Throughline - The Last Cup: The Kid's Dream

Episode Date: November 24, 2022

This week we're bringing you something special from our friends at NPR and Futuro Media: the first episode of the podcast, The Last Cup. From his earliest goals on the soccer fields of his hometown in Argentina to his arrival at Spain's Barça Football Club, host Jasmine Garsd follows the journey of a gifted kid who would go on to become one of the best soccer players ever. In Argentina, where the national sport is a fierce obsession, Lionel Messi was the one that got away. As Garsd retraces Messi's early career, she examines the consequences of Argentina's devastating economic crisis of 2001, how it shaped Messi's path, and what it meant for her own life.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Support for this podcast and the following message come from Autograph Collection Hotels, with over 300 independent hotels around the world, each exactly like nothing else. Autograph Collection is part of the Marriott Bonvoy portfolio of hotel brands. Find the unforgettable at AutographCollection.com. Whether you're watching or not, the World Cup, the world's arguably biggest sporting event, is happening right now. Last week, we brought you the story of how Qatar became the controversial site of this year's games. But we aren't quite ready to hang up our football cleats, I mean, soccer cleats, just yet. So we're staying on the pitch a little longer, and we're bringing you something special

this week from NPR and our friends at Futuro Media. The first episode of the podcast, The Last Cup. It's the story of one of the best players in the world, Lionel Messi, who's playing his last World Cup in Qatar. But it's also a story about Argentina, where he's from, and what it means to leave and come home. Before we turn it over to The Last Cup's host, Jasmine Garst, please note that the following episode contains some explicit language and the sound of gunfire. Our story starts in 2003 with a videotape. A tape gets dropped off with the coach of Argentina's under-17 national soccer team.

The coach's name is Hugo Tocali, and what he sees on that video leaves him speechless. We had a video room all set up. I put this tape on and it was like five plays. I was impressed. Tocali gets tapes like these all the time. I mean, his job, after all, is finding the best young soccer talent in a country that is overflowing with soccer talent.

The teenager he sees on screen, though, is an Argentine kid who plays in Barcelona. According to sports writer Guillem Balague, this video is legendary. You had a very small player, the smallest player, like half of the size of everybody else, just dribbling everybody and scoring and assisting. So he could just do all the dribbling and then in the last moment he just gives a pass to somebody, a sign that it's not all about scoring. All that was early signs of what came after. Tokali faces a conundrum. He will soon take his team to Finland for the FIFA Under-17 World Championship.

And this kid on the screen is precisely the kind of player Tokali has been looking for to improve the squad. But he's already assembled a whole team. I saw the tape about five times, and then I asked myself, what do I do? I can't just take this kid with us. What about these other boys who have been practicing with the team for two years? And so Tocali goes to the tournament in Finland with the team for two years. And so Tokali goes to the tournament in Finland with the team he has. They make it all the way to the semifinals without giving up a single goal. And then they face off with Spain. After the loss, Tocali finds himself sitting at a hotel restaurant,

having dinner, feeling dejected. He's a handsome gentleman with striking green eyes and these bushy, melancholy eyebrows. And he's sitting there trying to understand what happened. The first thing you do is analyze. And he's sitting there trying to understand what happened. The first thing you do is analyze. The lineup of players I brought to Finland. What did I do right? Where did I go wrong?

To an outsider, it might seem like Tocali is overreacting. But this is a big deal. It's a youth championship for the next generation of superstars. This is the equivalent of high school football in Texas, youth hockey in Canada. In Argentina, soccer is essentially the religion, and Tocali's job is to find the next prophet. So it was a big letdown. It was a bitter feeling because I was really hoping we would win an under-17 championship. And to add insult to injury, the Spanish team is sitting right there next to him, laughing and eating and living it up.

