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You're listening to the Monocle Daily, first broadcast on 18 May 2026 on Monocle Radio.
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Why is Iran still bombing its Gulf neighbours? Is the UK really about to put itself through Brexit again? And will an across the DMZ football match, warm relations between the Koreas. I'm Andrew Muller. The Monocle Daily starts. Hello and welcome to the Monocle Daily, coming to you from our studios here at Midori House in London. I'm Andrew Muller. My guests Nina Dos Santos and Anand Menon will discuss the day's big stories. And we'll hear from ESPN Seth Wickersham about his new book chronicling the evolution of the NFL quarterback to its current hybrid of athlete, CEO and celebrity. Stay tuned. All that and more coming up right here on the Monocle Daily.
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Foreign.
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This is the Monocle Daily. I'm Andrew Muller and I am joined today by Nina Dos Santos, international broadcast correspondent and former CNN Europe editor and Anand Menon, professor of European Politics and Foreign affairs at King's College London and Director of UK in a Changing Europe, a think tank. Hello to you both.
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Hello.
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C
Hello. How are you doing?
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Very well, thank you for asking. No one ever asks. And now, now someone has you both arrive from having recently visited Datelines, which will be recurring through tonight's show, which is handy. Anand, you were in South Korea, for what reason? How did you find it? How was the weather, et cetera?
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I went to speak at a conference. I found it utterly fascinating in loads of ways, which I think we'll touch on later on. And the weather was slightly disappointing, I have to say. Well, it wasn't as warm as I'd been led to believe it might be.
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Well, there's a quote for their tourism posters. Nina, you have recently been in Washington D.C. staying at what was, as I understand it, is no longer a Trump Hotel.
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Yes, that's right. It was for a while, the Trump Hotel. Now it's back to the Waldorf Astoria. And when I walked in through the doors, I thought, hang on a second, I know this place. But actually it was other buildings that the US President is leaving a bigger and more lasting footprint on that caught my attention.
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Let me see if I can guess.
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You can't go anywhere in Washington near the White House without noticing that lots of bits of Washington D.C. are being dug up. There's the Lincoln Memorial. He obviously wants to put a sort of big sort of swimming pool type water feature there, or locals have said it would end up looking like a swimming pool. And he put an AI generated image of himself and Other people potentially enjoying the, the rays, the sun rays, because obviously it gets quite hot and steamy in Washington during the summer, I must say. Weather was slightly disappointing, by the way, over there. And you know, of course you've got the, the new ballroom that's being built. So I must say I almost walked right past the White House without realizing it was the White House because all, all the awnings had changed and half it was being dug up. But there was lots of furious activities, you can imagine, with Marine One leaving, going and leaving because the US President at the time was on his way off to China.
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Well, we shall crack on because happenstance would have it that we have a full house pretty much of intractable global crises to get to grips with. We will be doing the Middle east, the Taiwan Strait, Brexit and the Koreas. So if we can't knock at least one of these over in the next 40 minutes, I don't know what we're all doing here. We will start in the United Arab Emirates, which since hostilities commenced in its vicinity in February, has been notably cagey about reporting impacts or letting other people report them. An exception has been made for a drone strike which occurred yesterday and which started a fire in roughly the last place anyone would want, one that is disconcertingly close to the Barakah nuclear power plant in Abu Dhabi. According to local authorities, there were no injuries and no detriment to the plant's safety. The UAE has suggested uncontroversially that Iran or one of its proxies were probably to blame and said that it reserves the right to respond to what it called a terrorist attack. Anand, first of all, are we going to go ahead and agree that the Emiratis are safe enough in suggesting that whoever is running affairs in Tehran may have had some idea?
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I mean, if I were a betting man, my money would be on Tehran.
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I have to say yes, they reserve the right to respond. There's some reporting that they already kind of have. There have been these reports that both the UAE and the Saudis joined in on the quiet during US Israeli operations. Is it possible that this is Iranian retaliation for that?
