“A violent yet controlled sport that’s kind of a form of art.” That’s how Phaidra Knight describes rugby. On her retirement, she tells NPR’s Lulu Garcia-Navarro what drew her to the sport.

(SOUNDBITE OF TRIBECA SONG, “GET LARGE”)

LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO, HOST:

The Rugby World Cup is underway in Ireland, where teams of women from 12 countries, including the United States, are rucking and scrumming in pursuit of the world title.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

UNIDENTIFIED ANNOUNCER #1: Marsters trying to get past Naoupu – a really good chuck.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

UNIDENTIFIED ANNOUNCER #2: Brilliant pass here from the fullback Trey Hoon (ph).

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

UNIDENTIFIED ANNOUNCER #3: Brushes off Wunderfinder (ph), comes back again, gets rid of two more. So she’s beaten three.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

UNIDENTIFIED ANNOUNCER #1: Thomas with a handoff – still going – Kristen Thomas with the game’s first score.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: A fixture of the U.S. rugby scene is Phaidra Knight. She just announced her retirement from the sport after 18 years as a USA Eagle and three World Cups. But that doesn’t mean she’s missing the 2017 World Cup this year. She’ll be there, too, broadcasting with NBC Sports in Dublin instead. This week on Out of Bounds, women’s rugby. Rugby Magazine’s 2010 player of the decade Phaedra Knight joins us now from New York. Welcome.

PHAIDRA KNIGHT: Thank you. I’m stoked to be here with you.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: I’m stoked to have you. For those of us who may not know much about rugby, can you tell us the positions you played, prop, then flanker? And what do those things mean?

KNIGHT: (Laughter) A prop is one of the two positions on the field in the scrum, where they – you literally prop the hooker, who’s a player, obviously, in the middle of the two props, up. And props typically are your strongest or some of your strongest players. That was the position I played in the 2002 World Cup. Immediately after that World Cup, I moved to the position of flanker. And this is how the position was sold to me, right?

GARCIA-NAVARRO: (Laughter).

KNIGHT: I was told you get to essentially set the limits of the game by testing the referee and what they’re going to tolerate.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: (Laughter).

KNIGHT: So you’re the craziest player on the field. You can run like a free radical and tackle people, just destroy.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: Sounds fun.

KNIGHT: Yeah. Your goal in life is to make the fly-half’s life miserable. And so I was sold at that point.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: (Laughter). What was it that attracted you? Why did you find it so compelling?

KNIGHT: Probably the surface thing was that I was able to run as fast as I could and run through people. That was emancipating to me. But the biggest magnet to the game – into the sport – was how inclusive and accepting the community was. And for me, I was just this small-town girl from Georgia – didn’t quite know who I was or all of what I was. I knew that I had probably a lot of anger issues that I needed to get through, a lot of identity issues to work through. And it didn’t matter. That was the one community that didn’t care. And they accepted me and everyone else that knocked on their door.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: We often hear about men channeling their anger issues or medical issues into sports. We don’t hear as much about women doing that in the same way – especially sort of aggressive sports. Do you think the stigma has changed? Do you think that this has shifted now?

KNIGHT: I think that there are a number of women who come to the sport because, you know, something very deeply calls them that will allow them to be able to express themselves, right? And it’s not that rugby’s full of just angry people. I think that that life is full of – I mean, we all have anger.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: We do.

KNIGHT: And we all struggle with that. We all have different degrees of it. We also have different ways of expressing it. And this offers an opportunity to express that in the way that men do it, right? This violent yet controlled sport that’s really kind of a form of art.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: Rugby player and now rugby commentator Phaidra Knight, thank you so much.

KNIGHT: Thank you.

Copyright © 2017 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

In the 1980s, quarterback Joe Montana of the San Francisco 49ers was known as the premier passer in the game. But you wouldn’t even know his name if there hadn’t been someone on the other end to catch his passes. Most often, that was wide receiver Jerry Rice, and today we’ve invited the Football Hall of Famer to play a game called “Take a seat, Joe Montana! It’s time for Hannah Montana.” Three questions for Jerry Rice about that other great Montana — Hannah.

Click the audio link above to see how he does.

