Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me! - HTDE: Torches and Ski Jumps

Episode Date: February 4, 2026

Mike and Ian are back, just in time for the opening ceremony at the Winter Olympic Games in Milan/Cortina. Olympians and Starfleet Captains share how to carry the torch, fly through the air, and mentally prepare for the big games.You can email your burning questions to [e-mail] To Do Everything won’t live in this feed forever. If you like what you hear, scoot on over to their very own feed and give them a follow.How To Do Everything is available without sponsor messages for supporters of Wait Wait…Don't Tell Me+, who also get bonus episodes of Wait Wait Don't…Tell Me! featuring show outtakes, extended guest interviews, and a chance to play an exclusive WW+ quiz game with Peter! Sign up and support NPR at plus.npr.org. How To Do Everything is hosted by Mike Danforth and Ian Chillag. It is produced by Schuyler Swenson and Heena Srivastava. Technical direction from Lorna White.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

This message comes from How to Be a Better Human, a podcast from TED for the self-help skeptic. Hear how you can laugh more in your everyday life, explained with science, insights, and hilarious stories. Listen to How to Be a Better Human wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, everybody, it's Peter. Coming up, our sister podcast, How to Do Everything, is back. They're once again tackling your trickiest questions with a lineup of special guests and overqualified experts, including your favorite Winter Olympians. If you have enjoyed listening to How to Do Everything, be sure to follow the show in their own feed, and happy listening.

The Winter Olympics start this Friday in Milan, Cortina. We would play the Olympic theme right now, but we're not allowed, so you're hearing this. U.S. ski legend Ted Liggety is there. He's covering downhill skiing for NBC. He's online with us now. So, Ted, you just got in, right? Yes, we got it flew into Milan yesterday. I'm up in Bormia right now. We actually got on the race hill today. It snowed a good

six, eight inches. So it was more of a powder day than real training for that. I mean, it's up there today. It's a lot of snow to clear off. Did you ski it today? I did ski down the downhill track, yeah. So if you have a gold medal, they just let you go down the slope whenever you want. Is that the, is that how it works? Yeah, we're in Italy. They know who I am. I had the right credential. That's fantastic. So what's it like to go down an Olympic downhill course when you have no threat of having to compete. It's this, so, Borneo downhill is one of the nastiest downhills in the World Cup. It is a pretty scary downhill.

With eight inches of snow and not having to race it, it is a joy. Yeah. Yeah, it's funny because I like skiing, but when I watch Olympic skiing, I never think it looks like they're having fun. It doesn't look fun the way you're doing. So I would say if you're like really on top of it, If you're like on the top of your game, it's fun. Nowadays when I look at it, I'm five years removed from racing.

There are very few days that look fun. Most of it looks pretty scary. Do you feel that, that lack of training after five years that gaped, your legs and knees feel like, oh, dude? Yeah, my wife jokes that it looks like somebody popped a balloon when she looks at my butt now. I'm definitely not anywhere close to as strong or prepared to do any of that stuff. stuff as I once was. Yeah. I don't know quite how to ask this, but one thing I'm curious about when I watch competitive

skiing is it seems like the way you win is by pushing as close to the limit of failure as possible. At any given time, how close are you to crashing? Oh, anybody who wins had to take some risk. People who risk it too much have very short careers or short seasons. So you're always trying to find that right line there. And in a downhill or super G-course, like five degrees of difference over a role and be the difference between being on the perfect line and winning

and, you know, burritoing yourself up in the fence and ending your season. So it's a fine line. That feels like good slang for me when I'm watching over the next couple weeks. He burritoed himself in the fence. Yeah, you'll see it. The fence is just like rapid its way around him and there'll be the meat in the middle. So you competed in the 2018 games in Korea where it was unusually cold. Can you tell us some of the things you did to keep warm?

For most of the biggest difference was that our boots would get really cold. So when our boots get cold, it makes the plastic really stiff. So we brought like a propane heater to the start. And I would stand just close enough that it would get the plastic warm but not so close that it would melt the plastics. That was always like a fine line there. We read about battery-powered pants. Can you tell us about those?

Yeah, we actually tried that a little bit before Korea. I didn't end up using them because I don't like having too many battery packs and things to bust around with. I think, like, yeah, of course, like super heating your muscles before you go is probably an athletic advantage. But, you know, just walking around my copper-wired pants is not super comfortable. No, it doesn't sound like a... Well, okay, we read. read something that some skiers, we learned about this specific to ski jumpers, that they use jet lag to an advantage. When I say that, does that mean anything to you? That's news to me. I never

felt like that worked out so well for me. The theory, I think, is that their bodies are relaxed. Ian, help me out here. That there's a lot of nerves that are involved in making yourself go off a ski jump. And if you're a little bit jet lagged, your nerves are calm, which is a lot of allows you to kind of operate purely on muscle memory. Okay. I don't know that theory. I've skied a lot of races, jet lagged. Sometimes it worked.