The Argentine team had to smuggle their own drinks in. That's how broke they were. The Spanish team, they got to travel with their own cook. I was very friendly with the cook, and he told me, Tocali, if only you'd had that kid on your team. The cook starts to say something about this Argentine kid who lives in Spain and plays soccer like he's superhuman. People are talking about how he's the next big thing,

and Spain is dying to get him on their national team. And I look up at him. He goes quiet. All the technical directors and the coaching staff of Spain were sitting right there. This is when Hugo Tocali remembers that video, lying around in his office. And he realizes the cook is talking about that kid,

the one Tokali passed over. So he looks up at the cook and asks, You're talking about Messi, aren't you? Soccer is complicated. It's about so much more than a ball in a field with 22 players. You can be one of the most brilliant young players on the planet, on the way to becoming the best in the world, and still be a stranger in your own country. I'm Jasmine Garst. Welcome to The Last Cup. Today on the show, we take a look back at how one of the greatest soccer players of all time left his country at a young age and why he longed to return. It's a look back at the traumatic

upheaval of the country we both call home. How it pushed him and me and tens of thousands of people off to parts of the world where we never ever expected to land. And the dream of coming back. money internationally and always get the real-time mid-market exchange rate with no hidden fees. Download the WISE app today or visit wise.com. T's and C's apply. Support for NPR and the following message come from Carnegie Corporation of New York, working to reduce political polarization through philanthropic support for education, democracy, and peace. More information at carnegie.org. If you go to Argentina, one thing you will notice is that soccer is everywhere. A radio broadcast of a game in an old cab, a TV blasting a match at a convenience store, and a soccer field on every other block. Or, you know, what passes for a soccer field.

Often it's just kids playing in the dust with a makeshift goal. Whatever you go, there is a pitch every, you know, 50 meters. Everybody's involved in the game. This again is Guillem Balague. He wrote an authorized biography of Lionel Messi. And it doesn't have to be organized football. It can be done anyway, in any field, because this is the beautiful part of football that you can organize a football game in no time.

In fact, the legend of Lionel Messi starts in the early 90s on this field, where toddlers who haven't even been walking for that long are running and scoring goals under a mural that shows a young, barefoot Messi juggling the ball. I'm in the city of Rosario. It's about 180 miles from Buenos Aires, the city I grew up in. I've come back to Argentina to tell you about the dream. Most of these kids out here dream of becoming soccer gods. And a lot of their parents dream about it, too. In Argentina, this dream is so common, it even has its own name. El sueño del pibe, which roughly translates into the kid's dream.

In the U.S., there's hoop dreams. In Argentina, it's el sueño del pibe. El pibe is, you know, the young man who gets all the accolades, who reaches his dream, of course. You make it big in your barrio, you make it big nationally, and then... Maybe eventually make it into Europe, but certainly first conquer home. And Messi, he's a classic pibe in the early 90s. Working class family, dad works at a steel factory, mom cleans houses to make some extra money.

And money was tight when he was growing up. They just felt that the wages weren't enough, that the little money that the mom could be doing and the money that dad did, it just, it was getting to the limit. By the time he's eight, he joined a major national club. He went to play for the kids' squad at Nuel Sol Boys. That's one of the main teams in Rosario, and one of the biggest teams in the country.

Even though it was a kids' team, made of boys born in 1987, they were so good, people called them La Maquina del 87, the Machine of 87. Here in Rosario, I met Newell's fans who told me they loved watching young Leo play. The amount of people that went to see the, you know, the under-11s of Newell's old boys, or the fact that he had to go, have to leave school and go to tournaments abroad, those things indicate that certainly everybody knew that he was something special. Even his teammates back then knew there was something special about this boy. Sergio Maradona, no relation to the soccer legend, was a bit younger, but he says he was fascinated by how Messi played.

Lionel did stand out among the others, not just because he was small physically, but also because of his speed, the technique he had. Back then he was totally different. He was from another planet. But there's a problem. In the early stages of his soccer career, Messi is, in fact, very small for his age. He isn't growing like other boys. When Messi was 11, he went to see an endocrinologist, Dr. Diego Schwarzstein. He finds that Leo has a hormone deficiency, which for an aspiring athlete is super problematic.

This could derail his dreams. If he hadn't gotten treatment, he would have been like any other kid suffering from an untreated growth hormone deficiency. And definitely he would have been shorter than he is today. I don't know, maybe four or six inches shorter. I don't know if he would play at this level. And the treatment is very expensive. In Guillem Balague's book, simply called Messi,

he says Newell's paid for some of the treatment. In an interview with ESPN, Messi, a teenager with a crackly voice and a goofy haircut, he talks about his hormonal treatment, which was kind of a lot. He says, I had to inject myself every night and every day. An injection to wake up my hormones, to grow normally. Once he starts getting treatment, the dream is back in sight. But things in the country are changing.

