April 29, 2026 • 53 mins
On Episode 15 of The Away End, Daniel begins with a call to action regarding the current, Kafkaesque reality of being a football fan and wishing to attend a World Cup game. Then Daniel's deep dive into the South Korean National Team brings back memories of a long-lost friend, "Hyun" and the crushing return of a symbolic gesture in a brown paper bag. John is fresh off his return from Sierra Leone and shares a lovely story about soccer and social connection at Kissy Psychiatric Hospital and a hopeful story that took place on the six-hour bus ride from Kono to Freetown. Plus, a wonderful listener mailbag segment!
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Speaker 1 (00:06):
Welcome to the Way End.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
I'm Danielle Alercon and.
Speaker 3 (00:09):
I'm John Green.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
John, you look tired, man. What's going on?
Speaker 3 (00:12):
I got back from Sierra Leone this morning at about
two am, so I am a little tired, but I'm very,
very happy to be with you. I have two wonderful
football stories to share with you from Sierra Leone. Will
save that for the third seven of the podcast, But first,
I think you want to talk to me about a
little bit of exclusive reporting you've been doing.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
Yeah, So, the Crack investigative reporting team at the Oaend
stumbled upon this memo which it was leaked to us
by a source. It's called FIFA pricing structure to maximize
game day revenue. Weirdly, it has brought to you by
Franz Kofko, which I didn't understand until I read what's
on it. John, you won't believe this. Yeah, there are
(00:51):
so many fees. There's a seat access fee, there's a
bathroom access service charge, security fee, cup holder usage to
usher mandatory gratuities. You have to sit on shows either seat,
you have to tip them sure, there's a selfie surcharge,
and there's in addition, you have to pay if any
like brands come out in the background of your selfie.
(01:12):
You also have to pay for that JumboTron appearance fee,
which is quite see. I've always thought they should have
one of those. Actually, I think there should be a
jumbo tron appearance fee for a club like AFC Wimbledon
that's looking to raise some revenue. A jumbo tron appearance
fee feels like a I mean obvious, how jumbo is
the jumbo tron at Wimbledon Stadium If you don't mind
my asking.
Speaker 3 (01:32):
Well'll be honest with you and thank you for asking.
We don't have one. Well, just you know, just duct
tape together a couple of large screen TVs and just
just hold it out a couple of big flat screens.
There's a crowd waving tax, John, This one will really
I'm in favor of that. I'm in favor of that.
(01:55):
This one's difficult for the Spanish, whom, as we mentioned
in the last episode, don't actually have any lyrics to
their national lands them. But there's a national anthem singing fee. Wow,
that actually gives Spain a slight advantage in the World Cup.
Speaker 1 (02:06):
Well, it would accept that.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
There's also a penalty if you don't sing the national anthem,
so they kind of yeah, it's weird, they get you. Yeah,
I'm starting to see why this was brought to you
by Franz Kafka. It was just the interesting there's a
banter tax if you want to, you know, sort of
like exchange a friendly repartee with the whoever's sitting next
to you child on shoulders surcharge John. That one's tough
(02:31):
as parents. I feel like that one's really, you know,
designed to take money out of my pocket. And then
this one is really a kind of a long shot.
I don't know if they're gonna get much money off this.
But if you've seen done those those games where people
send like in the upper tiers, float a paper airplane
down to the field and see how far they can
(02:52):
get it into the field. Have you ever seen that?
Speaker 3 (02:54):
Yeah, it's one of my favorite genres of TikTok videos.
Speaker 1 (02:57):
Paper airplane flight permit tariff.
Speaker 3 (03:00):
Hmmm, So well, listen, if you're going to use the
friendly skies, you're going to have to participate in governance,
and governance is apparently determined by FIFA.
Speaker 2 (03:12):
Yes, now, this memo, tongue in cheek memo, I should say,
it's really been making it comes because I've just been
thinking about this stuff a lot and about how much
I hate PIFA, and I just want to report some
facts to you that I read in the Guardian, and
these are not fake, These are real. Yes, John, thank
(03:32):
you for clarifying. Everything that I've set up until now
is fake, but it is of a piece with these
actual facts which are actually real. FIFA's resale site currently
has four tickets on sale for the World Cup Final
that are just under two point three million dollars each.
Speaker 3 (03:49):
Each, John, I mean, I don't doubt that someone will
pay that because people with infinite resources. And I was
reminded this week as I traveled through Sierra Leone that
lots of us have functionally infinite resources and hoard them
and use them terribly. But people with even more infinite
(04:13):
resources than I have simply don't care how much things
cost because it doesn't matter to them, and it does
matter to FIFA, and that is is is the.
Speaker 1 (04:26):
Root of all evil.
Speaker 2 (04:27):
Yes, I agree, that's a tragedy, and I'm glad you
brought that point up, because You're right, in our privilege,
we sometimes forget sort of the you know, the relative
scale of our privilege is easy to forget if you're
stuck in your own bubble. So I'm glad you brought
that up.
Speaker 3 (04:44):
What's the cheapest ticket available?
Speaker 2 (04:46):
Well, let's see. The lowest priced tickets for the final
are three dollars eighty five cents.
Speaker 1 (04:53):
Sheeeese Louise.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
For four seats four rows from the top of the
upper deck.
Speaker 1 (05:00):
Behind the goal.
Speaker 3 (05:05):
I mean, you could own a not insignificant portion of
AFC Wimbledon for that investment.
Speaker 2 (05:10):
Wow, that is a lot of money. Oh my god.
Speaker 3 (05:13):
Okay, so you could have you could have your name
on the on the JumboTron if we had a jump votron,
for sure.
Speaker 2 (05:21):
Yeah. I mean, I just think there's a lot of
ways to spend that money. It would be better than that.
It just makes me so angry, John, and I've been
thinking about this, and here's what I've come up with.
I think that FIFA and all the layers of greedy
corporate trolls that dominate the world's most popular sport are
(05:42):
actively weaponizing our love for the game against us, and
they're extracting every dollar from our collective passion for the sport.
They need to understand that there's a point at which we,
the fans, without whom the sport and the spectacle means
little or nothing, will not tolerate as much abuse. And
this will only happen if the game's so. I'm saying
that for the good of soccer, for the good of football,
(06:06):
for the good of the sport that we love so much,
this World Cup should fail. I don't mean in footballing terms.
I mean in h I don't mean sporting terms. I
mean in economic terms.
Speaker 3 (06:20):
Do you think that there will be empty seats as
a result of all of this? Like at some point,
I mean I if I absolutely agree with you. I
mean I remember like being a Chicago Cubs fan as
a Major League Baseball team in the nineteen nineties, and
every time you'd go to Wrigleyfield, Wrigleyfield would be full,
and it didn't matter that the Cubs were always bad,
(06:42):
because there were always plenty of Cubs fans who were
making their first trip to Chicago, or plenty of Cubs
fans who had season tickets who were going to go
and fill that stadium up. And there was no incentive
for the Cubs to be good other than whatever money
you get for winning the World Series and there is
absolutely no incentive for FIFA to do anything else than
(07:04):
what they're doing as long as people will pay, and
like people will pay, people will travel it because there's
there's so much I kept thinking this too this week.
There's so much money in this world, Like there's so
much money. Forget, we always talk about the billionaires, but
(07:24):
there are so many millionaires there are so that you know,
there are so many people who have lifetimes and lifetimes
worth of money who can afford to go and spend
a few thousand dollars to see a football game and
that will be a lifelong wonderful memory, Like going to
the World Cup in nineteen ninety four is a lifelong
wonderful memory for you and I so like, I don't
(07:46):
want you and me sorry, it's really embarrassing to do
that in front of you, but it's a lifetime memory
for people, and I understand, you know, like just like
people will pay an absurd amount of money to go
to Disney World once in their lives, not just for tickets,
but for travel, for accommodations. I mean, you didn't even
(08:09):
get into the costs of hotels. I was looking at
a hotel in Kansas City for something else, or like
an event that I'm doing that happened to be during
one of the Kansas City World Cup Games, and I
was like, I guess I'm not doing the event, like
it's not worth but it's not worth it. Yeah, there's
nowhere to stay, you know, the airbnbs are full, everything's
(08:30):
jacked up ten x and but people will pay that.
And so, you know, I think it was Ursula Legwin
who said that in the days of absolute monarchy, people
could not imagine a system other than absolute monarchy, and
yet it ended anyway. And today people cannot imagine a
system other than the system, and yet it will end anyway.
Speaker 2 (08:51):
Yeah, I mean, you know, I'm not a radical socialist
or anything like that, but I do think that this
particular brand of mercenary capitalism is is terrible and extortionate,
and you're right, it exists with its own logic, and
it's a logic that is hard to deny. Once you're
in it, You're like, oh, of course, you know, you
jack up the price until people stop buying it, and
(09:13):
then you adjust. And I just feel like that people
need to stop buying it. But you're right, there's so
much money that people won't.
Speaker 3 (09:22):
One of the things that you lose when you do this,
and this is something Liverpool fans are arguing about right
now with Liverpool ownership, because I think one of the
things you lose when you do this, when you maximize
game day revenue, is you actually lose part of what
makes it such a good TV product to make a
capitalist argument for it, you lose part of the magic,
(09:45):
the magic of fifty thousand fans of a country's team
in the stadium, because you end up with the people
who can afford to pay those extortion at prices, who
are not the people who are going to sing because
they don't know all the songs because they haven't spent
thirty years on the road with England or is Bekistan
(10:07):
or whatever team and you know they haven't. They don't
have that level of investment. So you're you're you're gonna
pan to the crowd when who's Bekistan scores a goal
and you're or even when England scores a goal, and
you're not going to see the average English soccer fan.
You're going to see, you know, everybody who had ten
(10:28):
thousand dollars you said to put on the game. And
then you're gonna have to go up to the fourth
row from top. It's a camera man.
Speaker 2 (10:36):
Sure England won't be in the final? Note sorry, oh
fair enough, fair enough? Yeah, sorry, because the ten thousand,
nine hundred dollars was for the final.
Speaker 1 (10:45):
Uh yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 2 (10:47):
It just don't. I don't know what the solution is
and I don't know that if empty seats at Columbia's
Bekkistan will persuade FIFA that they've gone too far? Are
you know? I don't know.
Speaker 3 (11:01):
I don't think it will because I don't I think
they're about I think that they've carefully calculated how to
maximize revenue and they're going to do that. I think
the issue from my perspective is that for the you know,
eight billion or so people who can't attend a game,
what makes the game magical is not just what happens
on the field, but the interaction between what happens on
(11:24):
the field and the thousands or tens of thousands of
people watching it. And when you lose that over time,
you're going to lose the game. So like you're not
going to see a single World Cup fail, what you're
going to see is declining interest in the world Cup
in a sense of a distance between the World Cup
and the people who love it.
Speaker 1 (11:42):
Yeah, John, I don't know.
Speaker 2 (11:44):
I find it. I find it.
Speaker 3 (11:45):
Bleak, but it's representative of a larger bleakness.
Speaker 1 (11:50):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (11:50):
It's the same thing that happened to you know, like
burning men in Coachella and you know, Bali and I
don't know, Pancun. You know, like the presence of something
special is degraded by the world's sudden awareness that it
is special, and then everyone flocks and in the process
of loving it destroyed.
Speaker 1 (12:10):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (12:10):
But I actually think that we can love the World
Cup together without FIFA. I think that there is a
way to do that. You know, FIFA is ostensibly a
non governmental organization that does not exist to make money.
It exists to make football tournaments, and it does not
(12:32):
exist to maximize revenue. It exists to maximize the joy
and wonder and connection of football. And in so far
as that's the truth, FIFA can change. I just don't
know that it will.
