Why Sports Matter Even When the Game Doesn’t with Roger Bennett

Why do sports make us cry, unite strangers, and create memories that last a lifetime? In this episode, Men in Blazers founder and CEO Roger Bennett joins Brené Brown and Adam Grant fresh off a 39-day World Cup marathon to explore what the tournament revealed about identity, belonging, and the power of collective effervescence. Together, they unpack the difference between hero players and hero teams, what it means to be a true fan, the political complexities surrounding the World Cup, and how sports create shared experiences that shape our lives. Along the way, Roger shares stories from the road, reflects on the strange grief of “World Cup withdrawal,” and revisits some of the tournament’s most memorable stories, including Erling Haaland’s taxidermy shop detour, the Cape Verde goalkeeper who became a global icon overnight, the controversial red card reversal, and more. Roger Bennett – Men in Blazers Media Network The Englishman Who Became America’s No. 1 Soccer Fan – David Waldstein, July 16, 2026, The New York Times Men in Blazers’ Roger Bennett Eats Two Dinners During the World Cup “Chicken-tinga burros are the Messi of burros.” – Ben Widdicombe, July 17, 2026, New York Magazine Brené Brown on Surrounding Yourself With People Who Take Pleasure in Your Joy (Schadenfreude vs. Freudenfreude) – Ellen DeGeneres, April 1, 2022, TheEllenShow Premier League to bring all 20 clubs to U. S. in activation after 2026 World Cup – Victoria Hernandez, July 23, 2026, Yahoo Sports The Kansas City fanwalk had us all like… – OnsOranje, Royal Dutch Football Association The Numbers Game: Why Everything You Know About Football Is Wrong – Anderson & Sally, 2013, Penguin Men in Blazers - “The Women’s Game” and “Vamos” (Platform links) – The Men in Blazers Media Network New Volume Edited by Phil Smith and Sébastien Tutenges: Collective Effervescence – 2026, Yale Center for Cultural Sociology ROG’s Heartbreaking Farewell and Stunning Comeback at Goodison Park (Everton) – Roger Bennett, 2026, YouTube Brené Brown: The Power of Vulnerability & Joy in Liverpool! – Roger Bennett, April, 2025, Men in Blazers (Interview) Anfield sings 'You'll Never Walk Alone' to kick off new season – NBC Sports, August 15, 2025, YouTube We Are the World (Cup): A Personal History of the World's Greatest Sporting Event – Roger Bennett, 2026, HarperCollins Who Belongs? Football and the Reinvention of the Modern Nation – Josh Wilson, 2026, TIME The definition of a true fan – Adam Grant, Instagram Folarin Balogun's lifted suspension – Roger Bennett, CBS Morning News, Instagram This is so awkward: Modern puberty explained – Cara Natterson & Vanessa Kroll Bennett, 2023, Rodale Books Human challenges in polar and space environments – Sandal et al., 2006, Springer Strong Ground: The Lessons of Daring Leadership, the Tenacity of Paradox, and the Wisdom of the Human Spirit – Brené Brown, 2025, Random House Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

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• 1:30Brené Brown?

  Welcome to The Curiosity Shop.

• 1:31Adam Grant?

  A show from the Vox Media Podcast Network.

• 1:40Brené Brown?

  Hello, Adam Grant.

• 1:41Adam Grant?

  Hey, Brené Brown. Welcome back.

• 1:43Brené Brown?

  I missed you during hiatus.

• 1:45Adam Grant?

  I missed you too. And I know that that's a weird sentence for me to say, but I missed you.

• 1:50Brené Brown?

  I'm receiving it in all of its weirdness. I'm excited to be back from hiatus, and I'm so frickin' excited about our guest. I want you to meet my friend Roger Bennett, who is the founder and CEO of the Men in Blazers Media Network, the largest dedicated soccer platform in the United States. He is a soccer maniac, a poet. He is all about big emotion and big feelers, so you'll love that. He's all about collective effervescence and Freudenfreuda. We'll talk about all the good things. So I have been really looking forward to the two of y'all meeting, I have to say.

• 2:34Adam Grant?

  I can't wait. Can we dive in?

• 2:36Brené Brown?

  Let's do it. Roger, welcome to The Curiosity Shop.

• 2:40Speaker 05

  Brené Brown.

• 2:42Brené Brown?

  I'm so excited you're here. Please meet my co-host, Adam Grant.

• 2:47Speaker 05

  It's a joy to meet you, Adam. Brene, one of my favorite people in the world, definitely top three.

• 2:52Brené Brown?

  Right back at you.

• 2:54Adam Grant?

  Top three. Who are the other two?

• 2:56Speaker 05

  Well, probably Tracy Chapman and my wife.

• 3:00Brené Brown?

  I mean, I've never been in such good company.

• 3:06Adam Grant?

  You need to get a fast car, Brene.

• 3:08Brené Brown?

  I got a fast car, baby.

• 3:10Adam Grant?

  Love it. Roger, it's so great to meet you. I have an important question to kick us off. Have you ever done a podcast with Brene where she wasn't wearing a Liverpool shirt?

• 3:19Speaker 05

  It's very annoying. I'm not going to bore your listeners, but I am from Liverpool. And like the Mets and the Yankees, she supports the equivalent of the Yankees of where I'm from. They were a winning team. I support essentially a deeply losing team, a deeply traumatic team, which is very much part of my personality. It really fits beautifully. But every single time she's been on, she's dug out a different piece of Liverpool ephemera. And occasionally, I've not told her this, but I turn camera off because I just can't mentally handle it.

• 3:52Adam Grant?

  Brene, are you trolling Roger?

• 3:54Brené Brown?

  As often as possible. You should have seen the really shitty story that I put up. They did an article, who did the profile on what you eat?

• 4:04Speaker 05

  God, I've done so much over the World Cup, I can't remember. But it was a very funny profile. Go on.

• 4:10Brené Brown?

  Yeah, they said, you know, what is Roger Bennett eating a day? And I was like, he eats Liverpool football with an SEC Longhorn chaser. That's what he... And I put it up in stories, and I got so many great comments, like, you trolling the best guy in soccer is, I'm here for all of it.

• 4:30Speaker 05

  Yeah, I should have come on, Adam, in my Aggies outfit.

• 4:34Brené Brown?

  Oh, my God, you would never do that, because you don't love them.

• 4:37Speaker 05

  I wouldn't, because, Adam, the one thing, I've learned a lot off Brene, to be candid. But I'm a fairly dark human being, and Brené Brown forbid me from experiencing schadenfreude. I'm American now, so I'm full of optimism. But the little bit of Englishness in me still loves the pleasure of other people's misery, because if you give your average English person the choice of their success or your failure, they'll choose your failure every time. And Brene's forced me to do Freudenfreuda, I think it's called, like, taking pleasure in other people's success and joy. It's really been very, I mean, it's been, it's given me so much adrenaline in life, but that's why I'm not here in the Aggies outfit.

• 5:21Speaker 05

  It's just not who I am. It's who Brene is, but it's just not who I am.

• 5:24Adam Grant?

  Wow, converting an Englishman to empathetic joy. That's a win, Brene.

• 5:29Brené Brown?

  I know it is a win. It's like a Liverpool-level win. But I'm telling you why I'm wearing this right now. There is some very dodgy stuff going on on social media right now, where people are trying to recruit American fans to different Premier League teams, because everyone's going through soccer withdrawal. And it just seems so suspect to me that you would want us to follow anyone but Liverpool FC. And so every time I have a reminder to not be grifted by these other teams recruiting, I just have to just make sure that the Reds are front and center.

