed out, but Catherine was feeling great. The next day,
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Speaker 4: at Arne's insistence, she signed up for the race, signing
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Speaker 4: her name as she always did, Ka v.
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Speaker 2: Switzer.
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Speaker 4: She and Arnie checked the rule book. There was nothing
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Speaker 4: forbidding women to enter. Arne signed up too, as did
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Speaker 4: Catherine's boyfriend, Big Tom Miller, all two hundred and thirty
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Speaker 4: five pounds of him. He was a promising hammer thrower,
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Speaker 4: had been a serious college football player. And no, he
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Speaker 4: wasn't planning on training. He was pretty fit anyway, and
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Speaker 4: if a girl can run a marathon, I can run
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Speaker 4: a marathon. On Wednesday, April nineteenth, nineteen sixty seven, race day,
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Speaker 4: it was snowing. Most of the field were running in tracksuits.
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Speaker 4: There were seven hundred and forty one entrance, and Katherine
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Speaker 4: pinned her number to her sweatshirt with pride. Kay Switzer
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Speaker 4: two to sixty one. From the other runners, she got
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Speaker 4: a few looks of surprise, but a warm welcome. Hey,
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Speaker 4: you're going to go the whole way. Gosh, it's great
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Speaker 4: to see a girl here. Can you give me some
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Speaker 4: tips to get my wife to run? She'd love it
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Speaker 4: if I could just get her started. Arnie was beaming.
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Speaker 4: Big Tom unmissible in his bright orange Syracuse sweatshirt, wasn't
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Speaker 4: happy that Katherine was wearing lipstick, which might attract attention.
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Speaker 4: Take it off, he said, I shan't, she replied. The
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Speaker 4: crowd of runners squeezed closer and closer together as they
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Speaker 4: approached the start, and then they were off and feeling great.
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Speaker 4: Just four miles later, the fun would stop. Catherine Switzer
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Speaker 4: was running with her little group, including coach Arnie and
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Speaker 4: boyfriend Big Tom, feeling good and acknowledging the encouragement of
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Speaker 4: the other runners. But the four mile mark, the press
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Speaker 4: truck pulled alongside the little group to allow photographers a
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Speaker 4: good shot of that dame who was running the marathon.
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Speaker 4: Then Switzer recalled a man with an overcoat and felt
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Speaker 4: hat was there in the middle of the road, shaking
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Speaker 4: his finger at me. He said something to me as
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Speaker 4: I passed and reached out for my hand, catching my
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Speaker 4: glove instead and pulling it off.
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Speaker 2: Who was it?
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Speaker 4: A protester, a crank, but he was wearing an official's ribbon.
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Speaker 4: Moments later, I heard the scraping noise of leather shoes
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Speaker 4: coming up fast behind me. When a runner hears that
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Speaker 4: kind of noise, it's usually danger. Instinctively, I jerked my
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Speaker 4: head around quickly and looked square into the most vicious
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Speaker 4: face I'd ever seen. A big man, a huge man
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Speaker 4: with bad teeth, was set to pounds, and before I
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Speaker 4: could react, he grabbed my shoulder and flung me back, screaming,
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Speaker 4: get the hell out of my race and give me
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Speaker 4: those numbers. Katherine was terrified. She realized she'd wet her
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Speaker 4: pants in fear, and she turned to sprint away as
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Speaker 4: the furious official tried to rip the number off her sweatshirt.
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Speaker 4: The press truck was still there, The cameras were whirring
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Speaker 4: and clicking, and then, seemingly from nowhere, two hundred and
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Speaker 4: thirty five pounds of orange clad college football player crashed
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Speaker 4: into the official, who flew sideways and landed on the
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Speaker 4: roadside in a crumpled heap. Oh God, thought Katherine big
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Speaker 4: Tom's killed him. We're in trouble. Run like hell, yelled Arnie,
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Speaker 4: and they sprinted away from the scene with a press
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Speaker 4: truck in pursuit, cameras still clicking. It was an extraordinary scene,
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Speaker 4: and perhaps the strangest thing about it, Catherine Switzer wasn't
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Speaker 4: the first woman to run a marathon. She wasn't the
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Speaker 4: first woman to run the Boston Marathon. In fact, she
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Speaker 4: wasn't even the leading woman in this race. A mile
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Speaker 4: ahead of her, Roberta. Bobby Gibb was making serene progress
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Speaker 4: without an irate race official insight.