Sometimes it didn't. Yeah. Actually, after the Olympics in 2006, it was right after I won my first gold medal, I'd never won a World Cup race before that. We flew to Korea a couple days after Olympics. You know, I got my own room because I won the Olympics. It was like my first time ever rooming by myself. and I slept through the first race there.

And I got woken up by my physio and a security guard, like thinking that something happened to me. And then the next day, I won my first World Cup. So maybe I needed that extra bit of rest and was going on the special Muslim memory there. Wait, you missed a race you were supposed to be at? Yeah, I slept through the race. I woke up at noon, you know, the race had already happened. And then the next day, you know, luckily there's two races in Korea that time.

I won the next one. That was my first World Cup victory. I just think about, like, I've overslept and been like five minutes late to a Zoom call, but to miss a race at the Olympics, like what? Well, this is a World Cup race. Okay. The race after Olympics, but World Cup races are the same level of competition as the Olympics. Yeah. So what, like, when you realize what had happened?

Oh, I was pretty pissed at both myself, but also our hotel is at the bottom of the mountain. So, you know, at 7 o'clock in the morning when I didn't show up for breakfast and at 8 o'clock in the morning when I wasn't there for warm up and 9 o'clock in the morning when I wasn't there for inspection, there's a lot of like touch points that somebody should have realized that I hadn't shown up yet instead of noon after the race is already done. I wonder if this other competitor was like, oh, crap, Liggett, he's here today. If they were mad that you didn't sleep in for that second race. No, I went to lunch after the race is over, and I had just woken up so it was my breakfast, and people that had just heard what happened to me, and they're just, like, giggling at me. Yeah, I bet. All right, so you've won so many medals. You're there at the event.

You're holding on to your gold medal. You step off the podium. What do you do with it? It's on your carry-on bag. You don't check it. What's funny is, like, you leave putting your carry-on, and it looks pretty funny in a... X-ray machine. So 100% of the time when I travel with my medals, they take it out of security. No, really? They're like, oh, what's this? What's in your back? Oh, cool. That's the best case scenario

right there, right? Like, what's the point of having a gold medal unless you could show it off to people? You don't want to be obnoxious. You want them to discover it. And then you're like, oh, well, now that you've asked. Yeah, exactly. Watching on television, the sounds you hear are really cool, like the scrape of the skis on the snow and the ice. But are you grunting a lot during a giant slalom race? When things are going really well, you're not grunting. When things are a little off, you're grunting a lot. That's good to know.

So it depends. I mean, there are racers that make more of a concerted sound every turn than others. Yeah. There are some people who are known as grunters. Yeah, and sometimes you almost like make, you know, the sounds just to like get yourself into it. I don't know. Like you make all the sound effects sometimes. And then, you know, if you really get offline, you might curse to yourself, which ends up being out loud.

Yeah, I mean, there's always like the moment where I see the skiers get airborne. And that feels like a real moment where a curse might come out where maybe you got a little more air than you expected. Maybe if you're like backslap. Otherwise you're like, ch-o-w. Wait, what is back-slap? Backslap is you're like laying in the backseat and like your back slaps against the snow

and then you might be like, be-te. If that happens, you just pop back up and keep going? In the perfect world, yeah. Wow. In the less perfect world, then no, you don't pop right back up. Well, Ted, thank you so much for talking us through all of this. Yes, it's fun.

This is How to Do Everything. I'm Mike. And I'm Ian. As we speak at this very moment, the Olympic torch is making its way to Milan for the opening ceremonies on Friday. It's been carried by hundreds of athletes and stars throughout Greece and Italy. Everyone from the two guys from heated rivalry to an Italian basketball player, none of us have ever heard of.

Mike and I once talked to, in our opinion, the greatest torchbearer ever. we're going to play that for you now. Sir Patrick Stewart, what was that experience like? It was a really very emotional experience. I was not prepared for that. The sidewalks were deep right up to the walls of the shops and buildings and stores, people hanging out of windows on the scaffolding of building sites, on rooftops even, the enthusiasm and excitement

and the hunger for people to see the torch and to touch it and to get close to it was quite extraordinary. We watched some video of you carrying the torch, and you looked pretty fit. I wondered, did you work out? Did you prepare for this knowing you were going to be running with the torch? Yeah, I work out anyway. You know, I had 17 years in California,

