Good Job, Brain! - 24: OMGlympics!

Episode Date: August 13, 2012

Go for the gold with these lesser known Olympics trivia and history tidbits: hot air ballooning, mascot quiz, the weird link between pole vaulting and Donkey Kong, Olympic ring color mnemonic, Fatso the Wombat, and the strange science behind official equipment. ALSO: the cure for jet-lagged hamsters, Oklahoma's state vegetable, "Hey! That Sounds Familiar!" Music Round, and GO BANANAS with our very special announcement! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to an Airwave Media podcast. Hello, frenetic, fresh and frequently frenzied friends. Welcome to Good Job, Brain, your weekly quiz show and offbeat trivia podcast. This is episode 24. And of course, I'm your humble host and I guess a little bit hoarse. Karen, and we are your zany zoo of zippy zealots not xylokarps.

I'm Colin. I'm Dana. What's a zylokarp? Yeah, I'm curious as well. Silos carp, I'm glad you guys ask, and that's spelled with an X. Okay. X, Y, L-O, carp.

Uh-huh. You'd think it's like a xylophone made out of fish. That would be my first assumption. It is, I found out, it's kind of like a coconut. It's like a fruit that has a hard and woody shell.

Okay. So, oh, like a coconut. that is a zyla card. Yep. Another word that starts with an X, that's not x-ray or xylophone for you to use. That is good.

Xenophob, yeah. We're not even into the proper show yet, and we're already dropping knowledge. Yeah. Take that. Speaking of fruits and more knowledge, I actually just read this five minutes before the show. Do you guys know what the state vegetable of Oklahoma is?

Just off the top of your head. I want to hope it's okra, just so they can make some okra homo jokes. This is going to blow your mind. It is a watermelon. Ah, that's a vegetable. Well, so the officials have logically deduced that, you know, the watermelon is actually part of the cucumber family. And they love watermelon, so watermelons, they're a state vegetable.

It's very logical, but except for the fact that cucumbers are officially fruit. So, no Chris today, obviously. And he's actually working at the classic gaming expo in Las Vegas. We all know he's a big video game nerd. Yeah, he's too big for us today. professional, professional nerd. He is a professional video game nerd. And we've all done a fair bit of traveling ourselves. I just came back from Chicago last night. And Colin, you just came back from Paris. Paris and Strasbourg as well for a couple days. And yeah, it was fantastic. I was holding down

the trivia fort over here. Chris's Bill of Rights nemonic. Came in handy? Came in handy at trivia. Yes. So today we have a super big show today and a super special show and for good reason. We're pretty excited and let me just tell you a quick story a few weeks ago i got an email from a very cool and hip new york city based menswear company called bonobos like the primate like the primate they sell like really cool crisp shirts and pants and you know really sharp and awesome looking men's clothes and they told me that they listened to our show at their headquarters office yeah that was cool that was awesome that was really cool hi bonobos and and people there like us are giant humungo trivia nerds as well so like peanut butter and chocolate Sherlock and Watson

Rhode Island and coffee milk we thought maybe a good job brain and bonobos would make a pretty cool and good pair and so you know you listen smart and you look smart so we always kid about how oh we're looking for sponsorship and maybe maybe someone will sponsor us and it's happening we're so excited to announce that our new BFFs bonobos will be sponsoring this episode and few of our upcoming shows as well. Woo-hoo! That means we have special bonobos' quiz segments, prizes, offers, and just general awesomeness in store for everybody.

And rumor has it, the quizzers over at Bonobos are actually currently working on upcoming ways to stump us in the future and stump you, the listeners. Yes, yes. And being the only guy. present at the table today. I can, in fact, vouch that they make good pants. They look nice. Yeah, they look very good. Collins blushing, yeah. Well, I mean, you know, I think all guys will agree that one of the primary goal is that, hey, is if women say you have nice looking pants, you're doing something

right. So without further ado, let's do our first general quiz segment. Pop quiz, hot shot. And this week, we're actually going to do a very special bonobos edition. Get your barnyard buzzers ready, everyone. The two of you, I guess. now. So the following questions are general trivia, but they're all kind of related to bonobos in a way. So we can learn a bit about them at the same time. Number one, if you don't know, bonobo is a type of ape. Even though sometimes they're referred to as bonobos monkeys, they're technically apes. Right. They're not monkeys. And they're kind of famous. If you are into science, you might know that bonobos, they like to have a lot of sex.

Yes, yes. Anthropology. They're studied a lot by anthropologists, yes, for what they can learn about human behavior. Yes. Quote, high levels of sexual activity, which I promise, I promise we will get into more detail in a later episode because we all know. Karen likes to talk about things doing it. We love weird animal facts and specifically weird animal reproduction facts. So it's only a matter of time until the needle comes around to that as a topic.

