Fresh Air - How sky-high ticket prices, war & politics could impact the World Cup

Episode Date: June 9, 2026

The biggest World Cup ever starts this week. Laura Williamson, editor in chief of The Athletic, describes how sky-high prices, travel restrictions, politics and the Ebola outbreak are impacting fans. Williamson also discusses President Trump’s UFC event on the White House lawn. Ken Tucker reviews Kacey Musgraves’ album ‘Middle of Nowhere,’ which he says pairs well with the music biography ‘Gary Stewart: I Am From the Honky-Tonks.’See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

This is fresh air. I'm Dave Davies. The FIFA World Cup opens this week with soccer matches in the United States, Canada, and Mexico. With 48 teams in 104 matches, this will be the biggest World Cup ever. Gianni Infantino, the president of FIFA, the International Federation that runs the tournament, has declared that this will be the greatest event that humanity, mankind, has ever seen and ever will see. So, yes, there's plenty of excitement. More than 5 million tickets. have been sold to international travelers alone. But this is also a season of some discontent surrounding the cop. Aside from logistical challenges like transportation, there are issues arising from war, politics, infectious disease, and according to many, greed. FIFA's ticketing practices and pricing have outraged many fans

and prompted investigations by two state attorneys general. U.S. immigration restrictions and the war with Iran have affected travel from many countries, And the Ebola outbreak has the attention of local and international health officials. And just to keep things interesting this week, there's the NBA finals and another one-of-a-kind sports event coming up on Sunday, the ultimate fighting championship on the White House lawn. To talk about all this, we've invited Laura Williamson, editor-in-chief of The Athletic, to join us. The Athletic is the subscription-based sports journalism site of the New York Times. Before joining The Athletic, Laura Williamson was Sports News,

editor and a correspondent at The Daily Mail. She joined us from London, where she is based. We recorded our conversation yesterday. Laura Williamson, welcome to fresh air. Thank you. Thank you for having me. You know, we'll be talking about some issues and controversing surrounding the World Cup. But to begin with, I just want to take note of the enormous pleasure and joy that this brings to many hundreds of millions of people around the world. Just share with us, you know, what the World Cup can be at its best. Yeah, I mean, when I think about my experience of World Cups, you know, as a kid and then being lucky enough to be in Qatar four years ago and to cover that tournament, you might not remember the score, you might not remember who scored, but you remember where you were and who you watched it with and what it meant to you at that time. And I think it's that power that actually sport can have and football soccer in particular can have to bring people together, that sort of connective tissue, if you like. So that's the hope that that's what this tournament can do without sounding sort of too sentimental about things but I really do believe that football in particular

has a power to do that. Is there a heart-stopping play or moment that sticks in your mind when you think about the World Cup? I do think back to that final three and a half years ago in Qatar, France and Argentina and going right down to the wire in terms of penalties and watching Leonel Messi lift the World Cup trophy was just an incredible moment when you think of his career and it's obviously still going.

He'll be there this time around as well. But just the – it's so rare that you get an incredible game to match the occasion and that delivered on all fronts. All right. Well, so let's talk about some of the issues here. Ticket prices at this World Cup are higher than any World Cup ever, in part because FIFA, which runs this thing, is using dynamic pricing, right? Yes, yes, the first time it's ever been used.

Yeah, so what does that mean for fans? It means ticket prices go, I was going to say up and down, but actually they just go up at the moment, depending on scarcity and depending on the demand for those tickets. So because a certain number of tickets have been kept back or allocated to fans that are going to follow that country throughout the tournament, it's meant prices have gone up and up and up. So for the final, which obviously we don't know who's.

going to be in that. At the moment, there's sort of an average price for around $11,000, which is eye-watering, to be honest. But then at the other level, an England fan, for example, who wanted to have the opportunity to buy a ticket for every one of their group games and then an opportunity to buy a ticket to follow their team, even all the way onto the final. They were being asked to park with £14,000 ahead of the tournament. I mean, that is just so prohibitive for, the average person. It's an incredible amount of money before you've added on hotels and travel, etc, etc. So the dynamic pricing has been very controversial because it also doesn't distinguish between, they're called supporter fans in FIFA language, but between fans who, you know, I've been to every

game that their team has played for the past 10 years, for example, and somebody who lives in Philadelphia and quite fancies going to a World Cup game. You might think, well, that's just tough luck. If the demand's there, that's what happens. But it's a very different approach for football in general. And I think that's why it's caused so much upset because you're not being rewarded for loyalty, if you like, or for being an expert about your team.