Speaker 2 (12:45):
Well, you're right, I think support to change, you would
have to be president of FIFA.
Speaker 3 (12:51):
That would be a cool job, but I would immediately
start taking bribes.
Speaker 1 (12:57):
It's an intractable problem.
Speaker 2 (12:58):
If even John Green would immediately succumb to the temptation
of the bribes.
Speaker 3 (13:07):
I don't hate that job because there's so much interpersonal drama.
People want, people want conflicting things from me. You have
to send on unpleasant emails.
Speaker 2 (13:15):
I would hate that. M No, of course not.
Speaker 3 (13:20):
I'd be terrible at it. But I wouldn't take bribes.
I obviously wouldn't take bribes you. No, of course I
know that.
Speaker 2 (13:27):
I know that. Don we know that your listeners know that.
Here's what I think, Uh, when I think of the
World Cup, I think of the games that I've watched
with friends on television, these parties, these these gatherings that
really mean a lot to me and have really special memories.
(13:48):
That's what I think about. And that's to me loving
the World Cup without loving FIFA. You know, yeah, absolutely,
that's that's what it means. So anyway, I'll be out
in front of the television most likely. John, Let's take
a quick break and we come back. I'm gonna tell
you about South Korea.
Speaker 3 (14:04):
I can't wait. I love me some South Korean national team.
Speaker 2 (14:08):
You're gonna be perplexed by this story. But anyway, on
we go back soon. We're back at the away end.
On the away end. With the away end, I'm donil John.
(14:30):
I'm here to tell you about South Korea, and I
want to start with the obvious. South Korea is one
of Asia's best teams. They've qualified for eleven straight tournaments.
That's every World Cup since Italy nineteen ninety. And I
know that sounds like a lot, but I don't think
I understand just how elite this is. So for context,
these are the teams with current streaks for consecutive World
(14:52):
Cup qualifications longer than South Korea's Brazil with twenty three,
which is like all of them, Germany with nineteen, Argentina
with fourteen, and Spain with thirteen. So I don't need
to tell you this, but in footballing terms, that is
extraordinary company to be in, right, I mean these are
every one of those teams has won a World Cup. Now.
(15:15):
South Korea's best ever finished was two thousand and two,
when they co hosted the tournament with Japan. That year
they were SEMMI finalists, they finished fourth. And my deep
dive is gonna be a little different today, John, because
it's gonna veer off into this personal story that intersects
obliquely with that tournament. Okay, I'm not sure if you
know this, John, but I was supposed to go to
(15:36):
that World Cup.
Speaker 3 (15:37):
I did not know that.
Speaker 2 (15:38):
Yeah. So I had a friend back then, and I'll
call him Hung. Hun is our age. She's Korean American
born in Seoul. He moved to an La when he
was eight. When I knew Hun, he was a brilliant
and funny, super handsome, very charismatic guy. We met working
at this community center in East Harlem, and we got
to be really close friends, like really really close. He
(15:59):
told the incredible stories, and I remember this image that
he shared with me from his childhood and soul. How
in the summer, these like oppressively hot Korean summers, these
like big trucks would drive down the street, spraying these
like deliciously cooling clouds of mists in the air, and
all the neighborhood children would come out and run alongside
the trucks, just delighting in this sweet relief of this fog.
(16:20):
And it was only later as an adult that he
realized that what those trucks were actually spraying were pesticides
like DDT. Yeah, and he was like joyfully inhaling poison,
as if it were some like life giving elixir, like
these deep hungry breaths. And he used this, i should say,
parenthetically to justify his smoking. It was like, I've already
(16:45):
done enough. I've already done damage from my Lungs's what's
the city here there? Yeah? Anyway, we were both employed
at this pretty chaotic after school program and a community
center at George Washington Houses and he's Harlem on Third Avenue.
But during the day, while our students were ostensibly attending
classes that they're under funded local public schools, Han and
I we had all this free time and really very
little supervision. So we spend our days just kind of
(17:07):
walking around East Harlem and talking about life, about books
and film and music and art. And here's the thing.
We both wanted to be artists. He wanted to be
an actor and a playwright. I wanted to be a writer.
And John, as you know, when you're like young, admitting
that you have this kind of slightly embarrassing ambition, it's
(17:27):
a little bit scary. Every message you get in the
world is like, go start a career, get a job,
plan for the future. And admitting that really in your
heart of hearts, all you really care about, all you
really believe in, is like truth and beauty and the
ineffable value of art. That's like a really scary thing
to admit to yourself, and then to admit to another
person is even harder. It's not easy to confess this
(17:48):
when you're young and you're kind of like finding your
place in a really cynical world, right, So that's so true.
Speaker 3 (17:54):
Man, Like I remember being twenty three and wanting to
be a writer more than any anything, but also like
constantly thinking of the other things I wanted to be,
to try to want to be something else, you know,
in that sense, it is it is really kind of
a calling, because, yeah, it's a hard thing to acknowledge
to yourself, let alone to a friend.
Speaker 2 (18:16):
Yeah, and Hum and I shared this bond because we
both wanted it and we admitted it to each other,
and it was like it was a big deal, you know.
We shared. Something else is that we both kind of
had this immigrants longing for rootedness, for identity, and one
of the places we found this identity was through soccer,
which in the US was and remains, I think an
immigrant sport, one of those spaces where our status is
(18:40):
outsiders kind of made us feel like insiders and made
us feel better about ourselves, more deserving, truer and human.
Was really good, like really good man, like silky first touch,
good finisher, better than me by a mile. We played
the same team. Oh my god, he's really good man. Wow.
And despite smoking, he could run for days all the
(19:03):
DDT he had Inhaled as a youth in Soul, Korea.
He could still you know, hustle up and down the field.
We played on the same team in this league in Chinatown,
run by this Chinese peruving guy. We even won a
couple of trophies there. Okay, so I'm gonna bring this
back to soccer, I promise, or did the World Cup?
I mean eventually, all this kind of internal and typically
(19:25):
young male agonizing over a sense of self took me
back to Peru. And when I left New York, which
was just before nine to eleven, to move to Lima,
where I was born, I gave Hugh and my soccer
ball and the plan was that I would meet him
in Seoul in June of that year. It was going
to be his first time going back to Korea since
he'd left as a boy, and we were going to
watch the tournament together. We had tickets for like six games.
(19:45):
I'd meet his family, and I.
Speaker 3 (19:47):
Was going to be not a ten thousand dollars a
game turn.
Speaker 2 (19:52):
And it must be noted, no, these were simpler times.
These were much simpler times. It was I don't remember
what it was cost, but if I could afford it
on my you know, after school program at a public
housing project in New York City salary, then it could have.
It must have been doable, you know, right. So I
(20:12):
was going to be like witnessed to his return, his
like emotional support Peruvian, and he was going to be
visiting these places where his first memories were going to
be had been constructed, and we were metaphorically going to
run through those clouds of DDT together, John. None of
this happened, hmm, none of it. And it didn't happen
for a really specific reason, which I think you'll understand.
(20:33):
I got to Lima. I met a girl. Hmmm, that
is the best reason, a girl who would later break
my heart. But the fact is that I met her,
and once I did, as often happens when one falls
in love, everything else, every other commitment or spoken promise
or relationship. It seems suddenly preposterously unimportant. And the cool
fact of the matter was that once I met her,
(20:54):
I did not want to leave Peru to go to
Korea to hang out while he and reconnected with his
culture in past. This was selfish, I recognize that, but
I wanted to be near this girl, and I knew
at the moment I met her. And I put off
telling Hun because I was nervous to tell him, and
I was right to be nervous, because when I did
finally tell him, it did not go well. He was
furious and he basically broke up with me. Like we
(21:16):
literally never spoken again. We have not spoken again. It's
been twenty five years.
Speaker 3 (21:21):
Oh man, I'm sorry. That sucks.
Speaker 2 (21:23):
Yeah. And the last indirect interaction I had with Huan
was in two thousand and five. I'd published a book
by then, my first book, and I came to New
York to give a reading. And when I got to
the venue, the organizer told me that someone had stop
by a few hours earlier to drop off something for me,
and I was super confused. I had no idea. She
hands me this like, you know, brown paper grocery bag,
and inside is the soccer ball that I'd given Hun
(21:45):
when I left town.
Speaker 3 (21:46):
Whoa, yeah, yies right, I mean that's some hurt feelings
that extended through the decades.
Speaker 2 (21:54):
Yeah no, I mean, well, at that point it had
been three years since I, you know, not dissed him
and not gone the World Cup. But yeah, yeah, it was.
It was it felt like very pointed. You know.
Speaker 3 (22:04):
Yeah, that's hard.
Speaker 1 (22:06):
So did I do the right thing?
Speaker 2 (22:09):
I mean I think I did, because, like, young love
is so special and I definitely wouldn't be the person
I am to day if I had not met that girl.
And also, like getting your heart eviscerated is like an
important part of growing up.
Speaker 3 (22:21):
But it is a critical thing. But I gotta say,
you gotta I almost pushed back against that and say,
I think you could have had an amazing summer in
Korea that you just don't know about now I just
don't know about. Yeah, I could have met a Korean
girl like who knows sliding doors man sliding door.
Speaker 2 (22:43):
Sliding doors. I realized that this was super disappointing to
human and I want to emphasize again, this was not
like a middling friends, Like we were super close friends
and I miss him to this day, like one of
the smartest and funnest people I've ever met, and I
let him down for whatever reasons that I may have had.
It may have felt just about the time, but I
can see now that it must have felt like a betrayal.
(23:04):
So now as concerns the listeners of your way and
the sailing, fact here is that I was not of
the two thousand and two World Cup, and I did
not with witness South Korea's glorious run to the semis.
I did not see them beat Italy in the quarterfinals,
which is what I mean.
Speaker 3 (23:18):
You should have. You should have left that girl. Man,
Now that you're talking about it, and it's clear to
me you made the wrong call.
Speaker 2 (23:25):
I was not there, John, I was in Lima, Peru.
I was puppy dogging after this girl. Yeah, I was
not in Soul. Just for the record, before you start hallucinating,
you were not there either.
Speaker 3 (23:34):
Yeah, No, I was. I saw that game. I saw
that that quarter final. It was incredible. No, I was
in Chicago. I woke up at three o'clock in the
morning to watch it.
Speaker 2 (23:44):
I watched the game. I just didn't watch it in Korea.
Speaker 3 (23:47):
Yeah. Here here, you missed out you really made a
big mistake. There's only one thing more important than young love,
and that is the young love of football.
Speaker 2 (23:56):
Exactly. Okay, so this deep dive has taken a real
time run away from football. But I really do hope
for Hun and for all other South Koreans that they
will do well this tournament. They have a challenging group
South Africa, Mexico host country obviously, and Checchia. I just
want to plan on a couple of players to watch,
or a few Sun Hung min erstwhile of the sad
(24:18):
side of North London, South Korea's captain, all time leading scorer,
Asian leading scorer in European football, one hundred and forty
one caps, three World Cups, Premier League, Golden Boot winner
in twenty twenty one twenty two, arguably the greatest South
Korean player of all time. He's now playing his trade
in MLS at LAFC And by the time you listen
to this, two great Korean players will have met in
(24:40):
the Champions League semifinals. That's Kim and Jay, central defender
for Bayern Munich and Lee Kung In, an attacking midfielder
for a plucky little side known as PSG. Neither is
necessarily a nailed on starter, but the fact that they're
both playing at this level says a lot about the
strength of South Korea. And lastly, as you know, when
I don't have a real rooting interest, I turned to writing,
(25:01):
and so I don't know a ton about Korean literature,
but I do have real love for a novelist that
I want to mention here, Chang Rai Lee. I don't
know if you ever read him, John, I have read him.
Speaker 3 (25:10):
Yeah, I've read what is that book called.