Yay! But speaking of sex, it was discovered by scientists in our own. Argentina that the drug sildenafil citrate aids jet lack recovery in hamsters you can give them I cannot tell you how many times that has ruined a business meeting for you need some sydenafil citrate what is that more commonly called I believe that's Viagra correct yes you can feed your hamsters your jet lack hamsters Viagra perks them up For four hours. Or less.

Yeah. For an awake hamster lasting longer than four hours. Consult your veterinarian. Call your hamster doctor. Who's funding these highly focused studies? Argentina, apparently. All right. Keep fighting the good fight. Number two.

So the name of this type of fabric is derived from the Persian word for soil. And back in the day, this term became part of the English language. Thanks to the British Indian Army. What type of fabric am I talking about? Fabric. Oh. Is it Muslim? Incorrect.

It can be a color or a fabric. Okay. Oh, I have another guess, but if... Do it. Indigo? No, it is khaki. Oh, of course, British, right. Okay.

Kaki, comes from meaning... The word for soil in Persian. Okay. But I thought the word... Pack means poo. Pooh colored. Pooh color, too. I'm sure there's some overlap meanings.

Way to take it down a little, Dana. Sorry. We're all giggling now. Poop is funny. Okay, number three. Tech companies like Hewlett Packard, Xerox, Pinterest, Mashable, and of course, electric motor company Tesla, all have headquarters in what U.S. city? Is it San Mateo?

Incorrect. Is it close to there? Yes. Is it Palo Alto? Correct. Palo Alto, one of the big tech Silicon Valley cities in the area. And it's also where Bonobos had their start, too, because the founders went to Stanford Business School. Yay, Stanford.

Karen and I are a little conflicted being, well, we're all Cal grads, but Dana has also some Stanford at Crit as well. They were nice to me. I have a little bit of school rivalry there. I went to both schools. You can claim allegeans to both, yeah. Okay, number four. So, Bonobos had been lauded in a lot of fashion magazines for their awesome pants

and jeans, like an Esquire and GQ and very, very spiffy magazines. And you know what? There are so many times in pub trivia where we're asked about iconic magazine covers. Time Magazine, Man of the Year, or who's on this icon. cover and whatnot. So, in 1968, what magazine featured a controversial cover image of Muhammad Ali being pierced by six arrows? Do you guys remember that photo?

Yeah, yeah. What magazine was it? Hmm. I'll guess Sports Illustrated. It is Esquire. Esquire. Was it an allusion to St. Sebastian? Wow, you're really smart.

It is St. Sebastian. He's like a Christian martyr. Right. It was put to death by, as I understand it, or remember, basically he was bound to a tree and shot to death with arrows. And so like that in the religious iconography, if you see the saint with, and usually it's just an arrow or two sticking out, that's St. Sebastian. He's the patron saint of athletes. Okay, last question.

Peronomasia is a form of workplay which suggests two or more meanings by exploiting multiple meanings of words or similar sounding words for an intended humorous effect that is paranoamasia. This is also more commonly known as what? Is it puns? Correct. I tried to look for the root of the word pun. But I think it's just so so old. So old colloquial, but you know, the official or I guess the more technical term is paranomasia. Huh. Yeah. And I threw in this question because if you go to Bonobos's website, you can see that they really win the award for like best pants names. Seriously, grats to this guy who decides on all the names because they're fantastic. They're all really punny. And that must be one of the most awesomest job in the world.

Do you have any good examples? So they have a pair of dark khakis. They call Graham slackers. They're sort of the dark color try the capuchinos. Oh, I like it. No, I actually love puns. Yeah. I do. So there you go. Hope you learn a little bit about our fabulous sponsor, Bonobos. So they're giving good job brain listeners a special 20% offer for new customers using their code. Of course, Smarty Pants. That's perfect. That's perfect.

That's great. That's great. So you can go to www. www. Bonobos.com. That's B-O-N-O-B-O-S dot com and check out all of their great stuff. And the code once again is smarty pants. A space between or no?

No space. There's some nice clothes on there. Check them out. do recommend them. I'm wearing them right now. I was jealous. Yeah, we wish we can wear those clothes. It'd be awesome. Pants for the fellas, shirts and cool styles and unique prints and awesome accessories and completely free and easy U.S. shipping and return and perfect for work for school. And of course, looking smart at Pub trivia. Yeah. So we are recording this episode. Today is Sunday, August 12th. Today is the closing ceremony of the Olympics. And we thought before we wait a

another four years for people getting all caught up in Olympic fever, we would do an episode on the Olympics. But I'm sure we've all heard about or read about the big Olympic news and such, right? But what about all the weird facts and histories that most people don't know about? So for today's show, we're going to specifically talk about the weird, the bizarre, and the lesser known facts and trivia about the Olympics. Woo! Woo!

