An extraterrestrial alien observing human behavior might be fascinated with the amount of time humans spend observing other humans moving small black and white spheres around with their feet.  Those spheres, known to most of the world as footballs, but here in the U.S., we call them soccer balls, are possibly the world’s most watched object.  The physics and the manufacturing difficulty of trying to create a durable, perfect sphere has caught the attention of French mathematician Étienne Ghys, whose new book called simply, “The Football” is out now in English translation from Princeton University Press. Étienne Ghys is a teacher at École normale supérieure in Lyons, France, and he joined the Monday Buzz on August 18, 2025.

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