Bagpuss, the saggy cloth cat from 1974, is currently enjoying a second life on four continents—streaming in 17 languages, trending on Brazilian fan-art forums, and inspiring a boutique line of ethically sourced felt mice in Kyoto. All this for a programme that was originally cobbled together in a converted cowshed outside Leeds with a budget…
The Conjuring: Last Rites—A Global Séance in Dolby Atmos By Our Man in the Cheap Seats, Somewhere Over the Atlantic The trailer dropped at 3 a.m. in Manila, 9 p.m. in Paris, and just in time for the Lagos rush hour, which means Warner Bros. has finally synchronized humanity’s circadian rhythms around the only thing…
Angelina Jolie, the woman who turned a vial of blood and a penchant for adopting half the planet into a one-woman foreign policy, has spent the past two decades auditioning for the role of “Earth’s Concerned Mom.” From refugee camps to the UN’s gilded antechambers, she has perfected the art of looking photogenically anguished while…
San Francisco Weather: The Fog That Ate Global Capitalism By Our Man on the Brink, filing from a city that still thinks irony is a weather pattern. Let us begin with the only forecast that matters: Karl the Fog—that amorphous, sentient blanket of damp self-importance—has been granted diplomatic status by at least three EU member…
Michelle Pfeiffer, the original cat-eyed sphinx of Hollywood, has spent four decades quietly proving that global soft power can be exercised in a Chanel suit and a smirk. While nations pour billions into embassies, summits, and panda-diplomacy, Pfeiffer has been exporting a far more potent product: immaculate cheekbones and the implicit promise that somewhere in…
James Corden: The Empire Exports Its Cheekiest Chappie By Our Man in a State of Permanent Jet Lag The British have a long, proud tradition of sending their most troublesome specimens abroad—convicts to Australia, Gordon Ramsay to Los Angeles, and, most recently, James Corden to the American late-night sofa. While the first two shipments arguably…
Padres Score, World Shudders: How a San Diego Box Line Became the Planet’s Moral Thermometer By Dave’s International Affairs Desk Somewhere between a ballistic missile test in Pyongyang and a €200 million European Central Bank rate hike, a small orange graphic flashed on millions of screens: Padres 6, Dodgers 3. The alert pulsed in twelve…
The Conjuring: Last Rites and the Global Economy of Dread By L. Marlowe, Senior Correspondent, Somewhere Between a Screening Room and Existential Despair If you believed the Vatican’s only export these days is schism and papal merch, think again. The Conjuring: Last Rites—Warner Bros.’ latest dispatch from the ecclesiastical horror-industrial complex—turns exorcism into a passport-stamped…
The NFL, that quintessentially American carnival of padded gladiators and 30-second capitalist sermons, has long prided itself on exporting the Stars and Stripes one touchdown at a time. Yet the most successful U.S. cultural attaché of the past decade might not be an overfed franchise circling Wembley like a hawk above a meat pie, but…
**The Global Siren Song of the FanDuel Touchdown Jackpot: How America’s Digital Gold Rush Went Viral** While the world grapples with climate refugees and supply chain collapses, nothing quite captures the zeitgeist of late-stage capitalism like watching a London investment banker place bets on Cleveland’s third-string quarterback during his lunch break. The FanDuel Touchdown Jackpot—America’s…
The planet, in its infinite wisdom, has decided that the most pressing export from the United States this season is not microchips, democracy, or even another streaming series about morally flexible hedge-fund managers, but rather the salty effusion of one 27-year-old defensive end named Josh Sweat. From Lagos traffic jams to the fjords of Norway,…
From Apia to Abu Dhabi: Jey Uso’s Slow-Motion Rebellion as a Global Mood Ring The first time I watched Jey Uso shoulder-check Roman Reigns on a grainy stream in Nairobi, the power flickered twice—once for the city’s aging grid, once for the narrative earthquake rippling outward from Tampa. Half the planet away, a cousin in…
