#its super embarrassing when they have to take it down when the next radio broadcast goes live an HOUR after posting it

[patchworks-in-progress]

"alastor's still alive!!! " let him have his moment

#velvette is taking the photo btw #vox insists on putting it on the main company page #its super embarrassing when they have to take it down when the next radio broadcast goes live an HOUR after posting it #and vox bluescreens so hard he has to do a full factory reset #art #digitalart #artist #hazbin hotel #hazbin vox #hazbin velvette #hazbin valentino #hazbin alastor #hazbin the vees #the vees #hazbin hotel fanart

[grifalinas]

Batter Up (working title) (Chapter 5)

-/-

Flint took Radley with him to help bring back lunch, and while they waited for their orders, he finally calmed down enough to actually talk.

“You knew about Deacon, didn’t you,” he asked.

“I knew he was lying about his age,” Radley said. “He was at school with me, he graduated last summer. He used to give me a hard time.”

“That why you were fighting?”

Radley nodded, a little embarrassed. “It felt like a chance to finally get my own back, so I thought I’d try needling him a bit. I wasn’t expecting him to swing on me.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “I wasn’t kidding, you know, I take responsibility for us fighting.”

“Yeah, well.” Flint gave him a sour look. “I don’t like him lying about being able to bake. That’s what I need him for.”

“Not really.” Radley gestured vaguely at himself. “You taught me all your recipes since I was a toddler, I could make them blindfolded, and by the time school lets back in you’ll be able to hire someone else. Demand probably won’t be super high after the first week we’re open, and if it is, you’ll be able to afford more employees anyway.”

“All the more reason to fire him, then.” He huffed a stray lock of hair out of his eyes, then huffed again and slipped a sequined scrunchy from his wrist to pull it all back with a grumble. “What do I need him for when I’ve got you?”

“He can run the front and be an extra set of hands, since Mr. Bassington can’t do any heavy lifting and won’t let Eddie. Actually I feel like Deacon will really thrive if you put him doing heavy lifting.”

“I have you to do my heavy lifting.”

“I’m still a minor. I’m pretty sure those liabilities apply to me, too, and Mr. Bassington just looked the other way. But he’s not going to for very long.”

Flint leaned back in his chair with a groan. “What in the world has Raphael gotten me into? That man is way too controlling.”

“He’s doing his job.”

Flint let out a frustrated little growl. “Changed your tune, have you?”

“He makes a better second impression. Things have gone way smoother with him organizing everything. And he puts his money where his mouth is when it comes to protecting his employees. He isn’t just worried about legal issues, he really does try to protect the people under him.”

There was a long silence, and Radley added, a little hesitantly, “You looked like you were about to start swinging on Deacon earlier.”

“I wanted to,” Flint admitted. “I like to think I wouldn’t have…” He shook his head. “But there’s no way for Sam to have known one way or another.”

There was another long silence, Flint mulling over the Deacon situation while Radley scrolled social media in an idle sort of way. Finally Flint sighed and slumped, a little defeated.

“Guess I owe the kid an apology,” he said. “And Sammy, too…”

-/-

Samuel felt it might help cool Flint’s temper a little if the kitchen was cleaned up by the time he got back, so he set Deacon and Eddie to do that while he went back to supervising the work crew and getting everything else done.

While Radley and Deacon appeared to have declared each other public enemy number one, Deacon seemed to have no such animosity for Eddie, though the two had interacted little thus far. Eddie seemed intent on making up for this discrepancy now that they were working on a task together, though.

“-and Mr. Bassington says he’s going to introduce me to Rosie and we’re going to be best friends so I’m trying to decide what things I like that he didn’t mention her liking that I should try to introduce her to and I’m thinking of seeing if she listens to Angel DJ on the radio because that’s my favorite radio show and if she gets into music through Angel DJ then we can get into music on the same path instead of both of us discovering stuff, not that that isn’t fun but it’s really fun to find stuff together, me and Radley used to get into stuff through Angel DJ together all the time but then he stopped really caring much about getting into music except as something fun to play while you do other stuff and I like music as something that exists in its own right and should be experienced by itself too and Radley doesn’t like looking up stuff about the artists like how what I do so he’s not fun but I bet maybe I hope that Rosie will be into music like how what I’m into music so we can be into music together.”

Deacon gave her a second to make sure that was actually the end of the sentence and poked his head out of the oven he was cleaning to ask, “What’s Angel DJ?”

“It’s a radio show! Angel is just some guy, he broadcasts from his apartment and he isn’t tied to any specific radio station so he can just play whatever he likes, so he just plays stuff he’s into. He’s been on a bit of an eighties rock kick lately, and he’s playing a lot of Queen stuff so I’ve been really getting into them, I was watching videos of their performances on the internet and they’re SO cool.”

Deacon laughed. “No arguments there. I learned to play on Queen songs.”

“You play?” She lit up. “What do you play?! I don’t play anything, I kinda wouldn’t mind learning but I can’t even pick anything because I hear a song and I think ‘boy it’d be fun to play that I bet’ but there’s so many different parts that go into it that I just end up getting bogged down. What do you play? Guitar? Drums? Keys?”

“Uh… well I main bass, but I can do electric…” He rocked back on his heels to tick off on his fingers. “...Mother made me learn piano and violin so I can do keys and violin, and I was percussion ensemble in high school so most basic percussion, though I’m not great at drums, and I sing.”

Eddie stared at him with stars in her eyes and squeaked out, “That’s so cool~”

He opened his mouth to say he wouldn’t mind playing for her sometime, if she was into that, and was interrupted by the return of Flint and Radley. He clammed up, returning to the oven without a word, leaving Eddie to go help get the food unpacked and call the crew in. He listened to her chattering about how Deacon could play and liked Queen and wasn’t that SO cool?, and stilled to listen to their response.

“You don’t think it’s cool that I like Queen,” Radley said.

“That’s because you just like listening to them. Deacon learned to play on Queen songs.”

“You play?” Flint asked, when Deacon finally emerged from the oven to join them for lunch.

“He mains bass!” Eddie chirped before Deacon could answer.

“I like music,” he said. “It’s a good distraction.” There was a beat, and, seeing the opening, he added, “Sometimes I play with the house band next door, when one of their permanent musicians can’t make it. You should come hear me play sometime.”

Eddie lit up again. “Oh, can we? Can we, Uncle Flint? Please? Can’t we? Please can we?”

“We’ll… see,” he said, a little uncomfortable. “I think taking you kids into a bar is one of those things your old man would kick my ass for.”

Eddie deflated like a three month old birthday balloon. “I’m never going to be old enough to do anything fun.”

“And once you are you’re going to be carded for years,” Flint agreed, reaching over to ruffle her hair. “Sorry, kiddo, that’s just how it is.”

This got a huff, and she batted his hands away before turning to pout at her lunch.

“Sorry,” Deacon said, shuffling a little. “I wasn’t thinking about the age thing, I guess…”

-/-

After lunch, once everyone had gotten back to work, Flint decided to talk to Samuel first. His partner was guiding two of their contractors through putting up the menu boards; Flint took hold of his arm to get his attention, and startled back when Samuel jerked his arm back as if Flint’s touch had burned him.

“Sorry-” they both attempted at the same time, and Flint shook his head before jerking his head toward the office. “Can we talk?”

Samuel paused, and looked to the contractors, but they seemed to have the menu boards under control so he nodded and the two headed back to the office.

“I’m sorry,” Samuel began, before Flint could say anything. “I’m- sensitive to touch sometimes.”

Flint waved that away as unimportant. “I wanted to talk to you about earlier. I owe you an apology, and a thank you.”

“I don’t think I’m the one you owe an apology to.”

“I know. The kid’ll get one in a little while, I just want to get my thoughts in order before I talk to him.”

He sat down in his chair, and Samuel followed suit with a nod of approval. “Smart call.”

“Yeah, turns out I got a couple of braincells kicking around in here.” He cracked a lopsided smirk and then shook his head. “Anyway. I also wanted to thank you. I can’t say for sure that I wasn’t going to swing on the kid, even if I’d like to think I wouldn’t, but I can say for sure if I had you would have stopped me. I appreciate that.”

Samuel opened his mouth to say something, then shut it and shrugged. “We have a responsibility to protect the people we employ, and that includes from each other. I take that seriously.”

“Not a lot of people do.” He leaned his chair back with a sigh. “I wonder if that’s why Raphael sent you to me? She knows I got a temper. I’m a little impulsive, too. And I don’t always think things through…”

“To protect your employees from you? I doubt that. She seemed very invested in your success, and I don’t think she would be if she thought you were the sort to abuse your employees.”

“Not so much that, just someone to curb my impulses when they might have collateral damage.”

“Ah, right. That makes more sense.”

Flint watched him for another quiet moment, taking a few seconds to enjoy his rigid, perfectly controlled posture that did nothing to diminish the amount of him there was- here was a man who had never been taught to take up less space, though paradoxically his presence seemed to invite others into the space he was already occupying. Flint was struck with a bizarre desire to press into his side, enjoy his warmth while they shared… something, anything, it didn’t matter.

He shook the thought away.

“So if she sent you to keep me in line, what did she mean for you to get out of it? Think maybe she wants me to loosen you up?”

“Given she’s applied the words ‘tightly wound’ to me more than a few times in our friendship, I wouldn’t be surprised.”

“You ever think Raph secretly wants to produce a sitcom? That’d explain all the odd couple situations she’s always setting up.”

Samuel chuckled softly at that, and Flint suddenly felt as if he’d been shot through the throat.

He must be staring, because Samuel was giving him a confused look. “Everything okay?”

“Wh-? Oh, yeah. Fine. Just didn’t know you were capable of laughing, that’s all.”

“Maybe if you didn’t run off every time your niece starts talking…”

Flint let out a startled bark of laughter at that. “Yeah? Try living with her, pal. I need a break sometimes, you know. Your girl a chatterbox too?”

“No, she’s very quiet. You’d hardly know she was there half the time.”

“When are you bringing her around? Eddie’s not going to stop pestering yout about it until you do.”

Another of those laughs that made Flint feel like curling his toes up. “To be honest, I’m hoping I can get some of the anticipation to wear off. Rosie is so wonderful but Eddie’s hopes are so high.”

“You’ll never do that. Eddie doesn’t curb her enthusiasm, she just gets more tightly wound up until she finally experiences the thing she’s excited about. We took her to an amusement park to see this singer she was into once and she got so excited she threw up. Keep putting it off and you’re just perpetuating the problem.”

“Hmm.” Samuel seemed a little put out by that, and stroked his beard thoughtfully. “I suppose I could have Theresa drop her off tomorrow? I’m sure she’ll be interested in seeing what we’ve got going on here anyway. She’s very nosy, though she’ll never admit that.”

Flint grinned. “Sounds like a plan!”

-/-

Unfortunately, after his chat with Samuel, Flint had to bite the bullet and talk to Deacon. He didn’t want to. He was still furious with the kid, still wouldn’t really mind just tossing him out and letting him be someone else’s problem.

But whatever he felt about Deacon’s choices, he had behaved far worse, and if he wanted to be the sort of man his kids could look up to, he had to be the sort of man that owned up when he misstepped. So he told Samuel to send the kid in, and took a seat behind his desk and tried not to look like he was sulking too hard over having to apologize.

Deacon slouched in like a spooked animal, like he fully expected Flint to start yelling at him again and, oof, that was fair. Suddenly apologizing felt a lot more doable and a lot more important.

“Siddown, kid, I’m not gonna bite you,” Flint said, waving vaguely at the second desk chair that Samuel usually occupied. “I just wanna talk. And I owe you an apology. I shouldn’t have blown up like that.”

