The Jordan Harbinger Show - 676: The Olympics | Skeptical Sunday

Episode Date: May 29, 2022

The Olympic games hold a place of reverence in the hearts of people around the world. But for the athletes who wreck their bodies and their bank accounts training for years to compete in the Olympics for glory and national pride -- especially the ones who hail from Team USA -- are the games kind of a sham? Welcome to Skeptical Sunday, a special edition of The Jordan Harbinger Show where Jordan and fact-checker, comedian, and podcast host David C. Smalley break down a topic that you may have never thought about, open things up, and debunk common misconceptions. Full show notes and resources can be found here: jordanharbinger.com/676 On This Week's Skeptical Sunday, We Discuss: In spite of the PR boost nations get whenever their teams win medals and the influx of cash brought in by the games, the United States is one of the few countries that doesn't spend a dime supporting its Olympic athletes. A so-called non-profit, the US Olympic & Paralympic Committee brought in $317 million in revenue in 2018, including $122 million in broadcast revenue, which resulted in $48 million in profit. The CEO made $800,000 in compensation. 60% of the athletes who train full-time for years to have a chance at competing in the Olympics do not consider themselves financially stable, often relying on low-paying gig economy jobs to fund their journey. For Team USA athletes who win medals, the USOPC pays out $37,500 for gold, $22,500 for silver, and $15,000 for bronze. In contrast, Singapore rewards its athletes with $1 million for gold, $500,000 for silver, and $250,000 for bronze. In 2012, half of the track and field athletes made less than $15,000 per year, while the track and field CEO earned $1.2 million in 2018. In 2012, US News and World Report found it cost around $100,000 per year to be an athlete in the Olympics. Connect with Jordan on Twitter, on Instagram, and on YouTube. If you have something you'd like us to tackle here on Skeptical Sunday, drop Jordan a line at [e-mail] and let him know! Connect with David at his website, on Twitter, on Instagram, on TikTok, and on YouTube, and make sure to check out The David C. Smalley Podcast here or wherever you enjoy listening to fine podcasts! If you like to get out of your house and catch live comedy, keep an eye on David's tour dates here... See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This episode is sponsored in part by Conspiruality Podcast. You know how I'm always talking about critical thinking and spotting manipulation? Well, there's a podcast that's all about dismantling new age cults, wellness grifters, and conspiracy med yogis, basically the wild overlap of spirituality and misinformation. It's called the Conspiruality Podcast. The hosts, a journalist, cult researcher, and a philosophical skeptic, dive deep into how this stuff spreads, from Project 2025 and the Heritage Foundation's dystopian vision of the future to how former leftists get pulled into far-right conspiracies.

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Find Conspirality on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever you do. get your podcasts. Welcome to the show. I'm Jordan Harbinger, and this is Skeptical Sunday, a special edition of the Jordan Harbinger show where fact checker and comedian David C. Smalley and I, we break down a topic that you may have never thought about, we open things up, we debunk common misconceptions, topics such as why the Olympics are kind of a sham, that's what we're going to tackle today, expiration dates and why they're nonsense, or why tipping makes absolutely no sense. Got a lot more coming up as well. Normally on the Jordan Harbinger show, we decode the stories, secrets and skills are the world's most fascinating people, and we turn their wisdom into practical

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Today on this edition of Skeptical Sunday, okay, I realize the Olympics have been over forever for months now. They're not coming back for a couple of years. That is not going to stop me from complaining about them given the opportunity. And today, I have that opportunity. Besides, not everything has to be timely, especially our rants about things we all hold dear, such as the Olympics. I used to watch and be a fan of the Olympics up until recently, and the more I learn about it, the less I like what I see, what I read, what I'm hearing. You know, I've never been, when they were in Atlanta, in whatever, to the 90s, I was so close, I wanted to go. I've never been able to go, and I wanted to grab tickets.

And it turns out, it's actually really, really hard to go to the Olympics, and it's kind of fraught with the most non-political, event on the globe, supposedly, is now fraught with political consideration. So I wanted to talk to you about it, because I know you've got some thoughts on the Olympics. Yeah, the tickets alone. I think the cheapest tickets are between $2,000 to $3,000. I mean, it's insane. And I looked into a little bit some of the ticket fraud issues, and there were people who were charged $3,200 for some tickets, and then never either got to go or it said it included the opening ceremony and it really didn't. This was after they booked their flights and booked their hotel. And then they start trying to get their money back and they're like, sorry, says no refunds.

