Today, Explained - The World Cup is healing us

Episode Date: June 29, 2026

The World Cup is showing what Trump can’t destroy about America. This episode was produced by Ariana Aspuru and Kelli Wessinger, edited by Amina Al-Sadi, fact-checked by Gabriel Dunatov, engineered by David Tatasciore and Patrick Boyd, and hosted by Sean Rameswaram. US fans at the FIFA Fan Festival at LA Memorial Coliseum after the US scored their first goal against Paraguay. Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images. Listen to Today, Explained ad-free by becoming a Vox Member: vox.com/members. New Vox members get $20 off their membership right now. Transcript at ⁠vox.com/today-explained-podcast.⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

No one could blame you if you thought this men's World Cup was going to be a disaster. The President of the United States isn't exactly a welcome mat for the world, and there have been plenty of embarrassing stories for the country. There was the mom of Cape Bird's goalkeeper who wasn't let into the United States to watch her son play until the team started doing well and people clamored for her entry. The team from Dr. Congo had made a men's world cup in 52 years and hardly made this one because the United States was supposedly worried about Ebola, even though no one on the team had Ebola.

If you were watching Senegal, Norway last week, and we're wondering where all the Senegalese fans were, they weren't let into the country, but you probably noticed we let in like a million Vikings? I wonder what's different about their fan bases. Oh, and who could forget? We're literally bombing one of the countries that up until Friday was playing here.

Missiles aren't the problem. But, but somehow the vibes at this World Cup are mostly positive. The World Cup might just be healing us on today, explained from Vox. support for this show comes from fetch pet insurance. Do you have a pet? Every six seconds, a pet owner in the U.S. gets hit with a vet bill of over $1,000. And it's almost always an unwelcome surprise. That's where Fetch pet insurance comes in.

Fetch is the most complete pet insurance. Get paid back up to 90% of vet bills. You can use any vet in the U.S. and Canada. All vets are in network. Go to fetchpet.com slash save right now for your free quote. That's fetchpet.com slash save. Support for today's explain comes from fetch. Fetch is pet insurance if you hadn't figured it out.

Do you have a pet? According to a study from a pet insurance company from a few years ago, every six seconds a pet owner in the U.S. gets hit with a vet bill over $1,000, and it almost never comes at a convenience. time. So check out Fetch. You get paid up to 90% of vet bills. You can use Fetch for any vet in the U.S. and Canada. Every vet is in network. Go to fetchpet.com slash save right now for your free quote. That's fetchpet.com slash save. My name's Constance Grady, and I'm a senior correspondent on the culture team at Vox.

Constance, are you a big fan of the footy? Oh, man. I would not say. I would say I am a sports knower per se. I would say I am an appreciator of, like, things that make people all get together and be, like, really happy and excited and bond in a big group. But this is why you ended up writing a piece for Vox titled, The World Cup is showing what Trump can't destroy about America. I think that the World Cup has been such an... unmissable story in the culture for the past few weeks, even for non-sports knowers like me, and trying to figure out why and how is really, really exciting and interesting to me.

And what are you seeing that has piqued your interest? Because from what I'm getting, it isn't like Messi's hack trick. Or Messi breaking the all-time World Cup scoring goal. Messy, Messi, Messi, Messi. Or messy, you know, like staking his claim for a second consecutive World Cup for Argentina. Sean, are you a messy fan? No, for me, what is really taken over my social media feeds for the past little while has been all these videos of World Cup tourists from overseas coming to America and just like loving it.

Like they're so excited about like the red fire trucks. I've just gone to Walgreens but there's a fire station right outside I'm going to go ask if I can go have a look at the fire engines and they've let me in and like endless soda refills at restaurants

and really big grocery stores okay I'm here in Florida this is West Palm I think and that is Publix I love baggies it's so cute I love this cookie and it's just

it's so charming and delightful to watch and I kind of wanted to feel like Well, why am I so delighted by these things? What I ended up deciding is, I think that these videos are really exciting because they show how deeply embedded the idea of America is across the world, right? People around the globe grow up watching American TV and movies. Like, they look at a yellow school bus and they say, well, I've seen that on The Simpsons. Like, this is like walking into a fictional universe.