Speaker 1 (25:16):
A Gesture Life? Maybe a Gesture Life. Oh, great book.
Speaker 3 (25:20):
Great book which is recommended to me by a young
kid who was living with stage four cancer. Actually that's
why I read.
Speaker 2 (25:26):
It, oh Man, beautiful book. So, when I was a
public school teacher in Harlem, about a year after my
sad breakup with Hun, I prepare a whole unit on
Chang Relei's first novel, Made a Speaker, which included a
class trip out of Flushing, Queens. It's kind of a
scavenger hunt there along Main Street, and I had my students.
I took my students to a Korean restaurant exactly. None
(25:47):
of my students had ever eaten Korean food before, so
it was really exciting. And I think that might be
like my greatest accomplishment as a teacher perhaps, And I
think that's reason enough to support care in this tournament,
and I hope they go very far and naturally, John,
I want to dedicate this deep dive to my old
friend Hun. That's not his real name, but he knows
(26:08):
who he is, and if he's listening, though I'm sure
he's not, please write to us or to me at
Away endpod at gmail dot com.
Speaker 3 (26:15):
Well, if this podcast leads to a reunion of that friendship,
I think it will have been a great success.
Speaker 2 (26:19):
I think so too. I think so too, John. Let's
take a break and we'll do that.
Speaker 3 (26:40):
Welcome back to the Away and So I actually have
two stories for you, Daniel, because just too much happened
in Sierra Leone for me to only have one story.
It was a very football drenched trip, as we mentioned earlier.
I just got back this morning, and football is everywhere
in Sierra Leone as it is throughout West Africa. The
fandom is profound and it runs deep. Like I spoke
(27:01):
to this one teenage footballer who was being treated for
multi drug resistant tuberculosis in Lecau Government Hospital in Freetown,
outside of Freetown, and he told me that he was
a midfielder. I was like, what do you do? You know, like,
what are you looking forward to getting back to when
you get out of the hospital. As for MDRTV, you know,
if you're healthy ish and this this young man was,
(27:26):
you know, hopefully you can go home after you know,
as little as two weeks maybe a month of daily
treatment because you'll no longer be super infectious. So I
was asking him what he was excited about, what he
wanted to go home to, and he said what, I'm
a footballer and I said, well, what position do you play?
And he said, I'm a midfielder and then he said,
I'm not declan rice, I'm ode guard. And it turns out, Wow,
(27:50):
it turns out that like many Sierra Leonians, like the
majority of football fans I spoke to, he is like
you an arsenal support. In fact, when I turned on
my phone camera to make an Instagram video with him,
he looked right into the lens and immediately shouted through
his mask, North London Forever, Oh love it. That is
(28:16):
not a story. That's just a prelude to a story.
My first story is about Kissy Psychiatric Hospital, which is
the only psychiatric hospital in sier Leone. So Kissy is
the oldest psychiatric hospital in West Africa. It's been around
for almost two hundred years. It has a very long
and extremely complex history, most of which of course, occurred
(28:38):
during colonialism, when anti colonialism itself was a form of madness.
But to give you a quick taste of how difficult
life was at Kissy four patients just not long ago,
as recently as twenty eighteen, more than one hundred patients
were literally chained to their beds twenty four hours a
(28:59):
day because there were no medications or other treatments to
keep them safe and to keep others safe at the hospital.
So this was a site of tremendous, unimaginable suffering and
a place that's close to my heart because I also
live with serious mental illness like a lot of the
(29:21):
patients at Kissy Psychiatric Hospital. And you know, I've also
been a patient at a psychiatric hospital and I've benefited tremendously,
I mean, you know, on an unprecedented scale really from
psychiatric intervention, from you know, therapy and medication and other
forms of psychiatric treatment. So when I first visited Kesey
(29:45):
in twenty nineteen, much of the hospital was still in
intense disrepair, very thin mattresses where there were mattresses at all,
for instance, no twenty four hour electricity, And while they're
as a functioning pharmacy, by then, it was still quite limited.
Today it's a very different place in ways that are
(30:06):
mostly encouraging. It's still crowded, but now not primarily with
what we would traditionally think of as psychiatric patients, because
most of them are treated on an outpatient basis, like
I am, like most people living with mental illness are
so like I might have been hospitalized for my OCD
there ten years ago. Now I would receive my medication
(30:26):
through the hospital monthly and be able to live at home.
These days, almost all of the patients are being treated
for substance use disorder because addiction to a smoked opiate
called Kush has become an absolute epidemic in Sierra Leone,
as indeed opiate addiction is in the United States and in.
Speaker 2 (30:46):
Much of the world.
Speaker 3 (30:48):
Now, even today, Kissy is a really challenging place. There's
twenty four hour electricity now but there's still no consistent
running water. The wards are very crowded. There are not
nearly enough beds there to treat the national substance of
use epidemic, which of course is also the case in
the US. But there is this big recreation area that
was empty when I last visited it. You know, people
(31:10):
were just like laying in bed, And this time it
was alive. It was It was so, to use a
word that urban space designers sometimes use, activated as a space,
there's a flat surface, there is a rectangular expanse of concrete,
(31:31):
which of course means that there is a football pitch,
and the patients were playing seven aside in flip flops
with a tattered ball. But they were playing and they
were having a great time. Now I'm not a psychiatrist
or a drug addict counselor, but I know that social
connection is a key to any form of recovery. And
as those guys passed this old ball around, I kept thinking,
(31:53):
here is a little bit of hope, a little game
that brings us together, a language we all share that
FIFA simply cannot touch.
Speaker 2 (32:05):
Beautiful.
Speaker 3 (32:07):
And then there is the second story about the third
tier English soccer team. I support Daniel, So I mean
I passed so many that who we both support.
Speaker 2 (32:17):
That's right.
Speaker 3 (32:17):
You have a third tier English soccer team now and
it's AFC Wimbledon. So I don't even need to tell
you this story because you already know what happens. Yes,
but go on for no, no, no, no, you you finish,
so I'll.
Speaker 2 (32:34):
Let you tell it.
Speaker 1 (32:35):
I'll let you tell it.
Speaker 3 (32:36):
Thanks, I appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (32:37):
Man.
Speaker 3 (32:37):
So AFC Wimbledon have not won any of their last
ten games. They've been on it. They've been properly spursy,
they've been on a proper Tottenham style run down there
in the third tier of English football and have lost
six straight and find themselves with two games left on
the edge of relegation. So for context, we were in
(33:01):
Sierra Leone to visit the Maternal Center of Excellence, this
truly transformational addition to Coyu Government Hospital in the Kono
district that brings one hundred and twenty maternal beds to
the region, the first NICKU in the history of Sierra Leone.
The you know, just a truly world class hospital in
(33:23):
a place that has often been denied access to world
class health services. And it was an amazing visit. I wept,
you know, I mean to walk into the first NICKU
and think that our little Internet community had a hand
in making this possible, and everything was just just amazing.
(33:46):
It was just the gift of a lifetime. And then
we had to drive from Kono to Freetown where we
were flying back home through Casablanca, and that's a six
hour drive. And on that six hour drive AFC Wimbledon
we're playing against Wigan Athletic. We have two games left.
(34:09):
That is the game we are much more likely to win,
even though it's an away game, because it's against a
team that's maybe like five or six spots above us
in the table, and we had to win at least
one of these last two games. Having lost six in
a row and not ten for ten games, we had
to win one of these last two games to stay
up unless the team below us, Exeter City, also lost
(34:30):
their last two games. So we're in this car and
to say that the Internet on this drive was inconsistent
would be a significant understatement. I'm in this car with
my friends Lauren, Ryan and Chris and Marina and my
wife Sarah, all of whom, in addition to making huge
investments in the Maternal Center of Excellence, have made small
(34:51):
investments with me in AFC Wimbledon. My friends love of
John Green boondoggle. You'll have the opportunity to invest soon,
don't you worry. And so I'm on the road with
these people I love tremendously who have helped tremendously to
build this neonatal and maternal care center and also helped
(35:13):
AFC Wimbledon this in every season. And we're trying to
stream the game on Ryan's phone and I would say
about thirty percent of the time it worked and the
other seventy percent of the time Chris and Marina are
updating us on the score based on what Google says
if we have at least three G Internet and if
we don't, then we're just sort of sitting in silence
wondering what's happening. Forty five minutes in AFC Wimbledon have
(35:38):
slipped into the relegation zone because Exeter City have scored.
They're winning one nothing. AFC Wimbledon are tied neil nil.
It looks like we will never score a goal again.
Like Tottenham. We have nine injured players, including our top
four choice strikers. It looks impossible that we can score.
I mean, there's a guy out there and I say
(35:58):
this with love who And I know that I'm overly
generous about your football talents, Daniel, but you could have
made it in the team on Saturday. And so we're
watching it looks like we're never going to score. It
looks like Exeter's gonna win. And then about then there's
then it's halftime. Then about sixty five minutes in we
(36:20):
get a solid five minutes of getting to watch the game,
and we just look terrible. We have twenty three percent possession.
It's wave after wave of attacking. It's like watching the
Alamo be defended.
Speaker 2 (36:31):
It is.
Speaker 3 (36:31):
It is hideous and terrifying. And then and then suddenly
Exeter aren't winning because Burton Albion has scored a goal
and it's one to one, and there's a little bit
of hope and if we can just and if Burton
can score another goal, or maybe we can somehow get
a goal or at least hold on to a draw,
like at least it'll come down to the final day
and we'll get to we'll get to live another five days.
(36:55):
And then in the ninetieth minute, one young substitute who's
played for AFC Wimbledon since he was like eleven years old,
passes the ball to a loan player who we signed
on loan from a team that's in our division, because like,
that's you know, that's that's how challenging a circumstance we
(37:17):
find ourselves in financially. He passes the ball to Antoine Hackford,
who's hardly played a game in the last fifteen games
because of injury and because being out of favor and
everything else. And Antwine Hackford scores a goal in the
ninetieth minute and the stream is perfect high definition for
those ten seconds. And you have never seen joy inside
(37:41):
of a bus on the road from Cono to Freetown
like this. Joy and AFC Wimbledon stay up, and AFC
Wimbledon live to fight another year in League one.
Speaker 2 (37:54):
Amazing.
Speaker 3 (37:54):
I love football, Yeah, I love what football can make
you feel. Oh God, it just pierces through everything. It
simplifies the world, It pierces through everything. It was such
a hard trip in so many ways, you know, and
such a beautiful trip in so many ways. And holding
those competing ideas together is the hardest thing. Like the
(38:15):
sense of the profound, unbelievable, reprehensible injustice, and the sense
of the profound, true progress, and the fact that these
things can have to be held together somehow or else
the wheels completely come off the bus. And so I'm
trying to hold all that together and like can't make
sense of anything. I still can't make sense of anything.
I've only been home for a few hours and so
(38:36):
I can't make sense of any any of it.
Speaker 2 (38:38):
But like.
Speaker 3 (38:40):
There was something about being in that bus with those people,
with that football club that just reminded me that hope
is correct.
Speaker 2 (38:49):
I love it. I love it. It's why I support Wimbledon
for moments.
Speaker 3 (38:58):
Well you're you're joking, but you're going to get an
investment portfolio Prospectus over the weekend if you don't watch it.
Speaker 2 (39:05):
Yeah, no, I'll be looking out for it. John. It's
beautiful and I want to thank you, and I want
to thank the whole uh kind of amazing community you've
created obviously for the work that you're doing in Sara
Leone and elsewhere. It's just so inspiring man. And uh again,
this is why I think you'd be a great FIFA president,
because you do well.