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Quite possibly. So it's certainly Iranian retaliation for what they see as the complicity of these states with the attack on them by the United States and Israel. And it does place the Gulf countries in a rather uncomfortable position because my sense of where they are now is the worst outcome in the world for them would be a half finished war, you know, a desperately angry and resentful regime that is still in place in Tehran that sees them as part of the problem and is therefore liable to launch drone strikes at any attempt. So I think in a sense, what they're thinking now is how do we get an out from this war that works for us? And I think secretly they're probably hoping that the Americans finish the job.
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Conversely, Nina, is a half finished war actually quite a good result for Iran?
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Well, especially considering as obviously Donald Trump talked about ending an entire civilization at one point just a couple of weeks ago. One would think that things actually are looking slightly stronger for Tehran than people might have imagined two and a half months ago in the run up to this situation. But as Anand was just saying before, it does present some significant difficulties for other US allies in the region that have been trying to diversify their economies, that have also been trying to get their oil to other parts of the world. And this is an area that makes about 20% of the world's oil. And the UAE has pulled itself back out of opec. It's able to profit from this moment economically. But at the same time, this drone strike just goes to show how vulnerable parts of its infrastructure are. I mean, this is a $20 billion facility. It provides about a quarter of the UAE's electricity. There's still concerns about water supplies in the region if any of the desalination plants get hit, not just in the uae, but in places like Saudi Arabia. So it is a very tense situation for these US allies. And I think what's really stoked of the fire here is the fact that obviously Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel let it be known a couple of weeks ago that he claimed he had visited the UAE during the Iran war. That was obviously rebuffed quite strongly by the UAE itself. But again, the point there, as Anand was just mentioning before, is that Iran is making the point that it views that as extremely hostile.
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How twitchy will the Emirates be getting by now, Anand? Because their whole pitch for decades has been that we are a metaphorical and actual oasis of stability in a somewhat volatile neighbourhood. And the last couple of months have demonstrated that they are vulnerable in practice as well as in theory.
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Absolutely. And I think there's a massive threat to their economic model. Here you hear stories of expats considering their future in the region because they no longer feel safe. Their attractiveness, that soft power that meant you can come here, you can be safe, you can sort of forget who our neighbours are because it will never impinge on you, is definitely challenged. They're also going to have to spend a significant amount of money on rebuilding the damage from this war and on rearming. So their ability to deploy soft power abroad, you know, they're fond of buying sports teams and the like, that's going to be severely compromised as well. So there's a real challenge for them, I think.
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I mean, is there any coming back from it, though, Nina? Because everybody, at least everybody who's ever looked at a map of the region, which may exclude quite a lot of the current US State Department, has understood the potential threat of the Strait of Hormuz. It is one of the world's great vulnerable choke points. But there'd always been this assumption that, ok, the Iranians probably could do that, but they wouldn't really. And if they did, we would stop them. Whereas now the Iranians have done it, as of this broadcast at least, nobody's figured out how to stop them from doing it. And therefore, it is now a factor.
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And that's because everybody's been focused on the nuclear threat coming from Iran rather than the economic threat that obviously, it turns out, has been the trump card, if you pardon the pun here, that Tehran has used with the plan, probably will continue to do so. That's why it's looking very dicey diplomatically as to how on earth this Strait of Hormuz can really be reopened. I mean, obviously there can be some mediation with Qatar, Oman, Pakistan, but really, there's a sense that with the midterms looming in the United States and that gas price, if it continues to stay high through the summer, well, Donald Trump may well get punished because let's face it, the summer driving season is when lots of US Citizens start driving from one part to the other, and they are extremely economically sensitive to the price of oil and gas. And he can't get it down if the Strait of Hormuz is still blocked.
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I mean, it is the case, Anand, that Trump's own approval ratings have been descending in rough proportion to the ascent of oil prices. He has, within the last 24 hours, directed another threat at Iran, saying the clock is ticking. But has he become the boy who cried wolf at this point?