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Speaker 1: There's so much in this Cautionary Tales episode. Two groundbreaking
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Speaker 1: female marathoners and an epic two hundred and sixty eight
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Speaker 1: mile race two hundred and sixty eight miles along the
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Speaker 1: spine of England. You can find it now in the
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Speaker 1: Cautionary Tales feed. There are two things that define our era,
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Speaker 1: an absolute obsession with sports and incredible technological progress. Sylvia
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Speaker 1: Blemker works at their intersection. She's a professor of biomedical
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Speaker 1: engineering at the University of Virginia and the co founder
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Speaker 1: of Springbok Analytics. She figured out how to combine MRI
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Speaker 1: scans with artificial intelligence to create incredibly detailed analyzes of
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Speaker 1: our muscles. Springbox clients include Olympic athletes, major League Baseball,
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Speaker 1: and a bunch of professional basketball and soccer teams. Sylvia
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Speaker 1: Blenker talked about how her work helps elite athletes and
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Speaker 1: people with neuromuscular diseases in this interview with Jacob Goldstein
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Speaker 1: for What's Your Problem.
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Speaker 6: What's one surprising thing your work has taught you about
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Speaker 6: elite athletes.
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Speaker 7: I never thought I would see muscles that were so
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Speaker 7: developed they broke our scale.
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Speaker 5: Wow.
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Speaker 6: Yeah, like it was just too big the A I
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Speaker 6: couldn't figure out what it is.
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Speaker 7: Well, no, the AI found it. But we are like
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Speaker 7: our kind of rating system.
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Speaker 5: Wow.
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Speaker 6: Was there a particular athlete or a particular sport or
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Speaker 6: particular muscle?
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Speaker 5: What?
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Speaker 6: What? What muscle broke the scale?
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Speaker 2: Uh?
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Speaker 7: The gluteus maximus breaks it a fair Yeah, fantastic. Yes,
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Speaker 7: it's a pain in my butt.
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Speaker 6: Like because it's too big.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, it's just so big. The other thing is
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Speaker 3: that they have some tiny muscles too, huh, Like they have.
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Speaker 6: Like smaller than a normal person's muscle.
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Speaker 7: Much smaller.
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Speaker 2: Huh.
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Speaker 7: They put their muscle where they need it.
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Speaker 6: What's an example, like what muscle is tiny and what
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Speaker 6: kind of.
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Speaker 3: Athlete calf muscles are small and most fast athletes huh.
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Speaker 7: And either you look at a sprinter or like a
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Speaker 7: running back.
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Speaker 6: It's just all squad no calf, all.
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Speaker 7: Like thigh no calf, yeah bye and him.
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Speaker 3: It kind of makes sense because you know, if you're
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Speaker 3: trying to run fast, you wouldn't want to put a
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Speaker 3: lot of mass like at the end of your leg.
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Speaker 7: It's like as a lot of inertia to like move
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Speaker 7: your leg.
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Speaker 2: Huh.
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Speaker 3: Because you know, the muscles are important for sprinting, that's
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Speaker 3: the interesting thing. But they just don't they're small, They're
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Speaker 3: very small.
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Speaker 6: Huh uh huh. So I'm particularly interested at this moment
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Speaker 6: in the sports piece of what you do. I'm curious,
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Speaker 6: by the way, do you work with any Olympic teams
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Speaker 6: or Olympic athletes?
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Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, We've actually been working with several different Olympic athletes.
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Speaker 7: The ones that probably that.
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Speaker 3: Come to mind most are multiple players on the US
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Speaker 3: women's national soccer team.
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Speaker 6: Oh cool, tell me, like, tell me the story of
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Speaker 6: that of that work. So they came to you, what
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Speaker 6: did what did they what do they want when they
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Speaker 6: came to like how did that? How did that begin?
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Speaker 7: They came to us along with their team.
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Speaker 3: So the technology we provide, you know, an athlete could
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Speaker 3: understand it, but really with their team to help them
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Speaker 3: figure out how to keep athletes healthy.
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Speaker 6: So what did they what did they say? What did
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Speaker 6: they say when they came to so?
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Speaker 3: Uh, for example, one athlete that's coming to mind had
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Speaker 3: a known imbalance side to side that based on a
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Speaker 3: history of injury, and they really wanted to know where
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Speaker 3: that imbalance was coming from.
