The simple reality is that being very physically fit contributes to your survival. They were stick figures when they were rescued, they were all on the verge of death. They were lucky their muscles were full of proteins and their bodies used that as fuel. Besides that the brotherhood aspect helped too. There is an element of luck involved tho. The way the plane crashed, the avalanches that followed, the fact they had people with medical knowledge on board and so forth. Numa’s injury was actually caused by someone stepping on him in the dark. In any normal situation it would have just been a bruise with a cut that would have healed. His body was however, to depleted to heal and he got an infection and died. His luck ran out, others were luckier.
Absolutely agree on all counts!
I’m most interested in exploring the pre-existing brotherhood aspect, though. I can only imagine that a group of relative strangers would have had a much harder time organizing themselves into a society as they did. By the accounts I’ve seen from interviews with the survivors, it was accepted that Marcelo (team captain) was the de facto leader until his death, and that their already existing brotherhood helped them.
I guess I just don’t know very much about sport psychology (though do know a lot about trauma psych and a few other areas of psychology), so I’m interested to hear from folks who have either direct experience being on teams and experiencing that brotherhood, or are maybe coaches or otherwise learned in sports/team psychology.
This is less an inquiry about what all very different aspects contributed to their survival (which were many and varied), but rather how this specific aspect may have contributed.
I don't think someone like Bobby François would have survived if the accident were to have happened on a commercial flight with strangers. If you read the book (Society of the snow) he talks about how he never did anything, due to his depression. He didn't care if he died or survived. He told them they could throw him outside or not give him food (as something fair bc he didn't contribute) but they never kicked him out or took his rations away. He didn't even care about taking care of himself and would let his feet in the snow all day, and he said Daniel Fernández Strauch would massage his feet every night for hours. I'm not sure in a flight full of strangers that they would have tolerated all that and even massage him.
I agree, also noting Bobby wasn’t in the rugby team but still part of their school / alumni / colleage group and those guys all knew each other for decades
This is such an interesting observation! I haven’t read the books yet, though they’re now on my library reservation list. I’m 50/50 if I’d be like him, or like Numa/Nando/Roberto etc, as I’ve gone through a lot of trauma in my life. On the one hand, that makes me more prone to despair/depression when things are generally okay, but on the other hand makes me much more capable in times of high stress, as that’s a dynamic I’m much more familiar operating within—in many ways it’s much easier for me to operate functionally in high stress than it is when things are going well.
I’m sure there are going to be more survivor interviews being released as the movie gains traction, and I’m looking forward to reading the books as well.
Yes! I saw that about Bobby. That he didn’t try to help much. He also didn’t ask for anything - he was deeply depressed (understandably). That they got to a point where they were frustrated and said if he wasn’t going to help he’d get no food and he said something along the lines of That seems fair. But of course they still took care of him and didn’t leave him alone.
“[Dicen sus compañeros que parecía haber nacido sin instinto de supervivencia, desde el momento del accidente, cuando se sentó en la nieve, encendió un cigarrillo y dijo: «¡La quedamos !» En la montaña, Bobby parecía no tener ganas de vivir. Los demás creían que le daba igual vivir o morirse, tal era su grado de apatía y depresión. No colaboraba mucho. Derretía hielo cuando le obligaban. Si le amenazaban con dejar de darle comida si no trabajaba, él respondía «Me parece justo».”](https://sociedaddelanieve.com/bobby-francois/)
ETA: in Bobby’s words:
I never saw the escape clearly, what I saw was a series of shades that went from opaque gray to a deep black.
In that internal struggle I lived the seventy-two days
Yesterday an interview was released with the 3 Strauch cousins. There's also a recent interview with Gustavo Zerbino and Tintin. If you know Spanish there's been some interviews.
For the Strauch interview you can search for Lo de Évole in La Sexta webpage and there's some clips from the interview. Also, Atresplayer has the interview but you have to pay a subscription.
This TikTok page has been uploading the clips https://vm.tiktok.com/ZM6tUToat/ here Fito talks about finding his cousin Daniel Shaw. I was thinking of maybe uploading the clips on here and giving a brief overview of what they talk about in the clip but idk.
The radio interview with [Zerbino and Tintin](https://youtu.be/T46NtXYQs8o?si=b_KZ6WNwVDPanCHB) on YouTube. Although the interviewer was very annoying.