And trying to sue like a nonprofit that is working through a ticketing agency. Who do you sue the ticketing agency or the USOPC, which is technically a nonprofit? It's just so like, I don't know. It's a very shady situation. But I've sort of, I say sort of boycotted the Olympics for quite some time now. just originally, just based on how poorly they treat the athletes from America. And I don't mean these foreign nations treating Americans poorly. I mean America treating our own athletes like absolute garbage.

And as a kid, you know, you watch these folks on TV and you just look up to them. And you're like, wow, they're doing it. And they're out there. They're on your Wheaties box, man. Yeah, they're like our modern day heroes. And looking back on it, I'm like, yeah, that guy was getting paid. that one guy got paid by... By Wheaties.

Yeah, not by America, by a long shot. And so I really started diving into it and it was shocking more and more. And then I noticed a couple of things come out saying that like the profits were down 40 or viewership was down 43%. People are boycotting not only because of, you know, the past Winter Olympics with Beijing, but just in general. And I'm like, wait, I'm not the only one with this issue. Yeah, interesting.

I start diving in and it's like tons of people have a problem with how poorly are athletes are treated. I would love to get into this because I didn't know until recently that athletes didn't get paid. I figured we had an Olympic program that was funded by tax dollars and things that go to sports. I mean, we have cultural offices and things like that. You know, I assume their training was paid and once you made Team USA, they fed maybe housed and clothed you with sponsored goods and your training was free. And it looks like it's kind of the opposite. It's almost like you have to have enough money just laying around to not have. have to work and to buy expensive stuff.

Absolutely. Let me say unequivocally. Athletes do not get paid. There is no salary for athletes. The only way they make money, there's a couple of different ways they make money, but the primary ways they can make money is if they win a medal.

And America is one of the few countries that has nothing to do with funding its athletes. All of the funding comes from what's called the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee, which is the US OPC for the rest of this conversation, because that's a mouthful. But 60% of Olympic athletes do not consider themselves financially stable. What does that mean?

Most of them do jobs like DoorDash, Uber, Lyft, things like that, just to make Innsmeat. Oh, man. But they have to do those kinds of jobs to keep their schedules sort of flexible because of all the training they have to do. I want to be careful not to be like, oh my God, it sucks. They work for DoorDash, Uber and Lyft services I use literally every single day. Those are jobs that people need to do, but it is a little weird that somebody who's like, gee, I hope to bring home a silver medal or a gold medal in, I don't know, skating or something

like that is like, here's your crappy Chinese food you ordered because you drank too much and now you're hungry. Like, that's not good. Exactly. And I think the issue is not that those jobs are bad jobs. And I'm with you on that. Those jobs are very important jobs. And those people were essential. And that's a great thing. And I use those services all the time. But the issue is, if we want our athletes to go perform well and be good representatives of the country, they need to be training six to eight hours a day, six days a week. They need to be able to focus. They need to not have to worry about where their next light bill is going to come from or how they are going to afford DoorDash if they need a meal, you know? Yeah, no kidding. I don't want our sprinters sprinting

from Pan-Express to my house as part of their training regimen. Right. And look, it's not to say that the USOPC doesn't have the money. In 2018 alone, they pulled in 300,000. $17 million in revenue. $122 million of that was just broadcast revenue. Oh, so like NBC buying the rights to put it on TV? Yeah, absolutely. Or licensing. So anytime you buy a little toy that has the Olympic circles on it, the US OPC gets paid

for that. And in 2018, they raked in enough money to have $48 million in profit. Wow. But they are a non-profit. So they tend to put that money either into their employees or in terms. to programs, which I'll get into in a minute, which seem a little bit shady. Programs sure sounds like paying athletes to train. You would think.

You would think. But I guess it's not. No, no, no. And that's where the money comes from. It's sponsorship. It's licensing. It's broadcast rights. So anytime you see the Olympic thing, like, you know, Toyota, a proud sponsor.

Right. Yeah. Whatever. Whatever. It's they pay for that time, but they also have to pay for the licensing to use the Olympic logo in their commercials. And so little figurines and people that are jogging around the block will buy a headband that has the Olympic logo on it to support the Olympians, and that money is not going to the Olympians. It's awful. That's crazy. So who's getting the money? Like, where is the money?

You mentioned programs and people. That's a great question. So programs, I'll get into the programs in a sec, but like, so according to the Orange County Register, the USOPC spent $20 million more on employees than athletes in 2019. They spent more than $24 million on legal expenses just in the last two years with dozens of sex scandals and abuse accusations. The CEO alone made 800,000 in compensation. But the athletes, there's only really three ways to make money. Direct sponsorships on their own that they have to go get on their own, usually performance based. And if they're super popular, you know, like a Serena Williams or someone, they can go out because they have the name. Two, prize money. Prize money typically happens as they're working up to the Olympics. So you have

these side competitions that you enter, you have to pay to enter, by the way. You pay this entry fee, and then if you place fourth or fifth, you just don't win any money. But if you win first place, you might win 10 grand here and there for those side competitions. And then number three, winning. Like I said, the USOPC does pay if you win a gold medal. Ready for these numbers? Yeah. Strap in. Okay, this is where the big money is, right? The winning a gold or silver medal. Yeah, you think. You're about to pop this bubble. I can see it in your face. for a gold medal. What?