Speaker 3 (39:25):
It's a little bar to jump over, man. I mean, yeah,
I know, but you have your your your heart is
in the right place at least to be the greatest
FIFA president since the first FIFA president, Like you would
not have to be a great FIFA president. No, no,
but you're I mean, I'm joking aside. Man, I'm really
proud to be your friend for this kind of thing, uh,
and for the Wimbledon stuff, but really for the for
(39:46):
the Sirira Leone stuff, that's that's amazing. Yeah. Every time
I tell Sarah like, can we just maybe squeeze a
little bit more money into ancy Wimbledon, She's like, do
you do you really want to do that? Or maybe
you should it go somewhere where it could matter a
little more. And uh, that's that's why if Wimbledon almost
got relegated, it Sarah's fault.
Speaker 2 (40:09):
It's Sarah's fault, right, Uh, Sean, you want to come
on and read us some questions, Man.
Speaker 1 (40:17):
There is I just want to I just want to
add I am proud to be both of your friends.
You guys, Uh regaled us with some amazing stories today
and thanks Sean, thank you man. I look forward to
hearing more about your trip.
Speaker 3 (40:31):
John I know, I mostly I know, I mostly only
compliment Daniel, but I have to say, you look incredible
in that shirt.
Speaker 1 (40:38):
Oh god, this is pretty uh nondescript shirt that I'm
wearing today.
Speaker 2 (40:44):
But I appreciate that. Maybe you should. I just want
to I want to ask you something. This is not
football related, but was this your like go to, like
uh like flirting style when you were a young man
on the market there just like just like school.
Speaker 3 (40:58):
My go to flirting style with no nearly that good.
I just did. What I just did with Sean was
excellent fording.
Speaker 2 (41:08):
I'll have.
Speaker 1 (41:10):
Yeah, I got me blushing. Yeah. I also think if John,
if John was you know, if we're calling John the
ultra of our high school soccer team, it feels like
you could also argue that he is the ultra of
the Away End podcast because he's just like he's like
(41:30):
our biggest uh fan here, He's like always you know,
I'm your Yeah, yeah, amazing. All right, we're gonna read
a couple letters here, Yeah, hit us man, Dear John,
Daniel and Sean. I love almost everything about the game.
I really do accept the diving faking simulation nonsense. As
(41:55):
we approached the World Cup, I would love to introduce
some of my friends to the game, but I'm mortified
by the faking diving rolling around that I know is
going to happen. It's just embarrassing. What do you guys think,
How do you watch grown men falling down and grasping
that precious area above the ankle. Why do they always
grab that area over and over again and still enjoy
(42:17):
the game? Any ideas on how to solve this or
any ideas on how to not let it bother me
as much? Scott and his daughter Katie.
Speaker 3 (42:26):
So Scott and Katie. The first thing I'd say, and
I defer to Daniel and to a wesser extent Sean
on this, is that getting your footsteps on does really hurt.
Does especially with cleats, it hurts. Yeah, getting kicked in
the shin hurts, and so sometimes they go down and
(42:47):
it really hurts. Now, in American football, it does appear
that there's more hurt per role in soccer than American football.
I will give you that. It appears to me from
the outside like there's more niggling injury or or knocks
(43:08):
per roll around on the ground screaming yes, So what
is it? Daniel? How do you how do you solve
for this?
Speaker 2 (43:15):
I don't know when I when I heard this question,
my first thought was, like I was thinking about in
politics like that, there's like fake outrage is a thing,
you know, like where a politician will say something fairly
anadyne and then the other side, because of the polarized
moment that we're living through, will take the crassest bassist
(43:38):
possible interpretation of what was said and then to be
outraged by it. You know.
Speaker 3 (43:43):
Can I jump in there real quick and ask Sean
to ask Daniel what anadyne means?
Speaker 1 (43:50):
Daniel, can you tell us the definition of anadyne please?
Speaker 2 (43:55):
Just like something inoffensive, something that is not okay? Yeah,
Like that's what I thought for my context, but I wasn't.
Speaker 3 (44:04):
Now I have it. I've got it forever.
Speaker 2 (44:05):
It's a gift to me. You got it forever. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (44:07):
I can also say it is the title of one
of my favorite albums of all time by legendary alt
country band Uncle Tupelo headed by Jeff Tweety and j
Ferrar of sun Volt and Wilco. Now, but Anadne great album?
Speaker 2 (44:23):
Check it out. Uh So I forget what I was saying,
But oh, Yeah. So basically people take some anodine comment
and then use the worst possible interpretation of that comment
in order to pretend to be outraged. That's basically what
diving is. And if you ever have watched, for example,
or had the misfortune of watching like a White House
press conference and they'll ask, you know, Carolyn Levitt, you know, like,
(44:48):
what is the President doing today? And she'll be like,
I am appalled that you would even ask what, you know,
the greatest statesman in the history of the world would
be doing today of all days, And you know, are
you even an American for asking?
Speaker 3 (44:59):
Like?
Speaker 2 (45:00):
That's fake outrage, that's diving. You know, it's just such
a part of our culture that I think to sort
of pretend that it's It's upsetting in all moments. It's
more upsetting in politics, I think than in in sport.
And there's a reason why people do it. One is
because things things do hurt. Two, because there are times
(45:21):
when you have to exaggerate a little bit to make
sure the ref saw the contact. And then there's things
that are super embarrassing, you know, where people fall down
as if they'd just been you know, shot by a
sniper and they weren't touched. But it's just gamesmanship, Scott
and Katie, it's just gamesmanship. And I think having played,
you know, you always are told if there's if you're
(45:44):
in the box and feel contact, like, don't be afraid
to go down. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (45:47):
The only thing I was going to add to this
is that it's not specific to soccer football either. Like
I was watching the NBA. You know, NBA playoffs are
happening right now. There was a game on the other
night there was they should they you know, it's a
slow motion replay afterwards, an absolutely zero contact that happened,
(46:09):
but the foul was called pivotal moment of the game.
They can't overturn it, and that in that moment and
you know, yeah, and if you can gain an advantage
in a sporting contest from flopping or diving or whatever,
it's got to be hard to resist.
Speaker 2 (46:28):
Let me just end with this for Scott and Katie,
if you've ever played in the park on a Sunday
in any context like sort of soccer football, that doesn't
matter at all. And that's where you really can say
flopping is a moral failure because if you've ever seen
someone flop on a Sunday League in Riverside Park. Then
(46:51):
you're just like, what is wrong with you? Like what
are you doing? Like you're embarrassing yourself and your entire
family by doing this, and that is something I really
can't understand. But flopping in the World Cup, you know,
it's not really flopping. It's just making sure the ref
saw something that you want them to see. That's it,
you know, that's it. And it's framed game. Yeah, it's
(47:13):
a it's a it's a narrative. It's it's storytelling, John,
That's what it is. So Scott and Katie, when you
see someone diving and you're embarrassed to tell your friends,
explain it to your frenzy, to whom you're introducing the
world's most popular sport in twenty twenty six, Just tell
them it's it's narrative. It's just narrative. That's all it is,
(47:35):
all right.
Speaker 1 (47:36):
Next question, Dear John and Daniel enjoying the show. But wow,
do you guys drop names on this podcast? Oh? I
was traveling with Bill Gates and Ethiopia. Oh, look at me.
I did fantasy football with multiple MacArthur geniuses. Here's some
free advice. Friends More Stoutschkov less Bill Gates. As far
(47:57):
as I know, Gates never kicked a ball in Anger.
Unless the name you drop is an obscure Croatian under
twenty one, it's not relevant to the story. All best.
Speaker 2 (48:05):
Eric b.
Speaker 1 (48:06):
Esquire, former player of the Upper west Side National team. PS,
nice job jinxing you mean lamal Oh yeah you did?
And you mall man, Wow, this is a great one.
Speaker 2 (48:21):
This is I think this is really this is really
for you, John, because yeah, you're the one name dropping
I think, I mean, you're the one traveling with Bill Gates.
Speaker 3 (48:30):
And yeah, it reminds me a little bit of when
I was hanging out with car de Levigne on the
set of Paper Towns.
Speaker 2 (48:36):
Actually, and he told you never to name drop, right, yeah?
She but gee, yeah, sorry, I don't know whose people are.
I can't even name ever changed stay Golden, Tony boy. Yeah. Uh.
I think Eric has a point. But I think this
(48:58):
is just the lives we happened to have stumbled into.
And I'm not going to apologize for not knowing Bill Gates,
but for you know, knowing some people who are fun
and interesting and.
Speaker 3 (49:10):
I think I don't Actually, you know, it's funny because
I do name drop, and I just I realized that
when I got that email that I definitely do name drop.
But I would say ninety nine point seven percent of
the people I have met and care about in my
life are not famous, and so I should name them more.
(49:34):
I should name drop them. I should name drop the
hewns of the world. You know, Yeah, I think that
you should.
Speaker 2 (49:40):
I think you do. I think you do. To be fair,
I think you mentioned a lot of people today in
your story from Sierra Leone who are not famous, but
who are incredibly remarkable and special people. And I think
to be fair to Eric b Esquire, former player of
the Upper West Side national team. Just judging from that Moniker,
I think that he is uh gently ribbing us tongue
(50:02):
in cheek, and.
Speaker 3 (50:04):
I do enjoy being ribbed, although never as much as
when l s Ao chose that question about Julian Nagelsman
having never been a professional footballer that was classic to
be to be dunked on by your teenage son is
a joy I simply could not have imagined when we
were in high school.
Speaker 2 (50:25):
Yeah, or you know that that would be uh kind
of the one of the highlights of this podcast when
we were sort of imagining this show right. Lastly, Eric's
point of Jingxon give me Lamal though, I think that's
really relevant man and super sad. And I keep hearing
every day of players missing, you know, who are going
(50:47):
down injured, missing the World Cup, most recently Chabby Simon's
of Tottenham.
Speaker 3 (50:52):
My heartbreaks that kid.
Speaker 2 (50:54):
Brutal, man, brutal. You know, Lamal will be will be fit, man,
I really do.
Speaker 3 (51:00):
I hope we should too. I mean it's going to
be a better tournament with him, in addition to being
great for Spain, It'll just be a better tournament.
Speaker 2 (51:08):
Yeah, absolutely, absolutely so. Yeah, healing mercies to Yamin Lamal
and to Chabbie Simon's and to all the players who
are getting injured. I hope they make a full recovery.
We're gonna have to do a mailbag show pretty soon
because because some of these emails are piling up and
they're really, really good. I do want to mention one
thing because we had two listeners now recommend a game,
(51:31):
and I don't do, John, do you play games like
on like I do video games? I do, Okay, I don't,
But now we've had two listeners recommend this one game
called This Plote ed Torres and an email we got
a few months ago from Mariana I believe her name
was So. This Pilote is an autobiographical game about growing
(51:54):
up in Ecuador in two thousand and one, when the
country qualified for the World Cup for the first time,
and how those events are remembered in processed by the
game's creator as a young boy, I mentioned this. I
want to mention this because you're not gonna beieve it's done.
But I was at that game. And I was at
that game with the girl that pulled me away from
(52:17):
human we were trying. We're in Quito. We went to
the stadium. It was so emotional because people were so happy,
and she wasn't really like into soccer in the same
way I was, So she was just like letting herself
go with this like first time ever national celebration. Like
the streets of Keito were just you know, packed, and
(52:37):
it was incredible, and I was with her sort of
feeling this kind of joy vicariously through all the Ecuadorians
around me, and I was also heartbroken. I was like,
I'll never see this for Peru. I really thought that.
I was like, I'll never see this for pro she
I think she tried to buy me an Ecuador Jersey
and I was like, I can't. I can't wear that.
I'm sorry, I was like, n But so anyway, we've
(52:58):
had two listeners recommend this game and I and I
don't play video games, but I'm sure it's really good.
So de pelote for those of you who do play
video games, it sounds really amazing.
