Hour 1: A Good Ol' Fashioned Rip Off
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We've got an emergency call right now from Lucy Rodin from her father's basement because she's eager to talk about gymnastics. There are things happening in the Olympics. She hasn't been able to talk about them into a microphone. So Lucy joins us now from what looks like, is that wood paneling back there? It is. It's a great basement. I love a good basement. And that one is straight out of the 70s. I mean, that's amazing.

There's so much wood paneling and my dad decided to decorate like you can see it over here by hanging up more wood on the wood paneling. Like there are different slabs of wood just hung up on the wood and all the frames are wood and all the furniture is wood. If there is a house fire, we are screwed.

Tell us about why it is that you're so eager to talk about all things gymnastics. Just before you came on, Izzy was asking me, do the men have to dance or fake dance in the corners? Why don't they have to dance on floor exercise? They should have to dance. Thank you. Why don't they? What is happening there?

I don't know. It's wrong. They have to prove that they have rhythm, too. Why would you not want to talk about gymnastics? Team Gold. That team is legendary. Simone Biles, every time I watch her, it's just like you know you're watching history, and it's hard to even say that she's a generational talent because she's more than that. I don't know what the next step is, but it's generational talent, Simone Biles. Hmm.

Lucy, we didn't really get to talk about the rest of the gymnastics team yet. We've only really talked about Simone Biles today. So can you talk about some of the things that the rest of this team has gone through to get back to the top of the podium in this Olympics, specifically Suni Lee, who was kind of the star of the Tokyo Olympics?

Suni Lee, like every time they play her story, it makes me want to cry just because to go through the things she's gone through where she won gold at Tokyo in the all-around competition. And there was a lot of pushback to it because we all know Simone Biles opted out of that Olympics after getting the twisties. And so she had to deal with like,

horrible stuff online, which ended up being the least difficult thing she had to deal with. She goes and she's a gymnast at Auburn, wakes up one day and her face is completely swollen shut. She like can't breathe. Gains 45 pounds in like two weeks and finds out that she has this like kidney disease that they don't know if she's

ever going to play gymnastics again. That she'll ever be able to compete. So she had to go through like insane like medical procedures and training to get back to be able to compete and it started from scratch. She lost all her skills like her body was still recovering like 45 pounds in two weeks is like

batshit crazy. And then to do that, go all the way back to the Olympics, win the team gold and have such an amazing performance. Like it is remarkable what she has gone through. And like even outside of her health issues, she's dealt with stalkers. Like at Auburn, she had to take online classes because she couldn't deal with just like the popularity on campus. Like this girl has been through hell and back over the last four years. And for it to end up with a team gold is just like, I'm just so happy for her. I'm happy

for all of them. Lucy, you know what's wild to me is having watched gymnastics since like I've said a couple of times now since 84 is that these women are going to college after competing in the Olympics. And I'm wondering how much that helps just sort of the team environment that you're constantly in helps you overcome these types of things instead of feeling like you're an individual sport like maybe in the past.

Yeah, what's weird is this is sort of like feels kind of like a new trend. Like previous Olympians, they would just compete professionally. And I think there's a big difference in what NIL has brought to the space where you're able to compete and make money. I know that Jade talked about it, how going to Oregon State and like having that constant just like...

Having coaching all the time, having the ability to hone her skills at maybe a smaller level, just being the collegiate stage, has helped so much. And there's the ability for these athletes to make money now. Jordan Childs goes to UCLA. Hasley Rivera is 16. She'll probably go to college. That's crazy that she's 16 years old. That actually upsets me. Like, you're not allowed to be...

to be more accomplished than me when you're 16. Like, that's just not allowed. But it's really cool to see these, like, collegiate athletes. Like, that's crazy that they are competing right now in Paris, and three months from now, they're going to be at a frat party. That's insane. I just saw sweep across the faces of Jessica and Mike. I'm not totally sure I have this right, because I don't know what they're saying to each other, but that music does give off more Asian spa than it does Olympics. It's...

Chris is really married to this bit because he's insistent that this is the Olympics theme and I'm like yeah on that surface it was for the Beijing Olympics and he's like we're in too deep I'm like no there's plenty of time no one's gonna call you out on continuity if you decide you know what let me get something more culturally appropriate but it's not it doesn't feel to me like at

Oh, go Jira. Can we get those rights and play this during our Olympic segment? Oh.

This has deep tissue massage in it somewhere. Where are you getting these massages? I got a deep tissue massage once at the Mandarin Oriental, and that kind of feels like what I heard there. It feels like Epcot. It does. There's going to be people on drums in a second, and I'm rounding there to just get an egg roll in me. Yes.

This is what I enjoy about our group and all its expertise. There is no one here who has more experience with what the music would be in an Asian spa deep tissue situation than I do. It's not the humble brag that you think it is. Not certain you should be discussing that. I am a person... Ruppercraft would like a word. ...bonafide here.