I was a teenager in Argentina back then, in the late 90s. While Messi was perfecting his extraordinary dribble in Rosario, I was further south, in Buenos Aires. I hadn't heard of Messi yet, of course, but we grew up in similar environments. We had parents who were stressed out about money. We were raised largely by our grandmothers. And that's about where the similarities end. While he was polishing his free kicks and injecting hormones, I was a 15-year-old perfecting my black eyeliner technique, fighting with my little brother, listening to cumbia like Gilda, hole. And

dos minutos, while grandma was in the kitchen cooking and singing boleros. You know, besame mucho and at some point she'd come out and be like okay come on everybody everybody get up you can't just be locked in here all day get out you gotta get some fresh air so i'd go to the park by my house and smoke with my friends all day. When I'd come back home at night from our adventures, I'd spray a lot of deodorant on myself to mask the smoke and sometimes crawl into bed next to my grandmother. I would have never told my teenage friends this, but we used to hold hands in our sleep, even if we were mad at each other. Para que podamos andar juntas por los sueños. So we could be together in each other's dreams. Abuela Yaya was an odd one.

My grandmother slept with her patent leather platform shoes on in case there was an emergency and she had to run out. And a tiny plastic radio was always on, muffled under her pillow, playing the news. And as I lay there, I'd hear the official numbers. 15% unemployment. 17% unemployment. And as I lay there, I'd hear the official numbers. 15% unemployment. 17% unemployment.

Eventually, it would get to 20. Things were getting very, very bad. The health care system was imploding. Here's Dr. Diego Schwarzstein, Leo Messi's endocrinologist. We're talking about the year 98, 99, almost 2001. And Argentina's social structure just broke. It fractured. There were no protections. People couldn't get medications, hormones. It was a huge problem. I mean, people's cancer treatment got interrupted. Diabetics couldn't get insulin. The Messi's have said that Newell's, their soccer club,

stopped helping pay for his hormone treatment. Because even the big soccer clubs in Argentina, these multi-million dollar enterprises that you would think were recession-proof, even they were feeling the economic crisis. And without a treatment, Messi's future as an athlete was becoming uncertain. Guillem Balaguez's money was getting tight for the family. They had to make decisions about the future. The prospects weren't great. Factories were closing.

Jobs were being lost. In fact, there was going to be a recession, which happened. And they realized that they may have to take steps towards leaving the country. My dad was a professor at the University of Buenos Aires at the time. He lost almost all his work that year. So did my mom. Our family basically tailspinned into having almost no income. And the government started putting caps on how much of your savings you could take out of the bank.

There was a lot of anguish. I remember waking up in the middle of the night to get a glass of water and finding my father at the kitchen table just staring into space. He was also starting to wonder if we should try to leave. After the break, European soccer clubs start making big money and turn their sights towards Latin America. Thank you. joining the club, all purchases help support NPR programming and fund quality reporting developed to connect people to their communities and the world they live in. More at nprwineclub.org slash podcast. Must be 21 or older to purchase. People don't realize this, but a long time ago, it wasn't that common to see so many Latin American and African players in the European leagues. For starters, there was a major rule change that removed caps on how many foreign players were allowed on any given European team.

Another thing that changed? Cable companies made deals with the big European soccer leagues. Sky Sports proudly presents British Premier League sold broadcast rights to Sky Sports in a landmark deal worth £304 million. Skins will never be the same again. We're here for the next five hours with Super Sunday. Delighted to be part of the FA Premier League. It's a whole new ballgame for all of us. And remember, this is the only place you'll see... The deals meant larger audiences, more sponsorships, more money in teams' pockets. Simon Cooper, the author of the Barcelona Complex, says European teams started thinking... OK, well, we're going to buy the best Brazilians, Argentinians and Uruguayans principally

and bring them here because we have the money now to do that. Player after player, the European teams started really going in on getting the best talent from Latin America. So in the late 70s, Argentina had arguably the best league in the world. And by the early 90s, it's just a kind of feeder team and baseball team, almost a triple A league for the European leagues. And then at some point, European clubs, they start to think, well, why not bring younger players for cheaper? Cooper, who has written a lot about Messi, says Messi's dad knew. His son is brilliant. It doesn't take business genius to realize that the gold is in Europe and not here.

In fact, European scouts were starting to sniff around Rosario. Take the case of Sergio. We heard from him earlier. He was that teammate of Messi's at Newell's. When I met him in Rosario, Sergio said it was in the year 2000, when he was just 11 years old, that a European scout came to one of his games. But of course they were. scout came to one of his games. I didn't know there were scouts in the stands watching me play. But of course they were.

