Hear Me Out: The Olympics Are a Tool of Oppression

Slate Debates

Slate Podcasts

Society & Culture, News

4.6 • 3K Ratings

🗓️ 6 August 2024

⏱️ 43 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

On today’s episode of Hear Me Out: opening ceremonies (and a can of worms). We come to you midway through the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris. But amid the patriotism, athletic prowess, and sheer spectacle of these games — the most watched and streamed to date, by some measures — there’s also concerns about geopolitical power, human rights abuses, and the facilitation of facism. MacIntosh Ross of Windsor University joins us to talk about the uglier facets of the Olympic Games. If you have thoughts you want to share, or an idea for a topic we should tackle, you can email the show: [email protected] Podcast production by Maura Currie. Want more Hear Me Out? Subscribe to Slate Plus to access ad-free listening across all your favorite Slate podcasts. Subscribe today on Apple Podcasts by clicking “Try Free” at the top of our show page. Or, visit slate.com/hearmeoutplus to get access wherever you listen. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is Hear Me Out. I'm Celeste Hedley. We come to you in the midst of the 2024 Olympic Games.
0:08.0	So far we have seen record-breaking athletic performances, amazing sights from the beautiful city of Paris, and staggering TV
0:15.7	viewership numbers.
0:16.6	The opening ceremonies drew 41.5 million viewers, basically doubling the numbers from the last summer games, which were in Tokyo.
0:25.0	It's hard not to feel a twinge or maybe a surge of patriotism
0:30.0	when the athletes we send to compete do well.
0:33.0	That's even more the case for host nations,
0:35.0	as we'll find out soon enough when the summer games come to LA in 2028.
0:39.0	But if you peel back the spectacle, the pride, the history, and just the sheer impressiveness of it all,
0:46.4	you might find some stuff that's pretty ugly.
0:49.1	So are the Olympics really a force for peace and unity, or is that just what the International Olympic Committee wants us to believe?
0:56.5	When you take a look around kind of the path of destruction created by the Olympic Games,
1:01.6	I think most people don't even know what's happening
1:03.4	first of all or that it has happened. Macintosh Ross joins Hear Me Out to show us the
1:09.2	dark underbelly of the Olympic Games. Stay with us. things money. Revolute lets you spend in over 150 currencies with great exchange
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1:46.0	Welcome back to Hear Me Out. I'm Celeste Hedley.
	...

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