So that's been very, very controversial. And there's upset a lot of people. You know, and it's not just the prices. It's the way they are being managed and market. And I didn't understand really how troublingly deceptive this can be until I read a piece in the athletic of which you are editor-in-chief by Henry Bushnell, who wrote this story about how it, you know, typically when you buy a sports ticket, I'm going to go to a game in Baltimore. My daughter lives in Baltimore. So I was going to get a Baltimore Orioles game. And you go to the website and there's a map of the stadium and you can pick the section, the row, the seat that you know exactly what you're getting and what it costs.

But he writes in this piece that when people went to the FIFA site to buy tickets for their games, you couldn't choose a seat. You chose a category of seats. There were four categories. And he noted that for category one, the most expensive, which was, for most of them, more than $1, sometimes several thousand. You were showing a map of the stadium. And basically, the good seats in the lower half along the sidelines were category one. So you didn't know what seat you were getting, but you figured you're getting one of those. But in fact, what happens is after you bought it, they changed the lines without your knowledge.

And what you might have found is that now your category one price got you a seat somewhere else. And here's a cut from a video that Henry Bushnell said, describing about what happened to most of these fans. He said he's talked to a lot of them and they are not getting what they thought. I haven't been able to find a single fan who got those desirable seats. Everyone says they're in corners or behind the goals or even in the second deck. And in some cases, even if they paid a category one price, they're actually in sections that were colored red for category two at one point because FIFA has been quietly altering these maps throughout the past several months.

So the fans are furious. They feel misled, taken advantage of, scammed. Those are a few words they've used. One even told me he's considering a class action lawsuit. FIFA's response? The maps were, quote, indicative and quote, designed to provide guidance rather than the exact same. seat layout.

So Laura Williamson, what's the fallout from this? Yeah, Henry has been incredible in terms of the rigorous ways reported this process. And another point that he's made in an article on Monday on The Athletic is a lot of this has come because the process has been so opaque. So FIFA can do what they like ostensibly. They are the World Cup organizers. So as you referenced there, we've heard examples of people, thinking they're buying VIP hospitality tickets.

And then actually when the ticket seat and row number comes through, it's category one, which is a very, very different experience. And I think even going back to sort of September, that was the first time that information about ticketing for this tournament was released. And that was only in September, you know, less than a year to go before kickoff. And then there was the sort of right-to-buy-buy-fiasco, if you like, which was where you paid an additional fee to... have the right to buy a ticket because FIFA were banking on there being such high demand,

which there was. Then the dynamic pricing kicked in and the sort of initial prices shot up by an average of 35% for I think 95 of the 104 games. And then people have realized what tickets they've got. And as you say, they're not in the area they thought they were. Then there's also the resale market. So previously you would buy a ticket, maybe through FIFA or through the event organizers, and then some people choose to put it on a secondary resale site and make money that way. FIFA have really leaned into the resale market,

which is meant so they're operating an official one, but there's a 15% fee for both the buyer and the seller, which goes to FIFA, on any resale. So fans are being hit again, and they still don't have that full knowledge of, If I'm buying a ticket for this game at this stadium, I know where I'm going to sit because it could all change again. So FIFA has its own proprietary resale platform in which they earn essentially 30% commission on it. Yeah.

Wow. Yeah. Yeah. Well, we know that the attorneys general of New York and New Jersey have announced investigations into this and have issued subpoenas for FIFA. I don't know where that stands. Do you have any sense of what redress there might be for disappointed fans? sadly I think the answer is you just have to take your chance on the dynamic pricing market going down which I really I really can't see happening but now it's this close to it