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To an extent, yes. I mean, we had when we had the argument over tariffs earlier in his second term, this whole nation of tac, taco, Trump, that Trump always u turns on his threats. And there is an element of that now. I think the whole world is perplexed. There's also, I think, interestingly, a nice insight into the problems for Western powers of asymmetric warfare. Obviously, the United States is far more powerful than Iran. That being said they cannot deal with this issue of small boats in the straits, however powerful they may be, short of actually just trying to take down the regime. And this is a real problem for Trump. I think he assumed this would be like Venezuela, quick, easy, and he'd get what he wanted. Now he finds himself caught in a conflict and it's very hard to see how he saves face and extricates himself from this.
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Well, sticking with the subject of once mighty superpowers attempting to extricate themselves here in the United Kingdom, it seems that the post Brexit decade may grind on a while longer. In between a self inflicted leadership crisis in the governing party and melodramatic agonising over the UK's relationship with Europe, two of the declared contenders to succeed Sir Keir Starmer as Prime Minister at some as yet unspecified juncture have come out not merely as remainers, but rejoiners. Up to a point. The now former Health Secretary Wes Streeting has harrumphed that Brexit was a catastrophic mistake and that the UK should seek to rejoin the eu, while Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham, now attempting to become MP for Makerfield and therefore a plausible P, is retreating from a somewhat similar position. Anand, first of all, because this is very much your area, how much are you looking forward to doing Brexit all over again?
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Well, obviously I never stopped, so this is just a continuation in slightly more extreme form. But it is. I mean, this is almost the Brexit sweet spot, isn't it? Because on the one, if you think about the Labour leadership election that we might have, we don't know for certain. The thing to bear in mind is that Labour MPs are massively and unrepresentatively pro European as our. Okay, so if you want to become Labour leader, you need these pro Europeans to vote for you. So what you need to do is sound incredibly positive about the European Union, which is what West Streeting did. Okay. He didn't actually say anything significant. He didn't say we'll join soon. He said one day we should rejoin. But it's a vibes thing rather than a policy thing. He sounded pro European. In so doing, he puts Andy Burnham in a really difficult spot because Andy Burnham has got two electorates to worry about. He's got the Labour membership if and when he becomes an MP and stands for the leadership. But before then, he's got a constituency that voted 65% leave where his main opponent is going to be reform and where it might well be. That sounding like you want to reverse the Results of the referendum is bad politics. So actually we're streeting by forcing this issue onto the agenda has placed Andy Burnham in a really tight spot.
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And this is why, Nina, we see Andy Burnham saying, well, his most recent quote on the subject, Brexit has been damaging, but the last thing we should do is rerun those arguments. Does that translate from campaigning politicians speak to please shut up about this and stop asking me questions?
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Yes, because I've got to win a by election in a particular constituency that might not necessarily think globalization has delivered them all the dividends that people in Brussels may. And I think the other two things that they've got an issue with is the red flags that the current government have signed up to when they were elected with that big thumping mandate in 2024. And that was Keir Starmer's ruling out of rejoining the Customs Union and the single market. So there's a real nervousness even among pro European Britons about what exactly they would get as a deal with Brussels. There's a real sense that with Ursula von der Leyen and the Germans in charge, they could drive a pretty hard bargain. And at the end of the day, it won't reverse the 6 or 7% worth of economic damage that Brexit has created for this country.
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Which does prompt, I think, the under considered question when this, every time this pops up unarmed, which is, would the EU actually want the UK back?
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I mean, in a way the EU doesn't have a choice because it is mandated by its own treaties to consider any application by European democracy. So actually that's why applying to join is very different to applying to join the single market, because they have to consider that and there's a process they have to go to. Would they make it easy for us? Absolutely not. Would they strike a hard bargain? Absolutely they would. They would extract as much cash and other concessions from us as they could. And the final thing is it's all about politics. And there is a waiting list of states trying to get into the European Union at the moment. There's the western Balkans. There is, of course, Ukraine. Iceland's having a referendum on applying to join later this year. Where the UK fell in that queue would be a really interesting question. And just to add one final thing, it is more than likely that in the event we applied to join, the French would have to have a referendum about whether they wanted us to.