PETER SAGAL, HOST:

And now the game where we ask stars about things down here on Earth. It’s called Not My Job. So in the 1980s, Joe Montana of the San Francisco 49ers was acclaimed as the premier passer in the game. But if somebody wasn’t out there to catch those passes, you would not know that man’s name. Most often, it was Jerry Rice, a football Hall of Famer and the greatest wide receiver ever to strap on cleats. Jerry Rice, welcome.

(CHEERING)

JERRY RICE: Peter, can I…

SAGAL: No, please.

RICE: Excuse me. Can I add something to that, Peter?

SAGAL: By all means.

RICE: Yeah, you know, yeah, the greatest receiver to ever play the game, but I like to think of myself as the greatest player to ever play the game.

SAGAL: OK, forgive me.

(LAUGHTER, APPLAUSE)

RICE: Just joking.

SAGAL: Yeah. That’s the hardest job in the field, I think, because you have to concentrate on catching this very fast-moving object coming at you, and – but you also know that as soon as you grab it, if you grab it – what?

RICE: Look at the size of my hands.

SAGAL: (Laughter) You know, when you held them up, you blocked out the light, but…

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: I…

PAULA POUNDSTONE: He’s going to be part of the eclipse.

SAGAL: I’ve always wondered about…

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: So I’ve always wondered about that – that you’re out there. And, of course, you’re doing this incredibly difficult thing. You have to catch this ball, which is very hard to do, on the run. But you know that as soon as you catch it, somebody’s going to try to kill you.

RICE: That’s true.

SAGAL: Does that weigh on your mind as you’re reaching up to get the ball?

RICE: No, I just run very fast.

(LAUGHTER, APPLAUSE)

SAGAL: Well, let’s go back in time. Were you – I assume you were a star athlete growing up, right?

RICE: No, I was a nerd.

SAGAL: Were you really?

RICE: Yeah. I started playing football around my sophomore year in high school.

SAGAL: Really?

RICE: Yeah.

SAGAL: I’m somewhat comforted by that. When you say you were a nerd, what…

ROY BLOUNT JR: Too late.

SAGAL: Yeah, I know.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: I was hoping you were going to say early 50s, then I’d be, like, yes, but…

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: So when you say nerd, what do you mean?

RICE: Very quiet, but I had very large hands.

SAGAL: Right.

(LAUGHTER)

RICE: And really skinny. So I would walk around with my hands in my pocket all the time because everybody would notice my hands before they noticed me.

SAGAL: Wait a minute. So you’re telling me that, like, you were embarrassed as a kid…

RICE: Yeah.

SAGAL: …Because your hands were so large.

RICE: They were so big.

SAGAL: And that ended up being the attribute that helped you become the greatest wide receiver…

RICE: Right.

SAGAL: …Of all time, a Hall of Famer.

RICE: Right.

SAGAL: You are the football equivalent of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.

(LAUGHTER, APPLAUSE)

SAGAL: Think about it. Right? Everybody makes fun of him, and then all of a sudden, they’re like, Jerry, will you catch this football tonight? And you’re like, I can do that.

RICE: I’ve never thought of it that way.

(LAUGHTER)

RICE: That is amazing.

ALONZO BODDEN: Can I tell you tell that I, too, have incredibly large hands?

SAGAL: Yeah.

BODDEN: It takes more than that to be you.

SAGAL: Yeah.

(LAUGHTER, APPLAUSE)

RICE: Thank you.

SAGAL: I got one last question, which is that often, the wide receivers line up outside toward the sidelines, and you’re often right across from the safety or cornerback who’s going to be trying to cover you. Is – what passes between you two guys, as you’re looking at him, he’s looking at you, and you – he knows that he’s going to try to stop you, and you know he’s not going to? I mean, did you ever – do you ever, like, trash talk or just…

RICE: No, I just look at the defensive back and I say, you done.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: All right, Jerry Rice, we’ve invited you here to play a game we’re calling…

BILL KURTIS: Take a Seat, Joe Montana. It’s Time for Hannah Montana.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: We’re talking about that. You formed one of the great offensive tandems with quarterback Joe Montana, so we thought we’d ask you about that other great Montana – Hannah.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: You’re looking at me with a look of confusion. Do you know who Hannah Montana was?

RICE: I have heard the name.

SAGAL: Hannah Montana, just so you know, was a fictional character played by the – on the Disney Channel – by the very real Miley Cyrus. It was a TV show about a young girl who had a normal life, but her other life was being a pop star named Hannah Montana. That was the plot of the show. So we’re going to ask you three questions about that. And if you get two of them right…

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: …You will win our prize.