and, you know, you work out or die in California. and I gave up running, but I really got into power walking, which is what I do, at least three times a week, maybe four times a week. But running is another issue. I don't run anymore. So I did go into trading. I was running half a mile, given that I knew I only had 400 meters to go. And I thought if I run half a mile, I can comfortably run with a torch in my hand, 400 meters. But I got off the bus. I was the last one to be dropped. I got off a bus at the bottom of a hill. And my 400 meters were entirely uphill. Very unfair, given that I was arguably one of the oldest people to carry the torch this year, I think. And a knight, no less. You would have thought, wouldn't you, that the knighthood and my great age, combined with the fact that I am Jean-Luclouc Picard and Professor Xavier,

they would have arranged it more comfortably for me. So can you describe the torch for us, how heavy it is, what it looks like? Well, you know, if you will just bear with me for one second of silence, I know silence is anathema on the radio, but you keep talking for, I do mean two seconds. Okay. Oh, oh. Because I now have in my hand the Olympic torch, which I carried on that day, and I'm just taking it out of its beautiful canvas. bag that it was given to me in. And I am holding my hand this beautiful. I think it's brass,

honeycombed, elegantly shaped torch. It's unmistakably a torch. Wait, don't they need that for the Olympics? Okay, I'm going to let you in on a huge secret. There are lots of them. Every runner gets his own torch. Every runner, and I think there have been over 8,000 relay torch carriers. So, um, A lot of these were made, and they give you an opportunity, if you wish, to purchase your own personal torch when your run is over. And it's a beautiful object, and I'm going to think of some way of mounting it, and it has a scorch mark at the top where the flames came up. And, you know, I may charge visitors. I may let them run around my garden carrying this, and there'll be a small payment.

which, of course, I will donate probably to NPR. Oh, excellent. Thank you for that. But it has been decommissioned, so you can no longer light it. It won't flame anymore. Well, now, we're a how-to show. So now, if you could, could you kind of give us, like, maybe a couple tips on how to carry the Olympic torch? Yes.

First of all, with gratitude, I would say, that you're doing it at all. and then I think it needs a good arm elevation with a slight bend in the arm, but for safety reasons, you need to have it well above your head. However, I would recommend you guys are young, aren't you? You're really youthful. You could probably keep the torch in the same hand. I had to switch hands two or three times because I'm holding it in my hand now, and I would say it weighs six,

Oh, all right. Okay. You're not impressed, are you? I can hear you're not impressed. Well, you're going to feel that after some distance, I would think. Exactly. And I would say maybe the one other piece of advice I would give, and I think this is very important, try really hard not to fall over. That seems good, yeah. I think so. I think perhaps that's maybe the best thing that I can pass on to any of your listeners who find themselves Olympic torchbearers in. the future, try and stay upright if possible. Was there anything the Olympic organizers told you that you couldn't do while carrying the torch?

Well, indeed, we, all of us signed four pages of restrictions. One thing I think you're carrying a torch, if you were to see maybe an elegant woman pull a cigarette out of her purse, are you allowed to walk over to her and say, let me get that for you? Only in your dreams. Yeah. No, all of that is really frowned on. It is there as a symbol of the Olympic flame carried from Athens. And the flame stays a light all the time.

Yeah. Even I was the last one to run before lunch. So instead of transferring the fire from one torch to another torch, It was transferred to an oil lamp, like an miners, like an old-fashioned miners' oil lamp. And that was kept burning all the way through lunch, and then the next torch was lit off the oil lamp and so on. And I find that a rather beautiful and touching symbol, the idea of the eternal flame. Well, Sir Patrick, thank you so much for talking to us about this. And thank you for carrying the torch for the Olympic Games.

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But science is getting closer to truly understanding what drives autism. It looks like there are hundreds of genes that are involved. To find out what the research actually says about autism and what we still don't know, Listen to Shortwave in the NPR app or wherever you got your podcast. Hey, if you've got a question for us, Olympic related or otherwise, could be anything, yeah. Get it to us at how to at npr.org. We will do our best, our very best, our Olympic best,

to answer any question you send our way. You might get a gold medal in good questions. Or you might get a bronze. You might get a bronze. Try and work harder. Yeah. Wait, we're the ones who need to work harder. We're actually competing in the answer to,

vision. Oh, fair enough. The people are talking to right now. Got it. I'd like you to cast your memory back about 10 minutes to when we talked to Ted Liggity. The Olympic skier. Yeah. All right. We asked about this thing that we had read about how ski jumpers try to get jet lagged because it actually helps calm their anxiety. We have a ski jumper on the line with us now to ask him about this. Kevin Bickner is on the team in Milan. Kevin, is this a real thing?