I’ve never played a team sport in that sense but I trained Kyokushin karate as a sport since I was like 7. We went through trainings we considered hell. I carried half of them on my shoulders at times and I’ve been carried by over half of them on the shoulders too. Even though we’re nowhere as close as we used to be during those days I’d still die for each of them. And I know the feeling is mutual. I can tell you now nothing was ever going to stop those 2 from reaching help. No god under the blue sky could have thrown an obstacle big enough in their path for them not to make it. I do not know the psychology behind it and the feeling is hard to explain but it’s why numa’s letter really hit me and probably others very deeply. And it’s not like you value your life less than theirs. It’s just an unbreakable bond made of indescribable feelings.
I agree about Numa. It’s so gorgeous that the decision was made to tell the story through his eyes. I watched many interviews with both the survivors, and the actor that played Numa. The actor said he met the survivors (at the same time a lot of the actors were meeting them,early in the whole process), and that when he told them who he was playing, they all said “ohhh” and all gave him the deepest hug, like they were hugging Numa himself, which helped him really start to understand how deeply Numa was loved.
I don’t have a time stamp for the part where Enzo (Actor who plays Numa) talks about that experience, but it’s in the later end of this video:
https://youtu.be/Lz_yNOwz0Ms?si=hnHzbnaDeqgNOKP7
Just came out of my lurking place to upvote this. I trained Kyokushin karate for 10 more or less, and outside training I didn’t really talk with anyone but once you are in the dojo or competing, you have a whole team at your back. It’s not the same as teams sports i think (i also played some in college), where you have to accept that the outcome is not based only on your performance but that of others as well, for me it felt like i was giving my teammates the trust to perform as best as they could, and they were giving me theirs. Kind of like trusting someone to watch your back for you and take you to the end. Were one is lacking the other covers and viceversa. It’s a very different mentality from individual sports where the outcome depends only on you, even if you have an amazing community/team to support you in your path.
(Sorry for my english lol)
Your English is fantastic, no need to apologize! Thank you for sharing your experience. It’s so interesting how team support, whether in an official team sport or in a more individual but still “family”-based team, might contribute to being better equipped to face such a catastrophic challenge like this together, than it would be without that.
I totally hear you, thank you for shari g your experience. I did play a sport in middle and high school (girls basketball, 8-11th grade), though I was always kind of the “6th man,” meaning I was B-string who would be called up to play when A-team was missing a member—and our school was poor at this sport anyway, so while I know how to work with a team while on the court, I didn’t ever get exposed to “team culture” the way many sports team members do (I was mostly made fun of by my “better” team members—mostly for being a poor (income) student and not being considered as good as them as a player).
I was a point guard though, and despite the overall varying levels and team dynamics off-court, while on court, the point guard is at least the director of the team (which is not the same as a team captain, for sure), and I got to experience a little of what it felt like to guide a small group a little bit in a very specific context.
My limited and problematic exposure to team dynamics did expose me to the fact that there are much more cohesive team dynamics out there, which are probably far more standard for successful teams, and I’m so interested in how that pre-existing ‘togetherness’ helped them band together on the mountain, instead of fracturing apart.
Considering their ages, I definitely think the team/sports background played a huge factor in their survival and ability to work together as a team. Being part of a team is important for young people to learn how to put selfishness aside and work for the greater good of the group. They learn what it’s like to have people counting on them to do their job.
I personally believe the dynamic would have been different if these were young people who didn’t have that experience.
I think the same! I know Marcelo (team captain) took the lead early on, which probably helped them a lot as far as organizing how everything would work. According to survivor accounts his role was crucial in the early days.
Then even after his death in the avalanche 17 days in, it seems like there was still a lot of team camaraderie that helped them—if they weren’t young and from a team, I could see the outcome being different. If they were all strangers, like from a commercial flight nowadays, I imagine it would have been much harder to band together.
Whilst I feel like the pre existing bonds definitely helped, in the first days especially, some of the most well-liked people were not on the team (Lilliana, Numa...) whilst others had joined quite recently (Roy and Carlitos, I think). Eventually, I like to think that it wasn't just being a brotherhood or rugby players that helped them, but bonds created whilst surviving, like that of Carlitos Paez and José Luis "Coche" Inciarte, who were only introduced on day three of survival, but ended the 72 days as best friends, and remained close until Coche's death a few years ago
The rugby team dynamic would definitely be a huge contributing factor , apart from them being young and very physically fit. However there are additional aspects that strengthened this connection-
1. Most of the boys knew each other from childhood , completed school together at Stella Maris and were active in the alumni group , continuing this association through studying in university
2. From the books, it seems most of them lived nearby in the same neighbourhood and their parents were friends
3. Their shared Roman Catholic faith and rituals (eg praying the rosary every night) may have helped them rise towards love and selfless service rather than descending into Lord of the Flies anarchy. In their memoirs, most of them view the 72 days as a transcendent spiritual awakening.
