From executive producer Isaac Saul, this is Tangle.

Tangle.

Good morning, good afternoon and good evening and welcome to the Tangle podcast, the place where you get views from across the political spectrum, some independent thinking and a little bit of our take. I'm your host for today, managing editor Ari Weitzman, and I'm giving you a lot of my take today. I'm going to be talking about the Winter Olympics, some of the reflections that I had from watching it,

from the athletes who competed for our country, and the controversy that surrounded the Olympic men's hockey team. I don't really have anything else to talk about today other than that. So,

I'm going to dive right into it. This piece is written in three parts, so let's start with part one, sports in America.

Ever since I was a little kid, I've loved even-numbered years.

Because I absolutely love the Olympics. They combine my two

truest boyhood passions, sports and America. I was a sports obsessed little Pittsburgh kid.

When I was nine, I won a contest at a local video rental store ahead of Super Bowl 30 by correctly

identifying the first points the Steelers ever scored in

Super Bowl as a blocked punt safety. Before I even entered junior high, I'd been to several dozen

Penn State football games with my dad and probably about a dozen wrestling meets. I can still name

the five Pittsburgh Penguins who won gold medals with what was then called the Czech Republic

at the 1998 Nagano Olympics. Yammer Yager, Mardi Strzraka, Yuri Slager, Robert Lang, and Jan Herdina, as well as each of their jersey numbers, 68, 88, 8, 22, 71, 20, and 38, respectively, no need to fact check me. I promise that's right. I also remember being starstruck when I got to be a ballboy for a team USA soccer game in Hershey,

and I actually got to feed the legendary Mia Hamm for a throw-in.

As a small editor's note here, it came to my attention during fact-checking that Joseph Baranick

played eight games of the Penguins in 1998. I stand by my comment.

I was also a very patriotic youngster.

My first favorite toy was a puzzle map of the United States. In third grade, I cried in class when they showed us a video about Arlington National Cemetery that ended with a montage set to Lee

Greenwood's God bless the USA. In fourth grade, I went through a serious American flag phase.

My school photo that year was me in an American flag sweater against an American flag backdrop,

and I chose both of those things. A part of me still enjoys these boyhood passions today.

...