I wouldn't necessarily say that the tactic is using it to an advantage in the sense that you want to be jet lagged for your competition. One thing I did do in 2018 was our events were so late at night. You know, I thought, why adjust all the way over to where we are? You know, you get home from your event. I wouldn't hop into bed and go to sleep and get an early start the next morning. I would then hang out and do stuff, maybe go eat dinner after midnight, get to bed at like 3 o'clock in the morning. And then I would sleep in until 10 or 11 in the morning. So you just maintain your USA sleep schedule.

You're on that clock. That particular event, yes. I think this is a sport where when I watch it when I watch the Olympics, I'm wondering, what is going through an athlete's head through the whole process. So like when you're about to go, tell me what's in your head. Typically, I would think of the changes I have to make on the hill to make my jump better to have a further jump, a jump that's more technically correct. And what would one of those things be, just for example, are you like jump earlier,

jump earlier, jump earlier. What does it sound like in your head? Yeah, pretty much. You're just going over in your head again and again. Like, this is what you need to do, do it. So it's like five seconds, right, that you're in the air, something like that? Have you ever had a thought during that five seconds where you're like, dude, why am I thinking about tortellini soup right now? Not often does that happen, but I do remember one time that was ski flying.

So ski flying jumps are twice the size of the Olympic jumps. And typically with a good jump there, you're in the air for about 10 seconds. Dang. So that's a lot of time to be going through your head. And I remember when I was a little kid, I was watching a ski flying video with my dad. And he was like amazed at the 10 seconds. He's like, that's enough time to read a book. And so I remember one time I was in the air for a long time.

And, you know, 10 seconds of that air time. And you're not, like, doing a whole lot. You're just kind of stretching out and trying to hold it for extra distance. And, you know, I did have, like, that entreatened thought where, like, damn, this is, I'm up here for a long time. This is enough time to read a book. At least, like, go through, like, half a page. Like, that's a lot of air time. Yeah.

You found out, you qualified four days ago, right? Four or five days ago, is that? Yeah. So you weren't sure if you were on the Olympic team. until five days before we're talking to you. Did you book your plane ticket, or did you wait until you were sure? No, thankfully, we don't have to book those plane tickets.

The USOPC takes care of that for us. Nice. Although my parents and girlfriend both booked their tickets months ago. Oh, nice. A little bit of a disappointment if I didn't make the team, then they would have those tickets to Milan. I'm sure they'd still go. Hey, I mean, come on.

It's pretty great. Well, Kevin, congratulations. I'm making the team, and we'll look forward to watching you in Milan. Awesome. Hope I can put on a good show for you guys. Well, that does it for this week's show. What'd you learn, Ian? Well, I learned, Ted Liggity told us when we talked about grunting and stuff,

that a lot of times the skiers will just be making the sound effects of skiing while they're going down the hill. Yeah. Which is, you look at these people in there are so strong and tough, but that's adorable. that like literally they're going 100 miles an hour and saying like, whoosh. This is like learning that when a fire truck passes you by, inside, the firefighters are in there themselves saying, yeah, wee, weo, weo, weo, yeah.

If you ever watch an F1 race, had to think they're like, mew, meow, meow. I learned that the Olympic torch, you know, you see it on TV and one runner, hands it to the next run. They light the next runner's torch and they move on and it feels like this continuous thing from Athens all the way to the host city. I learned that they take a lunch

break. That is kind of burst the bubble a little bit, doesn't it? I like that they keep the flame going during the lunch break. Well, but it changes your opinion of the Olympic torch if you think that at some point someone's using it to make smoors. I bet that is

the most delicious. If there's ever a performance and dancing smore. It's the Olympic smore. Yeah. It's weird to say the singular of smore, I realize. Yeah, you're right. Yeah, you're right. But why, you don't want more, you shouldn't eat more than one, right?

It's, of all the foods I've ever had, it's the food that you least want more of, which is weird that it's called a s'm more. But also, I think it's worth noting a smore is a thing that if it owned, if it possesses something, it may be the only word in the English language that starts and ends with an S-apostrophe or apostrophe S. Is this your Nintendo Switch?

No, it's the smores'-z. How to Do Everything? It's produced by Skyler Swenson with technical direction from Lorna White. Our intern this week is the U.S. Olympic team. Some of the music you heard in this show was from Moby Grades. We'll be back next week

with more Olympics coverage and more of the non-Olympic stuff we do. Yeah, you can send us your questions. We promise. We'll look at them. How to at npr.org. I'm Mike. And I'm Ian. Thanks. On ye gods with Scott Carter,

here from the faithful. I told my very Catholic mother that she needs to meet Jesus. The faithless. I just so don't believe in God. And the fearless. Serve people. connect with people. That's how we thrive. If life's a mystery, we investigate, who done it? I pray that the humor god. Listen religiously to ye gods with Scott Carter, wherever you get your podcasts.

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