• 6:09Speaker 05

  God bless. You are trying to bring joy, and I'm just here in my Chicago White Sox top, just reveling in the darkness with fleeting moments of happiness, which is how I approach life.

• 6:24Brené Brown?

  Okay, we have so many questions for you. We have scheduled six hours and 30 minutes.

• 6:33Brené Brown?

  So we're going to start at the top. Okay, we just have questions for you, because we want your Shakespearean football POV, point of view, on these things. Looking back at the World Cup, which has been such a... I am so tired, Raj. Like, I haven't slept in a month. First question, hero players versus hero teams. What is your thinking about, you see two different types of things on the pitch. You see teams that have individual heroes, and you see teams where the team is the hero. What's your take on that?

• 7:15Speaker 05

  Yeah, I mean, I think that it's fascinating within the context of the World Cup, which has just passed. And it is, we're taping this two days after the end, and it is fascinating, the withdrawal, the sense of absence, the sense of just a lack. It's been 39 days. That's a long time. It was an ultra marathon. I'm very tired. The piece you were talking about, the food piece, was in New York Magazine. They asked me to document what I ate for four days during the World Cup. I just reread it over the weekend. It's actually quite dark. Without DoorDash, I would have never seen food. I was in a basement for much of the World Cup, just working, taping, filming, communing. I rarely saw the light of day,

• 8:00Speaker 05

  but it was magnificent because of that sense of global connection, which is at the heart of the thing. And the power of the tournament, the football was central and is central, but it's really a global eclipse, the World Cup, where for 39 days, a global eclipse that strikes the whole planet in its entirety for the whole time. And it emanated gloriously from North America, which made it all the more special, all the more meaningful. I'm sure we'll talk about it. But that narrative is really beautiful, because the game is now marketed in the social media age through individuals. Young TikTokers view highlights. They don't watch full 90 Minutes. They commune with the game differently. And so the star

• 8:45Speaker 05

  players become giants that walk amongst us. Lionel Messi, tiny little Ewok of joy. Erling Haaland, the Norwegian Shaquille O'Neal in football boots.

• 9:01Adam Grant?

  Wait a minute. Roger, I got to jump in on that. I am pretty confident that Haaland can make a free throw on a basketball court.

• 9:08Speaker 05

  Oh, doubt. And even if he's never played, I'm sure his percentage would pretty quickly be, would be better than Shaq's. But the thing they share is a lethal clinicality and a hyper competitiveness. And then off the field, they both have a deeply goofy persona, which is incredibly endearing and very, very separate. Mbappe, the French blur of speed. I could go on. And they're reduced to it. But ultimately, Brene, the winner of this tournament, Spain, were just the ultimate collective. They're actually the ones truly unified. These guys have played together since they were kids, many of them. They played with deep cohesion. They actually, they had a young star, a beautiful star,

• 9:52Speaker 05

  19-year-old, a man called Lamine Yamal, who I'm sure we'll talk about. I say man, I really mean a man-child. Remarkable story. But he didn't have a good tournament, and they won as a team. So I think the way we market, the way we experience, look, in our social media age, it's not just the players who are heightened. The fans become characters. Every fan doesn't just go to the game anymore. They have their thing. The Dutch fans marched 20, 30,000 of them, all clad in orange, behind a bus, a techno bus bouncing left and right through Kansas City, magnificent to watch the spectacle. The Norwegian fans row. Social

• 10:34Speaker 05

  media has changed so much of how we engage with the before, the during, and the after. But ultimately, when it comes down to it, the best team, because there's 11 players, it's not like the NBA where one or two great players can just take over. The best team ultimately won out.

• 10:51Adam Grant?

  That is exactly what I wanted to ask you about. You've probably seen the economists who talk about basketball being a strong link sport versus soccer being a weak link sport.

• 11:03Adam Grant?

  I never thought about it this way, but to your point, a basketball team can win with one or two superstars, whereas a soccer's team really seems to be dependent on making sure that their worst player is the least bad. And it seems like we saw that not only with with Spain versus Argentina, but also Cape Verde. Like, that was a whole group, it's a whole team that did not have a weak link. A 40-year-old goalie, can you, can you help us make sense of this?

• 11:28Speaker 05

  I, look, there's some alchemy to all of it. So Cape Verde, for those of you listeners who don't know, qualified for the World Cup for the first time, tiny, like, archipelago of islands. We all know this now because they participated. Trust me, I did not know any of this before they kicked off. And this is the joy of the World Cup. It changes identity, it changes geographic understanding, changes balance of power. 10 islands, I think eight of them are populated. They'd never qualified before. The players are partly in gathering of diasporas, partly low level, the equivalent of, I think, double A, triple A baseball. And they played Spain. Spoiler alert, Spain end up winning the World Cup.

• 12:12Speaker 05

  But in that first game, there'd never been a bigger gap between two teams in a World Cup. I think it was second in the world, playing 67th in the world. And Cape Verde, no hopers, duffers. We expected it to be an absolute one-sided avalanche, and they held Spain to a goalless draw. It sounds terrible. It sounds like every American's worst nightmare of football, but it was ecstatic because Spain absolutely smothered and covered Cape Verde. But in goal, they had a journeyman goalkeeper, a 40-year-old, who'd only become professional when he was 25. I mean, this is like some kind of Hallmark movie of a gentleman, and he had the game of his life, and he had seven or eight saves. It was remarkable to watch the spectacle.

• 12:57Speaker 05

  And right at the death, he pulled off one of the best saves of the tournament. This man, Vazinha, this is the incredible part of the story, Adam. He began the game with less than 50,000 Instagram followers. By the end of the game, he had more Instagram followers than Patrick Mahomes, more than Wemby, just through that arc of the 90 minutes. He called and asked if he could come on the show, our show, the day of that game, told his story with humility, looked into the camera and said, by the way, this wasn't a one-off, I'm not celebrating. This is our moment. We've struggled to get here. Our goal is to play without fear every single game. They ended up having a darling run into the knockout rounds.

• 13:42Speaker 05

  Vazinha came back on my show on game day. I was at Fanatics Fest. We had a live show before the game. He now has 30 million Instagram followers. I was with David Beckham on the morning of of the World Cup final. David Beckham was elated that he'd met Vazinha. He said, oh, I just met Vazinha last night. This is an amazing story and really a testament, I think, to the power of the World Cup, that this gentleman, an unknown, you know, a journeyman, a footnote in the world of football. I mean, he's now one of the most profound, almost, and why are these elite footballers excited? He's got a quasi-religious, like, a quasi kind of sainthood kind of aura to him that's deeply, deeply inspirational to, I think, everyone who meets him.

• 14:26Speaker 05

  If this man can do it, if this man could be plucked out of obscurity, if this man is almost like the last starfighter of World Cup football, you do think about yourself in your own life, not, not, you know, taking the World Cup field, but you do stand a little straighter, you do believe in your dreams a little bit more. And I think that's really the power of what we've shared together. It's not the football, it is the football, but it's about what kind of, and you understand this better than I do, Renee and Adam, it's what it inculcates into your own life, what you take and what transcends the game that I think is its true beauty.

• 15:01Brené Brown?

  I have, I have to pause us from our regularly scheduled questions because I have to ask you something. A lot of CEOs, founders and leaders listen to our podcast because that's very much the work that Adam and I do out in the world. You're the founder and CEO of the Men in Blazers Media Network, single biggest dedicated soccer platform in the US. What has this World Cup meant for your business? And how does that align with your expectations? How did, what did you, like, when I watch people, they're so excited to be sitting across from you.