Lucy, are you excited about other things or is it just gymnastics? Are you excited about the Chinese swimming meat scandal?

I focus on gymnastics. I haven't been able to watch the Olympics. I've been kind of busy with personal things in my life that are none of your business. But now that I'm back, I got the gold zone. I'm ready to go. I turned it off so it wouldn't ruin the beautiful wood paneling view. I'm really into wrestling, which is kind of weird, and I'm really excited. That starts in a couple days. But for those that are following the tainted meat scandal of 2024...

Apparently, these Chinese swimmers who have done very, very well in the pool, especially this year, are testing positive for a contaminant that they are claiming is in meat. But the levels don't necessarily match up. The Olympics, it seems like if you're looking to game the system, this is the year to do it because there's all sorts of... Usually, the Olympics sometimes outsource as a governing body over specific sports.

And that's not happening. So you're having all sorts of different things happen in the world of boxing and whatnot.

And the idea that you can come up with an excuse and all of a sudden they say, okay. I'm familiar with that in baseball. Someone used tainted meat not too long ago. But you could offer, they offered them tainted meat to test. Hey, look, we test this tainted meat. It's clear that we're not cheating. It's nonsense. Like, to me, and especially in the Olympic sports, and it's happened with the USA, when it sniffs of cheating, it's usually cheating. I mean, you remember...

There used to be an East Germany and a West Germany. That was crazy. If it smells like cheating, it's cheating. The East Germans were always consistently thought to be cheating. And it turned out, yeah, they were. And so Americans have probably cheated in the past, certainly. And these Chinese swimmers, if they're testing positive and they're just letting an excuse be the reason why they continue to compete, I think it's nonsense, too. But Mike is saying, if you're going to cheat, this would be the year to cheat. It seems like a lot of people, you know, sleeping at the steering wheel, you know? It...

What they're testing for affects the heart in some way. That means you're sleeping while you're driving. Right. I don't know if it... I think at the heart of it, no pun intended, it's supposed to improve your cardiovascular stamina. Yeah, just a coincidence that that was in the burger I had. You know when you guys were on Soarin' at Epcot? This is when you fly over the Great Wall of China. This is the music that's playing in the background. I think it might legitimately be.

Juju, put it on the poll, please. When it sniffs like cheating, is it usually cheating? I've noticed Izzy keeps going back to the well on his Olympics nostalgia growing up in the 80s. Lucy, since you are considerably younger than most of us, what are your nostalgic Olympic memories that you think about when you watch the Olympics every year?

four years. So I used to have to spend the summer in Iowa every year, which was like the worst summer vacation ever. But it was pretty cool in 2008 because Shawn Johnson was representing the USA on the women's gymnastics team and Lolo Jones. I don't know. She plays like every sport, but she was representing the USA and whatever she was doing. And we got to go to like

their presser in Iowa and like their meet and greet, which was super cool. So it was really awesome to get to like meet them and see them. And I was like a kid at the time. And then to see them perform was really, really cool. So the 2008 Beijing Olympics, I was 10. I was hoping you were going to say my favorite Olympic nostalgia was when they couldn't do the Olympics. You're just that young. They did it in Tokyo a year later.

When she used the phrase that is part of the parlance for what it is that we were talking about with the twisties, it sounds so much nicer than it actually is. The twisties seem terrifying, but they have such a nice name. It seems so gentle, comprehensively. It sounds cute, like a little dance. Like, oh, I'm doing the twisties. It doesn't sound so cute if you have balls.

Yeah, that's true. Jessica, thank you for the pantomime visual image of what it would look like if somebody did the twisties. Do you ever get up and you're like, is it inside me even more than you? Because those are usually outside. Yeah, every day.

So you are not losing. You are not. You are not with Greg Cody, who is saying that our United States men's gymnastics team celebrated way too much for winning a bronze medal and finishing in third place.

Greg Cody respectfully will never get near a bronze medal in his lifetime. Like that's crazy to me. Why would you not be happy if you went to the Olympics? The USA men's gymnastics team has historically struggled at the Olympics. Bronze is amazing for them. I don't know why we can't just be happy for each other. Yeah. You said that so angrily. I just, I'm like, Oh,

Oh, I'm sorry. Sorry that that was the best day of their life, but it wasn't good enough for Greg Cody. With all due respect, they're celebrating third place. I mean, that's ridiculous. It is, Lucy. Come on. Third place? No one celebrates third place. No, it's absolutely not. If you have never reached that stage before, you should be able to celebrate it. I didn't see a lot of people complaining about the Brazilian women's gymnastics team celebrating their silver. I think they were bronze. They're bronze yesterday because that is a team that has...

hasn't had success in women's gymnastics before, doesn't have a country that really puts a lot of financial support behind women's gymnastics, and no one was angry at them for celebrating. Well, you don't know. You don't know that. There's a Brazilian Greg Cody. Or she's Greg Cody. Doing an afternoon drive somewhere? The last time they meddled in that team event, this music made sense.

