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The Arise Podcast: Daily Summaries Delivered
by Danielle S. Castillejo, Margalyn Hemphill
Conversations about faith, race, justice, gender and healing.
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- 3 weeks ago56 min
Season 7, Episode 1: The Graveyard of Instagram with Rebecca W. Walston and Danielle S. Rueb Castillejo
A major thread of the episode is the relationship between immigration rhetoric and broader racial control. Danielle and Rebecca argue that calls to “secure the border” are not only about the nation’s geographic borders, but also about who gets counted as belonging, qualified, safe, or fully human. They connect immigration enforcement, birthright citizenship, anti-DEI backlash, voting rights, and gerrymandering as part of a larger project of redrawing the boundaries of American life around whiteness and power. The conversation also turns inward toward betrayal within communities of color. Danielle speaks with grief and anger about Latino communities voting against their own ancestors, families, and cultural memory, while Rebecca reflects on the pain of Black men and other communities of color supporting a political movement that has openly threatened their own interests. Together they ask what stories people have to believe about themselves, their communities, and America in order to align with power that intends to harm them. Rebecca offers one of the episode’s central metaphors: America as a survivor choosing to remain in a familiar cycle of violence rather than step into the uncertainty of a freer world. She describes the country’s attachment to white male narcissistic violent power as a kind of domestic violence cycle, where the known threat becomes more tolerable than the terrifying work of standing without it. The episode closes with Rebecca naming the exhaustion of Black women and Black communities being expected to remain at the front lines of every fight for justice. She frames stepping out of the room not as abandonment, but as a defiant and resilient act of self-care. Danielle and Rebecca end by questioning the stability of integration into white institutions, noting that access may have produced real success, but that success remains unstable when institutions can reverse commitments the moment political cover appears. The episode leaves listeners with a sober but clarifying truth: survival, solidarity, and resistance may now require refusing the old bargain that marginalized communities must keep sacrificing themselves to save a country still choosing domination. Rebecca — on safety and the Black or brown body “We need to have a brutally honest conversation about the one Black kid in the all-white room. We need to have a conversation about how that isn’t safe. Nobody is surprised by that sentence. It might not have been one we said as brutally and blatantly as it is being said now, but I guarantee you that has been the worry all along: the ways in which it is not safe for the Black or brown body.” Danielle — on no justice coming “Yesterday I said to Luis, ‘There will be no justice for Lorenzo. There’s not going to be justice. There wasn’t justice for Renee Nicole Goode. There wasn’t justice for Alex Preddi. There’s no justice coming down for this dude.’” Well, first I guess I would have to believe that there was or is an actual political dialogue taking place that I could potentially be a part of. And honestly, I'm not sure that I believe that.
- Jun 30, 202656 min
Season 6, Episode 33: Adoption and Whiteness with Rebecca, Jenny and Danielle
Rebecca In this country, what we do with adoption is this notion automatically that adoption is a good thing, and whoever is in the role of adoptive parent is the hero of the story. That usually means the story of the adopted child, and however they came to be in a position where adoption was an option, is villainized in a way that is often inaccurate and radically oversimplified. It’s told as if the adopted child’s story begins at the moment of adoption, as if there was not something that happened before or during. It sets up this dynamic where there are clear heroes, clear villains, and a kid in the middle who has everyone writing their story except the kid to whom the story belongs. The frame is problematic to me. The fact that we don’t know how to address it is problematic to me. What is true for that kid at the time of adoption? What is true for that kid ten years later? What is true for that kid thirty years later? There’s no conversation about that at all. There’s no vocabulary around what that means to identity and culture. Jenny I reread a book called Kisses from Katie, which was very popular. Katie Davis was a white woman from the States who went to Uganda and adopted fourteen Ugandan daughters by the time she was twenty-three. In one of the last chapters, a child’s biological mother comes and takes the child back to the village in Uganda, and Katie Davis writes as if it is absolutely unjust that a child would be taken from its mother. There is seemingly complete obliviousness to the children she has who were birthed by someone else, who have stories there. It’s like there is no history or narrative because God has called her to be mommy. That call is unquestioned and unproblematic, and it is really