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Speaker 6: So the the woman had had hurt one of her legs,
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Speaker 6: and that leg was even after she came back, that
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Speaker 6: leg was weaker essentially than the other. I mean, is
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Speaker 6: that the sort of gross macroy?
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Speaker 3: Yeah exactly, that's a that's a nice way to put it.
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Speaker 6: And and and they wanted a sort of finder like okay,
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Speaker 6: but we can see that, but what's going on on
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Speaker 6: the inside, like muscle by muscle tell us that, yes.
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Speaker 7: Exactly, that's precisely what we do.
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Speaker 3: We go on the inside because on the outside you
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Speaker 3: see perhaps that her knee extents or quads seem weaker
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Speaker 3: on one side than the other. But there's four quads,
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Speaker 3: quadre steps, four muscles, and so it's not clear which
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Speaker 3: of those muscles are actually the culprit for that imbalance
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Speaker 3: and in what way good.
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Speaker 6: So this is their question and then what happens next.
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Speaker 3: So this first step is an MRI scan, And so
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Speaker 3: with these athletes or teams, we have ways to connect
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Speaker 3: them with an MRI machine, whether it be through an
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Speaker 3: imaging center that they partner with, or we've even actually
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Speaker 3: brought MRI mobile trucks to sites to make it easier.
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Speaker 6: Run off the field and get an MRI and go
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Speaker 6: back and keep playing.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, kind yeah.
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Speaker 3: It helps just with the timing of things. But so
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Speaker 3: for we connect them there, so it takes about ten minutes.
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Speaker 3: Then they send those pictures up into the cloud into
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Speaker 3: our server and then we crunched through it and then
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Speaker 3: we send back a report on their muscles. We also
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Speaker 3: have what we call it interactive viewer, and it's presented
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Speaker 3: in the form of a three D model. Three dimensional model,
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Speaker 3: so you actually see your own legs, the muscles and bones,
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Speaker 3: your own muscles and bones, that we've identified from the
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Speaker 3: images going through a process called segmentation where we find
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Speaker 3: all the muscles and bones and then we reconstruct them.
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Speaker 3: So it's kind of like a digital twin of that
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Speaker 3: person that they can see on their computer. And so
17:43
Speaker 3: along with it or a number or all these metrics
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Speaker 3: that helps them understand their balance, the development or strength
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Speaker 3: of the muscles, and the health of the muscles.
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Speaker 6: And so in the case of this soccer player who
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Speaker 6: came to you, who you know, knew knew she had
18:03
Speaker 6: some kind of problem with her quadriceps on one side,
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Speaker 6: but didn't know what was going on, what did you find?
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Speaker 3: We found some imbalances and actually not just in those muscles.
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Speaker 3: It turns out that, you know, it's all connected. So
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Speaker 3: I think there were at least one calf muscle and
18:23
Speaker 3: then some in the especially in the deep hip, those
18:27
Speaker 3: were impacted.
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Speaker 7: So yeah, it kind of shows up everywhere.
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Speaker 6: To what extent can trainers or you know, strength coaches
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Speaker 6: develop programs that are sufficiently kind of fine grained to
18:42
Speaker 6: match the kind of fine grained findings you're having, right Like,
18:46
Speaker 6: for example, if you find, as I understand you did,
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Speaker 6: that a soccer player has one particular quadricep that is weak, Like,
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Speaker 6: are there workouts that target a single quadricep and not
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Speaker 6: the others?
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Speaker 7: Yep, there are.
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Speaker 6: That's cool for whichever quadricepp you're just like, just for fun,
19:03
Speaker 6: give me an example.
19:05
Speaker 5: You know.
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Speaker 3: One way that it's very simple is using something called biofeedback.
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Speaker 7: Huh.
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Speaker 3: So you can measure whether you use something called e MG,
19:16
Speaker 3: which is a way to measure how much electrical activity
19:19
Speaker 3: is a muscle, and then you can see which muscles
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Speaker 3: you're using for a given task. So if you give
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Speaker 3: people the feedback of which of those muscles they're using
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Speaker 3: and say, oh, no, you're not using this one, use
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Speaker 3: this one more, that actually works very effectively.
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Speaker 6: Oh really, So you can basically use your brain if
19:38
Speaker 6: you're getting the feedback to focus on which quadricep you're exactly.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, and there's other ways you can you can give
19:45
Speaker 3: the feedback in other different ways. But yeah, our brains
19:47
Speaker 3: are very good at that. Once they get feedback, they're
19:50
Speaker 3: very good at learning.