RICE: Are you serious?

SAGAL: I am absolutely serious.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: This is so funny because you were talking about your laser stare, your absolute confidence. You are now fidgeting in your chair, looking for an exit. This is…

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: …Hilarious.

POUNDSTONE: Those big hands can’t help you now, Jerry.

(LAUGHTER)

RICE: Yeah, it’s getting hot under here, guys.

SAGAL: Bill, who is Jerry Rice playing for?

KURTIS: Luke McEvoy of San Francisco, Calif.

(APPLAUSE)

SAGAL: Ready to do this?

RICE: Let’s do it.

SAGAL: All right. When Disney was creating the show back then, they considered a bunch of names based on place names, you know, eventually, like, Hannah Montana. They thought of a name – Alexis Texas. Why couldn’t they use that one? A, the state of Texas charges royalties for any commercial use of its name; B, cast member Moises Arias had a thick Castilian accent and he pronounced it Alexis Texas or C, Alexis Texas is the name of a well-known adult film star.

(LAUGHTER)

UNIDENTIFIED AUDIENCE MEMBER: C.

(LAUGHTER)

RICE: C.

SAGAL: C.

(LAUGHTER)

RICE: I am good. I am so good.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: Yeah, it was C, Alexis Texas. They were afraid what would happen when kid fans of the show were to Google the name Alexis Texas. So it became Hannah Montana. All right.

RICE: So I got that one right.

KURTIS: You bet.

SAGAL: You got that one right, yeah.

(APPLAUSE)

SAGAL: All right. Second question. The show “Hannah Montana,” which was a big hit – ran for some years – influenced many artists and performers, such as whom? A, actor Eli Roth, who listened to her music to prepare for his role as a stone-cold killer in the movie “Inglourious Basterds” because he said it made him feel insane…

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: …B, performance artist Marina Abramovic who, after hearing one Hannah Montana song, conceived of her piece “The Artist Is Present” where she sat in silence for over 700 hours…

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: …Or C, Lin-Manuel Miranda, author and composer, who says Hannah’s struggles as she tried to become famous inspired the early scenes as Alexander Hamilton…

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: …Starts his climb to the top.

RICE: Peter, you know, I’ve been preparing myself for this all day.

SAGAL: I bet you have – running up and down those hills.

RICE: So you guys are not going to help me out.

(LAUGHTER)

UNIDENTIFIED AUDIENCE MEMBER: A.

RICE: A?

SAGAL: They like A…

RICE: A.

SAGAL: …Apparently. Yes, it’s A.

(APPLAUSE)

SAGAL: Eli Roth – apparently listening to Hannah Montana put him in the mood to beat people to death with a bat. All right.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: “Hannah Montana” has a lot of dedicated fans, but some of them may surprise you, like which of these? A, Vice President Mike Pence…

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: …Who considers her music, quote, “wholesome but danceable.”

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: …B, actor Stephen Baldwin, who has Hannah Montana’s initials tattooed on his shoulder or C, artist Damien Hirst, who called his installation of a decomposing beef cow The Real Hannah Montana.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: If we could weaponize the look of incredulity that Jerry Rice is giving me right now…

(LAUGHTER)

RICE: Did you say number two – a tattoo?

SAGAL: I said, Stephen Baldwin, the actor, the answer…

RICE: Wow.

SAGAL: …Was that he got a tattoo of Hannah – H-M – Hannah Montana’s initials on his shoulder. He was so inspired by her.

RICE: OK, such art. So I would say C.

SAGAL: You’re going to go C, the – Damien Hirst, the British conceptual artist.

(APPLAUSE)

SAGAL: Damien Hirst fans put a decomposing cow in a thing and called it The Real Hannah Montana. I wouldn’t put it by him, but it was actually the tattoo. It was Stephen Baldwin. You’ll be happy or sad to know that Mr. Baldwin now regrets the tattoo.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: Bill, how did Jerry Rice do on our show?

KURTIS: His score was two out of three, and you’re a winner. That’s a win.

(APPLAUSE)

SAGAL: Jerry Rice is a Super Bowl MVP, three-time Super Bowl champ. Jerry recently partnered with the National Kidney Foundation to promote kidney health. Jerry Rice, thank you so much for joining us.