I think this is what we've signed up for if you like and it's quite sad for the the ordinary fan I mean there's been there's been some very sort of small concessions in terms of a thousand sixty dollar tickets for sort of true fans, if you like, or followers of each team at each game. And then some concessions for games at MetLife in terms of New York City residents or New Jersey residents. But like we're talking a thousand tickets out of 60 or thousand or more. So they're very, very small inroads. You know, FIFA and Gianni Infantino have said lots of times that, you know, this is the American

ticketing model. You know, Americans, they want entertainment, and they're happy to pay for it. Our research and from the people we've been speaking to, both sort of casual sports fans and diehard football soccer fans, that's just not the case. That's, you know, when you're talking about four figures to see a World Cup game, that is just prohibitive for so many people. Jennifer Davenport, who is the Attorney General up at the state of New Jersey, said being honest about ticket sales is not complicated, but FIFA has turned

buying a ticket to the World Cup into a gauntlet of confusion, fake scarcity and impossibly high prices. Well, we'll see where her investigation goes. I mean, I assume that at the pace of these things usually work, nothing's going to happen over the course of the tournament itself. No, no, I wouldn't have thought so. And then the way football works will be on to the next one, but there is very likely to be a women's World Cup in the United States, along with a couple of other countries in 2031.

So I think it's going to be fascinating to keep an eye on the lessons that have been learned this time to see what happens then. We should say that FIFA's argument is always well this tournament is going to make $11 billion, which is going to be invested back into the global game. But again, that's where the opaque nature of this comes into play in that, you know, the 211 FIFA member federations can expect to get about $8 million each. this tournament or during this World Cup cycle, but we don't know where that's going. How does that translate to kids playing soccer in Senegal or Ivory Coast or wherever?

We don't know. We don't know where that money goes. So I think that also adds to the confusion and the feeling of, well, who is this tournament for? Is it for fans? Is it for the member federations? Is it for growing the global game? A lot of questions swirling around. you make it enough of an elite event? Are you going to lose the ground level fanatics, if you will, who bring all the color to the game?

Yeah, and without being sort of oversensitive about it. But what about the local kids who, so many of my colleagues in North America talk about 94 and being a kid and being at a game and actually in getting this bug for this beautiful game, which at its best it is simple and beautiful. And if the ticket prices are as prohibitive as we've been discussing, how do you get a family of four into a game? Like it's impossible. So I guess that would be my main concern going into it.

If we're talking about an opportunity to really grow soccer in the US in particular, are we missing an opportunity here, I think? I guess we should know that Johnny Infantino, the president of FIFA, took over after this horrific scandal, it was 2015, when they raided the headquarters and I think 27 FIFA officials pled guilty to fraud charges. And he has aggressively expanded the game, right? Operates far more tournaments now than it used to and generates a whole lot more money. Yes, yeah.

I mean, Johnny Infantino was elected in 2016 on a ticket of two things, really. It was, A, I'm going to clean up this game. I mean, you can't overstate how damaging that 2015 scandal was. I mean, I remember it vividly. I was working at the Daily Mail, and the FBI and Swiss authorities raided a luxury hotel on a lake in Zurich. And, you know, you had FIFA executives being taken out, you know, with their head under bedcloth sheets and things.

It was extraordinary. rampant systemic and deep rooted corruption. So outcomes Gianni Infantino. He was at UEFA, which is the European governing body of football. And he says, I'm going to clean up this game. And he also very cleverly said, and I am going to give the 211 member federations, though they're the people who vote for him to be in power,

I'm going to give you more money. And he quickly raised the sort of annual bounty, if you like, from $3 million to five, and now it's at eight. And the way he's done that is... The bounty, meaning what those federations pay to participate? No, the money that they receive as a member of FIFA. So this is ostensibly where all the ticket money, all the revenue from mainly Men's World Cup,

but lots of other events as well, is filtering down. So he's raised more money for the people that, you know, to be blunt, are voting to keep him in power, very clever and the way he's done that is by basically creating more football tournaments so we've seen the club world cup for men which was hosted by the US last summer and was won by Chelsea eventually but that was a huge event that had come like the the club world cup used to be sort of eight teams in the winter somewhere in the Middle East very low key very we say clubs that It means these soccer teams that are in, mostly in Europe, I guess, right?

Yeah. In South America, right? But they're private teams. They're not national teams, right? Exactly. Exactly. So you'd have the European champions against the South American champions, et cetera, et cetera. So he's created this huge new tournament, to be honest, with huge prize money involved to get and to generate more revenue.

And this is why we find ourselves with 48 teams in the World Cup and talk that that may go to 64 for next time, which people are always eager to talk down, but it's not going away. So his answer for creating this incredible amount of cash has been just more football. What that means for what we'll see on the pitch this summer, I'm not quite sure, because players are definitely tired. But he has delivered on the two things that he said he would do in 2016. He's cleaned up FIFA, the sort of the scounder.

