The Podium

Introducing The Podium, an insider look into the 17 intense days of competition at the 2018 Olympic Winter Games in PyeongChang. In the run-up to opening ceremonies, hear in-depth interviews with your favorite Winter Olympians, explorations of host country South Korea’s culture, history, and more from industry experts. Subscribe on your favorite podcast platform for automatic download.

Chang Rae Lee’s books include “Native Speaker,” “Aloft,” and “The Surrendered,” for which he was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize in Fiction. His most recent book is “On Such A Full Sea,” a cool, sci-fi dystopia. It was published in 2014. His novels tackle some of the most important themes in American life today, including immigration, life after war, and even the divided Korean Peninsula. He was born in Seoul, South Korea, but moved to the U.S. with his family at the age of three. His home country has been in the news a lot lately. And we’ll be hearing about it for more cheerful reasons in February, when South Korea hosts the 2018 Olympic Winter Games.He spoke to Vox's Todd VanDerWerff for this episode of Vox Media's "I Think You're Interesting."

In a special Olympics-themed episode of Worldly, Yochi, Jenn, and Zack look at how global politics will shape next year’s Winter Games in South Korea in a way that hasn’t been seen since the height of the Cold War. The International Olympic Committee has already banned Russia because of a massive doping scandal, and the nuclear standoff with North Korea could make some countries jittery about sending athletes to the games. Add it all together, and you have the potential for an Olympics like no other.Plus, Jenn confesses to a passionate love of figure skating, Zack argues for taking the world’s guns and giving them to Olympic biathletes, and Yochi makes the case for why skeleton is the only sport you should watch.

The most important story in the world right now is how real the chance of war with North Korea is — and how cataclysmic such a war would be.Part of the reason the risk of war is so real is that our understanding of North Korea is so sparse. "The Hermit Kingdom" is a world unto itself; a land of deprivation, of lunacy, of tyranny, of delusion. We have no diplomatic relations, no trade, no cross-cultural exchanges. We don't understand Kim Jong Un, we don't understand his people, and they don't understand us. And so, ignorant, we lurch towards the possibility of nuclear war built atop mutual miscomprehension. The best view we have into life in North Korea is Barbara Demick's Nothing to Envy: The Ordinary Lives of North Koreans. Demick was the Los Angeles Times bureau chief in Seoul and Beijing, and she found herself obsessed with this country she couldn't cover and couldn't understand. So she began talking to the people who had left it, the refugees who escaped across the DMZ. She began asking them to reconstruct their lives, to tell her what it was like, to make everyday life in North Korea intelligible. And they did. They told her what it was like to grow up, and to fall in love, and to go to school, and to have dinner, and to flee. They told her what it was like to build new lives, to remember past friends, to know their family was in a place they could never visit again, to hear the rest of the world fear and pity the place they had once called home. This conversation is about North Korea, but it's also about North Koreans — about what it's like to live in the most closed society on earth, about what they know and don't know of the outside world, about how their existence can be both ordinary and extraordinary, about what would happen to them if there was a war. And this is a conversation about what we need to know about North Korea, about how the country's past informs its present, about what Demick would tell Trump if he would just listen.

Get ready for the 2018 Winter Olympics with NBC Sports and Vox Media. All this month, The Podium will introduce you to athletes to watch in the lead up to PyeongChang in February.

No snow, no problem: more than 25 nations competing in the Winter Olympics in PyeongChang are considered tropical countries. In Episode 1, Tim Struby set out to examine why a generation of "tropical" athletes decided to focus on the Winter Olympics, delve into the influence of the movie "Cool Runnnings," and learn about some of the challenges that "tropical" Olympians face along their journey to PyeongChang.

The Podium examines how snowboarding evolved and gained popularity in the U.S. and made its way into the Olympics. Plus, why there will never be another Shaun White and how Kelly Clark catapulted to the national scene.

Ahead of the Opening Ceremony, The Podium profiles four American all-star Olympians to watch in PyeongChang. Olympic medalist Christin Cooper, New Yorker staff writer Nick Paumgarten, and snowboarding pioneer Todd Richards discuss the rise of revolutionary skiier Mikaela Shiffrin, downhill master Lindsey Vonn, longtime snowboarding star Shaun White, and snowboarding maverick Chloe Kim.

The Podium takes a journey back to Nathan Chen’s prediction about making the 2018 Olympic Winter Games and how the young wunderkid has mastered five quadruple jumps, something that has never been done at the Winter Olympics. Plus, the U.S. women’s hockey team reflects on the 1998 team that sparked their interest in the game and why the U.S.-Canada rivalry ramped up in 2002.

In this episode sponsored by Intel, Rob Simmelkjaer sits down with Intel chief strategy officer Aicha Evans and Intel Sports director David Aufhauser to discuss the technological advancements Intel is implementing at the Winter Olympics, how virtual reality has become a cornerstone of the company's initiatives and the esports exhibition happening in PyeongChang.

The first NBC Olympics podcast from the world's biggest sporting event. Join the team covering the Winter Games from the ground in PyeongChang. Hosts Lauren Shehadi and Tom Farrey, with reporter Tim Struby, bring you daily competition updates and the stories behind the games. And K-pop, of course. Lots of K-pop.

Opening Ceremony co-host Katie Couric discusses what to expect from the broadcast (8:30 ET, NBC), the unified team of North and South Korea, and her interview with figure skating star Nathan Chen. We'll also take a look back at some pivotal moments in Olympic history, and at how the Winter Games have evolved from 1924 to today.

Stars on and off the ice, Tara Lipinski and Johnny Weir discuss their journey to Primetime and how the sport of figure skating has changed. Plus, diving into a surprise in the snowboarding world after two superstars, Sage Kostenberg and Kaitlyn Farrington, left the sport — and what they’re up to now.

Meet 17-year-old Red Gerard, who just won the first U.S. gold medal in PyeongChang, and his exuberant family, who watched the run with our reporter Tim Struby. Plus, Katie Couric returns to examine how women’s ski jumping got to be an Olympic sport.

Guest host David Chang, special correspondent for NBC Olympics, is flummoxed by curling. What are the rules? How do curlers train? Is there alcohol involved? In an effort to better understand the game, he sends Tim Struby to learn the ins and outs of the sport, attends a curling match, and interviews a world champion curler.

Jamie Anderson and her best friend and fellow gold medalist, Julia Mancuso, discuss their friendship, plus Shaun White shares what it is like to be the “old man” on the slopes, his love of skateboarding and more.

After a brief cameo from Gold medalist Chloe Kim, the Podium talks to longtime NBC Olympics broadcaster Mary Carillo about breaking gender barriers in sports reporting, her favorite Olympic moments, and the significance of the unified Korean women's hockey team. Then the team heads to the Korean team's game against Sweden, to talk to unified flag-waving fans about the historic moment. Finally, NBC News correspondent Keir Simmons takes us inside North Korea.

Scott Hamilton explains what makes the Shib Sibs so successful, with a close look at the complicated relationships in figure skating and ice dancing pairs. After a brief cameo from an enthusiastic pairs figure skating fan club, host Lauren Shehadi get a crash course in sliding sports (bobsled, luge, and skeleton) from Lewis Johnson, who also breaks down Chris Mazdzer’s silver medal run.

Host Lauren Shehadi takes us to women's slalom, where alpine skiing star Mikaela Shiffrin fails to win a medal in her second event in two days in PyeongChang, And The Podium takes a hard look at race and winter sports, with Vonetta Flowers, the first black athlete to win a gold medal at the Winter Olympics.