Somewhere between the 23rd UN Climate Summit and the 42nd COP press release, the planet decided to outsource its last remaining postcard weather to San Diego, California. Delegates who have spent years arguing over half-degree Celsius targets in windowless halls in Bonn or Dubai now step off the plane at Lindbergh Field, inhale 72 °F…
PARIS—Somewhere between the croissants and the creeping dread of late-stage capitalism, the world received its latest cinematic love letter: “The Summer I Turned Pretty” (colloquially “TSITP”) has been adapted into a feature-length film. Global markets trembled—mostly because teenagers collectively emptied their parents’ streaming-service budgets, but still, tremors were recorded in Singapore, São Paulo, and that…
In the grand, gilded circus tent that is the United States Senate, where septuagenarian lions still roar and octogenarian tight-rope walkers refuse to install a net, one act keeps drawing the world’s gaze: Chuck Grassley, the 90-year-old Iowan who has spent more cumulative hours on the Senate floor than most of us have spent on…
Bayern Munich vs Chelsea F.C.: A Timeline of Cosmic Irony, Financial Doping, and the Beautiful Game’s Slow-Motion Car Crash By Dave’s Locker International Desk 19 May 2012 – Allianz Arena, Munich In the city where beer halls still debate the existential merits of 0.5-litre vs 1-litre steins, Chelsea—managed by a man whose last name sounds…
**The Chancellor’s Little Red Briefcase and the World’s Collective Heart Attack** LONDON – Somewhere between the stained carpets of 11 Downing Street and a Pret à Manger queue that stretches to Calais, the Chancellor of the Exchequer is rehearsing how to say “we’re all poorer, but cheer up, pensioners get a bus pass” in a…
The Newest Body-Part Brand Name You’ll Pretend to Know A dispatch on Skene’s glands, global gender medicine, and the planet’s endless talent for turning trivia into trend By the time you finish this sentence, some influencer in Copenhagen will have posted a pelvic-floor workout “for your skenes,” hashtagged #SkeningRight. Feel free to nod knowingly; the…
Emma Willis: The Quiet Brit Quietly Rebooting Global Television While You Weren’t Looking PARIS — Somewhere between the collapse of the Euro, a pandemic that turned living rooms into offices, and a war that reminded Europe maps can still be redrawn, a 47-year-old mother of three from Birmingham has become the planet’s most politely ruthless…
LOS ANGELES—Somewhere between the sushi bars of Ginza and the steakhouses of Buenos Aires, the phrase “¡Vamos Dodgers!” has become as common a toast as any local battle cry. That a baseball team from a city that also exports Marvel franchises and micro-influencers now functions as a de-facto cultural attaché tells you everything about America’s…
Enrique Hernández, the man whose name autocorrects to “Enrique Iglesias” on three continents, has spent the past decade proving that the global supply chain is held together less by steel and silicon than by a single procurement manager in Tijuana with a caffeine addiction and a knack for dark miracles. From his perch at a…
Tim Key: The Accidental Global Poet Laureate of Our Quiet Existential Spiral By the Bureau Chief Who Skipped Lunch GENEVA—The International Committee on Cultural Significance meets every third Tuesday in a beige room that smells faintly of cheese and dread. Last month they added a new item to the agenda: Tim Key. Not the man…
Sean Clifford and the Geopolitics of a Backup Quarterback By Our Man in the Cheap Seats, somewhere over the Atlantic The name Sean Clifford does not, at first blush, rattle the chandeliers at the UN or trigger emergency sessions of the G7. He is, after all, a 25-year-old American football player who was selected 149th…
Eric Idle: The Last Python Standing Between Empire and Apocalypse By Our Man in a Bunker Somewhere Over the Atlantic There is, admittedly, something perversely comforting in the fact that the loudest surviving voice of Monty Python belongs to the one member who once wrote a musical number called “Always Look on the Bright Side…
