020: Henry Winter on total football, the World Cup, ritual, groupthink & Gareth Southgate

Fellow BSers,

Welcome to another episode of 'A Load of BS: The Behavioural Science Podcast' with me Daniel Ross. This week, I welcome Henry Winter, Chief Football Writer at The Times newspaper. Henry is without doubt one of the very best practitioners of his art and I hope you sense his thoughtfulness and erudition in this conversation.

Before The Times, Henry was a football correspondent at The Telegraph for 21 years and prior to that he wrote at The Independent in its very earliest days.

Henry was named Specialist Correspondent of the Year at the British Sports Journalism Awards in 2004, 2009, 2010 and 2013, and Football Writer of the Year in 2016. In 2010, he was named among the top 10 most influential sportswriters in Britain by the trade publication Press Gazette.

He also makes regular appearances as a pundit on Sky Sports' Sunday Supplement and BBC Radio 5 Live.

Outside of journalism, he has ghost written books with former FA Chief Executive David Davies and with ex-Liverpool players John Barnes, Sir Kenny Dalglish and Steven Gerrard. He also wrote his own tome in 2017 'Fifty Years of Hurt: The Story of England Football' which I suspect would have sold even more copies had it been released a year later after England's ride at the 2018 World Cup in Russia!

Today, I talk with Henry about:

• His love for his craft
• What he wants his readership to feel
• Turgenev, Tolstoy and the Russian World Cup
• An enlightened England generation
• Groupthink in football narratives
• Football ritual
• Why Gareth is good, Bobby was brilliant and Fabio a flop
• Why football is the only sport with hooligans and
• English entitlement

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Next week, I'm going to bring you Part 2 of my interview with psychologist, writer and tech provocateur Nir Eyal where we'll discuss how to overcome the urge to check your mobile every 2 minutes!

Now game on! 

Daniel ⚽

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• Podcast music: Tamsin Waley-Cohen's Mendelssohn's violin concerto