Translator: Julieta Baccaro Reviewer: Omar Estaitih Ávila
Around three years ago, I went to Barcelona.
When you go to Barcelona, there are two things you must see.
First, the Sacred Family Cathedral, then, Messi, of course.
As to the Sacred Family, I said, "OK, I will go when they are done."
(Laugher) As to Messi, I said, "I will go right away." --
Good that you got the joke, it was a good one.
About meeting Messi, "OK, I will go right away."
So, what do we do? When you want to go see him,
you call and say
to the Barcelona Club, "I want to go there
and see if I can interview Messi."
So they answered,
"No, you can't come." Why?
Because at that moment Guardiola did not want
anyone talking with the football players.
What does a journalist do when someone tells him he cannot go somewhere?
He goes anyway, of couse. (Laughter)
I arrive at the door, and then, what do I do?
"I'm here to see Messi, blah, blah"
"No, you cannot come in." "But I spoke to the press manager."
Then the press guy comes and says,
"I have already talked with your production company
and told them you cannot come in."
Great. So, as a reporter, the worst thing
that can happen to a reporter happened to me,
that is, waiting at the door where the fans are.
Waiting with the fans is awful. It seems stupid, but it is awful.
You go there, and they are all there
with their cameras, and it is a different world.
There, you are a nobody. All your credentials,
all you have done to get there, gone.
You are a nobody.
So I went over there and I said to the fans,
"Step aside, step aside,
I know Messi."
Yeah, right, it is like being in prison
and, at a "Who is innocent?," have everyone answering, "Me."
Of course, we all are. We are all innocent.
Great, so, we are all "nobodies", OK.
The problem was we had to decide which way to go.
Through the cars, all German car brands, leading brands,
that were going out through the other door,
the other half through this door. If he came out through this one,
it would be okay. If he came out through the other one,
I would not see him, because Barcelona is too big,
like 4.4 acres, so you cannot be
in two places at once.
I had a huntch and decided, "I will stay here."
I stayed there with the fans. So, a football player comes out,
then another, half the cars go the other way.
And then, a white Maserati. Messi.
So all the fans rushed forward, among them, me.
Maybe, because I'm from Argentina, I had some experience in this,
I behaved like a window cleaner.
You know? You kind of snatch. And I said to him,
"Lionel, Lionel, roll down the car window."
He looked at me, amid all those fans, and asked,
"What are you doing here?" "Roll down the window,
let me in, please."
He opened the door for me, and let me in,
and, amazingly, my biggest satisfaction was looking back at the fans,
"Take that, loosers!" (Laughter)
It was almost as if I did not care
about the interview with Messi. (Laughter)
It was enough just to say just, "Take that, loosers."
(Laughter) (Applause)
"I was not lying, I do know him." That made me feel great.
So we were there in the car,
no issues at all for real.
We were driving on Barcelona's highway, and I asked him,
"OK, Lío, when do we do this interview? Today, tomorrow?"
So he gave me his number. Amazingly, he gave me his number.
We had a one-hour interview the following day. It was awesome.
We finished the interview and, do you know that feeling?
For an entire hour I thought, "Ah, this makes me feel so good,
it is amazing."
I walked through the streets like, "Hi there."
I was overjoyed, like when you score a goal, you know?
The following day, same feeling.
And the following day, it was like "Hi." A little less excited.
The third day, the feeling was gone.
It had been an incredible experience,
but it was gone.
Ephemeral. Gone.
So then I realized that, at the radio station,
a moment like that is great, but it goes away.
Radio and television are two different things.
Very different things.
Television creates celebrity junkies, whereas the radio creates friendships.
I know it sounds odd, but it is truly different.
You can be on television, and generate a rating
of 30 or 20 points, which is a lot.
Every point is equivalent to 100,000 people.
So we are talking about 2 million people, maybe 3 million.
Against 500,000 people that listen to the radio.
But the relationship you have with a listener is much more intense
than with a viewer. TV creates celebrity junkies
that tells you, "I saw you on TV, can I take a picture, please?
