AJ ODUDU AND THE GLOBAL PARADOX OF FAMOUSLY ALMOST FAMOUS PEOPLE By Our Slightly Jet-Lagged Correspondent There are 195 countries on the planet, give or take a disputed micro-state or two, and yet the same name is currently trending from Lagos to Lisbon to Los Angeles: Aj Odudu. If you blinked during the 2021 season…
Chris Farley: The Global Export Nobody Negotiated, Yet Everyone Signed For By Our Correspondent in a Hotel Mini-Bar Somewhere East of the Dateline Somewhere between the fall of the Berlin Wall and the rise of TikTok, a 300-pound Wisconsinite in a too-tight Oxford shirt became an unwitting instrument of soft power. Chris Farley—who once described…
The Curious Case of Tallon Griekspoor, or How a Dutchman Became the Canary in Tennis’ Multinational Coal Mine Dave’s Locker – International Sports Desk If you mention the name Tallon Griekspoor in a bar on the Rue Oberkampf, the average Parisian will assume you’ve ordered a craft beer by accident. In Melbourne they’ll think it’s…
The Tree of the Year 2025 Is a 47-Year-Old Lebanese Cedar That Survived Three Civil Wars, One Port Explosion, and the World’s Most Expensive Parking Lot By Our Correspondent, Beirut, with additional reporting from places that still pretend trees matter BEIRUT—In a ceremony that felt equal parts Arbor Day and war-crimes tribunal, the International Union…
The Astros’ latest middle-infield prodigy—let’s call him “Señor Swing” to preserve the illusion of journalistic impartiality—has just signed a contract that, if converted into humanitarian aid, could vaccinate half a continent. In Houston, a city whose skyline looks like a committee of drunk architects tried to one-up Dubai on a dare, this is treated as…
From the neon canyons of Shibuya to the half-lit favelas of Rio, the phrase “FC 26 PS5” is currently being whispered, screamed, and autocorrect-mangled in more languages than Esperanto ever managed. On the surface it’s just the next annualised instalment of EA Sports’ football sim, freshly varnished for Sony’s shiniest black monolith. But beneath that…
A Brit in the Basement Who Knows What You’re Thinking By Our Man in the Ether, filing from somewhere with shaky Wi-Fi and questionable morals LONDON—In a city that still pretends the Empire is just having a long smoke break, a modest firm in the unfashionable end of Westminster has quietly become the planetary confessor….
Tom Aspinall: Britain’s Accidental Heavyweight Messiah in a Planet Addicted to Chaos By Dave’s Locker International Correspondent The last time Britain exported a heavyweight who actually mattered, the Berlin Wall was still standing and most of today’s TikTok audience were gleams in their parents’ overdraft. Enter Tom Aspinall, 6-foot-5 of polite Lancastrian menace, whose rise…
The Empire Strikes a Chord: How BBC Radio 1 Became the World’s Guiltiest Pleasure By Our Man in the Cheap Seats, somewhere over the Atlantic There’s a moment, usually around 02:47 GMT, when the night-shift nurse in Lagos, the rideshare driver in Jakarta, and the insomniac coder in Vancouver all find themselves humming the same…
PARIS—In the Marais, a barista who normally sneers at anything more commercial than Serge Gainsbourg is humming “Livvy Dunne” to himself while foaming oat milk. In Lagos, a streetwear reseller is hawking knock-off LSU leotards to university freshmen who have never watched a full gymnastics meet. In Seoul, the subway ads for a vitamin drink…
Chappell Roan and the Age of Manufactured Authenticity A dispatch from the front lines of pop’s new Cold War By the time Chappell Roan’s “Good Luck, Babe!” cracked the Global Spotify Top 50 last week, diplomats in Brussels were already drafting memos: a drag-tinged Midwestern torch song had somehow become a soft-power bargaining chip. From…
Sydney Thomas: One Name, Five Continents, and the Inevitable Collapse of Meaning By Dave’s Locker International Desk Somewhere between a Tokyo boardroom and a Lagos open-air market, the phrase “Sydney Thomas” is being murmured with equal parts hope and dread. To the algorithmic class, it’s the latest data-point oracle; to the rest of the planet,…