22,500 for a silver and 15,000 for bronze. Now, some people may go, hey, that's one medal. It's at once every four years, first of all. Oh, good point. It's day after day after day of working without getting paid for this. So 37,500 for a gold medal. Sounds like a lot. Singapore pays $1 million for a gold medal.

That's more like it. They pay $500K for silver. They pay $250,000 for bronze. So you're better off being a gold medal. a bronze level athlete in Singapore than a gold medalist in the United States of America. This is crazy because if you think about it every four years, right? So let's say I win four gold medals because I'm just ridiculous. I'm the best figure skater or snowboarder that the country has ever seen. I'm now making about as much as I would, probably less than

I would if I manage like a reasonably busy Trader Joe's grocery store in the area. Absolutely. Wow. And to compare to other countries for gold medal prizes, France pays seven 33,000. Italy pays 201,000. Hungary pays 156,000. The Czech Republic pays 110,000. And the athletes in America just get these really small stipends. So like there are some sort of tiny little stipends here and there that you have to apply for like a scholarship or whatever. It can come from the USOPC or other governing bodies like the USA swim team has a swim USA, which is a governing body that sort of helps manage these types of things. One athlete on the U.S. Women's Roe team reported making less than $2,000 a month in stipends during the entire time during the Olympics.

A member of the fencing team reported $300 a month for her stipend. This is insane. I actually, it's funny, you just reminded me, I have a friend who I met at a party who was on the crewing team, so Roe crew team and, or crew team, and she won bronze. And I can't remember when it was, you know, 2012 or whatever it was. And she showed me the metal. She had brought it to the party because she was giving a little bit of a talk or something like that. So she brought the metal to the party. And I've never seen a medal. So I was like, I want to see that. Yeah, yeah. So she busted out of literally a plastic grocery bag. And I was like, this is what, why are you keeping it in this? And she goes, well, I do have a case, but it's like kind of annoying to carry it with me

and this bag is easier. And I'm like, you should probably have like a nicer bag for your metal, because this thing could rip. And she goes, funny. It has ripped before. And I was like, doesn't that freak you out? What if you're, you know, you drop it on the ground? She goes, see that dent? This is from when I was biking with it and it fell out of the bag and it fell on the ground. And I was like, why are you biking with your metal in a like a thank you carryout bag?

You know those white bags that say like, thank you. And I'm like, what are you doing with this? This is like a bag you get from, yeah, again, from Panda Express or something. And she goes, I don't have a car. And I said, why not? And she goes, well, I can't afford one. I work at a grocery store right now. I said, so you're on the team that had the best or third best, I guess, in the whole world

at rowing, and you can't afford a car and you work at a minimum wage job right now. Your metal is being kept in this plastic bag. And it made me feel kind of a little bit ashamed because, again, there's nothing wrong with having these jobs. But the idea that you can be the best in the world or one of the best in the world at something and then still have absolutely no compensation from it at all other than teaching. Like her best thing was teaching summer camp, rowing summer camp. That's like how she made enough money to not be super poor for the rest of the year.

Yep. Because she can't work even full time at the grocery store. She's rowing. It just sort of makes you feel a little ashamed to be in a country where we treat our athletes who bring us a lot of glory, kind of crappy. We treat them kind of crappy. Yeah. Once you reach that gold medal status, that's essentially, if you don't go out and reach,

you know, Usain Bolt type status, which most people won't, You're basically what they primarily do is go coach at whatever it is that they do. And when we lived in Texas, my daughter was in gymnastics and one of her teachers was a gold medalist. Wow. Minimum wage at a gym teaching, you know, six-year-olds how to tumble. It's not to insult them. It's to say we should treat them better than that. You know what I mean?