heavy. Danielle What comes up for me is the Supreme Court ruling and Amy Coney Barrett having adopted Haitian children and then voting to end TPS status for Haitians. That is where our books overlap. That is literally psychotic to me. How are her kids going to make sense of that at some point in their life? Right now, they have to survive and do whatever they need to do, but the reality shift required to live inside that world is so great. Theme 2: Transracial Adoption, Cultural Severing, and Identity Loss Rebecca When you’re talking about transracial adoption, I think it’s twofold. There is the issue of being a member of a marginalized community adopted into a majority family and having to navigate the explicit or implicit, conscious or subconscious racism that exists in that dynamic. To have to navigate that from inside the four walls of your own home is a thing unto itself. But the other piece, which I think may be equally harmful in a different way, is the absence of the collective identity space that shapes who you are. Whole parts of your identity go unacknowledged, undeveloped, misignored, because you have been removed from the womb of your cultural and ethnic identity. I don’t think there is enough language to talk about how significant that connection is—not just to your family of origin, but to land, extended family, and the whole collective group. Oftentimes for the adoptive kid, I don’t have vocabulary to describe what it is that I don’t know, except I have this haunting whisper that there is something I’m missing, and I can’t even identify it because I don’t have enough access to the cultural knowledge to tell you what I’m missing. Jenny It makes me think about Indigenous residential schools and the phrase, “kill the Indian, save the child.” What makes adoption acceptable is that it is actually adopting these kids into whiteness. It is not bringing them with their Haitian culture and language and pride in the same way TPS holders have. A month ago, Sean and I stood with the TPS community in front of the Supreme Court when they heard this case, and it was an entire day of songs and stories and such beauty in the various cultures represented by TPS countries. That is what is being killed. That is what is not allowed. You can come if you adopt whiteness. Danielle I think we have sanitized the abuse and harm in European-dominant families here in the States, in evangelical white churches, schools, and other places. We are told that the white families adopting these children are not perpetrating harm. But I’m looking back at it today and thinking, no, they are perpetrating a lot of harm. So you have a child coming out of one set of harm and having to navigate another set of harm. It’s a double whammy. Well, first I guess I would have to believe that there was or is an actual political dialogue taking place that I could potentially be a part of. And honestly, I'm not sure that I believe that.
- Jun 11, 202639 min
Season 6, Episode 32: Jenny McGrath and Danielle S. Rueb Castillejo on the World Cup and Cancel Culture
Danielle Pull Quotes “I just love the competition of it and seeing how far people can push their bodies and how far they can go. And I love team sports. I didn’t used to like soccer, but I’ve been watching World Cup games with Luis, who’s my partner. Since Mexico played the United States, we watched that game in Ciudad Juárez in Mexico together. And that’s one of the last times the U.S. won. We were down there, and I remember cheering and looking around, and Luis was like, ‘Don’t cheer. You’re going to get us in trouble.’” “I started getting out of my skin this morning listening to stories about the international teams arriving in Mexico and being met with mariachis and food and dancing and celebration, and then hearing about teams arriving here and being locked in rooms, strip searched, cavity searched, and the best Somali referee being sent back. He can’t referee here, which is freaking insane. FIFA has its own problems, but this is the contradiction: we’re supposed to be hosting the world, and yet we’re treating the world like it’s dangerous.” Jenny Pull Quotes “I have a love-hate relationship with soccer because I had three older brothers and they all played soccer very seriously. Two of them went to state, one of them was first team all-state for Colorado. Every weekend was a soccer tournament. By the time I was old enough for my parents to ask if I wanted to play, I was like, ‘No, I hate soccer. I’m going to do dance.’ I still like that choice. I prefer dancing more than soccer, but soccer is the one sport where I actually know what’s going on and know the rules. Anything else, I just dissociate and have no idea what’s happening. I do like the snacks that often come with watching sports, though.” “I saw the story about the referee not being allowed in, and it made me think about the question of hospitality. We are hosting the world, and yet as a nation, as a government, we are acting as though we hate the world. It’s such a weird time. I honestly would not blame countries if they said, ‘No, we’re not actually going to go at all.’” Well, first I guess I would have to believe that there was or is an actual political dialogue taking place that I could potentially be a part of. And honestly, I'm not sure that I believe that.