• 15:44Brené Brown?

  It's not like you haven't had huge stars before this, but like, you're the hot ticket. And so I just need to pause from football for a minute and talk to you as a leader and a founder about this experience.

• 16:01Speaker 05

  The little bit of Englishness that's left in me, I'm very American now. I love America more than Matthew McConaughey loves America. The little bit of English is, you know, is, is a, I won't have you saying nice things about me in public because it's deeply uncomfortable. I like to focus on the negatives. I like to focus on the things that didn't work. I like to focus, look, we've had a very, very, very, very good World Cup. We had a bus, a Home Depot orange bus, like John Madden, that we drove from coast to coast, stopping in 10 cities, reveling in the moment. Look, the ethos of, of what I do, football's amazing, but I like what it allows you to do, to make memories that you will treasure forever, cross-generational memories, collective

• 16:44Speaker 05

  memories, which I think are often the most powerful, you know, in good and bad ways, in loss and in, in victory. You feel alive when you watch football. I'm pretty dead inside, but when I watch football, I feel emotions, victory, agony, triumph, failure, that people feel in real life, but I'm dead to inside. And the joy of it is, none of it matters. So you walk away from it just as, you know, with the same number of limbs as you enter. And the ethos of our show is, let's not take a second of watching football together for granted. Let's make great memories. I believe it deeply. I find it very moving when I see mothers and, you know, daughters or fathers and sons or any of our show. I always say to them, when they're going to the game, you will not forget what you're

• 17:28Speaker 05

  about to experience for the rest of your life. You will remember these moments. That's the ethos of, of what we're trying to preach here. So we went across the nation. We did these college game day style match day lives with huge audiences in Seattle. We had 5,000 people come and watch us with John Green, one of the most nourishing human beings in the world, and Marsh, and Marshawn Lynch. Marshawn Lynch, one of the most fascinating, creative personalities that we've, and we did, you know, pre-game live shows and talked about, really trying to preach that sense. And we did 120 shows in over 39 days from the back of the bus, which we converted into a broadcast studio. And what I can tell you is, we did enormous numbers.

• 18:13Speaker 05

  I mean, enormous numbers, NFL numbers, the, the stuff, found an enormous audience here. We're blessed to have people like you on Bene, Jon Stewart, John Oliver, JJ Watt, you know, Ludacris, all my favorites, talking about this sense of moment. And so the, this has been an incredible moment, one I've, I've dreamt of as someone that loves America and loves football and has lived the rise of football in America. When I came over here in 1994, right before the World Cup, they revealed soccer was America's 67th most favorite sport. Tractor pulling was 66. I don't know where tractor pulling is now, but soccer was just found out to be the third

• 18:58Speaker 05

  biggest sport. So we've surfed this wave. We cover men's football. I have a whole platform purely for women's football, which is so meaningful. We have a platform for young Hispanic, second and third generation fans. And to pull this together and make meaning, that's really the joy of the thing for me. But again, I look at someone, when I'm broadcasting, I'm trying to make meaning. I think you understand that. You've given me some of my most beautiful terms. We had Ryan Reynolds on for the final, and he still talks about collective effervescence when he came on and talked about Durkheim. You give us these tools, these gifts to name the feelings. That's really what I'm trying to do. Name the feelings, share the feelings, share the experiences.

• 19:42Speaker 05

  But as a, as a CEO, I'm, I'm just focused on what we've not done right. Make sure we're learning from, from all of it, that we keep growing, because this has been the journey of our life. And this World Cup, we always joke, I'll say this, and then I'm going to let you get back to normally scripted broadcasting. We always joke soccer is America's sport of the future, as it has been since 1972. It's always the next big thing. But this World Cup has been so massive, the audience, we've, we've got such an enormous incoming new audience. And so it's very much the sport of the present. This is what we've dreamt of, we're now living it, and now we just have to build the future together.

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• 22:26Adam Grant?

  Okay, I'm so curious. You just said something that I could ask 19 questions about this, but I'm going to try one. So Roger, as you know, Brene and I both love paradoxes. And I think you just surfaced a paradox that I've been having a hard time wrapping my mind around, which is, on the one hand, you said, like, it doesn't matter. The World Cup does not matter. And on the other hand, we care deeply about it. Like, Brene is losing sleep over it. You know, I'm like, I feel I don't emote nearly as often as as many people do. And like, I'm at the edge of my seat, waiting to see what's going to happen to like, to England and France in a consolation game. And I'm just, I'm wondering if you can help us understand,

• 23:09Adam Grant?

  like, what is this duality of caring about something that we don't really need to care about? I guess in some ways it's similar to like, to watching a movie or a TV show where you're rooting for these characters that don't exist.

• 23:22Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 23:23Adam Grant?

  But what is that? Why? Why do we do this?

• 23:26Speaker 05

  You know exactly why, and more articulately than I do. We need this. Like, we need this. None of it matters, but it's the feelings that matter. There's an incredible storm right over my head that you may be hearing in the background that makes everything I've just said seem like it's from a Bela Lugosi movie.

• 23:43Brené Brown?

  No, it's so dramatic. I love it. It's, you are so on brand right now.

• 23:47Speaker 05

  I know. I just said the feelings that matter. And there's a huge crackle of thunder overhead. It is the feelings that matter. Like, it's what we bring to it ultimately. I'll give you an example. The team I support, a cursed team, a dark team, Everton Football Club. I support them because my father supported them and his dad supported them. They used to play in a little ramshackle stadium. They lost a lot. My dad didn't call it losing. He called it not winning. He was very insistent on that. And he said, if we, you know, I interviewed him once. One of my favorite interviews, because he's now, he passed away July 4, 2024. He'd said if we were Liverpool fans like Brene, he said we'd be completely different people. We'd take everything, you know, winning would be so common. We'd never appreciate it.

• 24:32Speaker 05

  And he really believed that all are losing. The occasional fleeting moments of happiness. He said, we learned to really seize them in life and dance as if you're at your own kid's wedding. And the home stadium, they just closed it down last year. They built a state of the art, the equivalent of like, Northwestern England sofi. And I made a film about the last game that I went to at the old stadium. And it was beautiful. I went with a friend of mine whose dad also was a massive Blues. Dad was also passed away. People were sobbing all over the stadium. There was a stranger by me who cried the moment the teams went onto the field. Another stranger by her, because everyone was there on their own. They couldn't get a ticket, put his arm around her. He goes, don't cry, Gail. We've not even lost yet.

• 25:17Speaker 05

  But she was sobbing because she was thinking about, ultimately, we were all thinking about the people who were not there with us, the memories we'd had, the life-shaping experience. But most of all, those who were not there to see it, those we wish we were there. What you bring to sports, it's the safest outpouring of your core essence, of who you are, your greatest fears, your greatest losses, your greatest dreams, your greatest memories. The World Cup, I do think, to be honest, even more so than just casual every day, because it is every four years. That rarity, that scarce, that kind of long-waited baseline through your life, it becomes the spine of your life.

• 26:00Speaker 05

  And so each one, because it is such a rare thing, you know, my first memory was eight, you know, watching Argentina, 1978, just an ecstasy. I didn't know football could be joyful. It was played in the sun. It was played in England in muddy pitches by bald men who just wanted to have a cigarette at halftime and let the fans fight each other. It was miserable. I was like, Dad, I didn't know football could be so joyful. Onwards, you know, every four years. And it is, it's like watching a flower bloom in fast motion. But I mean, I'd love you to tell me, this is like you, it's like me asking you about football details. You two are the experts. Why is it that that paradox exists, do you think? Because that cognitive dissonance is its true beauty.