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Speaker 6: That's cool, especially somehow to think of what the lead athletes, right,
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Speaker 6: because they are already presumably like super dialed in in
19:58
Speaker 6: terms of like the relationship between their brain and their
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Speaker 6: body at this very.
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Speaker 2: Elite level exactly.
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Speaker 5: Yeah.
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Speaker 7: The other I was going to mention.
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Speaker 3: A lot of players and teams use this not just
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Speaker 3: one time, but overtime. So they'll get a scan, figure
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Speaker 3: out a plan, work on that for maybe three months
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Speaker 3: or six months, and then do another scan and see
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Speaker 3: how things are progressing and adjust accordingly. So that's that's
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Speaker 3: definitely another way to in the long term see if
20:29
Speaker 3: what they're doing is resulting in the change that they're
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Speaker 3: hoping to see.
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Speaker 6: So, what happened with that soccer player who had the
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Speaker 6: weak quadricep and other.
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Speaker 3: Related Yeah, No, I think she's doing great, like staying
20:42
Speaker 3: healthy and and you know, getting ready.
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Speaker 1: Yeah.
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Speaker 6: So I know you can't tell us her name, but
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Speaker 6: will we see her in the Olympics this time?
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Speaker 7: Yeah.
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Speaker 1: You can hear more from that interview and a bunch
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Speaker 1: of other stories from people who are creating groundbreaking new
20:58
Speaker 1: technologies on what's your problem. I'll be back in a
21:03
Speaker 1: minute with the final leg of this relay race through
21:06
Speaker 1: Pushkin's Olympics summer. Our last story today is one from
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Speaker 1: Revisionist Histories series about the nineteen thirty six Olympics in Berlin.
21:28
Speaker 1: The series is all about why America chose to compete
21:30
Speaker 1: in the Games when it was already clear who Hitler
21:34
Speaker 1: was and what the Nazis stood for. Ben Daphaffrey takes
21:39
Speaker 1: everyone's favorite story from the Berlin Olympics about two athletes
21:44
Speaker 1: making good on the promise of the Games and breaks
21:47
Speaker 1: it wide open.
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Speaker 8: The Collock Street tears around the clay circle with the
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Speaker 8: speed of the wind, increasing his lead with every stride.
21:55
Speaker 2: About four thousand athletes competed in the nineteen thirty six
21:59
Speaker 2: Olympics Games. Jesse Owens is the one people remember.
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Speaker 5: Streak Jesse Owens in one hundred meters.
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Speaker 8: He started building the other out and got that capa
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Speaker 8: coming second up on him.
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Speaker 2: Jesse Owens was born in Alabama, the son of a sharecropper,
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Speaker 2: self effacing, soft spoken, and an unbelievable athlete. In nineteen
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Speaker 2: thirty five, as a twenty one year old, he had
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Speaker 2: already set three world records in a single day, all
22:30
Speaker 2: in the same hour. With a bad back.
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Speaker 9: The world's most runner makes the others look as if
22:35
Speaker 9: they're walking as he wins the final and equals the
22:37
Speaker 9: words record of time.
22:39
Speaker 2: And in nineteen thirty six, even the Germans were expecting
22:44
Speaker 2: something great from him.
22:47
Speaker 9: How many board medals do your host to win? The
22:50
Speaker 9: two part times, it's to desire very athlete to win
22:55
Speaker 9: a first.
22:55
Speaker 3: Place in the Olympic Games.
22:57
Speaker 2: In nineteen thirty six, he was slated to in three events,
23:01
Speaker 2: and since I'm in three.
23:03
Speaker 8: Events, I hope to emerge with.
23:05
Speaker 3: Three victory.
