Loving Sports in an Age of Authoritarians w/ Dave Zirin and Jules Boykoff

For many around the US and around the world, the World Cup was a welcome distraction from the dismal state of the world and the daily overwhelm of relentless war, corruption, fascism, and disaster. But the games were also an uncomfortable reminder that, no matter how much we love sports and want them to be an escape from politics and the pain of living in a broken society, there is no way to truly escape those things, and the manufactured illusion that sports are an escape from political reality is just that: an illusion. At a live event hosted on July 16, 2026, at Chilo’s bar in New York City, TRNN Editor-in-Chief Maximillian Alvarez spoke with legendary sports writers Dave Zirin and Jules Boykoff about what it means to love sports in an age of authoritarians.

Additional links/info:

• Chilo’s bar website and Instagram
• Jules Boykoff, OR Books, Red Card: The 2026 World Cup, Sportswashing, and the FIFA Greed Machine
• Dave Zirin, Penguin Randomhouse, The People's Historian: The Outsized Life of Howard Zinn

Credits:

• Audio Post-Production: Alina Nehlich

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