(SOUNDBITE OF JOHNNY PEARSON’S “HEAVY ACTION (THEME FROM “MONDAY NIGHT FOOTBALL”)”)

SAGAL: In just a minute, Bill blames it on the tortellini in the Listener Limerick Challenge. Call 1-888-WAIT-WAIT to join us on the air. We’ll be back in a minute with more of WAIT WAIT… DON’T TELL ME from NPR.

Copyright © 2017 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick remains unsigned even as preseason is underway. Some believe the league is blackballing him for taking a knee before games to protest police violence.

AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:

There’s less than a month to go before the start of the NFL regular season, and quarterback Colin Kaepernick is still a player without a team. Last season he was with the San Francisco 49ers. Now, during the preseason, he began a silent protest of social injustice against minorities and police violence. Instead of standing during the national anthem before games, he would kneel. This sparked outrage among those who said he was being unpatriotic. He also had a lot of supporters, and now those supporters allege that NFL owners are freezing him out because of his political beliefs.

NPR’s sports correspondent Tom Goldman joins us to talk more about this controversy. Hey there, Tom.

TOM GOLDMAN, BYLINE: Hi Audie.

CORNISH: So is there any way to prove this idea of collusion to keep Kaepernick out?

GOLDMAN: It’s very hard to prove, Audie – no evidence of backroom deals being made. But it doesn’t look good as one quarterback after another gets signed and it’s not Colin Kaepernick. Jay Cutler this week signed with Miami, coming out of retirement and basically having to be talked into playing again. Baltimore signed a quarterback without NFL experience, a guy who played most recently in the Arena Football League. Now, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell said last week, no collusion. Although it is safe to say there are NFL owners who worry about signing Kaepernick and the message that would send.

CORNISH: Now, before we get to that, I want to ask about Kaepernick’s abilities on the field. I mean how does he compare to these other quarterbacks?

GOLDMAN: Excellent question. He led San Francisco to one Super Bowl following the 2012 season and to two conference championships. Of course that’s ancient history to teams that want to win now. A more important stat is last year. On arguably the worst team in the NFL, the San Francisco 49ers, Kaepernick threw 16 touchdown passes and had only four interceptions in 11 starts. So he showed he can still play. And when you consider there are 32 starters, 32 backups, 32 emergency quarterbacks who carry clipboards during games and Colin Kaepernick isn’t on a roster, it’s questionable.

CORNISH: The other thing that his defenders note is that when you look back at the controversies the NFL has had over the last couple of years, there are players who have done a lot worse than kneeling during the national anthem, and they’re still playing.

GOLDMAN: Yeah, players who have committed domestic violence, rape, vehicular homicide. They’ve been busted for drugs and brutal dogfighting. We remember that. You know, there are people, though, who consider what Colin Kaepernick did beyond the pale, taking a knee during the National Anthem, which really took on a life of its own. He says he was protesting overall treatment of people in black communities during a time of great tensions following shootings by police of African-Americans. Kaepernick said early on he was not against the military but wanted to help motivate social change. But for many fans, it was interpreted as un-American, unpatriotic. And some owners worry about that.

CORNISH: What is the NFL saying about all this?

GOLDMAN: Well, as I mentioned Roger Goodell denies collusion. He said recently that teams make decisions based on what’s in the best interest of their team, and they make these decisions individually. I talked to Dr. Harry Edwards today. He’s the well-known sociologist who’s really been at the intersection of sport and politics and activism for 50 years. He thinks the NFL needs to get out in front while it can. Here he is.

HARRY EDWARDS: I sent an email to the commissioner of the National Football League urging him in the strongest possible language not to make Colin Kaepernick a martyr. Let him play football. Let him do whatever he’s going to do, and manage it.

GOLDMAN: And Audie, you know, this isn’t going away. A protest was announced yesterday in front of NFL headquarters for later this month. Filmmaker Spike Lee is taking an active role in that, as are several protest groups. And there’s a petition circulating on change.org targeting the NFL, its teams and league sponsors and threatening boycotts of the NFL and sponsors’ products. The petition is hoping to get a million signatures by the start of the regular season next month.

CORNISH: That’s NPR’s sports correspondent Tom Goldman. Tom, thank you.

