Brett Anderson and the Curious Case of the Global Everyman By Our Man in the Departures Lounge Somewhere between the duty-free cigarette counter and Gate C-19, the name “Brett Anderson” flashed across a hundred screens like a low-budget prophecy. In São Paulo it was spelled “Bret,” in Seoul “Buretteu,” and in the fluorescent corridors of…
The Fabian Society: How a Bunch of Victorian Londoners Still Decide Whether Your Bus Fare Goes Up By the time the barista in Manila finishes spelling your name wrong, a 140-year-old British think tank has already nudged three governments toward slightly higher VAT. Welcome to the enduring afterlife of the Fabian Society—an organization whose members…
Tom Odell: The Last Piano Man Standing in a World That’s Already Autotuned Itself to Death By Our Man in Existential Limbo If you’ve ever sat in a departure lounge at 3 a.m. watching CNN loop the same footage of a burning cargo ship while your flight to anywhere is delayed indefinitely, you’ve probably heard…
Scorpion in a Suitcase: How René Higuita Accidentally Became the World’s Most Dangerous Tourist By the time the Berlin Wall had been reduced to souvenir fragments, René Higuita was busy turning the penalty area into a geopolitical playground. The Colombian goalkeeper—part acrobat, part liability insurer’s nightmare—never bothered to wait for history’s permission slip. Instead, he…
There was a moment—around the time the Berlin Wall was still chucking chunks of concrete at history’s shins—when a Glasgow shipyard welder-turned-banjo-strumming-folk-singer strode onto a London stage and essentially annexed the English language for his own comic empire. Sir William Connolly, CBE, knight-errant of the one-liner and hair like a dandelion that’s seen things, was…
Olivia Smith and the Curious Case of a Name That Became a Global Meme LONDON—When Olivia Smith, 27, posted a 14-second clip of herself absent-mindedly stirring instant coffee with a biro on a Tuesday morning in Leeds, she was nursing a hangover and a mild sense of existential dread. Within 48 hours, the post had…
Sara Cox: How a Rugby Referee From Rochdale Accidentally Became a Global Allegory for Everything By Our Jaded Correspondent, currently self-medicating with airport whisky PARIS—The planet is on fire, supply chains are collapsing, and the Doomsday Clock has crept so close to midnight that the minute hand needs a restraining order. Yet in the midst…
Sydney Harbour, that postcard-perfect collision of opera-house curves and Bondi bronzed optimism, spent Tuesday morning playing host to an older, toothier kind of performer. A 51-year-old British expat—let’s call him Nigel for the sake of narrative convenience—took an unscheduled swim with what authorities clinically label “a large shark” and what locals with fewer syllables call…
The Turtles: A Slow-Motion Global Rebellion Against the Speed of Collapse By A. Correspondent, filing from a beach bar that used to be a nesting site The turtles—those obstinate, algae-covered anachronisms—have quietly declared war on the 21st century. From the Gulf of Oman to the Gulf of Mexico, from the Andaman Islands to the Andalusian…
In Which Humanity Pauses Its Descent to Watch Animated Child Soldiers Murder Demons A dispatch from the global release calendar of *Demon Slayer: Mugen Train*, now boarding in 70-odd territories. By the time you read this, Kimetsu no Yaiba has already shattered box-office records in Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, Hong Kong, Thailand, and every other…
BBC Sport Tennis: A Global Court Where Geopolitics Serves and Human Frailty Volleys Back By Our Man in the Press Box Who Still Owes Wimbledon a Security Deposit There is, apparently, no corner of the planet so remote that a local 12-year-old hasn’t already perfected a topspin forehand and is now being data-mined by a…
To the rest of the planet, the All Blacks versus the Springboks is less a rugby match and more a geopolitical stress test disguised as sport. While the rest of us were doom-scrolling through inflation graphs and negotiating with our microwaves for edible leftovers, New Zealand and South Africa quietly scheduled their annual reminder that…