We have been getting a lot of mail through Twitter, Facebook, an email, asking us, where's the dedicated Olympics episode? Nikki Metcalf on Facebook said, every pub quiz right now must be filled with Olympic questions right now. So how can we help people out? I mean, even leading up, we've, I hate to say it, missed a couple. Olympic questions in the run-up, things like country codes, you know, which we'll get to a little bit more later. Yeah, all kinds of weird. What cities?

Right. Cities to mascots. And predicting one of the big questions at Pub Trivia will be about the Olympics logo. Oh, yeah. The five rings. So we know the colors are, there's blue, there's black, there's red, there's green, and there's yellow. And of course, actually, there's a sixth color, and this is really important. Technically, there are six colors in the Olympic logo.

Which is the white in the background. Right, right, right. Well, I was just going to say I think I might be, I think I see where you go. I remember learning once that those colors were picked because they represented the colors of the flags of the world, meaning that every flag, every flag in the world had at least one of those colors in it. Is that something like that? I think that's the modern interpretation now. I think before they were supposed to represent a lot of the different countries participating in it.

I don't think they were gutting for the whole world. But now I think it is, it is logically. Participating nations, right, right? And the number of rings refers to the five continents. Is that right? The five, well, technically five parts of the world involved in the Olympics at that time. And that was like about in the early 1900s. So that's 1912.

And so the six colors are supposed to appear on all of the national flags that competed in the Olympic Games at that time. Okay, okay. That makes more sense because there probably wasn't a strong fielding team from Antarctica. A, they have white, white's in their flag. And I actually made a little mnemonic to help you remember the colors in order. Obviously, white is not in this mnemonic because that's the background and hopefully... You should be able to remember that.

Yeah. So I'm going left to right, kind of zigzagging. Sort of like it's like in a W shape basically. Yep, yeah. So it's the colors are blue, yellow, black, green, and then red. Blue, yellow, black, green, red. And so my mnemonic is, bludgeon your bladder gets it red. What?

Which is probably true. It's probably true. Bludgeoning your bladder? Bludgeoning your bladder gets it red. So blue, yellow, black, green, red. That actually works pretty well. Bludgeon your bladder gets it red. So there you go.

That's going to show up in a lot of puck quizzes, I bet. I have a general Olympics quiz that I've put together, and this is sort of in the spirit of a sports quiz for non-sports fans, which I've done before. You're lucky because your audience is Dana and me. So the idea is that you can reason these answers out. You can make educated guesses. And because they're Olympics, you know, I think that all of us have at least some fascination with Olympic sports. So here, we'll go right in, and I think you guys do pretty well. Since the modern Olympics started up in 1896, the Summer Olympics.

There have been five sports that have been featured at every Summer Olympics since them, never been dropped. Some have gone away and come back, but these five have been at every Olympic. Consistent. Consistent, that's right. Some of these are kind of wide-ranging. So athletics is one. And when we say athletics, that's what we usually think of when we talk about track and field. So all the track and field, those are all part of athletics.

Swimming is another one. All the swimming events, the number of races has varied. And artistic gymnastics. So the parallel bars and the pommel horse and the rings, those kind of things. So those are three of the five. What are the other two sports that have been at every Summer Olympics in the modern games? Okay, guessing. Wrestling and weightlifting?

Wrestling is a great guess, but no. It was there in the original Olympics, but it has not been in every Olympics since then. It did make a departure for a while. And weightlifting. Weightlifting, also a good guess, but no. One of these is a very classic sport. Rowing. No, also good guess.

It is fencing and cycling have been in every Olympics since the modern Olympics started up again. So let's see. So it's cycling. Cycling, fencing, athletics. Which is track and field. Tracking field, right. Swimming and gymnastics. That's right.

Have not taken a break. You're right. Wrestling was there at the beginning, but it went away for a little while and came back. And tennis was there, in fact, at the very first Olympics, and that went away and came back. I'm surprised weightlifting, wasn't it? Because it seems like... Basic. Yeah, so basic.

All you have to do is have a big rock and see who can pick it up. Or even wrestling. You just have two dudes. Yeah, I was more surprised that wrestling had not been there consistently. Yeah, that would have been my first time. So you don't need a special equipment. You don't really need special... You just need a mat.

