Tulsa, Oklahoma—population roughly the same as Reykjavík plus a decent football stadium—has once again become a global barometer, not for oil futures or evangelical voter turnout, but for the simple fact that its weather behaved like a drunk diplomat at a climate summit: unpredictably, loudly, and with collateral damage. Last Tuesday’s softball-sized hail turned sedans…
Sam Leavitt, Quarterback-in-Transit, and the Quiet Collapse of Borders By our man in the departure lounge, nursing a flat espresso and a passport full of regrets Geneva—Ask any seasoned observer of geopolitics what keeps them awake at night and you’ll get the usual litany: supply-chain chokepoints, microchip embargoes, TikTok. Yet the name currently ricocheting between…
If you blinked last month you missed Gabriela Fundora turning the women’s flyweight division into an international incident. One moment she was a polite 20-year-old from Coachella who still calls her mother before weigh-in; the next she was detonating an Argentinian veteran on a Saudi undercard so opulent the camels wore gold-threaded nose rings. The…
John Travolta and the Global Masquerade: How a Disco King Became the Planet’s Favorite Glitch PARIS—Somewhere between a French disco in 1977 and a Kazakhstani meme in 2024, John Travolta transcended mere Hollywood stardom and became a passport-stamped, universally mispronounced cultural glitch. The Italians call him “Giovanni il Travolgente,” the Japanese have a verb, toraboruta-ru,…
Taylor Fritz: America’s Last Serve Before the Lights Go Out By Dave’s Foreign Correspondent, filing from a press box that still smells faintly of 1980s corduroy and geopolitical angst The planet’s most under-rehearsed superpower has, for once, dispatched a tennis player who doesn’t look like he’s been cryogenically thawed from a country-club mixer circa Eisenhower….
Monterrey vs. América: A North-Superclasico with Collateral Damage By Diego “Still Jet-Lagged” Morales, International Correspondent If you’ve ever tried explaining Mexican football to a European banker over lukewarm espresso in Davos, you know the drill: “Ah yes, the one with the sombreros and questionable VAR.” Monterrey vs. Club América, however, is the one fixture that…
Woody Allen, that diminutive neurotic with horn-rimmed glasses and a lifetime subscription to existential dread, has somehow become the global Rorschach test for the late-capitalist psyche. From Seoul to Seville, his face—equal parts guilty conscience and self-deprecating punchline—adorns subway posters for 1979’s Manhattan next to ads for K-pop comebacks and oat-milk lattes. It’s as if…
Glen Powell: The Last American Smile Export in a World That’s Given Up on Grins By Dave’s International Desk of Diminishing Returns If nations traded on charisma futures, Glen Powell would be the bullish commodity every treasury wishes it had shorted five years ago. While Beijing hoards rare-earth metals and Brussels stockpiles bureaucracy, Hollywood has…
Mike Trout and the Cosmic Joke of Global Stardom By our man in the cheap seats, somewhere over the Pacific When the name Mike Trout surfaces in a bar in Manila, a café in Lagos, or a noodle stall in Chengdu, the reaction is the polite nod normally reserved for a cousin’s baby photos: vaguely…
MI State vs USC: A Gladiatorial Spectacle for a Planet Too Tired to Care By our man in the cheap seats, somewhere between Detroit and Doha—where the Wi-Fi still costs more than dignity. Across time zones stretching from Vladivostok to Valparaíso, the phrase “MI State vs USC” pinged on screens like a low-grade geopolitical tremor….
CINCINNATI, Ohio — Somewhere between the Ohio River and the smog-soaked hills of Los Angeles, two professional football clubs met on a humid Midwestern night to remind the rest of the planet that the United States still insists on calling the game “soccer.” The occasion—FC Cincinnati versus the LA Galaxy—was billed locally as a “crucial…
Stephanie McMahon, Heir to a Glitter-Fisted Empire, Steps Off the Global Stage By Matteo “Mace” Vargas, International Correspondent at Large Somewhere between the pyrotechnics in Jeddah and a merchandising kiosk in Manila, the news pinged across the planet: Stephanie McMahon—once tipped to reign over WWE’s billion-dollar carny cosmos—has resigned as Chairwoman and Co-CEO. The announcement…