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That's a very good point, especially they may well be run by the far right at this point, if polling is correct. Can I just ask a Quick question, though. My recollection when I used to cover Europe and Brexit at cnn, good old days, in the good old days still hasn't stopped. But if I'm not wrong, according to the treaties, you'd have to surrender your currency, wouldn't you? Wouldn't that be another issue that the UK would have to.
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There are countries in the EU who still don't use the euro.
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Yeah. I think under the treaties you have to say that you surrender your currency. But if you take Sweden and Poland, both of which qualify for the euro now, neither of which is showing any intention of adopting and no one's doing anything about it.
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But that would be a political football in the uk, wouldn't it?
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I think it would be one of the really intense flashpoints of the negotiations because the EU would say, you have to sign up for this whether you like it or not. And the incumbent Prime Minister would struggle, I think, to get heard. If he said to his domestic audience, we'll sign up, but we won't really do it. I think that could be problematic because
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this was a question I did want to ask. Obviously, as Nina was saying, and I'm sure you're right, Nina, the EU would drive a fairly hard bargain. But would they drive Anand if they realized that was breaking point, if they said, okay, we will take the UK back under these conditions, including signing up to the euro, if a British Prime Minister said to them, in a million years, the people of Britain will not vote to join the euro, which I think is an accurate assessment, would that cause the EU to give. Give the UK a pass?
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I think almost certainly not. I think the EU's reaction would be, we have nothing but time. Go away and think about it. Because apart from anything else, the advantage from the EU side of forcing the UK to adopt the euro is it would be a lot, lot more difficult to leave if we tried to do it again.
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Yeah. And also I do remember when, obviously, David Cameron suggested the referendum back in the days of 2015. I remember covering all those EU summits when he came armed with the suggestion of an emergency break on migration. There were a lot of people there around that summit table who said, well, maybe we should hear him out, because, you know, it's worth going down this route and look at where it's led.
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But just finally on this one, nina, looking at YouGov's latest polling on rejoining the European Union, they currently have it 55, 33 for and against. So 55 want to go back, 33 don't. That includes 80% of labor voters, which I think goes to the Andy Burnham dilemma. Intriguingly, it also includes 22% of Leave voters and 11% of Reform voters. I would be intrigued to hear from the reform voter who wants to rejoin the European Union. They may, of course, have not entirely understood the question, but what would those numbers have to be before a government actually decided, all right, let's do this. Because I'm wondering. My long bet is that if Labour is still floundering coming up to the next general election, which is not due until 2029, that could be their one big point of differential is to stand up and say, all right, vote for us, we're taking you back in.
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I agree with you somewhat. Full disclosure, I'm not a syphologist, but I do think that, having witnessed when the Liberal Democrats put that gauntlet down in big display, they paid the price for that their leader had to step down. So that's a cautionary tale. Obviously, it's not one of the two big parties of the uk, but let's face it, it was much bigger than.
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Neither are the Labour Party.
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Well, it was much bigger than reform is today at the moment.
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I think with the polling, you've got to be careful about two things. Firstly, questions that don't spell out trade offs, because if you say, would you like to rejoin the European Union and adopt the euro and pay a load of money into the Brussels coffers, you'd get a. I think we're nowhere near that. The second thing I think is salience, which is, yeah, you might get these flimsy majorities saying, I'm in favor of rejoin. But if you ask the people in Britain, what are your priorities at the moment, I think 2% say Brexit and actually forcing them to revisit that referendum, even if in principle, if they could wake up tomorrow and be back in, they'd be quite happy. They don't want to go through that process again.
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Well, to Taiwan now, the citizens of which are unlikely to have been much reassured by the readouts from US President Donald Trump's recent visit to China. There is strategic ambiguity and then there is spending 48 hours wandering distractedly about various tourist attractions, pointing vaguely at things before posting about the new White House ballroom, about which it has to be suspected that Chinese President Xi Jinping has now heard a great deal. Indeed, not coincidentally, Taiwanese President Lai Cheng Te has decided that this is a propitious moment to reiterate Taiwan's position, which is that it will not renounce its sovereignty, but also will not provoke any conflict, that is just leave us alone already. Nina, did anything about the US Position on Taiwan become any clearer for Trump's visit?