In 2012, half of the track and field athletes said they made less than $15,000 a year. It's just so unbelievable. Yet in 2018, the track and field. CEO made a salary of $1.2 million. I'm a free market guy, so I get this in a way, but also we really are forced, we're undervaluing these people, and we're doing it not by the market. This is forced, this is forced, because we're refusing to value what these people bring to the country, and we're, I'm guessing there's some sort of longstanding lie about how they're going to be great with endorsements afterwards, which isn't true unless you're like Sean White. That, but we've also sort of, I hesitate

to use the word brainwashed, but we've sort of cultivated this idea in our culture that these people are heroes. You want to believe that and you want to lift them up and you want to congratulate them for that. But then that's sort of the payment. You feed your ego and you get to be this person who is on top of the world representing America, but it's so hard to share that enjoyment with them and celebrate with them when you see what they've had to go through and how bloodied and bruised they are and how much they have to fund their own trips and their own travel and their own equipment, which I can get to in a second. They have to pay for everything. Like everything that you see they're paying for. It's hard to be happy with them when I'm looking at them going, it's literally

the carrot and the stick. And the carrot is a gold medal. And don't you want this shiny prize while this CEO is making $1.2 million, while this organization's bringing in $312 million, while these massive sponsors are raking in millions upon millions of dollars in revenue from the ads they're running. And these executives are raking it in, while the people that were actually interested in watching are being treated terribly. And it's just, it's hard to be happy for them even when they do well, you know? This is like when someone says, I'll pay you an exposure, but it's like that on steroids, although probably shouldn't say that. We're talking about the Olympics. Somebody might get a little calm down Russia. That's not what I mean.

I was, well, Russia's not even allowed to participate in the Olympics. Sorry, ROC. Sorry, Russian Olympic Commission or the committee. I did watch the cross-country skiing in prep for our conversation. I watched that. I was like, let me just watch from the beginning. And there's like 44 people that ski for 17 miles. And some of it is uphill. How do you ski uphill? You ask? Well, they're basically running with They're sticks, and it looks absolutely brutal. And there's 44 of these people just like trudging along in the snow. They get up around the spot, and then they slowly start to go down a ways,

and then they get right back uphill and have to go trudging along again. And I'm just, when it zooms out, and I'm seeing them all, just kind of bob along, and I'm like, you're destroying your bodies and you're doing this all for other people to make profit while you chase this shiny gold medal, and my heart breaks for them. I don't mock them. I don't make fun of them. they are brutalizing themselves for the chance of being the best at something that once this is over, very few people are going to care about. And how do you take this on to do something else? And it's one of the reasons I pulled my daughter out of gymnastics because I'm like, I want you to spend your time doing something else, not wreck your body until you're 16 years old and then have nothing to show for it, but a chance to go make somebody else millions of dollars.

It just that blew my mind. I wanted her to work on her mental state and how she could become her own content creator and focus on that in college and generating revenue and understanding business school as opposed to destroying her body like so many gymnasts do. You know who won't tweet mean things about you even if you fall three times during your routine? The fine products and services that support this show. We'll be right back. Thank you for listening to and supporting the show. I love the fact that you all are enjoying skeptical Sundays. In fact, a lot of you are really upset about these skeptical Sundays, which tells me we're doing it right. all of the sponsors, deals, discount codes, everything, all in one place. Jordan Harbinger.com slash deals is where you can find it. You can also search for the sponsors using the search box on the website as well,

so please consider supporting those who support this show. Again, that's Jordan Harbinger.com slash deals. Now, for the rest of Skeptical Sunday. What do they have to pay for? Do we at least, is the USA gymnastics team, or are they at least paying for the coaches, for example, or does the athlete also have to pay for that? That's a great question. So Lauren Williams is one of the most decorated track and field and bobsledding superstars that we have on our Olympic teams. Quite the combo. She was the first American woman to win medals in both summer and winter Olympics. And she once said that she, as highly decorated as she was, she would make about $200,000 a year. But she said 200,000 becomes less than 100,000 really quick with all of our expenses. So what kind of things do they pay for? Well, first of all, every Olympic athlete has to be.

to be a part of what's called a club. So a club fee would be like, for example, in the U.S. swim team, if you're not paying your club dues, which for the swim team is $5,800 or so per year. Wow. If you're not paying to be a part of the club, none of your times count. You won't register and you won't be ranked in the country in order to even qualify for the Olympics. So like, for me, the one hobby I have outside of fact checking and making people laugh

who are drunk in Little Rock, Arkansas, I bowl. One thing I do, I love bowling. Well, if I go out and bowl a 300 during a game, it won't count unless I'm a member of the USBC. So I have to pay my annual dues. I have to pay my weekly dues. Every time I go bowl, I have to pay. If I don't pay, and then I break some world record, the world record doesn't count. So you have to pay your dues. So just five grand a year, just for the club fees alone. And then every time they travel, If you're going to go to some sort of qualifying competition in Colorado and you live in New York, you got to buy your own plane tickets. You got to pay for your own hotel.

