Nate Landman: The Linebacker Who Accidentally Became a Geopolitical Punchline If you squint hard enough from the cheap seats of the global amphitheater, Nate Landman’s story resembles the kind of parable the World Economic Forum would commission after three negronis: a South African-born, Colorado-raised tackling machine who now earns his keep in Atlanta, proving that…
The Ballad of Joey Bosa, or How One Very Large Man in Pads Explains the Modern World’s Collapse By: Our Man in the Press Box, Somewhere Over the Pacific We open on a Wednesday in the Year of Our Overlords 2024, when the news ticker crawls past like a dying tapeworm: “Joey Bosa, Los Angeles…
Tesla: The Car That Conquered the World While Barely Paying Rent on Reality By “World-Weary” Correspondent, filing from the smoking crater formerly known as Common Sense PARIS—When the Eiffel Tower lit up in electric blue last month to celebrate Tesla’s record quarterly deliveries, French environmentalists staged a protest by chaining themselves to croissants. The stunt…
Teslaa Lions: When Detroit Meets the Serengeti in the Age of Electrified Hubris By Dave’s Locker Foreign Desk NAIROBI—Just when you thought the global supply-chain circus had run out of fresh acts, a pride of actual lions wandered into Tesla’s new “GigaSavanna” battery-materials depot on the Kenyan side of the Maasai Mara last week, electrocuted…
The Global Racing Order: How NASCAR’s Top-10 Became a Geopolitical Mood Ring By Our Man in the Paddock, nursing a lukewarm Belgian lager and existential dread When the latest NASCAR Cup Series standings dropped this week, the United States treated it like a casual Tuesday at the Waffle House: loud, carb-heavy, and vaguely apocalyptic. Meanwhile,…
The Green Cathedral of the Andes, Now Streaming Worldwide Dave’s Locker – International Desk Medellín—If you crane your neck high enough above the jacaranda trees and concrete scars of Colombia’s second city, you’ll spot the twin spires of Estadio Atanasio Girardot. Locals call it “la Catedral Verde,” which sounds charming until you remember that the…
The Curious Case of the Pearsall 49ers: How a Forgotten Californian Football Team Became an Accidental Global Metaphor By Our Bureau Chief, Nursing a Hangover in Zurich Somewhere between the almond orchards and the federal prison, the town of Pearsall, California (population 7,229 on a good Friday) produced a semi-pro football outfit called the 49ers….
Asheboro, North Carolina—population roughly 26,000, median income politely described as “aspiring,” and home to the North Carolina Zoo, which proudly advertises itself as “the world’s largest natural-habitat zoo,” a phrase that sounds suspiciously like a dating-app bio—has become an improbable litmus test for whether globalization can be bothered to remember the small print on the…
Austin vs Sporting KC: A Microscopic Derby in a Macroscopic Mess By Dave’s Far-Flung Football Correspondent, somewhere between Reykjavík and regret The world is busy immolating itself—Arctic ice shelves auditioning for the role of “ice cube,” crypto bros discovering that gravity is still legal tender, and half the planet’s leaders locked in an eternal game…
Only Murders in the Building Season 5: The Arconia Goes Global and Humanity Learns Nothing By the time the elevator cables snap in Episode 1, viewers from Lagos to Lima have already cracked the case on Reddit, TikTok, and whatever encrypted app is fashionable in Minsk this week. Season 5 of Hulu’s geriatric Scooby-Doo fever…
Green Bay Packers Players: When Cheeseheads Become Geopolitical Chess Pieces By Our Man in Geneva, Still Wearing the Same Parka Since Brett Favre’s Rookie Year The world’s diplomats insist the next global flashpoints will be water, semiconductors, and whatever Elon Musk tweets at 3 a.m. They are, as usual, only half-right. The other half is…
**The Great American Oval: How NASCAR’s Playoff Standings Became a Global Morality Play** In a week when the UN Security Council couldn’t agree on the definition of “cease-fire” and the Arctic registered its first 30 °C day, the planet nevertheless paused—if only for the length of a fuel run—to ask: who the hell is leading…
