Olympic Torches: Remember Those?

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 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 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. 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. 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 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 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 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 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

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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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. 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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.

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. 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 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 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, 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 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, 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, 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

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,

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,

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 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 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.

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 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

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

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

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 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, 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.

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 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.

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 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 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 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 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 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. 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.

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 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

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 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 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 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 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 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, 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, 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 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 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 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.

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 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. 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 relay right after this. All right, Chuck, So we're back 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

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.

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

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

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 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 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 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 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, 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 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, 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 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 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. 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, 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 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 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

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 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 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 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 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 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 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.

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 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 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 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

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

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 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. 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, 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 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 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 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

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 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 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 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 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 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. 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 production of iHeart Radio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts for my heart Radio is at the iHeart Radio app. Apple podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows.