99: US vs Them: Sports on the World Stage

BackStory

History, Education

4.7 • 2.9K Ratings

🗓️ 26 January 2018

⏱️ 54 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This year’s Winter Olympics have already seen their share of drama -- and political jockeying -- and the games haven’t even begun. So, BackStory is digging into the history of the power of international sports. We’ll discuss how sports have been tangled up in what’s going on off the field, from Cold War politics to Americans’ sense of ourselves at home and abroad.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Major funding for backstory is provided by an anonymous donor, the National
0:04.4	Dowment for the Humanities, the University of Virginia, the Joseph and Robert
0:08.5	Cornell Memorial Foundation, and the Arthur Vining Davis foundations.
0:12.6	From the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, this is backstory.
0:25.1	Welcome to the show.
0:26.2	I'm Brian Balla, and I'm Ed Ayers.
0:28.5	If you're new to the podcast, we're all historians in each week.
0:32.4	We explore the history of one topic that's been in the news.
0:36.5	Russian athletes have dominated the Winter Olympiads, but this year, the ever-formative
0:42.4	Russian Olympic team banned from the 2018 Winter Games in South Korea because of prior
0:48.3	systemic dopeing.
0:49.3	Well, today the UN ambassador said it's an open question whether the United States will
0:54.0	participate in the Winter Olympics in South Korea.
0:57.1	Is it an open question?
0:58.1	Is that now and now?
0:59.1	An Olympic first tonight for North and South Korea, they'll play together.
1:04.1	A united women's hockey team.
1:07.8	The 23rd Winter Olympics is about to open in Pyongyang, South Korea, and given the tensions
1:12.7	in that peninsula, the event has something of a cold war feel to it.
1:17.1	Our first story takes us back to 1980.
1:20.2	It was tough times for the United States.
1:22.5	The Soviet Union had just invaded Afghanistan, and the United States was in the dying days
	...

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