The Netflix series Simone Biles Rising is, on the one hand, exactly what you would expect: a documenting of Biles’ remarkable career, with an emphasis on her unexpected withdrawal from the 2020 Tokyo Olympics (which were delayed until 2021) and her preparation for the Paris Olympics, which are under way.

Much of the story is well-known, particularly her utter dominance of her sport in the last decade or so. And it’s not the first time anyone has tried to shed light on the mental health vulnerabilities of elite athletes, even at the Olympics: That’s also the topic of the HBO film The Weight of Gold (which I highly recommend). What makes this series timely is that it works as something of an education, or at least a reminder, for audiences just as the Olympics start. The message: We don’t know these athletes.

Biles has a “forbidden Olympic closet” where she keeps all of her items from Tokyo.

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When Biles dropped out of most of the competition in Tokyo, some things were known. She talked about having “the twisties,” a condition familiar to gymnasts in which the athlete loses the ability to know and control where they are in the air. But a lot of commentators and social media jerks, as you see in the series, blew off that explanation and declared she should have just pushed through, that she just quit, and that a strong person would have continued on no matter what.

What many people featured in the series make clear is that when the twisties hit an athlete, the risk is not just that you’ll be embarrassed or lose. As 1992 Olympic medalist Betty Okino says — with a little reluctance, because she doesn’t want to scare young gymnasts — you can die. If you can’t land on your feet and you instead land on your head, you can die. If you’ve ever seen baseball players struggle with the yips and keep throwing wildly no matter how many therapies they have attempted, or if you idolize athletes who play hurt in general, think about whether they’d keep doing it if every errant throw was potentially life-threatening.

Biles is also quite open about the fact that the contemptuous and vicious way commentators like Jason Whitlock spoke about her (they still do!) took a toll. She acknowledges at one point that it was a good idea for her to turn off Instagram comments, and that she’s removed Twitter (now X) from her phone a couple of times when she needs to.

But perhaps the most useful thing she does in the series is create context for her comeback. Yes, you get to see how she showed up in competition again in 2023 and performed very, very well, at 26 – an age when she says she thought she’d be retired. But while the timing of Olympic competition can be brutal — if you miss your moment, you don’t get another one for years — it also means that if you need to recover, you have the time. After Tokyo in 2021, Biles and her coach say she didn’t really get underway in the gym again for about a year and a half. The coach says that the only real cure for the twisties is to take time off and try to work on your general well-being, including your mental health. And so that’s what she did.

Simone Biles is returning to the Olympics in 2024 — on her own terms.

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She went to therapy; in fact, she convinced her husband, NFL player Jonathan Owens, to go to a sports psychologist, too, and he speaks about how useful it’s been in his own career. She spent time processing trauma in her life, including the fact that she was one of many gymnasts who came forward to acknowledge sexual abuse by Team USA doctor Larry Nassar, part of a very long story that publicly unfolded mostly between her 2016 and 2021 Olympic appearances. And she talks about the fact that when she did come back to the gym, it was not with a glorious fanfare and a delighted spring in her step. She was scared and discouraged. Before competing at the 2023 World Championships in Antwerp, Belgium, she says this: “Mostly, I’m trying not to die.”

One possible lesson to take away from the series — perhaps the simplest one — is “Simone Biles is awesome; look how she fought to come back.” And that certainly appears to be true. But the other lesson is a bit more complicated: Athletes are just people. They don’t follow neat paths, necessarily. For Biles, coming back took time. She was sometimes ambivalent. The ultimate outcome is not assured. Handling the kind of negativity she faces is something she’s working on.

Elite athletes (including super-elite athletes, which is the only phrase that really captures Biles’ place in her sport) have limits. Top men’s tennis player Jannik Sinner isn’t playing in the Olympics because of tonsillitis, and mental health is just capable of interrupting a competition. Tennis phenom Naomi Osaka has faced criticism similar to what’s been directed at Biles when she’s taken care of her own health by taking a step back. (Notably, they are both women of color; there is some smart discussion of the role of race in the Biles film, too.)

So whether they meet their goals or not, much of what Olympians feel and experience is unknowable unless and until they choose to explain it. It may look like just grit and triumph or grit and disappointment, but in fact, it’s more impressive to remember that they’re complicated people with a lot going on, even when they’re not performing.

This piece also appeared in NPR’s Pop Culture Happy Hour newsletter. Sign up for the newsletter so you don’t miss the next one, plus get weekly recommendations about what’s making us happy.

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Think you have a rough travel story? Millions of Americans do this summer. But it’s difficult to top, and I mean the word in all ways, the predicament of Barry “Butch” Wilmore and Sunita “Suni” Williams.

They’re the astronauts who rocketed into space aboard the Boeing Starliner capsule on June 5 for what was supposed to be about a week in orbit on the International Space Station. As of today, they have been circling the earth for 52 days.

Just before liftoff, NASA unloaded luggage that contained some personal items, like their changes of clothing, because the space agency needed the space for a new pump to help recycle liquid waste into drinkable water. Think about that over your morning coffee.

Sure, your space suit might look a little wrinkled in a week. But who’s going to see you — E.T.? Besides, you’ll be back home soon. Oh, wait …

Boeing’s Starliner has had helium leaks and thruster failures during its inaugural trip to the ISS. The battery aboard the craft is rated to last 90 days. Time is running out for engineers to diagnose the problem and repair the Starliner, if the astronauts are to ride it home.

To be clear, Astronauts Williams and Wilmore are not stranded. They are in residence aboard the ISS, with other astronauts and cosmonauts. If the Starliner can’t return to Earth, the astronauts may have to come back in a SpaceX Dragon capsule … another embarrassment for Boeing.

Williams and Wilmore can handle the changes in plan. Both are military and space flight veterans. Williams has been on seven spacewalks.

But it’s tempting this weekend to imagine a sitcom in space that studios might now be planning. Like, say, Nine’s Company: “Two astronauts can’t get home when their spacecraft blows a gasket, and they have to bunk aboard the ISS. But wait — who has the Hello Kitty toothbrush?”

Or the Netflix rom-com Lost and Found in Space. “Two astronauts are cooped up together on the ISS. Jordan is neat and methodical, Drew scattered and impulsive. Jordan listens to Mozart; Drew likes Nicki Minaj. Jordan reads James Joyce and Marcel Proust; Drew watches ramen recipes on TikTok. But as they circle Earth 3,000 times, their eyes meet across the module, they see each other float in the starlight. And…”