Hi, I'm Annamarie Cox. Welcome to With Friends Like These.

This is our Olympics episode and more specifically our Olympics gymnastics episode and even more

specifically our fan-girling Simone Biles episode. And I have to say if you do not know who

Simone Biles is, I would like you to pause the podcast, go over to YouTube, look at some

videos and come back. Alright, now we're all on the same page. All of these topics fit

squarely into the wheelhouse of With Friends Like These because the first two Olympics

and gymnastics are, let's say, problematic faves. And because Simone Biles epitomizes

a lot of what I want this show to be, empowering and joyful, thought-provoking, meaningful.

I'll be talking to Alyssa Ronig from ESPN Magazine about all of these topics. I do want

to give you a quick content warning because we do discuss the Larry Nasser Sexual Abuse

scandal. And if that's something you don't want to hear right now, I hope you come back

some other time because in the end what this particular episode is about is about reclaiming

your power and expressing the joy you feel to the world. Alyssa Ronig talking about Simone

Biles and other things coming right up. Alyssa, welcome to the show. Thank you so much

for having me. I'm glad to be here. We are not speaking to you from Tokyo. Although

you are covering the Olympics, that's the first weird thing about the Olympics this

year, right? It is and it's, it is weird for me personally. This would have been my

eighth Olympics and I am covering it from home in California. And as a company, we made

decisions around how many people we would send. And personally, I made a decision that

I did not want to travel to Tokyo. And it was a really tough decision to make, but I am

happy with the decision. Let's talk a little bit about how this particular Olympics is so

different, right? I guess first of all, there's the pandemic, which is what the reason you're

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