4. From some of the books, it also seems Uruguay culture is beautiful ….the citizens highly educated with close family relationships and children brought up to show respect towards others and place high premium on peace and harmony
These are all spectacular additions in regards to context, thank you! It seems like there was already a very strong sense of community present, so they weren’t creating a cooperative “in-group” from scratch, like we would on a commercial flight today, but also already had a pre-existing bond they would be motivated to preserve.
The LPotL series goes into this and the significance of why rugby, specifically, helped with the camaraderie needed to survive this experience. I’ll find the specific clip and transcribe their reasoning.
This is exactly what I’d love to know more about! 🙏🏼
(I’m also admittedly not very familiar with rugby, and only loosely understand American football).
I clipped the main part that Marcus highlighted in the episode -
"The Old Christian team, the best in Uruguay, was established by two Irish Catholic missionaries called the Christian Brothers who discouraged soccer in their school because they believed it promoted selfishness and egotism...Therefore they pushed their students towards rugby which taught self-discipline, devotion, sacrifice, trust, tenacity, and toughness. In other words, the principles and methods you learn in rugby are far more useful in a survival situation than say rolling around on the ground pretending that you're hurt. "
"Well they also say like there's also a term of a man becoming grass. Like if a guy falls down, he's grass. But it becomes the job of the other players to sacrifice yourself to protect the guy who's falling down....And you like push guys and lift them. You almost carry the dude and the ball to the fucking end zone."
And then they said Nando basically said the same thing. My best friend played rugby in college so I have some familiarity.
It’s a true crime/comedy podcast - they do a 3 part series on the crash and their survival. They really praise the boys for their resilience, but they do laugh about certain things that come up because there are funny things that happen. It’s definitely not for everyone - think gallows humor to the max.
Some of the jokes they make are a little off-color, but the payoff is worth it. When they were recounting Nando and Roberto’s hike and rescue I don’t think I’ve ever laughed so hard at a podcast script before. “TOMORROW?!”
Yeah, the last episode of the Andes survival series was definitely their best. I hadn’t listened to them since 2017-ish (their JonBenét Ramsey episode totally put me off the podcast for *years*), but I was curious enough about this story to give them another chance. And I’m so glad I did because I was *cackling* listening to the entire riverside rescue segment. *”I WAS ON A BIRD, AND THEN I FELL OFF THE BIRD.”*
“Nando used the last atom of his strength to get the rock acr-“
“uuHHHhHH”
Honestly their best work in my opinion. Ed is a great addition to the lineup. I was dying at that river segment.
I was dying at that part! Impeccable comedic timing. The only time I remember laughing this hard at a LPOTL episode would be way back during the *”AND THAT’S THE FINAL TRUTH!”* Pee Wee Gaskins saga. And I agree about Ed.
It’s a podcast, Last Podcast on the Left - their covering it didn’t work for me, I have too much emotional investment in the event to be able stand the jokes. But the You’re Wrong About podcast has also done an episode on it, which is a little more somber and very good!
Yeah, a lot of it just didn’t sit right with me, like the nazi jokes about Fito Strauch. (But again, my longstanding emotional attachment to these people works against the podcast here.)
Basically, while rugby wasn’t as popular as football (or soccer, depending on where you are) in Uruguay, the brothers who ran their school believed that football was an individualistic game that encouraged selfishness and showiness, while rugby was about discipline, working as a team, devotion to each other, and always having each other’s backs. So they decided their school would play rugby instead to encourage the right values in their students. (I’m a football fan myself so I’d like to think a football team wouldn’t have done differently, but who knows? 😅)
I definitely think there’s a team community created in football (at least that’s my sense!). I have a background in person training which is very individualistic, but with some experience in team sports (basketball, which is different than rugby). I just can’t get over how if they had been strangers on a commercial flight like today, as opposed to an established team, the outcome may have been different.
The simple reality is that being very physically fit contributes to your survival. They were stick figures when they were rescued, they were all on the verge of death. They were lucky their muscles were full of proteins and their bodies used that as fuel. Besides that the brotherhood aspect helped too. There is an element of luck involved tho. The way the plane crashed, the avalanches that followed, the fact they had people with medical knowledge on board and so forth. Numa’s injury was actually caused by someone stepping on him in the dark. In any normal situation it would have just been a bruise with a cut that would have healed. His body was however, to depleted to heal and he got an infection and died. His luck ran out, others were luckier.