I am a fan, I can't believe this, I can't breathe."
"OK, yes." "Thank you, Gastón Pauls."
(Laughter)
I'm not [Pauls].
You are like, wh...?
A listener runs to you on the street
and does not do that to you, because he knows you,
he knows you have a fobia, he knows you are shy,
he knows you do not like that, He wants you to know that
he listens to you, but he does not want to make you uncomfortable.
A listener knows when you are feeling blue,
or happy, he knows what happened to you,
your stories, when you got dumped,
when you dumped someone, he knows a lot about you.
You know nothing about him,
but he knows everything about you. A weird relationship arises,
almost like a friendship. This friendship generates
a certain trust. And with that trust
you can do a lot.
At that point, I had no idea. When I became aware
of all of that, it was still something
I could not take advantage of. I could enjoy "goals"
like Messi and other similar moments.
One day, like any other, at home,
I was going through clothes I no longer used
because I needed to clear out my wardrobe,
and I ended up with a bag, a bag full of clothing.
I decided to take that bag
to Caritas, I think it was.
As many other people, I drove my car to Caritas,
after finding their address online.
I rang the bell, someone came to the door, and I told him,
"Hey, I have these two bags here."
And he said, "Thank you."
Then he closed the door and left.
And that made me feel a void. I asked myself,
"Where [are the bags] going?" I know they'll get them somewhere,
I trust [Caritas], of course.
But I needed something else.
"Who am I helping with this?"
I am getting rid of these bags and, is that it?
So I thought, "I am going to do this on the radio."
And I could not have dreamt what was going to happen later.
I did this because of an issue of mine:
I was obsessed with transparency,
with the transparency of saying, "Okay, let's fill a truck [with clothes]."
A truck, I asked for a truck, and said,
"We will know where it goes."
It will go to a soup kitchen in Santa Fe,
which had suffered greatly after the floods.
And I also said, "Let's call a civil law notary public."
This notary will check that everything is in order, and we will do it live
so that everyone knows, when they donate something,
where it is going, which is what I needed: to know.
When I arrived at Plaza Armenia,
I saw this huge truck and I felt so bad, so distressed .
Because, of course, I went there with a bag,
I contributed but, do you know that feeling you have
when you put something in a big room like this one?
I thought, "We will never fill it up."
And I felt a knot in my throat, but people started arriving,
and more and more people came.
By two o'clock in the afternoon, at closure time, the notary came by,
the truck drove away and then we talked to the people in Santa Fe.
And this made me feel so good as to shout, "Great."
The thing is, the feeling stayed with me.
The following day, I was like, "Good."
And the following day too, and the one after that.
It stayed with me, this warm feeling, and I thought,
"This works. My job has found a good purpose."
So much so, that the following year we got everyone at the radio involved
and we filled up 14 trucks.
And after those 14, 40,
and then 55, and then 88, and last year
we collected 600 tons.
This creates an energy so hard to explain. (Applause)
I applaud because we did this,
all of us. By the third year,
second, third year, something else happened,
what I call the awakening of social awareness.
It is a type of awakening that, once you experience it,
it does not go away ever again.
And it is so weird, because it is like...
it happens and, I don't quite know how to explain it,
but it is like nothing will ever be the same again.
You walk on the streets and everything looks different.
You learn how to be in someone else's shoes,
a specific part of your brain gets activated.
Because it is all about practice.
And once you try it, it stays with you.
What happened to me in this awakening process
is that I started to think all the time
about what was happening to other people.
And you want to help them, and understand them.
For instance, I started to see
the issue of "pickets" in a different light.
Before, I definitely would have thought,
"Oh no, I will be late, they're blocking the streets, why are they doing this now?"
But then you stop to think,
"Wait. If I were in their shoes, and I needed financial aid,
had 4 children, no job and the government did not provide me that aid.
What would I do? Would I stay at home? Or would I be here like them?"
Well, I would block the streets like them.
Once you understand that, you cannot swear
if you are not going through that, you just have to understand them.
But goodwill, or this social awareness,
comes to play in those moments
and with many other things.
