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 XXX by correctly identifying the first points the Steelers ever scored in a Super Bowl as a 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 four Pittsburgh Penguins who won gold medals with the Czech Republic at the 1998 Nagano Olympics (Jaromir Jagr, Martin Straka, Jiri Slegr, and Robert Lang) as well as each of their Pittsburgh jersey numbers (68, 82, 71, 20). I was star-struck when I got to be a ball boy for a Team USA soccer game in Hershey, PA, and actually got to feed Mia Hamm the ball for a throw-in....

Ad-free podcasts are here!

To listen to this podcast ad-free, and to enjoy our subscriber only premium content, go to ReadTangle.com to sign up!

You can subscribe to Tangle by clicking here or drop something in our tip jar by clicking here. 

Our Executive Editor and Founder is Isaac Saul. Our Executive Producer is Jon Lall.

This podcast was written by: Ari Weitzman and audio edited and mixed by Dewey Thomas. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75 and Jon Lall.

Our newsletter is edited by Managing Editor Ari Weitzman, Senior Editor Will Kaback, Lindsey Knuth, Bailey Saul, and Audrey Moorehead.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.