John Sorochan

speaker

156 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Jul 2026 last heard 17 Jul

John Sorochan’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.

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Short Wave · Why did designing the World Cup pitches take eight years? · 17 Jul 2026 podcast

I started looking at the field and you could see after a month indoors with no sunlight, it was showing its wear.

And I was like, how do I make that better?

How would we make this all uniform?

And so I went on and my PhD was growing grass indoors for dome stadiums and now doing it, you know, 32 years later for the 2026 world cup.

Yes, five of the 16 stadiums are indoors.

First time this happened actually was in 94, 32 years ago when the World Cup was here.

We didn't have the technologies we have today.

So we grew the grass in the parking lot and then we put it inside.

And for the next 30 days, it started declining because there's no sunlight.

Fast forward 32 years, we got five dome stadiums and they've got grow lights in there.

So if you drive by these stadiums at nighttime, they're lit up red because they got these LED grow lights growing the grass indoors to replace the sunlight.

Yeah, well, geez, you just make me feel old when you called it three decades.

Yes, it's changed a lot.

So FIFA has these requirements.

You have to have a natural grass pitch that has a sand-based root zone, that has an in-ground irrigation system.

And in that sand root zone, they have to be hybrid reinforced with synthetic fibers that go in and kind of act like rebar.

So when you go and you plant, you're not getting a big divot blowout because it stabilizes it below.

But the top you're playing on is all grass, but those fibers are stabilizing that sand below.

You look like a cyborg grass.

Yes, absolutely.

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