The 2025 series of *Strictly Come Dancing* premiered last Saturday, and the planet—still busy juggling wars, elections, and the slow-motion car crash formerly known as “the climate”—paused for two hours to watch celebrities in diamanté try not to fall over. From Kyiv to Caracas, viewers tuned in to see whether a former oligarch’s niece could…
Patrick Kielty: The Accidental Diplomat Who Proves the World Runs on Banter By Our Man in the Green Room When historians eventually write the obituary for the late, unlamented “Global Age of Earnestness,” they will almost certainly footnote Patrick Kielty—Northern Irish stand-up turned BBC chat-show sphinx—as the man who demonstrated that international soft power can…
Geneva—While the Security Council bickered over whose turn it was to veto humanitarian aid, and the bond markets practiced synchronized nose-dives, five unassuming green, yellow, and gray squares quietly colonized every screen from Lagos to Ljubljana. Somewhere between the third espresso and the fourth existential crisis, humanity discovered that the most pressing geopolitical variable of…
Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle—A Global Fever Dream Where Capitalism Meets Corporeal Decapitation By Dave’s Locker Foreign Correspondent Somewhere between the neon haze of Shibuya and the artisanal oat-milk cafés of Brooklyn, the Infinity Castle arc of “Demon Slayer” has metastasized from mere anime into a planetary mood ring. One moment it’s a cartoon; the next…
Global Dispatch: The Curious Soft-Power of Ant Middleton – or How One Bearded Brit Became the World’s Favourite Recruiting Poster for Masochism By the time the sun rose over the South China Sea last Tuesday, an ex-Royal Marine with the improbable surname “Middleton” was already screaming at a tear-streaked Singaporean banker through a mouthful of…
**The Accidental Diplomat: How Kumail Nanjiani Became Pakistan’s Most Effective Cultural Export (Whether He Wanted To Or Not)** *From Dave’s Locker International Bureau* Kumail Nanjiani’s journey from Karachi to Silicon Valley’s favorite everyman represents perhaps the most successful soft-power operation Pakistan never intended to launch. While diplomats in Islamabad wrestle with geopolitical headaches and IMF…
Zion National Park: America’s Grand Canyon for People Who’ve Already Instagrammed the Grand Canyon By Diego Serrano, International Desk – Dave’s Locker The tour buses roll in at dawn, disgorging their cargo of jet-lagged humanity like a UN summit on jet lag. Dutch hikers in clogs, Chinese newlyweds wielding selfie sticks the size of javelins,…
Kai Who? How a 21-Year-Old from the Bronx Became the UN’s Most Effective (and Unpaid) Cultural Attaché By Our Correspondent, still recovering from the algorithmic whiplash NEW YORK—While the Security Council was busy drafting another strongly-worded sigh about Gaza, a kid who still gets ID’d at R-rated movies managed to unite India, Brazil, and South…
Bad Bunny Bites Back: When a Latin Pop Star Becomes the World’s Punching Bag By Our Correspondent Who Has Already Booked Therapy for 2025 San Juan, Puerto Rico – Somewhere between the reggaetón beat drop and the next geopolitical meltdown, Bad Bunny—neighborhood kid Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio—managed to offend three continents, two billionaires, and one…
The Giants Game, as the English-speaking world insists on calling it, returned again last week to remind us that even in an era of orbital supply chains and near-instantaneous financial collapse, humanity still finds comfort in watching very large men in very tight trousers try to move an egg-shaped object a few yards at a…
Wiz Khalifa: The Pittsburgh Piper Who Convinced the Planet to Stay High and Keep Smiling By Our Man in the Departure Lounge, Somewhere Over the International Dateline The first thing you notice, boarding any long-haul flight that still tolerates in-flight entertainment, is that Wiz Khalifa has become the unofficial soundtrack of altitude. Somewhere between the…
Drew Barrymore: The Planet’s Favorite Child Star Turned Global Comfort Blanket By Dave’s Locker International Desk Somewhere between the fall of the Berlin Wall and the rise of TikTok, Drew Barrymore became the last universally acceptable American export—less carcinogenic than Coke, less bellicose than aircraft carriers, and somehow more soothing than the entire pharmaceutical aisle…