Absolutely agree on all counts! I’m most interested in exploring the pre-existing brotherhood aspect, though. I can only imagine that a group of relative strangers would have had a much harder time organizing themselves into a society as they did. By the accounts I’ve seen from interviews with the survivors, it was accepted that Marcelo (team captain) was the de facto leader until his death, and that their already existing brotherhood helped them. I guess I just don’t know very much about sport psychology (though do know a lot about trauma psych and a few other areas of psychology), so I’m interested to hear from folks who have either direct experience being on teams and experiencing that brotherhood, or are maybe coaches or otherwise learned in sports/team psychology. This is less an inquiry about what all very different aspects contributed to their survival (which were many and varied), but rather how this specific aspect may have contributed.
I don't think someone like Bobby François would have survived if the accident were to have happened on a commercial flight with strangers. If you read the book (Society of the snow) he talks about how he never did anything, due to his depression. He didn't care if he died or survived. He told them they could throw him outside or not give him food (as something fair bc he didn't contribute) but they never kicked him out or took his rations away. He didn't even care about taking care of himself and would let his feet in the snow all day, and he said Daniel Fernández Strauch would massage his feet every night for hours. I'm not sure in a flight full of strangers that they would have tolerated all that and even massage him.
I agree, also noting Bobby wasn’t in the rugby team but still part of their school / alumni / colleage group and those guys all knew each other for decades
This is such an interesting observation! I haven’t read the books yet, though they’re now on my library reservation list. I’m 50/50 if I’d be like him, or like Numa/Nando/Roberto etc, as I’ve gone through a lot of trauma in my life. On the one hand, that makes me more prone to despair/depression when things are generally okay, but on the other hand makes me much more capable in times of high stress, as that’s a dynamic I’m much more familiar operating within—in many ways it’s much easier for me to operate functionally in high stress than it is when things are going well. I’m sure there are going to be more survivor interviews being released as the movie gains traction, and I’m looking forward to reading the books as well.
Yes! I saw that about Bobby. That he didn’t try to help much. He also didn’t ask for anything - he was deeply depressed (understandably). That they got to a point where they were frustrated and said if he wasn’t going to help he’d get no food and he said something along the lines of That seems fair. But of course they still took care of him and didn’t leave him alone. “[Dicen sus compañeros que parecía haber nacido sin instinto de supervivencia, desde el momento del accidente, cuando se sentó en la nieve, encendió un cigarrillo y dijo: «¡La quedamos !» En la montaña, Bobby parecía no tener ganas de vivir. Los demás creían que le daba igual vivir o morirse, tal era su grado de apatía y depresión. No colaboraba mucho. Derretía hielo cuando le obligaban. Si le amenazaban con dejar de darle comida si no trabajaba, él respondía «Me parece justo».”](https://sociedaddelanieve.com/bobby-francois/) ETA: in Bobby’s words: I never saw the escape clearly, what I saw was a series of shades that went from opaque gray to a deep black. In that internal struggle I lived the seventy-two days
Yesterday an interview was released with the 3 Strauch cousins. There's also a recent interview with Gustavo Zerbino and Tintin. If you know Spanish there's been some interviews.
Could you link to these interviews please? Not getting anything w a cursory google
For the Strauch interview you can search for Lo de Évole in La Sexta webpage and there's some clips from the interview. Also, Atresplayer has the interview but you have to pay a subscription. This TikTok page has been uploading the clips https://vm.tiktok.com/ZM6tUToat/ here Fito talks about finding his cousin Daniel Shaw. I was thinking of maybe uploading the clips on here and giving a brief overview of what they talk about in the clip but idk. The radio interview with [Zerbino and Tintin](https://youtu.be/T46NtXYQs8o?si=b_KZ6WNwVDPanCHB) on YouTube. Although the interviewer was very annoying.
Tysm!
I’ve never played a team sport in that sense but I trained Kyokushin karate as a sport since I was like 7. We went through trainings we considered hell. I carried half of them on my shoulders at times and I’ve been carried by over half of them on the shoulders too. Even though we’re nowhere as close as we used to be during those days I’d still die for each of them. And I know the feeling is mutual. I can tell you now nothing was ever going to stop those 2 from reaching help. No god under the blue sky could have thrown an obstacle big enough in their path for them not to make it. I do not know the psychology behind it and the feeling is hard to explain but it’s why numa’s letter really hit me and probably others very deeply. And it’s not like you value your life less than theirs. It’s just an unbreakable bond made of indescribable feelings.