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Not really. So obviously, the US has always embraced this strategic ambiguity. Indeed, indeed, with regards to Taiwan. And now, obviously, Taiwan's own leader is turning that on its head because he needs to. Because obviously, when Donald Trump went to Beijing, he did not stand up and support Taiwan's cause. And also at the other time, there's the question, not small question of billions of dollars worth of US Arms that haven't yet been signed off, that Taiwan would to defend itself. So I think sharp intake of breath in Taipei as a result of this particular visit. And this is, you know, an obvious counter reaction, saying, well, look, let's not jump the gun. Nobody's going to flinch first.
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What did you make of President Lai's statement, Anand? He's very much in favor of the status quo, I. E. He's reiterating that, look, we're not going to do anything stupid like declare independence or anything like this. What he didn't say out loud, but what he actually meant was like, we are perfectly content to keep kicking this tin down the road for centuries, if not indeed millennia.
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I think he was left with very little choice but to adopt this, what you could call radical status quoism, because Trump just hadn't said what the Taiwanese wanted him to say during his visit to China. And I think you could understand why, as a result, they feel very insecure. You can understand why, as a result, the Chinese might think, hmm, that's interesting that the Americans aren't willing to say this out loud. So someone had to say it. So I think, in a way, he had very little choice but to come out and make this statement.
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I mean, there is strategic ambiguity, Nina, which does have its virtues, because the idea being, of course, that China will not act on Taiwan because it's never entirely sure how the United States would respond. It doesn't know where the red lines are. And so the thinking is it will stay well away from where they might be. But given Trump's extreme vagueness, is there a danger that you end up in a position where China starts thinking, are we ever going to get a better opportunity? We have a position where there's at least a racing chance that if we do this and we get it done quickly, the United States simply won't turn up?
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I think there's a real risk that that may be what Beijing is thinking, particularly considering, if I'm not wrong, Xi Jinping has said that he wants to unify Taiwan, even if it's by forcible means by the end of his term in office. Who knows when that'll be? But the states is very much otherwise distracted with the war in Iran that, as we've said earlier on the show, has become more entrenched and protracted than was expected. It's also made clear in its national security doctrine earlier this year that Latin America is the next big focus. And Cuba's been very much in the headlines. We've had the head of intelligence agencies over to Cuba. The US has been starving Cuba of energy. So, so, yeah, this could be. And then, of course, the Ukraine war continues to rumble on, so this could be the best chance China gets. But it also looks as though in those meetings it didn't really feel as it felt as though the two had a slightly warmer relationship than that. I don't know whether you agree perhaps now that we've had this trade detente. So who knows whether anything's going to happen soon.
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Conversely, Anand and just finally on this one, it is conventional wisdom that the Chinese Communist Party is patient and cautious and not foolish. Is there? And this is a possibly optimistic assessment, but they can read a newspaper and they can look at the map. And they have seen in the last four years twice their two fellow superpowers set off on military adventures against much smaller opponents that they thought would be an absolute cakewalk. And yet Russia now, after more than four years, has made very little progress in attempting to swallow up Ukraine. And as we were discussing earlier, the United States, having got itself into the Persian Gulf, can't figure out how to get itself out. And what China would need to do to take Taiwan by force is at least a comparable endeavor to either of those things.
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I think that's true. I think what the Chinese also are is very, very patient. Time is seen as their ally and no one else's ally. I wouldn't be surprised in the years to come if we didn't see the Russians nibbling around at the edges of NATO's Article 5, just to see how the Americans react and the Chinese watching that very, very carefully indeed. A little bit of interference in the Baltic States or things like that. Just a test. How unreliable Trump really is when push comes to shove, I think will be interesting both for the Russians and indeed for the Chinese.
