The Daily Show’s Quiet Global Coup: How a Basement in Manhattan Became the World’s Most Trusted Newsroom From Jakarta to Johannesburg, the phrase “I saw it on The Daily Show” no longer triggers the smug chuckle it once did. Instead, it elicits the same solemn nod you’d give a wire-service alert—only with better punch-lines and…
Ole Miss Head Coach Lane Kiffin—yes, the Twitter-addicted, visor-tilting American football savant—has quietly become a global Rorschach test. From the shadow of Oxford’s Confederate statues to the fluorescent glare of Seoul’s Gangnam sports bars, Kiffin’s 280-character grenades ricochet across oceans, reminding the planet that the most American export isn’t corn or democracy but unfiltered, algorithmic…
**From the Caucasus to the Cosmos: How a Georgian Kid Named Ladd McConkey Became the World’s Most Unlikely Geopolitical Rorschach Test** While the planet’s 8 billion inhabitants were busy arguing about whether democracy is dying or merely on life support, a 21-year-old from Chatsworth, Georgia—population 4,696, or roughly the same number of people who claim…
Raiders vs Chargers: When Two Expats Duke It Out in a City That Barely Noticed They Arrived by Diego “The Jet-Lagged” Marlowe, International Sports Desk Las Vegas—if you squint past the LED volcanoes and crypto-bro wedding chapels—looks less like a city and more like a pop-up ad for late-stage capitalism. Into this neon fever dream…
Costco Recalls: How a Plastic Chicken Tray Took Down the Global Village By the Bureau Chief of “Things That Shouldn’t Travel” Let us begin with the humble rotisserie chicken—an $4.99 beacon of late-capitalist hope that has migrated from the fluorescent suburbs of Seattle to the bootleg parking lots of Mexico City, the glassy atriums of…
The Invisible Man Goes Global: John Cena, Soft Power, and the Art of Never Being There By Dave’s Locker Global Bureau Somewhere between a détente summit and a TikTok dance tutorial, John Cena has become the United States’ most improbable export since the McRib. To the uninitiated, he’s the 250-pound slab of muscle who once…
The Curious Diplomatic Career of Keenan Allen, Accidental Ambassador of a Fractured Planet From the moment Keenan Allen snagged a 17-yard slant on a humid Midwestern Sunday, the tremor registered on seismographs in Reykjavik, on trading floors in Singapore, and in group chats from Lagos to Lahore. No one handed the Los Angeles Chargers wide…
From a smoky bar in Tórshavn to a noodle stall in Ho Chi Minh City, the name Dont’e Thornton Jr. is now being murmured into phones, printed on bootleg jerseys, and scrawled on betting slips. The 6’4″ wide receiver who once ran post routes for the University of Oregon—and more recently for North Carolina—has become…
In a world where a Ukrainian wheat convoy gets shelled on Monday and your phone offers a 20-percent-off coupon for tactical flashlights on Tuesday, the continued excellence of Los Angeles Chargers safety Derwin James feels almost indecently pure. While central banks argue over whose currency is now the least ugly prom date and El Salvador…
Luke Combs: The Accidental Diplomat in a Cowboy Hat By Our Correspondent Who Once Spent 36 Hours in Nashville and Still Isn’t Sure Why Somewhere between the fall of Kabul and the latest cryptocurrency implosion, a 34-year-old North Carolinian with the silhouette of a friendly bison has become the most quietly influential American abroad who…
Every 16 September, Mexico shouts itself hoarse in the name of freedom, a ritual that looks suspiciously like a national hangover cure. At eleven o’clock sharp, the president steps onto the National Palace balcony in Mexico City, rings a comically outsized bell, and yells “¡Viva México!”—a phrase that, after 213 years, still hasn’t solved the…
Zamir White and the Global Supply Chain of Human Speed By Our Man in the Cheap Seats, Geneva GENEVA—On the surface, Zamir White is merely the latest American running back to bolt from the Las Vegas Raiders’ backfield like a man fleeing his student-loan officer. Yet in the grand bazaar of 21st-century talent arbitrage, his…
