The Ballad of Ryan Helsley: When a Fastball Becomes a Diplomatic Incident By Our Man in the Cheap Seats, Somewhere Over the Atlantic In an age when trade wars are fought on Twitter and climate summits end in steak dinners, the most electrifying act of international brinkmanship this month came from a 29-year-old man with…
Sheridan Smith and the Global Anxiety Supply Chain By Dave’s Locker Foreign Correspondent-at-Large Somewhere between a UN climate summit and a TikTok livestream of a cat wearing a tiny tuxedo, the planet found itself briefly transfixed by the latest “Sheridan Smith drama.” For readers who have spent the past decade in a cave—presumably a more…
Where to Buy Powerball Tickets: A Globe-Trotting Guide to the World’s Most Expensive Daydream By Dave’s Foreign Correspondent, Still Jet-Lagged and Morally Ambiguous NEW YORK – If you’ve glanced at the headlines lately, you’ll know the Powerball jackpot has swollen to a sum that would make a small nation blush—roughly the GDP of Iceland, minus…
Turkey vs Serbia: When Two Middle Powers Decide to Throw Elbows in the Balkan Playground By the time you read this, the latest diplomatic “flare-up” between Ankara and Belgrade may have already been memory-holed by the next algorithmic outrage. Still, for those keeping score on how small, proud nations weaponize history, the Turkey–Serbia spat is…
Malcolm Gladwell, the Canadian-born pop-intellectual with the hair of a startled alpaca and the delivery of a bedtime-storyteller who moonlights as a management consultant, has managed to export a very particular brand of reassuring explanation to every corner of the globe. From Lagos traffic jams to Tokyo bullet-train lounges, airport bookstores still stack The Tipping…
Lisbon, City of Light and Dimming Futures By our correspondent in existential real-estate, still waiting for the tram that never comes If you stand on the Miradouro da Senhora do Monte at dusk, the Atlantic bruises the horizon while the Tagus River reflects the last euro your landlord just hoovered out of your wallet. Below,…
Countdown: Season 2 – When the World Holds Its Breath, Again By Dave’s Locker Foreign Desk Geneva—If you listen very carefully above the hum of espresso machines in the Palais des Nations canteen, you can hear it: the low, collective murmur of diplomats rehearsing the phrase “red line” in sixteen languages. Countdown: Season 2 has…
Beyond the Gates: How the World’s VIP Rope Became a Geopolitical Fault Line By Our Correspondent, Somewhere Over the Pacific, Seat 47B For centuries, “beyond the gates” meant pasture land, graveyards, or the occasional dragon. Today it’s where the planet’s real decisions are made: the velvet-roped lounges of Davos, the blast-proof checkpoints of COP summits,…
Patrick Gibson: The Actor Who Accidentally Became a Geopolitical Barometer Dave’s Locker – Global Bureau, 12 June 2024 PARIS—In the grand carnival of 21st-century fame, where TikTok dentists become foreign-policy advisors and crypto bros lecture the G-20 on monetary policy, the case of Patrick Gibson is refreshingly modest. The 28-year-old Irish actor did not invent…
UMass Lowell: How a Former Textile Trade School Quietly Became the Canary in Global Higher-Ed’s Coal Mine By Our Man in the Commonwealth, Nursing a Dunkin Cold Brew and Existential Dread LOWELL, Massachusetts—Somewhere between the rust-red brick of a repurposed mill and the aggressively optimistic glass of a new “Innovation Hub,” the University of Massachusetts…
Paris—In the age when a TikTok of a cat sneezing can upend the Dow Jones, the curious case of LaMonica McIver has become the latest proof that geopolitics now behaves like a drunk algorithm. McIver, a city-council president from Newark, New Jersey—population smaller than a Shanghai subway car—has been elevated by the gods of cable…
007 First Light: When the Sun Never Sets on British Nostalgia By Correspondent at Large, Dave’s Locker Global Desk The codename “007 First Light” sounds like the title of an overpriced artisanal gin, but it is in fact the freshly unclassified designation for the United Kingdom’s next-generation signals-intelligence satellite constellation, launched last week from a…