Sergio was a great player. In fact, when I turned my recorder off, people in Rosario actually tell me he played as well as Messi, if not better. There's this one game in particular that stands out for Sergio. He didn't play well that day. I remember I left the game and my dad cursed me out because I didn't have a good game. He says a Spanish scout approached his father with an offer. You could let us take Sergio to Spain or you can come with him and we'll give you a stipend to live off.

At the time my dad was the sole breadwinner at home, he couldn't just leave. He clearly doesn't have any regrets. He said that he will never allow his 11-year-old son to live by himself. Sergio's dad said no to the Spaniard. He never told me and that was hurtful. We had strong arguments, even now when the topic comes up sometimes. Sergio went on to play for minor teams in Argentina and around Latin America. And he says he often wonders what if his dad had said yes to the Spanish scout. I still have that question in my mind. The what if? Who could I have been

if I had the resources? Like in Europe, I would have gotten better nutrition. I suffered so much playing in the youth leagues in Argentina. It was abusive. I mean, look at the state the country is in today.

I think that any boy who has the opportunity to should go abroad. There's one boy who also played at Newell's who jumped at the opportunity. Around the same time as Sergio's dad said absolutely not to a Spanish scout, Messi's dad started talking to one of the biggest teams in Spain, Barça Football Club in Barcelona. So Messi's dad is a big football man, and he realized the potential of Leo, and they went for it. So Messi got on a plane to do a tryout. He was only 13. He made a big impression, but Barca had doubts. One of the

problems in soccer is it's very hard to extrapolate from being good at 13 to being good at 18. It just doesn't mean very much if a kid is great at 13, 14, 15. Your body changes, your desires change. Some kids get better, some kids don't. So it's just not a good bet. And this, Balaguer reminds me, was a kid who required an expensive hormonal treatment. There was a big question mark. And yes, he had to do also with the hormone treatment that had to be paid by the agents when he landed in Barcelona, because Barcelona didn't have the money for it or didn't want to pay for it. Messi comes back to Argentina without a contract. A few months later, Messi got invited to join the Barça Youth Academy. The Messis didn't tell a lot of folks in Rosario that they were leaving. It was early 2001, and Balague says Messi cried the whole way to the airport. A few months later,

I would take a similar journey. Many people did. Because in December 2001, things blew up in Argentina. There's this one memory I have of my country coming apart. To this day, I think about it more often than I like to admit. It's the memory of this young man. I saw him on TV. He was protesting outside the presidential palace, not far from where I used to live. This guy, he's a kid. He must have been like in his early 20s. And he's being dragged away by cops. And as they're taking him, he screams. We're dying of starvation. They're starving us.

And then he yells his name. I was a kid myself, not that much younger than he was. And I think the reason this moment is seared in my memory is because as he was screaming his name, I thought to myself, he wants us to know who he is in case they do something to him. That's how violent the government crackdown had gotten. It was December 2001. And here, in a nutshell, is how the country reached its breaking point. A brutal dictatorship ruled over Argentina in the 70s and early 80s. During that time, foreign debt increased five-fold. Add to that decades of disastrous economic and monetary policies,

rampant corruption in the 90s. That's just a few of the things that led to this totally unsustainable situation. People started going hungry. Hospitals started having shortages. It got so bad, groups of people started busting into supermarkets, grabbing whatever they could eat and running. The morning the government declared a state of siege, I was watching the news when the broadcast was interrupted by an official announcement from the president.

The president was basically saying some of our rights were no longer guaranteed. No moving freely in public spaces, no gathering in groups, you could be arrested without explanation, and militarized police were deployed. And the response from the police was brutal. They showed up and whipped people. They shot at them. Elderly people, women, minors. It didn't matter. Eventually, protesters ran the president out of office. Over the next month or so, we would get four more presidents. Around this time, my parents decided that we were going to try and move to the United States. And I remember we had this family talk in which we sat down and explained to my grandparents

that this way, when they got older, we could help them out. This is the only time I have ever seen my grandfather cry. He was like a big, old, shuddering tree. In the middle of the talk, I excused myself to go to the bathroom and just sat on the edge of the toilet and sobbed. My parents were both teachers, so it's not like there were a lot of savings to be salvaged. But on this one hot summer day, my mother grabbed the cash she'd been storing away at home,

put it in a pouch under her clothes, and put on her red winter jacket. On the cab ride to the airport, she was stern and irritated with us. Now, as an adult, I understand why. She must have been really scared. That would be my last drive through Buenos Aires for many years to come. That year, about 225,000 people left the country.

