Season 6, Episode 32: Jenny McGrath and Danielle S. Rueb Castillejo on the World Cup and Cancel Culture
About this episode
Danielle and Jenny discuss the complexities of international sports, particularly soccer and the World Cup, while addressing issues of border enforcement and hospitality.
Episode Summary In this episode, Danielle and Jenny begin with the joy, tension, and absurdity of international sports, especially soccer and the World Cup. Danielle reflects on watching Mexico and the United States play with Luis in Ciudad Juárez, her complicated love of competition, and the hope sports can offer in a time when the world feels increasingly unbearable. Jenny brings her own layered relationship to soccer, shaped by growing up with three older brothers who played seriously, and the two move between humor, memory, family, and the embodied experience of watching teams push themselves together. But the conversation quickly turns toward the contradiction of the United States hosting the world while treating the world as a threat. Danielle names the violence of border enforcement, denied entry for fans and referees, strip searches, racial profiling, ICE snatch-and-grabs in Kitsap County, and the expanding presence of GEO Group vans at the Northwest Detention Center. Jenny frames this contradiction through the question of hospitality: what does it mean to host the world while acting as though the world is dangerous, unwanted, or disposable?
More episodes of The Arise Podcast
- Season 6, Episode 31: Danielle Castillejo and Jenny McGrath talk about Dissociation
- Season 6, Episode 30: The First, The Few, The Only with Michael Thornhill
- Season 6, Episode 29: Rebecca W. Walston and Danielle S. Castillejo - Updates - Voting Right's Act
- Season 6, Episode 28: Rebecca, Danielle, and Jenny: Settler Colonial Sex and Purity Culture Stuff
Explore listener stats, chart rankings, contacts and more on the The Arise Podcast podcast page.