The World Cup is underway. And if you’re looking for someone who saw all of this coming — the sovereign wealth funds buying clubs, the exorbitant costs of fandom, the collision of soccer and authoritarian soft power — Franklin Foer did. Twenty-two years ago.

Foer is a national correspondent at The Atlantic, a former editor of The New Republic, and the author of How Soccer Explains the World — a book that used the game as a lens to dissect the forces of globalization long before most American sports writers thought soccer was worth covering. He also is the author of World Without Mind, about Big Tech’s takeover of culture, and The Last Politician, about Joe Biden.

Today we talk about what the book got right, what it missed, what Trump and FIFA have in common, and why the World Cup — more than any other sporting event — is a Rorschach test for the world we actually live in.

Of course, there’s a cycling angle.

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