23:11
Speaker 2: Broad jump one hundred meters, two hundred meters and the
23:15
Speaker 2: broad jump. Later they added a fourth event, the four
23:19
Speaker 2: by one hundred meter relay. He would win gold in
23:22
Speaker 2: all four, the only person to win four gold medals
23:26
Speaker 2: in the Berlin Olympics. And that is why you know
23:30
Speaker 2: the name Jesse Owens. But it all could have turned
23:33
Speaker 2: out differently because of that broad jump. You've seen a
23:40
Speaker 2: broad jump before today. It's called the long jump, and
23:43
Speaker 2: it's one of the more dramatic Olympic sports. The jumpers
23:46
Speaker 2: sprint down the runway, hit a take off board and
23:49
Speaker 2: they look like they're flying and then they land in
23:52
Speaker 2: a huge spray of sand. So the morning of August fourth,
23:56
Speaker 2: nineteen thirty six, ten thirty am in the right place,
24:00
Speaker 2: sport Feld, it's the long jump qualifying rounds. Best jumpers
24:04
Speaker 2: go on to the final. Owens had just run his
24:07
Speaker 2: heat in the two hundred meters immediately after he headed
24:11
Speaker 2: over to the pit. It was the third day of
24:13
Speaker 2: the Games, and by then he already had his first
24:15
Speaker 2: gold medal, so it was a surprise when he botched
24:19
Speaker 2: his first jump. By some accounts, he thought it was
24:22
Speaker 2: a practice run no sweat, though he had two more tries,
24:27
Speaker 2: so he lined himself back up and started jogging down
24:30
Speaker 2: the runway. He took off and came up short. He
24:36
Speaker 2: had one jump left. If he screwed up that last jump,
24:41
Speaker 2: he'd have been out of the contest, and he'd have
24:43
Speaker 2: gone from being the only athlete to win four gold
24:46
Speaker 2: medals in nineteen thirty six to one of three athletes
24:49
Speaker 2: who'd won three golds, right up there with Conrad Frey
24:52
Speaker 2: and Hendrika Mastenbroke, who actually would have had more total
24:56
Speaker 2: medals than him. And I ask you, be honest, have
24:59
Speaker 2: you you ever heard of Conrad Frey and Hendrika mastenbrook No,
25:04
Speaker 2: And probably if he'd missed that final qualifying jump, you
25:09
Speaker 2: wouldn't have heard of Jesse Owens either. So after the
25:15
Speaker 2: first two misses, Owens was rattled. But then something miraculous happened,
25:23
Speaker 2: something that changed the course of Jesse Owens's life and
25:27
Speaker 2: made him a legend. It was cool that day in August,
25:34
Speaker 2: clouds had rolled in over the stadium. Around one hundred
25:38
Speaker 2: thousand people were in the stands watching in. America's most
25:42
Speaker 2: famous athlete, Jesse Owens, was screwing up badly, which makes
25:48
Speaker 2: no sense. All he had to do was jump seven
25:51
Speaker 2: point one five meters to qualify. He already had a
25:54
Speaker 2: world record for jumping a meter farther than that, So
25:58
Speaker 2: what was going wrong? Malcolm and I decided to ask
26:02
Speaker 2: an expert a legend. Actually it was about.
26:05
Speaker 7: Ten years ago.
26:06
Speaker 8: So the age is sixty five, I think. And I
26:09
Speaker 8: jumped further than my high school mark.
26:12
Speaker 5: Is that right? Yeah?
26:13
Speaker 1: And you're the first American who jumped fifty seven feet.
26:16
Speaker 8: Yeah.
26:17
Speaker 2: One of the greatest American triple jumpers of all time,
26:21
Speaker 2: Milan tiff.
26:23
Speaker 8: I actually jumped sixty feet, but they didn't wouldn't recognize
26:26
Speaker 8: it because I jumped out of the pit.
26:29
Speaker 1: And where should you do that?
26:31
Speaker 8: Right here?
26:31
Speaker 5: You say, wow? And I jumped.
26:34
Speaker 8: I completely jumped over the sand pit and landed on
26:37
Speaker 8: the grass. I had grass stands all over the back
26:39
Speaker 8: of me.
26:41
Speaker 2: Going to see Milan was Malcolm's idea.
26:45
Speaker 1: So when I was in high school, starting at the
26:47
Speaker 1: age of twelve, I became a competitive runner, and I
26:51
Speaker 1: was obsessed with track and field, and I subscribed to
26:54
Speaker 1: Track and Field News, the Bible of the sport, as
26:57
Speaker 1: it's called. And Millen Tiff was this extraordinary. First of all,
27:04
Speaker 1: he was astonishing looking. He looked there was something kind
27:07
Speaker 1: of ethereal about him, and he had as a kid,
27:11
Speaker 1: he couldn't walk because he had I think polio or something.
27:14
Speaker 1: And he was also an artist, really really bright colors
27:18
Speaker 1: and kind of wildly imaginative and a little bit psychedelic.
