England FC: A Tragicomic Opera Staged for the Planet’s Edification By Our Man in the Cheap Seats, somewhere over the Atlantic If you’ve ever wondered what it looks like when an entire nation decides to confuse football with group therapy, tune in to England FC every other summer. The spectacle is broadcast to 195 countries—roughly…
“Economy jobs” is the polite euphemism we now use for the sort of work that keeps the planet spinning while the rest of us refresh our portfolios. From the sweat-beaded brow of a Bangladeshi fast-fashion machinist to the algorithm-tethered soul of a Berlin “gig-economy” cyclist, these are the positions that exist precisely because someone, somewhere,…
The Curious Case of Josh Giddey: When an Australian Kid Becomes a Geopolitical Basketball Somewhere between a flat white in Melbourne and a triple-shot cortado in Madrid, the NBA’s latest diplomatic incident dribbled into view. Josh Giddey—6-foot-8, passport stamped “Oz,” haircut suggesting he still cuts his own fringe—has become the league’s most improbable piece of…
World Cup Qualifiers Europe: Where National Hopes Go to Die (and Occasionally Resurrect) The biennial continental bloodletting known as the UEFA World Cup qualifiers is back, and with it the reassuring spectacle of 55 nations pretending their geopolitical relevance hinges on 22 men chasing a ball. From Reykjavik to Tbilisi, passports are brandished like swords…
Bosnia vs Austria: A Balkan Derby for the Age of Collapsing Certainties By L. V. Raković, Senior Continental Misanthrope VIENNA—When the draw spat out “Bosnia-Herzegovina vs Austria” for the Nations League fixture this week, the world’s attention pivoted—briefly—from whichever apocalypse is currently trending to a collision of two nations nobody has confused since 1914. On…
Joe Swash: How a Former EastEnders Barista Became an Unlikely Global Metaphor for the Age of Perpetual Side-Hustles By Our Man in the Departure Lounge There are, in this fractured century, only two kinds of celebrity: those who accidentally ignite geopolitical crises and those who quietly embody them. Joe Swash—yes, the grinning geezer who once…
The Fjord and the Vineyard: Norway vs Moldova in the Theater of the Absurd By Correspondent-at-Large, Dave’s Locker International Desk If you squint at Europe from a weather satellite suffering from late-stage capitalism, you will see two blips flickering like mismatched LEDs on the same aging motherboard. One is Norway, sleek and smug, reclining on…
Portugal: Europe’s Charming Afterthought That Keeps Accidentally Mattering By the time most foreigners remember Portugal still exists, the rest of Europe has already moved on to its next collective panic attack. Yet like a polite guest who shows up late but brings excellent wine, Lisbon keeps slipping back into global relevance just when the room…
Pedro Pascal, the Chilean-born actor who now looks permanently exhausted in eight different time zones, has become the first truly global celebrity of the post-hope era. From Seoul subway ads hawking The Last of Us to Berlin bus shelters promising “more daddy issues than you can fit in a Bundesliga stadium,” Pascal has achieved that…
Ferrari 849 Testarossa: A Global Love Affair with Speed, Sin, and Selective Amnesia By Dave’s Locker International Desk Maranello, Italy – The world’s billionaires have a new collective crush, and its name is the Ferrari 849 Testarossa. While the rest of us queue for eggs that cost more than last year’s rent, the planet’s .001…
Channel 4: Britain’s Publicly-Owned Misfit and the Global Spectacle of Selling Your Weird Uncle By the time you finish this paragraph, at least three governments on three separate continents will have floated the idea of flogging their state broadcasters to the highest bidder. Yet only the United Kingdom has managed to turn the ritual into…
Elliot Anderson and the Sudden Global Obsession With a Name That Wasn’t Even His PARIS—Somewhere between a croissant-induced sugar crash and the third espresso of the morning, the world’s newsrooms discovered they had been chasing a ghost. “Elliot Anderson,” the supposed 19-year-old wunderkind who allegedly crashed the Tokyo derivatives desk of Sumitomo-Glencore with nothing more…
