Book Club Claire on "Above & Beyond: Tim Mack, the Pole Vault and the Quest for Olympic Gold"
Release Date: 07/31/2025
Sydney 2000: Rowing and Olympic Closing Ceremonies
Keep the Flame Alive
In our penultimate episode of our Sydney 2000 Games history series, Jill takes a look at the Olympic rowing competition, specifically the women's coxless pairs race, which featured Missy Schwen-Ryan and Karen Kraft from the USA racing for the gold that eluded them at Atlanta 1996, even though Schwen-Ryan was missing something. Watch that race here: Then Alison tries to decipher the fever dream that was the Olympics Closing Ceremony, which you can watch in its full glory here: ***Much like the American coxless pairs team, we're also bootstrapping our way to the 2026 Winter Olympics and...
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Keep the Flame Alive-2025 trailer
Keep the Flame Alive
Introducing your favorite Olympic Aunties Jill Jaracz and Alison Brown! If you're obsessed with the Olympics and Paralympics or just curious about how Olympic and Paralympic sports work, you've found your people. Join us each week--and daily during the Games--for smart, fun, and down-to-earth interviews with athletes, coaches, and the unsung heroes behind the Games. Get the stories you don't find anywhere else. This is why you watch the Games!
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Olympic Luge with Ashley Farquharson, Chevonne Forgan and Sophia Kirkby
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We are sliding down the luge track in this episode, interviewing three women from Team USA's luge team, who are vying to compete at the Milano Cortina 2026 Olympics. First up, singles luger and 2022 Olympian Ashley Farquharson returns to the podcast to explain some of the technical details--and physics--of the sport. Then we talk with women's doubles lugers Sophia Kirkby and Chevonne Forgan. Women's doubles is a new Olympic event, so the pair discuss how this event works. They were also part of the athlete testing group for the new sliding track in Cortina, so they share some insight on how it...
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100 Days until the Milano Cortina 2026 Olympics
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It's 100 days to go until the Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics! We have all the latest on these Games from the Team USA Media Summit in New York City (aka our test event) including podiums, more torchbearers, and a new Team USA plane. We also talked with Peacock reps to find out what the viewing experience will be like this time around--will the feed beef cease to exist in 2026? We want to know if you are a Milano or a Cortina! Let us know by helping us raise funds to cover the production costs of our Milano Cortina 2026 coverage, which includes at least 32 daily episodes (and probably 100+...
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Olympian Dame Lisa Carrington on Kayaking and Kiwis
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Paddler Dame Lisa Carrington, New Zealand’s most decorated Olympian, joins us to talk about kayaking and how the sport varies from solo races to doubles and fours. We also discuss her children's book "Lisa Carrington Chases a Champion" and her new partnership with Zespri kiwifruit. What's Dame Carrington's favorite kiwi? Kiwi vs. feijoa? Where are her silver ferns? We've got answers! Follow Dame Carrrington on and : @liscarrington and check out her ! Milano Cortina 2026 has announced its Olympic Opening Cermony theme and details around the event, which might be more complicated than...
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Author Doug Levy on Unknown Olympic Heroes
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We are excited to talk with Doug Levy, author of the book . The book contains amazing stories you may not have known – or athletes who for some reason or another, made our collective conscious for a Games and then fell off the radar. We talk with Doug about some of those stories. Learn more about Doug and the book at his and follow him on: Insta: Facebook: LinkedIn: D Plus, news from Milano Cortina 2026, LA 2028, the International Olympic Committee and Team Keep the Flame Alive. Also, Super Fan Sarah joins us to review the new exhibit at the George W. Bush Presidential Library....
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Sydney 2000: Paralympic Football 7-a-Side and Olympic Television Advertising
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It's the latest installment of our retrospective on the 25th anniversary of the Sydney 2000 Olympics and Paralympics! Jill looks at the Paralympic Football 7-a-Side competition, while Alison explores the Olympic television advertising campaigns in the U.S. Playlist of ads referenced in this episode: Nike slasher ad McDonald’s ad Coke ad Adidas Buick Visa Also, we announce which Games you, the listeners, have selected for us to cover in 2026! For a complete list of sources used in this episode, visit: . For a transcript of this episode, please visit . Thanks so...
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Olympic Figure Skater Nicole Bobek's Wild Life
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Olympic figure skater Nicole Bobek has long been on our list of athletes to interview, and we're thrilled she's able to come on the show! In 1995, Nicole dazzled at the US Championships, winning gold and then taking bronze at the Figure Skating World Championships later that year. Her career on and off the ice has had a lot of highs and lows, from her beautiful performances to dealing with injuries and the sudden death of her coach Carlo Fassi at the 1997 World Championships where she was still competing. Nicole also represented the US at the Nagano 1998 Winter Olympics. Nicole has a new...
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The Science Behind Classification in Paralympic Wheelchair Rugby
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Wheelchair rugby is a mixed-gender sport, but not many females play. One way to increase their numbers and playing time is to see if they're classified fairly. We talk to Dr. Thomas Rietveld, research associate in wheeled sports and technology at the , who worked with on a project for World Wheelchair Rugby to reassess the classification system for female players. We also talked to Dr. Rietveld about his research on wheelchair tennis, which was part of our episode featuring . Learn more about the Peter Harrison Centre for Disability Sport at Also on this...
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Athletes for Hope with Jason Belinkie and Jenny Sichel
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You know how Olympic and Paralympic athletes go around and speak at schools and do other types of education-related events? How do they get those gigs? Well, there are organizations who help with that. is one of those connecting organizations who work with athletes on causes that are near and dear to them and connect them to schools and non-profits so they can do speaking and other types of advocacy work. Today we’re talking with Jason Belinkie, chief executive officer of Athletes for Hope and Jenny Sichel, a Rio 2016 silver medalist in para mixed fours rowing to learn how Athletes...
info_outlineBook Club Claire is back for our summer reading selection: Above & Beyond: Tim Mack, the Pole Vault and the Quest for Olympic Gold by Bill Livingston. Tim Mack won the gold medal at the Athens 2004 Olympics (perhaps a surprise winner), and this book details his very long journey to the top of the podium and the unique training methods he developed that helped him achieve his goal.
What did we think of the book? Listen to the show to find out!
Our next selection is A Team of Their Own: How an International Sisterhood Made Olympic History by Seth Berkman. This tells the story of the combined Korean women's hockey team that competed at PyeongChang 2018. We're looking forward to reading a story that took place during the life of this podcast! Get your copy now, and look for this episode to drop in November.
Also on today's episode, we have news on the one-year anniversary of the Paris 2024 Games. Ice hockey will have blended officiating teams at Milano-Cortina 2026. LA plans to become more accessible. The World Games had its first torch relay.
Reminder: you can watch World Games 2025 online at the World Games' streaming platform. (https://live.theworldgames.org/) The World Games start on August 7, 2025.
In news from TKFLASTAN, we hear from:
- Fencers Lee Kiefer, Lauren Scruggs, Nick Itkin, Alexander Massialas and Gerek Meinhardt
- Racewalker Evan Dunfee
- Wheelchair tennis player Charlie Cooper
- Goalball player Calahan Young
- Shooter Sagen Maddalena
For a transcript of this episode, please visit http://flamealivepod.com.
Thanks so much for listening, and until next time, keep the flame alive!
Note: Where possible, we use affiliate links. If you purchase something through one of these links, we may earn a commission.
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Keep the Flame Alive: The Olympics and Paralympics Fan Podcast with hosts Jill Jaracz & Alison Brown. New episodes released every week and daily during the Olympics and Paralympics.
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