Elizabeth Gilbert, the American author whose passport now contains more stamps than an Italian post office, has become the de-facto cartographer of the modern soul’s grand tour. Ever since she dragged 10 million readers through the trattorias of Rome, the ashrams of India, and the rice paddies of Bali, her memoir “Eat, Pray, Love” has…
Kathmandu, City of Perpetual Reboot By Dave’s Far-Eastern Correspondent, still slightly dusty from the last aftershock The first thing an international visitor notices about Kathmandu is that it smells like the entire planet decided to hold a garage sale in a chimney. Sandalwood, diesel, momo grease and the faint whiff of existential dread swirl together…
The Fourth Amendment: America’s Most Exported Paranoia By Dave’s Foreign Correspondent-at-Large (currently self-quarantining in a non-extradition country) The Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution—protecting the citizenry from “unreasonable searches and seizures”—reads like a quaint postcard from 1791. On the front: powdered wigs, candlelit parlors, a polite knock before His Majesty’s agents rummage through your snuffbox….
Dirtbag Billionaire: A Global Field Guide to the New Gilded Age’s Anti-Hero By the time you finish this paragraph, another hoodie-clad centi-millionaire will have declared himself a “dirtbag billionaire” on a podcast recorded from the cargo hold of his Gulfstream. The phrase—equal parts self-deprecating marketing stunt and accurate character assessment—has already achieved the rare linguistic…
**The Sweetener Index: How Ariana Grande Tickets Became a Global Economic Barometer** In the grand theater of late-stage capitalism, nothing quite captures the zeitgeist like watching grown adults mortgage their futures for three hours of perfectly choreographed regret. From Tokyo to Tulum, the Great Ariana Grande Ticket Scramble of 2024 has evolved from mere pop…
Wetherspoons: The Last Honest Embassy on Earth An International Correspondent’s Field Notes from the Imperial Pub Chain by “Marlowe” – filing from the Salisbury, Fleet Street, over a £2.15 “breakfast stout” The United Nations has 193 member states, but only one issues its own currency in the form of laminated beer mats and calls its…
**The Curious Case of Katie Abraham: How One Woman’s Digital Footprint Became a Global Mirror** In the grand theater of international affairs—where nuclear powers play chicken over shipping lanes and central banks perform interpretive dance with interest rates—the saga of Katie Abraham might seem like small potatoes. But then again, history teaches us that revolutions…
**The Man Who Built Magic: Stuart Craig’s Architectural Sorcery and the Global Empire of Make-Believe** In an era where the real world increasingly resembles a poorly scripted dystopian fever dream, humanity has found its most reliable escape hatch in the meticulously crafted fantasies of a soft-spoken British production designer who never quite learned to color…
From the Ruins of Local Truth, a Global Mirror: Chicago Tribune as the World’s Cautionary Comic Strip By Our Man in the Departures Lounge, somewhere between Gate 47 and Existential Dread Chicago—The city that once gave the planet speakeasies, improv comedy, and a certain brand of brisk, sub-zero stoicism—has lately been best known for exporting…
Manila, Philippines – At the precise moment delegates in Glasgow were pledging to phase out coal, the Philippines was quietly signing yet another 20-year sweetheart deal to import more of the black stuff. This, in a country already blessed with enough sunshine to tan the entire planet and enough wind to blow every politician’s promises…
Adam Sandler: The Last American Export That Even Trade Wars Can’t Kill By Dave’s Locker International Desk Somewhere between the collapse of the global liberal order and the day Netflix’s algorithm achieved sentience, the planet quietly agreed on one point of consensus: Adam Sandler is inevitable. From the air-conditioned multiplexes of Riyadh—where his latest comedy…
The Global Spectrum: How the World Decides Which Autistic Traits Are Genius and Which Get You Fired ZURICH—On the same Tuesday that a Swiss asset-management firm discreetly hired a 24-year-old Kazakh “pattern savant” to spot algorithmic glitches, a Cambodian garment factory quietly fired a 34-year-old seamstress for “excessive rocking.” Both women carry the same formal…
