Rings of Hell: The NOlympics Podcast

NOlympics LA has teamed with KNOCK LA to present a series of podcasts which focuses on all of the very real consequences of the Olympics that the IOC and local politicians try to scrub from the mainstream media discourse.

This series offers a deeper dive into many of the subjects we explore as a campaign at large: the Olympics’ effects on housing, homelessness, democracy, immigrants, people of color, athletes, the poor, and specifically how this will affect LA in the lead up to 2028.

Each episode focuses on a different subject, and we’re given more time and space to explore these areas we’ve researched deeply in many cases. The first run of ten episodes features seventeen different guests, conversing on a wide range of topics.

For our other podcast appearances, just head on down to the bottom of this page.

Episode 1: 1984, The Olympic Legacy of Denial

The 1984 Olympic Games are hailed as one of the most successful games ever staged. For Eric Garcetti and Casey Wasserman this apparent legacy of success is one of their major selling points for the 2028 Games. But beneath the star-studded Opening Ceremonies and lavish Olympic Village, there is a narrative about displacement, policing, and inequality. While there is some truth to the idea that 1984 Games turned a profit the full story is much more complicated. 1984’s legacy is central to understanding the drive towards 2028 and how we can resist these false memories to stop the games.

Episode 2: Who Wins When The Olympics Come to Town?

The Olympic games are sold to cities around the world as an opportunity to revitalize and highlight their development. But far from bringing tourist dollars the games actually facilitate a transfer of wealth upwards Neighborhoods are uprooted in favor of luxury development. Whole blocks are leveled to make room for new venues. Forests are literally clear cut for ski runs.

When we talk about the Olympics we need to look beyond the ceremonies and sports, we need to see who benefits and who loses across a city. The games are sold as a win for everyone to mask that they are designed only to benefit the wealthy few.

Episode 3: The Movement Against The IOC

The movement against the Olympics is not limited to Los Angeles, of course. We’ve seen opposition organizations spring up from Denver to Hamburg, Tokyo to Turino, Calgary to Chicago and everywhere in between, as the International Olympic Committee repeats their pattern wherever find a city to reel in.

For this episode, we feature guests who were documenting the struggle in Rio in the lead up to the 2016 games and who were involved in No Boston’s successful fight to push out the 2024 bid. We reveal that, despite some local differences, we are all fighting the same fight against the IOC who helps create heightened militarization, displacement, and authoritarianism in the name of extracting profit. The struggle against this form of neoliberal lotteryism is both a hyper-local and transnational one.

To learn more about Rio: www.rioonwatch.org

To learn more about Boston: www.nobostonolympics.org

Episode 4: A Very Special Garcetti Episode

In this episode, we unpack LA’s occasional Mayor, Eric Michael Garcetti, who has the worst kept secret in local politics (an upcoming presidential run), and explore MEG’s privilege, his hijacking of marginalized groups’ identities for political advancement, his fear of adversarial journalism, and what his true goals are. And we bring it all together by exploring how the Olympics is the cynical vanity project Garcetti’s using to try to make you forget he works for developers, police, and other elite interests.

So turn on, tune in, and drop out; it’s time for the MEGisode.

Episode 5: A History of Olympic Grift

For this episode, we invited Olympic author and expert Jules Boykoff to call in and give us a broad look at how the modern Olympics came into being, how their power is structured, and how they’ve evolved over the decades, growing more insidious at every turn. The Olympic machine has been around since the late 1800s and operated as a sort of sideshow. To this day the IOC still feels like it’s being led by carnival barkers trying to hook the next gullible sucker, and this conversation tracks how they’ve managed to stay alive and where they’re potentially vulnerable.

To read more by Jules Boykoff: julesboykoff.org

Episode 6: The Humiliation of the Will

For our sixth episode, we explore how fascists have co-opted and manipulated the platform of mega sports through the annals of history – whether it’s Hitler, Mussolini, and Franco with soccer and the Olympics – or more recent despots or power-hungry individuals who use the games to enhance their power. It turns out the pageantry and bright shiny object-ness of mega sport gives bad people a tremendous amount of cover.