27:23
Speaker 1: But I was I was just obsessed with him as
27:26
Speaker 1: this kind of like this this strange, otherworldly figure. And
27:31
Speaker 1: he was a favorite in nineteen eighty. Had we not
27:33
Speaker 1: boycotted the nineteen eighty Games, he might well have won
27:35
Speaker 1: a gold medal. Anyway, I cannot wait. He's going to
27:38
Speaker 1: be He's going to be a little bit. He might
27:41
Speaker 1: be a little I don't know, but I have a
27:43
Speaker 1: sense that he might be. He might be a little
27:46
Speaker 1: out there.
27:49
Speaker 2: This turned out to be pretty prescient. After meeting Lawn Tiff,
27:52
Speaker 2: I felt like I had taken some kind of intense
27:54
Speaker 2: psychedelic the effects of which I've yet to wear off.
27:57
Speaker 8: The first humans.
27:58
Speaker 2: It's unbelievable understood that to walk is just to take
28:02
Speaker 2: a number of tiny, long jumps. I found myself transfixed
28:06
Speaker 2: by an actually gorgeous painting of Milans portraying a pair
28:09
Speaker 2: of empty tidy whities suspended in a blue abstract space
28:13
Speaker 2: called mysteriously palm springs.
28:17
Speaker 8: And the birds and the trees would all fly down.
28:19
Speaker 8: They're just tapped into the same frequency as I have
28:22
Speaker 8: when I'm running and jumping.
28:24
Speaker 2: We flew out to Los Angeles, where he lives, so
28:26
Speaker 2: he could take us out to the UCLA track, and
28:29
Speaker 2: when we got there, there were several helicopters hovering above
28:32
Speaker 2: us the whole time, which only made everything a little
28:34
Speaker 2: more surreal, and Olympic legends just walking up to him,
28:38
Speaker 2: literally bowing down. This, I think because they wouldn't normally
28:43
Speaker 2: see him. He told us he prefers to run in
28:46
Speaker 2: the morning, by which he meant three am. Tiff took
28:53
Speaker 2: us out to the broad jump pit to help us
28:55
Speaker 2: get inside Jesse Owens's mind, which we thought he could
28:59
Speaker 2: do because he's a master of the approach. The part
29:03
Speaker 2: Jesse Owens was screwing up. But also because so you
29:07
Speaker 2: actually knew Jesse Owens when you were a kid. Yeah, yeah,
29:09
Speaker 2: you know, I sit and he.
29:12
Speaker 8: Tell the stories. Yeah, and not hear all the stories.
29:15
Speaker 8: And you know he talked about his experience in Berlin.
29:20
Speaker 2: You know, we asked him to tell us about how
29:23
Speaker 2: you're supposed to approach a jump.
29:25
Speaker 8: Yeah, you gotta have a gidea up first, that kind
29:28
Speaker 8: of rockings. You have to have some or a jiggle
29:30
Speaker 8: where you will call it. Yeah, you have to have
29:32
Speaker 8: a jiggle or a gide up before you even get
29:35
Speaker 8: into your run. Yeah, that adjustice your run.
29:37
Speaker 2: Is that why this is obviously the broad jump, but
29:40
Speaker 2: lose long. I noticed he does this sort of like
29:42
Speaker 2: hitch in his leg before he starts running. Yeah, it's
29:45
Speaker 2: like a dance.
29:46
Speaker 8: It's like it's like a preparation.
29:48
Speaker 6: Can you show us what your gidea up was, Well,
29:50
Speaker 6: it's like a one.
29:51
Speaker 8: Two, three, four five, then you start your run. Yeah.
29:55
Speaker 8: And I told it to Willie Banks World Ragged, taught
29:58
Speaker 8: it to h Bike Pile whol record.
30:03
Speaker 2: We gave it a shot on the track where at
30:05
Speaker 2: the very same time actual Olympic athletes were practicing for
30:09
Speaker 2: this year's games. Was it embarrassing? It was mortifying. Did
30:13
Speaker 2: we set a world record? Not even close. Did we
30:16
Speaker 2: become friends with any Olympians they were otherwise occupied. But
30:21
Speaker 2: this is the kind of dedication that deep historical investigations demand.
30:26
Speaker 2: What was Did Jesse Owens have a gideo?
30:28
Speaker 8: No, he had a stamp start because he was a sprinterer,
30:32
Speaker 8: you see. Yeah, that's why he was losing the steps
30:35
Speaker 8: all the time.