Deacon shrugged, like that didn’t factor to him, and said, in a rushed sort of way, “I’m not sorry about lying. Everyone lies on their resume and they even advise that.”

“They also advise learning how to fake the thing you’re saying you can do,” Flint said. “But that wasn’t really the issue, and you and I both know it.”

An uncomfortable silence descended. Deacon shifted a little in his seat, and said, “It’s cause of the help comment, isn’t it?”

Flint nodded. “I got my recipes from my ma,” he said. “She was an amazing cook, and an even better baker. She taught me and my si- brother coming up, but I was the one who really took to it.” He was silent for a long moment, thinking back to those days with his mother, explaining how every aspect of the recipe worked with every other aspect of the recipe, how to know if the process was working and how to figure out what was missing when it was.

Then he shook his head, dispelling the memory, and went on.

“Ma was a personal chef, she cooked for a lot of wealthy families. Made sure they always had a hot meal waiting without any effort on their part. You know how much thanks she got for it?”

Deacon was shrinking in his chair now, the full realization of what he’d implied hitting him. “‘M sorry,” he mumbled. “I didn’t mean…”

Flint gave him a few more seconds of discomfort before saying, “You should be. That’s the kinda toxic shit you gotta start unlearning now you’re on your own. There’s people out there without a tenth of what you’ve been handed that are worth ten times that, and you’re gonna be surrounded by them now. But. That don’t mean I gotta treat you like that. You’ll never learn like that.”

He leaned back in his chair, waiting in case Deacon had anything to put in, but the kid just stayed staring at the floor. Flint wondered what was going through his head, what he was thinking. If he was taking in what Flint was getting at, or just writing him off as some angry chef’s boy.

“As for your future here… I’ve handed you over to Sammy. Not just because you pissed me off, but also that. I don’t trust my temper enough to be directly in charge of you. But you still answer to both of us. I’m still your boss; Sam is just your direct supervisor.”

Deacon nodded, still staring down at the floor. Flint squinted at him, wondering where all of his fight had gone.

Hmm.

“Hey, kid. Why’d your old man cut you off? What was the decision you made that offended him?”

And, oh, there it was. Deacon bristled up like a rooster with a temper and said, “I don’t think that’s any of your business.”

“There it is. Knew you were in there somewhere. All right, go on, get back to work. Go on.”

He shooed him away; Deacon slouched out in a hurry, before Flint could start Talking To Him again.

-/-

#made the chapter longer and i think that helped the rushed feeling a lot #for the second draft i'll expand the first four chapters a bit to make them feel less rushed #this is way better #please don't reblog this! simply commenting will suffice! #batter up (working title)

[inconvenient-sneezes]

steve wakes up in the 21st century with a horrible cold (of course).

[[this is a continuation!! read part one here]]

Time After Time

Chapter Two: Waking Up (During)

***

Steve slowly opens his eyes and blinks. Once, twice, just taking in his surroundings. He’s in a bed, nothing special, and the radio’s on. I must be sick, Steve thinks to himself, then glances around the room, looking for Bucky. 

If there’s one person that’d be taking care of him, it’d be Bucky. But wait. Steve remembers being Captain America, that gorgeous doll-of-a-girl Peggy, Bucky falling, Bucky’s death. Steve sits up faster than he’d planned to and immediately brings a hand to his pounding head. His nose is completely blocked and he can’t smell anything, but he can hear the radio. Hmm... maybe I am sick after all.

“Just an absolutely gorgeous day here at Ebbets field. Philly’s have managed to tie it up, four-to-four, but the Dodger’s have three men on... pitch, it’s a strike. He leans in, here’s the pitch swung on, it’s a line drive. It gets past Grissom. Rizzo will score, Reiser heads to third...” 

The rest of the radio broadcast turns into white noise as Steve recognizes something familiar about that particular game. He sits up completely, swinging his legs over the side of the bed and just listening until his nostrils start to flare. Steve feels the strong urge to sneeze and his eyes are watering. 

For him, it’s a feeling that he hasn’t experienced for quite some time. “Hehhh...” Yet something feels wrong, scratch that, everything feels wrong about the room he’s currently sitting in. Where am I? “ITSSCCHHH!” 

It’s a harsh sneeze, right from the throat, and leaves Steve bent at the waist.

“Bless you.”

Steve looks up to see a pretty woman beaming at him. “Also, good morning.”

“Where ab I?” Steve croaks, then flinches at his voice.

The brunette’s curls bounce every time she takes a step. “You’re in a recovery room in New York City.”

“Doe, really.” He rubs his nose a bit before repeating himself. “Where ab I?”

She smiles and her red lipstick contrasts greatly with her teeth. “I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

There’s just something about her voice that Steve doesn’t trust. “Hh’KSHHH!”

“Bless you,” she says again, but it sounds fake. Everything about the room is fake, almost as if he’s been set up... and there’s something about the bra she’s wearing. Steve tries not to stare at the woman’s chest but... what is she wearing?

“The gabe.” He pauses to she if she’ll take the hint, but she doesn’t. “Id’s frob Bay, 1941. I kdow, because I was there.”

The young woman doesn’t say anything more, but her eyes give her away. She’s been found out; it is a lie. 

He stands up and towers over her. “I’b dot goig to say id agaid.” Steve figures he’d be a little more intimidating if he could just talk properly.

Two men burst in the room and that’s all Steve needs. He shoves one guy, kicks another and the both fly through the thin walls, revealing the whole set-up. It’s like a film, and Steve is a mere actor, subdued by a confusing, often comical plot. Only he doesn’t get the joke.

“Captain Rogers, wait!” the woman calls after him, stepping through the wreckage. Seeing he’s not coming back, she speaks into a little device and her voice reverberates through the entire building. 

Before Cap realizes it, there’s about fifty men chasing him through this unfamiliar building and he’s pushing people over, left and right, until his hands make contact with a door. 

He shoves it open and runs out into the street, where he’s nearly hit by a cab. So this is New York City, he thinks, but everything looks different. He stops in the middle of traffic and turns around twice. There’s films on the buildings and people are staring at him staring at the buildings.

“At ease, soldier.” A man wearing an eye patch is striding towards him and begins making conversation. Something about he’s been asleep for 70 years.

*** Steve is sitting at a table in a S.H.I.E.L.D. office when a stunning redhead walks in on him blowing his nose. “Looks like the new century doesn’t agree with you.”

He flushes pink and tosses the tissue in a waste basket. “I haven’t been sick for seventy years or more. It’s just another new thing to get used to, I guess.”

“Natasha Romanov,” she introduces herself and extends her hand. “And you are?”

Steve shakes his head at her patiently waiting hand. “Sorry, I just wouldn’t want to get you sick. I’m Steve.”

“That’s okay.” Her hand drops to her side. “You’re the Super Soldier everyone’s talking about?”

“AhH’TSHH! Excuse be.”

“Bless you.”

“Thags,” he says thickly, reaching for another tissue. Natasha pulls up a chair. “They stdill haven’t found a cure for the cobbon cold?” His voice is somewhat muffled by the tissue clamped over his mouth and nose.

“No.” She gives him a rare smile. “We still have tea, though. And Vick’s VapoRub. I’d be happy to get someone to bring you some.”

“Thad’s okay. I’b fide.” 

Actually, he sounded horrible and felt even worse. All Steve wanted was Bucky, but nobody could grant him that request.

Natasha nods. “In that case... do you mind meeting with someone? He’s actually... well, let’s just say he’s a Captain America fan. You must know the type, the comic-book collecting, sticker-wielding, I-have-eighty-plush-figures-of-Captain-America fan?”

Steve chuckles. “Sure, send hib id. You’ll have to ward hib though, about by, uh... I just wouldn’t wand to get hib s-sigg... ehh’KTSCHHH!”

“Oh, I don’t think he’d mind at all. In fact, he’d probably be honored to catch a cold from the great Captain America.” Natasha pulls a device out of her pocket and speaks to it. “Send him in, it’s all clear.”

Steve is expecting a child but what he gets is a grown man who has to be at least 40, give or take.

“Hi,” Steve greets him, then cringes at his own voice. “Sorry about by voice, I’b stdill gettig over a cold.”

The man just stands there in the doorway, almost as if he’s in shock. 

Natasha rolls her eyes. “For God’s sake.” She gets up, tugs the man over to them and sits him down in a chair. “This is Agent Coulson.”

“You can call me Phil, if you want.” He’s beaming. “It’s a pleasure, a real pleasure, to meet you, sir.”

“Ligkewise,” Steve tells him, obviously fighting another sneeze. His eyes squeeze shut and he thinks he sees Natasha slide back in her chair. “Ehh’SHHOO!” One isn’t enough apparently and Steve is left practically gasping for breath. “Ehh! HehhH! ErT’SSHOO!”

“Bless you!” Coulson exclaims.

Steve blindly gropes for a tissue and Natasha nudges the box in his general direction. “Hept’TSHHH!”

“‘Scuse be,” he mutters, embarrassed, and buries his face in a tissue.

After a few minutes of polite admiration from the agent, Natasha gives Steve a sympathetic look. “You know what? Maybe we should let him get some rest.” Natasha suggests to Coulson, standing up.

He nods eagerly. “You’re probably right. Nice meeting you, Cap!” He smiles and waves before the pair disappears out the door.

“Drat! I forgot to ask if he’d sign my Captain America cards!” Steve hears him say.

“Tomorrow,” is all Natasha responds with as her heels click down the corridor.

***

Steve finally decides to just go home and get some sleep. S.H.I.E.L.D. sets him up with a nice little apartment, directly in the complex. He unlocks the door and is pleasantly surprised to find a container of Vick’s VapoRub, chamomile tea and a little bag of throat lozenges on the table.

He can’t resist popping the top to the VapoRub and inhaling its scent. Steve almost immediately recoils as the strong smell attacks his nose. “H-hoo...” he exhales shakily, knowing full well he’ll start sneezing again. And sneeze he does. 

“Ihh... Ihh’SHUHhh! Hept’SHOO! Ahh... hahhH! ATSCHH!” Steve puts the tube down and shakes his head, dizzy. “That’s one way to clear your sinuses.”

***

The next week, Natasha Romanov is sneezing as well and cursing Steve Rogers’ name. “I hate this!” she snarls to Clint Barton, the only one brave enough to visit Natasha in her room when she’s like this. He wonders whether he should pat her on the back or start running, far, far away.

“T’sHH! It’SHH! Ihh... hiiihH! ISHH!”

“Bless you,” Clint says as soon as he knows she’s done.

“I’m going to kill him!” she snaps, standing up and swaying a little.

“No, no,” he argues, gently pushing her into bed. “You’re gonna stay here and rest. Besides, Steve’s still pretty new and it’s not like he purposely gave you his cold. In fact, you don’t even know for sure that it was his cold that you got.” He stops talking when he realizes Natasha’s glaring at him. 

Before long though, her eyes water and she twists away from the archer. “Hh’TSHh!”

“Bless you, Tasha,” he tells her, climbing into bed.

“Trust me, you don’t want this,” she warns him, turning away.

“But I do want you.”

“Touché.”

***

request some stuff/give me feedback!! read more stuff!!

#fic #steve rogers #sick!steve #captain america #capsnz #clintasha #contagion #clint barton #natasha romanoff #clint x natasha #in which steve gives natasha his cold by accident #sickfic #sneezing #natasha romanov

[jeroldlockettus]

How to Catch World Cup Fever

One billion people watched the last World Cup final, roughly 10 times more than the Super Bowl. (Photo: riciardus/pixhere)

Our latest Freakonomics Radio episode is called “How to Catch World Cup Fever.” (You can subscribe to the podcast at Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or elsewhere, get the RSS feed, or listen via the media player above.)