• 26:45Adam Grant?

  Well, Brene, I'm going to, I'm going to defer this one to you. I loved Roger's phrase, the safest expression of your core essence. And I never thought about how sports are an occasion to experience the emotion without the vulnerability and risk. And that is your jam. Over to you.

• 27:01Brené Brown?

  Yeah, no, I, yeah, it's, it's almost so emotional. I almost can't even talk about it without crying. It's like, it's terrible. You cannot put Raj and I together for, for, we can't put the two of us together for very long. I think, you know, when I was just on your podcast, Roger, we talked about, I was, we were just jokingly doing a comparison between SEC football, because we're 46 days away from that now. But, and how, how that compared to the World Cup for me. And I said, I have to give it a tie. Because of course, the World Cup is a World Cup. It's internationalism at its best. It's all of this. It's huge. It's every four years. But I can smell SEC football. It's my dad making chili.

• 27:47Brené Brown?

  It's the fact that I will be with my kids when UT football starts. And we will walk, it'll, you know, it's supposed to be cool because it's in the movies, football's in the cold weather. But here it'll be 100 degrees. And we'll walk to DKR Stadium and we'll piss and moan the entire way. And then the eyes of Texas will come on. And we'll hold each other's hands and we'll bond through that. And it's family. It's, it is, just like it's a safe place to express emotion, it's also a gathering magnet where we don't make time in our lives to be with people.

• 28:32Brené Brown?

  You know, and there's a million pieces of research on collective effervescence about coming together, shared artifacts, singing together. It is everything technology and capitalism. And these bigger systems have built that tear us away from each other. There are moments that bring us together. And if you took music and chants out of soccer.

• 28:57Brené Brown?

  It wouldn't, you wouldn't have it. It wouldn't mean anything.

• 29:01Adam Grant?

  Cue the Viking row.

• 29:03Speaker 05

  Which, by the way, was so profound for the Norwegians. It looked like a, you know, a sticky gimmick. I'll be honest, I was pretty tired of it after about the 12th time I saw them row in some strange place in New York. It's like, all right, guys, lads, we got this one. But the more, you know, I've interviewed the Icelandic team before they became really, really good. I was there the summer before they exploded onto the international scene. And in my interviews, they were all like, I was like, well, how have you, you're a tiny nation, a couple of hundred thousand people. Have you become like European slayers? And they'd all look into the microphone, these slightly fearsome humor. They would be like, I am Viking. There's Viking blood, Viking. And the first time I was there, I was like, okay, this, this, I was like, this one's a bit off.

• 29:48Speaker 05

  This one's a bit, I was like, I'd nod, I'd be like, cool, next one, Viking, I am Viking. Like, cool. And they really do feel it. And what's been fascinating, well, two things. Number one is the pride when the Norwegians went home with, with, with a, a, a vaunted defeat. You know, they made their noise, they'd had their ecstasy, beautiful to watch. And, you know, I think a million of them got together and did this enormous, enormous row with the, with everyone there. It was like something out of the Middle Ages, actually. It was very, finally, very haunting. And then the second thing, we were in Dallas and we did a show at Jerry Jones' house.

• 30:28Speaker 05

  And he talked about, he talked honestly about how he, you know, how he thought that the Cowboys fans were just unbelievable. But then he heard the Argentinian fans in his own stadium and he's like, wow, that's a different level of ecstasy. That's a different level of divinity. That's a different level of, of, of almost religious experience. And I'd been with the Argentinian fans. We talked about this, Benay, when you came on. Again, not a spiritual man, very dead inside. But when I watched them, these, you know, 40, 50, 60,000 of them in Atlanta. The, the woman I was with, who'd never been to a game before, they started, they, they were losing, they needed divine magic.

• 31:08Speaker 05

  They got divine magic and the fans were so, you know, with shirts off, it was, they do this thing where their hands, you know, thousands of them do this. They're all singing, screaming, weeping, many of them were weeping. She started crying too. And I said, you know, why are you crying? She said, it's like the greatest evangelical church I've ever been to. And Jerry Jones and the Cowboys were like, we need to get to that. Like, that's levels. And I do wonder, to pull this together, Adam, the Viking row, like, there will be an SEC team come college football who will do the Viking row. Like, the thing that started in the football from the Norwegian, from the Viking, from that mindset, it will carry through.

• 31:50Speaker 05

  And so America will have this impact on global football in ways that I can talk about if it's interesting. But also, global football will leave its mark on, on American sporting culture, behaviors, rituals. And I think that's like one of the fascinating legacies of all of this. But that, it is, you know, the overlap between collective religious experience and at its best, the divinity, the ecstasy of, of sporting euphoria is very, very interesting.

• 32:19Brené Brown?

  I mean, I'll never forget, I think I wrote about it maybe 10 years ago, a tweet that I saw from Chris Anderson of TED that just showed 95,000 fans, Liverpool fans, singing You'll Never Walk Alone in the Melbourne Stadium. And his, all it said underneath it was, when sport becomes religion, you know. Okay, I have to ask these questions. There are so many of them. I'm going to ask this question. I wanted to stay away from it, but I'm going to ask it anyway because I need to know the answer to it.

• 32:49Brené Brown?

  There were some very difficult moments, I believe, in the World Cup, fueled by geopolitical realities. Tell me what your take is on the intersection between what we see on the pitch, the truth that's told, you know, the green never lies, the truth that's told on the pitch and history and politics. What do you make of it?

• 33:16Speaker 05

  That's why I love it. I mean, that's the greatest part of it, isn't it? That football, and particularly the World Cup, holds, I mean, I wrote a book about it before the World Cup. We are the World Cup. But it holds up a mirror. It's a perfect mirror to who we are. It's a reflection of who we are. I believe this deeply and the World Cup is the, is the perfect expression of this, that when two teams take the field. And I think this is why it caught on in America in the way it did. I'm a huge American sports fan. But, you know, when, when the 49ers play the, the LA, it's a great game of football and it's a great matchup.

• 33:55Speaker 05

  And there is history within the game. But there's the, the political reality, the, when two teams take the field in World Cup play, their team's histories, their team's cultures, their team's politics, take the field alongside them. And it's that depth, you know, that multitude that gives it its human beauty. And I've always loved that. I've always loved that about the, I've always thought it was beautiful, to be honest. The, you know, with Walt Whitman, it contains multitudes, football, World Cup football contains multitudes. And the reality is, as the world gets darker, you know, South Africa 2010, I think, was for me, just the beauty.

• 34:37Speaker 05

  I couldn't believe it was, I, I watched the first game, this continent that had never hosted a World Cup before. You know, Mandela, late, late, late Mandela, his kind of shadow cast upon this welcoming of the world. Lots of doubt going into that. Could, you know, the violence, we were told, the crime, the electricity grid couldn't, wasn't functional for the world. It was beautiful, that first game. And football felt like the fusion of the geopolitics, a fusion of the joy of a continent. The football was almost irrelevant. But the darker the world's gotten, the reflection is still there and it still shines. And as you still hold up and see ourselves, the reality is, we might not like what we see.

• 35:22Speaker 05

  But I think football gives you that and that's the depths that I adore. I, I, I, we saw that in the beginning of the tournament, the Somali referee, and it feels like it was years ago. It really does. This tournament's been so long. Omar Artan denied entry into, I mean, just barred, no fight, no anything. It was just like blocked, done, okay, move on. That was, that was, that's who we are. That's who we are. The, the treatment of the Iranian team. By the way, the tournament was ecstatic and there's so much, I want to be clear. The tournament was a human ecstasy and I do, I can talk about that very, I've talked about that a lot in a lot of places.