30:36
Speaker 2: He didn't have a jiggle, well, he didn't have a che.
30:39
Speaker 8: No, he didn't have a jiggle or a giddy. Yeah.
30:42
Speaker 8: And it took his competitor to say, man, come on,
30:45
Speaker 8: you gotta do something first.
30:48
Speaker 2: Jesse Owens's competitor, facing down the pit there export feld
30:53
Speaker 2: Loots Long. Lutzlong was Germany's champion broad jumper, Hitler's champ,
31:00
Speaker 2: and he looked the part, a fine ak line nose
31:04
Speaker 2: framed by your classic blonde hair and blue eyes. As
31:07
Speaker 2: Owens wrote later, Hitler was in the stadium that morning
31:10
Speaker 2: to watch. Owens knew that he'd like nothing better than
31:13
Speaker 2: to see a black man lose to an Arian. The
31:17
Speaker 2: thought was nanging at him, messing up his focus. And
31:21
Speaker 2: then he'd looked up at the box where Hitler had
31:23
Speaker 2: been watching the games, and saw that when Owens's turn came,
31:28
Speaker 2: Hitler had just left. It made his blood boil. That's
31:33
Speaker 2: why he was fouling out. He was psyched out by
31:36
Speaker 2: all of it. Distract it, and when he saw how
31:38
Speaker 2: amazing Lutslong was at the broad jump, he began to
31:41
Speaker 2: wonder if there was something true about all this arian stuff.
31:45
Speaker 2: He was down to his last jump, and then came
31:49
Speaker 2: the miracle. In an autobiography he published in nineteen seventy eight,
31:54
Speaker 2: Owens wrote, suddenly I felt a hand on my shoulder.
31:58
Speaker 2: It was Lutslong.
32:00
Speaker 9: Look, there is no time to waste with manners. What
32:04
Speaker 9: has taken your goat?
32:06
Speaker 2: Obviously we had to reenact this.
32:09
Speaker 9: I had to smile a little in spite of myself
32:11
Speaker 9: hearing his mixed up American idiom ah nothing, I said,
32:16
Speaker 9: you know how it is? He was silent for a
32:19
Speaker 9: few seconds. Yes, he said, finally, I know how it is.
32:24
Speaker 9: But I also know you are a better jumper than this. Now,
32:28
Speaker 9: what has taken your goat? I laughed out loud this time,
32:33
Speaker 9: but I couldn't tell him him. Above all, I glanced
32:36
Speaker 9: over at the broad jump pit. I was about to
32:39
Speaker 9: be called. Lutz didn't waste words, even if he wasn't
32:43
Speaker 9: sure of which ones to use. Is it what Reichkanze
32:47
Speaker 9: Hitler did?
32:48
Speaker 2: He asked.
32:49
Speaker 9: I was thunderstruck that he'd say it. I started to answer,
32:54
Speaker 9: but I didn't know what to say. I see he said, Look,
32:59
Speaker 9: we talk of that later. Now you must jump and
33:02
Speaker 9: you must qualify. But how I shot back? I have thought?
33:08
Speaker 9: He said, you are like Aya. You must do it
33:11
Speaker 9: one hundred percent correct.
33:14
Speaker 2: I nodded.
33:15
Speaker 9: Yet you must be sure not to foul. I nodded again,
33:18
Speaker 9: this time in frustration, And as I did, I heard
33:22
Speaker 9: the loudspeaker call my name. Lutz talked quickly. Then you
33:26
Speaker 9: do both things, Jesse. You remeasure your steps, You take
33:30
Speaker 9: off six inches behind the foul board. You jump as
33:33
Speaker 9: hard as you can, but you need not fear to foul.
33:38
Speaker 9: All at once, the panic emptied out of me like
33:41
Speaker 9: a cloudburst.