For soccer fans, it’s easy. For the rest of us? Not so much, especially since the U.S. team didn’t qualify. So here’s what to watch for even if you have no team to root for. Because the World Cup isn’t just a gargantuan sporting event; it’s a microcosm of human foibles and (yep) economic theory brought to life.

Below is a transcript of the episode, modified for your reading pleasure. For more information on the people and ideas in the episode, see the links at the bottom of this post. And you’ll find credits for the music in the episode noted within the transcript.

*      *      *

Roger BENNETT: The World Cup is a global eclipse, it’s been called, that just casts its shadow across the whole world for an entire month at the same time. Everywhere apart from America.

That’s Roger Bennett. What’s he do for a living?

BENNETT: My wife asks me the same question. I sit in front of a television, watch a lot of football and shout at that television thinking it will impact events as they’re unfurling thousands of miles from me.

Bennett grew up in Liverpool. But he’s pretty American by now; in fact, he just became a citizen.

BENNETT: I arrived here right before the 1994 World Cup.

Stephen DUBNER: Ah. You mark it by the World Cups, then. Yes?

BENNETT: My whole life, whenever someone gives me a year, I immediately back it up to the nearest World Cup and I’m able to locate myself, my emotional memory by that nearest World Cup.

Bennett is co-host of Men in Blazers, a podcast-and-TV enterprise devoted to the sport known as … well, it depends. Here’s another Brit-turned-American, Stefan Szymanski:

Stefan SZYMANSKI: Well, everybody in America calls it soccer. And a lot of people think that this is a word that comes from the United States, but actually it’s an English word coined in the 1890’s at Oxford University and up until the 1970’s it was a perfectly acceptable word. However, in recent years, Brits have decided that they think soccer is a terrible word and that you Americans should stop using it and start calling it football instead. And that’s completely absurd.

Okay, back to Roger Bennett. He’s also the host of a new podcast about the 1998 U.S. men’s national team.

BENNETT: One minute, they thought they were going to win the World Cup. The next minute, they were humiliated.”

This new podcast about the old team is called American Fiasco. But even Roger Bennett, a soccer savant, couldn’t have known how well that title would fit this year’s U.S. team. For the first time since 1986, this year’s team failed to qualify for the World Cup finals. This did not go over well in the American soccer community.

Taylor TWELLMAN: This is an utter embarrassment.

In its final qualifier, the U.S. needed only a tie.

TWELLMAN: With the amount of money that’s in Major League Soccer and in this sport, you can’t get a draw? A tie?

It needed a tie against Trinidad and Tobago.

BENNETT: The big takeaway is we should stop playing two countries at the same time. Never again should we play Trinidad and Tobago. One at a time. Let’s take baby steps.

Bennett’s kidding, of course. Trinidad and Tobago is really one country, whose population is about one-sixth of New Jersey’s. So: yes, another American fiasco. Though it may be even worse for the American broadcaster carrying this year’s World Cup. Yes, there are plenty of people in the U.S. who’ll be rooting for France and Mexico; Brazil and Germany; even first-time qualifiers Panama and Iceland. But Fox Sports, without an American team to show during the month-long tournament, has had to figure out a clever way to attract a domestic audience to tune in to foreign teams. So they unleashed a marketing campaign with 23andMe called “Root for Your Roots.” That said, even if you’re an American with little interest in soccer, there are so many reasons to catch World Cup fever this year — and we’ll ask some economists why. Yes, economists.

SZYMANSKI: One reason is that actually probably more people care in developing nations about this national soccer team than the state of the national economy.

Toby MOSKOWITZ: Well, one thing that we looked at was the home-field advantage. And we thought, Well, let’s put it to the data and see if in fact it’s true.

Luigi ZINGALES: If you are in swimming, you need to have a country rich enough to have swimming pools. But in soccer, you can be trained on a piece of dirt with a ball.

And then there’s the fact that, with the tournament held in Russia, several time zones ahead of us, it’s simply a great chance to shake up your daily routine.

BENNETT: What an alluring possibility for any American. You know, if you are in a bar at 7 o’clock in the morning with a Budweiser, society frowns on that, right Stephen?

DUBNER: Yes.

BENNETT: Yeah. But if you’re in that same bar, with that same Budweiser and on the television, Spain are playing Portugal in the opening group game of the World Cup, what are you?

DUBNER: You’re a football fan.

BENNETT: You’re a football fan.

*      *      *

Every four years, soccer teams from across the globe gather to compete for the sport’s biggest trophy, the World Cup. Historically, the Americans have been brilliant, winning three of the past seven World Cups, never finishing worse than third. The American women, that is. The men’s national team? Not so hot. The U.S. has never finished higher than eighth — except for 1930, the very first World Cup, when we finished third. And this year, as noted, we failed to make the 32-team field.

But don’t worry; the rest of the world will hardly notice. The World Cup is a staggering phenomenon: the 2014 men’s final, with Germany beating Argentina in Brazil, was watched by 1 billion people — about 10 times more than a Super Bowl. The sport has been growing in the U.S., among players and fans; attendance at Major League Soccer games last year averaged 22,000. Some people are concerned the American failure to qualify for this year’s World Cup could endanger that growth. Roger Bennett thinks that’s nonsense:

BENNETT: You know, when England do badly, it’s bad. We feel bad. But we live. No one, in the wake of it, is saying, “Oh my god. What’s this going to do to the future of soccer in England?” Italy didn’t qualify for this World Cup, nor Chile, nor did the Netherlands. No one’s been like, “It’s going to affect the popularity of the very game.” I think Americans are going to realize they just love the World Cup for its own sake, not purely because of the self-interest of the American team.

There are, after all, so many story lines in this year’s World Cup:

BENNETT: Ronaldo, Messi, the heroic Icelandic story, the kind of Pro Bowl roster of the Belgian team. Spoiler alert, one of the three winners — Brazil, Spain, or Germany — one of these three is going to win it. You’ve got the African challenge, you got the intricacies of some of the incredibly organized, passionate teams coming from Asia. South Korea: wow.

Another reason to watch: familial bonding. That’s how it works in my house.

SOLOMON Dubner: My name is Solomon Dubner. I am a co-host of Footy for Two and I’m the biggest and youngest benefactor of nepotism in the podcasting world.

Yes, that’s my son.

SOLOMON: Nice to see you.

Footy for Two is the soccer podcast we make together. Basically, Solomon extols the virtues of his favorite club team, Barcelona, and schools me in the intricacies of the world’s most popular sport.

SOLOMON: The 4-4-2 is the traditional, English, direct football formation associated with more physicality than technical ability. In Spain it’s kind of looked down on; the most technical, tactical-intrinsic league.

STEPHEN: It’s looked down as kind of too muscular?

SOLOMON: Lower-class football, not enough brains or technical ability. But Valverde has made it beautiful, I think we were playing beautiful football today…

Anyway, he’s really looking forward to the World Cup.

SOLOMON: I’m 10 for excitement, but I would be a higher 10 or an 11 if the U.S. was in it. In Mother Russia.

STEPHEN: In Mother Russia.

SOLOMON: The homeland.

STEPHEN: Whose homeland?

SOLOMON: I think America’s at this point.

STEPHEN: And who would you say is the outright favorite to win the World Cup?

SOLOMON: There are four teams I put in that category: Spain. They have the pedigree, they have a great team. France. Great team, I think they’re too young. Brazil. They have a great team, great coach named Tite. And then the obvious favorites are Germany. They have a great team. They all know each other well. Joachim Low is a great coach and they are the reigning champions, which could go for or against them.

But Solomon, like Roger Bennett, appreciates the many story lines beyond the winning.

SOLOMON: Iceland is going to be there, which is fun. Everyone probably knows how excited people were about Iceland in the Euros, which we were at: at one game, eight percent of Iceland’s population was in the stadium watching them play. It’s pretty awesome.

Awesome perhaps, but also intriguing. How does Iceland, a country with a population of roughly 330,000 people, make it to the World Cup, when the U.S., with nearly 330 million, doesn’t?

BENNETT: They have hardwired their country to produce phenomenal collective football players. They invested heavily in training facilities. They invested heavily, intentionally, in elite coaching. They have a ridiculous number of elite coaches per capita.

DUBNER: I know the manager of the national team, at least until recently, was also a part-time dentist.

BENNETT: He was. Heimir Hallgrímsson. A very good friend of mine.

DUBNER: Have you ever had him do any work on you?

BENNETT: You know, I’ve watched him do root canal, and I asked him, “Why do you keep, as an international manager, keep doing part-time dentistry?” And he said, “The other managers blow off steam by hunting. Other guys gamble.” He said, “I do root canals.” Like I was a moron.

So Iceland’s presence in the World Cup can be explained by shrewd investment in coaching, and shrewd steam-blowing by its manager. But could it also be explained by economic theory? Stefan Szymanski is one of many economists around the world who study soccer. He’s co-author of the excellent 2009 book Soccernomics — nice title there, friend-o — which has been updated for this World Cup, as well as a new e-book called It’s Football, Not Soccer (and Vice Versa).

DUBNER: I understand you used to write about things like the cost of garbage collection and labor-market hierarchies. Why’d you stop that and how do you get away with this?

SZYMANSKI: Nobody read my papers on garbage collection, as wonderful as they were and everybody seemed interested in any old garbage I write about soccer.

One of Szymanski’s recent papers is called “Convergence vs. The Middle-Income Trap: The Case of Global Soccer.”

SZYMANSKI: So convergence is the idea that poorer countries will end up catching up economically with richer countries simply because they offer, in a sense, better investment opportunities.

DUBNER: So that’s an economic theory, what is the evidence that that theory is at least somewhat true?

SZYMANSKI: Well there’s good evidence at the level of, say the United States itself. So there’s been convergence amongst the states of the United States over more than 100 years. There’s also good support for this amongst developed nations and the nations of the Far East. Where this falls down, though, has tended to be some of the poorer nations, particularly in Africa.

DUBNER: And can you just give a sense of what sort of, I guess, magnitude of convergence or to what degree should convergence be complete?

SZYMANSKI: Well, a lot of countries start a very, very long way behind. So even China, with growth rates of 10 percent-plus for 20-plus years, they’re still considerably poorer on a per-capita basis than the United States. So this is a sort of process that we’re talking about over decades and possibly centuries rather than in terms of 10 years or so.

DUBNER: And you argue that the sector in which convergence between nations seems very, very, very strong is manufacturing.

SZYMANSKI: Right, and one reason for that might be that manufacturing is something that is easily copied and transferred across the world. And often you can buy the equipment and machinery that you need to make it happen. Whereas some of the more intangible things about education and social structures, those things are harder to copy and take much longer to catch up with.

DUBNER: And what does all this have to do with, or have in common with, soccer?

SZYMANSKI: Well, most studies of convergence are about G.D.P. per-capita income. And that’s one of the few statistics for which we have figures for every country in the world going back many decades. And to study convergence, you need many decades of data. What other statistics do we have that would similarly have for all nations of the world? Well, probably the results of international soccer games is the only other thing for which we have complete records going back 60, 70 years.

DUBNER: And so talk about looking at historic G.D.P. data and historical soccer data through the lens of convergence, and what did the results tell you?