And two angry dudes. They don't have to be aimed. angry. So speaking of athletics and track and field, the shot put has been a longstanding Olympic event. It was at the beginning. What is the shot put? Why is it called the shot put? Can you explain either or both parts of that? Shot put. Oh, did it used to be like a cannonball? That is exactly right. Oh, I'm a genius. It basically comes from an old competition that goes back most likely to medieval times. And there are absolute records of cannonball hurling competitions. It was. It basically came from

military kind of training games of soldiers would see how far they could essentially hurl a cannonball, the direct predecessor of our modern shot put. A drinking bet. Oh, of course. And the put, and the put really is just because you're not throwing it overhand like a baseball. You're kind of just pushing it. Because you can't really throw it. It is shot. It is a canon shot. The modern awards that we give out the top place finisher, gold, silver, and bronze medals, that only dates back to the 1904 Olympics. In the 1896, the first games of the modern Olympics, what did the top finishers receive? Oh, it sounds like a trick question. Not a trick question. Not a trick question. Was it just gold and silver? It was just silver. It was just silver to the

first place, copper metal to the second place, and nothing for third place. You get nothing. Right. Now, in addition to the metal, so first place got a silver medal and all of branch and a diploma. Second place got a copper metal, a laurel branch, and a diploma as well. And third place just got a hearty handshake, I'm assuming. This is according to the official IOC records. Yeah. And so weird because we're so trained to thinking that first place is gold, second place is silver. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Just incidentally, they have since retroactively assigned gold medals to those first place people. So when they do these like tallies of most gold medals all time, they sort of updated those original standing.

It's very confusing. Like, they meant gold. Yeah, it's retroactive inflation. What was special about the swimming events held at the 1908 summer games in London? Give us a clue. It was a first. The first time they filled the pool with jello. I wish that were that.

I know. You're in the right ballpark. Oh, man. That was the first. The freestyle jello event. The freestyle jello. The nail bit. That was the.

first summer games where the events were held in a swimming pool. The three prior Olympics to that were not held in a pool. Where were they held? So in Athens at the 1896 games, they swam in open water in the Bay of Z, ZEA. They literally took the guys out on boats, dropped them in the water, and they held the events out in open water with currents and frigid temperatures. In 1900, in the Paris games, you can probably guess they swam in the Sen, which by all accounts was not a very hygienic place to be swimming. So they swam in the sand. And again, having to deal with currents and cold temperatures. And then in the 1904 games in St. Louis, they were in a lake in Forest Park, which at least was contained, I suppose. Oh, weird. Yeah. So a nice little symmetry there with

the games being in London this year. Again, they had the first pool-based swimming events. The following sports have all been demonstration events at the Olympics, except for one. So now, going back to the original games. What is it? What is that demonstration event? So, so, So for most of the games in the early years, and even up well until pretty recently, they would have a demonstration event or sort of a trial event, where it's more for kind of just to show it off and introduce it to the world, see if it maybe would work to be incorporated. And several sports were incorporated from demonstration events into actual events.

Like most recently, I think curling is a good example. Curling in the Winter Olympics started as a demonstration event and then it was incorporated into a full-fledged event. So I'm going to give you a list of five. events. Do they still give out medals? No, no, no. So, yeah, good question. They don't give out medals. They're more just kind of, here, we're demonstrating this event world, see if you like it. So I'm going to give you five events. One of these was not a demonstration event. Water skiing, bowling, hot air ballooning,

horseshoes, and motorcycling. Oh, I want to say horseshoes. That's my guess. Correct. Yeah, good, good guess. Yeah. The one on there that most surprised me was hot air ballooning. See, that is too weird that that's the red hair. You want us to say balloon because it's so weird and that's why it's not. But you remember when we were talking about the duels from the hot air balloons?

Yeah. I mean, it was a thing. It was a thing. Yeah, that was 1900, motorcycling, 1904. Bowling, the most recent, 1988. Wow. I kind of remember that. Yeah.

I was in a bowling league. Men's and women's bowling. We were the worst in the league. We were terrible. So no one on your team went on to the Olympic demonstration. We were little kids, but we were the worst little kids. Do you guys have those little balloons that fill up the bumper balloon? That's fun.

I actually want to do that as an adult. Yeah, we too. They fill up, yeah, you can never ever get a zero. No losing. Yeah, it doesn't matter how much you drink or how low your skill, you're still going to get it and knock a pin down. Yeah. No frills, delivers. Get groceries delivered to your door from No Frills with PC Express.

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I have a couple questions here. I referred to the IOC country codes earlier. And these, I always find these fun. So these are the three letter official codes for each country. And some of them are very obvious. America is USA. And Russia is R.U.S. And so a lot of them are fairly logical.