- Jun 5, 202639 min
Season 6, Episode 31: Danielle Castillejo and Jenny McGrath talk about Dissociation
Jenny describes dissociation as the feeling of not being fully present, not quite in the body, and not able to feel one’s weight connected to the earth. Danielle adds her own experience of dissociation through music, piano, and “slow time,” complicating the idea that dissociation is always pathological. Together, they make space for dissociation as both a protective strategy and a collective danger: something that can offer relief, but can also allow people and communities to remain absent from suffering, violence, and accountability. The conversation then turns toward whiteness, privilege, and what Danielle names “the white tax”—the cost of pseudo-belonging to systems of dominance. Jenny connects privilege to disembodiment, describing how whiteness and supremacy ask people to gain the world while losing access to soul, embodiment, reciprocity, and aliveness. Danielle extends this through the metaphor of Jason Bourne: “Look at what they make you give,” naming the severing of family, home, connection, erotic energy, food, dance, and presence as part of the cost of assimilation into power. From there, Danielle and Jenny ask what it means to practice another way of living. They discuss therapy’s ethical dilemma: whether it helps people survive oppressive systems just enough to continue participating in them, or whether it can become part of creating something new. Jenny imagines a slower world, less obsessed with capitalist productivity, where people have enough, creativity is not tied to extraction, and collective wisdom replaces hierarchy. Danielle brings this into concrete community care through mutual aid, access to blood pressure cuffs, medical knowledge, herbs, and shared histories. The episode closes with hope grounded not in denial, but in practice: Jenny’s experience traveling through forty-four states and finding communities everywhere building different ways of living; Danielle’s garden, walk-running, lifting weights, and touching the earth; Jenny’s book on the trauma of privilege and the hope of regaining soul through embodiment. The conversation becomes an invitation to return to the body, not as a private wellness project, but as a communal and political act of repair. Well, first I guess I would have to believe that there was or is an actual political dialogue taking place that I could potentially be a part of. And honestly, I'm not sure that I believe that.
- May 27, 202651 min
Season 6, Episode 30: The First, The Few, The Only with Michael Thornhill
Michael Thornhill’s book, The First, The Few and The Only, is available through the official book site and shop. The site describes Thornhill as an AfroCuban author, consultant, and recovering DEI practitioner whose work explores race, erasure, tokenism, and mixed identity in North America. Book / author links: https://www.thefirstthefewandtheonly.com/about Official book site: https://www.thefirstthefewandtheonly.com/shop Instagram: @thefirstthefewandtheonly Telling the Truth and Taking Your Story Seriously Michael “The first thing that comes to mind for the listeners is you need to take your story seriously enough to tell the truth. If you're going to write anything… you need to be honest. And if I remember your question correctly, to anyone who's the first, few, and the only, what that means is if you've ever been the only one with your face in the room, when you enter a room, you find yourself counting how many brown faces are there all the time at the church, on the school bus, in the youth group. If you've gotten so used to counting that you forget you're doing it, this book is for you.” “I wrote something called a mirror memoir and what that means to me is a phrase I coined to basically reflect what black and brown people do whenever they get together and discuss what's happened to them in a white world, that whether across lunch tables or whispered in hallways, you end up regurgitating something that happened to you and then next thing you know, the space between you becomes a mirror because you're kind of like, ‘Oh yeah, that happened to me too.’” “They feel well worn. They don't have their shock impact. There's not as much of a recoil and of course they feel old, but they also feel not polished in a sense of pedestal, but in a sense of a smooth rock that's been beat up by the waves against this cliff and they're like gems now. It just feels like something that's been well beaten down to the point of beauty and I feel it and yet it also feels good to name because it's like my body isn't the cage for it anymore.” Well, first I guess I would have to believe that there was or is an actual political dialogue taking place that I could potentially be a part of. And honestly, I'm not sure that I believe that.