SZYMANSKI: Well, first thing to say about comparing soccer data with G.D.P. data is soccer data is way better. It’s far more reliable. We know who won the game and there’s no real argument about that. Whereas G.D.P. — boy, even for developed nations, there’s always some margin of error. But what we found when we looked for convergence in the soccer data was something that has never really been found in the G.D.P. data, which is something called unconditional convergence. Which is just to say, it’s very clear in the data that the countries with the worse results are getting better, are catching up with the countries with the better results, and that’s regardless of any other factors at all. That’s not something you find with G.D.P.

DUBNER: So you’re saying it’s easier to catch up in soccer than in your economy. Why’s that?

SZYMANSKI: One reason is that actually probably more people care in developing nations about this national soccer team than the state of the national economy.

DUBNER: How can that be? I mean, really?

SZYMANSKI: The soccer team is something concrete and real, it’s there on your TV, you’re watching it. Whereas the national economy is a sort of abstract concept. Does anybody come home saying, “Oh I did a great job for the national economy today, I feel really good about that.”

DUBNER: No, but you do come home saying, “I don’t have enough money to pay my light bill,” right?

SZYMANSKI: Right. But that then depends on the nature of the economic structure and the nature of the economic relationships. I think many of these underlying economic conditions have a significant impact on whether you can get goods and services, and most of that is not really relevant to the development of the national soccer team. The players play, you see who the good ones are, they immediately — you don’t get an example where the president of the country pays a bribe so that his son can play on the national soccer team. That’s not the sort of thing that’s going to work.

DUBNER: How does that contribute to soccer being easier to improve?

SZYMANSKI: I think people are focused and if the team does well, they know who’s responsible for that. And likewise, when you do badly, I think it’s difficult to conceal the fact and action must be taken, heads must roll. So there’s a natural process of weeding out poor performance and encouraging good performance. If you want to build a soccer team that’s going to be internationally competitive, you need to find the finest players in your country, and that’s a process of selection that is not quite so trivial, I think. And if you want to see any examples of countries where that’s turned out to prove really challenging, if not impossible, think of India and China.

DUBNER: You know, I wanted to ask you: India and China have a combined population of about 2.7 billion. Neither of them are in this World Cup. China has qualified I think for exactly one World Cup in its history. India has never played in one, and yet they have more people in their countries than the rest of the 32 qualifying teams combined by more than a billion.

SZYMANSKI: So it turns out that having the raw materials is not as simple as it sounds, right? See, it’s certainly true that nations that are more populous tend to win more games than nations that are less populous. But clearly translating that potential into competitive teams is actually a little bit more challenging than one might think.

DUBNER: All right, you’ve found that convergence is happening in soccer, perhaps more robustly than in national economies. So how, if at all, will this inform the way you watch the World Cup and perhaps should inform the way the rest of us watch it?

SZYMANSKI: Well, one of the things I think is firstly, take account of the economic characteristics of the nations that are competing. Those disparities matter and that has an effect on what the likely outcome will be. But then also think about who’s getting better and who the dark horses might be. So for example one team I would think a lot of us are now looking at this this summer is Egypt, which is, again, not a team that has traditionally done that well, obviously an African nation as well. But they look like they are producing quite a lot of good players. But I think we’ll see some interesting teams like that come through, and perhaps produce some surprising results.

International soccer is, historically, full of surprising results. Including the very site of the World Cup, and how the site is chosen by FIFA, the sport’s international governing body. The 2022 tournament, for example, will be held in Qatar, a tiny country with a nominal soccer presence and a summer climate so inhospitable that the tournament had to be shifted to wintertime, which will disrupt league calendars around the world. Very curious. And what about this year’s site, Russia? It’s not on the list of most brotherly nations these days. How did it get the World Cup?

SZYMANSKI: Well I’d, like to tell you a lot in great detail about this, but the computers on which all the records of their bid were stored were mysteriously lost by the Russians when FIFA conducted an investigation into alleged corruption surrounding the bids, and Russia was one of the few countries acquitted of any corruption largely because all the evidence had been destroyed. Most people believe that Russia secured this by corrupt means. That certainly wouldn’t be a first. We know pretty much corruption took place in securing the 2010, 2006 World Cups and even more the 2022 World Cup which is due to take place in Qatar.

FIFA is infamous for cronyism and corruption on a grand scale. Occasionally, this leads to repercussions.

CBC broadcaster: Charges and arrest of FIFA officials. Fourteen people including high-ranking officials, leaders of regional bodies. In total, 47 different counts that include racketeering and money laundering, and the New York news conference suggested this has been going on for two decades.

SZYMANSKI: There are many forms of corruption which operate in FIFA but in terms of securing the World Cup, usually it seems to have been a matter of money in envelopes at meetings with representatives of small federations. Remember, the Federation of St. Kitts and Nevis has one vote in the FIFA Congress just like the United States or Germany. And hence there are lots of small countries with a lot of power and seemingly people who are less than scrupulous with how they make their decisions.

So the awarding of the World Cup is susceptible to corruption. What about the actual World Cup matches?

Simon KUPER: So I think the World Cup, given that it’s in the grasp of FIFA, is very susceptible to corruption.

That’s Simon Kuper, a Financial Times columnist and Szymanski’s Soccernomics co-author.

KUPER A lot of soccer leagues are susceptible. So in China, or Bulgaria, or Greece, there’s a lot of match-fixing that goes on. And countries really want to win the World Cup. So I do not find it unimaginable that some countries bribe FIFA officials to ensure that they get the right referee and win a World Cup match. In 2002, you know there was this shocking game really, South Korea beat Italy and the referee seemed incredibly biased against Italy.

South Korea, we should say, was a co-host of the 2002 World Cup, along with Japan.

KUPER: He withheld a penalty, he disallowed a good goal, he sent an Italian player off. And I thought, Well, it’s just, you know, referee being swayed by the home crowd, there’s nothing kind of venal about it. But that guy, Byron Moreno, an Ecuadorian, eight years later he was arrested arriving at J.F.K. Airport in New York and found to have a lot of heroin concealed in his underwear. And then I thought, you know what, the guy’s a criminal. So who chose a criminal to officiate a World Cup match to make sure that the hosts won? And that leads you on to the belief — I’m not normally a conspiracy theorist, but I do think that there is quite a bit of skullduggery in World Cups. The easiest way to fix a result is to find a compliant referee.

DUBNER: Now, presumably, one easy way to get around that would be to assign referees, let’s say, last minute and/or secretly, yes?

KUPER: There is a bit of that. But you might have a powerful guy who says, “Look, I really want to know who the referee is going to be, tell me. And you tell him and then he finds the referee, etc. You can also fix teams because there’s an enormous amount of money bet on every single World Cup match. So it’s worth the match fixer’s while to bribe a team to lose or to achieve a certain score. Often the bribe will be: “You must lose by three goals or more. And here is $20,000 for each of you to make that happen.” This can be appealing to journeyman players in some of the weaker teams who probably know, “Well, we’re going to lose that game anyway,“ or, “We’re already knocked out of the World Cup.” So Declan Hill, he’s a Canadian writer, has produced very compelling evidence that Brazil’s three-nil victory over Ghana in 2006 was fixed. The Brazilian players knew nothing about it, but Hill writes with quite a lot of evidence that some Ghanaian players were fixed to lose by three.

There’s also the issue of how the World Cup bracket is drawn up, especially which group a team gets placed into for the first round. This has a big effect on that team’s likelihood of advancing into the later rounds. Consider this year’s draw:

KUPER: Russia’s first-round group — Uruguay, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt — has been calculated as I think the weakest first-round group in the history of the tournament. Is it an amazing coincidence? Or did somebody take care of that?

BENNETT: They organized the groups by pulling balls out of pots.

Roger Bennett again.

BENNETT: And then they organized which four teams play against each other in which cities in which order. My partner in Men in Blazers, Michael Davies, cut his teeth on quiz games, working with the great Merv Griffin, and Davo always says, at this stage in our technological reality, if you’re still using balls for any kind of a draw — be it a lottery draw or a World Cup draw — you’re doing it for a reason, and that reason is to fix the draw. You can heat the balls. You can freeze the ball so when they’re to the human touch, “Oh yes, and Russia, oh my lord, is in the easiest group!”

DUBNER: If Russia were to win the World Cup, what would you say are the odds that someone intervened with a briefcase of cash, a loaded weapon, etc., etc.?

BENNETT: Russia are a hapless, pathetic soccer team. I’m saying that as a guy born in England. I know hapless, pathetic soccer teams because England more often than not fit into that category. The World Cup is an incredibly grinding tournament where you need tenacity. You need skill. You need incredible leadership. You need elements of luck. Of the 17 things you need to win it, Russia has maybe two, arguably, and I’m being very very kind. They will not win it. And if they do win, in your crazy scenario — I think America is more likely to win the 2018 World Cup than Russia.

*      *      *

Luigi Zingales is a professor of finance at the University of Chicago. Among his specialties: the effect of corruption and cronyism on the economy. He’s also a soccer fan; has been since he was a kid.

ZINGALES: In fact I cried when my favorite team lost a derby, and my mother banned me to watch soccer for a year as a punishment.

For Zingales, one appeal of the sport is how egalitarian it is.

ZINGALES: If you are in swimming, you need to have a country rich enough to have swimming pools because otherwise you can’t really compete effectively. But in soccer, you can be trained on a piece of dirt with a ball and still being a Maradona. And you see the countries like Cameroon or Nigeria, they’re certainly not rich by any standard, but they have phenomenal soccer teams.

We asked Zingales for his view on host-country Russia’s weak first-round opposition in this year’s World Cup.

ZINGALES: If there are rules that allow the hosting team to choose its opponents, that’s fine, as long as they’re transparent. But if they are done by the people inside the organization, it’s not fine, and it’s set up a tone at the top that will reverberate down the line. And I think that this is the problem with the soccer organization in my view.

So Zingales is no fan of FIFA. But his antipathy has an economic angle.

ZINGALES: Soccer is so popular around the world that there’s basically no comparison in terms of sport. And has a caché, a brand value, really, really difficult to tarnish. In fact, in spite of all the scandals we’ve read about, people still love soccer and it’s not very much affected. So I think that having a monopoly of that size with no real controls, because the organization is not really accountable to anybody in a serious way, I think inevitably leads to favoritism and some form of institutional corruption. Whether this takes the form of explicit violation of the rules, or takes the form of an extreme favoritism at some level is irrelevant. The point is that it’s not a fair game. And for a game that would like to be fair and for a game as I said as the beauty of being intrinsically a fairly level playing-field game, having the organization that is unfair is I think a capital crime.

By this time, we’ve probably made you fairly suspicious that there will be some shadiness in at least a few World Cup matches. Especially involving the Russian team. But let’s say the Russian team — or some other team — does do much better than expected, or does have a referee’s call go their way. Is that necessarily the result of corruption or cronyism? Maybe not. For this, we turn to yet another soccer-loving economist.

MOSKOWITZ: I’m Toby Moskowitz. I’m a professor of finance and economics at Yale University.

DUBNER: Yes, so you have won a really prestigious academic award as one of the top finance scholars in the world. Why do you mess around with sports?

MOSKOWITZ: It’s called tenure. They can’t fire me. So, a lot of what I study is behavioral economics, and how people make decisions when faced with a lot of uncertainty. Sports is just a really rich field to look at those kinds of things.

Moskowitz is co-author of a book called Scorecasting, which takes an empirical look at some of the standard decision-making in sports. In basketball, does it really make sense to bench your star player if he’s in foul trouble? In football, does it really make sense to punt on 4th and 1 from your own 40? How about icing the kicker — does that work? And does defense really win championships, like the cliché says? In a lot of cases, Moskowitz found, the conventional wisdom turns out to be not so wise. We’ll hear more about that in a whole sports series we’re just starting to work on now. But some conventional wisdom is pretty true.  