33:43
Speaker 2: Owens jogged up to the line and laid a towel
33:45
Speaker 2: to mark where Long had told him to jump. He
33:48
Speaker 2: lined up on the runway, maybe wiped his hands on
33:52
Speaker 2: his jersey, and then he ran one step, two steps,
33:58
Speaker 2: closer and closer to the pit, and he hit that
34:00
Speaker 2: mark on the towel leapt into the air, and when
34:04
Speaker 2: he finally got that, he qualified, and later that day,
34:07
Speaker 2: with Hitler back in the stands in the metal event
34:10
Speaker 2: itself well record, he set an Olympic record. And that's
34:16
Speaker 2: when Lootes along the Aryan poster child who had just
34:20
Speaker 2: lost to Jesse Owens, hugged him in front of Adolf Hitler,
34:25
Speaker 2: and the Hitler was pissed man, but Long didn't just
34:30
Speaker 2: embrace him, According to Jesse Owens, Later that night they
34:35
Speaker 2: met up in the Olympic village. The hours ticked on
34:41
Speaker 2: and they stayed up late, talking about their lives, the
34:44
Speaker 2: state of the world in the uncertain future. Some kind
34:48
Speaker 2: of strange bond had been formed between the men that day,
34:51
Speaker 2: because then the next day they did it again, and
34:55
Speaker 2: after that, again and again and again. Every single night
35:00
Speaker 2: of the Games they met up to talk. They became friends.
35:06
Speaker 2: The dream of the Olympics was real for them. They
35:08
Speaker 2: bridged an unbridgable gap between two cultures, two races. Something
35:14
Speaker 2: unbreakable had bound them. After the Games, when Owens was
35:18
Speaker 2: back in America and Lutzlang was still in Nazi Germany,
35:21
Speaker 2: they wrote letters to each other even after long was
35:24
Speaker 2: serving in the Wehrmacht the Nazi army, back and forth
35:27
Speaker 2: across the Atlantic for years. They kept coming until right
35:33
Speaker 2: before Lutzlang was killed in the war. He was stationed
35:38
Speaker 2: in the deserts of North Africa. On some lonely desert hour,
35:43
Speaker 2: he sat down to write one last letter to his friend.
35:47
Speaker 9: I am here, Jesse, where it seems there is only
35:50
Speaker 9: the dry sand and the wet blood. I do not
35:54
Speaker 9: fear so much for myself.
35:55
Speaker 6: My friend, Jesse.
35:57
Speaker 9: I fear for my woman, who was at home, and
35:59
Speaker 9: my young son, Karl, who has never really known his father.
36:05
Speaker 9: My heart tells me, if I be honest with you,
36:09
Speaker 9: that this is the last letter I shall ever write.
36:13
Speaker 9: If it is so, I ask you something. It is
36:17
Speaker 9: something so very important to me. It is you go
36:22
Speaker 9: to Germany when this war done. Someday find my Carl
36:27
Speaker 9: and tell him about his father. Tell him, Jesse, what
36:31
Speaker 9: times were like when we were not separated by war,
36:35
Speaker 9: I am saying, Tell him how things can be between.
36:40
Speaker 2: Men on this earth. There are tears in your eyes.
36:47
Speaker 2: You would not be alone. This story is a big
36:51
Speaker 2: part of the legend of Jesse Owens. If you look
36:55
Speaker 2: up Jesse Owens in the Encyclopedia Britannica. There's the story
37:00
Speaker 2: when they made a star studied Hollywood film about Jesse
37:03
Speaker 2: Owens's life. Lutslog and that qualifying jump are the pivotal moment.
37:08
Speaker 2: Retelling this story would help launch the career of the
37:11
Speaker 2: greatest Olympic documentarian of all time, Bud Greenspan. And I'm
37:15
Speaker 2: not an auctioneer, but I think it is the reason
37:18
Speaker 2: why Lutslog's silver medal sold for nearly half a million
37:22
Speaker 2: dollars two years ago, about five times the amount earned
37:27
Speaker 2: for any other silver medal at auction. It's arguably the
37:30
Speaker 2: most important story in Olympic history. It is proof of
37:34
Speaker 2: the Olympic dream. It made the case that it was
37:37
Speaker 2: good that America went to the Vilin Games because it
37:40
Speaker 2: made possible this improbable friendship that transcended even the Second
37:44
Speaker 2: World War, a story that was just too good to
37:50
Speaker 2: be true.
38:00
Speaker 1: You can hear the rest of this episode and the
38:03
Speaker 1: whole Hitler's Olympics series by following Revisionist History, And if
38:09
Speaker 1: you're looking for more Olympic content, take a look at
38:11
Speaker 1: Happiness Lab Slight Change of Plans, and other Pushkin shows
38:16
Speaker 1: This summer We're all going to the Olympics. Thanks for
38:20
Speaker 1: help with this special episode goes to Sarah Nix, Sophie Crane,
38:25
Speaker 1: Sarah Bugaier and Nina Lorence.