This is an all-ers English podcast, episode 2244, Summer Olympics 2024, part 2, The Contraversy.
Welcome to the All-Ears English podcast, downloaded more than 200 million times.
Are you feeling stuck with your English?
We'll show you how to become fearless and fluent by focusing on connection, not perfection with your American host Aubrey Carter, the Isle Twizz, and Lindsey McMahon, the English Adventure, coming to you from Arizona and Colorado, USA.
And to get your transcripts delivered by email every week, go to allearsenglish.com, forward slash subscribe.
What are the hot controversial topics that come up when it comes to the Olympics?
It might be politics, economics, or something else.
Listen in today to get six topics that you need to be ready to discuss in English.
This podcast is sponsored by Indeed.
When it comes to hiring, don't go searching for the one, just meet your match with Indeed.
Get unparalleled access to job seekers with over 350 million monthly unique visitors globally, according to Indeed data, and an extended reach through Glass Door.
And Indeed doesn't just help you hire faster, 93% of employers agree, Indeed delivers the highest quality matches compared to other job sites.
According to a recent Indeed survey, and listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility at indeed.com slash AEE.
Just go to indeed.com slash AEE right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast.
Indeed.com slash AEE. Terms and conditions do apply.
Need to hire you need Indeed.
Hey, Lindsay. How's it going?
Excellent. Aubrey, how are you doing today?
Excellent. I'm really enjoying watching the Olympics.
And I'm excited that we're going to talk about it today, especially about some of the controversies that make for really interesting conversations.
Yeah. I mean, you know, this is when we built our course, the Connected Communicator, we got into controversial issues because at your level, guys, this is what you want to be talking about.
You're no longer reciting sentences like the table, the pen is on the table, right?
Exactly. That cliche expression.
We're not doing that anymore, right?
We're going way beyond that in English.
And we are connecting. We're talking about politics.
This is what we want to get into.
I know we have a big political season coming up this fall.
And we might get a little bit into that too, but this will be a warm up, right?
In order to learn how to talk about controversies.
So, Aubrey, we've talked some on the other English podcast about phrases you can use when something's controversial, when you know you might not see eye to eye, right?
We got into diamond mining, the environment issues that are sort of hot button issues where not everyone agrees.
And this is sort of the other side of the scale where there are controversies where there are like indisputable facts about something that happened that there's a reason it's controversial, right?
Not everyone will be okay with what happened or there's just like red flags for some of these things.
So it's interesting to talk about with people, but you do also have to have some of the facts ahead of time.
It's important to just be like, what do you think about this when you don't have a lot of information?
Oh my gosh, yeah, for sure.
So today's episode is just a broad survey of what are some of the issues around the Olympics.
And then in the next edition of this Olympic series on all our English, we're going to talk about how you would approach this topic, right, Aubrey?
We're going to go into, so we're going to guide deeper into one of these issues and give you guys the phrases you could use to bring up that conversation, follow up questions to see how you can use it to connect with someone.
And so definitely hit follow here so that you don't miss the next installment of this series.
Yeah, I am excited to give our listeners the tools.
But first, let's see what's going on in the world, Aubrey.
What is going on? What is the first big controversy?
I think this one is a little less well known, but you were in Salt Lake City when this happened.
I lived. So it's one, right?
It feels really well known to me.
There was a bribery scandal with the Olympics in 2002 for the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City.
And what happens is the Olympic Committee when they were making a bid to host the Olympics, they were bribing the Olympic, the Salt Lake City was bribing the Olympic Committee.
And it ended up causing this huge problem, 10 members of the International Olympic Committee either resigned or were expelled for accepting cash and gifts.
And it sort of changed the way Olympic bids happened.
They've cracked down on this.
So in this corruption, they're trying to make it so that it's not so possible to sort of bribe your way into hosting the Olympics.
Okay, good to know. So this was back in 2002.
So hopefully things are less are more bribery proof.
I guess, right? And the scandal broke in 98.
So that's kind of fascinating how long before often it's a decade before a city hosts the Olympics, that they're putting in their bid, who, you know, the people being chosen because it takes so long to prepare to host the Olympic.
Isn't that crazy? Oh my gosh.
And we'll get into that, you know, hosting the Olympics towards the end is another topic.
But the next one is transgender athletes.
And the important thing to know here is that the International Olympic Committee is moving more towards kind of respecting what people feel is their gender.
Okay. And how are they doing that?
Aubrey, what's going on just in January of this year, 2024, the International Olympic Committee issued new guidelines on transgender athletes.
So in the past, they required athletes to undergo hormone level modifications.
They have removed that.
They're no longer requiring these.
They're goal. They now have these principles they're describing as grounded on the respect for internationally recognized human rights.
Their aim is to make sure that every Olympic athlete is treated with respect has equal human rights.