MOSKOWITZ: Well one thing that we looked at was the home-field advantage. This is talked about throughout sports and almost every sport. And we thought, “Well, let’s put it to the data and see if in fact it’s true.” And that’s something that is true not only in every sport but every sport no matter where it’s played, what country, and throughout history over time. So that is true, that is a fact. There is a strong home-field advantage.

Truth be told, this wasn’t so hard to figure out. You basically look at a team’s winning percentage at home versus on the road. There were, however, some interesting wrinkles. For one, there’s a large variance in the size of the advantage among different sports. In baseball, for instance?

MOSKOWITZ: So, slightly better than 50-50. A clear advantage but not a huge one.

But in soccer:

MOSKOWITZ: In soccer, and this is true worldwide — so if you’re looking South American leagues, leagues in Russia, Australia even the U.S. — you’re talking like 65, 67 percent.

This leads to a couple questions. No. 1: why is there such a difference among sports? And No. 2, which might help explain No. 1: what are the causes of home-field advantage? If you are even a little bit a of a sports fan, you’ve likely heard a lot of different explanations. For instance: the enthusiasm of the fans improves the performance of the athletes.

MOSKOWITZ: This is I think the No. 1 thing that most fans think when they think of the home-field advantage, which is, their adrenaline increases because the fans are pumping them up. Conversely if you’re on the road, people are yelling terrible things at you, questioning the chastity of your sister and your mother and all kinds of things.

So how solid is this theory?

MOSKOWITZ: Doesn’t seem to be true.

And what’s the evidence that fan enthusiasm isn’t driving home-field advantage?

MOSKOWITZ: So take basketball. You look at free-throw shooting, where you take everything else out of the game. There’s no defense. The referees are removed at that point as well. The player’s at the free throw line. The only interaction is between a crowd that’s either dead silent and hoping you’ll hit the free throw if you’re the home player, or there’s screaming, banging those thunder sticks. And what we find is in professional sports and college sports, the same player shoots exactly the same percentage at the free-throw line whether he is on the road or at home. Just doesn’t seem to have an effect.

How about the idea that teams are built to take advantage of their home field, like stacking a baseball team with left-handed sluggers if the stadium has a shallow right-field wall?

MOSKOWITZ: We just didn’t find any evidence of it.

How about the weather? Like when teams from warm-weather cities have to play in the cold? Nope; no evidence of that either. Okay, how about the effects of travel itself — not sleeping as well or eating as well. To test this idea, Moskowitz looked at games where the traveling team doesn’t actually travel.

MOSKOWITZ: My favorite example is when the Lakers play the Clippers. They play in the same stadium. The only difference is they change the decals on the court and the season-ticket holders who are there. If you look at those same-city games, versus games where, let’s say, you’ve got Miami traveling to Seattle, there’s just no difference in the home-field advantage.

So what does account for home-field advantage? Moskowitz did find that in certain circumstances — back-to-back road games in the N.B.A., for instance — fatigue does matter.

MOSKOWITZ: On the second night, if you played the previous night, your chances of winning go from say — let’s say there are two even teams, so it’s 50-50; it would drop to about 36 percent.

But that effect, Moskowitz found, can only explain 10 or 15 percent of the home-field advantage in those cases. So what’s the real story? Here’s the real story.

MOSKOWITZ: In 2007, there were a couple of soccer riots — well, as there typically are in Europe. This happened to occur in Italy, and the Italian government banned fans from 21 matches. And a couple of Swedish economists collected the data and examined the home-field advantage in these 21 games where there were literally no fans. All there were were coaches, players and the referees. And what they found was, that the home-field advantage all but disappeared, when the fans were gone. But what was interesting is the players didn’t play any better or worse. Their accuracy of passes, their mistakes, their tackles, their fouls — all those things were about the same. So whether the fans were there or not, these players weren’t affected.

DUBNER: So this would seem to pose a riddle. You’re saying home-field advantage does exist in all sports. It’s highest in soccer but in a kind of natural experiment in which fans were banned, the home-field advantage essentially disappeared. Which would seem to suggest that the fans are influencing the game somehow. But I guess not in the way that we might typically think — is that what you’re getting at?

MOSKOWITZ: That’s exactly right. That basically the fans had a marked impact on the success of the home team, yet the home players didn’t seem to play any worse when the fans weren’t there. Nor do they seem to play any better when the fans were there. So what’s going on? Well there’s really only one other participant who could possibly be influenced by the fans and that is the referee.

Now to state something like that obviously sounds controversial, and you better provide some proof. So what a couple of economists did was they gathered data on soccer. This was in the Spanish La Liga, and they looked at a very unique feature of soccer games, which was the extra injury time. Now what’s unique about this is it’s a part of the game where the players have literally no influence. This is the point in the game where what the head referee is supposed to do is add up all the substitutions throughout the game, and all the injuries and all the fouls, and add some extra time.

Now what was neat about this was, the data was gathered I think in the 90’s and early 2000’s, and at that time, the head referee did not have to announce how much time he was putting on the clock. It was not posted anywhere and not even the other referees knew what it was. He would just blow his whistle at some point declare the game was over. And what was really interesting is if the home team was behind by one goal, the amount of extra injury time the head referee added was more than twice as large as when the home team was ahead by a goal. And you can see what might be going on here which is, they’re shortening the game to preserve the win for the team. Or they’re lengthening it to give the home team a better chance to tie.

But here’s the thing: Moskowitz isn’t saying that referees are cheating in favor of the home team. Or that they’re even consciously making calls in their favor. It’s subtler than that — more human than that.

MOSKOWITZ: Referees, like anybody, any other human, feels social pressure. Relieving that social pressure is natural and emotionally, you get caught up in the game. They don’t necessarily want the home team to win. I don’t think this is conscious. I don’t think there’s any conspiracy. I think it’s just a natural, “I want to please 50,000 people and I don’t want 50,000 people screaming at me.”

DUBNER: Or worse, we should say.

MOSKOWITZ: Or worse. Yes.

Another piece of evidence in this argument? In soccer, the home-field advantage is cut in half when the game is played in a stadium where the field is surrounded by a running track — that is, where the crowd is farther from the referees. Moskowitz is pretty convinced the referee-bias theory can explain a lot of the home-field advantage effect.

MOSKOWITZ: So I don’t think it’s the whole thing, but I think it’s the largest part.

DUBNER: I’m also curious about the variance in sports — soccer, you mentioned, has the highest home-field advantage. Baseball is the lowest. And for people who follow either of those sports and especially both, they know that the referee or the umpire has, obviously, different functions but also a different amount of leverage. And also there’s a lot less scoring in soccer, and so one pivotal call really can determine the game.

MOSKOWITZ: Absolutely. In soccer, there’s so little scoring that a penalty kick, throwing a player off, any sort of free kick can have a huge impact on the game, and can tilt the odds very significantly in favor of the home team. Whereas, take the other end of the spectrum — baseball, you know, quite honestly most calls in baseball aren’t that close.

DUBNER: You’re telling us that fans don’t influence the outcome of a game in the way that we think — that is, they’re not influencing the players. But you’re also telling us that fans do influence the outcome of the game by influencing referees. So the bottom line is really the same, isn’t it, which is that fans should be as loud and obnoxious and maybe as threatening as possible, right?

MOSKOWITZ: There’s a little bit of that and I hesitate to say that.

DUBNER: I’m not asking you to personally condone violence, but I mean the data are the data yes?

MOSKOWITZ: Well, I think there’s no question that you’re right. The data is the data that on a close call, if fans yell and yell loudly it does tend to influence the referee’s perception.

So that’s something to watch for in the upcoming World Cup: do the referees seem to favor Russia, the home team? Or, this being a World Cup, where fans travel from all over, some games might feel like home games. If you’re the prime minister of, say, Iceland, maybe you pay for the entire citizenry to go to Russia to pack out the stadiums?

MOSKOWITZ: I would argue it’s probably not worth it, but I guess it would depend on the government. I would expect that the costs far exceed the benefits.

We’ve given you several reasons to pay attention to the World Cup. Although we haven’t said much about the actual soccer. The players. The greatest players in the world. And maybe the greatest player in the sport’s history.

Joaquim Maria PUYAL: Messi Messi Messi Messi Messi Messi. Immense Messi.

Lionel Messi is about to turn 31. This will likely be his last World Cup. He’s won every trophy imaginable with his club team, Barcelona. But he’s never won a World Cup with his national team, Argentina.

ANNOUNCER: Argentina’s dream was to win a World Cup. In Brazil, it’s proved just that: a dream.

My son Solomon is a true soccer fanatic. But his adoration of Messi goes beyond that.

SOLOMON: If Argentina wins the World Cup, I am moving to a rural town in Argentina and becoming a shepherd for the rest of my life, because I think that’s what Messi would want.

STEPHEN: Why would he want you to be a shepherd?

SOLOMON: I just think he would.

STEPHEN: Does he have sheep that he needs caring for?

SOLOMON: That he needs shepherded? No I just think I should respect Argentina and him.

STEPHEN: You think that would be the kind of tribute that he would appreciate?

SOLOMON: That would be the perfect way.

I asked Solomon for some biographical background.

SOLOMON: It’s going to have a little bit of a stalkerish detail, is that okay? So on June 24, 1987, in Rosario, Argentina. There was a huge tree in the middle of town. There was a huge storm and lightning struck it. And from the tree emerged the god that is Lionel Andres Messi. As a child he had a growth deficiency. He would have ended up being 5’1” or 5’2”. Except he was an unbelievable soccer player. When he was diagnosed, he started taking growth hormones. His club, Newell’s Old Boys, they couldn’t really afford it. His family, I think, sought out the attention of scouts in Barcelona, where he happened to have family. They almost didn’t sign him because of his height. But then they realized he was pretty good anyway. And they started paying for his medicine. That was one of the main reasons he went.

STEPHEN: Wow. He was how old at this time?

SOLOMON: He was 12 or 13. Originally his whole family moved, but then they couldn’t do it, so he just he and his father stayed. And he grew up in La Masia, Barcelona’s famed youth academy.

STEPHEN: So it’s an academy where you obviously—

SOLOMON: You live right by the Comp Nou, the stadium. You can it see out your window.

STEPHEN: Wow.

SOLOMON: La Masia I think means “farmhouse,” is what I want to say. It’s in an old farmhouse. So it’s where Barcelona raises the next generation of football warriors.

STEPHEN: Do you go to school as well?

SOLOMON: You do. I’ve heard it gives you a pretty decent education, actually.

STEPHEN: Who are some of his classmates, yeah?

SOLOMON: Mainly Gerard Piqué and Cesc Fabregas. They thought they were going to be able to bully him at first, on the pitch. And he said they were getting ready to kick the crap out of him, and then he got the ball and they just couldn’t get near him. The rest is history and he’s probably gone on to become the greatest player of all time.

STEPHEN: It sounds as though part of the appreciation is almost an artistic appreciation.

SOLOMON: He’s beautiful to watch. I wouldn’t call him graceful necessarily. I think elegant maybe, but it’s breathtaking to watch. How he doesn’t look like an athlete. He’s 5’7”, he’s a little stocky. But when he’s with the ball and he’s running at an opponent, you can tell they’re terrified. That’s not necessarily the artistic part, but what he does. It’s so beautiful. There’ll be two defenders and there’s no space, he just squeezes himself and the ball through. I think part of that is actually his height. It gives him the ability to twist. But it’s really — he’s beautiful to watch.

BENNETT: He’s the single greatest footballer I have ever seen.

Roger Bennett again.