Some of them are a little more obscure and takes them figuring out. But I think they always make for good trivia questions. Wait, so these are only for the Olympics. That's right. These are IOC codes. And some of them may overlap with like World Championship codes or other things like that. And the list has changed over the years, but this is from the most current list, these are the official codes that if you're watching the Olympics right now, you'll see. Okay.

There are 200 different codes. So I'm going to ask you just a couple questions here. All right. So one of these country codes is ASA, which is American Samoa. Okay, so there are two more palindromic country codes, and I think you guys can get these. These are, these are reason outable. PAP for what country? Papua New Guinea.

No, incorrect. One is in South America. One is in Central America. Ooh, South America, Uruguay. Correct. You are you. Uruguay. Right.

All right, one more. So you got the South. So Central America. Costa Rica. Costa Rica. Wait, what's Costa Rica? C-R-C. Oh, okay. I would be like C-O-S.

Yes, yeah. So we have ASA, American Samoa, C-R-C, Costa Rica, U-R-U, Uruguay. Wow. Did you go through all 200 co-names to find that? Yes, I did. Good job, Colin. Luckily, they're available in convenient table format. All right, one last question here, around the country code.

So I'm going to give you three codes and you tell me what they stand for. Okay. I'm going to give them to you in a list, and you just work on them all of one. All right. T-U-N, T-U-R, and T-U-V. Tunisia? Correct. That's T-U-N.

T-U-N-R is Turkey. Correct. Turkey is T-U-R. T-U-V-V. Tuvalu. Correct. Yes, yes. Good job, guys.

My question is, my burning question is, I remember a while ago, when they announced the London Olympics, people are all really jazz and psyched. And they debuted the London Olympic mascots. Do you remember that? That was like a couple years ago. Yeah, yeah. People were not very happy. They were, I feel honestly like they've just been getting kind of stranger over the last few

Olympics. But this year in particular, he was like, it was like the one-eyed alien, right? They represented the Industrial Revolution or something. That is just way too high concept. I just want a corgi. I want some tiger cubs. Yeah. A corgi. A corgi.

A corgi. Yeah. We're done. Well, we're done. So, what happened to them? I haven't seen any of the mascots. What were their names? It was Winlock.

Wenlock. And Mandiville. Wenlock and Mandiville. Oh, it rolls off the tongue. The mascots, though, are usually kind of my favorite part of the favorite. I enjoy the mascots. Yeah. I mean, it's cute because they do different sports and stuff.

Did you know that the tradition for Olympic mascots hasn't been around since the beginning? It started actually in 19. Oh, that's late. Yeah. Yeah. The Winter Olympics in France were the first time. And that same year, they did it in Mexico City, too. Oh, so what was the first one?

The first one was the skier. It's not like an anthropomorphized. But after that, they got the Red Jaguar in Mexico. That's when it really started becoming the animal trend. And they started giving them cutesy names and things like that. Yes. That's when they discovered the power of merchandising. So I'm going to do a mascot quiz with you guys.

Yeah. See if you remember. But to make it fair, fair for our listeners and a little more, maybe a little more interesting to guess what the answers are, I'll give you all the summer cities since 1968 really fast. So Mexico City, Munich, Montreal, Moscow, Los Angeles, Seoul, Barcelona, Atlanta, Sydney, Athens, Beijing, and London. Ooh, I think I only start remembering from Seoul. Yeah. I think we'll be okay.

All right. We're in this together. Let's rock and roll. All right, let's do this. All right. So this is for Karen. I think you're going to know the answer to this. That means it's a dog.

It's a dog. There were five mascots in the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing in China. Do you remember what they are? They're all pandas. No. What animals were they? A fish, a giant panda, the Olympic flame, which is not an animal. It's a bed and an alope and a swallow.

I just remember the pandas. So which Olympics mascot had Sam the bald eagle? There were two American ones. That was L.A. in 84. Isn't Sam the Eagle from the Muppets? Right. That's true. Yeah, the big blue eagle character. Which one was the first computer-generated mascot?

Oh, what does that mean? Let's see. Computer. I want to say this year is the London ones. No, it was 96 in Atlanta. It was Izzy the what's it. Izzy the what? And it would change its shape.

It would be a boat sometimes or like random. That's a cop out. It's computer generated. So you mean he was just like CGI created or interesting? Which Summer Olympics game had the mascots, Ali, Sid, and Millie? Oh, Ali. Oh, it's got to be Sydney, right?