You have no proof that there's not a Greg Cody somewhere on radio in Brazil spitting in Portuguese that those losers shouldn't be celebrating. He's the executive producer of his radio show. I don't want to know him. It'd be a great take. I mean...

Dangerous in Brazil. I had a hard time yesterday trying to get something off the ground that I know I'll be able to get off the ground now because we derailed when I talked about it, mentioning that Connor Stallions is going to be doing a documentary on Netflix this month, and it just derailed into Jessica's grandma getting the Italian Stallion as a stripper for her 50th birthday. Love her. I'm always in the penalty box for the good conversation. Sure.

Are you intrigued by a Connor Stallions documentary on Netflix coming out later this month? Yes. The Netflix Untold series has been like, it's crazy hit or miss. Like they have had some really, really good, like I loved their Manti Te'au piece they did. And then their Florida Gators one, I hated with every fiber of my being. It was so bad. So I don't necessarily expect,

I'm not expecting anything out of it, but I believe this will be the first time he's spoken about this whole incident. I think the only thing he's been doing is cameos. So I'm excited to see a non-cameo interview of Connor Stallions. I don't know what information is going to come out that we don't already know, but I'm intrigued.

What are you most excited about upcoming this season now that we've figured out how it is that you're going to do your job so that you can have better resources and better infrastructure around what you're doing?

This is just a really weird season around the fact that these crazy matchups are now conference matchups. So like the possibility of going to see Ohio State at Oregon is really exciting or Texas hosting Georgia. The amount of games you have to pull from this year is a lot better in previous seasons where like,

I feel like in the college football year, you have two to three weeks every season where you just kind of had like a dud week. Like there aren't really great competitive matchups. That weird week in November where the SEC is playing like FCS schools. You're going to avoid that this year. So I'm excited that we're going to have good football every single weekend.

Lucy, look how happy she is just thinking about it. She is radiant. We are four Saturdays away from a midnight Eastern Hawaii home game, Lucy. How about that? I'm so excited. I know. I have my little college football magazine here, and I've been reading it. Oh, the Phil Steele book. It's so good. I've been reading it, too. I'm in a bad place because he's like, Iowa's making it to the playoff, and I can't think like that. I'm sick. I'm sick. I'm under the weather.

I wish we could play off Lucy before you go what was the highlight of babysitting Willow last week oh that's good um

I liked the ice cream walks. I ate a lot of ice cream. So did she. So I think those were probably my favorite because eventually, like, you're just sitting in front of Salt and Straw and you're just trying to pull and you're like, I have to give up. I just have to get ice cream. So I had a lot of ice cream. So did she. She was a little heavy when we got back. Yeah, for sure. Minor complaint. But she was happy.

See you later, Lucy. You were really a bad influence on Willow. Willow was being, yeah, she was just being stubborn. I resent that. Sit in front of ice cream places. I'm a fun aunt. Thank you, Lucy. Good talking to you.

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Official sleep and wellness partner of the NFL. See store for details. Don Levitard. Few things feel better than when you're on a roller coaster with no underwear. Noted. Try it. A very weird observation by Stugatz. You should try it. Don't knock it until you try it, Dano. Stugatz. You know what, Stugatz? I reconsider my position. I have not tried it, and so I won't knock it.

Please explain to us in as much elaboration as you can why it's so wonderful to ride on a roller coaster with no underwear. Well, you just get that incredible breeze that you can only get when you're high up on a roller coaster and it's about to go down. And when it goes down, oh, does it feel good? It's like air conditioning inside your shorts. It's amazing. Yeah.

It really is. This is the Dan Levitar Show with the Stugats. Today's episode is sponsored by DraftKings. Stay tuned because you'll hear more about DraftKings and all it has to offer throughout the show. DraftKings, the crown is yours.

I don't know if Stugatz has seen a photograph that was going viral yesterday for obvious reasons and at the risk of alienating the audio audience, I will just tell you to please just search wherever it is that you get your social media information. Wemby photograph or Wembyn Yama photograph. Stugatz, have you seen the photograph of

of Wemba Nyama. I believe this is what he's going to do to the entire NBA in three or four years. I assume that Wemba Nyama is going to keep growing. I don't think he is done growing. But that is a basketball player is at...

as his face in Wemba Nyama's thigh, like legitimately where Wemba Nyama's thigh is. He would have to jump to kiss Victor's belly button. That player cannot jump up and get higher than Wemba Nyama's head. I don't believe that. Did you see him getting stuffed at the rim?

It happened to Rudy Gobert, too. Yeah. Wemby did? Yeah, and Gobert did, too. By who? They have Wemby still camping out at the perimeter, which is interesting. An interesting way to use him, especially against Japan. When Hachimura went out, they had such a size advantage, but they just stayed to their game.