And it allows you to do incredible things
with so little.
Let me tell you about this experience I had
with so little effort.
To have this social awareness
has no merits of its own.
At work they offered me to go to my favorite band's show, U2.
And I had already gone to one of their shows,
and I truly believe it is a luxury to spoil yourself like that,
to go see something you want, so, going again.
I had seen their show a while ago, and they were offering me
to go see them again in Sao Paulo. And I said, okay,
because it is truly a band whose music I enjoy so much.
But then it felt like a burden.
And, because of this awareness, I said to the people
offering me the trip, "I am not going, but...
can I ask you a favor? I will advertise your company
all the time, can I send someone else?"
That someone was Paquito,
our friend, who is the janitor at the radio,
Matías knows him,
he is here today.
So, there was almost no effort on my part,
there is no merit.
Paquito went to the show,
with all these celebrities, we dressed him up,
he went live [on the radio],
and took amazing pictures. To him, this was an incredible moment
a once in a lifetime opportunity, and it implied almost no effort.
I mean, goodwill is not only
to fill up a truck with clothes once in a while.
It is to think constantly what can you do
for other people to have
those things you spare, or to enjoy for free.
And it does not require a lot of effort.
I also realized that it is very important,
and maybe this is the most important of all,
that each one of us
has a role to play and a responsibility.
But you have to do it from the place you hold
within society. At the time,
I was so caught up on this goodwill mission
that I started questioning my job, and that was a mistake.
But of course, you start thinking,
"What do I do [for a living]? I speak 4 hours a day on the radio,
I could be doing so much more,
I could be helping others and blah blah blah."
Until I realized this [trail of thought] was a mistake.
I realized that if I left my job
to work with Manuel Lozano, Juan Carr, Father Pepe,
I would be adding, I would only be one more.
But through my own job, I could be a multiplier.
When we got to the third goodwill mission,
during the first two, I collected things,
collected bags with my whole team.
But when we got to the third one,
the volunteers were doing all the work,
there was nothing for me to do, I was not needed here,
nor there, and my producers
looked around and there was nothing for us to do,
because there were people taking care of everything.
And, at first, I thought, "What is going on?"
And then I realized that this was something
that had grown and had taken
its own shape, all it could be,
and that, if I worked with Manuel Lozano,
I may be less helpful than I am from where I stand now.
If I have a radio show where I talk about goodwill
4 hours every day, most likely no one will listen to it,
because its essence would be lost.
Its essence is in keeping being who we are,
keeping entertaining others,
and talking about the stupid things we talk about,
or whatever it is we do. But we are friends.
And at some point, we make a connection and say,
"Hey, Let's do this. We can do this other thing too."
We can do many, many things.
But without losing the essence of who we are.
And, to me, that is our main role.
I believe that each one of you
and each one of us can contribute somehow,
not only by devoting time
to our goodwill mission.
You don't have to have a radio show either.
You can do it from your own place.
And that is the most important thing.
I understood that my role was not to collect bags anymore,
but to tell people everything about it,
about that energy we all generated once a year,
to reach beyond those 30 thousand people
that spent that day with us on the radio.
Apart from the 100 soup kitchens
that, at the last goodwill mission,
received stuff from all of you
Apart from that, the people listening [to the radio],
even if they were not paying attention,
they felt a very peculiar energy.
There are people who come crying to the goodwill mission
with stuff from dead relatives.
I remember this man who told me,
"This was my mum's," another one told me,
"This was my dad's." And he brought many things and said,
"I had them stored for a special moment
but then I realized that someone else
may find it useful now."
And there are lots of things that have to do
with commitment.
I realized that my role was not to stop chasing Messi,
which creates in me an ephemeral feeling
and ephemeral excitement,
but to try to convey,
among the news we deliver every day
to the listeners, these ideas
we are talking about now.
And I think that each one of us is their own coach
and we cannot wait around hoping that someone
will call us to play in this or that position.
Each one of us has to look within,
and if you want to help
just ask yourself, what can I do today?
That is what everything is about.
Thank you.
(Applause)