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Well, to South Korea now and to potentially heartwarming. Ish news. For the first time in nearly a decade, North Korean athletes have arrived in the country for a competitive fixture, specifically the Nye Gohang FC women's team will play Suwon FC in the semifinal of the AFC Women's Champions League on Wednesday evening. A couple of potential banana skins have been deftly sidestepped because this is a club fixture rather rather than an international one. There will be no pre match formalities, removing the possibility of someone hoisting the wrong flag or firing up the wrong national anthem, prompting diplomatic incident. That does seem to happen a lot, Nina, where Korean athletes are involved. Hugely amusing to everybody else on every occasion, much less funny if you work in the foreign ministries of either Korea. But to the match itself. Will you be tuning in?
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I confess I didn't know this was going on. Coming on Monocle radio.
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You do now.
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That's what I love about Monaco radio. You always learn something different. Part of the world.
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Be Wednesday morning our time, I reckon. I don't know who's got the broadcast rights.
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Goodness me. And I'm sitting in front of somebody who's just come back from Seoul. So there you go. So I mean this is kind of your ping pong diplomacy again, isn't it? But on the football pitch with female football players or soccer players. So you take away a little bit of the temptation for machismo, I suppose.
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I don't know. There could be like a punch up and a flurry of red cards. Cards.
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I don't know. But who. What happens if one side loses?
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Well, one side will. That is the nature of.
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Exactly. It could be a draw, couldn't it?
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B
It could, but no, it's a semi final. It's a knockout tie. There will have to be a result even if it goes to penalties. As I understand it, Anand, the. The wi. The final of this tournament is also taking place in Suwon this weekend. The other semi final is as well. That's between Melbourne City and Tokyo Veri. As I understand it, the North Koreans have permitted from their people back home and from the South Koreans to stay in South Korea until the weekend. But if they get done on Wednesday night, they're all back on the flight home straight away. They're not going to be allowed to stay in South Korea and enjoy the rest of the tournament.
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C
I mean, I find it absolutely remarkable that the North Koreans are allowing this partly because of the dangers of embarrassment if some of the team just decide not to go back after this tournament. Partly too because of late the North Koreans have been slightly hunkering down and cutting off contact with the South. Now I think sport can play a really important role. So I think we shouldn't bemoan the fact that this is happening. And we should be really happy that it is. But it does take me by surprise that the North Koreans are letting it go ahead.
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B
I mean, do you think that there is something to sporting diplomacy that, you know, if this could lead to something beyond the pitch?
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Big time. And we've also seen countries that, you know, at some point invested quite heavily in sort of sporting or intellectual sporting diplomacy, and it hasn't been successful. I'm thinking, notably Russia's support of the International Chess Federation, which continues apace. And obviously Russia now is a prior state for other reasons, but that kind of diplomacy hasn't worked. But I think. I think the fact that it's, you know, a good sporting initiative. Dennis Rodman, by the way, also got involved, didn't he, in the North Korean.
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B
Inexplicably, yes.
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A
Yes. I never quite understood that.
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B
Yeah, you're not alone there.
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A
But I do think that there's room. I mean, Deng Xiaoping's era of ping pong diplomacy really worked. It was under a more extreme time. But no, I think that there is something to be said for sports.
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B
I mean, Anand, do you agree or are you more on George Orwell's line that it's war minus the shooting, that this is actually a forum for the expression of international hatreds and resentments?
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C
I think international sport can be club sport is slightly different, but I do think actually looking at South Korea, one of the very interesting things is, is how they really use soft power and cultural diplomacy. I mean, the triumph of K pop is just heralded throughout South Korea as a sign of that country's sort of vigor and power and influence globally. And I think, you know, sport is no different. Now, this is smaller scale, obviously, but I think from the South Korean side, they will definitely see this as something very, very significant because they never underplay that sort of cultural element to international performance.