• 36:00Speaker 05

  But two things are true. The way Iran were treated, where unprecedented, the host nation was, was at war with one of the qualifiers. Iran, who were meant to play games in Los Angeles and Seattle, they had to move their training camp last minute after geopolitical brinksmanship about whether they'd be allowed to participate or not. They had to move from, from the United States to, to ultimately a training in, in Mexico. And where, by the way, the Mexicans, the, the welcome, that, that was, that was, even in darkness, there's light. And that part of the story is beautiful. But Iran were, you know, they played in LA. That was very complicated because it's the Islamic Republic of Iran.

• 36:45Speaker 05

  And LA is the greatest entity of Iranian emigres in the United States. And they're a symbol of the state, the Islamic state, but the players are also heroes. So we were there and it was remarkable. You know, there was a lot of demonstrations around the first game. But once the game kicked off, many of the demonstrators were actually rooting for the players. It was emotionally deeply complex and fascinating to watch. But then they were, you know, told very quickly by American officials, they had to leave almost immediately after kickoff and sent right back to Mexico. Again, a mirror to who we are.

• 37:23Speaker 05

  And then the United States team, you know, becoming a geopolitical debate where a player was red carded, sent off. The best player striker, he just came on our show and ultimately the White House became involved to compel his red card to be suspended. That was unprecedented and there's levels to that. I don't know if you want to talk about it, but it's a blight on, on the tournament. A bruise for our nation. It's tough for this team. It's how it will be remembered now. Instead of the beautiful, delirious play that they unfold in the early games. The darkness is all there and thinking it through, I mean, football allows you to often see things clearer than, than, than just in the light of day.

• 38:09Brené Brown?

  I so much appreciated the conversations and the curiosity about history and the desire to understand more that I saw in my 21-year-old and my 27-year-old and my, my friends and neighbors. And I think what it brought up for me too, in addition to the stories that we talked, we're talking about right now, that you and I talked about on your podcast, is the cover of Time Africa right now. What does it mean to belong? And the fact that without birthright citizens, we wouldn't have no team in the US. You know, without, you know, you look at, I mean, right? I mean, yes or no?

• 38:49Brené Brown?

  I mean, it's just, and what does it mean to belong to a country and to a team? And there's so much power. I mean, that's, I look at Spain and I think, I mean, there's just poetic and powerful insight around the gift of setting a long table.

• 39:12Speaker 05

  Yeah, but again, Spain is fascinating. They have this young star, Lamin Yamal. This kid is 19 years of age. He is spectacular. I'm sure some of your listeners are aware of Lionel Messi. He's 39, still doing casual miracles. I mean, divinity, godhead. I'm being not hyperbolic. I'm almost underselling him. He's old. His moment, his last dance will come. You do not get to choose in life or in football when you have your end. That's one of the other things that I think is fascinating about watching football humanly. Cristiano Ronaldo, aged 41, has shown us you cannot choose your end.

• 39:57Speaker 05

  You're not able to say, you know what, I'll have the hero's farewell. I'll have the Viking funeral, please. No, football and life do not give you that choice. He will be replaced and probably the greatest contender is 19-year-old kid, Lamin Yamal. I mean, he grew up in deep poverty in Spain with a Moroccan side of the family. He's had to, and there's no joy. We've framed these stories joyfully. This kid has won everything already. And by the way, not just as a bit part on the team. He's a leader of every team he's on. It's like genuinely, I think of Joan of Arc, who I think about a lot. Like, how did she become a leader at such a young age? What did she exude? What aura must she have had?

• 40:43Speaker 05

  Lamin Yamal, he broke through at 15, was leading the teams he was on, was fearless. They won things. They won a lot of things, winning the World Cup. And he didn't have a great World Cup. He was coming back from injury. But I do, when he won the World Cup, watching him, he's the face of this team. And I thought, what I thought was Alexander the Great's quote, but since I said it, I found out it was actually Alexander the Great's quote, as bastardized by the Die Hard movies, that he cried because he had no more worlds left to conquer. This kid, 19, has won everything. 19, bloody hell. But my point is on this one, it's gorgeous. His brother, three-year-old Kane Yamal, is like the cutest, I mean, just a human meme in dumpling form. He's exquisite.

• 41:26Speaker 05

  You know, everything feels good. But a month ago, he was still protesting Islamophobia in Spain. He was still being very clear to the Spanish fanbase, if I am your hero. When he scored his first goal, he immediately prayed, as if to say to them, yes, I'm your hero. This is who I am. Love all of me. Love all of me, not just the commercials face of me. But this is who I am. And I remember what you were doing, you know, in terms of your chants and your racism. And this is who I am in this moment. I'm going to remind you, I'm going to stick this down your throat. The complexity of life, it's everywhere. This is not just us in America with the Baligan thing,

• 42:10Speaker 05

  the red card that was rescinded, that was very difficult. And the thing that was crazy about that for me was it was objectively ridiculous. It's never happened before. Something happens in football and the government, of any government. Like, think about if Saudi Arabia did that. I mean, we would just be like, oh my lord. If France just were like, we didn't like what you did with Mbappe, now the French government are going to get. We would think it was ludicrous. It happened. It happened here. And we did a lot of media in the wake. What was fascinating was so many people were rationalizing it because it was for us. That was fairly fascinating. It's objectively, I want to say, it's not just wrong, it's ridiculous.

• 42:51Speaker 05

  But because it happened to us emotionally, every show I did, and I don't just mean like I was going on Alex Jones's podcast or something. I mean, like you go on, you go on always like MSNBC or something. And there'd always be one dude who'd be like, Roger, I've got to say, I mean, it wasn't a red card. This is only fair, don't you think? When it happens to you emotionally, you're able to repress. You don't always see the geopolitical, you don't always see the true reflection. And that's also fascinating to me.

• 43:24Brené Brown?

  Adam, I liked your post. I liked your post. You have to tell Roger your post that I thought what you posted in response to the red card flip was so good.

• 43:35Adam Grant?

  Oh, thank you. It actually came because I was watching the game with our 12-year-old son. And I said, look, let's just set aside whether the red card call was fair or not, right? In sports, we accept bad calls. That's part of the game. And now we're seeing all these American fans saying, we have to do whatever it takes to overturn it. And I said, those aren't true fans because a true fan loves the sport more than the team. And that means if you're a real fan, you would rather watch your team lose fairly than win unfairly.

• 44:11Speaker 05

  That's the most beautiful part of this show. We just smashed it. It's beautiful and true and wonderful and a deeply minority opinion.

• 44:23Brené Brown?

  Well, you're with us.

• 44:25Adam Grant?

  Only in America, not in the rest of the world.

• 44:27Brené Brown?

  Adam, ask your final question, then I'm going to get to the rapid fire.

• 44:31Adam Grant?

  Yeah, I think, you know, I think that we've actually covered several of the questions we already had planned. But I think the question I want to ask, which Brene really dreamed up, is so many people, as you previewed earlier, were hopeful that bringing the World Cup to North America would be what finally lights the match and creates this incredible passion for soccer or football. And as part of that, there was a real hope for a transfer of learning, that America would take something from the world and the world would take something from America. What do you think have been the biggest lessons in both directions?

• 45:15Speaker 05

  I mean, I think it's the most important question right now. World Cup's a circus. The circus has just packed up and left town and it is an agony. It was very exhausting. I will say, last night was my first night back home in about 50 days. And even though I was so happy to be home, so happy to be with my family, so happy to be with my dog, I got an itch. I missed the 11 o'clock at night recording where we debriefed on everything. I missed the sense of connectivity with my co-hosts and with our audience, refracting their opinions, their feelings, their memories. And so I think it's twofold.