You have to pay to enter the competitions. You have to pay those fees, the entry fees. It's like gambling on yourself. Yeah. At a chance to win the 10,000 to be the best out of these 37 people, they're all taking your money to pay and you're all fighting for that number one spot. The vast majority of people leave with nothing. You have to pay for your own coaches.

The USOPC does not pay for coaches. There's some coaching available, but if you want a dedicated coach for you, they don't just provide it. You have to pay that. It's usually upwards of about $100 to $200 per hour for coaching. You typically have to rent your own gym time. There are some USOPC dedicated practice facilities where you can reserve time, but it's so backed up and it's so full. A lot of times you have to go rent time somewhere else. You got to pay for that.

You got to pay for a dietitian. You got to pay for massages. You got to pay for nutritionists. And 20% goes to your agent, by the way. And on top of that, not only are you, this money that you are bringing in is going out to all these other places, but you have to buy your own equipment. When you see people holding their rods and their skis and their goggles and the whole uniform, they have to buy those things. The one thing I didn't know about this going into this, which I learned as part of my research, is that they actually have to buy their own bobsled. That's ridiculous.

I know. They have to buy it. And it's about 30 grand for one of those bobsleds. And you're like, how, how, how can someone live working part-time jobs here and there, afford this stuff? More and more Olympians are going to crowdfunding, going to like GoFundMe and stuff like that. And our men's bobsledding team got really creative with it. They did what's called the Bob Spread.

They literally posed shirtless, and these are good-looking guys who have great bodies. They posed shirtless to raise $75,000 for all of their collective equipment, including the bobsled itself. So they had to sell a bunch of calendars and yeah, they hit their goal. They actually made their goal and then some. But now you have the crowdfunding these athletes and the USOPC profiting from it and paying their executives millions. It's just brutal. So, okay, they're not getting paid. They have to pay for their own stuff. So there's negative pay, right? It's like they're going into debt to do this and often not really, unless they get serious endorsements, they're not coming out the other side. What else do they have to put up with? There's got, that can't be the only

inconvenience or drag on these poor folks? Look, you would think, in most situations, when you're funding it, you've heard the old adage, it costs to be the boss. When you're funding yourself, you're an entrepreneur, you're generating the revenue, you get to say how things go. In fact, it's the opposite. These people are funding themselves in order to essentially be an employee to generate profit for another organization. And they have to go by these ridiculous restrictions. I don't know if you heard about the women's volleyball players, especially the beach volleyball. They have the the size of their bikini bottoms regulated. They can't be more than six centimeters wide at the hip

and no longer than six centimeters long. So if they're constantly like, you know, digging their thong out of their butt crack, it's because the Olympic Committee demands that that's what they do. The men's shorts are also controlled, but they are controlled to be a minimum of 10 centimeters above the knee or the top of the kneecap. Huh. So the men get to wear long shorts. The women have to wear these tiny thongs that are just barely covering themselves. And of course, it's, you know, sexualized. Yeah, that's weird. Because obviously there's no function where it's like, hey, look, you know, when people jump in shorts, they can't get as much air. Because if that were the case, then dudes would be digging their thong out of their butt on TV also. Absolutely. Absolutely. Because

you know, guys especially will do anything to get just a little bit of an edge over someone else. So clearly it's not a function. Yeah. If you told guys they had to play volleyball with like a fig leaf duct tape to their crotch. They would do that if they thought it would give them an edge athletically. Absolutely. Anything for the gold medal. That's got to be a crap feeling, though. Like, you're one of the best in the world, and they're like, what we want, though, is for more people to watch, and in order to do that, you have to show more of your butt on TV. And it's like, this is the last thing I want to fucking worry about right now. It's so demeaning. They even control, like, of course they can't make political statements, which I kind of understand. And they can't do any sort of protests,

You know, like the whole fist on the podium thing from the 70s. They're not allowed to do that. But gymnasts are not allowed to wear bright fingernail polish, only neutral colors. Why? Do we know? That doesn't make any sense. They said anything that would be a bright color to be distracting from the uniform. Okay, sure.

These people are training, like I said, six hours a day, six days a week. There's constant injuries. The USOPC estimates, and I quote this, a near 100% injury rate. So basically, you're going to get hurt during the 11. You're going to get hurt. The pay is going to be ridiculously low and basically no social life. So especially for teenagers. You're talking about sacrifices some of the best times of your life for this grueling physical

work that will likely have no payoff whatsoever. Unbelievable. So not necessarily injured during the Olympics. Sorry, during your training for the Olympics at some point. Training or the side competitions, yeah. Or getting ready or working out for the training. There's tons of injuries. Where do you go for that?