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B
Well, I will of course myself be cheering on Melbourne City. Anand Menon and Nina Dos Santos, thank you both for joining us. Finally, on today's show, it's often said that the position of quarterback in American football is the most difficult and demanding in any team ball sport. There is certainly a case to be made. See how you go throwing a football onto a dime from 50 yards away with maybe three seconds to read the field, while several large, fast, armor clad men attempt to trample you into it. The modern NFL quarterback in particular, however, is more than just a supremely capable athlete. The likes of Patrick Mahomes of the Kansas City Chiefs, Josh Allen of the Buffalo Bills, Lamar Jackson of the Baltimore Ravens are at once the face and heart of a multi billion dollar business and celebrities of a renown undreamt of by most film stars. A new book by ESPN's Seth Wickersham gets to grips with the condition of the modern quarterback and the qualities possessed by those who succeed and lacked by those who fail. It's called American A Biography of the Quarterback. I spoke to Seth earlier and began by asking he defined any grand universal theory of the quarterback.
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D
That was the question that kind of like haunted me throughout the book and haunted me maybe even going back to when I was a child and, you know, I wanted to be a quarterback so badly. I think that the thing that I think was clarified by the book experience and talking to all of these quarterbacks at different levels is that, you know, the thing that we put so much value on and watch with such amazement, which is the perfect path, pass into the inconceivable spot. The thing that we think is impossible is in a lot of ways the easiest thing for them. And that's the thing that they have to think the least about. And it's everything else that makes quarterbacks so unique, not only in the States, but globally. I think, you know, we give quarterbacks more responsibility, a higher status in the culture. All of these things that are really different than any other position in sports. It's all of those things that come with it end up being the part that's hardest for them to deal with. And so that was the thing that I thought was kind of interesting. I guess I thought it was the inverse. And it ended up being that I
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B
do want to come back to that because the lives that they now lead, you do follow through the book, from, you know, promising high school prospect to retired NFL great, But just to go back to what they actually do on the field, because it's something I've always wondered about really with any elite sport, how much they themselves actually understand what makes them them a cut above everybody else. And you do speak to be clear to listeners, to some of the absolute greats, John Elway, Steve Young, Warren Moon, many others. But did you get a sense that they understand it themselves? When they throw that perfect pass, do they know what they're doing?
- [31:07]
D
Yeah, that is, you know, all the interviews I've done for this book, nobody's asked me that question. And I think it's really interesting because I think that even they have a theory, have a working theory that maybe is like a story that they tell themselves, themselves. And, you know, when it comes to just being able to throw, I Think that that's like the baseline for them. Like it's something that they've always been able to do well and so they look for something else. And you know, Tom Brady would, would say that it's the mental game. All of these guys have a way to explain what I think separated them, but I don't think they quite know. And I think that like one of the things that was interesting thing in the course of reporting this is when I would have theories to their greatness. They were kind of open to hearing them and considering them in ways that led me to think that even they can't fully explain what they do. And I think that was really, really interesting because again, you have to wear all of these hats. Like I asked, you know, the hall of Famer Steve Young, what are all the hats you have to wear as a starting quarterback of an NFL team? And he just starts rattling them off, you know, field general, amateur psychologist, matinee idol, breathtaking asshole spokesperson for a multi billion dollar organization. All these things he stopped at like 17. And oh, by the way, you also be able, have to be able to throw a pass through windows that most people can't see, much less exploit. And so those were the things that were interesting because even they might have a working theory to explain their careers. It's still somewhat of a mystery to them.
- [32:40]
B
One of the things that's interesting about reading the book now is that three fair principal characters in it become the first, second and third picks in the 2024 NFL Draft. And we have now seen them play. This is Caleb Williams, Jaden Daniels, Drake May, the latter of whom has already played in a Super bowl, admittedly not on the winning team. But as you followed them through what is now this extraordinary circus that attends promising young footballers, did you get the feeling that any or all of them still quite understood what they were about to get themselves into?
