I'm Natalie Moore. I fell in love with soap operas when I was just five years old, and I still

watch them. Their television's longest scripted series and have zero reruns. Now let me tell you,

soap operas aren't just some silly art form. They are significant. In this season of making,

Stories Without End from WB EZ Chicago.

Join me as I share how the genre began, their social impact, and why these stories endure.

Listen wherever you get your podcast.

From WBEZ Chicago, this is Nerdette. I'm Greta Johnson. We did it. We made it to another weekend.

Coming up, we will unpack the history of the butt. Yes, the butt. Any butt that's not killing you

is a perfectly fine butt. And then it sort of makes you think like, well, what's the butt that would kill you?

I don't know. But first, let's take a minute to sit back, unwind, and chill out from the week that was.

With us this week, we have two excellent humans. Jasmine Garst is a reporter for NPR, who is hosting the new podcast, The Last Cup glad to be back. Yay, glad to have you. We also have Brandon Pope. He's an anchor and reporter at CW26 here in Chicago. And he is hosting the latest season of WBEZ's making podcast. Brandon, hello. Great to be here. Good to see you. Okay. So let's start with the World Cup because this is a thing that is happening. Obviously, Jasmine, your podcast is all about it. I am

extremely not a sports person. So especially Jasmine, I mean, you know, like your whole podcast

is about soccer and your love of it. Why should I care about the World Cup? Sell it to me.

Sure. I think what's appealing to me, soccer is such a way to see the world and understand the world. I mean, you have these matches, which actually means so much more than a sports match, you know? I mean, England against Wales, that has a really a political weight. Iran against the U.S., wow, like that has a heavy, heavy weight. And, you know, for Argentina,

it's Leonel Messi's last World Cup. He's the best player in the world or one of the best players

in the world. He's announced that he's retiring after this. And so what I love about soccer and what I

love about sports reporting, like good sports reporting,

is that it goes into like kind of all the other factors, you know, race, class, geopolitics,

that sports kind of embodies.

Yeah, that's a really good point.

So Brandon, you're following along too, right?

You're a soccer guy?

...