
1 | The Engineer
Sports Explains the World · Audible | Meadowlark
Audio is streamed directly from the publisher (rss.art19.com) as published in their RSS feed. Play Podcasts does not host this file. Rights-holders can request removal through the copyright & takedown page.
Show Notes
As a kid, Kieran Morris, a cheeky lad from Liverpool, loved pulling pranks to fool the press. When England played Honduras in a friendly soccer match, he found a young player on the Honduran side, inflated his stats on Wikipedia to equal those of a young Messi and Ronaldo, and then dubbed the player the “Honduran Maradona.” Sky News, a top outlet, fell for the prank. But so did an MLS soccer team. They signed the “Honduran Maradona” and the story became the jokester’s go-to tale at the pub. But Kieran always held on to some low-grade guilt for tossing a player into a situation where he would no doubt fail. The Engineer is a comical and cautionary tale about fake news that takes us across continents, as Kieran Morris, now grown, sets about retracing his prank, culminating in a face-to-face meeting with the player whose life he altered: the "Honduran Maradona."