Yes. Sid for Sydney, Millie for Millennium. because it was the 2000 games and Ali Olympics. What were they? It was a cuckaburra, a platypus, and an echidna. Oh, an echidna. A kidna. There was an unofficial mascot that became more popular than the official mascots,

and it was to make fun of the commercialization of the mascots. It was super edgy. It was a wombat. It was fatso the wombat. Not sanctioned by the IOC. No. Fatso the wombat. So which mascot was drawn in a cubist style?

That is Barcelona 92. Colby the Catalan sheep dog. Nice. A ba-bam. Got it, got it. Of course. When it's a dog, I know it. Picasso being one of the fathers of cubism.

Okay. So this was the most, maybe one of the most famous mascots, according to Wikipedia. So it must be true. So this mascot was drawn by a children's book illustrator and went on to become the first mascot of a sporting event to achieve large-scale commercial success. It was a doll. It had an animated short film, and it was a TV animated cartoon. Oh, man, I don't know. It was 1980. Oh, 80 was, uh, Moscow. Yes. So, oh, so, okay, a red bear of some kind, I don't know. It wasn't a red bear. It was Misha the bear. Ah, cute. It was really cute.

I've seen it around. I didn't realize it was Misha from the Olympics there. Yeah. Good job. You know, as we're getting ready for the show, like doing a lot of research, one of the things that I had the most fun with was like seeing how equipment and stuff has changed over time. Oh, yeah.

Like, obviously the record keeping and timekeeping gets more precise as, you know, clocks and mechanisms get more precise. But, you know, just very quickly, one of the things was, you know, how they had outlawed the special swimming suits from two Olympics ago. They were saying, you know, you're not going to see as many world records being set because they just felt the suits were too good. So I was looking back, you know, we see the track events, the runners into the starting blocks and they're the little things behind the feet that they brace their feet on when they push out.

Do you know what they did before they had starting blocks? Like I assumed this was something that went all the way back, but starting blocks are fairly modern. They really didn't have them until 1929. I would just guess nothing. They would dig holes into the dirt track. And before the start of the track events, they would have travel. little shovels available and each racer would be responsible for digging his there was a man at the time digging his own little holes into the ground that he would dig his feet into to start out of and of course this would leave holes all over the track and it was just no way to maintain a proper running surface so this was just how they did it you'd be responsible for digging your own hole and you would dig out of that like a divet until they had the bright idea of well you know what if we had just a block of some sort that we could actually push off of

The basic principle hasn't changed. They've gone from wood to higher tech materials, and the way they're attached to the track is different now. They probably standardized it a lot better now, right? Because they're all the same model, same make, same way. It's the same model, right. And in fact, if you watch closely, you can see that all of the starting blocks in the modern events, there's a little speaker that's embedded into the track. And do you guys want to guess what the speaker is for? You can probably figure this out.

No one to start? It's so that the sound of the starter pistol. reaches each sprinter at the exact same time so that the person who's closest to the starter pistol doesn't have an unfair advantage. This is how carefully precise they want to be about it. So the speaker funnels the sound, sometimes it's a tone, often it's a starting pistol, so that they each hear it at the same moment. And this is how far the technology has come from holes being dug in the dirt. So I don't know if you guys have been watching beach volleyball. Beach volleyball, very popular sport. For both women and men.

So you know how when they dive in the sand they roll around and they get up and they're spotless like none of the sand stick on them Whereas when we go to beach stands everywhere It's in my mouth And everything and everything And you know for years I've been wondering I was like is this some kind of crazy like tech sand like is it fake when they play beach volleyball They kind of fake a lot of things and you know they have like really bright lights to simulate the sun What about the sand? Why doesn't the sand get into all of their sweaty bodies?

I just assumed because it was just super clean, high, high quality sand or something. I thought they had special Olympian bodies. They don't get special lotion. They sweat differently than we do. Yeah, they're special. Anti-sand lubricants. But no, actually, you're right. It is some of the best sand in the world.

And believe it or not, it is a strictly regulated type of sand. So there's no little stones or pebbles, no shell, all pretty much the same size and weight and shape. And they have people who rake it regularly to keep it not densely packed. It has a nice subtle lemon flavor to it. It's really, this is the cream of the crop in terms of sand. And it's nuts. It's really just very well-picked sand. There are people who go and pick the sand.

Isn't that nuts? That is kind of amazing. You'd think they would come up with some sort of sand. synthetic sand. They've talked about how it would cost so much more to come up with that volume of synthetic sand that they can only use, like, once every four years, then to just hire some dudes raking sand on the side. Well, yeah, I mean, I, in high school, I played volleyball. And, like, when we would go play on the beach from time to time, honestly, we were just happy if there were no chunks of broken glass and cigarette butts. Like, that was pretty much our standard for,

oh, this is good sand. I only saw two cigarette butts. in a Gatorade cap. It's not too much cat poop in this. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Not too much. It's regulated by the International Volleyball Federation. I want to roll through some Olympic sand just to see how it feels like. I wonder if people try and steal a handfuls up, and I bet they do.