The sort of the scandals and the awful stories of bribery and corruption are gone. They feel like they belong to a previous era. And he is giving more money to the federations. So in a way, he's done what he said he would do. And he has been, had a very close relationship with President Trump. He recently gave him FIFA's first ever peace prize, right? Yeah, that was, I was at the World Cup drawer in Washington, D.C. before Christmas. And it really was an extraordinary moment.

And yeah, handing over the first FIFA Peace Prize to President Trump. And then in the next breath, saying that politics and soccer don't mix, it's, you can't equate the two. So FIFA are very hot, for example, on what flags you can bring in to a World Cup stadium. So they're saying that because politics and soccer don't mix, you couldn't bring in an Iranian flag that reflected the old regime. But at the same time, they can give a peace prize to the president of the United States. It's, again, that sort of lack of transparency and clear, clear rules. It does feel like it's one rule for one person and one for another.

So I suppose those controversions and as well as the high. ticket prices are contributing to the fact that hotel reservations are off, right? Yes. Yeah. I think another factor as well is travel, transport to the games itself. We've covered this extensively because, again, from a sort of British perspective, if you like, of being able to get a five-pound ticket to get a bus or a train to a stadium, etc., the idea of being charged, I think it's $80 to get from Boston to Foxborough, actually Scotland have a game there, or it's now down, in inverted commas, from $150 to $98 to get from Penn Station to MetLife, and you have to pre-book as well.

That's, again, another cost that people are just not prepared to pay. And I think when you package all of that together, visas, tickets, hotel prices, and sort of the image of America geopolitically and globally, the cost of actually getting to the games. Then we haven't even talked about water. We've had the Watergate scandal this week. I think it is off-putting for a lot of people.

Yeah, the Watergate thing was, it's not water. The FIFA originally said people could bring empty bottles, transparent water bottles in to get them filled at coolers. Then they reverse themselves and then they reverse the reversal, all right. So now you can bring a water bottle?

You can, not to the stadiums in Mexico, but you can into the US and Canada. Up to, I think, 20 ounces, sort of soft plastic bottles, which I think has been a relief for lots of people because another thing we haven't mentioned is the heat. The games, especially in the latter stages, you know, the final kicks off at 3pm local time, which it will either storm or it will be, you know, burning hot. So absolutely fans need to have water as do the players, of course. We're going to take another break here. Let me reintroduce you.

We are speaking with Laura Williamson. She is editor-in-chief at The Athletic. She'll be back to talk more after this short break. I'm Dave Davies, and this is fresh air. The United States, under the Trump administration, has required bonds from $500 up to $15,000 for travelers from some countries to post when entering the United States to ensure that they won't. remain there illegally. And the administration has waived those bonds for those coming to the

World Cup, provided they bought their ticket by April 15th and entered the FIFA pass system. So not just anybody, right? That's it. That's it. And I think some of the reporting around that change in the rules was confusing as well because it was like, oh, you know, they've waived all the bonds. No, no, they haven't. Like you had to sign up for the FIFA pass scheme which was supposed to basically enable you to book embassy appointments, et cetera, and help with the visa scheduling process. You had to have done that and have bought a match ticket by April the 15th. Some countries didn't qualify until three weeks earlier, three weeks before that.

So there will be lots and lots of people who have been affected by this. We've talked about some of the difficulties with ticket prices, with immigration issues. There's also just getting to the game when if you're in the right city and you have a hotel booked. And in the past World Cups, host countries have invested a lot in getting fans to and from matches. I mean, I read that in Russia in 2018, there were long distance trains to get people from one Russian city to another that were no charge. What was it like when you were in Qatar for the last World Cup? It was totally and utterly different because all those games, really were within one city.

You couldn't be able to see all of it, but in theory, if you wanted to, you could go to four games in a day by getting the air-conditioned, very clean, very efficient, a very free train system between the two, their version of a subway.

Whereas here, because it is so spread out over 16 host cities and three countries, all of which are almost like their own little kingdoms, if you like. They've all signed individual contracts with FIFA, so there's all different rules all over the place. It's going to be completely different. And also, I think, because of the, one of FIFA's things is about the naming of stadiums. So you can't have commercial names in stadium titles.

