This week, Liam and Abram looked at the history of skating and other so-called "extreme sports" from rollerblading to skateboarding to surfing. As everybody who remembers the 90s and early 2000s in the United States knows, these kinds of "Xtreme" (yes, spelled with an X) sports were a staple of popular consciousness and culture. Movies, advertisements, and video games had a perennial skater and surfer presence, sometimes as protagonists and other times as antagonists, but always unquestionably cool and rebellious. Even textbooks for schoolchildren often featured them on the cover! But towards the beginning of the 2010s these sports went into a decline. This scene has not disappeared by any means, but whereas at the turn of the millennium figures like Tony Hawk were well-known even among people who were not themselves skaters, today many would struggle to name an equivalent athlete. Is this part of the usual ebb and flow of pastime activities, or have the kids simply given up on it in favor of video games? Find out by listening to this week's episode of Gladio Free Europe!

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