GOLDMAN: You’re welcome.

(SOUNDBITE OF ROANE NAMUH AND REVA DEVITO SONG, “SHOULD HAVE KNOWN”)

Copyright © 2017 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

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A post shared by World Dog Surfing (@worlddogsurfing) on Aug 7, 2017 at 11:27am PDT

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Amateur cyclist Bryan Fogel set out to make a film about doping in international sports. What he found was an international scandal over a state-run Russian doping program, with links to the Russian government.

STACEY VANEK SMITH, HOST:

Doping has been one of the biggest stories in sports over the past several decades. Nearly every sport out there has been hit with news of athletes using illegal performance-enhancing drugs. Perhaps the most famous example is cyclist Lance Armstrong, who denied doping allegations for years and then finally admitted to using performance-enhancing drugs in 2013. That is where a new documentary called “Icarus” begins.

Director and amateur cyclist Bryan Fogel decides to explore the subject by taking his own regimen of performance-enhancing drugs. But halfway through the film, what began as an experiment turns into something much bigger. One of the film’s main subjects blows the whistle on a massive Russian doping program with links to the highest levels of Russian government.

(SOUNDBITE OF DOCUMENTARY, “ICARUS”)

UNIDENTIFIED JOURNALIST #1: If this is true, it is an unimaginable level of criminality.

UNIDENTIFIED JOURNALIST #2: The International Olympic Committee calling the report very worrying.

UNIDENTIFIED JOURNALIST #3: We asked the World Doping Agency to investigate immediately.

UNIDENTIFIED JOURNALIST #4: The Justice Department is opening an investigation into Russian government officials, athletes, coaches and anti-doping authorities.

SMITH: I’m joined now by the film’s director, Bryan Fogel. He’s in our studios in New York. Bryan, thanks for joining us.

BRYAN FOGEL: I’m thrilled to be here.

SMITH: So, Bryan, this film begins as a very daring experiment. You decide to use performance-enhancing drugs yourself in a cycling race. The movie has all these really vivid images of you taking pills and injecting yourself with testosterone. I mean, like, at one point, you have needles lined up on the table. You’re giving yourself shots in the butt. You have blood running down your leg. What was that like?

FOGEL: Besides being almost an absurdist comedy? (Laughter) I mean, it was a little ludicrous. But for what I was doing, which was, you know, going on this very, very detailed mission of charting what I was taking and then getting blood tests done every single week and collecting my urine and, you know, there was a very, very large extent to which I was going. But, you know, I was out to make a film. And I was documenting that process. So to that extent, I mean, there was a method and a purpose to the madness.

SMITH: So you don’t go on this journey alone. You get this man Grigory Rodchenkov to oversee your steroid use and your training regime. And he has a very interesting position. He is the head of Moscow’s anti-doping laboratory. He is quite a character. What was your first impression of him?

FOGEL: Well, Grigory at the time oversaw the testing of all Russian athletes across all sports and all international competitions in Russia of all athletes coming to Russia to compete on top of the Sochi games. And this guy is just this incredibly likable, enigmatic, larger-than-life personality.

SMITH: And this is very striking because he is the head of Russia’s Anti-Doping Agency, and he’s making all these jokes. And he’s helping you beat doping tests. Did that strike you as strange that he agreed to do this?

FOGEL: Well, I mean, it was beyond strange. And it was jaw-dropping. And it was also why at that time before, you know, it pivoted, I felt like I still had a really interesting film. The fact that I’ve got this Russian scientist who was supposed to be catching athletes for doping breaking every single rule in the book to not only help me dope but to tell me what to do and then even go so far as to come to Los Angeles to collect all of my urine samples which I had been taking, to bring them back to Moscow to test them in his WADA-accredited lab. I mean, everything about what he was doing was against the rules.

SMITH: Right. WADA being the World Anti-Doping Agency?

FOGEL: That’s correct. They’re kind of like the United Nations of anti-doping.

SMITH: So you mentioned that things pivoted very quickly. As you’re filming your documentary, the Russian anti-doping lab starts to come under fire. What was happening?