So MetLife has met life to so many people, but it will be New York, New Jersey Stadium for the duration of this World Cup. This World Cup comes at a time when there is an Ebola outbreak in at least two African countries. There are travel restrictions in the United States from some of those countries, including Congo, which is sending a team to the tournament and I think has a base in Houston. How much of a concern, how much of disruption might this cause to World Cup matches? The answer is we don't know again. So it's a huge unknown in terms of, I mean, fans, you would think, fans actually coming from. Congo will be very, very, very limited because of the reasons we've discussed. And the health measures around the team itself will be incredibly tight.

But it's another factor that, of course, is very concerning. Another thing for people to think about. Security is always a challenge at these things. And, you know, it's interesting that two years ago at the Copa America Cup final in Florida, some fans actually stormed the stadium. It was quite a chaotic scene. Do you have any sense of what special security measures might be undertaken in these World Cup matches? I was at that final and actually my children and my dad were there as well.

Really? It was very, very scary in terms of it happened, I think, because fans left it as they're allowed to. They left it late to get into the stadium and then a crush developed. And the reaction was to shut the gates, which just meant people had nowhere to go. And the kickoff was delayed and it was very scary, very scary. I think FIFA would say that, well, that wasn't our tournament. We didn't run that operation. It will be very different at the World Cup.

And I do think it will be in terms of the perimeter, sort of the outside, boundary of the stadiums is quite a long way away from the actual bowl, which will sort of help the flow of people, which is often where problems occur. We've seen it here, for example, in the Stad de France with the Champions League final, the European Championship a couple of years ago with crushes developing as people get there late.

But I think the wider surface area will definitely help there. I think there's going to be security issues about what people are bringing into stadiums in terms of flags and political banners and slogans and things like that. That was a huge issue in Qatar with people wanting to bring flags protesting about human rights, etc., into stadiums and getting them taken off them or denied entry. I think we'll see that on a different level at this tournament. And then in terms of general public safety, I've been reading about some action on drones

and the use of drones above stadiums. And that's, again, a bit of an unknown. We don't know what's going to happen there. But I do think the sort of flow of people, if you like, in terms of their physical safety, that will be as well prepared as we possibly can be because of the large distance outside the stadiums and then trying to communicate to people

to get there early, etc. The United States is at war with Iran. The Iranian team is being allowed to come, right? Yes, yes. We actually sent a reporter to Turkey to see them off, if you like. They had a pre-tournament training camp there. They flew to Mexico just over the border from the US. They landed there in the early hours of Sunday morning.

And then they're still waiting on visas to. get into the US to play their games. There have been reports that they will sensibly only be allowed day passes, so they have to go into the US and then leave again. So it's very, very fraught. And also, we're hearing, I mean, we would hear this because there's a travel ban, but a lot of dissident fans who are anti-the-regime and have lived outside of Iran for a long time, have been denied their visas to get into the United States. So it will be very much reliant on the Iranian diasporas, particularly in Los Angeles, to support their team however they see fit. Yeah, I want to get this straight.

You and I are speaking on Monday. Are you saying that the Iranian team is not actually in the United States yet? No. No, they're still in Mexico, and they're still awaiting visa clearance to travel into the United States to play their games. And I understand the State Department refused entry to certain members of the staff for the team. letting the players in but not all of the staff. Is that right? Yes, that's right.

This goes back to a women's tournament actually, which was in Australia a few months ago. And we did a lot of reporting around the fact that security personnel attached to the regime had traveled with the team to make sure they didn't abscond. And in fact, Australia ended up offering refuge, but the vast majority returned to Iran with the team. So that's the explanation for certain members of the backroom staff being denied entry because it's unclear whether they are there for performance reasons or whether they are representative of the regime. We're going to take another break here. Let me reintroduce you.

We are speaking with Laura Williamson. She is editor-in-chief at The Athletic. We will continue our conversation in just a moment. This is fresh air. Laura Williamson, I don't know if you follow mixed martial arts much, But not closely, but we'll go. This is going to be quite an event here. I mean, this structure's been built on the lawn of the White House.