One economist I spoke to told me that at the time, he remembers seeing graffiti at the airport, which read, El ultimo en salir apague la luz. Last one out, turn off the lights. In this video from Barça Football Club, shot after he arrived in Barcelona, a young Messi sounds relieved. Yes, I'm very happy because I lived a different life here and it's much better. Messi sounds relieved. He says he's living a different and better life in Barcelona. He's happy because things have changed for him.

And you have to understand, he left his country just as everything was really unraveling. Still, he says, Argentina is home. All his friends and family are back there. His mom and siblings were in Rosario. It was just him and his dad, which sounds kind of lonely. Guillem Balague says this was a lot for a young teenager. Basically, he realizes that he couldn't very early on, that he couldn't make mistakes and he he couldn't doubt, because if he did, the whole thing could collapse. In interviews like this one with ESPN, Messi says he's happy at Barca, but he has this dream. He wants to go home someday and play for a local team in Argentina. But he never did. Instead, he racketed up the ranks of Barça's youth system.

In late 2003, he debuts with the Grown Ups, on Barça's first division team against a Portuguese team. It's been reported that he was so excited, he couldn't sleep that night before the game. The game, by the way, is narrated in Portuguese. Throughout most of this game, Messi is sitting on the bench, looking kind of nervous, holding his hands. And then he gets sent in towards the end.

What do they say? Catalonia reminds me of Maradona. He reminds one of Maradona, the announcer says, referring to soccer god Diego Maradona, who we'll hear a lot about in the next episode. This is a comparison that will haunt Messi throughout his career. But for now, he runs onto the field like an excited puppy, his awkward teenage hair flopping around, his team uniform looking too big for him. Messi doesn't score in this game, but he got so close several times. That day, everyone got a whiff of his greatness.

He was only 15 years old, one of the youngest players to ever hit the field for Barca's first division. And already, he was putting fear into the hearts of goalies. Leo Messi, 16 years old. So it was no surprise that very early on, Spain starts to think, we need this guy on our national team. Of course, Spain thinks Messi would be eager to join. Why wouldn't he? Spain gave Messi so much. Why would he ever want to leave? Why would he want to go play back home? Why does anyone dream of going back home? While Messi was killing it on pitches in Europe, my family and I, we lived in a motel in Southern California.

That first year in the U.S., I worked a lot of jobs at once. I did nights at a bakery, I cleaned bathrooms at a hair salon, and I worked at this one store called The Frustrated Cowboy, where I sold cowboy hats and boots to suburbanites while listening to Tex Ritter on a loop. I see by your outfit that you are a cowboy. It was like I had been thrown into the deep end of the American experience. And during my breaks, I'd sit in the parking lot smoking, and I'd think to myself, coming here was a mistake. I couldn't afford to go back, but I kept my country in the rearview mirror. And I'd tell

myself, one day I'm going to make a U-turn, maybe in a year or two. Okay, three years. I'm going to give it three years. Just wait to know if the people I arrived with, my parents and my brother, are going to be okay, and then I'm going to go back. Before I knew it, that place I loved so much, the one I kept in the rearview mirror, had become a speck on the horizon, and I'd spent a lot of time telling myself I'll be right back and I meant it every single time I said it. And Messi, I think he meant it too. Yeah, yeah, I know. I was making minimum wage and Messi was well on his way to becoming a millionaire but I get why he did what he did when Spain asked him to join their national team. He said no. Despite having been adopted and taken care of by Spain, Guillem Balaguez's Messi felt deeply