It's not like we have banging health care in this country, right? Right. No, that's a good point. So look, again, I'm usually a free market guy here. So is this just a function of, and it unfortunately doesn't sound that way, but is this just a function of, look, these don't generate a lot of cash? Like maybe the Olympic Committee generates a lot of cash, but there's, look, they've got a ton of employees, they've got to pay, those people need benefits. That's their actual job. They don't get any glory. Or is it that there are sports that rake in tons of cash? And they just said, you know what? We can get away with not paying these people. So that's what we're going to do. Where does it lie? great point. It definitely a little bit is tied to how much that sport brings in. But like, for example, people will talk about the NBA versus the WNBA and they say, well, men are paid unfairly because the NBA players make more than the WMBA. I'm just as egalitarian as the next person. But if you look at the profit margins of the NBA versus WMBA, the NBA makes a ton more cash so they can afford to pay more. So if the WMBA players were demanding NBA salaries, the WMBA would literally go out of business. They cannot afford that level of salary because they're not bringing that much

money into the sport. And so you would say that that's the same with Olympics, but even the high dollar sports are not bringing in that much cash. But I do have a quick list here for the top earning sports. So as a business decision, I want to know, should we cut some of these out and then start actually paying salaries to the top earning sports? It's something to be considered if you're going to treat this fairly. So the top earning sports are $6 million. is what's brought in for the U.S. ski and snowboard team. Okay. 2.1 million for bobsled. 2.1 million for speed skating. 3.9 million for track and field. 3.4 million for the swim team. These are the people we see on the Wheaties boxes, right?

These are the people we see in the commercials. 2.2 million for gymnastics. I thought that would be much higher. I thought gymnastics would be the top because I feel like that's the only thing anybody watches that I know. Or maybe I just know a bunch of gymnastics fans for some reason. Yeah. For some reason, the ski. Keeing and snowboarding, I think, has more, has different types of events where the long jump and the flips and the, it's just cool to watch them do all the big flips and they're doing it 40 feet or 60 feet in the air as opposed to, you know, off of a dumble track. So maybe it just, anything that's more dangerous probably is going to be more eyeballs on it.

Maybe they just attract more sponsors because there's more crap you have to buy to go skiing and snowboarding versus gymnastics where apparently you're not even wearing shoes, right? You can't even wear nail polish. So where are you going to sponsor? Like, here's a brand of chalk that I use to do flips. Right. That's a great point, man. You can't put a whole lot of sponsorships on that jersey. But you and I could just go skiing. You know what I mean? We can go pay for the stuff and just go skiing. We're not going to go on a balance beam anytime soon. No, that's a good point. No, iron crosses for me. On the flip side, the golf federation that participates in the Olympics, $26,000 is all they're bringing in. The roller sports, $50,000. The handball team. What are roller sports? Is there rollerblading in the Olympics? It's not rollerblading. I think there are, I don't know. Literally don't even know what sport that is. I guess that's why it doesn't earn a lot. I thought there was going to be some sort of skating.

Yeah, I know. It doesn't earn a team handball. I know what handball looks like. I've never seen handball in the Olympics. It brings in 81,000. Tennis only brings in 90 grand. That surprises me. But U.S. Batminton brings in more than tennis.

Batminton is 131,000. And then synchronized swimming is 156,000. I'm surprised that synchronized swimming even brings in that. I mean, that's six times or whatever more than golf. That's shocking. I don't understand these economics. Yeah, I don't either. Okay.

So when you think about that money coming in, the millions of dollars that do come in, how are you going to divide that up among the people? Yeah, I don't know. So here's what the USOPC says they do. This is their claim. $33.2 million was spent on direct-to-athlet payments. Okay. Now, that sounds like I've been lying to you this entire time.

Right, that sounds like they're getting paid. Yeah, okay. Yeah, 33.2 million direct-to-athlete. Here's how they classified direct-to-athlet payments. 14.3 million to 1,479 athletes, which averages out to $9,600 per person. I didn't realize there were so many athletes. I guess that's the problem.

If you'd ask me how many athletes do I think there are, I would say under 200. Yeah, I would have guessed a little higher than that, but well under 1479. I mean, sorry, for televised sports under 200. Of course, we're not talking about the roller sports that we couldn't even identify in golf that I didn't even really realize was the Olympics. Like, I'm not thinking archery.

