All right, the Winter Olympics are just a few weeks away. We watch these people with a mixture of shock and awe.

I mean, how does anybody do what they do? And you also ask yourself how they manage to monetize what they do so they can afford to keep doing it.

But this isn't anything new. What's equally amazing is the origin of the Olympic Games and how those athletes

made a living. More than 2,000 years ago, these guys performed almost entirely in the nude,

so there were no sneakers to sell. I'm Patty Steele. Making a buck off sweat equity. That's next

on the backstory. This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed

human. We're back with the backstory. When you watch world-class athletes compete, like in the Olympics,

aren't you blown away by how physically perfect they look? So jealous. Now, honestly,

they're just making the very most of what they have, and they're doing their best to make a buck off

of it, right? If you think about it, who wouldn't? Well, it turns out there's a backstory about

that motivation to look and perform at your very best and also get some payback,

and it goes back thousands of years to ancient Greece and the ancient Olympics.

The original Olympics took place in Olympia, Greece, every four years, from 776 BC to 393 AD.

That's almost 1,200 years. By comparison, the modern Olympics have only been around since 1896, just the past 130 years.

What's interesting, those ancient athletes performed in a surprising way.

On top of that, they and their trainers found a way to make a lot of

money off their physical perfection. I guess it's kind of like our star athletes do today, only way

different. Now, today, athletes pretty much agree that their uniforms are totally about feeling good

about themselves physically and mentally so they can perform at their best.

You really have to look at them in their body-hugging uniforms and think about how crazy amazing they look and the work that it takes to get there.

So where did it actually all begin? Well, it goes back to those original ancient Olympics. Almost 3,000 years ago,

those guys, even then, were all about showing off their perfect bodies. And believe it or not,

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