- May 15, 202635 min
Season 6, Episode 29: Rebecca W. Walston and Danielle S. Castillejo - Updates - Voting Right's Act
Rebecca 1. On grief, shock, and not trusting white institutions “I don't think shocked is the word that I would use. At the risk of making a sweeping generalization, I think we don't trust white people. I don't think we ever have. And I think even when we see something that looks like forward progress, that doesn't necessarily mean that we trust the white privileged supremacist institutions that were the reason why we needed forward progress in the first place. So I don't know that surprised is or shocked is a word. I think I have some grief about the fact that my generation is now facing something that we thought was long over.” 2. On how quickly government moves when Black rights are targeted “If you ask for anything else, the answer is the wheels of government move slowly and the wheels of justice move slowly… But the second you want to strip Black people of something, the second you want to oppress Black people… ‘We can do that over lunch. We can get that done in the next hour. We can undo 50 years worth of voting rights legislation in five minutes.’” 3. On whiteness as an invented category and an exchange “Isn't that the setup of whiteness all along? And when I say whiteness in that, I'm talking about the category white because the truth is nobody who identifies as white is actually like whiteness is a contrived category. What you are is European. What you are is Irish or German or British or Dutch or any other set of categories. And the whole idea in the U.S. sort of experiment is that you would exchange that ethnic specificity, that nationality and the story, the narrative and the identity that is attached to that, that you would exchange it. You would erase yourself. You would shorten your name, change your last name, drop your language, drop the accent, drop all of the cultural markers of your people to join this category called white in the United States.” 4. On the cost of racism, misogyny, and xenophobia “The exchange is always, you get to become us and them is whoever we're othering at the moment. And this belief that in that othering somehow you come out unscathed, uninjured, which is never true, right? Racism, misogyny, xenophobia, it's expensive. It costs money.” 5. On Supreme Court cases and the invention of whiteness “If you follow the court cases at the turn of the century where you have a number of immigrants that are coming to the United States under all these waves and there's a series of court cases, people seeking citizenship… the debate in the courts the entire time is this idea that there's such a thing as a category called white and the people who belong to this category have access to power and wealth and the people who are not in this category will not have access to that power or wealth.” 6. On racism reinventing itself “Racism is smart. Misogyny is smart. Xenophobia is smart. It never stays the same. It morphs and it changes. It reimagines and reinvents itself. It's clever… When you have this period of expansion of rights, it will be followed by a period of extreme backlash.” 7. On the danger of believing civil rights are permanent “I was born into a season where the battles had already been fought and won and the space around human rights was fairly expansive. So my only experience is living in the space of having the rights, the civil rights that we should have as human beings. That's what I know, and it never dawned on me… that in a country that could put the first Black man in office could at the drop of a dime pivot and do the polar opposite.” 8. On power, race, and who gets to belong “In the end it's probably really about power and that racial lines, gender lines, nationality lines are how we have decided to limit the access to that power. And this is the thing: when you get invited into the us category and you think you're secure, you aren't. Because to quote Martin Luther King Jr., injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. Just because today you fall in the category of us in the us versus them calculation is no guarantee that tomorrow you will stay in that category.” 9. On loyalty to power “If my connection is only to power, I'm loyal to no one and at the same time I'm loyal to anyone who allows me to keep that power.” 10. On the present threat and the limits of talking about trauma as past “Probably the way that we were imagining trauma in that cohort was on this idea that the trauma that we're talking about has long since passed and whatever that threat was doesn't exist today in that way. And for that reason, we sort of have the space to talk about the trauma itself and its impact. And I think where we are in this moment is that's no longer true. The threat is present, it is real, it is tangible, and it's bigger and more concrete in significant ways than it was five, six years ago.” 11. On fear, denial, and
- May 11, 20261h 12m
Season 6, Episode 28: Rebecca, Danielle, and Jenny: Settler Colonial Sex and Purity Culture Stuff
Danielle 1. On adults needing honesty before they can guide young people “But then that comes back to us and being able to honestly talk about our own experiences as kids and be far more honest about what that experience was. Be far more honest about the spectrums we probably all lie along or the ways we've felt confused or the way we've worked through maybe even contradictions in our own selves that don't feel like they fit and what tools have we used that are helpful, what tools have not worked for us… I think it's a new way of differentiating from us as parents to be able to explore something different.” 2. On colonization, sex, caste, and racial hierarchy in Mexican history “One thing I know about my history and a part of the complex and layered part of Mexican history is that when colonizers came over, the Spanish particularly, they would then send for their families or their wives, but they would also, part of the strategy along with the Catholicism and the Christianity that was brought, was having babies with Africans that were enslaved… part of the colonial atmosphere was to essentially make classes of people based on race. And so you have a Christian monogamous colonizer with this sent-for family also having… either Indigenous folks or Africans that have been enslaved… That was intentionally done through sex under the guise of monogamy.” 