Hey, Dad, how come you've never taken us to see a soccer game? I don't know. And I think that's a real reminder of something that America has kind of struggled with under this presidential administration, which is people from other countries liking us. That's something that we used to actually be really good at. What a lot of people see and like about this World Cup right now, not just in the United States, but Canada and Mexico, is the cultural exchange. It's like Mexicans dancing with Koreans. It's a Japanese guy giving an interview to like an American broadcaster in Dallas. Okay. USA. USA. Amen. Japan. Okay. And USA. I love it.

Okay. We love you too. But you write about soft power specifically and how it relates to the president and how this World Cup is offsetting that relationship. Tell us about that, I guess, starting with El Presidente. So soft power is this idea that one of the ways a country can get other countries to do what it wants to do is not just through economic force, it's not just through the military, but it's through powers of persuasion and attraction. And that's something that the U.S. has historically been really good at. We're kind of the case study for soft power in political science. That's because of a few different assets we have, most of which Trump has been attacking pretty aggressively, especially over the course of his second administration.

We have the most powerful technology on earth. We have the greatest culture on earth. And above all, we have the greatest people on earth. We have this university system that people come to from all over the world. There's some of the most prestigious colleges around the world here. And that has been something that Trump has really pushed against with lawsuits and defunding. We also do a lot of humanitarian work. You know, in the days before Doge, U.S. foreign aid saved around 3.3 million lives per year.

Obviously, Doge dismantled U.S.A. So these are all reasons that the rest of the world have. has had to like us. And there are reasons that Trump has really been like, this is not a thing we're prioritizing. This is not something that America is doing anymore. And the World Cup is intentionally or unintentionally offsetting what we've lost in American soft power during the two or six or ten years of Donald Trump.

Yeah, I don't think this is something that Trump is doing intentionally. Trump has been quite vocal about. not particularly being interested in the idea of soft power. Trump said to Bob Woodward at one point, real power is, I hate to use the word, but the word is fear. He very much is most interested in hard power. Soft power, he seems to consider, like, not very masculine enough. I don't think that he's thinking of the World Cup as, like,

a thing that's going to make the rest of the world. like America more. That's just not a priority for him. But it's kind of serving that purpose in spite of him. I think in large part because despite the xenophobia of Trump's base, a lot of people in America have been very welcoming to these tourists from around the world and excited to show them the country. I want to say thank you to team Algeria for choosing our hometown, Lawrence, Kansas, to come here. And so welcome. If you were in Texas right now for the World Cup, we want to host you.

We want to show you all the real Texas experience. It's worth noting that a lot of the, like, really excited videos we're seeing from World Cup tourists are from European tourists who are more able to get over here right now. But I think it's also worth noting that these people do still have the desire to explore America even when we're really doing the most to alienate other countries. And I think that speaks to the incredibly outsized role of importance the U.S. has played in popular culture around the world. everyone grows up knowing what America looks like on their screens and in their living room, and now they want to see it in person. Do you think it's a sign that America can get back to the place it held in terms of soft power around the world? In spite of all these cuts to humanitarian aid, in spite of all the bullying, in spite of telling everyone else to deal with the straight of Hormuz being shut down? I think it shows that we still have a fighting chance. But you know, so much depends on what directions we move in after the end of what's going to be Trump's final term in office.

Trump is part of the story of America, whether we like it or not. And so are the impulses he's harnessed of xenophobia and isolationism and fear of others. What gives me hope about the World Cup is how much it shows that a genuine interest in and respect for people from other countries and a desire to share with them and socialize with them and be hospitable is also still part of the story of America and maybe can continue to be so. Wow, Constance. I feel so warm and fuzzy, but how do we feel about the hydration breaks? The consensus on that is that it's partially dark evidence of global warming and partially capitalism in action adding more at breaks, right? And it's bad. It's bad. I'll take your word for it, Sean. Okay, we're going to do that next on today, Explains. Support for the show comes from Upwork.