• 45:54Speaker 05

  Look, we've talked about the darkness and there was that. It's important to hold that and not airbrush it out at all. But by and large, it was a World Cup of love. The football was quite ecstatic, both for reasons of competitive fire, but also, I do believe this, commercially, a lot of these individual footballers saw America, saw the marketplace and wanted to conquer it, wanted to be the face of the World Cup, like Pele was in the 1970s. They came and they tried to bring it. There was goals from Messi, Mbappe. Everyone was like, the big dogs, they're all barking. To me, the big dogs were all like, I like some of that Nike money. I like some of that Anheuser-Busch money. I like some.

• 46:37Speaker 05

  And God bless, the world was better because of it. So ecstatic on the field. But it was the off the field that I think is the thing that, twofold. Global football fell in love with America. As someone that loves America, that loves traveling around America, it's the honor of my life to wander around tasting every juicy Lucy, every form of barbecue, every extra, extra, extra hot wing, you know, every lemon pepper wet. To see the world come and love America. And the thing, they were not blown away by the skyline. They were not blown away by, you know, let's say our museums. I don't think it had a great summer. Not that many people were like blown away by the art institute of whatever city.

• 47:22Speaker 05

  They were blown away by the Waffle House, smothered and covered. I was in Atlanta by a Waffle House. I can tell you, the line to get in, you would think the Beatles had reformed. They're blown away by buckies, by nuggets, beaver nuggets. They're just seeing these buckies was the European mind cannot comprehend in real life form. And they fell in love with, I think, the thing that attracted me to America, the sense of warmth and joy and hope. When you become American, like I did in 2018, you'll be in a room, and I encourage any of your listeners to go to a swearing in of new citizens because anyone can attend. And I think it's the most energizing way to reconnect to what's really important in this nation.

• 48:07Speaker 05

  I wrote a book about why I moved here. It's not impressive. It's Tracy Chapman, The Music of Public Enemy, John Hughes movies. Growing up in Liverpool in a very dark time for that city, America felt like a place of warmth and joy. But you'll meet people who crawl across deserts to get here. You'll meet people who flee civil wars, harrowing civil wars to get here. And it reconnects you to a sense of positivity and joy and hope. And I think the world did, and the world was faintly surprised that it did with the incoming narrative. The world felt a love for America. Brene, we talked about it when you came on. We needed this. You love yourself often through confidence, but sometimes that love needs to be rekindled

• 48:52Speaker 05

  by seeing others see the love in you. And then again, that feels truly, truly energizing. Number one, I think the world fell back in love or reconnected to the part of America. Because I don't want to pretend it's all this. There is that hope that I felt in that citizenship swearing in. And then the other thing is that America fell in love with global football for all of its joy. The rituals, the pageantry, the ecstasy, the complexity of it, the nuance, the noise, the smell, the memory making. I believe this deeply. You don't watch football, you feel it. You feel it and it moves you.

• 49:35Speaker 05

  It moves you and different things, different moments move you in that way. And the joy of the World Cup is that you're being moved at a scale unknown to humankind. 5 billion, 200 million watched the Super Bowl, 5 billion watch it. And you're just connecting to. That's the good stuff. You're connecting. There's an interplanetary moment of memory making that you are, that you're tapping into. And I think between those two things, that it all came together in Lawrence, Kansas for me, where that town, you know, fell in love with the Algerian team, which was beautiful. All of this love happened between the Algerian

• 50:15Speaker 05

  fans and the Lawrence, kind of, you know, rock chalk Algeria. When Algeria qualified for the knockout rounds were beautiful. I found it very moving. I found it very moving. The Algerian bus came back two, three o'clock in the morning. The Algerian fans did what they did, which is just let off rockets, fireworks, crazy drumming, crazy noise. But if you looked at the footage, there were Algerian fans, there were also citizens of Lawrence, Kansas, up at two or three in the morning, doing the same. And you know, in that moment, Adam, that, man, those people will tell their kids' kids of the summer that the Algerian team came and their minds were, their minds were buckled forever. And that's the true beauty of this.

• 50:59Brené Brown?

  I still tell those stories from when I was like, you know, in elementary school and we watched, you know, Archie Manning's quarterback for the Saints in Tulane Stadium before they, you know, I mean, it's, it's, these are the stories that make up the fabric of my family, of my life. It's fall. It's football. It's hunting season. It's also back to school. It's football. You know, it's, you know, so, you know, I just love it. Okay. Are you ready for the rapid fire?

• 51:32Speaker 05

  I'll try.

• 51:33Brené Brown?

  I think you're gonna love it.

• 51:34Speaker 05

  Go on.

• 51:36Brené Brown?

  What's one thing you're deeply curious about right now?

• 51:39Speaker 05

  Oh, how to sleep again for the first time all year is, is really, is the honest answer. Just how to readapt to civilian life after this is for my whole, I don't just mean for me, but we have 120 people working with us. How to maintain the intensity that's driven us to this place while lowering that, the kind of war footing that we've been on for the past eight months to be able to win this thing.

• 52:12Brené Brown?

  I just have to say, if you're listening, it's going to be worth popping over to YouTube to watch this, to see the red-rimmed eyes that just poked right up and just said, I mean, it was, it made me want to cry a little bit, his face. I will also tell you, Adam and I've both done a lot of work with NASA. Reentry is real. The reentry, yeah.

• 52:33Speaker 05

  I mean, it is. I got the bends on my first day back.

• 52:35Brené Brown?

  Oh, yeah. No, for sure.

• 52:36Speaker 05

  I think I got a shave for you, though. I did. I got a shave for the first time in, in about 12, in about 12 months.

• 52:43Brené Brown?

  You, you look very dapper, but I will tell you, it's hard on relationships. It's hard on teams. It's tough. So best of all of our love for reentry. Number two, curiosity shops are wild and wacky places. If you've ever been in one, they have all kinds of weird shit on every shelf. If you got to design your own curiosity shop, what would be one thing that would have to be in your curiosity shop on a shelf?

• 53:09Speaker 05

  Anyone who's looking at this on YouTube will know that I actually broadcast from a curiosity shop. And the one thing I take with me everywhere I go is Tracy Chapman's Fast Car album. It's a reminder that whatever's happening in your life, particularly in sports, when your team loses devastatingly, I always play Fast Car almost always within the first 10 minutes of defeat. Because I do believe it's really important to know, however sad you are feeling in that moment, however sad you think you're feeling, Tracy Chapman has seen worse, has lived worse. There's a reminder of what you're feeling is, the most important, least important thing sports is. And that what real people are going through

• 53:52Speaker 05

  is so much more painful. So always that album.

• 53:55Brené Brown?

  Beautiful. I just want to say Holland definitely went to a curiosity shop because every curiosity shop in Texas has a taxidermied raccoon. And I will say, I was so proud in that moment as a Texan.

• 54:11Speaker 05

  He went to Wild Willy's because we went right after he got that. And we tried to buy a whiskey raccoon too, but they were sold out immediately. We had to make do with a squirrel. We had a squirrel, which we named, we named squirreling Holland. We trouble with the rest of the tour. But man, that was savvy by him. He was showing America, I'm bringing you back with me. I'll be back.

• 54:33Brené Brown?