Argentine. He wanted to play and be recognized by his home country. Home is home. And you may be appreciated by Catalans or by, you know, millions around the world. But I'm telling you, you are an immigrant, so am I. Unless I'm recognized at home, it just doesn't feel the same. It doesn't feel the same. It doesn't feel the same. Messi says it himself in that ESPN interview. His goal is to play with the Argentine national team. It's something he's wanted to do for a very long time and he's never achieved it. Even as he speaks, he still has that working

class Argentine accent that avoids consonants like it's dodgeball. He longed to play for Argentina on the national team, but there was a slight problem. The gatekeepers of Argentine soccer, they didn't really know who Leo Messi was. I mean, Hugo Tocali, that's the under-17 coach, when we last heard from him at the beginning of this episode, he got that videotape and set it aside. I saw the tape about five times. I was impressed. But they decided not to take Messi with them to the under-17 world championship in 2003, the one they end up losing, which is how Tocali and his colleagues ended up drinking with a Spanish cook

who kept on telling everybody about this magical kid who's about to debut for Barca's first division team, Leo Messi. Gerardo Salorio, better known as Profe, a.k.a. the Professor, was part of the Argentine coaching staff during that youth championship. And he said, you Argentinians are a bunch of jackasses. Wait, the cook asks. You knew about this kid and you didn't put him on your team? You know Spain really wants him for their own national team, right? Even now, like almost 20 years later, when Tocali recounts the Spaniard's tale, he starts pounding his fist on his desk. I can assure you that in that moment,

I wished I could have teleported back to Argentina to make sure this so-called Messi joined our team. I went back to my room, and the next morning, I woke up, and I called the president of the Argentine Soccer Federation. The negotiations were on. The Argentine Soccer Federation was officially trying to get Messi to join their team. They called up neighboring Paraguay and set up a friendly game for the under-20 squad. Profe Salorio says the Argentine Soccer Federation played their cards close to their chest. They didn't want to make a big fuss about this new player.

We didn't tell them we were trying to force a player onto our national team. We lied to them and said, let's just get some practice. The real reason for assembling this game is a rather obscure soccer rule. If a player who is not signed to any country puts on that country's team jersey and plays in a game where tickets are sold, that's it. The national team gets to claim that player. On June 29, 2004, Messi stepped onto an official game

with an Argentine jersey, sealing his fate. Almost no one showed up. The stadium was still under construction, but it had to be an official match. And tickets had to be sold. It was broadcast by Teise, an Argentine sports channel that was still kind of new at the time. And it was completely empty. There were like three dudes in a stray cat sitting in the bleachers. Messi got sent in during the second half.

This kid is going to play a few minutes, says the announcer. He's a bit of a mystery. He's 17, he's from Rosario, but he went to Spain to play really young. What's notable about this game is that the team is all but ignoring Messi. Like at some point, it's a blowout, 6-0. And even the announcer said, Hey, pass it to the new guy. He's all by himself. But then someone does pass it to him. And he turns it on, dribbling at the speed of light.

The seventh goal was his. He dribbles past like six Paraguayan players. It's like the ball's attached to him. What a goal. The three people in the stadium cheer. Profesor Lorio says everyone who saw that goal on

both teams was like, Where did you get this player? Nobody had heard of him. Messi, who at this point has already debuted for Barca's first division team, looks like he cannot believe his luck. He hugs a teammate who lifts him up a little. Another guy pats him on the head. After the game, Profe Salorio says, So I sat him down and said, OK, pal, what's it going to be?

Do you like playing with us? And he said to me, I love this team. Messi had arrived back home. But what he didn't know was that coming back home is never easy. In fact, it can be a nightmare. Coming up on the next episode of The Last Cup, Messi comes back home, but after being away for so long,

he's a changed man. You know, he played like a Spaniard. Here we play with a knife under our poncho. If you don't run, they're going to spit on you. The Last Cup is a co-production of NPR and Futuro Studios. This episode was produced by Andrew Mambo, Marlon Bishop, and Julieta Martinelli, with support from Paz S. Sarabia. Our editor is Luis Trelles. Our bilingual team of producers includes

Fernanda Echavarri, Skylar Swenson, Juan Diego Ramirez, Our bilingual team of producers includes Voice-over actors were Our production coordinator was Our mix engineer for this episode was Catherine Silva. Music for this episode provided courtesy of ZZK Records and Rata Sencelo. Katie Simon is the supervising editor for Embedded. Lauren Gonzalez is the senior manager of the content development team. Our executive producers are Yolanda Sanguini for NPR and Marlon Bishop for Futuro Studios. Anya Grundman is Senior Vice President

for Programming and Audience Development. We love getting feedback from listeners. You can send us a message at thelastcup at npr.org. I'm Jasmine Garst. We'll be back next week with more from The Last Cup. Contigo es hermoso sufrir El vicio más hermoso Te quiero ¡Pum, pum, pum! ¡Pum, pum, pum! ¡Pum, pum, pum!

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