I want to. Going on eBay right now. Just get a little jar back. I want to see this awesome sand. They could probably sell that as a souvenir for a lot, little jars of beach sand. Let's write a letter, you guys. Dear London Olympic sand. Can I have some saying?

Also, your mascot should have been a corgi talk. Do you guys know who Sergei Bubka is? Bobka. Bubka. It's fun to say. Bubka. It is fun to say. Boobie.

Sergei Bubca is the current world record holder in Pole Vault. Which one's Pole Vault? Polvald is the one where they have the long stick and you jump up as high as you can and clear the crossbar. So random. It does so random. And they would get so high on this pole and it curls up and they bounce and they fly over. Sergei Bubka is the current world record holder. He is a very, very, very famous Ukrainian athlete, possibly the most famous Ukrainian athlete.

Before the breakup of the Soviet Union, he competed for Russia. But what he's primarily so famous for is being extremely dominant in his sport, more dominant than any other athlete in his or her sport. To the extent that he set the record over 30 times, every time he set the record, he was basically breaking his own record. There was the only time he ever lost his world record at a meet, he claimed it back again in that same meat. So this is how dominant he was, that he was competing against himself for the bulk of his career. So what really interested me about Sergei Babka is the way that he would compete. So since he was just competing against himself, he would basically never jump higher than he had to. So for most of his jumps, he would raise the bar the absolute minimum you could, which is one centimeter at most meat.

because his reasoning was, why jump higher than I have to, if I'm only competing against myself. If you look at his, like, the last 10 times he set his record, it was only by one centimeter at a time. There was the other half of the story came out and makes so much sense now. It wasn't just for competition. It was also financial. So when he was competing for Russia throughout the 80s, there were financial rewards for things like winning events and financial rewards for setting world records. He's a smart dude.

He's a smart man. So he would set a world record at an event and claim his prize. you know, both from the event, oftentimes, and from the Russian government. And then he would wait. You know, there's no need to set another world record until the next event and claim more rewards and more financial payouts from the Soviet Union at that time. In a way, it's very kind of calculating, but I think it's brilliant. He's that good. He's that good. He's that good. And he, I think this should be a term. Like, to pull a Sergei Bubka is to do just the little that you have to do to set a new mark and then wait for somebody else to beat it. What is, in some ways, kind of ironic, he only has one Olympic medal. So he's, He's one of these guys who was kind of cursed at the Olympics. So all of his records come in world championships and other track meets. The first Olympics in 84 that he would have been eligible for, they boycotted the Soviet Union. So he didn't compete. His next Olympic in 88 was where he got his one gold medal in Seoul.

He didn't clear in 92. He had a foot injury in 96 and he didn't clear in the 2000 games and then he retired the year later. For somebody who's considered, you know, the most dominant in his sport ever, he has one medal and it's a gold medal. Have you seen King of Kong? Yes, I was just saying about that. Yes, so I, exactly, I think that in King of Kong, that that is the same phenomenon going on. The world record holder in Donkey Kong had this super high score and then, and so this upstart comes and he gets a better score than the previous world record. And then the previous world record holder has a videotape of himself getting a slightly higher score than that.

And it sounded like there were rumors that he had like a room full of videotapes of himself getting slightly higher scores. And I made that exact comparison when I saw the movie. I'm like, he's the Sergei Bubka video games. So that's Olympic fever talk. A lot of things that you don't hear about. It's very interesting. And we have our final quiz segment. And our final quiz segment is a music round.

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Shop now at IKEA.ca. So we have a music round, and it's a little bit different because I need two-part answers, and I'll tell you the theme. So we know in pop music, there's a lot of songs that sound very familiar, sometimes too familiar. outright rip-off sometimes rip-off sampling inspired by so here i have the original sources and then you have to identify the artist in the song and also what song samples what song famous is okay all right and here we go this first one will kind of wet everybody's appetite Well, range around the floor

Well, that the original is under pressure, which is David Bowie and Queen, I believe a joint effort And famously sampled, if not infamously sampled by Collaborate and listen. Vanilla Ice in Ice Ice Ice Baby. He argued it was different, though. Yeah, that is just one of the most pathetic things. Yeah.

