The UN’s official development goals have a new, uninvited sibling: Adolescence, the animated fever dream that just crash-landed on Netflix in 190 countries simultaneously. While diplomats in Geneva still argue over comma placement in climate accords, a cartoon British teenager with anger-management issues and a fondness for graphic masturbation scenes has become the planet’s most…
**Gridiron Imperialism: How the 2025 NFL Draft Became the World’s Most Watched Talent Auction** While the rest of the planet grapples with climate agreements that nobody intends to keep and trade deals that everyone pretends to understand, the United States has once again demonstrated its mastery of the only export that truly matters: spectacle. The…
Sterling K. Brown: The Global Export Nobody Knew They Needed By Dave’s Locker Foreign Correspondent PARIS — Somewhere in the Marais, a Senegalese cabbie is watching This Is Us reruns on Canal+, wiping his eyes at 3 a.m. because Randall Pearson has just reminded him of the cousin he hasn’t hugged since Dakar’s airport ran…
Atlanta Falcons vs Minnesota Vikings: A Statistical Tragedy in Four Quarters, Now Available with Global Shipping From the vantage point of a press box that smells faintly of hot wings and existential dread, the Falcons-Vikings clash revealed itself as less a football game and more an economic micro-drama playing out against the backdrop of a…
From the rolling hills of Tennessee to the neon-lit living rooms of Singapore, a 57-year-old grandmother with a drawl thick enough to butter toast has become the planet’s newest soft-power export. Leanne Morgan—mother of three, former jewelry-hawker, and current queen of the “hot-flash confessionals”—is doing for menopausal diplomacy what K-pop did for eyeliner. The world,…
Jeff Hiller Lands in London, and the Planet Tilts a Fraction By our man in the departure lounge, still nursing a £9 bottle of airport water LONDON—When Jeff Hiller’s size-ten sneakers touched the tarmac at Heathrow last Tuesday, the UK’s Office for National Statistics quietly upgraded projected Q3 GDP by 0.0003 %. Coincidence? Absolutely. But…
Gen V: The Post-Hero Generation That’s Too Tired to Save Anyone, Including Themselves by Our Exhausted Foreign Correspondent, currently stuck in a Warsaw co-working space that smells like oat-milk regret If you squint past the exploding torsos and TikTok-length attention spans, Amazon’s “Gen V” is less a superhero spin-off and more a 50-minute public service…
The World According to Angela Bassett: How One Woman’s Eyebrows Became a Geopolitical Barometer By Étienne “Grimly Amused” Moreau, Senior Correspondent, Dave’s Locker PARIS—Somewhere between the Seine and a streaming queue in São Paulo, Angela Bassett’s cheekbones have quietly redrawn the map of soft power. While diplomats in Geneva argue over comma placement in trade…
**The Mullet That Marched Across Borders: Jared Allen’s Accidental Diplomacy** While diplomats in Geneva negotiate trade deals over lukewarm coffee, somewhere in Eastern Europe a farmer wears a Minnesota Vikings jersey with “Allen 69” stretched across his beer-enhanced torso. This is what passes for American cultural export these days: not democracy or innovation, but a…
Grant Show: The Last American Export Anyone Still Wants By our correspondent in the lobby bar of a five-star hotel whose name changes every six months for tax reasons PARIS—While the rest of the United States busies itself exporting inflation, culture wars, and inexplicable TikTok dances, one product remains stubbornly in demand on the international…
From the vantage point of a cramped newsroom in downtown Lagos, where the generator coughs like a chain-smoking oracle, I watched Charlie Kirk’s latest soliloquy on George Floyd ricochet across WhatsApp groups from São Paulo to Seoul. The American conservative influencer, who has perfected the art of sounding earnest while selling vitamin supplements, declared that…
Cooper Koch and the Global Ripple of a Hollywood Debut By Dave’s Locker Foreign Desk PARIS—While COP negotiators were busy congratulating themselves on a new “aspirational” climate pledge that will be quietly shelved by the next election cycle, a 27-year-old actor from Los Angeles was quietly making the planet’s electrons twitch. Cooper Koch—pronounced “cook,” because…