Speaker 1 (53:07):
I think that's it, man, See you next week, See
you next week.
Speaker 2 (53:11):
Thanks John, Thanks Jean, thanks Kurt, and thanks everyone for listening,
and remember to send your emails away and pod at
gmail dot com. Thanks so much. I see you next week. John.
All right
Welcome to the Way End.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
I'm Danielle Alercon and.
Speaker 3 (00:09):
I'm John Green.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
John, you look tired, man. What's going on?
Speaker 3 (00:12):
I got back from Sierra Leone this morning at about
two am, so I am a little tired, but I'm very,
very happy to be with you. I have two wonderful
football stories to share with you from Sierra Leone. Will
save that for the third seven of the podcast, But first,
I think you want to talk to me about a
little bit of exclusive reporting you've been doing.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
Yeah, So, the Crack investigative reporting team at the Oaend
stumbled upon this memo which it was leaked to us
by a source. It's called FIFA pricing structure to maximize
game day revenue. Weirdly, it has brought to you by
Franz Kofko, which I didn't understand until I read what's
on it. John, you won't believe this. Yeah, there are
(00:51):
so many fees. There's a seat access fee, there's a
bathroom access service charge, security fee, cup holder usage to
usher mandatory gratuities. You have to sit on shows either seat,
you have to tip them sure, there's a selfie surcharge,
and there's in addition, you have to pay if any
like brands come out in the background of your selfie.
(01:12):
You also have to pay for that JumboTron appearance fee,
which is quite see. I've always thought they should have
one of those. Actually, I think there should be a
jumbo tron appearance fee for a club like AFC Wimbledon
that's looking to raise some revenue. A jumbo tron appearance
fee feels like a I mean obvious, how jumbo is
the jumbo tron at Wimbledon Stadium If you don't mind
my asking.
Speaker 3 (01:32):
Well'll be honest with you and thank you for asking.
We don't have one. Well, just you know, just duct
tape together a couple of large screen TVs and just
just hold it out a couple of big flat screens.
There's a crowd waving tax, John, This one will really
I'm in favor of that. I'm in favor of that.
(01:55):
This one's difficult for the Spanish, whom, as we mentioned
in the last episode, don't actually have any lyrics to
their national lands them. But there's a national anthem singing fee. Wow,
that actually gives Spain a slight advantage in the World Cup.
Speaker 1 (02:06):
Well, it would accept that.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
There's also a penalty if you don't sing the national anthem,
so they kind of yeah, it's weird, they get you. Yeah,
I'm starting to see why this was brought to you
by Franz Kafka. It was just the interesting there's a
banter tax if you want to, you know, sort of
like exchange a friendly repartee with the whoever's sitting next
to you child on shoulders surcharge John. That one's tough
(02:31):
as parents. I feel like that one's really, you know,
designed to take money out of my pocket. And then
this one is really a kind of a long shot.
I don't know if they're gonna get much money off this.
But if you've seen done those those games where people
send like in the upper tiers, float a paper airplane
down to the field and see how far they can
(02:52):
get it into the field. Have you ever seen that?
Speaker 3 (02:54):
Yeah, it's one of my favorite genres of TikTok videos.
Speaker 1 (02:57):
Paper airplane flight permit tariff.
Speaker 3 (03:00):
Hmmm, So well, listen, if you're going to use the
friendly skies, you're going to have to participate in governance,
and governance is apparently determined by FIFA.
Speaker 2 (03:12):
Yes, now, this memo, tongue in cheek memo, I should say,
it's really been making it comes because I've just been
thinking about this stuff a lot and about how much
I hate PIFA, and I just want to report some
facts to you that I read in the Guardian, and
these are not fake, These are real. Yes, John, thank
(03:32):
you for clarifying. Everything that I've set up until now
is fake, but it is of a piece with these
actual facts which are actually real. FIFA's resale site currently
has four tickets on sale for the World Cup Final
that are just under two point three million dollars each.
Speaker 3 (03:49):
Each, John, I mean, I don't doubt that someone will
pay that because people with infinite resources. And I was
reminded this week as I traveled through Sierra Leone that
lots of us have functionally infinite resources and hoard them
and use them terribly. But people with even more infinite
(04:13):
resources than I have simply don't care how much things
cost because it doesn't matter to them, and it does
matter to FIFA, and that is is is the.
Speaker 1 (04:26):
Root of all evil.
Speaker 2 (04:27):
Yes, I agree, that's a tragedy, and I'm glad you
brought that point up, because You're right, in our privilege,
we sometimes forget sort of the you know, the relative
scale of our privilege is easy to forget if you're
stuck in your own bubble. So I'm glad you brought
that up.
Speaker 3 (04:44):
What's the cheapest ticket available?
Speaker 2 (04:46):
Well, let's see. The lowest priced tickets for the final
are three dollars eighty five cents.
Speaker 1 (04:53):
Sheeeese Louise.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
For four seats four rows from the top of the
upper deck.
Speaker 1 (05:00):
Behind the goal.
Speaker 3 (05:05):
I mean, you could own a not insignificant portion of
AFC Wimbledon for that investment.
Speaker 2 (05:10):
Wow, that is a lot of money. Oh my god.
Speaker 3 (05:13):
Okay, so you could have you could have your name
on the on the JumboTron if we had a jump votron,
for sure.
Speaker 2 (05:21):
Yeah. I mean, I just think there's a lot of
ways to spend that money. It would be better than that.
It just makes me so angry, John, and I've been
thinking about this, and here's what I've come up with.
I think that FIFA and all the layers of greedy
corporate trolls that dominate the world's most popular sport are
(05:42):
actively weaponizing our love for the game against us, and
they're extracting every dollar from our collective passion for the sport.
They need to understand that there's a point at which we,
the fans, without whom the sport and the spectacle means
little or nothing, will not tolerate as much abuse. And
this will only happen if the game's so. I'm saying
that for the good of soccer, for the good of football,
(06:06):
for the good of the sport that we love so much,
this World Cup should fail. I don't mean in footballing terms.
I mean in h I don't mean sporting terms. I
mean in economic terms.
Speaker 3 (06:20):
Do you think that there will be empty seats as
a result of all of this? Like at some point,
I mean I if I absolutely agree with you. I
mean I remember like being a Chicago Cubs fan as
a Major League Baseball team in the nineteen nineties, and
every time you'd go to Wrigleyfield, Wrigleyfield would be full,
and it didn't matter that the Cubs were always bad,
(06:42):
because there were always plenty of Cubs fans who were
making their first trip to Chicago, or plenty of Cubs
fans who had season tickets who were going to go
and fill that stadium up. And there was no incentive
for the Cubs to be good other than whatever money
you get for winning the World Series and there is
absolutely no incentive for FIFA to do anything else than
(07:04):
what they're doing as long as people will pay, and
like people will pay, people will travel it because there's
there's so much I kept thinking this too this week.
There's so much money in this world, Like there's so
much money. Forget, we always talk about the billionaires, but
(07:24):
there are so many millionaires there are so that you know,
there are so many people who have lifetimes and lifetimes
worth of money who can afford to go and spend
a few thousand dollars to see a football game and
that will be a lifelong wonderful memory, Like going to
the World Cup in nineteen ninety four is a lifelong
wonderful memory for you and I so like, I don't
(07:46):
want you and me sorry, it's really embarrassing to do
that in front of you, but it's a lifetime memory
for people, and I understand, you know, like just like
people will pay an absurd amount of money to go
to Disney World once in their lives, not just for tickets,
but for travel, for accommodations. I mean, you didn't even
(08:09):
get into the costs of hotels. I was looking at
a hotel in Kansas City for something else, or like
an event that I'm doing that happened to be during
one of the Kansas City World Cup Games, and I
was like, I guess I'm not doing the event, like
it's not worth but it's not worth it. Yeah, there's
nowhere to stay, you know, the airbnbs are full, everything's
(08:30):
jacked up ten x and but people will pay that.
And so, you know, I think it was Ursula Legwin
who said that in the days of absolute monarchy, people
could not imagine a system other than absolute monarchy, and
yet it ended anyway. And today people cannot imagine a
system other than the system, and yet it will end anyway.
Speaker 2 (08:51):
Yeah, I mean, you know, I'm not a radical socialist
or anything like that, but I do think that this
particular brand of mercenary capitalism is is terrible and extortionate,
and you're right, it exists with its own logic, and
it's a logic that is hard to deny. Once you're
in it, You're like, oh, of course, you know, you
jack up the price until people stop buying it, and
(09:13):
then you adjust. And I just feel like that people
need to stop buying it. But you're right, there's so
much money that people won't.
Speaker 3 (09:22):
One of the things that you lose when you do this,
and this is something Liverpool fans are arguing about right
now with Liverpool ownership, because I think one of the
things you lose when you do this, when you maximize
game day revenue, is you actually lose part of what
makes it such a good TV product to make a
capitalist argument for it, you lose part of the magic,
(09:45):
the magic of fifty thousand fans of a country's team
in the stadium, because you end up with the people
who can afford to pay those extortion at prices, who
are not the people who are going to sing because
they don't know all the songs because they haven't spent
thirty years on the road with England or is Bekistan
(10:07):
or whatever team and you know they haven't. They don't
have that level of investment. So you're you're you're gonna
pan to the crowd when who's Bekistan scores a goal
and you're or even when England scores a goal, and
you're not going to see the average English soccer fan.
You're going to see, you know, everybody who had ten
(10:28):
thousand dollars you said to put on the game. And
then you're gonna have to go up to the fourth
row from top. It's a camera man.
Speaker 2 (10:36):
Sure England won't be in the final? Note sorry, oh
fair enough, fair enough? Yeah, sorry, because the ten thousand,
nine hundred dollars was for the final.
Speaker 1 (10:45):
Uh yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 2 (10:47):
It just don't. I don't know what the solution is
and I don't know that if empty seats at Columbia's
Bekkistan will persuade FIFA that they've gone too far? Are
you know? I don't know.
Speaker 3 (11:01):
I don't think it will because I don't I think
they're about I think that they've carefully calculated how to
maximize revenue and they're going to do that. I think
the issue from my perspective is that for the you know,
eight billion or so people who can't attend a game,
what makes the game magical is not just what happens
on the field, but the interaction between what happens on
(11:24):
the field and the thousands or tens of thousands of
people watching it. And when you lose that over time,
you're going to lose the game. So like you're not
going to see a single World Cup fail, what you're
going to see is declining interest in the world Cup
in a sense of a distance between the World Cup
and the people who love it.
Speaker 1 (11:42):
Yeah, John, I don't know.
Speaker 2 (11:44):
I find it. I find it.
Speaker 3 (11:45):
Bleak, but it's representative of a larger bleakness.
Speaker 1 (11:50):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (11:50):
It's the same thing that happened to you know, like
burning men in Coachella and you know, Bali and I
don't know, Pancun. You know, like the presence of something
special is degraded by the world's sudden awareness that it
is special, and then everyone flocks and in the process
of loving it destroyed.
Speaker 1 (12:10):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (12:10):
But I actually think that we can love the World
Cup together without FIFA. I think that there is a
way to do that. You know, FIFA is ostensibly a
non governmental organization that does not exist to make money.
It exists to make football tournaments, and it does not
(12:32):
exist to maximize revenue. It exists to maximize the joy
and wonder and connection of football. And in so far
as that's the truth, FIFA can change. I just don't
know that it will.
Speaker 2 (12:45):
Well, you're right, I think support to change, you would
have to be president of FIFA.
Speaker 3 (12:51):
That would be a cool job, but I would immediately
start taking bribes.
Speaker 1 (12:57):
It's an intractable problem.
Speaker 2 (12:58):
If even John Green would immediately succumb to the temptation
of the bribes.