So he would argue it wasn't a sample. Right, right. Because he took out one of the beats or something like that. No, he added an additional note. Oh, sorry, sorry. Bum, bum, bum, baum, bum, bum, bum. You know, vanilla ice was ultimately forced to pay Queen and David Bowie. And they were actually retroactively given the songwriting credit for the

Sample. All right. Second one. You have a holland around a kitchen door. You better not get him in. Little old lady got mutilated day last night. We're wolves of London again. You were first.

Uh, so the original, uh, that I know is, uh, Werewolves of London, uh, Warren Zevon. Correct. The, the piano in particular. And I, I think it was, uh, it was kid rock, right? It was, I'm really ashamed that I know this was kid rock. And that was the one, that was the one where he sampled two songs, right? He sampled, all summer long. Okay.

He sampled both werewolves of London and it was, uh, Sweet Home Alabama, right, Leonard Steiner. Very good. And here's number three. So, I want a new drug When the wall made me sick So is Huey Lewis Yes, and the news Don't shortchange the news, Danes.

I want a new drug? Yes. And then at first I thought it was the Ghostbusters song. Exactly. Wait, what? Correct. Wait, the Ray Parker Jr.? Ghostb-it sounds like Ghostbusters.

Yes. So actually, funny story. The producers of the film of Ghostbusters approach Huey Lewis and be like, oh, can you help us write a song? And at that time, Huey Lewis declined the offer because he was actually working on the soundtrack for Back to the Future. Yes. And so they gave the option.

to Ray Parker, Jr. And when they got the song back, the Ghostbusters theme, Huey Lewis sued Ray Parker Jr. for copyright infringement, claiming that the melody was stolen from I want a new drug. And they actually settled off of court, but there was some... So that's less a sample as more of a copy. Inspired by rip-off. In the style of Huey Lewis.

And here we go. I need love, love to ease my mind. I need to find, find someone to call mine. But mama said, can't hurry love. No, you test up to win. She said love don't come from easy. That's can't hurry love is Diana Ross and the Supremes, right? I forget if a solo or...

The Supremes. Okay, the Supremes. And then the sample... The opening beat sounds pretty familiar, doesn't it? Is it lust for life? Yes. You know, it's funny. I may be exposing my ignorance until just now.

I never really thought about that lust for life. It does. The same drumbeat, it is. Also, relatedly, there's also... There was trouble between the band, the current band Jet with their hip. Yes. You might remember from...

the other one. Well, yeah, from the iPod commercial, Are You Gonna Be My Girl? Also uses that similar beat. So there was some drama between Iggy Pop and Jet because it was so similar, but then there was this information about well, this kind of sounds like the Supreme, so who's really

at fault? And they had to settle it with a steel cage match between Diana Ross and Iggy Pop, I'm pretty sure. I bet Diana Ross won too. She's feisty. It was her song. So no documents have been released. stating whether or not Iggy Pop or Jet, you know, had to pay Motown because this was a Motown

too. Right, right. Very similar, huh? It really is. And last one. They're really rocking in Boston and Pittsburgh, PA, deep in the heart of Texas, and around the Frisco Bay all over St. Louis and down in New Orleans, all the cats want to dance with, sweet little It's a weird one.

Sounds really familiar. Gosh, well, I'm going to go backwards on this one. Are you getting that the song doing the infringing or copying was Surfing USA? Yes. The Beach Boys? Yes. All right. And now, as for who's singing on the first one, is it, was that Fats Domino?

Was it the Big Bopper? Who was that? It was Chuck Barry. Chuck Barry. And the song is Sweet Little 16. When Serving USA came out, Chuck Beer is like, wait a second here. Props to Chuck Berry. He actually confronted the group.

They settled it. And Chuck Berry still holds the copyright rights for Surfing USA. Good. Good. Good. That whole song was Serf in a cover version. There you go. Famous influences.

Inspired by. Based on and inspired by. This other song I really like So that's our show Thank you guys for joining me And thank you guys listeners for listening And hope you learned a lot of weird histories Of the Olympics that you don't really hear about

Or see about That's the juicy stuff that we like And you can find us on Zoom Marketplace On iTunes On Stitcher and also on our website Which is good job brain.com And we're also on Twitter and Facebook So check us out there

And don't forget to go to Bonobos And check them out too We'll see you guys next week Bye Bye. Have you ever wondered how inbred the Habsburgs really were, what women in the past used for birth control, or what Queen Victoria's nine children got up to? On the History Tea Time podcast, I profile remarkable queens and LGBTQ plus royals, explore royal family trees, and delve into women's medical history and other fascinating topics. Join me every Tuesday for History Tea Time, wherever fine podcasts are enjoyed.