  Oh, yeah. As a little tiny Texan at eight years old, my very first purse I ever got was a taxidermied armadillo that opened up. You could put your shit inside. Okay. What's one thing? I know, I know. And my nickname from my relatives was Double T because they thought my haircut looked like Tanya Tucker. So, yeah. So what's one, you talk about the darkness of, of being an Everton fan in Liverpool. Welcome to Texas, baby. What's one thing you're really excited about right now?

• 55:07Speaker 05

  In life?

• 55:08Brené Brown?

  Wherever you want it to be.

• 55:09Speaker 05

  I mean, I'm fairly dark. I'm energized by so much. I really am. I mean, this moment, this joy, this sense of wide scale collective memory making. I mean, it's been an incredible high. I'm so excited to be with you. You said it's hard on, on relationships. I'm so excited to be home with my wife, who I love, and to be able to give her the support. She's got a book that's about to come out and to be able to flip the switch and to be able to support her in a way on this journey that she's been on. But I'm also really excited for, I mean, there are, there are millions of new football fans, football curious individuals.

• 55:51Speaker 05

  And that's the greatness of America is that so many of our new listeners have like hated football and then six months later, suddenly have an Arsenal tattoo on their forearm and they don't know how it got there. And that journey of discovery, that's what's got me so excited for so many people across America, that they're going to connect, they're going to experience, they're going to learn so much. And that's really the, for many, the, the end of the World Cup was not an end, but it's really the beginning of the, of a, of a really beautiful life journey. And that, I've got to be honest, is, is, is why we exist. And it's just an honor to be able to witness.

• 56:26Brené Brown?

  You, you walked us. You walked millions of us on that, you and your team. So take that back to your team from me, that you walked millions of us lovingly on this walk.

• 56:38Speaker 05

  Isn't it amazing that you're all bald men on the television in America? It's just the greatest.

• 56:43Brené Brown?

  I mean, two, two of them. I mean, like, I'm pushing all the norms. Okay. Last question for you, right this minute, as you're sitting there, Roger, what's one thing you're grateful for?

• 56:55Speaker 05

  Oh, I mean, I'm grateful for this insane journey that we've been on. I moved here to Chicago ridiculously because I watched the Chicago Bears when I was a teen. And this was like, I want to go there. My family were butchers that had left Eastern Europe and got off in Liverpool because they thought they were in the one tall building and the Liverpool skyline was New York. We were meant to come to America. That haunted my family. They were always, oh, we should have gone there. Liverpool was hard. And they were, oh, we should be in Chicago. And I finished, I was just like sod it. I'm going, I didn't know anybody. I moved to Chicago. I looked at a map. There was a town park called Rogers Park. I'm like, I'll live there. That's my name. And I am, I moved here, just, you

• 57:38Speaker 05

  know, never left. And it's ridiculous, all of it, that I've had this journey of possibility. And I take it super seriously. And I work really, really hard. But I also have a sense of just how ridiculous the whole thing is. And to be able to hold those both side by side, the seriousness of it, and also be aware of this, the incredible fortunate pathway, I think is, is really to live a life where you both give your everything, but also never take yourself that seriously. Never cross over into, into, you know, losing that, that humility. And so I'm very, I guess the, the answer, because this is the short answers, and I've gone on for five minutes here as I try and process it with the two human beings

• 58:23Speaker 05

  that can probably process it back for me. I just a sense of, of, of the, the lucky pathway that I've been able to walk here in the United States.

• 58:32Brené Brown?

  Thanks for bringing us along with you. We're really lucky to have that. Adam, last word?

• 58:39Adam Grant?

  Oh, I actually, two, two quickfire questions to add if we want to do them.

• 58:42Brené Brown?

  Oh, let's do it. Yeah.

• 58:43Adam Grant?

  All right. Roger, one, one question I have to, I have to ask you is, what's something you think the world should be curious about right now?

• 58:52Speaker 05

  I mean, the World Cup gave us so many. I was in, I was in Boston. We did a live show with Pedro Martinez and the mayor, Mayor Wu, who I had not met before. And she talked about how, how Boston was taken over by Scottish, the Tartan Army. It was delirious. It was fantastic, energizing. But it was also very profound. Football fandom, when I grew up, used to be violent and, and essentially zeroed, like you either win or you lose, but it's about the fight. This version of fandom was joyous. The boundaries were porous. Everyone was welcome. It was absolutely, I mean, Scottish people are immune to hangovers.

• 59:29Speaker 05

  So it was just an amazingly electric experience and Boston was forever transformed. It became the capital of Scotland for 10 days. What I'm fascinated by is, and it was one of many, I could go on, but this is the short answers. The communities that were formed here were the good stuff. They were porous. They were ones of welcome. They were ones of love. They were ones of joy. They were deeply celebratory. But they weren't exclusive. And I'm fascinated why America was so enthralled by the many of them. It wasn't just under South Korean was the same. And the Norwegian was the same. I mean, I could go on. Why, why did we love those manifestations of community and embrace them?

• 1:00:11Speaker 05

  Because they were, to me, they were the kind of communities that are so powerful. And it's how, you know, it's how America saw itself as a wide open, joyous, all welcoming reality. And I'm fascinated. And again, you guys, I'm speaking to the right people. Why did we allow it? And why did we revel in it? And why did we lord it? And right now, it's kind of, it was almost the antonym to many of the, many of the current realities that we have.

• 1:00:39Adam Grant?

  It's a great question. Okay. The other, we'll have to discuss it.

• 1:00:43Brené Brown?

  Last one, last one, last one. We got a lot, we got a lot of Roger recover.

• 1:00:50Adam Grant?

  Really quickly, Roger, you mentioned your wife is getting ready to launch a book. Tell us about it.

• 1:00:54Speaker 05

  It's a beautiful book. My wife works on confidence for girls and she's spent her whole, like I have for football, trying to understand how to build a narrative, tell the stories, build the contextualization. So my wife Vanessa Kroll Bennett has worked on the issue of puberty and that transformative period. And so the book is a second book, but it's about how to build confidence. I mean, adolescents of all kind, but particularly with a slant on girls. And it is the greatest thing, I think, if we can get over this and maintain confidence all the way through high school. I think many of the things I've talked about, many of the questions I've framed, many of the, the challenging issues in the world will be,

• 1:01:40Speaker 05

  will be solved by confident, empowered, incredible women.

• 1:01:45Adam Grant?

  Can't wait to read it. What's it called?

• 1:01:47Speaker 05

  I'll tell you the name in a week when, when it's official. I'll say, you're a beautiful human being. That's very generous, Adam. It really, really is. And I'm genuinely, what I do is very much in the shadow of what Vanessa does. And to watch her build and create that meaning, which I think my stuff is the most important, least important thing. And hers is the, is the most important, most important thing. So thank you.

• 1:02:13Brené Brown?

  We'll put a link if you're listening. We'll have a link to Vanessa's book on the podcast page.

• 1:02:18Speaker 05

  Big, big love.

• 1:02:19Brené Brown?

  Big love, Roger. Thank you so much for being with us and, and thanks for walking us through this amazing, exhausting 90 minute agony at a time. It's just, I don't know. You were the heartstone for me during this. So thank you.

• 1:02:36Speaker 05

  It means a lot to me. And Renee, we are going to go over to Liverpool this year and we're going to watch a game together. And poof, it's going to be, I'm not sure I could handle going to the, the Derby is where the team I support and the team Renee supports play each other. I think that would be a very bad idea for our friendship.

• 1:02:57Speaker 05

  You'll report back, but it'll be lovely. Whatever, whenever. Adam, it's lovely to meet you too, man. Really, really, really huge love. Big love, guys. Courage.