Speaker 3 (13:07):
I don't hate that job because there's so much interpersonal drama.
People want, people want conflicting things from me. You have
to send on unpleasant emails.
Speaker 2 (13:15):
I would hate that. M No, of course not.
Speaker 3 (13:20):
I'd be terrible at it. But I wouldn't take bribes.
I obviously wouldn't take bribes you. No, of course I
know that.
Speaker 2 (13:27):
I know that. Don we know that your listeners know that.
Here's what I think, Uh, when I think of the
World Cup, I think of the games that I've watched
with friends on television, these parties, these these gatherings that
really mean a lot to me and have really special memories.
(13:48):
That's what I think about. And that's to me loving
the World Cup without loving FIFA. You know, yeah, absolutely,
that's that's what it means. So anyway, I'll be out
in front of the television most likely. John, Let's take
a quick break and we come back. I'm gonna tell
you about South Korea.
Speaker 3 (14:04):
I can't wait. I love me some South Korean national team.
Speaker 2 (14:08):
You're gonna be perplexed by this story. But anyway, on
we go back soon. We're back at the away end.
On the away end. With the away end, I'm donil John.
(14:30):
I'm here to tell you about South Korea, and I
want to start with the obvious. South Korea is one
of Asia's best teams. They've qualified for eleven straight tournaments.
That's every World Cup since Italy nineteen ninety. And I
know that sounds like a lot, but I don't think
I understand just how elite this is. So for context,
these are the teams with current streaks for consecutive World
(14:52):
Cup qualifications longer than South Korea's Brazil with twenty three,
which is like all of them, Germany with nineteen, Argentina
with fourteen, and Spain with thirteen. So I don't need
to tell you this, but in footballing terms, that is
extraordinary company to be in, right, I mean these are
every one of those teams has won a World Cup. Now.
(15:15):
South Korea's best ever finished was two thousand and two,
when they co hosted the tournament with Japan. That year
they were SEMMI finalists, they finished fourth. And my deep
dive is gonna be a little different today, John, because
it's gonna veer off into this personal story that intersects
obliquely with that tournament. Okay, I'm not sure if you
know this, John, but I was supposed to go to
(15:36):
that World Cup.
Speaker 3 (15:37):
I did not know that.
Speaker 2 (15:38):
Yeah. So I had a friend back then, and I'll
call him Hung. Hun is our age. She's Korean American
born in Seoul. He moved to an La when he
was eight. When I knew Hun, he was a brilliant
and funny, super handsome, very charismatic guy. We met working
at this community center in East Harlem, and we got
to be really close friends, like really really close. He
(15:59):
told the incredible stories, and I remember this image that
he shared with me from his childhood and soul. How
in the summer, these like oppressively hot Korean summers, these
like big trucks would drive down the street, spraying these
like deliciously cooling clouds of mists in the air, and
all the neighborhood children would come out and run alongside
the trucks, just delighting in this sweet relief of this fog.
(16:20):
And it was only later as an adult that he
realized that what those trucks were actually spraying were pesticides
like DDT. Yeah, and he was like joyfully inhaling poison,
as if it were some like life giving elixir, like
these deep hungry breaths. And he used this, i should say,
parenthetically to justify his smoking. It was like, I've already
(16:45):
done enough. I've already done damage from my Lungs's what's
the city here there? Yeah? Anyway, we were both employed
at this pretty chaotic after school program and a community
center at George Washington Houses and he's Harlem on Third Avenue.
But during the day, while our students were ostensibly attending
classes that they're under funded local public schools, Han and
I we had all this free time and really very
little supervision. So we spend our days just kind of
(17:07):
walking around East Harlem and talking about life, about books
and film and music and art. And here's the thing.
We both wanted to be artists. He wanted to be
an actor and a playwright. I wanted to be a writer.
And John, as you know, when you're like young, admitting
that you have this kind of slightly embarrassing ambition, it's
(17:27):
a little bit scary. Every message you get in the
world is like, go start a career, get a job,
plan for the future. And admitting that really in your
heart of hearts, all you really care about, all you
really believe in, is like truth and beauty and the
ineffable value of art. That's like a really scary thing
to admit to yourself, and then to admit to another
person is even harder. It's not easy to confess this
(17:48):
when you're young and you're kind of like finding your
place in a really cynical world, right, So that's so true.
Speaker 3 (17:54):
Man, Like I remember being twenty three and wanting to
be a writer more than any anything, but also like
constantly thinking of the other things I wanted to be,
to try to want to be something else, you know,
in that sense, it is it is really kind of
a calling, because, yeah, it's a hard thing to acknowledge
to yourself, let alone to a friend.
Speaker 2 (18:16):
Yeah, and Hum and I shared this bond because we
both wanted it and we admitted it to each other,
and it was like it was a big deal, you know.
We shared. Something else is that we both kind of
had this immigrants longing for rootedness, for identity, and one
of the places we found this identity was through soccer,
which in the US was and remains, I think an
immigrant sport, one of those spaces where our status is
(18:40):
outsiders kind of made us feel like insiders and made
us feel better about ourselves, more deserving, truer and human.
Was really good, like really good man, like silky first touch,
good finisher, better than me by a mile. We played
the same team. Oh my god, he's really good man. Wow.
And despite smoking, he could run for days all the
(19:03):
DDT he had Inhaled as a youth in Soul, Korea.
He could still you know, hustle up and down the field.
We played on the same team in this league in Chinatown,
run by this Chinese peruving guy. We even won a
couple of trophies there. Okay, so I'm gonna bring this
back to soccer, I promise, or did the World Cup?
I mean eventually, all this kind of internal and typically
(19:25):
young male agonizing over a sense of self took me
back to Peru. And when I left New York, which
was just before nine to eleven, to move to Lima,
where I was born, I gave Hugh and my soccer
ball and the plan was that I would meet him
in Seoul in June of that year. It was going
to be his first time going back to Korea since
he'd left as a boy, and we were going to
watch the tournament together. We had tickets for like six games.
(19:45):
I'd meet his family, and I.
Speaker 3 (19:47):
Was going to be not a ten thousand dollars a
game turn.
Speaker 2 (19:52):
And it must be noted, no, these were simpler times.
These were much simpler times. It was I don't remember
what it was cost, but if I could afford it
on my you know, after school program at a public
housing project in New York City salary, then it could have.
It must have been doable, you know, right. So I
(20:12):
was going to be like witnessed to his return, his
like emotional support Peruvian, and he was going to be
visiting these places where his first memories were going to
be had been constructed, and we were metaphorically going to
run through those clouds of DDT together, John. None of
this happened, hmm, none of it. And it didn't happen
for a really specific reason, which I think you'll understand.
(20:33):
I got to Lima. I met a girl. Hmmm, that
is the best reason, a girl who would later break
my heart. But the fact is that I met her,
and once I did, as often happens when one falls
in love, everything else, every other commitment or spoken promise
or relationship. It seems suddenly preposterously unimportant. And the cool
fact of the matter was that once I met her,
(20:54):
I did not want to leave Peru to go to
Korea to hang out while he and reconnected with his
culture in past. This was selfish, I recognize that, but
I wanted to be near this girl, and I knew
at the moment I met her. And I put off
telling Hun because I was nervous to tell him, and
I was right to be nervous, because when I did
finally tell him, it did not go well. He was
furious and he basically broke up with me. Like we
(21:16):
literally never spoken again. We have not spoken again. It's
been twenty five years.
Speaker 3 (21:21):
Oh man, I'm sorry. That sucks.
Speaker 2 (21:23):
Yeah. And the last indirect interaction I had with Huan
was in two thousand and five. I'd published a book
by then, my first book, and I came to New
York to give a reading. And when I got to
the venue, the organizer told me that someone had stop
by a few hours earlier to drop off something for me,
and I was super confused. I had no idea. She
hands me this like, you know, brown paper grocery bag,
and inside is the soccer ball that I'd given Hun
(21:45):
when I left town.
Speaker 3 (21:46):
Whoa, yeah, yies right, I mean that's some hurt feelings
that extended through the decades.
Speaker 2 (21:54):
Yeah no, I mean, well, at that point it had
been three years since I, you know, not dissed him
and not gone the World Cup. But yeah, yeah, it was.
It was it felt like very pointed. You know.
Speaker 3 (22:04):
Yeah, that's hard.
Speaker 1 (22:06):
So did I do the right thing?
Speaker 2 (22:09):
I mean I think I did, because, like, young love
is so special and I definitely wouldn't be the person
I am to day if I had not met that girl.
And also, like getting your heart eviscerated is like an
important part of growing up.
Speaker 3 (22:21):
But it is a critical thing. But I gotta say,
you gotta I almost pushed back against that and say,
I think you could have had an amazing summer in
Korea that you just don't know about now I just
don't know about. Yeah, I could have met a Korean
girl like who knows sliding doors man sliding door.
Speaker 2 (22:43):
Sliding doors. I realized that this was super disappointing to
human and I want to emphasize again, this was not
like a middling friends, Like we were super close friends
and I miss him to this day, like one of
the smartest and funnest people I've ever met, and I
let him down for whatever reasons that I may have had.
It may have felt just about the time, but I
can see now that it must have felt like a betrayal.
(23:04):
So now as concerns the listeners of your way and
the sailing, fact here is that I was not of
the two thousand and two World Cup, and I did
not with witness South Korea's glorious run to the semis.
I did not see them beat Italy in the quarterfinals,
which is what I mean.
Speaker 3 (23:18):
You should have. You should have left that girl. Man,
Now that you're talking about it, and it's clear to
me you made the wrong call.
Speaker 2 (23:25):
I was not there, John, I was in Lima, Peru.
I was puppy dogging after this girl. Yeah, I was
not in Soul. Just for the record, before you start hallucinating,
you were not there either.
Speaker 3 (23:34):
Yeah, No, I was. I saw that game. I saw
that that quarter final. It was incredible. No, I was
in Chicago. I woke up at three o'clock in the
morning to watch it.
Speaker 2 (23:44):
I watched the game. I just didn't watch it in Korea.
Speaker 3 (23:47):
Yeah. Here here, you missed out you really made a
big mistake. There's only one thing more important than young love,
and that is the young love of football.
Speaker 2 (23:56):
Exactly. Okay, so this deep dive has taken a real
time run away from football. But I really do hope
for Hun and for all other South Koreans that they
will do well this tournament. They have a challenging group
South Africa, Mexico host country obviously, and Checchia. I just
want to plan on a couple of players to watch,
or a few Sun Hung min erstwhile of the sad
(24:18):
side of North London, South Korea's captain, all time leading scorer,
Asian leading scorer in European football, one hundred and forty
one caps, three World Cups, Premier League, Golden Boot winner
in twenty twenty one twenty two, arguably the greatest South
Korean player of all time. He's now playing his trade
in MLS at LAFC And by the time you listen
to this, two great Korean players will have met in
(24:40):
the Champions League semifinals. That's Kim and Jay, central defender
for Bayern Munich and Lee Kung In, an attacking midfielder
for a plucky little side known as PSG. Neither is
necessarily a nailed on starter, but the fact that they're
both playing at this level says a lot about the
strength of South Korea. And lastly, as you know, when
I don't have a real rooting interest, I turned to writing,
(25:01):
and so I don't know a ton about Korean literature,
but I do have real love for a novelist that
I want to mention here, Chang Rai Lee. I don't
know if you ever read him, John, I have read him.
Speaker 3 (25:10):
Yeah, I've read what is that book called.
Speaker 1 (25:16):
A Gesture Life? Maybe a Gesture Life. Oh, great book.
Speaker 3 (25:20):
Great book which is recommended to me by a young
kid who was living with stage four cancer. Actually that's
why I read.