And President Trump, it's going to be his birthday. It's going to be flag day. And there's going to be this ultimate fighting championship. You know, American presidents have traditionally met to congratulate, you know, championship sports teams at the college level, the pro level, occasionally attend big games. Is there any precedent for something like this? I mean what is it 600 ton steel arch

on the south lawn it feels a little bit different to Obama President Obama go to watch an NBA game doesn't it yeah I mean it's yeah

quite a weekend I think we're expecting President Trump at the US's opening game on Friday as well and then this shindig on the White House lawn on Sunday

Donald Trump has a history with mixed martial arts doesn't he he does also I think as recently invested in UFC's parent company as well, which brings an added dimension to hosting an event with such premium ticket prices as well, I think. Well, yeah, let's talk about that directly. The athletic reported on this.

A few weeks after this ultimate fighting championship on the White House lawn was announced, Donald Trump bought a substantial amount of stock. He was required to report this, so we don't know the exact amount, but it was between 15,000 and 50,000 stock into TKO Holdings, which is the parent company of the ultimate fighting championships. What's the significance of this? I think when you look at this event, and again, we've been talking about ticket prices, I think premium tickets for this UFC event are sort of a million dollars a pop at the very highest level.

So who is profiting from that? would be my question. And is it the holding group in which Mr. Trump has recently invested? I think that it sort of invites further questions about why this event is being held and where the money's going. So a potential conflict of interest if there's an event on a public space that he's profiting from. Now, a lawsuit was filed just over the weekend asking a judge to halt this event. What do we know about that? The suit is ostensibly saying, as we've just mentioned, that is this a conflict of interest?

It's saying that it's giving the chief executive of UFC, Dana White, unfettered access to the White House and the Lincoln Memorial, where the weigh-ins are going to be held before the event, to stage a private for-profit sports event. Yeah, obviously it's in such a public and prestigious area. So that's the main tenement of the lawsuit. You know, before I let you go, you know, at the Athletic, you have all these veteran sports journalists, a huge staff who do great work.

I mean, a lot of good analytical stuff. And I imagine a lot of these sports journalists got into the field because they were either athletes themselves or just loved sports and they liked to write about the players and the teams and the competition. But, you know, sports is such a big business now and the drive-for-profits affects competition. I wonder if you wrestle at times with how to, you know, apportion your reporting resources to covering the athletic competition or the business of sports. Yeah, we do. I think about that a lot, actually, because I think ultimately I want our reporters to tell people things they don't know about whatever it is they care about.

and sport and culture and business and politics are so entwined now, so interspersed. So I do feel we have our duty really to explore all avenues of that. Football, soccer is not just now about what happens in 90 minutes on the pitch. You know, some of our most popular pieces might be about player salaries, for example, or trades or transfers and who's going where and the intrigue around that. I sort of think back to the last World Cup as well. One of our most successful pieces was about Lienel Messi,

the Argentina and into Miami strikers' relationship with Saudi Arabia. And of course it helped that Saudi Arabia had a shock win against Argentina, so people were interested around that. But the piece wasn't about the sport at all. It was about his sponsorship deals and how he danced, this dance with a Middle Eastern state ostensibly. And it was hugely popular

because people want to know about the whole player in the round, not just what they can do with a football at their feet. So I often think back to that and that's been a real sort of tenement of our planning for this tournament in that we do want to deliver comprehensive coverage. and that doesn't just mean every game live and the focus on the bigger players. It means rigorous reporting around the biggest stories

and those sort of those topics that take us away from the pitch are just as important really. But then the other thing is that sport is supposed to be fun. I'm often telling reporters that, that it can be a release as well. So I think we have to remember that, you know, going back to my answer right at the beginning about the joy.

that a World Cup tournament can bring. We have to remember that. And we have to remember that because of the reasons we've discussed today, so many people won't be able to go. They'll be viewing this through their television screens, through their radios, etc. So we have to take them there. We have to tell them what it's like, good and bad, really.

So are you going to be attending any World Cup matches yourself? I am. I fly out on Wednesday for a couple of weeks, based in New York City, so I'm hoping to get to some games at MetLife, and I come back to the UK and then out again for the last 10 days or so. So again, hoping to get to the final. Are you picking your games based on the competing teams, just getting a sense of it? I mean, are you there as a journalist or a fan or what? Very much as a journalist, but sadly the role of an editor is just to tell other people what to do

rather than go to experience the joy of World Cup matches myself. Well, Laura Williamson, thank you so much for speaking with us. Absolute pleasure. Thank you. Laura Williamson is editor-in-chief at The Athletic from the New York Times. We recorded our interview yesterday. Coming up, rock critic Kent Tucker reviews a new album from Casey Musgraves and a recent biography of the 1970s-era singer Gary Stewart. This is fresh air.