It's odd. I did notice like in basketball, in international basketball, you really notice when someone is below like the average height of the other team. But in gymnastics, it's the opposite. If you see someone and you're like, wow, that woman looks really tall. And then you Google it and they're 5'1". Yeah. Look at those long arms. Did anybody watch the 3x3 basketball last night with Jimmer?

Yeah. So there's another Berry brother. Had no idea. Canyon. Canyon. Yeah. Canyon is playing on this team. Apparently there are Miami ties to it, but Jimmer was there and there was a moment. It was a rough go. Jimmer had a clear path to a finger roll and he hit the bottom of the rim and got me thinking, what if our best athletes played basketball instead of basketball? Yeah.

It is strange, right? Because on the women's side, there are WNBA players. And I'm always going to say 3v3. I don't know where X came from. It's 3v3. X just stole it. No, it's 3x3. No, it's 3v3. That's 3 by 3. It's 3 on 3. The commentator made it. He wanted to call it 3x3. So I got to do it. It's 3x3. But no, I just don't understand why we're using that level of player. Why can't we get other level of players? We talked about this...

During the postgame show yesterday. So the U.S. women's team only has two current WNBA players. They have one college player and one player who was sort of in the W and now she's not anymore, but she does like specifically 3x3 events. And so from what I understand to select the 3x3 team, you have to have players that have a certain have played in a certain amount of like qualifying events. And so in the U.S., like our players,

Best basketball players are obviously players that want to play five-on-five basketball and they want to be on five-on-five Olympic rosters. So that's where most of the talent pool is focusing on. So it's like you're not getting your 12 best five-on-five players. Do we need that? Do we just need better than Jimmer for debt?

That's what we need. Why couldn't we get like the big three, the Ice Cube League? Those guys would qualify, right? I don't know if that would make, if that would qualify for it. I don't think, I think the international like three on three or 3x3, excuse me, 3x3 tournaments have like a different points. This is all like Olympic qualifier stuff is all has like its own specific kind of route for doing it. But what I was saying about the women's team is that you're not, they're not taking like your best performance.

Five on five team plus subs. And then your next four best players are playing 3x3. That wasn't how they chose the team or else the team would probably look a little bit different. Izzy, I feel like you'd agree with me here. I don't like the three on three when you don't check up the ball. I need to check. They check. No.

No, no. I saw a Jimmer check. I see a lot of getting the rebound and then going out to the three-point line when somebody's already made a basket. Take-backs. Those are take-backs. No, they check. I saw a Jimmer for that check. I know, but it's not check on every play. If the ball goes into the hoop, we need to go check it back up. You can't get the ball out of the hoop and then start playing again. That tells me you've never played three-point. I'm with Mike. I just need a single check and I'm good. It feels like a game to me. A couple of checks here and there. One of the underrated parts of that cable guy scene was when

Chip actually checks the ball. Looks good. It makes it feel official, a check. I saw last night, believe it or not, I was, this is funny that you mentioned Jim Carrey, his first ever appearance on national television, which was 10 minutes long. The amount of confidence and talent that he had overall.

The first time he was on Johnny Carson and Letterman, where he's just doing impersonations. It's a 10-minute set of impersonations. I couldn't believe how talented it was right out of the box. Were you moved again emotionally or what happened there? Hell of a night you had. Earlier this week, I saw one of those anniversary things on social media that sent a chill down my spine. The mask turns 30. Oh, wow. Wow.

That one hurt. I need more chills in my life. You guys get all these chills. Dan's got them all right now. Football's coming. If you just said Hawaii's playing a midnight game, if that didn't do it, nothing will. I have an idea. Be a woman of average weight and height and go into an office.

Juju, put it on the poll, please. 3X3, 3V3, or 3 on 3? 3 Twitter 3. Put that, too. And also, when you mention the optics or the optical illusions of people seeming to be bigger or smaller than they are, this happens to me all the time in the movies. Happened to me a couple of days ago with Daniel Craig in a scene. I was like, oh, my God, he's small.

He's tiny small. 007 is tiny small. This happens to you guys how often watching the movies where you're surprised. Usually they do a good job of hiding when their star is small by surrounding them with small people. You're doing like apple crates, which is like a Tom Cruise, Tony Scott trick. De Niro also wears like platform shoes. I got the reverse of that when I was in Beijing for the Beijing Games and Vince

Vince Vaughn was on the escalator going the opposite direction. No, he's tall. Yeah. And so I don't remember in the movies him being or stand out tall, but he was stand out tall here. When I was younger, I went to like a Planet Hollywood event that Arnold Schwarzenegger was attending, and I was like eight years old. And I remember thinking, where's the rest of him? Hmm.