BENNETT: Amazing. He looks like he’s just wandered out of your local SuperCuts. And to understand him you have to know about his nemesis: Ronaldo.

DUBNER: Who is the opposite in every way.

BENNETT: So Ronaldo, Portugal captain. The two of them, it’s like LeBron and Steph Curry. You know, which is the greatest player? Both of them have completely different attributes, different physical styles of play. Ronaldo is physically beautiful.

DUBNER: He seems to be allergic to wearing shirts after goal-scoring.

BENNETT: I often think he doesn’t enjoy scoring goals in their own sake, they’re just stages for him to rip his shirt off, show the world his nipples. Ronaldo. It’s a truly remarkable thing. He is a sculpture of a man. Dominant. Beautiful. I mean, potent is the word.

DUBNER: And a good goal scorer. But Lionel Messi, you’re saying, is a better player because not only does he often outscore Ronaldo but what else does Messi do?

BENNETT: When he takes to the field, a combination of his vision, his ability to accelerate at incredible pace into crevices of space that really no one else sees, leaving behind only smoking cleats where defenders once were, just vaporizes opponents, his ability to compute angle, wind speed, traject— I mean he has a beautiful mind in there. The way he finishes goals: rarely smashing the ball home. It’s always with just enough effort, just enough power. Only what it needs. The great Uruguayan poet and social critic Eduardo Galeano described him, he said, “Lionel Messi runs with the ball as if he’s wearing it as a sock.” No one else can take it from him and he scores stunning goals with routine, for Barcelona, under great pressure, delivering over and over and over again.

KUPER: Soccer is really a dance in space.

Simon Kuper again.

KUPER When you have the ball, you try to open space, and when you don’t have the ball you have to try to close space. You do that not as an individual but as part of an 11-player team. And so the players who have the best sense of space, and Messi is a great example, are the best players.

But there are a couple things to consider. First: the World Cup features national teams whose players spend most of their time spread all over the globe on their club teams. Which means it’s hard for national teams to have a lot of cohesion for the World Cup. But also: soccer is played differently in different leagues, on different continents. There are, for instance, distinct European characteristics and South American characteristics. Messi, coming from Argentina and playing for Barcelona, exhibits both.

KUPER: So when Messi gets the ball in Barcelona’s close, short-passing moves, he can say to the defender trying to mark him, “Look, I can post to these four guys near me, or I can dribble and shoot. You have no idea which of these five options I’m going to choose.” And so he’s terrifying. And Messi, what I always tell my children is Messi doesn’t pass into somebody’s feet. Messi doesn’t pass where you are. Messi passed into the space where he wants to you be. So usually Messi gives the ball into a space and the teammate runs onto it, unmarked, and scores. So Messi has seen the space and told the teammates, in effect, “That’s the space.”

DUBNER: So that ability, if I put two and two together, I would think would be devalued in a World Cup because his teammates are not as accustomed to thinking about being in the space where they’re not yet. Am I right?

KUPER: Yeah. I mean Argentine players have a much weaker sense of space partly because the Latin Americans, they didn’t grow up in that European tradition and they’re just not as good. I mean there’s several of the guys who played alongside him in 2014 that, had they won the World Cup final, people would have said, “That guy won a World Cup final?” And you know it’s an amazing achievement of Messi’s. He’s often criticized in Argentina. But it’s amazing that he got those players into a World Cup final.

DUBNER: So let’s say that someone doesn’t watch a lot of soccer — maybe they’ve heard about Lionel Messi, maybe seen some highlights but never really seen him play — how would you advise that they watch him during this World Cup?

KUPER: Well, watch him knowing that he’s handicapped by the team he’s in. But Argentina have typically said to him in effect, “Here’s the ball. You do it alone.” Messi thinks, “Well I can do that, but I’m a team player so I need people moving around me to offer decoys even if I don’t pass to them.” And so when they give him the ball 50 meters from the opposition’s goal and the whole Argentine team standing still and Messi isolated, he’s kind of stuck. So, typically for Argentina, because they don’t have a system, he dribbles. So what you see at World Cups is much more Messi the soloist and not Messi the team player. You won’t see him as the interpreter of space. You’ll see him as the kind of brilliant soloist.

BENNETT: The last three big tournaments he’s played, he’s got his team to the final. But, it’s like watching LeBron. It’s like an unbelievable player and the rest of the cast, they underperform around him and they delegate, like they just wait for him to do magic and he’s got them to the final of the last World Cup, the final of the last two Copas. They both — all three of them have ended both in defeat and with him in tears.

SOLOMON: He’s a big-game player. But I think it’s been proven, one player can’t win a World Cup. It’s just not possible. And I think that’s why he hasn’t and that’s why I don’t think he will. I don’t think Argentina is going to win it.

There’s one more thing to watch for in this year’s World Cup even if you have absolutely zero interest in soccer. It’s not every day that a massive global event takes place in a country that’s considered, in many quarters, to be some combination of dictatorship, rogue state, and pure bully. How’s that going to play out? We called the Stanford political scientist Michael McFaul, who knows a bit about geopolitics and Russia.

Michael McFAUL: I spent five years in the government during the Obama Administration — three years as the senior director at the National Security Council responsible for Russia and Eurasia and then two more years in Moscow as the U.S. ambassador there.

Given that Russians love soccer, delivering the World Cup was a major coup for Vladimir Putin.

McFAUL: For Putin, the World Cup is a victory both domestically and internationally. On the one hand that he is delivering this fantastic sporting event to his citizens. That is a great achievement and he will be loved for it. But then too internationally I do think it delivers a positive message for Russia because I think a lot of the world has a very outdated image of Russia as this thuggish, criminal place where everybody’s living in poverty, and that’s not what you’re going to see on television during the World Cup. Russia today is richer probably than it’s ever been in its history. And so fans visiting Moscow or St. Petersburg or the other venues, even some of the more obscure venues, for the first time are going to see that Russia is a wealthy European country.

Russia was awarded this World Cup back in 2010.

McFAUL: Well, the world has changed remarkably, between 2010 and today with respect to Russia’s relationship with the West. Starting with Ukraine, annexation of Crimea, then bolstering a dictator like Mr. Assad in Syria where, you know, countless tens of thousands have been killed and millions displaced. And then meddling in the U.S. election. And now, you know, alleged assassination attempts in the U.K. So I think the context has changed dramatically and I think the challenge therefore for the western and I would say the global community is how do you show up and participate in a sporting event that everybody loves — including me by the way, we all want to see the World Cup succeed — but without somehow giving legitimacy to many of those things that I just described in terms of Putin’s foreign policy behavior.

McFaul’s solution? He’s advocated that no government official from any NATO country should attend the World Cup.

McFAUL: I don’t understand why governments from anywhere should be involved. This is a sporting event. It’s not a United Nations event. I think we should get out of the business of using sporting events for diplomatic ends and just let the athletes do their thing and let the fans do their thing and keep the politics out of it.

Some countries, including England and Iceland, have decided to not send delegations.

BENNETT: Part of me is surprised that the world is not talking about boycotting the whole event —

Roger Bennett again, from Men in Blazers.

BENNETT: — because ultimately the World Cup’s got a dreadful history, Stephen, a dreadful history of prostituting itself to the propaganda desires of awful dictators, going back to Mussolini in the 1930’s. The Argentinean military junta in 1978, a devastating moment for anyone that cares about democracy, justice, human rights. Russia is a rogue state. And the world is going to go there for an entire month with Vladimir Putin presiding over it.

Bennett recently had Garry Kasparov on his show.

BENNETT: Huge Russian football fan and political dissident.

And Bennett said to Kasparov:

BENNETT: I was like, “What are, you know, you are an activist. You are speaking out. What do you want us to do?” He said, “I would never tell anyone to boycott the World Cup. You cannot boycott the World Cup.” There is a massive chance that this could be a World Cup, a great cacophony. And these stadia over four time zones and many have been flung together.

At the last major tournament, the Euros, the Russian fans, a plague of far-right, Nazi-infused, U.F.C.-trained football hooligans — I come from a nation that’s provided the gold standard of football hooligans. These Russians are next-level football hooligans. They ran through English fans with hammers and GoPros. They filmed everything, and they devastated, they maimed, and absolutely destroyed an entire town over a period of 24 hours. Putin’s response to that has been to bring in platoons of Cossacks on horseback with whips and have them police these stadia. Cossacks.

You’ve got your hooligans. You’ve got your stadiums that are unready. You’ve got your English fans descending for which they built Soviet-style enormous drunk tanks. They’ve legalized heroin and cocaine around the stadia and you’ve got Cossacks with whips on horseback. What could possibly possibly go wrong?

DUBNER: But it’s remarkable though, you’re saying that Kasparov says, essentially, that “I’m sorry for all that misery, for all those malign intentions, etc. Football is just too intoxicatingly attractive to actually shut it down.” What does that say, I mean it’s, to me it says more about football than it does about geopolitics, in a strange way.

BENNETT: I’m not arguing with it.

DUBNER: Yeah.

BENNETT: I’m not arguing with, “don’t take away my World Cup,” Garry Kasparov.

And thus are the complicated, conflicted, miserable, jubilant, ethereal, and occasional primal emotions that accompany the world’s most worldly sport. May you watch it in good health. And if you choose not to watch — well, check out Roger Bennett’s American Fiasco podcast, or the Footy for Two podcast; or the fine books Soccernomics and Scorecasting; or Michael McFaul’s new book: From Cold War to Hot Peace: An American Ambassador in Putin’s Russia. Or, how about this option: you can start making plans to attend the 2026 World Cup — in America! That’s right: it’s just been announced that a joint bid by the U.S., Canada, and Mexico has been selected by FIFA for the 2026 World Cup. With 60 of the 80 matches to be played here in America. Anyone need a floor to sleep on in New York? Give me a shout.

Freakonomics Radio is produced by WNYC Studios and Dubner Productions. This episode was produced by Matt Frassica with help from Greg Rosalsky, Joel Meyer, and Eliza Lambert. Our staff also includes Alison Hockenberry, Stephanie Tam, Merritt Jacob, Max Miller, Harry Huggins, and Andy Meisenheimer. You can subscribe to Freakonomics Radio on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Here’s where you can learn more about the people and ideas in this episode:

SOURCES

Roger Bennett, host of American Fiasco and co-host of Men in Blazers.

Solomon Dubner, host of Footy for Two.

Simon Kuper, Financial Times writer and co-author of Soccernomics.

Michael McFaul, professor of political science at Stanford University.

Toby Moskowitz, professor of finance at the Yale School of Management and co-author of Scorecasting.

Stefan Szymanski, professor of economics at the University of Michigan and co-author of Soccernomics.

Luigi Zingales, professor of finance at the University of Chicago.

RESOURCES

Soccernomics (2018 World Cup Edition): Why England Loses; Why Germany, Spain, and France Win; and Why One Day Japan, Iraq, and the United States Will Become Kings of the World’s Most Popular Sport, by Simon Kuper and Stefan Szymanski (2018).

It’s Football, Not Soccer (And Vice Versa): On the History, Emotion, and Ideology Behind One of the Internet’s Most Ferocious Debates, by Stefan Szymanski and Silke-Maria Weineck (2018).

From Cold War to Hot Peace: An American Ambassador in Putin’s Russia, by Michael McFaul (2018).

“With U.S. Out of World Cup, Fox Sports and 23andMe Help Stateside Fans Find Rooting Interest,” by Anthony Crupi (AdAge, April 5, 2018).

“Convergence vs. The Middle Income Trap: The Case of Global Soccer,” by Melanie Krause and Stefan Szymanski (Dec., 2017).