FOGEL: So right as I’m starting the actual program to dope myself, a German documentary comes out, like, a “60 Minutes” TV doc. And it has these two Russian whistleblowers that have fled Russia, went to Germany and have told this story of a state-sponsored doping system in Russia. They run this television program, and there’s enough in it that sets off a WADA – World Anti-Doping Agency – investigation. So over the next year while I’m doping myself and Grigory’s advising me and he’s coming to Los Angeles and I’m going to Moscow and we’re talking and Skyping everyday, he’s also under investigation.

And November 2015, this 335-page report comes out basically saying that everything that the German documentary put forward is true. But not only that, that Grigory is the mastermind of this operation and that they believe that Russia is running a state-sponsored doping program. So suddenly, this is a crisis. And he’s forced to resign from the lab by Vitaly Mutko, who is the sports minister. And Vitaly Mutko answers to one person and one person only, and that’s Vladimir Putin.

SMITH: I mean, what are you thinking at this point when this report comes out?

FOGEL: It was a combination of, oh, my God, scared, shocked. Russia’s suspended from world track and field. And then Putin is on television – on Russia-1 – holding an official press conference not only denying all the allegations of this report but that if any of this proves to be true, that it will be the individuals that are held accountable and that punishment will be absolute.

SMITH: Right.

FOGEL: And at that point, Grigory has two FSB, KGB agents living in his apartment, quote, unquote, “guarding him.” And five days after the report, I’m on Skype with Grigory, and Grigory is telling me that he has got word from other of his friends within the KGB, the FSB that they have planned his suicide and that he needs to escape.

SMITH: And things get so bad that Grigory flees to the United States and, in fact, he comes to stay with you.

FOGEL: This happened so fast. I mean, this is – six days after this report, Russia for whatever reason didn’t have him on the do-not-fly list. And he’s somehow able to get out of the country. I bought the plane ticket. I put it on my credit card. He comes with just a backpack in his hand and three hard drives. And we put them up in a safe house in Los Angeles.

And over the next month, I discover that not only is Grigory involved, Grigory is the mastermind of a spectacular unbelievable scandal that calls into question every medal ever won in the Olympic Games. And not only that, he oversaw the Sochi Olympics, where Russia won 33 medals. And they did it through this elaborate “Ocean’s 11”-style scheme, where they had literally created holes in the laboratory to slip out the dirty urine samples of all the Russian athletes and swap out their urine with clean urine. And this guy was the only man on planet Earth who had this evidence. And he was able to prove it.

SMITH: Right. I mean, at one point in the documentary, he talks to a New York Times reporter. And there’s a huge story in The New York Times about this. Suddenly, you’re in the middle of a giant global conspiracy.

FOGEL: And a giant international scandal. And it was incredibly stressful. That six-month process between learning what I had learned to going to The New York Times was a daily crisis. Two of his friends died under mysterious circumstances in Russia, both of them. One, the head of the Russian Anti-Doping Agency, the other the former head of a Russian Anti-Doping Agency. Both die of heart attacks, age 52 and 59 within two weeks of each other.

Then, the Department of Justice and FBI show up and serve him with a subpoena. And eventually, bringing the story to The New York Times because we realized that if we didn’t, not only might the story be buried, but nobody in the sporting world really was going to want to do anything about this. They all just wanted to push it under the rug because of the ramifications to the business.

SMITH: Why do you think he talked?

FOGEL: What happened at Sochi he was incredibly upset about because he had went from being a scientist, meaning his whole life is – yes, it’s it’s doing the exact opposite of what he should be doing, but he was using science to beat the system. There was a differentiation that he made in his mind. But at Sochi, this wasn’t about science. This was just fraud.

This was literally like breaking into a bank vault and substituting real money for counterfeit money. It was spiraling out of control. And after Sochi, he was promised it would stop. Instead, he’s doing it for the swimming world championships. He’s doing it for the collegiate athletic world championships. And there’s essentially no end in this. And as you also see in the film, as you see that he’s disposable like so many others that betray the government or whatever…

SMITH: Right. He becomes very worried for his life and, in fact, goes into witness protection.

FOGEL: That’s right. He…

SMITH: Is that where he is now?

FOGEL: He is in protective custody. And the reason why is the Department of Justice and FBI has been sitting on this case for the last 14 months. And we’re very, very optimistic that our government is going to continue to protect him because regardless of the wrongs that he did, it was tremendous courage and honesty to come forward with this staggering amount of evidence and let the world know what had happened. And without him, we would still be in the dark about this.