Episode 7: "City of Sanctuary"

Did you know that LA isn’t a sanctuary city, in name or in spirit? Even if we were a true sanctuary city with real protections, any Olympics on US soil poses huge risks for immigrants. That’s because the LA 2028 Olympics is designated a National Special Security Event (NSSE), which gives the Department of Homeland Security (ICE, CBP, NSA, all the bad dudes) the express ability to coordinate with local law enforcement. Sound like a terrible idea? It is! For this episode of Rings of Hell, we are joined by members of DSA Los Angeles’ Immigration Justice Committee to discuss all the ways our current Democrat establishment in LA already fall short of their pseudo-progressive pro-immigrant messaging and how the NSSE – compounded with our already wildly militarized local law enforcement – poses a nightmare for communities across the Southland.

Episode 8: The Exploitation Olympics

The Olympics pose monumental risks to everyone unfortunate enough to be in their orbit, and this is true especially for workers – either workers who help make the games happen (construction, service industry, volunteers) to the athletes themselves. Labor exploitation and the Olympics are synonymous, and we’ve charted this history of rampant harm – everything from wage theft to psychological, emotional, and sexual abuse – in the modern Olympics, even the beloved 1984 games.

For episode 8 of the Rings of Hell podcast, we’re joined by members of DSA Los Angeles’ Labor and Healthcare committees to explore how the Olympics are always sold as being “good for labor,” while the receipts show the reality couldn’t be further from the truth.

Episode 9: The Youth Sports Swindle

We debunk the feel good fuzzies of the LA84 Foundation, often perceived as a benign altruistic youth sports non-profit but which is – after some serious scrutiny – really an unaccountable non-profit who merely claims to promote social justice and the empowering of marginalized communities. In practice, they’re more active in whitewashing LA than they are in making it more equitable. They’re massive investors in real estate giants like Blackstone and Oaktree Capital (the slumlords who led a misinformation campaign to defeat Prop 10 in November), and their work has been used to leverage the 2028 Olympics. Read more of our research on LA84 and a recap of its annual summit, which took place after the recording of this episode.

Episode 10: The Olympic Endgame

For the tenth and final episode of the Rings of Hell series, we have a full house of NOlympians to talk about everything that’s happened in LA and in the crumbling Olympic empire since this series started a couple months ago. This includes the release of NOlympics’ survey about the 2028 games, the LA84 Foundation’s embarrassing “social justice” summit, the fall of the Huizars, the death of the Calgary’s 2026 bid, and much, much more.

NØlympia on Nett Nett Radio

In 2021, NØlympics started radio show with NettNett Radio delving deeper into how the games effect the communities they’re held in. Listen live on SUNDAYS 5pm PST or the archive below.

All COPPSCs Are Bastards

This week we dive into the new California Olympic and Paralympic Public Safety Command (COPPSC), a massive partnership containing virtually all levels of law enforcement, what this “unified command” means for Angelenos, and how we can fight back.

Olympics Kill The Poor

This week we examine the links between the recent mass sweep at Echo Park Lake, gentrification, and the Olympics. Plus, a conversation between @echoparkriseup’s Ayman Ahmed and @groundgamela.

Rio

This week, we’re going to Rio, Brazil, site of the 2016 Olympics. We’ll hear music and stories of revolution from the 1960s all the way up until today, including the songs from the tropicalia movement and música popular brasileira. We’ll also reflect on the revolutionary work of organizers in Rio, like our anti-Olympics comrades and Marielle Franco, an organizer assassinated in 2018.

Mexico City, '68

This week we go to Mexico City, home of the ‘68 Olympic games. We’ll hear about the Mexican government’s brutal crackdown on protests during the Tlatelolco massacre from an activist who witnessed it. Then, we’ll hear from Lance Wyman, who designed the branding for the games, reflecting on his participation in the event.

Cancel the Tokyo 2020 Olympics

NOlympics spends the hour with political scientist and former Team USA soccer player Jules Boykoff, plus “David O’Brien” crashes an International Olympic Committee press conference and “Ryan O’Malley” stuns IOC President Thomas Bach. CANCEL THE OLYMPICS.