“FIFA: Computer-Destroying Russian Bid Committee Did Nothing Corrupt,” by Tom Ley (Deadspin, June 27, 2017).

“Sixteen Additional FIFA Officials Indicted for Racketeering Conspiracy and Corruption,” (U.S. Department of Justice, Dec. 3, 2015).

“Why has Sepp Blatter resigned as Fifa president?” by Josh Halliday (The Guardian, June 2, 2015).

“Fifa officials pocketed $150m from ‘World Cup of fraud’ – US prosecutors,” by Rupert Neate (The Guardian, May 27, 2015).

Scorecasting: The Hidden Influences Behind How Sports Are Played and Games Are Won, by Toby Moskowitz and L. Jon Wertheim (2012).

“Interview with Match-Fixing Investigator Declan Hill,” (Sept. 1, 2008).

EXTRAS

American Fiasco.

Men in Blazers.

Footy For Two.

“Lionel Messi The 10 GREATEST Goals Ever.”

“Cristiano Ronaldo Top 10 Unimaginable Goals.”

The post How to Catch World Cup Fever appeared first on Freakonomics.

from Dental Care Tips http://freakonomics.com/podcast/world-cup/

[voiceactinguk]

[Audio Drama] [Unpaid] Analogous Movement

In an attempt to find a new job, Elinor "Eli" Torosian finds herself and her friends dragged into a conundrum that quite literally transcends time and space itself. Analogous Movement is an upcoming sci-fi audio drama, paying homage to the detective radio dramas from the 30s and 40s, with a slight allusion to Orson Welles’s War of the World’s broadcast. The first episode is set to be released February 23rd. I will be release the episode (hopefully) on iTunes. They will also be available on YouTube.  Please email your lines to me at [email protected] as an mp3 file.  Title your email: Analogous Audition and then the character you are auditioning for. Like so: Analogous Audition [Character name]. In the body of your email, please give me your name, best place to contact you, any websites or social media you might have and your discord (or skype if you do not have a discord). Also include your availability.  The auditions will close November 17th and I will get back to chosen actors towards the beginning of December. Be prepared to start production mid-December. Unfortunately, I cannot give you compensation. If in the near future, I have enough money and could make a profit off Analogous Movement, I am open to discussing it with the actors. At this time, however, you are free to put Analogous Movement on your resume and use me as a reference.  Logo is done by @shillyyshally on twitter and art of characters is done by @Pratzelwurm on twitter.  The following characters will be appearing in episode one.  -------- Narrator Anyone can audition for this role. The only thing I am looking for in terms of casting is being able to speak clearly and calmly- like a narrator would. This role is basically just announcing things such as “this is Analogous movement!” or the location of where the story is taking place. Note: Up to five people will have this role. If you have been cast as a character, you can still audition for the narrator. Any accents will be acceptable.  Line 1: Life, with its rules, its obligations, and its freedoms, is like a sonnet: You're given the form, but you have to write the sonnet yourself. A Wrinkle in Time, By Madeleine L’Engle. Line 2: Analogous Movement. Part one: The Soul’s Bandaged Moments. Gulf Coast Undercity #3, North America. July 2164. Line 3: Thus concludes our program. Tune in next time to see the thrilling conclusion! Or not. Line 4: Welcome back! Did you miss us? Eli Torosian Looking for a trans woman between the ages of 18-24. Her voice is in the countertenor range. She sounds very apathetic most of the time, or disinterested. Eli’s voice becomes more emotional when distressed or upset. Can tend to be very snappy. She speaks very fast, but slow enough you can understand her.  Eli doesn’t take herself very seriously, so don’t think you have to sound serious, you can be a little over the top. Her accent is a regular accent that you would hear in the Midwest- the Northern Inland Dialect if you will.  Line 1: [in an apathetic tone, kind of sarcastic] … okay there’s like… three different kind of responses to your question. One, I could joke and just say depression. Two, I could say I don’t know. Three is... any of my chronic illnesses. Take your pick. My personal choice is depression. Line 2: [in a tired voice] Oh jesus christ chill the fuck out. Can’t ask how far I hopped in time? Sheesh. Line 3: [upset]: Ha, after losing this job, how the shit can you expect me to find another one?! Line 4: [Ranting] No because most of those jobs were in high places for detective work and like, they’re gonna say my name or pass it around or something! I can’t fucking work for that job Cari! All my chances are fucking shot. Ndidi Hobbs Looking for a black english woman between the ages of 18-24. Her vocal range is more of a mezzo soprano. Her accent is a Northern English accent, specifically the Yorkshire county area. However, I will be okay with any English accent you already have. Ndidi speaks in a very calm manner most of the time, and her voice is a bit soft. Not to entirely give away spoilers, but she is in a situation where she has to conceal a lot of information, making her uncomfortable. Any line explaining her mission is a bit anxious and feels forced, as Ndidi is not a fan of lying. (Her name is pronounced Nn-DEE-dee) Line 1: [Introductory, explanatory] My partner and I were sent to this time period to... investigate an… [hesitant] incident. I know that sounds really fishy- cause I’m pretty sure time travel was just being invented at this time. Anyway, back to what I was saying. So, my partner and I got sent here because something happened to the past- well I guess technically that’s your present. Anyways. [clears throat] Basically, we were sent here to see how it’s going to affect our future. Line 2: [assuring] It’s not your fault, see Jas- the tall person over there, and I do this all the time. I mean, err… we investigate time problems. Like a time problem can be anything from like a criminal trying to go back and kill someone- that one happens a lot, I think you can tell why. So you’re really not the [cringing] first case that this has happened to. Line 3: [confrontational] I’ve been in this agency three years and for what? I can’t keep just… lying to someone we’re supposed to help. Can you at least let me tell her something about what we’re doing? Line 4: [casual, conversational] Well, fun facts the way they do brain chips in this time period is  dangerous in ours. I mean, most everyone has a brain chip, but the surgery is… a lot less, I guess the right word is invasive,- in 2296. I don’t know what they changed, but is it really true some people died from the old surgery? Carina "Cari" Wallace Looking for a latina between the ages of 20-25. Her vocal range is an alto to mezzo-soprano. Cari’s voice is kind of tired, and she’s kind of chill like her roommate Eli is. Though she’s less biting and sarcastic, and takes herself a bit more seriously. Cari’s voice will need to sound a little off put with what she’s dealing with, but she’s hardly ever truly mean and can sound stern when she needs to. She has that of a typical Central Texan accent. It is not too heavy. Line 1: [Encouraging] Oh come on, you’ll find something. I mean… you… just don’t put down your last five failed jobs? I mean I can bullshit and be a ref for you? Line 2: [stern] Eli, I’m sure they’re not going to spread your name around. Look, [a sigh] Eli, I understand it and everything but… I don’t want to throw you out… but I really am getting tired of not knowing how much rent you’re going to be able to pay. How about this… why don’t we go spend tonight seeing if there’s a job for you that could work? Line 3: [angry] This isn’t the time, smart ass. God, now I have to redo the share of the rent. [Cutting someone off]  I’m still pissed at you, but I don’t want you out of money until you can find another job. Line 4:  [casual, more conversational] Okay so… oh my god Eli… you can time travel now? How did you even manage that? That’s so hilarious… maybe not hilarious but, how did you manage that? I… wow this has got to be the weirdest mess you’ve ever gotten yourself in. Nari Kang Looking for a Korean woman between the ages of 16-20. Nari’s voice is in the soprano range. She needs to sound very energetic most of the time, but her reactions are a bit immature. Most of the time Nari will ramble about science- specifically her favorite, chemistry. Her voice picks up speed when super excited or when freaking out. When around people she doesn’t know, her voice is very soft. Nari is a fun character, but be aware that she can be shy. Don’t worry too much about switching between the two. She has a Northern American Inland Accent. Line 1: [getting asked a question about her latest project, excited] Oh! Well you see here I have this thing called a plasma gun and I know, I know original… but let me explain to you exactly what makes mine so unique. See most of the time they’re really short range and you can’t actually use the gun as… well a gun, but I managed to create one that is long range and can be able to shoot a continuous stream. Oh and not to mention it has the abilities to shoot quick streams if that’s your thing too. Also, my friend uhm… my friend Mel helped me design it she’s a really good designer and… oh. Right yeah sorry… uhm. Yeah this is my project! Line 2:  [explaining] Uh… well see from what I know about time travel- I don’t really know physics so I might not be accurate. Well, we’re kind of moving in a linear fashion on our timeline, but see you can step out of the linear fashion via uh… well, death. So you can understand how nasty it is to figure out a way to not… die. So what I think people do is remove any connection the timeline has on you to make you time travel and then force your body to move faster or slower or… reverse in regards to how we’re moving. Uh, well the “we” being everyone else moving linear in the timeline. Line 3: [meeting someone for first time, shy, soft] Oh. You’re… uhm… are you one of Anton’s friends? Uh… oh you’re not, I don’t think. I mean, uh… it’s a pleasure to meet you! Uh…   Line 4: [interjecting, fleeting] It can’t be a machine! There’s only one time machine in existence! No one’s ever gotten so far with time travel as to use a… a chemical! What chemical would you even use?! Anton Lowe Looking for a man between the ages of 18-25. Anton’s voice is in the baritone to tenor range. His voice is a higher pitch and a little nasally. He’s very jokey and upbeat, but often times can be kind of mean. Underneath that he’s more emotional, but that hardly ever shows. It’s usually when he’s stressed and put under pressure do you see that side of him. He has a central Texan accent.  Line 1: [snarky] Ohhhhh, just because I was right and that you lost your job. Well, I see how it is. Line 2: [embarrassed] Well your parents were nice enough to let me stay there! I’m just saying as a fact. Line 3:  [holding back laughter] No, no it’s the right time… this is fucking hilarious! Line 4:  [upset and emotional] I just… I couldn’t stand that you, the person who always had fuck ups and failures somehow is doing okay. And… I’m not! Nothing has ever happened to me that was good or bad and yet I’m letting some fucking scumbag walk all over me… and I stay cause I think it’ll teach me something! But it hasn’t! It just makes me feel worse. Melina "Mel" Iordanou Looking for a woman between the ages of 18-26. Mel’s voice is in the mezzo-soprano range. She’s often a tag along to Nari and Anton’s antics. Mel tries to be kind, but she’ll slip out and be kind of nasty if something or someone is bothering her constantly. Though Mel is more the type to notice if anyone in the group is feeling down first. She has a Northern American Inland Accent.  Line 1: [Explanatory, conversational] Oh, nothing. The usual. Anton is suffering because he lost a bunch of games in a row. And Nari wanted to hang out with someone other than him since he was going to be a sulking baby. And Cahya didn’t want to stay cooped up in their apartment while dealing with a sulking baby. So, here we are. Line 2: [Confused] Uh? Everything okay guys? Line 3: [Taken aback] No you didn’t? You had to rush to tell me you were excited about finishing your design. I thought you told everyone? Line 4: [tired] I agree, but why don’t we just focus on more positive things at the moment? Cahya Duong Looking for a non-binary southeast asian between the ages of 20-25. Cahya’s vocal range is in alto. They’re the partner of Anton and have been dating for about two years now. They’re a bit blunt often times, but usually try to do it in a humorous manner. Despite being very upfront and “brutally honest” they really do care a lot about Anton and his friends. (Their name is pronounced CHAH-yah) They have a Northern American Inland Accent. Line 1:  [Jokingly] I’ll believe you when you can hold a job for… more than… what’s the longest you’ve ever held a job? Line 2: [smug] Something wrong Nari? Line 3: [jokingly dramatic] How kind of you, to jump to your dear friend’s defense. Line 4: [Upset] Cause I think he’s a dick. And just a nasty person in general. I have no idea why Anton is dating him. But whatever, guess I have to respect someone who hates me! Load of bull ass fucking shit. Celeste Resnik  Looking for a non-binary jewish person who can at least sound older- up to their late 20s or 30s. Their voice is in the alto to mezzo-soprano range. Celeste is Eli’s Parent. They’re a bit forgetful about pretty much anything, including when their daughter starts school. Though Celeste is very kind and tries to be patient. They speak very cheerfully. They have a North Texan accent.  Line 1: [Just on the phone, conversational] Oh good! I was having issues earlier with my audio, but glad it’s working now. Oh, right sorry, I completely forgot! How was work today? I know you started it… uhm, when did you start it? Line 2: [Remembering] Alright. Oh right! I was wondering when you were coming up to visit? I just wanted to know in advance in case you needed money to take the sub. Line 3: [Concerned] Okay? Mm, you just check that. I want to see you before you go back to school at the very least. Does September sound good to you? Line 4: [happy] Oh, that’s good. I hope you’re having fun with it! But, uhm, right… why I was calling? -------- If you audition and are not cast, you are still invited to be extras for episode one and to audition future episodes. For any questions please email me at [email protected].  For any updates regarding the series, please visit the twitter, the tumblr, or the main website. Thank you and good luck!  http://dlvr.it/PwfCvG www.voiceacting.space