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Just had to pipe drive.com slash explained to get started. That's PipeDrive.com slash explained. and you can be up and running in minutes. Okay, so the vibes of the men's World Cup are mostly positive, but if you're lucky enough to catch some World Cup in person, or if you just watch it on Telemundo, where they don't cut to commercials as much, you'll notice some serious negativity twice in every match. We're telling you the hydration breaks,

which have done something that I thought was almost impossible in the football world, which is to unite the entire planet in anger against its very existence. We asked Roger Bennett from the Men in Blazers cinematic universe to explain how hydration breaks did the almost impossible. I'm not exactly sure what is going on to be candid, but what has occurred is that football has just said it's hot, a very simple game. It is two halves of 45 minutes. That is the way it is. It's the way it's always been. Crucially, it's a way it is at the elite professional level.

it is the way it is at an under seven game in Alaska. Like it's pretty critical and fundamental to football that the game at all levels is exactly the same. That is until the World Cup came to North America this summer where this is one of the hottest in global football history. And so, Gianni Infantino, who your listeners may have seen, is the head of FIFA. He just imposed a new rule where they were

have hydration breaks, which he said was part of a focused attempt to ensure the best possible condition for players, drawing upon the experiences of previous tournaments. And they said they're purely a sporting matter. And I want to stress this because I hear as well, it's about money or things like it. It is not. We don't make one dollar more revenues in FIFA with these hydration rates. So it's boiled down to every half, the 45 minutes, it breaks in the middle now for an extended period, four minutes and 20 seconds per game, which amounts to about seven hours, 30 minutes, 40 seconds, but who's counting across my lifetime

that I have to watch these in the tournament? And what it does on Fox in America, in that moment, there's a player's ample to the side. They now just talk about it as if it's a routine part of the game. They say, oh, we've hit the water break, and then boom, we're in commercials. And that will take us to our match break, sponsored by Lenovo.

Now, the football fans, the American football fans, I should say, the NBA fans out there, the WMBA fans out there, they might be saying, what's the big deal? There's constant commercials when I'm watching a game or a match or whatever it might be, but this has really triggered the football purists out there. Yeah, look, football is a working class game. Football is a game of fan devotion, connection. connection. Football is deeply historic and there's an authenticity to it. The heat is terrible in the United States, but many of these stadia are indoors, are air-conditioned until you have

this kind of ridiculous, surreal situation where footballers are taking a break in an air-conditioned stadium, ambling over to the side. And what it's done is give coaches essentially a timeout in the middle of the game, reset. You have players having a break, exhausted players who have been run down by a superior opponent, have a chance to catch their breath. We've seen game after game be utterly transformed by the momentum shift. You know, it's a weird, surreal kind of purgatory world where this thing, which was meant to be because of the heat in Miami, meant to be because of the heat in MetLife,

and when you see the figures that the broadcasters are making, said to be 250 million in terms of the commercials that they're running in those slots. It's a very odd moment in time where people are wondering, what is this, why is this, and is this just for this World Cup or in dismal England in rainy November? Will the Premier League start to take water breaks and we'll cut to Coca-Cola commercials? Right. I mean, you're saying it's without a doubt having an impact on the actual play. Teams might be winning now because they got a little timeout.

They had some counsel from their coaches and now they're playing a stronger game after a hydration break. Does that mean that coaches and players like them or are they complaining too? Yeah, there's a couple of different opinions. Almost everybody hates them. A lot of the players talk about how hard it is to find. the rhythm and the game and then you're stopping and going over to the sideline. And just from an ex-player's perspective, we know what it's like when you're in that mode, when you're fighting for your life and trying to not to concede a goal,

or when you've got a team under so much pressure that you know you're going to get a goal and the water break happens. If it's really hot, obviously it would be good to put them in, but I think you have to look at it in every game, separately, in my opinion. The opponent is going to try to take advantage of the, to fix or to encourage or to do maybe things that you can not do when you are in the touchline and the game is running. By the way, at the beginning, the water break was just a water break and they would come back. And often Fox at the beginning was courting commercial.