And so the goal is to no longer make them prove or give evidence of some of these things of these, you know, the hormone therapies that they're doing.
Yeah. And this is a 100% a topic that comes up.
Right. So I've had instances where I've been talking to family members and they're curious about the topic wanting to know what I think or what my friends think about it.
And so you absolutely will get into this conversation.
Absolutely. It's brought.
It has come up a lot for me too because friends, children are competing against transgender athletes in schools and high schools and colleges.
And so it's not just at the Olympic level, right?
This is something that a lot of people are interested in and not everyone agrees about how it should work.
Yes. Okay. Number three, I'll break what is the next one?
Doping. What is doping?
I mean, that is a verb, right?
Aubrey? Is that a verb that we have?
Yes. Exactly. Right? Doping.
I guess it's a noun here because it's like the act of doping, right?
So this is when there's use of performance enhancing drugs.
And this happens a lot in sports, steroid use.
The first Olympic athlete, this happened way back in 1968.
The first athlete to test positive.
But at the time, it was just alcohol.
He said he had two beers, so steady his nerves, but that also was not allowed.
So, but then sometimes it's more systematic.
Right. Lindsay? Yeah. And doping is an issue not just in, you know, the Olympics, but other sporting events in different sports for sure.
And so that's a really interesting one.
And we'll see which one we choose to explore in the final episode of this series.
Aubrey, but mental health and overtraining has come up lately around certain like key athletes that have highlighted this issue.
Right? Exactly. This has probably always been an issue.
Anyone who competes in sports knows that this is a real risk of overtraining of not having a balance, you know, balance with how much time you spend training when you really have goals to be the best out of sport.
So this happens a lot that it can take a toll on your mental health.
Yeah. I was just listening to I listened to the daily podcast and they brought in an interview with Serena Williams from another podcast I think that's owned by the New York Times.
It was a really cool interview with her getting a chance to really listen to her describing her career.
And she sounds very happy about her career and the way that her parents pushed her like her dad.
She feels like he did it the right way, but she's struggling.
As she said in this interview, to push her daughter in any way whatsoever.
And so she's kind of asking yourself, if I feel like I benefited from that push from my parents, why am I not pushing my daughter at this stage?
Right? So it's really interesting that dynamic between parents.
I'm sure you see that Aubrey on the sidelines at soccer or track or something.
I've seen this where if my one of my children is not really passionate about a sport, but I just want them to get physical activity.
But it's difficult for a parent.
You don't want to push them too much.
You don't want to be asking them to do anything they're not looking forward to doing.
So I really get that struggle as a parent.
But as an athlete too, right?
I would love to spend more time training.
I'm a mom with kids, so I can't, but I can understand how an Olympian would really push themselves.
And it's actually called overtraining syndrome where Simone Manuel, there was an article just very recently.
She was the first black female swimmer to get an individual Olympic gold medal.
And she has really put a spotlight on this.
She suffered from overtraining syndrome.
And her body was breaking down, leading up to the Tokyo Games.
So it's definitely coming to light what a problem this is.
And it can be really harmful for athletes.
And I also think that through now that social media is so big, these athletes have channels and they're able to announce how they're we have an inside look into these athletes and how that's really affecting them.
And so they can kind of spread a message of, hey, there's a time to pull back and to take it easy on yourself, right?
Yes. And just Simone Biles in the Tokyo Olympics withdrew herself.
She was like, I need to take care of my mental health.
But then it turned out once everything came to light, that that was a lot more about sexual abuse from her coach.
So we'll get into that right after the break.
And I think just to tag on to that, I think there's also some stuff with Naomi Osaka in tennis having pulled back a little bit due to this over over working.
But that's a separate story.
Let's take a quick break and we'll come back.
Did you know that you can win a gold medal with your English skills?
Well, you can at the Allers English Olympics.
Play games with the Allers English hosts celebrate the Olympics, celebrate Allers English's 10th birthday and celebrate speaking English at our Allers English Olympics on August 9th.
This will be a one hour live event with Allers English hosts and other amazing fans just like you.
See if you can win the gold medal for your country.
This is a free event anyone can join.
Grab your spot now because space is limited.
Go to allersenglish.com slash Olympics.
That's all ears English.com slash O L Y MP I C S.
I can't wait to celebrate with you.
See you there. Okay. All right, Aubrey.
What's the fifth thing?
So we we kind of let into it towards the end before the break.
What is it? Yeah. So Simone Viles went shoe with Drew from the team gymnastics in Tokyo.
Everyone thought it was mental health, right?
We're like, yes, take care of your mental health.
But then it turned out it was something that is more difficult sometimes for athletes to bring to light, which was sexual abuse from a coach.
And then since she was vocal about it and a lot of other athletes more and more this has been coming to light that coaches unfortunately sometimes will take that power and the privacy they have with athletes and abuse it.