Our rock critic Ken Tucker has something new and something old for us. There's the new album from one of the new album from one of the first. of country music's biggest stars, Casey Musgraves. Ken thinks the best songs on her new album, Middle of Nowhere, have the dramatic detail of good fiction. He's also here to praise a recently published book, Jimmy McDonough's biography of the 1970s era singer Gary Stewart called I Am from the Honky Tanks. It's a lengthy portrait of a gifted but tragic performer, something old, something new. Let's start with Casey Musgraves. Out there on the edge of the world

Way past common sin Pass the dairy queen The county line The conventional framing of Casey Musgrave's recent career Is that she went pop for a few years On a couple of albums and now is returning to country music With Middle of Nowhere But the Texas twang in her yearning-searching voice

Has always remained rooted in country's deep melancholy One of the best moments on this album occurs on the song Back on the Wagon, whose lyric is upbeat and optimistic. The guy she loves has gotten sober and responsible. The two of them are planning a new cloudless future. But Musgrave's vocal carries all the feelings the lyric suppresses. You can hear the worry and doubt in her voice. She wants to believe he's changed, but she can't help but wonder,

has he really? Can I go through all that pain again? The tension between voice and words creates an entire vivid short story in under four minutes. Middle of nowhere is an uneven album, sometimes succumbing to the kind of uneven album, sometimes succumbing to the kind of false hope that back on the world,

that back on the wagon is too honest to claim. Profound sadness and extravagant schmaltz characterized the music of Gary Stewart, the country cult figure who died in 2003. Stewart's voice was an emotional rumble that rose into a keening high tenor in moments of exquisite pain, as on the title song of his extraordinary

1975 album, Out of Hand. Barry Stewart's life was out of hand, to put it mildly. The new biography by Jimmy McDonough called I Am from the Honky Tunks spends more than 500 pages chronicling Stewart's wild life and times. Born poor into a large Kentucky family in 1944, Stewart idolized Hank Williams, had quit school, and was playing in bands by his mid-teens. Pretty soon, his distinctive voice and the cleverly precise details

in his songwriting caught the attention of Nashville stars like Mel Tillis, who provided an entree into the industry. Early on in the book, McDonough sets up what would be the detail that sets Gary Stewart's life apart from so many performers. Time and again, writes McDonough, Gary would stress to me he never went looking for stardom, never went knocking on doors, never begged anyone to listen to his demos. McDonough's book then chronicles the way others pushed Stewart's. to record the wonderfully agonized ballads he wrote, and insisted that he submit to the Nashville Starmaking machinery. For a short while, it worked.

I've seen man look at her before. I don't see. I'd like to think it makes me proud. But I'm always fooling me. The minute I'm not there, while she pours herself some strange Pour myself a drink

Some way She's acting single I'm drinking doubles Stewart's only number one hit Stewart liked to play music But the smaller the crowd he thought The better he'd be able to connect to an audience As the years went by

His ambivalence towards celebrity became a dark resentment He shunned interviews Lost record contracts Lots of drugs were consumed To numb at all Stuart died by suicide at age 59. Here's Bob Dylan's favorite Gary Stewart song.

You never know we were ready, but we're celebrating. Half century in the making, I Am from the Honky Tonks, is a lot more than the biography of a cult artist. It's a vast, tumultuous portrait of 20th century southern working class life. I think a history-minded artist like Casey Musgraves would really like this. book. I hope she and you read it. Kentucky reviewed new music by Casey Musgraves and a biography of Gary Stewart called I Am from the Honky Talks. On tomorrow's show, we speak with actor Josh O'Connor. He won an Emmy playing a young Prince Charles in the Crown. Now he's the lead in Steven Spielberg's new film

Disclosure Day. We'll talk about his approach in this new blockbuster and Spielberg's decades-long exploration of the idea that aliens are among us. I hope you can join us. Fresh Air's executive producer is Sam Brigger. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Anne-Marie Baldinato, Lauren Crenzell, Teresa Madden, Monique Nazareth, Thaya Challoner, Susan Yakundi, Anna Bauman and Nico Gonzá.

Our digital media producer is Molly C.V. Nesper. Roberta Shorrock directs the show. For Terry Gross and Tanya Mosley, I'm Dave Davies.