• 1:03:07Brené Brown?

  Big love, courage.

• 1:03:11Speaker 06

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• 1:05:11Adam Grant?

  Wow. What a gem.

• 1:05:13Brené Brown?

  He's just incredible.

• 1:05:14Adam Grant?

  I could, I could literally listen to him talk all day.

• 1:05:18Brené Brown?

  I know. He's just, literally when they put the, when they put the, the story, when I saw the story, what Rog Minnitz eats in a day, I think I, I think my response on stories was football Shakespeare with an SEC Longhorn chaser, a Longhorn Liverpool chaser. Cause I mean, he's so, Trevor Noah said something really funny about him. Trevor said, you know, you listen to the, the, the normal football fan and they're like, ah, oh, ooh. And then you listen to you at a game and you're like, while we walk through the shadow of the pitch at night, the light from the midfield shines on, you know.

• 1:06:00Brené Brown?

  I'm so glad you got to meet him.

• 1:06:01Adam Grant?

  I'm so glad you introduced us. Thank you for connecting us. And yeah, I think he's, he's the poet laureate of football.

• 1:06:07Brené Brown?

  Yes. That's so good. So in addition to loving Roger, which was part of my plan, what's one thing that you learned that surprised you from our conversation with him?

• 1:06:20Adam Grant?

  You know, one thing that I did not see coming at all was the experience of withdrawal. I didn't, I didn't think about that at all, but I think he, he captured something that we don't pay attention to when we create such an immersive experience, which is, it's, it's what you said. It's the reentry. Like, like we've seen in play at NASA. And I don't think I've ever thought to prepare myself before, or my kids for that matter, for you're gonna, you're gonna get so wrapped up in, so absorbed in, you know, whether, whether it's the, you know, the World Cup or the Olympics or, you know, anything that's designed to be

• 1:06:58Adam Grant?

  an immersive experience that we actually need to think about how to remove ourselves from that and not feel unmoored or unsettled or just missing that sense of joy and focus and purpose. And that, that I think is something that needs more attention.

• 1:07:15Brené Brown?

  I will say that, I mean, I agree with you a hundred percent. I was struck by Roger's face when he kind of leaned toward the camera and said exhaustion, reentry. I was so hoping we were going to get through this podcast without an explicit warning, but this is what you signed up for, Adam, when you signed up to co-host with me. There's a phenomenon that I have called, that I have called out in a lot of my work with teams called missed you, fuck you. And, and, and it's really hard. And I've seen it

• 1:07:52Brené Brown?

  in teams that are very deeply operational and come home. And what they can't make sense of is how, how deeply they yearned for their partners, their children, their friends, how much they miss them. But then when they get home, there is so much tension and stress. And one, one military officer said to me, being deployed is falling through the air at a very fast pace and not knowing how you're going, you know, and what's going to happen. And you're holding on to your team and you're looking at your team and you're trying to figure out how this is going to work.

• 1:08:35Brené Brown?

  But walking through my front door was landing splat on the ground. Like, and I had rather be falling with my team than, and so I think it is a very under researched, misunderstood. And I think part of it is the shame that we feel when we get home after an intense commitment for days and days. And some of these operations are months in the term in NASA. You can talk to astronauts who said, oh, my God, I thought about my kids and my partner every day. But I need to get back to my team right away. And, you know, and tell, tell me more. I, I, I, I need to be back with the people that shared the experience with me that I

• 1:09:19Brené Brown?

  don't have adequate words to explain. Cause I walked in the back door and there was tears and hugs and, hey, can you drop me off at swim team tomorrow morning? And I'm thinking, will the capsule survive? What did we see up there that we need to under, you know, it's, it's a dimension shifting at a whole different level. Does that make sense to you?

• 1:09:44Adam Grant?

  I think, I think you've, you've captured it really well. And I think sometimes when I talk to people about that reentry, they say, well, of, but of course, you know, the magnitude of purpose and focus and, you know, unique shared experience. Yeah, an astronaut would get that, but, you know, not, not the rest of us. And yet in a smaller, much more ordinary form, it's the same thing I've seen when our kids leave summer camp, when they've been, you know, at sleepaway camp for three or four weeks. And all of a sudden, like they have to just leave that world and leave all their friends. Same experience is graduating from college, where all of a sudden, everyone you'd spent the last four years with was within walking distance. And the whole thing dispersed and the place is still there, but the people are gone.

• 1:10:29Adam Grant?

  And it's the same thing I feel when, when I do intensive teaching for a week or when I go to a conference for a few days and you've been transported into a different world with a core set of people that have had, you know, shared norms and discuss things that nobody else has, has quite been able to relate to. And, and all of a sudden you're going back to the rhythms of everyday life and you, you really feel out of place. It's a, it's a liminality, I guess, is, is one thing. I think you're right about the shame, but there's also a liminality of I'm between experiences and I'm not there anymore, but I'm not here anymore either. And I don't know how to reengage with either.

• 1:11:04Brené Brown?

  No, and the, I've been on both ends of it. I've been the person who comes home. And I've been the person that Steve comes home to after a really intensive four day medical crisis where he's working a hurricane or he's working, you know, a COVID long three or four day emergency, you know? And it's fricking hard on both ends. We just don't, I don't think we make the dimension shift without talking about it and asking what do we, I mean, it's very much kind of like the chapter in strong ground unlocking and unlocking through.

• 1:11:47Brené Brown?

  We are so locked in. Again, world, a different world, different norms, different sense making. And there's a ripping college ending. There's a ripping, a violent ripping out of one world. And then you're not expected to, to, to have an emotional reaction because you're back in a familiar world, but it doesn't account for the ripping motion.

• 1:12:12Adam Grant?

  No, no, it really doesn't. Wow. Yeah. And I don't, I don't think the, the world cup should come with a warning label.

• 1:12:21Brené Brown?

  Yeah, no, right, right, right.

• 1:12:23Adam Grant?

  Beware at the end of this.

• 1:12:24Brené Brown?

  Right, right.

• 1:12:25Adam Grant?

  You're, you're going to be really missing something, but it does leave a hole in us. And I think that hole, the purpose of that hole, the function it serves is to remind us to seek that out, right? To not wait every four years for a world cup, to find our next moment of collective effervescence.

• 1:12:40Brené Brown?

  But that is why literally Liverpool has three friendlies in the U.S. in the next four weeks. And then I'm getting ready for UT football. And it's because I want to be on the couch with my kids and Steve cheering, laughing, cooking burgers. Like I, I, I'm trying to just build the next path to the next collective sports effervescence, which is my jam.

• 1:13:09Adam Grant?

  I, I love it. Well, I, I'm going to fact check you here and say, Brene, you are never going to make it through a podcast without an explicit tag. That is just not happening. I know you way too well for that, but.

• 1:13:22Brené Brown?

  That's really fucked up, Adam.

• 1:13:24Adam Grant?

  Hell yeah, it is. No, this is, this is, this was so much fun. I, I really, I really love the chance to reflect on like, what, what should we have learned from this, you know, this, this last month? And I'm excited that we get to continue it next week.

• 1:13:40Brené Brown?

  Oh my God, we do get to continue it next week. So this was fun and thank you for letting me bring Grotjer to the table. And I loved y'all meeting each other.

• 1:13:51Adam Grant?

  Me too. See you next week.

• 1:13:53Brené Brown?

  I will see you next week. The Curiosity Shop is produced by Brené Brown Education and Research Group and Granted Productions. You can subscribe to The Curiosity Shop on YouTube or follow in your favorite podcast app. We're part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.

• 1:14:08Speaker 06

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