Season 6, Episode 32: Jenny McGrath and Danielle S. Rueb Castillejo on the World Cup and Cancel Culture

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?