**The Charlie Kirk Show: America’s Export of Campus Culture Wars Goes Global** While European cafés debate whether their Wi-Fi should prioritize existential dread or espresso foam art, across the Atlantic, the Charlie Kirk Show has transformed from a basement podcast into what diplomatic cables might generously call “soft power’s evil twin.” What began as a…
Owen Cooper, Age, and the Global Panic Over a Birthday Candle Dateline: Somewhere with Wi-Fi and existential dread – The planet’s collective cortisol spiked this week when search-engine autofill revealed the burning question on every smartphone-addled mind: “Owen Cooper age.” One might assume the query was typed by a single, slightly obsessive aunt in Stoke-on-Trent….
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
**The Queen of Indie Quirk: How Parker Posey Became the Patron Saint of Global Misfits** In a world where streaming algorithms have reduced human emotion to “skip intro” buttons and “are you still watching?” prompts, Parker Posey stands as a glorious anachronism—a walking, talking middle finger to the homogenization of global entertainment. While Hollywood churns…
Sam Rockwell: The Accidental Everyman in a World That Forgot How to Dance by our correspondent in the Departures Lounge of Civilisation The first time most of the planet noticed Sam Rockwell, he was wearing a tin-foil jumpsuit and murdering lunar clones to a soft-rock soundtrack. That was 2009, the same year Greece discovered it…