SMITH: Bryan Fogel is a documentary filmmaker. His new film “Icarus” is out on Netflix this week. Bryan, thank you so much for speaking with us.

FOGEL: It has been a real pleasure.

Copyright © 2017 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

Ray Allen was serious about two things in life: his three-pointers and the Holocaust. NPR’s Stacey Vanek Smith speaks with Allen about his experience visiting Auschwitz and some of the unexpected backlash he received once he returned home.

STACEY VANEK SMITH, HOST:

Most of us know Ray Allen as a former NBA basketball player with the Milwaukee Bucks, the Seattle Supersonics, Boston Celtics Miami Heat. He’s also the NBA’s all-time leader in 3-point shots. What most people probably don’t know is that Ray has always been fascinated by the Holocaust. In fact, whenever his team would visit Washington, D.C., to play the Wizards, Ray would make a visit to the National Holocaust Museum.

Recently, Ray Allen decided to see the history in person. He visited the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland, and he wrote about the experience this week in The Players’ Tribune. We called him at his home in Connecticut to hear more about his trip and some of the unexpected reactions he’s gotten. So you write in your essay that you have been fascinated by World War II and the Holocaust since you were a teenager. Why is that?

RAY ALLEN: Well, first, I grew up as a Air Force brat. My dad was a metals technician in the Air Force. And so I lived and grew up in Germany. I grew up in England. So I had opportunity to see things differently. So I’ve always had this curiosity about the world. And, you know, I had this ability to kind of think outside my own self and put myself in those people’s shoes. And, you know, so as I became of college age, I watched “Schindler’s List.” It was 1993. And it really, like, unearthed a lot in me. And it made me realize that, you know, how much good one person can do and vice versa, how much bad one person can do.

SMITH: And what made you want to visit Auschwitz specifically?

ALLEN: There’s so many different stories that have come out of the Holocaust, so many different movies that I’ve watched that really show the human condition, people’s will to survive. And, you know, I always ask myself, if I was in those situations, what would I do? Would I be brave? It’s easy for me to say I’m brave now, you know. I’m tall. I’m, you know, strong. I’ve played in the NBA for many years.

You know, I come from a good family. You know, it’s easy to talk about being brave Now in the position I’m in, but would I be brave if I was under those circumstances where, you know, I had to fight for my survival, having not eaten in days, weeks or months? Like, how tough would I have been then? How strong would I have been?

SMITH: Right. I mean, in your essay, you talk about people who hid Jewish families in their basements, risking their own lives to do that. And you ask yourself if you would have done the same. Would you have done the same?

ALLEN: The easy answer is yes. It’s easy to say, yeah, I’m going to fight for, you know, someone who can’t fight themselves. But, you know, I have five children. And would I put my 5-year-old in harm’s way? Like, it’s easy for me to say I want to help other people, but in helping other people, would I be killing my own family? Now, a lot of people made that choice. And a lot of people saved a lot of lives.

And I would like to think that I was – I would be that courageous. There’s obviously no way to be able to tell, but that is, I think, the ultimate question that we live with every day because there’s things that happen every single day now today. And it doesn’t result in maybe us losing our lives or family member losing their lives, but are we willing to fight for the next person when it doesn’t benefit us?

SMITH: In the piece, titled “Why I Went To Auschwitz,” Ray Allen writes about the overwhelming feelings he had as he stood in front of what he called the horror of the history.

ALLEN: (Reading) We walked through the barracks and gas chambers. And what I remember most is what I heard – nothing. I’ve never experienced silence like that.

SMITH: This is an excerpt where he describes visiting the gas chambers for the first time.

ALLEN: (Reading) Apart from footsteps, the complete lack of sound was almost jarring. It’s eerie and sobering. You’re standing in these rooms where so much death has taken place, and your mind is trying to come to terms with all that’s happened in this space. I stood outside for a while by myself, thinking about everything I experienced. Why do we learn about the Holocaust? Is it just so we can make sure nothing like this ever happens again? Is it because 6 million people died? Yes, but there’s a bigger reason I think. The Holocaust was about how human beings, real normal people like you and me, treat each other.

