Somewhere between the collapse of the Euro, the re-collapse of the yen, and the ongoing slow-motion implosion we politely call “late-stage capitalism,” a five-octave voice from Hackney still manages to ricochet off satellites and remind the planet that, yes, we once voted by text message for something other than constitutional referendums. Leona Lewis—remember her?—has become…
Albania: Europe’s Pocket-Sized Plot Twist By our correspondent, who once spent a night in Tirana arguing with a taxi driver about whether the EU is a pyramid scheme (spoiler: the taxi driver won). Tirana—In the great, weary telenovela of geopolitics, Albania keeps getting cast as the mysterious cousin who turns up late to family reunions,…
The Golden Age That Never Ended: Piracy’s Global Renaissance Picture this: while Netflix streams tales of swashbuckling rogues in eyeliner, real pirates—sans the charming Jack Sparrow theatrics—are quietly having their best quarter-century since the 1600s. From the oil-soaked waters of the Gulf of Guinea to the stratospheric corridors of cyberspace, piracy has traded its tricorn…
Nashville, Tennessee – To the average Berlin bureaucrat or Singaporean supply-chain analyst, Tennessee State University sounds like a minor footnote on the U.S. map, a place where the marching band plays “Rocky Top” and nobody questions why the local whiskey is older than the freshmen. But zoom out and the institution becomes a canary in…
The 28-kilometer sprint between Medellín and its mountain-shadow suburb Santa Fe de Antioquia used to be a three-hour roulette of potholes, roadside shrines, and the occasional armed checkpoint. Today it is a 30-minute glide along Tunel de la Quiebra—eight kilometers of asphalt that feel positively Swiss until you remember the tunnel was mostly financed by…
Barack Obama: The Last Man Who Made the World Clap Before Checking Its Wallet By Dave’s Locker, International Desk PARIS—Somewhere between the Champs-Élysées and a Nairobi traffic jam, Barack Hussein Obama still strolls in the collective imagination like a well-tailored ghost of what might have been. Eight years after he left the Oval Office, the…
Bill Clinton, the Man Who Taught the World to Love a Flawed Superpower By Dave’s Locker Global Correspondent PARIS—Somewhere between the foie-gras carts of the Champs-Élysées and the kebab stands of Istanbul, you can still hear the faint echo of a saxophone riff that once sold the American Century as a never-ending cocktail hour. That…
Fire Emblem Shadows: How a 30-Year-Old Video Game Trope Became the Planet’s Favorite Political Metaphor PARIS—Somewhere between the eighth espresso of the morning and the third breaking-news alert about another “shadow war,” I realized that the entire planet has apparently enrolled in a master class taught by Fire Emblem’s level-design department. The concept—literal shadows cast…
From Jakarta to Johannesburg, the name “Obama” still functions as international shorthand for a very specific cocktail of audacity, eloquence, and the faint smell of drone exhaust. When Barack Hussein Obama II left the White House in January 2017, the global applause was thunderous—partly because it meant the planet had survived eight years of a…
Finland: A Frozen Fable of Nordic Exceptionalism and the World’s Quiet Envy By Dave’s Locker Global Affairs Desk HELSINKI—On the map, Finland looks like Europe’s afterthought, a modest sliver wedged between the bear-hug of Russia and the polite fist-bump of Sweden. Yet this nation of 5.6 million has spent the past decade serving the rest…
Ric Grenell, the man who once served as Donald Trump’s acting Director of National Intelligence for the length of a European vacation, has lately been auditioning for a far grander role: self-appointed viceroy of the entire planet. From Tirana to Tegucigalpa, foreign ministries now keep a “Grenell folder” next to the one marked “Act of…
Como 1 – Sassuolo 0 Stadio Giuseppe Sinigaglia, Northern Italy, Saturday evening. The fog rolls off Lake Como like a hung-over diplomat slinking out of a five-star summit, and somewhere between the water and the floodlights a football match breaks out—apparently of interest to more than the 11,000 locals too polite to admit they’d rather…