Because, yeah, you're just assuming that he's a giant. Because those action stars were larger than life. And Stallone, also really tiny. If you see Stallone standing next to Thunderlips in that ring, like Hogan's a big guy, but that was comical. But he's got a big heart. I mean, Stallone. Statham is Statham short. You should get that checked out. Tiny guy.

You guys saw Hulk Hogan or Thunder Lips or Terry Bollea. He was with Dan Campbell at Detroit Lions. Makes sense. Practice. And he did it right after the Republican National Convention. So Dan Campbell caught a good amount of...

Heat for just allowing Hulk Hogan to do wrestling. I don't understand giving Dan Campbell heat for that. That is pitch perfect. Is that what we're doing now? Really? I mean, I could let Terry Bollea show up to Lions camp. It's Hulk Hogan. Yeah, I would. I'd say I'd love to be in that room, but I think can you OD on testosterone? Yeah.

It'd be a lot if Dan Campbell is... We'll find out in the Olympics, I guess, when the testing's all done. Well, what's going on with that? We're going to interview Mike Schmidt here about this Chinese swimming scandal. You got me excited. Yeah, wrong Mike Schmidt. There's a couple of them. Michael Jackson. I mean...

Pulitzer Prize winner, not a Hall of Fame third baseman. Yeah, I don't know how much he can explain because there's a big boxing controversy and you have to be super careful in what you're reading and what's getting aggregated because there are female boxers that wouldn't be female boxers under the previous testing, but they are not...

They that they are not arguing. They're just testing for higher levels of testosterone. And it's being reported that this is unsafe. And I know we're all learning this on the fly. I think combat sports because of biology is a pretty good line in the sand to draw. But but there is so much misinformation going on about this specific sport.

specific testing regimen. I'm curious to know what's going on here. We're going to get some legitimate expertise on this from a Pulitzer Prize winner who disappoints Stugatz by being Mike Schmidt, not the Hall of Fame. I was about to say what it gets. Third baseman.

But speaking of being disappointed, I wanted to ask you guys how I'm supposed to be feeling about an interaction that I had this weekend with ostensibly a fan who was ostensibly complimenting me. Are you ready? Uh-huh. Because I don't feel like it.

ended up actually being a compliment. So I walk in to a store, a furniture store, and there's only one person there working. And the person's face lights up with delight upon seeing me. And so I hold out my hand, and the first words the person says to me is, Hi, I was a fan. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.

Didn't follow you to DraftKings Network, huh? Just fell off the earth after ESPN there. How am I supposed to feel about that? All of it. At least they were a fan at one point of your career. That's correct. That is correct. So there's two ways I could have gone. It could have been, A, I stopped following you. I was a big fan. Or, ooh, you ticked me off at some point. No longer a fan of yours. But I was. But I get this all the time as well. Where are you guys now? Yeah.

Well, that wasn't what happened, though. What ended up happening is he explained that he had left sports. Oh, too bad for him. Which was an excellent pivot. Just leave sports? Just choose at 40 years old? I'm out.

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Don Levatard! If all the raindrops were lemon drops and gumdrops, oh what a rain that would be! Stoogatz! Standing outside with my mouth open wide, ah ah ah ah ah ah ah ah ah! If all the raindrops were lemon drops and gumdrops, oh what a rain that would be! This is the Don Levatard Show with the Stoogatz!

As Mike shovels red beans and rice into his maw, as Greg Cody would say. Into his gaping maw. How do we feel about jerk seasoning? Not a fan. Love jerk. No. I love it. Out of my life jerk. All of it. Yeah, not a fan. Do you guys sweat when you eat spicy food? It's like an annoying spicy. Depends how spicy it is. It's like an annoying spicy. There's a spice. I don't know what it is. It's spicy with a tang. If I smell it, I sweat. Really? Uh-huh.

You get really hot wings. I'll start getting the brow sweat a little bit. I can't wear glasses when I eat spicy because then my glasses fog up. Charlotte gets the brow sweat real bad. I get it in the back of my neck. On a level of jerk, Mike, how jerk was that chicken? I think Colin Jost. Got it. I need an Aaron Rodgers level. Really jerky. Or I'm not eating it. Give me like Billy Gill. Really? Yeah.

Just mild. Where does that rate on the Romo scale? Romo is... Oh, that's Greg Cody level. My dad loves some Tony Romo jerk. Where's Axl Rose? Axl Rose is like the Carolina Ghost Reaper. Hey, Axl. Hetfield got burned. Just go out there. Play a little earlier. No. In fact, two hours late, 40 minutes shorter.

We're going to have Michael Schmidt on with us in a little while. I've never been so prepared for an interview. I mean, this is very exciting. Talk a little hot corner. I mean...

