At the 1912 Stockholm Olympics, Jim Thorpe competed in mismatched shoes, one of them pulled from a garbage can, and still won the pentathlon and decathlon. This episode traces the life of the Sac and Fox athlete born Wa-Tho-Huk, or Bright Path, from the deaths of his twin brother and parents to the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, where he broke the high jump record in street clothes and ran through Pop Warner’s varsity defense.

We examine how he was stripped of his medals in 1913 for having played semi-professional baseball, despite a 30-day protest rule, then went on to play for the New York Giants and serve as the first president of the league that became the NFL. The episode also covers his struggles during the Depression, his $1,500 sale of his life story, his death in 1953, the sale of his remains to a Pennsylvania town, the failed NAGPRA lawsuit, and his full reinstatement in 2022.

• How tragedy and the assimilation policy at Carlisle shaped Thorpe’s early life
• His one-man performance against Harvard in 1911
• Why his Olympic medals were taken and how the IOC ignored its own deadline
• His role in professional baseball, football, and the founding of the NFL
• The decades-long fight over his remains and his record