I'm thinking of like the ones, sorry, I guess in the top earning sports. But even if it's 600 or 500, whatever, it's not 1,479, which that surprises me. That's so much more than I thought. Right. Which is why it's only, even if they did do it, it would only be $9,600 each. And I promise you, not every athlete is even getting $9,600. They also classify part of that money as $7.6 million toward health. insurance, of course they have deductibles and other things that are out of pocket

expenses for the athletes, $4 million in metal support. I could not find what even that means. Metal support. I do not know what that means. 5.3 million in metal bonuses, and that was along from the Pyong Chang Winter Games, and then $2 million on tuition and career assistance. That's a little suss. I agree. So those are not direct to athlete payments. So the numbers that they, And then if you even pull up the financial form that they released, that's where I'm literally copying and pasting into my notes from that form. That's all they say. There's no further explanation. There's no three or four deep dive pages to explain what health insurance coverage they get. That's all it says. 7.6 million health insurance. That's all it says. Metal support. That's it.

There's no explanation for what metal support is. So maybe we would have to, you know, talk to someone at the Olympics and see what kind of answer we could get. But yeah, the money is being spread so weirdly that it's hard to even track, yet we know those executives are cashing in, making either near a million or over a million dollar salary per year. I know a lot of people boycott at the Olympics this year or said, you know, I'm not going to watch it. I'm not going to go there. It's in China. People were calling it the genocide Olympics because of China's treatment of the Uighurs. That had to put a dent in the money available for everything from direct to athlete payments to everything else about the Olympics this year.

Absolutely. When I mentioned at the top of this that the viewership was down 43%. I actually saw that on a YouTube channel by Lauwai 86. Yeah. He talks about viewership being down 43% because people are calling it the Genocide Olympics. And it's mostly due to China and their treatment of the Uighurs, as well as the seven forced labor camps, seven forced labor camps that are within 12 miles of the Olympic Games. He actually shows a map and shows where all of these are, which, by the way, that's an entirely different. topic for another skeptical Sunday. I definitely want to get into that and address that at some point. We could tie tons of projects or tons of products back to those camps, whether it be iPhones or diamond rings or tennis shoes or whatever. There's all kinds of things we could address and go, you know, are we being proactive by actively supporting humanitarian causes and recycling and doing things that we think are good? But where's that money going and where's that product coming from? You know, I get to ruin everything for everybody. But at some point, we need to No, I like that. I want to do that. I want to ruin everything for everyone. That's the whole point

of this particular segment of the Jordan Arbinger Show. We got our work cut out for us. But those athletes, he shows in the video, athletes from these most recent winter games, posting videos of their apartments completely flooding. Like water pouring down from their light sockets. And it's kind of like when China built those two quick hospitals, remember, during the spike of COVID? Yeah, yeah. They put them up, like, so fast it made our heads spinner. It was like, wow, we were praising them. But then immediately there were plumbing issues. There were walls were crumbling.

There were issues because they rushed it and used cheap materials. The same thing is happening for these temporary barracks they built for the Olympic athletes. It's bad. I mean, literally water pouring from electrical outlets. I saw that. The finish, I can't remember. A Finnish athlete was like their whole thing is flooded. Here's photos.

And they made her delete those. Yeah. So everybody that was there had was forced to download a certain app to do all of their posting. And China's removed well over 41,000 posts. Wow. Anything that said anything negatively about the Olympics they were deleting. And they've banned over 800 users across multiple platforms just for telling the truth about the conditions in Beijing. And he even shows evidence of warnings to not eat the food provided.

Like this is coming from official committee members in the United States saying, do not eat the food provided because they're not only concerned about American athletes being malnourished, They're concerned that it, and this is the quote, it may contain banned substances. So they were concerned something about what was going on was making our committees concerned that China may intentionally put banned substances in the food that they're serving so that our athletes would test positive for substances that they weren't allowed to have. That would not really surprise me, given how bad Beijing wants to look, or I should say, Xi Jinping wants to look compared to the United States and the right.

rest of the world. Plus, I saw photos of the food and it looks horrendous. It looked disgusting. It was like fire fest. So disgusting. I mean, it's bad now. And what I've seen, I've seen pictures, different pictures from what the Chinese athletes are fed from what other foreign athletes are fed. And that's an interesting issue because is it true? Are the Chinese athletes being forced to eat the same crap everybody else was having to eat? But they were just showing different pictures because, you know, they don't want any trouble from their government or are they actually being fed better food, and now that's a whole new issue to address, right? That's totally different. It wouldn't surprise me if they were eating better food,

but it also wouldn't surprise me if they were eating the same crap and just weren't a lot to say anything about it. They were being sent photos to share, you know, or whatever. Right. Which sounds super conspiratorial, but when you see what's been going on with Beijing and with Xi, you know, like you said, it wouldn't be surprising at all. Propaganda looks like that. Yeah. And it's not uncommon from North Korea, China. And frankly, often from the United States, we have our own version of propaganda, but usually it doesn't involve telling an athlete to post a picture of food and say that it's good or bad. It's a little bit too micromanaged. We don't have that kind of infrastructure in place

quite yet. Like Lauwai 86 says, and I encourage people to go watch his video, there's tons more info there. But he talks about how it completely backfired on China. They wanted to sort of show how superior they were and how amazing they were. And some of the concept drawings would show like this ski jump, right, amongst these beautiful mountains and snowy hilltops, but instead they're right next to these factories with like smoke coming out everywhere. And what he's saying is like they were kind of proud of this. They're saying, look, we're not poor. We have all of these industrial workers and plants and factories.