Speaker 2 (25:26):
It, oh Man, beautiful book. So, when I was a
public school teacher in Harlem, about a year after my
sad breakup with Hun, I prepare a whole unit on
Chang Relei's first novel, Made a Speaker, which included a
class trip out of Flushing, Queens. It's kind of a
scavenger hunt there along Main Street, and I had my students.
I took my students to a Korean restaurant exactly. None
(25:47):
of my students had ever eaten Korean food before, so
it was really exciting. And I think that might be
like my greatest accomplishment as a teacher perhaps, And I
think that's reason enough to support care in this tournament,
and I hope they go very far and naturally, John,
I want to dedicate this deep dive to my old
friend Hun. That's not his real name, but he knows
(26:08):
who he is, and if he's listening, though I'm sure
he's not, please write to us or to me at
Away endpod at gmail dot com.
Speaker 3 (26:15):
Well, if this podcast leads to a reunion of that friendship,
I think it will have been a great success.
Speaker 2 (26:19):
I think so too. I think so too, John. Let's
take a break and we'll do that.
Speaker 3 (26:40):
Welcome back to the Away and So I actually have
two stories for you, Daniel, because just too much happened
in Sierra Leone for me to only have one story.
It was a very football drenched trip, as we mentioned earlier.
I just got back this morning, and football is everywhere
in Sierra Leone as it is throughout West Africa. The
fandom is profound and it runs deep. Like I spoke
(27:01):
to this one teenage footballer who was being treated for
multi drug resistant tuberculosis in Lecau Government Hospital in Freetown,
outside of Freetown, and he told me that he was
a midfielder. I was like, what do you do? You know, like,
what are you looking forward to getting back to when
you get out of the hospital. As for MDRTV, you know,
if you're healthy ish and this this young man was,
(27:26):
you know, hopefully you can go home after you know,
as little as two weeks maybe a month of daily
treatment because you'll no longer be super infectious. So I
was asking him what he was excited about, what he
wanted to go home to, and he said what, I'm
a footballer and I said, well, what position do you play?
And he said, I'm a midfielder and then he said,
I'm not declan rice, I'm ode guard. And it turns out, Wow,
(27:50):
it turns out that like many Sierra Leonians, like the
majority of football fans I spoke to, he is like
you an arsenal support. In fact, when I turned on
my phone camera to make an Instagram video with him,
he looked right into the lens and immediately shouted through
his mask, North London Forever, Oh love it. That is
(28:16):
not a story. That's just a prelude to a story.
My first story is about Kissy Psychiatric Hospital, which is
the only psychiatric hospital in sier Leone. So Kissy is
the oldest psychiatric hospital in West Africa. It's been around
for almost two hundred years. It has a very long
and extremely complex history, most of which of course, occurred
(28:38):
during colonialism, when anti colonialism itself was a form of madness.
But to give you a quick taste of how difficult
life was at Kissy four patients just not long ago,
as recently as twenty eighteen, more than one hundred patients
were literally chained to their beds twenty four hours a
(28:59):
day because there were no medications or other treatments to
keep them safe and to keep others safe at the hospital.
So this was a site of tremendous, unimaginable suffering and
a place that's close to my heart because I also
live with serious mental illness like a lot of the
(29:21):
patients at Kissy Psychiatric Hospital. And you know, I've also
been a patient at a psychiatric hospital and I've benefited tremendously,
I mean, you know, on an unprecedented scale really from
psychiatric intervention, from you know, therapy and medication and other
forms of psychiatric treatment. So when I first visited Kesey
(29:45):
in twenty nineteen, much of the hospital was still in
intense disrepair, very thin mattresses where there were mattresses at all,
for instance, no twenty four hour electricity, And while they're
as a functioning pharmacy, by then, it was still quite limited.
Today it's a very different place in ways that are
(30:06):
mostly encouraging. It's still crowded, but now not primarily with
what we would traditionally think of as psychiatric patients, because
most of them are treated on an outpatient basis, like
I am, like most people living with mental illness are
so like I might have been hospitalized for my OCD
there ten years ago. Now I would receive my medication
(30:26):
through the hospital monthly and be able to live at home.
These days, almost all of the patients are being treated
for substance use disorder because addiction to a smoked opiate
called Kush has become an absolute epidemic in Sierra Leone,
as indeed opiate addiction is in the United States and in.
Speaker 2 (30:46):
Much of the world.
Speaker 3 (30:48):
Now, even today, Kissy is a really challenging place. There's
twenty four hour electricity now but there's still no consistent
running water. The wards are very crowded. There are not
nearly enough beds there to treat the national substance of
use epidemic, which of course is also the case in
the US. But there is this big recreation area that
was empty when I last visited it. You know, people
(31:10):
were just like laying in bed, And this time it
was alive. It was It was so, to use a
word that urban space designers sometimes use, activated as a space,
there's a flat surface, there is a rectangular expanse of concrete,
(31:31):
which of course means that there is a football pitch,
and the patients were playing seven aside in flip flops
with a tattered ball. But they were playing and they
were having a great time. Now I'm not a psychiatrist
or a drug addict counselor, but I know that social
connection is a key to any form of recovery. And
as those guys passed this old ball around, I kept thinking,
(31:53):
here is a little bit of hope, a little game
that brings us together, a language we all share that
FIFA simply cannot touch.
Speaker 2 (32:05):
Beautiful.
Speaker 3 (32:07):
And then there is the second story about the third
tier English soccer team. I support Daniel, So I mean
I passed so many that who we both support.
Speaker 2 (32:17):
That's right.
Speaker 3 (32:17):
You have a third tier English soccer team now and
it's AFC Wimbledon. So I don't even need to tell
you this story because you already know what happens. Yes,
but go on for no, no, no, no, you you finish,
so I'll.
Speaker 2 (32:34):
Let you tell it.
Speaker 1 (32:35):
I'll let you tell it.
Speaker 3 (32:36):
Thanks, I appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (32:37):
Man.
Speaker 3 (32:37):
So AFC Wimbledon have not won any of their last
ten games. They've been on it. They've been properly spursy,
they've been on a proper Tottenham style run down there
in the third tier of English football and have lost
six straight and find themselves with two games left on
the edge of relegation. So for context, we were in
(33:01):
Sierra Leone to visit the Maternal Center of Excellence, this
truly transformational addition to Coyu Government Hospital in the Kono
district that brings one hundred and twenty maternal beds to
the region, the first NICKU in the history of Sierra Leone.
The you know, just a truly world class hospital in
(33:23):
a place that has often been denied access to world
class health services. And it was an amazing visit. I wept,
you know, I mean to walk into the first NICKU
and think that our little Internet community had a hand
in making this possible, and everything was just just amazing.
(33:46):
It was just the gift of a lifetime. And then
we had to drive from Kono to Freetown where we
were flying back home through Casablanca, and that's a six
hour drive. And on that six hour drive AFC Wimbledon
we're playing against Wigan Athletic. We have two games left.
(34:09):
That is the game we are much more likely to win,
even though it's an away game, because it's against a
team that's maybe like five or six spots above us
in the table, and we had to win at least
one of these last two games. Having lost six in
a row and not ten for ten games, we had
to win one of these last two games to stay
up unless the team below us, Exeter City, also lost
(34:30):
their last two games. So we're in this car and
to say that the Internet on this drive was inconsistent
would be a significant understatement. I'm in this car with
my friends Lauren, Ryan and Chris and Marina and my
wife Sarah, all of whom, in addition to making huge
investments in the Maternal Center of Excellence, have made small
(34:51):
investments with me in AFC Wimbledon. My friends love of
John Green boondoggle. You'll have the opportunity to invest soon,
don't you worry. And so I'm on the road with
these people I love tremendously who have helped tremendously to
build this neonatal and maternal care center and also helped
(35:13):
AFC Wimbledon this in every season. And we're trying to
stream the game on Ryan's phone and I would say
about thirty percent of the time it worked and the
other seventy percent of the time Chris and Marina are
updating us on the score based on what Google says
if we have at least three G Internet and if
we don't, then we're just sort of sitting in silence
wondering what's happening. Forty five minutes in AFC Wimbledon have
(35:38):
slipped into the relegation zone because Exeter City have scored.
They're winning one nothing. AFC Wimbledon are tied neil nil.
It looks like we will never score a goal again.
Like Tottenham. We have nine injured players, including our top
four choice strikers. It looks impossible that we can score.
I mean, there's a guy out there and I say
(35:58):
this with love who And I know that I'm overly
generous about your football talents, Daniel, but you could have
made it in the team on Saturday. And so we're
watching it looks like we're never going to score. It
looks like Exeter's gonna win. And then about then there's
then it's halftime. Then about sixty five minutes in we
(36:20):
get a solid five minutes of getting to watch the game,
and we just look terrible. We have twenty three percent possession.
It's wave after wave of attacking. It's like watching the
Alamo be defended.
Speaker 2 (36:31):
It is.
Speaker 3 (36:31):
It is hideous and terrifying. And then and then suddenly
Exeter aren't winning because Burton Albion has scored a goal
and it's one to one, and there's a little bit
of hope and if we can just and if Burton
can score another goal, or maybe we can somehow get
a goal or at least hold on to a draw,
like at least it'll come down to the final day
and we'll get to we'll get to live another five days.
(36:55):
And then in the ninetieth minute, one young substitute who's
played for AFC Wimbledon since he was like eleven years old,
passes the ball to a loan player who we signed
on loan from a team that's in our division, because like,
that's you know, that's that's how challenging a circumstance we
(37:17):
find ourselves in financially. He passes the ball to Antoine Hackford,
who's hardly played a game in the last fifteen games
because of injury and because being out of favor and
everything else. And Antwine Hackford scores a goal in the
ninetieth minute and the stream is perfect high definition for
those ten seconds. And you have never seen joy inside
(37:41):
of a bus on the road from Cono to Freetown
like this. Joy and AFC Wimbledon stay up, and AFC
Wimbledon live to fight another year in League one.
Speaker 2 (37:54):
Amazing.
Speaker 3 (37:54):
I love football, Yeah, I love what football can make
you feel. Oh God, it just pierces through everything. It
simplifies the world, It pierces through everything. It was such
a hard trip in so many ways, you know, and
such a beautiful trip in so many ways. And holding
those competing ideas together is the hardest thing. Like the
(38:15):
sense of the profound, unbelievable, reprehensible injustice, and the sense
of the profound, true progress, and the fact that these
things can have to be held together somehow or else
the wheels completely come off the bus. And so I'm
trying to hold all that together and like can't make
sense of anything. I still can't make sense of anything.
I've only been home for a few hours and so
(38:36):
I can't make sense of any any of it.
Speaker 2 (38:38):
But like.
Speaker 3 (38:40):
There was something about being in that bus with those people,
with that football club that just reminded me that hope
is correct.
Speaker 2 (38:49):
I love it. I love it. It's why I support Wimbledon
for moments.
Speaker 3 (38:58):
Well you're you're joking, but you're going to get an
investment portfolio Prospectus over the weekend if you don't watch it.
Speaker 2 (39:05):
Yeah, no, I'll be looking out for it. John. It's
beautiful and I want to thank you, and I want
to thank the whole uh kind of amazing community you've
created obviously for the work that you're doing in Sara
Leone and elsewhere. It's just so inspiring man. And uh again,
this is why I think you'd be a great FIFA president,
because you do well.
Speaker 3 (39:25):
It's a little bar to jump over, man. I mean, yeah,
I know, but you have your your your heart is
in the right place at least to be the greatest
FIFA president since the first FIFA president, Like you would
not have to be a great FIFA president. No, no,
but you're I mean, I'm joking aside. Man, I'm really
proud to be your friend for this kind of thing, uh,
and for the Wimbledon stuff, but really for the for
(39:46):
the Sirira Leone stuff, that's that's amazing. Yeah. Every time
I tell Sarah like, can we just maybe squeeze a
little bit more money into ancy Wimbledon, She's like, do
you do you really want to do that? Or maybe
you should it go somewhere where it could matter a
little more. And uh, that's that's why if Wimbledon almost
got relegated, it Sarah's fault.