[rhlynd-blog]

The Next Best Thing

by Rhialyn Dadap

           This is not the piece I was planning to submit today. I planned to write something remarkable, something that will leave the readers gaping in wonder and astonishment. Something way out of my league, in other words. When I set out to write this, I envisioned the task to be smooth and easy, not anticipating the number of times I’d hit a wall, the hours I’d spend agonizing over a paragraph loaded with grammatical errors, and the frequent bout of laziness that tempted me to indulge in an hour or two of irresponsibility. To succumb to such temptation, however, entails a lot of consequences. The first is that my instructor will make a face again, the one that says she’s disappointed in me. The second is that the pile of schoolwork I have to finish just keeps growing with each day I delay. The third, the one that has convinced me again and again to get out of bed and face my computer is that mocking voice inside my head, echoing “Mao ra gihapon ka, wa gihapun ka nag-utro.” I have been battling with that voice for years now, ever since that fateful day in Borongan, Samar, when I resolved to be, pardon the cliché, the best version of myself.

           It was a hot and humid day in November. The gym was crawling with people—student writers in jeans and hoodies, coaches and teachers clutching thick folders and giving last minute pointers to their charges. The photo journalists stood in the distance, looking for the perfect spot to shoot, heaving their equipment with both hands lest they drop them in the melee. Everywhere there were clumps of students whispering excitedly among themselves, eagerly waiting for the game to start. In the middle of it all, I stood rooted to the spot, dazed and bewildered, growing panicky by the minute. I was part of the crowd but I was alone.

           I was a small girl, barely reaching five feet, unruly hair escaping a hastily pulled ponytail. In my left hand was a small tattered notebook where everything my teacher had told me was written. It wasn’t much but it was all I had. As I took in the commotion around me, I wondered how those notes could possibly help me win. My opponents all looked formidable, with their eyes framed with thick glasses and their fancy looking gadgets tucked in their elbows. Knowledge is power, and I knew I didn’t have that much. If only my coach was with me, I thought fleetingly. But no, I only had myself and my meager notes.

           The whistle blew. The game began. The players crouched in the middle of the court, waiting for the ball to be tossed in the air. What happened next was a series of dribbling, passing, shooting and rebounding. But that was all I could make sense of the confusion; my coach had taught me those words and what they meant. I didn’t like basketball, didn’t even watch the occasional game being played near our house. I was a girl after all, and girls, my mother would say, should stay in the house sweeping the floor and washing the dishes. All I knew about the game was its most basic rule—that the ball has to go through the hoop to score. I didn’t know why at one point, a player was allowed to shoot without his opponents guarding him, or why the ball was given to the other team when they took too long to shoot. But I watched and listened because what else could I do. I watched when a player hit a three-pointer for the fourth time and took note of his jersey number. When I couldn’t understand what was happening, I eavesdropped on the discussion of a nearby writer and his partner. I also glanced very surreptitiously at their notes, and just as silently scrawled them down on my own draft. If I sensed them giving me suspicious looks, I just feigned ignorance.

           The clock kept ticking. The ball kept rolling. But still I remained as clueless as when the match first started. So for lack of a better idea, I stuck to my original strategy—watch and listen. That was why, when chaos erupted five minutes into the third quarter, I saw everything from the very beginning. I saw when the guy in a number 35 jersey deliberately elbowed his defender on the way to the ring. I saw when the offended player with an almost murderous gleam in his eyes made his way toward guy 35 even after the shot was made. I looked for the referee and found him talking to another officer, completely oblivious to what was about to happen. It was only when a player was downed and both teams were involved in fisticuffs that the two managed to disengage what looked to be an ugly display of foul temper and unsportsmanlike conduct. The gym grew loud with the players throwing accusations against each other, pointing their fingers and trying to break free of the referees’ restraints. The atmosphere was ripe with excitement—cameramen clicking away at the sideline, student writers craning their necks to get a better look. “What happened? What happened?” they asked each other. They could only speculate. I didn’t bother asking the same question. Nobody would understand me anyway. I spoke Bisaya, and as far as I knew, everybody else spoke Waray.

           Finally, the gym quieted and the game continued. This time, while everybody else looked on, I kept on writing, only glancing up when a play was made. At last, something I completely understood, something I could write about. When the game ended, everybody flocked around the players, writers flinging questions after another, their answers barely audible in the din. The scene was much like those seen on television where journalists cluster around a celebrity trying to get his attention. I was jostled and shoved in every directions, almost knocked over when a writer forced his way to the front. I got my first taste of what it was like to be a journalist. Though I knew it was nothing compared to the real deal, and I might get some sore muscles afterwards, I loved every minute of it.

           We were given exactly one hour to write and polish our articles. Everyone got to work…well, everyone but me. I wasn’t sure what to write. Should I focus on the game? Or concentrate on the fight itself? Unlike the other contestants, I had no one to answer my questions, no one to compare notes with, no one to tell me what to do. The game was a blur to me. I had my secretly copied notes, but I didn’t know how to put them into words. When almost ten minutes had gone and my paper was still empty, I had no choice but to write about the only thing that made sense to me—the fight. At the back of my mind, I knew I should probably write about the game, how one team outscored the other, which team excelled in which quarter. But my hands had different plans. As I handed over my paper at the nick of time, I consoled myself with the fact that at least I finished it. I might not win, but I did what I was told to do.

           Awarding day came and I wore a blank face. I wished we didn’t have to attend but Ma’am Dora, my coach, had insisted. “Just in case,” she had said. The first category called was straight news writing—which I also joined. Nothing. My name wasn’t called and I pretended not to care. Inside though, I was a little embarrassed—straight news was the easiest category there was, or so the conference speakers had told us. I tried to tune out the names of the winners being called for the next categories. “Sports Writing in English category,” the emcee’s voice came back and still I tried to appear nonchalant. “Fourth place, from the Division of Southern Leyte,” I couldn’t hide my interest by that point. And then the most astonishing thing happened. I heard my name being called. I expected someone from another school to win, like Bontoc or Malitbog—their coach had been to numerous press conferences. To say that I was surprised would be a massive understatement. The next thing I knew, I was walking toward the stage, my coach beaming at me from where she sat with the other participants from our division. I was ecstatic. Proud. Overwhelmed. Sure, it was just fourth place, but I wasn’t about to forget that out of the sixty something who competed, my piece was ranked the fourth best. I was so sure I couldn’t do it, wasn’t cut out to be a writer, didn’t have what it takes, but the slip of paper I’ve been given on stage proved otherwise. I was thirteen at the time.

           Since then, I poured myself into journalistic writing. I borrowed books from my English teachers, photocopied pages of good articles, bought newspapers whenever I happened to be in a city. It wasn’t the best training, but it was the best I could do.

           The next school year, I was chosen to be a part of the radio broadcasting team. Even then, I was a fast-talker, my friends had to literally stop me whenever I get carried away. I have learned, in a very painful way, that reporting was not about how fast you speak, but how you speak and deliver a lot of information in a short amount of time and still be understood. I almost got ejected from the team for speaking too fast. We didn’t make it into the regional level, but I was named Best Reporter.

           It was then that I started dreaming. Someday, I’d become a journalist. I’d go into places where the action was taking place, write about famous people and interesting things, perhaps even risk my life in my quest to report to the world what was happening. Someday, I’d have my dream job and my father would no longer need to cut trees and destroy forests for a living. I loved my father but I couldn’t help but wish a different kind of work for him, one in which he couldn’t get arrested for illegal logging. Forget the survey that ranked a journalist as the fifth worst job to have. It was the best job for me, and I would become one someday.

           When someday came, it wasn’t quite like I’d imagined. April 2014, about five months after Yolanda, while the rest of the world was slowly recovering from the super typhoon’s devastation, my worst nightmare occurred. My father and my uncle Junjun were caught felling a tree branch, almost the size of a utility pole up on the mountain we called bulhang. The DENR had received an anonymous call reporting the distant sound of chainsaw on a Good Friday, which, for them was a grave offense. The police came, confirmed the report was true, loaded the chainsaw, shuffled my father and uncle inside the mobile car, and held them in the precinct. When we heard the news, I couldn’t bring myself to go to the police station. I couldn’t look at my dear father, so kind and loving, held inside a cell. A tree branch, that was what troubled me the most. My father has cut down so many enormous trees in his life, and he got arrested for cutting a branch. The irony was painful.

           A family friend had asked my father earlier that week to help him repair his hut if he’s got time. My father had readily agreed. He was going to do it for free. He did a lot of helping without asking for anything in return. During the wreckage after Yolanda, my father had volunteered himself and his chainsaw in clearing the streets of demolished trees. He’d worked for days, not caring that his own yard was also a wreck, and that his back would be sore at the end of the day.

           After a series of negotiations with the chief of police and the mayor, they were released from jail. An arrest was made so the police had to file charges, using false names on the papers. But although they were freed, the chainsaw has to remain in custody. The authorities saw it as a just punishment. I saw it as the end of a dream. That chainsaw was our livelihood. It was the reason we had food to eat, clothes to wear, money for school expenses. That same equipment would have helped send me to a good university. It was my last year in high school and we’ve talked about our plans. My father would continue cutting trees—legally since it was allowed after the super typhoon. I would enroli either in Tacloban or in Ormoc, we haven’t decided yet, and pursue my dream. But with the stable source of income yanked away from the family, I had to look elsewhere. I had to forget my dream.

           Now, as I write this story, I feel like the same thing has been happening all my life, in different scales. I would plan something big, imagine something wonderful, envision something beautiful only to have life snap me out of my illusion. Dreams are tricky that way. They’d lure you with the promise of a perfect future beyond the horizon and you’re helpless against the pull to get there. But when you finally arrive, if you get there at all, you fall off the cliff called expectation and land on your hide in the tide of reality. Studying to become an English teacher and writing an autobiography may be a far cry from my dream of writing features and articles and sports stories, but at least it’s something. I didn’t get perfect,  but I have this chance to write and express myself. I still get the pleasure of accomplishing something. Still, if there is a small part of me that still yearns for the kind of thrill I experienced that momentous day in Samar, that insists there’s more for me out there, I ignore it and embrace the next best thing.

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