Gosh, yeah. So this has been a huge controversy that has been in the news and this definitely could come up easily in your conversations.
So being informed about what's been going on and knowing how to talk about it huge.
Right, Aubrey? Absolutely.
I wish I could see that 265 athletes accused Larry Nasser of child sexual abuse.
This is the coach that Simone Viles accused as well under the guise of medical treatment of abusing this 265 Lindsay.
165. That's wild. Oh, he's in his huge health at this point or what's going on with him?
I know there was a trial.
I'm unclear. Yes, I know he's in jail because I saw an article that he was actually like attacked in jail.
I saw that not long ago. So he must have been convicted or it's possible that he's in jail waiting for the trial to complete.
I'm not sure. Okay. So if we an ongoing problem just yesterday actually there was an article, a swimmer accused a former Olympic coach of sexual abuse.
So it's certainly not like everything's taken care of like this is still an ongoing problem.
Yeah, definitely a hot topic, important topic.
And then there is the issue of money, economics, and is it really worth it to host the Olympics?
It seems like there are always lots of cities that bid, I suppose, or want to host the Olympics.
But do we think it's worth it?
Well, that's what's fascinating.
I've always assumed as well that there were lots of cities that bid.
And it turns out if you really dig into it, there aren't really aren't that many because it costs so much it just took bid.
I read that Tokyo spent $150 million on its failed to 2016 bid, like to spend $150 million and then not even get the bid is crazy.
Yeah. Well, it's also crazy because it's such a strain on the locals.
I was in a class with one of our listeners, our students and our courses and he lives in Paris and you know, Paris is where the Olympics are this year.
And I said, what's it like living in Paris with, you know, he said the city is completely ripped up.
Traffic is awful. I have to go there.
And I said, it seems like locals should be able to go for free.
That's my opinion. Yeah.
Sure. With all that they're having to deal with.
And if you look at the costs, I feel like for a long time, I assumed that the city's making so much that it's worth it.
But that's really not the case.
If you look at the numbers, Beijing's 2008 Summer Olympics only made $3.6 billion in revenue, but spent $40 billion.
They're $40 billion. That is not a good market.
No way near recouping what they pay.
And what do you get left with?
Well, I could say once I took a trip to like, placid and you're actually able to go down those shoots as a tourist.
At least you can take advantage of some of that.
You go down the shooter.
What do you call it? The lose or whatever it was?
It was fun. But these structures are in place permanently.
They're not really continuously used other than some port tourism stuff.
It kind of does disrupt the city in a major way.
Right? Yes. Exactly. I know Montreal.
It took three decades for the city to pay back.
How much it costs? And that was a very problematic because of construction delays and some problems because it's not just building the Olympic facilities.
It's also often creating more infrastructure, building more hotels and apartments and trains and everything you need in order to make it run smoothly.
And then what happens after can you continue to fill those hotels with an apartment with Newcut with city visitors not necessarily necessarily.
Oh, tricky. So this is just a taste of some of the many controversies, right?
That have accompanied the Olympics throughout the years.
This makes for great conversations, you guys.
If you broached this topic with anyone and whether some of the things we've talked about like when we talked about diamond mining, the person might respond and just say, I don't really know much about that, but I'm interested or they might clearly not be interested.
And that's where you pivot to what like, okay, do we talk about something else or do we dive in?
And that would make for an interesting conversation.
But it depends on how interested they are.
Exactly. I mean, this is the difference between in my opinion, the B2 level and the C1 level.
Moving into C1 into closer to 99% fluency is the ability to instigate one of these conversations, a sort of opinion, express empathy for the other person's opinion, maybe debate it.
These are super high level communication skills.
Don't you think? Exactly.
Exactly. And you do have to have some information before you start a conversation about something like this, right?
Maybe you've listened to a podcast like this one.
And you could dive, you know, deep dive a little bit, find out some more information so that you have something to say.
Because when it comes to controversies, it's not enough just to be like, oh, I heard that was controversial.
And then move on. You want to really, you know, flesh it out.
What was controversial about it?
Yeah, I love that. So, Aubrey, we'll keep it a secret and we'll see what we choose for our Ishaar deep dive issue.
And in all of us, you don't miss it, guys.
It follows. You have part three on this Olympic series.
And I am excited to dive into one of these issues and really break it out and understand it and help our listeners understand how you might talk about it and connect over it with the native speaker.
Yeah? Yes. Love it. Yeah.
Wait. See you then. Take care.
Bye. See you next time. Bye.
Thanks for listening to all ears English.
Would you like to know your English level?
Take our two minute quiz.
Go to all ears English.com forward slash fluency score.
And if you believe in connection, not perfection, then hit subscribe now to make sure you don't miss anything.
See you next time.