They'd come back to the game and it would be on. And people would lose their mind. And so what they've done, they've made it even more American. It's almost like a TV timeout in the NFL now where the official keeps the players, on the sideline until they know the commercials are run and then they let them on. Anthony Robinson, the US player said he wanted to walk back onto the field and get back into his position

and one of the officials was like, no, sorry, the commercials are still playing, stay where you are. So this is the kind of surreal reality we're in. Most of the coaches detest it. Most of the players, the European players, have spoken out about it. A couple of the coaches have admitted that they won games because they were able to take complicated,

tactical changes and communicate that Germany were playing Curacao, tiny Curacao, who just tied the game up 1-1, one of the most delirious moments of this World Cup. And there's a goal for Curiselle, can you believe this? And the young German coach admitted

afterwards that he was able to adjust the playing against the diamond midfield shape that he didn't expect. And Germany ended up winning 7-1, and it was just, if you watch the game, it was like it was flicking it radio stations, the before the water break and the after the water break. Do you think they'll keep them around?

Have they already pledged to keep them around in future World Cups? This is the greatest full line in football, Sean. And I do not have prophetic powers. But ultimately, the whole game of football is currently in a battle between its roots and its authentic essence and just the commercial imperative that comes from being as big it is, you know, the Super Bowl, and American sports in general, are brazenly commercial. I've found it, it's not funny because it's been a bit dark, but the whole grew ha-ha about the ticket prices for this World Cup was really global football, again, finding American sports

culture, and seeing that you have floating ticket differential on, you know, supply and demand, and falling in love for that, being like, wow, what, we can charge different prices for our tickets, let's go. And, you know, the working class cultures of European football being like, hang on them, we've traveled everywhere of our team for generations. How are you charging this? And then American fans caught onto it and was like, wow, those tickets are expensive. Same Americans who were paying $20,000 to sit in their nosebleed seat to the Knicks

game and the finals. But five billion people watch the World Cup. 200 million people watch the Super Bowl. It is so big. It is the last megaphone, which is. faintly audible around the world is. And when you have something that big, it becomes deeply desirous

to make as much money as you can out of it. And that's the tension. So this is kind of about capitalism and the American version, contra, perhaps the European version. This is a question about European vacation policies. And you sound like you may have been a European in a previous life.

Born to be an American, Sean. So I don't know if I can answer what you're going to ask me, but go on. Here it is. I've been noticing, you know, the Scottish fans, the Norwegian fans, the Dutch fans, especially, just traveling from city to city to city. And I've wondered, like, how much vacation exactly do these people have? And then I saw someone online put it even better. They said, do Europeans get issued eight weeks of vacation, unlimited airline miles, and a trust fund at birth?

Because every match I turn on, there are 40,000 fans following their team to a different state or country on a Tuesday afternoon while Americans are hiding in a work bathroom checking scores. Yeah, whoever's hiding in the work bathroom is a liar. They're pulling this up and hiding it behind spreadsheets. Look, we've always joked that part of the reason that football has taken off

in this nation is because Americans love an excuse to daytime drink and cut work. GDP plummet, seriously, in Europe during a World Cup, at an enormous clip. These fans, by the way, many of them sell houses.

They sell off everything. They save for them. this. Remember, World Cup is every four years. It's why it's such a powerful experience. It is the spine to my life. When I meet someone and they tell me, they met me in like 1997, and my mind goes to the nearest World Cup, 1998, and I remember that so viscerally, and then I can locate myself in time and space and know exactly where I was. It's the spine to my life. It's the spine to millions of human beings' lives. So it's not a should I go, can I go? It really is a compulsion. I think it's been the joy of this World Cup.

I have to say when you look back in 40 years, any World Cup, you can name people, oh, that's the Pele World Cup. Oh, that was a Maradonna. This one will be remembered, probably for Messi, just defying for the time. Please God, for the United States going deep. But it will be remembered for the Scottish fans. The joy, their wonder, they're just absolute.

the openness, the love that they brought to our nation. So thank God they take the time that they do. There is a funny story of a number of them, like being caught on camera at games and having their boss see them and being recalled to work. That's happened on many, many, many occasions. But I think the world is better for them cutting work, for the decrease in productivity,

for the utter shamelessness, ditching their families, their occupational growth. And that's the joy of the World Cup too, Sean. Roger Bennett is the author of We Are the World Cup, a personal history of the world's greatest sporting event, soccer's triumphs, heartbreaks, and the passion that unites fans worldwide. Ariana Spurru and Kelly Wessinger are producers that today explained. They made the show today with help from Amina al-Sadi,

Gabriel Donatav, Patrick Boy, David Tattishore, and myself. I'm Sean Ramos for him. Congratulations, Canada.