It is not that Michael Schmidt. It is the Pulitzer Prize winning Michael Schmidt who covered baseball for a while. A terrible rip. He had notes. The Phillies have lost 7-10. Let me explain to you what just happened there, Jessica. I waited. I waited because he held up the paper. He had the joke. He was going to make a ripping sound and his left arm, he really did hurt it. Butterfly. Doing the butterfly stroke earlier in the show. Redemption. Redemption.

so much better but you are ripping it fast now I'm gonna rip this paper well wait a minute Jessica you're saying it's bad the ripping of the paper actual ripping of it is terrible he's ripping off a corner of it the second one sounded better for audio purposes than the first one but both of them were less than what they could have been I don't know why it is you couldn't just rip it right down the middle

Hmm. Want me to try again? Yes. All right, hold on. You can keep trying it. Do me this favor, okay? Since you've now lost your ability to ask him questions about being a third baseman for the Phillies in the 1980s... What happened to the mustache? Can you just... Throughout the interview, your only contribution to all of this can be just to occasionally rip papers, all right? Michael Schmidt...

You're so bad at it. Why are you so bad at this? You know what? Let's do this around the room. Show him who can be better. Michael Schmidt, I will tell people, he was covering the Mets and the Yankees when he was 25 years old during the steroid era. He has won a couple of Pulitzer Prizes because he might be the best investigative reporter in America. He's a reason to keep buying newspapers.

His book is Donald Trump versus the United States, Inside the Struggle to Stop a President. And he's got this story, which seems to be the biggest scandal at the Olympics. I'm not really sure why he's covering the Chinese national team right now. Perhaps we will find out together why he's covering the Chinese national team. Michael, thank you. Go ahead. Better. Thank you for...

Thank you for joining us, Michael. Can you please tell us why it is and how it is that you came to be covering this story? The best job that I ever had in journalism was covering off the field legal issues and drugs and sports earlier in my career.

And I always wanted to get back to it. And when I found out several months ago about what had happened in China around these positive tests, it was just too compelling of a story. And we've got a lot going on. I work for the Washington Bureau of the Times. We've obviously got a presidential race that we need to be putting a lot of our time and energy into. But we thought that this story was really important. And I've always wanted to get back to covering drugs and sports.

And that's how I found myself in the middle of this. Why was that the best job you've ever had in journalism? I think that the thing about corruption in sports is that there's a lot of it and there's different dynamics to it that make it

more compelling to cover. In Washington, where I do my usual day-to-day job, there's two parties breathing down each other's back. There's inspectors generals. There's the FBI. There's a lot of oversight of what's going on. And most people in Washington went there because they thought that they could do something of good, at least most people, at least

In sports, people are there for a range of different reasons and there's far less oversight. And the media is much more focused on covering the day-to-day on the field stuff than they are interested in covering what's going on off the field. And that makes for dynamics of corruption that are different and at times easier to break into.

How has the doping in sports changed since you started reporting on it a couple decades ago? When I started covering drugs in sports around 2006,

And this is sort of the lead up to the Mitchell Report and questions about Alex Rodriguez and Manny Ramirez and David Ortiz and Sammy Sosa, that sort of era. And at that time, WADA, the World Anti-Doping Agency, which is sort of the central player in this China doping story, they were seen as the highest standard of policing drugs in sports. They held themselves out as that standard.

They were very transparent and they were big critics of sports like baseball. They really went after baseball and baseball was sort of the one that was seen as being behind and laying on the brakes and not wanting to dive into really exposing its own players. When I come back to the story, you know, several months ago, WADA is a different entity. And the questions about it are whether WADA

this group, which is supposed to be ensuring that there's a level playing field in sports, that sports are clean. There's questions about whether they are doing their job. Are they laying on the brakes for athletes? Are they unwilling to go after players? And that's a big, big change from when the last time I covered this story.

To recap for the listener, 23 top tier Chinese swimmers tested positive for a banned substance months before the Tokyo Olympics. The Chinese cleared them of doping, blaming a hamburger in a hotel kitchen. And I think I have this right when I say nobody knew it until your first story in April. Right. So this is a cover up.

Yeah, and there's another important part that you need to know, which is that just a day ago, we broke a story that there's a current member of the Chinese swimming team who's scheduled to race in a very important relay on Thursday, who tested positive in 2022 and was cleared last December of doping. And no one knew about this. It was not publicly announced. And they blamed China.

for that positive test. And there's a lot of questions about whether that's another example of the Chinese anti-doping authorities and the World Anti-Doping Agency not holding athletes to account. No one knew about this. No one knew that there was this swimmer who had an incredibly powerful steroid in her system as recently as 2022, who's scheduled to be in the pool in Paris.

And what was the excuse given for that one, Mike? Because I'm curious, when WADA allows this to happen, it doesn't feel like they used to allow for, hey, it was just some hamburger meat. That's OK. It doesn't feel like it feels like they're being a lot more loose with their with their rulings here. So.

