SÃO PAULO—Somewhere between the papaya-colored favela lights and the 24-hour sushi robots, I found myself asking an algorithm for “grocery near me.” The phone, ever the obedient courtier, spat back a map studded with red pins: a Carrefour the size of Liechtenstein, a Korean mom-and-pop that doubles as a cryptocurrency exchange, and, for the romantics,…
The word “brave” used to come with a body count. Leonidas at Thermopylae, Harriet Tubman on the Underground Railroad, the anonymous soul who first looked at a blue-ringed octopus and thought, “I wonder how that tastes.” Today, the term is more likely to describe a middle-manager who posts a selfie from his standing desk captioned…
The Curious Case of Joanna Page: How a Welsh Actress Accidentally Became a Geopolitical Bellwether To the uninitiated, Joanna Page is merely the cherubic Welsh actress who once spent Christmas with a cartoon bear and, in a moment of festive delirium, convinced an entire nation that Martin Freeman was rom-com material. But step back—say, to…
Annapolis, Maryland – a postcard-perfect colonial port where the U.S. Naval Academy trains future admirals and the state legislature still meets in the only American capitol building older than the country itself. From half a world away, the place looks like a set piece from a Disney+ series about enlightened republics. Yet walk the narrow…
Emma Watson: The UN’s Favorite Hermione and the Global Guilt-Trip Industry PARIS—If you’ve ever wondered what happens to a child star once the goblin-run bank of public affection finally forecloses on her magic, look no further than Emma Watson. Two decades after she first flicked a wand in the Great Hall, the now-33-year-old Brit has…
Fermi, the Enigma That Keeps the Lights On—and the Existential Dread Flowing by Dave’s Locker International Desk Somewhere between a Roman metro ticket and the edge of the observable universe sits Enrico Fermi, the chain-smoking, chalk-dust-slinging physicist who managed to be both the midwife of the nuclear age and its first critic. Mention his name…
Dhaka, Friday, 3:12 a.m.—the sort of hour when sane people are asleep and only journalists, insomniacs, and arms dealers are still conscious. I’m watching a grainy feed of the T20 match between India and Bangladesh, but the cricket is merely the polite veneer over what is, in truth, a geopolitical cage fight wearing pajamas. While…
Wicked for Good: A Global Morality Play Where the Villains Pretend to Reform By the time you finish this sentence, a multinational mining conglomerate will have announced a glossy “net-positive biodiversity” plan while quietly dynamiting another chunk of the Amazon. Somewhere in Davos, a cigarette-peddling CEO will tweet about “purpose beyond profit” between drags of…
DALLAS — City of Perpetual Sunburn and Global Metaphor By Our Man in the Departure Lounge (still tasting barbecue in his dreams) Let us begin, dear international reader, with a confession: nobody outside Texas is entirely sure whether Dallas is a city, a television franchise, or a cautionary tale that escaped its cage. From the…
**The Butterfly Effect of a Christmas Melody: How Mariah Carey Accidentally Became the World’s Most Powerful Non-State Actor** GENEVA — While diplomats at the United Nations debate sanctions and trade agreements, a more formidable force has emerged from the ashes of 1994: Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You.” The song, which began…
Richard Madeley: Britain’s Export-Grade Embarrassment and the Global Art of Cringe Diplomacy by our Special Correspondent in Existential Freefall There is a moment—usually about 3 a.m. local time—when hotel televisions in foreign capitals surrender to the BBC World feed and something extraordinary happens. Statesmen pause mid-sentence, warlords lower their satellite phones, and even the hotel…
Sheryl Underwood and the Infinite Scroll of Global Empathy Fatigue By Our Correspondent in a Hotel Room with One Working Lightbulb Somewhere between the burnt-coffee time zone of U.S. breakfast television and the 3 a.m. doom-scroll in Jakarta, Sheryl Underwood cracked a joke about her own wig budget and accidentally became a diplomatic incident. It…