Speaker 2 (40:09):
It's Sarah's fault, right, Uh, Sean, you want to come
on and read us some questions, Man.
Speaker 1 (40:17):
There is I just want to I just want to
add I am proud to be both of your friends.
You guys, Uh regaled us with some amazing stories today
and thanks Sean, thank you man. I look forward to
hearing more about your trip.
Speaker 3 (40:31):
John I know, I mostly I know, I mostly only
compliment Daniel, but I have to say, you look incredible
in that shirt.
Speaker 1 (40:38):
Oh god, this is pretty uh nondescript shirt that I'm
wearing today.
Speaker 2 (40:44):
But I appreciate that. Maybe you should. I just want
to I want to ask you something. This is not
football related, but was this your like go to, like
uh like flirting style when you were a young man
on the market there just like just like school.
Speaker 3 (40:58):
My go to flirting style with no nearly that good.
I just did. What I just did with Sean was
excellent fording.
Speaker 2 (41:08):
I'll have.
Speaker 1 (41:10):
Yeah, I got me blushing. Yeah. I also think if John,
if John was you know, if we're calling John the
ultra of our high school soccer team, it feels like
you could also argue that he is the ultra of
the Away End podcast because he's just like he's like
(41:30):
our biggest uh fan here, He's like always you know,
I'm your Yeah, yeah, amazing. All right, we're gonna read
a couple letters here, Yeah, hit us man, Dear John,
Daniel and Sean. I love almost everything about the game.
I really do accept the diving faking simulation nonsense. As
(41:55):
we approached the World Cup, I would love to introduce
some of my friends to the game, but I'm mortified
by the faking diving rolling around that I know is
going to happen. It's just embarrassing. What do you guys think,
How do you watch grown men falling down and grasping
that precious area above the ankle. Why do they always
grab that area over and over again and still enjoy
(42:17):
the game? Any ideas on how to solve this or
any ideas on how to not let it bother me
as much? Scott and his daughter Katie.
Speaker 3 (42:26):
So Scott and Katie. The first thing I'd say, and
I defer to Daniel and to a wesser extent Sean
on this, is that getting your footsteps on does really hurt.
Does especially with cleats, it hurts. Yeah, getting kicked in
the shin hurts, and so sometimes they go down and
(42:47):
it really hurts. Now, in American football, it does appear
that there's more hurt per role in soccer than American football.
I will give you that. It appears to me from
the outside like there's more niggling injury or or knocks
(43:08):
per roll around on the ground screaming yes, So what
is it? Daniel? How do you how do you solve
for this?
Speaker 2 (43:15):
I don't know when I when I heard this question,
my first thought was, like I was thinking about in
politics like that, there's like fake outrage is a thing,
you know, like where a politician will say something fairly
anadyne and then the other side, because of the polarized
moment that we're living through, will take the crassest bassist
(43:38):
possible interpretation of what was said and then to be
outraged by it. You know.
Speaker 3 (43:43):
Can I jump in there real quick and ask Sean
to ask Daniel what anadyne means?
Speaker 1 (43:50):
Daniel, can you tell us the definition of anadyne please?
Speaker 2 (43:55):
Just like something inoffensive, something that is not okay? Yeah,
Like that's what I thought for my context, but I wasn't.
Speaker 3 (44:04):
Now I have it. I've got it forever.
Speaker 2 (44:05):
It's a gift to me. You got it forever. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (44:07):
I can also say it is the title of one
of my favorite albums of all time by legendary alt
country band Uncle Tupelo headed by Jeff Tweety and j
Ferrar of sun Volt and Wilco. Now, but Anadne great album?
Speaker 2 (44:23):
Check it out. Uh So I forget what I was saying,
But oh, Yeah. So basically people take some anodine comment
and then use the worst possible interpretation of that comment
in order to pretend to be outraged. That's basically what
diving is. And if you ever have watched, for example,
or had the misfortune of watching like a White House
press conference and they'll ask, you know, Carolyn Levitt, you know, like,
(44:48):
what is the President doing today? And she'll be like,
I am appalled that you would even ask what, you know,
the greatest statesman in the history of the world would
be doing today of all days, And you know, are
you even an American for asking?
Speaker 3 (44:59):
Like?
Speaker 2 (45:00):
That's fake outrage, that's diving. You know, it's just such
a part of our culture that I think to sort
of pretend that it's It's upsetting in all moments. It's
more upsetting in politics, I think than in in sport.
And there's a reason why people do it. One is
because things things do hurt. Two, because there are times
(45:21):
when you have to exaggerate a little bit to make
sure the ref saw the contact. And then there's things
that are super embarrassing, you know, where people fall down
as if they'd just been you know, shot by a
sniper and they weren't touched. But it's just gamesmanship, Scott
and Katie, it's just gamesmanship. And I think having played,
you know, you always are told if there's if you're
(45:44):
in the box and feel contact, like, don't be afraid
to go down. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (45:47):
The only thing I was going to add to this
is that it's not specific to soccer football either. Like
I was watching the NBA. You know, NBA playoffs are
happening right now. There was a game on the other
night there was they should they you know, it's a
slow motion replay afterwards, an absolutely zero contact that happened,
(46:09):
but the foul was called pivotal moment of the game.
They can't overturn it, and that in that moment and
you know, yeah, and if you can gain an advantage
in a sporting contest from flopping or diving or whatever,
it's got to be hard to resist.
Speaker 2 (46:28):
Let me just end with this for Scott and Katie,
if you've ever played in the park on a Sunday
in any context like sort of soccer football, that doesn't
matter at all. And that's where you really can say
flopping is a moral failure because if you've ever seen
someone flop on a Sunday League in Riverside Park. Then
(46:51):
you're just like, what is wrong with you? Like what
are you doing? Like you're embarrassing yourself and your entire
family by doing this, and that is something I really
can't understand. But flopping in the World Cup, you know,
it's not really flopping. It's just making sure the ref
saw something that you want them to see. That's it,
you know, that's it. And it's framed game. Yeah, it's
(47:13):
a it's a it's a narrative. It's it's storytelling, John,
That's what it is. So Scott and Katie, when you
see someone diving and you're embarrassed to tell your friends,
explain it to your frenzy, to whom you're introducing the
world's most popular sport in twenty twenty six, Just tell
them it's it's narrative. It's just narrative. That's all it is,
(47:35):
all right.
Speaker 1 (47:36):
Next question, Dear John and Daniel enjoying the show. But wow,
do you guys drop names on this podcast? Oh? I
was traveling with Bill Gates and Ethiopia. Oh, look at me.
I did fantasy football with multiple MacArthur geniuses. Here's some
free advice. Friends More Stoutschkov less Bill Gates. As far
(47:57):
as I know, Gates never kicked a ball in Anger.
Unless the name you drop is an obscure Croatian under
twenty one, it's not relevant to the story. All best.
Speaker 2 (48:05):
Eric b.
Speaker 1 (48:06):
Esquire, former player of the Upper west Side National team. PS,
nice job jinxing you mean lamal Oh yeah you did?
And you mall man, Wow, this is a great one.
Speaker 2 (48:21):
This is I think this is really this is really
for you, John, because yeah, you're the one name dropping
I think, I mean, you're the one traveling with Bill Gates.
Speaker 3 (48:30):
And yeah, it reminds me a little bit of when
I was hanging out with car de Levigne on the
set of Paper Towns.
Speaker 2 (48:36):
Actually, and he told you never to name drop, right, yeah?
She but gee, yeah, sorry, I don't know whose people are.
I can't even name ever changed stay Golden, Tony boy. Yeah. Uh.
I think Eric has a point. But I think this
(48:58):
is just the lives we happened to have stumbled into.
And I'm not going to apologize for not knowing Bill Gates,
but for you know, knowing some people who are fun
and interesting and.
Speaker 3 (49:10):
I think I don't Actually, you know, it's funny because
I do name drop, and I just I realized that
when I got that email that I definitely do name drop.
But I would say ninety nine point seven percent of
the people I have met and care about in my
life are not famous, and so I should name them more.
(49:34):
I should name drop them. I should name drop the
hewns of the world. You know, Yeah, I think that
you should.
Speaker 2 (49:40):
I think you do. I think you do. To be fair,
I think you mentioned a lot of people today in
your story from Sierra Leone who are not famous, but
who are incredibly remarkable and special people. And I think
to be fair to Eric b Esquire, former player of
the Upper West Side national team. Just judging from that Moniker,
I think that he is uh gently ribbing us tongue
(50:02):
in cheek, and.
Speaker 3 (50:04):
I do enjoy being ribbed, although never as much as
when l s Ao chose that question about Julian Nagelsman
having never been a professional footballer that was classic to
be to be dunked on by your teenage son is
a joy I simply could not have imagined when we
were in high school.
Speaker 2 (50:25):
Yeah, or you know that that would be uh kind
of the one of the highlights of this podcast when
we were sort of imagining this show right. Lastly, Eric's
point of Jingxon give me Lamal though, I think that's
really relevant man and super sad. And I keep hearing
every day of players missing, you know, who are going
(50:47):
down injured, missing the World Cup, most recently Chabby Simon's
of Tottenham.
Speaker 3 (50:52):
My heartbreaks that kid.
Speaker 2 (50:54):
Brutal, man, brutal. You know, Lamal will be will be fit, man,
I really do.
Speaker 3 (51:00):
I hope we should too. I mean it's going to
be a better tournament with him, in addition to being
great for Spain, It'll just be a better tournament.
Speaker 2 (51:08):
Yeah, absolutely, absolutely so. Yeah, healing mercies to Yamin Lamal
and to Chabbie Simon's and to all the players who
are getting injured. I hope they make a full recovery.
We're gonna have to do a mailbag show pretty soon
because because some of these emails are piling up and
they're really, really good. I do want to mention one
thing because we had two listeners now recommend a game,
(51:31):
and I don't do, John, do you play games like
on like I do video games? I do, Okay, I don't,
But now we've had two listeners recommend this one game
called This Plote ed Torres and an email we got
a few months ago from Mariana I believe her name
was So. This Pilote is an autobiographical game about growing
(51:54):
up in Ecuador in two thousand and one, when the
country qualified for the World Cup for the first time,
and how those events are remembered in processed by the
game's creator as a young boy, I mentioned this. I
want to mention this because you're not gonna beieve it's done.
But I was at that game. And I was at
that game with the girl that pulled me away from
(52:17):
human we were trying. We're in Quito. We went to
the stadium. It was so emotional because people were so happy,
and she wasn't really like into soccer in the same
way I was, So she was just like letting herself
go with this like first time ever national celebration. Like
the streets of Keito were just you know, packed, and
(52:37):
it was incredible, and I was with her sort of
feeling this kind of joy vicariously through all the Ecuadorians
around me, and I was also heartbroken. I was like,
I'll never see this for Peru. I really thought that.
I was like, I'll never see this for pro she
I think she tried to buy me an Ecuador Jersey
and I was like, I can't. I can't wear that.
I'm sorry, I was like, n But so anyway, we've
(52:58):
had two listeners recommend this game and I and I
don't play video games, but I'm sure it's really good.
So de pelote for those of you who do play
video games, it sounds really amazing.
Speaker 1 (53:07):
I think that's it, man, See you next week, See
you next week.
Speaker 2 (53:11):
Thanks John, Thanks Jean, thanks Kurt, and thanks everyone for listening,
and remember to send your emails away and pod at
gmail dot com. Thanks so much. I see you next week. John.
All right
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