Not to go too inside doping on this, but basically, if you're going to beat a doping allegation, you need to prove essentially how you were an unwitting victim of contamination. And in this case, the case that we're talking about here with this swimmer who's in Paris, they were never able to prove actually how she was contaminated with this hamburger.

And they just said, we think it was meat because we think some meat in China may be tainted with this substance. But they were never able actually to show how it exactly happened. And that's not how anti-doping experts say the system is supposed to work. Essentially, you are responsible for what is in your system. And it is on you to prove that you did nothing wrong. And in this case, they were never able to prove that.

Do all Olympic athletes get held to the same standard in terms of how often they're tested? And if so, are other Olympians really upset about this whole scandal happening right during the Olympics?

So athletes have been fairly vocal about this. Former athletes like Michael Phelps testified before Congress about this. Katie Ledecky has spoken out about it. Other athletes have said they've lost confidence in the World Anti-Doping Agency to do its job.

And that has created a lot of doubt amongst these athletes. Is everyone competing on the same playing field? Several months ago, in the midst of this reporting, I went to NBC and I said, can you be confident that when the fan sits down to watch this,

the Olympics that they'll be watching athletes competing on a level playing field. And NBC acknowledged receiving my email and still hasn't gotten back to me.

I want to share with the audience something behind the scenes here. Stugatz's fingers have gotten fatter. His voice has become less of a whisper. And so very often he's trying to talk to me privately, but some of the stuff leaks out over the air when he should just be talking to me. I will share with the audience that while Michael was talking, Stugatz actually said the following.

maybe stop eating burgers. Hey, Dan, that's all I've got.

You're so bad at it, Stu Goss. That was a good rip. A little better. You were so bad at it. Oh, that was good. It felt good. I haven't been watching every swimming event in the Olympics, admittedly, but I did hear NBC briefly mention this when one of the Chinese swimmers, I can't remember which one it was, was about to dive into the pool before an event. Do you think that NBC has covered this well, or are they kind of trying to keep the controversy away from viewers at home? Um,

It's not from the competitions that I've seen when I've tuned in. It doesn't seem to be a central talking point of what's going on. And I'll be interested to see how they deal with it on Thursday night, where I believe three members of the Chinese relay team that are scheduled to compete have tested positive before and not been sanctioned for those positive tests. So that will be a sort of test of this about how much

NBC is is willing to take this on and discuss this. Mike, I'm curious what the reaction has been to the United States being very vocal about this, having congressional things going on. Like what has been the reaction to the U.S. being so vocal about the Chinese failed tests? There's something something extraordinary happened last week that the

It's really important to try and explain, and it's a little inside Olympic stuff, but basically the World Anti-Doping Agency and the Olympic Committee are very concerned that there's an ongoing criminal investigation in the United States being done by the FBI and the Justice Department into these positive tests.

And there was some question about whether that investigation and Congress threatening to cut WADA's funding and criticisms of WADA from American anti-doping authorities was going to jeopardize the 2034 bid for Salt Lake City to host the Winter Olympics. So coming into the announcement of that bid last week, there was some angst amongst Americans that maybe they would...

you know, not give this bid to the United States. And what happened was, is that

the state of Utah and the committee for Salt Lake City essentially cut a deal with the IOC in which they basically said, we will agree to try and work to push back on these investigations and these efforts by the Americans to look into these doping allegations and basically condition that on the bid, giving the IOC the ability to take the bid away if

Utah and Salt Lake City are not able to help them push back on these investigations. And that's just in the twists and turns of this story. That was certainly not something that I saw coming. He is legitimately the only reporter ever to win two Pulitzer Prizes and also spend some time with Dontrell Willis and the Toledo Mudheads.

back in 2008. Uh, before we let you go and I urge you all, his book is Donald Trump versus the United States inside the struggle to stop a president. He does very good investigative work and I urge you all to check out that work before we let you go though. Michael, uh, Trump is scheduled to be sentenced in the stormy Daniels case on September 18th. That seems to be a pretty seismic, uh,

moment he seems to be running to stay out of prison. Do you have any idea what's going to happen there? So trying to predict what's going to happen in anything between now and November is crazy. If you think about it in the past month, what we've seen, we saw, you know, a presidential candidate essentially implode before our eyes and then have to try out in front of the country.

about his own acuity and fail at that and then be pushed out by his own party. You've seen an assassination attempt on one of the candidates. You've seen the emergence of a entirely new candidate. The Supreme Court made a major ruling on some of Trump's actions in the midst of this.

You have the delaying of that sentencing, which will happen in September. We're not even I think we're 100 days out. Maybe we're a little a little more. So who knows? That case has sort of been the little engine that that could in the sense that it has had, I think, much more of a dramatic impact than people initially thought it was, considering all the criminal cases that were brought against Trump.

