Hello and welcome to this day in esoteric political history from radiotopia.

My name is Jody Avergan.

This day, March 1980, President Jimmy Carter announced the U.S.'s decision to boycott the upcoming Summer Olympics in Moscow.

The boycott devastated the hopes of many U.S. athletes, as you you can imagine and there was even more

teeth to this because Carter backed it up with a law that promised to revoke the

passports of American athletes who traveled to the games in violation of this

boycott. This of course was in the larger context of the

Cold War and a particularly interesting moment in the Cold War. We've talked a

little bit on this show about how sports sometimes worked to soften diplomacy between the US and Russia. This was certainly

a moment of taking a much harder stance. And to state the obvious, the question of sanctions and

carrots and sticks to curb Russian ambitions on the world stage is something that is top of mind right now not to mention also

other questions about sports and diplomacy and so forth.

So really fascinating moment here to discuss as always are

Nicole Hammer of Columbia and Kelly Carter Jackson of Wellesley. Hello there.

Hello Jody. Hey there. Poor Jimmy Carter. I mean every single time it's just the worst thing.

Part of this is being a president during the Cold War was probably pretty hard, right?

But certainly one thing I think about with this story is like Carter's troubles and domestic troubles

and some of that have they affected this decision but it's also like you know if his

presidency is going different this plays maybe in a different way or if Reagan takes this dance it just plays in a different way but for some reason for

heart for Carter as we'll go through it doesn't play right and

it and there's there's backlash and so forth but let's talk about the decision itself it does

seem like this was a very tough decision for him Nicky but what else do we need to know about kind of getting to this moment?

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