3. On anger, violence, and the body “We know how arousing anger is and regardless of your sexual orientation, in our bodies anger is so arousing… as they put certain categories of people into unacceptable other categories, they're literally arousing themselves… essentially getting off on the violent talk is what I think and feel… using the content of the United States and our military as a form of doing that just feels so deeply violating.” Rebecca 1. On sexuality and gender as communal, not only individual “Sometimes we can think about this conversation about sex and sexuality and gender and all of that as this sort of individual choice or this individual expression. But I think there's something to be learned from the idea that it can be very communal and very collective and in that way have communal and collective impact. And I think sometimes we don't take that into account in very real ways.” 2. On young people needing a bigger frame “I definitely have the experience with my two kids of just a general sentiment like the frame that you gave me is not big enough to hold all of the things that my world requires me to hold. It's not. I need a different frame. I need a bigger frame. I need some flexibility in the framing in order to engage the world that is in front of me… Sometimes I think the best thing that we can do as adults in that space is say okay and be willing to knock down some walls and get rid of some steel and put something flexible in that space so they can breathe a little bit and figure it out.” 3. On not confusing authentic monogamy with colonial violence “Does that invalidate monogamy? And my answer would be no, it doesn't… if you're running around intentionally creating babies with the Indigenous people that were there in the place where you have come to conquer, don't call yourself believing in monogamy because that's a boldfaced lie… Christian nationalism is not Christianity, it's something else. And part of what is infuriating to me is the hijacking of an idea or vocabulary or belief that in and of itself is fine and it gets hijacked and applied to something that is a gross perversion of what it was meant to be.” Jenny 1. On purity culture, abstinence-only education, and labels “So much of that… is a symptom of purity culture and the fact that we don't talk about sex. The abstinence-only generations since the ’80s were we don't talk about sex. And it was sort of Nancy Reagan’s idea of just say no was applied to sex. And so consent was not talked about. Sexuality was not talked about. Gender expression was not talked about. And it's not that those things didn't exist… The queer community has always been around.” 2. On labels as both liberating and limiting “Raphaela Fieo from Healing Exchange says labels can be liberating or they can be limiting. And I think it's important to hold both. For some people, labels are really, really important and for some people labels are like, I don't actually want you to try to define me or put me in a box.” 3. On settler sex and Christian nationalism “What would have to happen is the reckoning of white heteronormative Christian nationalism… Kim TallBear is an Indigenous polyamorous scholar who has this article called Making Love and Relations Beyond Settler Sex… they essentially critique a lot of the white sex-positive communities that don't acknowledge the privilege in white polyamory or sex-positive practices when it literally was gender and racial and familial relati
- Apr 17, 202655 min
Season 6, Episode 27: Danielle, Rebecca and Jenny McGrath - Pope Leo and the President
"Woe to those who manipulate religion and the very name of God for their own military, economic and political gain, dragging that which is sacred into darkness and filth," Leo said during his four-country tour of Africa. "It is a world turned upside down, an exploitation of God’s creation that must be denounced and rejected by every honest conscience." Link here Podcast Summary: Pope Fiction This episode is a sharp, passionate, and often humorous conversation about religion, power, and political corruption in the current American moment. Using recent controversies involving Donald Trump, Pete Hegseth, and Pope Leo as a starting point, the three of you explore how Christianity is being manipulated for political gain and how sacred language is used to justify cruelty, nationalism, and violence. A central thread of the episode is grief and disbelief: How did so many faith communities get here? Rebecca especially wrestles with the collapse of theological integrity inside modern evangelicalism, while Jenny situates these distortions within a much longer historical pattern—empire repeatedly co-opting religion for domination. Danielle brings in race, imagery, and whiteness, asking how white depictions of Jesus shape public consciousness and who gets recognized as holy in the first place. The conversation also moves toward accountability. You discuss public figures like Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, and Marjorie Taylor Greene criticizing Trump, but question whether criticism without confession or repair means anything. What emerges is a larger theme: repentance is not words—it is dismantling harmful systems one helped build. Despite the outrage, the episode holds onto resistance and hope. Danielle names the endurance of oppressed people—“We’ve been doing this for hundreds of years and we’re still here.” Rebecca points to truth-telling traditions, especially from the Black church, as carrying moral clarity in moments when mainstream institutions fail. Jenny reminds listeners that these abuses are ancient, but so is the resistance to them. Overall, this is a podcast about spiritual discernment in a disorienting age: how to recognize counterfeit faith, refuse numbness, and keep one’s conscience alive. Well, first I guess I would have to believe that there was or is an actual political dialogue taking place that I could potentially be a part of. And honestly, I'm not sure that I believe that.
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