I think there'll be a lot of pressure on the judge to do something. But at the same time, does the judge want to put Donald Trump behind bars as he's running for president? I, you know, that that would be something pretty extraordinary. And my guess is that he would have a chance to appeal that before that would happen. But who,

knows. All right. There is the latest information, the dismount. He hit it just like Simone Biles. Who knows is the answer. Michael, thank you for the time. We appreciate it.

Thanks so much for having me. I appreciate it. All right. I saw you guys practicing back there. You're cheating. You're cheating like the Chinese swimmers. You guys got a whole bunch of practice runs in there. He could have just said, who knows? Sue had like 17 practice runs. Okay, but I want to now have a competition. Michael, you're welcome to be a part of it if you want to stick around and do a... No, he's done. He's got work to do. Michael! He doesn't have time for nonsense. He's busy. He's busy. What is this, a law school? Okay.

Let's start with you, Tony. I want to have a competition here, a paper. We were all critics. We were all right there to criticize Stugatz, but we weren't in the arena doing our actual paper ripping. So, Tony, you start us off. Let's see who can do the best paper rip. Dan, I think there's a couple schools of thought here, right? We've got vertical rip and we've got horizontal rip. So let's do one with a horizontal rip. We're going to go with a vertical rip. Rookie move. Here we go. You ready? Yeah.

Ooh, that one was clean. Almost too fast. That was good. Too good, though. Hold on a second. Tony is proud of himself for a couple of reasons. That's a tough nominee to beat right off the bat. But he's proud of himself not only because the sound was excellent. He tore that damn nearly in half. Almost perfectly straight. Stugatz kept tearing a corner piece of the paper. It was weird. Yeah, my shoulder hurts. Michael, where are you? Mike, where are you with this? Michael! Michael!

Fly with us, Michael. All right, so I got to stand out. That's a red bean. You got to practice. This is not fair.

Oh, I like it. I like it. A slow tear at the beginning. There is such a thing as too fast to tear. Yes. I'm telling you, you got way too fast. All right, well, let's see who the consensus winner is. It's like a PK in soccer. Are you allowed to just like stop and then go again? I don't know. It's part of my strategy. Where's water with the rules? But you only get one chance at it. The one total chance. Sleep it at the steering wheel. I mean.

Oh, that was good. That was aggressive. It was. Tony's so far, right? Pulled away from the microphone. Docs you a couple points. Yeah. Chris Cody, you want to try this? Actual Terry. Perforations clean. Getting with rookies here. I mean, geez.

That is fantastic. That might be the winner! It was good pacing. I could fall asleep to that. You might have a career in the no-brainer. I'm telling you. Chris Cody really did tell us, hey, you guys are going too fast, and then did it slowly.

Wow, he's good. He's good. He's good. Yeah, the form there. Tempo. Office services, my mom's office. Oh my God, your mom hired you for a job too? A lot of ripping up papers there at the office? What's happening over there, huh? Get your own job. Come fly! Are we ready? Yes, we are. Mike is still doing launch voice. Mike, oh!

That was a lot going on. Damn. That was just trying to be me. That's all I saw there. Not good pacing. I doubled up, Chris. It's the only way I could do better is doubling up. You get a stronger. Really complicated character work. There's two pieces of paper? That's cheating. Your page there. I've got three. That's cheating. It's cheating. It's cheating. Okay, Mr. Iron Man, Mr. Strong Man, my bad. Rip a phone book next. Is it cheating? Takes me back to old Power Team. Power Team. Power Team. Try to hold five. Jesus Christ.

Are there still phone books? No, the power team destroyed all of them. I f***ing love July. You guys believe that three is cheating? You want me to do one? No, you can do one for every soul you save. For every soul you claim in the kingdom of God. Alright, he's got three.

That was very clean. Pretty good. It was powerful. Yeah. A little too fast. Yeah. Yeah, I think it's second place to Chris's. Yeah. Izzy and Chris, Izzy had such a complicated character. Congratulations, Chris Cody, on being our paper-ripping champion. I did not know that. Cody Olympics! Yeah, can you do a horse going through the tower? I mean, I did not know that.

All right. It took you all, but you got the music over. I did not know that you had 10 years of experience, that you are a veteran paper ripper. Congratulations. It is your finest work as executive producer. A new era of the Dan Levitard Show with Chris Coney. Go get an American flag. It'll make Dan really emotional. I think, Dan, you are solidly bronze, so be careful how much you celebrate. Right.

Greg is watching. I appreciate you helping me be a bronze medal finisher. Straight as I've ever been right there.

A lot has changed over the years, audience. As you've been so kind in pointing out, my shirt size has changed over the years. Look, I started this show as a 19-year-old boy. Now I'm a 38-year-old dad. But along the way, one staple of my life has been Miller Lite. And those of you that have been listening to us know this. I've been a Miller Lite guy since day one. I have been pretty honest about that. So let's get down to the nitty-gritty. What is the best thing about the original Lightbeer Miller Lite?

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