- [33:14]
D
Oh man, that is a good one. I think that they can intellectually understand it. And here at the States it's becoming like football players in Europe where the, the hunger to spot genius in its infancy is so great. And even though we have a much different system, we don't obviously have a club system. You know, they put so much pressure on these kids so early and so you're really like. And you know, there's a, there's a consequence for that that doesn't come for free. And I think that these quarterbacks are a little bit like child stars in Hollywood or in music where, you know, I think they pay a price later in life. But even for those who like Caleb Williams, who were really kind of the guy from a pretty young age, and everything seems like it's been prelude and run up to achieving these outstanding feats, which are just, you know, these things don't happen that often. I think even they are stunned by the terms that their life has taken. You know, everybody who has a smartphone is paparazzi. And so I think that, like, the level of. Of scrutiny that they're under from a young age and what they get used to in terms of, like, either everybody watching them when they're out in public, or them thinking that everyone's watching them out in public, which is basically the same thing, even if they're not, I think those elements of it still catch them by surprise. And I think that, you know, that's a dangerous place to be in. I think that modern fame, we'll look back on this era one day and think about what fame meant in this era where, you know, it was just so invasive and so intense at all hours and wonder what it did to these people.
- [34:49]
B
Well, just finally then, I want to go back to something you mentioned at the top and you do mention early in the book, which is that you were a high school quarterback, and I think listeners probably should have a read or indeed a watch of Friday Night Lights to understand that being a high school football player in the United States is a different thing than being a high school athlete in most places. You write a lot about your kind of, you know, frustrations at not going on to the next levels. But having spent so much time with the people who did, do you think you would actually have enjoyed it?
- [35:19]
D
You know, I think that in some ways, I probably dodged a bullet. Now, if I had been talented enough to do it, maybe it would have been different. But I think that, like, again, it's like, you know, one of the most fun parts as a reporter for me was reporting on the afterlife of these quarterbacks. Like, what happens when you're a Hall of Famer and you spend the rest of your life with everyone looking at you for what you did when you were 28 years old and unable to get that. And what are the things you built within yourself to survive being an NFL quarterback and the pressure and the skill mistakes, and how uniquely ill suited is that for life away from the game? And I think a lot of these guys really, really struggle with it. And there's no tools, you know, the tools they give you. And I, I illustrate this. To survive as a quarterback aren't the tools that I think really help you in life. And so really you have to figure out a way to kill that person. You know, that, that idea of yourself and who you were, you have to really, like, put them in a separate place and rebuild your life. And that's really hard. And, you know, I'm a writer and, you know, I feel like I'm just, you know, even though I've been doing this for 25 years, I still feel like I'm just getting started. And I think that, like, the idea of having to start over in the best of circumstances, when you were like at the highest, the pinnacles of your craft, having to start over in your 30s and kind of rebuild who you are and how you look at yourself and how you self identify, it would be really hard. And so I think that, like, I don't think I would have been better, any better at that than anybody else. And I think that that's a really, like, painful and at times really depressing thing to go through. And I'm. I have to say that I'm happy that I didn't go through it.
- [36:50]
B
That was Seth Wickersham of ESPN speaking to me about his excellent new book, American Kings, a biography of the quarterback. And that is all for this edition of the Daily. Thanks to our panelists today, Nina Dos Santos and Anand Menon playing us out tonight, Dr. Hook, in honor of lead vocalist Dennis Licorier, who has died at the age of 70, 76.
- [37:10]
E
We got a lot of little teenage blue eyed groupies who do anything we say we got a genuine Indian guru He's teaching us a better way we got all the friends that money can buy so we never have to be alone and we keep getting richer but we can't get our picture on the COVID of the rose Rolling stone rollin
- [37:37]
B
stone Dr. Hook negotiated a peculiar trajectory from early 1970s country hellraisers to late 1970s yacht disco smoothies. The former period has endured rather better, not least their collaborators, with songwriter Shel Silverstein among them. The COVID of the Rolling Stone, an agonizing meditation on the cruelest dilemma of rock and roll success. The rich ones want to be cool, the cool ones want to be rich and future get both.
- [38:09]
E
Smiling man.
- [38:10]
C
Oh.
- [38:12]
B
Today's show was produced by Tom Webb and researched by Josefina Astrid Nagla Gomez. Our sound engineer was Elliot Greenfield. I'm Andrew Muller here in London. The Daily is back at the same time tomorrow.
- [38:21]
C
Thanks for listening, Sam.