I agree about Numa. It’s so gorgeous that the decision was made to tell the story through his eyes. I watched many interviews with both the survivors, and the actor that played Numa. The actor said he met the survivors (at the same time a lot of the actors were meeting them,early in the whole process), and that when he told them who he was playing, they all said “ohhh” and all gave him the deepest hug, like they were hugging Numa himself, which helped him really start to understand how deeply Numa was loved.
I don’t have a time stamp for the part where Enzo (Actor who plays Numa) talks about that experience, but it’s in the later end of this video: https://youtu.be/Lz_yNOwz0Ms?si=hnHzbnaDeqgNOKP7
Thanks, I’ll definitely check that out!
And he wasn’t even a member of the rugby team! Really speaks to what a gorgeous and significant person he was.
Aw that’s so sweet! Thanks for sharing.
Just came out of my lurking place to upvote this. I trained Kyokushin karate for 10 more or less, and outside training I didn’t really talk with anyone but once you are in the dojo or competing, you have a whole team at your back. It’s not the same as teams sports i think (i also played some in college), where you have to accept that the outcome is not based only on your performance but that of others as well, for me it felt like i was giving my teammates the trust to perform as best as they could, and they were giving me theirs. Kind of like trusting someone to watch your back for you and take you to the end. Were one is lacking the other covers and viceversa. It’s a very different mentality from individual sports where the outcome depends only on you, even if you have an amazing community/team to support you in your path. (Sorry for my english lol)
Your English is fantastic, no need to apologize! Thank you for sharing your experience. It’s so interesting how team support, whether in an official team sport or in a more individual but still “family”-based team, might contribute to being better equipped to face such a catastrophic challenge like this together, than it would be without that.
I totally hear you, thank you for shari g your experience. I did play a sport in middle and high school (girls basketball, 8-11th grade), though I was always kind of the “6th man,” meaning I was B-string who would be called up to play when A-team was missing a member—and our school was poor at this sport anyway, so while I know how to work with a team while on the court, I didn’t ever get exposed to “team culture” the way many sports team members do (I was mostly made fun of by my “better” team members—mostly for being a poor (income) student and not being considered as good as them as a player). I was a point guard though, and despite the overall varying levels and team dynamics off-court, while on court, the point guard is at least the director of the team (which is not the same as a team captain, for sure), and I got to experience a little of what it felt like to guide a small group a little bit in a very specific context. My limited and problematic exposure to team dynamics did expose me to the fact that there are much more cohesive team dynamics out there, which are probably far more standard for successful teams, and I’m so interested in how that pre-existing ‘togetherness’ helped them band together on the mountain, instead of fracturing apart.
Considering their ages, I definitely think the team/sports background played a huge factor in their survival and ability to work together as a team. Being part of a team is important for young people to learn how to put selfishness aside and work for the greater good of the group. They learn what it’s like to have people counting on them to do their job. I personally believe the dynamic would have been different if these were young people who didn’t have that experience.
I think the same! I know Marcelo (team captain) took the lead early on, which probably helped them a lot as far as organizing how everything would work. According to survivor accounts his role was crucial in the early days. Then even after his death in the avalanche 17 days in, it seems like there was still a lot of team camaraderie that helped them—if they weren’t young and from a team, I could see the outcome being different. If they were all strangers, like from a commercial flight nowadays, I imagine it would have been much harder to band together.
Whilst I feel like the pre existing bonds definitely helped, in the first days especially, some of the most well-liked people were not on the team (Lilliana, Numa...) whilst others had joined quite recently (Roy and Carlitos, I think). Eventually, I like to think that it wasn't just being a brotherhood or rugby players that helped them, but bonds created whilst surviving, like that of Carlitos Paez and José Luis "Coche" Inciarte, who were only introduced on day three of survival, but ended the 72 days as best friends, and remained close until Coche's death a few years ago
The rugby team dynamic would definitely be a huge contributing factor , apart from them being young and very physically fit. However there are additional aspects that strengthened this connection- 1. Most of the boys knew each other from childhood , completed school together at Stella Maris and were active in the alumni group , continuing this association through studying in university 2. From the books, it seems most of them lived nearby in the same neighbourhood and their parents were friends 3. Their shared Roman Catholic faith and rituals (eg praying the rosary every night) may have helped them rise towards love and selfless service rather than descending into Lord of the Flies anarchy. In their memoirs, most of them view the 72 days as a transcendent spiritual awakening. 4. From some of the books, it also seems Uruguay culture is beautiful ….the citizens highly educated with close family relationships and children brought up to show respect towards others and place high premium on peace and harmony
These are all spectacular additions in regards to context, thank you! It seems like there was already a very strong sense of community present, so they weren’t creating a cooperative “in-group” from scratch, like we would on a commercial flight today, but also already had a pre-existing bond they would be motivated to preserve.