SMITH: Many questions, many reflections, many unexpected emotions – that’s what Ray Allen says this journey drummed up in him. The one thing he did not expect? Criticism. When Ray returned home and posted about his trip on social media, some people blasted back. They didn’t like the fact that he seemed to be raising awareness for what had happened in Poland to Jews and not using that time or energy to support people in the black community. You got quite a few really strong reactions to your visit to Auschwitz. Not all of them were positive. Why do you think there was that response?

ALLEN: Because, again, the way, you know, we get thrust into these situations in the first place is because people can’t see past their own color, past their own hate. And the reason that I brought that up was because people are looking at this as a color issue. You know, you want to talk about this issue and say, well, why are we still talking about this? And why is, you know, why are you supporting Jewish people? And my response has been consistent every time is that this is not about Jewish people. This is about people. You know, just because that’s their religion, look at what was done to them. You know, this is a lesson for us in all walks of life.

And there’s so many different atrocities that have taken place. This is just the atrocity that we are speaking about right now. We can talk about the genocide all over the world, you know, that’s taking place in so many different countries, but we just happen to be talking about the Holocaust. I’ve studied slavery just the same. And this is slavery just the same. I’m speaking on behalf of people, people who can’t speak for themselves, you know, atrocities. You know, teaching kids now – we got kids in school now that don’t know what the Holocaust is, you know, but yet, they’ll know – they know what a bully is. Bullies turn into dictators. Dictators end up bullying. You know, we can’t have that in this world that we live in. We know too much.

SMITH: That was Ray Allen. He played in the NBA for 18 years. His piece on his journey to Auschwitz ran this week in The Players’ Tribune.

Copyright © 2017 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

Ara Parseghian was a force at the University of Notre Dame. He brought the football program back to national prominence during the 1960s and 1970s, including two championships.

AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:

Legendary Notre Dame football coach Ara Parseghian died this morning. He was 94. He coached the Fighting Irish during the 1960s and ’70s. Parseghian returned Notre Dame to college football prominence and established himself as one of the greatest to lead the storied program in South Bend, Ind. NPR’s Tom Goldman has more.

TOM GOLDMAN, BYLINE: The numbers alone tell a story of success. In Ara Parseghian’s 11 years at Notre Dame, the team won 95 games, lost only 17, tied 4. And the winning started quickly. Parseghian took over a Notre Dame team that was foundering – 2 and 7 in 1963. The next year, his first, the Irish went 9 and 1, almost winning a national championship. Almost became a reality in 1966. Notre Dame won the title after an epic tie with Michigan State and then again in 1973 after a 24-23 win over Alabama in the Sugar Bowl.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

UNIDENTIFIED ANNOUNCER: As expected, a fantastic game – five lead changes thus far. We’re still in the third quarter with 2 and a half minutes to go.

FRANK POMARICO: That was like a heavyweight fight, toe-to-toe with two great champions throwing haymakers at each other.

GOLDMAN: Frank Pomarico was in the middle of that game-slash-fight. He was a senior captain and starting offensive lineman for Notre Dame. But Pomarico and his teammates had another title. They were “Ara’s Knights,” spelled with a K. It’s the title of the book Pomarico wrote about Ara Parseghian.

POMARICO: He was somebody that cared about each one of us individually as people and then how we were going to make a difference in the world after we got out of school.

GOLDMAN: Pomarico says Parseghian was tremendously disciplined but fair. He worked his players hard and looked for people who were hungry for success. Parseghian never promised a starting position. You had to earn it.

POMARICO: This is a man who could have been a governor, a senator. He could have been the president of the United States. That’s how well-organized and charismatic he was.

GOLDMAN: Parseghian is considered part of Notre Dame’s holy trinity of football coaches along with Frank Leahy and Knute Rockne, a great honor that comes with crushing pressure. Parseghian talked about it in a 1984 NPR interview.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED BROADCAST)

ARA PARSEGHIAN: It’s more self-inflicted pressure as a result of trying to live up to the enormous traditions that have been set at Notre Dame.

GOLDMAN: He did live up to the traditions, but it took a toll. Parseghian retired after the 1974 season when he was only 51. He worked in broadcasting and fundraised to combat illnesses that took the lives of his daughter and several grandchildren. And when talk turned to maybe returning to college football, Parseghian was quoted as saying, after Notre Dame, what is there? Tom Goldman, NPR News.

(SOUNDBITE OF FUTURE AND ZAYTOVEN SONG, “LAY UP”)

Copyright © 2017 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.