And like we're supposed to be impressed by that. But the concept drawings looked like it was going to be this beautiful scenery in nature. And it's just not the case. So my whole take on this is until America starts helping with the funding, paying a fair wage to athletes and ensuring their proper care overseas and fair play, like the whole issue with the doping from the ROC, I think we should all remain very skeptical of the Olympics. David, thank you very much. No more Olympic plans for me. I'm out too. Thanks for having me, man. As usual, I've got some thoughts on this episode, but before I get into that, here's a preview

with a former undercover FBI agent who infiltrated the Gambino crime family in New York for nearly three years, resulting in the arrest and conviction of 35 mobsters. And get this, he's not even Italian. Here's a bite. Jordan, I've done everything. I mean, I have posed as a money laundry. I've worked as a drug dealer. I have worked as a transporter for drug dealers. I worked as a warehouse guy. The whole gamut. My career was 24 out of 26 years. We're solely dedicated working on the cover. If I wasn't working for the FBI, I would have been investigated by the FBI. Exactly, yeah. Now, I walk in, I'm in the bar. Now, there's a barmate there, good-looking young lady. She's serving me a drug. Yeah, what would you like? I used to leave my drink was,

give me a kettle, one martini, three olives, a glass of water on the side. I finished the drink. The guys come in. I'm going to go, go in my pocket, take out the big water money, that knot with a rubber band on it. Bam, I'll give her $100. You're not a guy. who takes out a little leather wallet and he's going through the change or he's doing it. Can you imagine four gangs are sitting around going, let's split it up. I had the soup. He had to sandwich and french fries. What about the set?

Sometimes we get into bidding work. That goes, hey, your money's no good here. What are you doing? You're embarrassing me over here. What do you mean? You paid the land. Let me get to. Forget about it.

You pay for it. If I would have gone in there and became a guy who had never a penny, never went into his wallet, never picked up a. tab, never had a dime, never kicked up money, never gave tribute payment. That'd be on my ass, they throw me out. If you're with the mob, I say, hey, Jordan, you're on record with us. That means we protect you. Nobody could shake you down. We could shake you down, but you're on record with us. For more, including tricks wise guys used to know who's legit and who's not, mob culture and the rules that govern the always upward flow of money, and how Jack became so

trusted by the highest levels of the organization that they offered him the chance to become a made man. Check out episode 392 of the Jordan Harbinger Show with Jack Garcia. Another one in the can. Thank you all for listening. Many of you did get back to me with positive feedback and suggestions for Skeptical Sunday. That's where a lot of these ideas come from. So please do keep those coming. As I mentioned pretty much every week, these episodes probably aren't something we're going to do every single week, but we'll see what shakes out. It really does depend on a lot of different factors around here. Now I have no life. I have two kids, so I'm just creating shows and changing diapers all day long. Topic suggestions for future episodes of Skeptical

Sunday are always welcome. Email me Jordan at Jordan Harbinger.com and give us your thoughts. A link to the show notes for the episode can be found at Jordan Harbinger.com. Transcripts are in the show notes. I'm at Jordan Harbinger on both Twitter and Instagram. Or just connect with me right there on LinkedIn. Love chatting with you there. You can find David Smalley at David C. Smalley on all social media platforms at David C. Smalley.com, or better yet, on his podcast, The David C. Smalley Show, links to all of that in the show notes as well. This show is created in association with podcast one. My team is Jen Harbinger, Jace Sanderson, Robert Frogerty, Ian Baird, Millie Ocampo, Josh Ballard, and Gabriel Mizrahi. Our advice and opinions, they're our own, and yeah,

I'm a lawyer, but I'm not your lawyer. So do your own research before implementing anything you hear on the show. Remember, we rise by lifting others. Share the show with those. you love. And if you found this episode useful, please share it with somebody else who needs to hear it. In the meantime, do your best to apply what you hear on the show so you can live what you listen, and we'll see you next time. This episode is sponsored in part by Something You Should Know podcast. Finding a new great podcast shouldn't be this hard, so let me save you some time. If you like the Jordan Harbinger show, you'll probably like something you should know with Mike Carruthers. It's one of those shows that makes you smarter in a practical, useful way.

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