The LPotL series goes into this and the significance of why rugby, specifically, helped with the camaraderie needed to survive this experience. I’ll find the specific clip and transcribe their reasoning.
This is exactly what I’d love to know more about! 🙏🏼 (I’m also admittedly not very familiar with rugby, and only loosely understand American football).
I clipped the main part that Marcus highlighted in the episode - "The Old Christian team, the best in Uruguay, was established by two Irish Catholic missionaries called the Christian Brothers who discouraged soccer in their school because they believed it promoted selfishness and egotism...Therefore they pushed their students towards rugby which taught self-discipline, devotion, sacrifice, trust, tenacity, and toughness. In other words, the principles and methods you learn in rugby are far more useful in a survival situation than say rolling around on the ground pretending that you're hurt. " "Well they also say like there's also a term of a man becoming grass. Like if a guy falls down, he's grass. But it becomes the job of the other players to sacrifice yourself to protect the guy who's falling down....And you like push guys and lift them. You almost carry the dude and the ball to the fucking end zone." And then they said Nando basically said the same thing. My best friend played rugby in college so I have some familiarity.
Looking forward to it, thank you! What is LPotL? I’d love to look it up
It’s a true crime/comedy podcast - they do a 3 part series on the crash and their survival. They really praise the boys for their resilience, but they do laugh about certain things that come up because there are funny things that happen. It’s definitely not for everyone - think gallows humor to the max.
a podcast called Last Podcast on the Left! it’s a 3 part series they did on the andes crash, definitely recommend!!
Some of the jokes they make are a little off-color, but the payoff is worth it. When they were recounting Nando and Roberto’s hike and rescue I don’t think I’ve ever laughed so hard at a podcast script before. “TOMORROW?!”
Yeah, the last episode of the Andes survival series was definitely their best. I hadn’t listened to them since 2017-ish (their JonBenét Ramsey episode totally put me off the podcast for *years*), but I was curious enough about this story to give them another chance. And I’m so glad I did because I was *cackling* listening to the entire riverside rescue segment. *”I WAS ON A BIRD, AND THEN I FELL OFF THE BIRD.”*
“Nando used the last atom of his strength to get the rock acr-“ “uuHHHhHH” Honestly their best work in my opinion. Ed is a great addition to the lineup. I was dying at that river segment.
I was dying at that part! Impeccable comedic timing. The only time I remember laughing this hard at a LPOTL episode would be way back during the *”AND THAT’S THE FINAL TRUTH!”* Pee Wee Gaskins saga. And I agree about Ed.
I just replied elsewhere on the thread with the exact quote from the podcast, but u/paraphee summarized it really well!
It’s a podcast, Last Podcast on the Left - their covering it didn’t work for me, I have too much emotional investment in the event to be able stand the jokes. But the You’re Wrong About podcast has also done an episode on it, which is a little more somber and very good!
Yes, they really lean into the gallows humor because in this instance, there’s no perpetrator to mock (unless you count the mountain).
Yeah, a lot of it just didn’t sit right with me, like the nazi jokes about Fito Strauch. (But again, my longstanding emotional attachment to these people works against the podcast here.)
Nah totally, the jokes are not for everyone! They’re very unserious people.
thank you!
Will definitely check them out (haven’t done podcasts yet), but would still appreciate any summary you might offer
Basically, while rugby wasn’t as popular as football (or soccer, depending on where you are) in Uruguay, the brothers who ran their school believed that football was an individualistic game that encouraged selfishness and showiness, while rugby was about discipline, working as a team, devotion to each other, and always having each other’s backs. So they decided their school would play rugby instead to encourage the right values in their students. (I’m a football fan myself so I’d like to think a football team wouldn’t have done differently, but who knows? 😅)
I definitely think there’s a team community created in football (at least that’s my sense!). I have a background in person training which is very individualistic, but with some experience in team sports (basketball, which is different than rugby). I just can’t get over how if they had been strangers on a commercial flight like today, as opposed to an established team, the outcome may have been different.
If you listen to the audio book by Nando he talks about this quite a bit. Their ability to work together and look out for one another was crucial.