Dublin to Dubai: How Colin Farrell Accidentally Became the Last Universal Leading Man By the time the private jet carrying Colin Farrell touched down in Riyadh last month—courtesy of a film-festival junket so opulent it could make a Bond villain blush—the planet had already decided what it wanted from him. Not another eyebrow-cocked villain, not…
John Simpson and the Uneasy Crown of the World’s Oldest War Correspondent By our man in the departure lounge, still waiting for the jet bridge to connect There is a moment, somewhere over the Hindu Kush or the Donbas steppe, when the cabin lights dim and the young reporter next to you begins composing a…
Germany vs Slovenia: A Quiet Collision of Alpine Pretensions and Baltic Hubris By Dave’s Locker International Desk, somewhere between Frankfurt’s finance bros and Ljubljana’s ironic cafés Europe, that antique chessboard where every pawn believes it’s a rook, is once again arranging its pieces. This time the matchup is Germany vs Slovenia—two countries that, on the…
Kyoto’s House of Mario Files Blueprints for the Next Global Addiction By Our Man in the Airport Lounge, still sober enough to type TOKYO—While half the planet argues about whose turn it is to save democracy and the other half wonders whether the air will still be breathable by Christmas, Nintendo Co. has been quietly…
Lord Mandelson’s Bedroom: A Global Power Grid Nobody Asked to Inspect By Our Man in the Cheap Seats There are questions that electrify the world’s chattering classes: Will the Fed cut rates? Is the Arctic really on fire? And—apparently—what exactly does Peter Mandelson get up to under the brocade canopy of a British peerage? From…
Manchester Piccadilly: The Last Stop Before the Apocalypse (and Everywhere Else) By the time your train wheezes into Manchester Piccadilly, you’ve already crossed more invisible borders than most diplomats manage in a lifetime. One moment you’re gliding past hedgerows that look reassuringly English, the next you’re decanted into a glass-and-steel cathedral that insists, with brutal…
Manchester Piccadilly: The Last Waiting Room Before the World Falls Apart By Our Correspondent, still clutching a lukewarm flat white and residual jet-lag It is 07:43 on a Tuesday, and Manchester Piccadilly Station has achieved peak globalisation: a Costa queue that snakes past a LadBaby billboard, a Pret that thinks it’s in Dubai, and a…
Heidi Liddle’s Name Echoes from Reykjavík to Rio, and Nobody Knows Why By our correspondent with too many air-miles and too little faith in humanity Somewhere between the fifteenth Zoom farewell party and the sixteenth global supply-chain apology, the words “Heidi Liddle” started trending. Not in the frantic, Kardashian sense, but in that slow, unsettling…
Jeremy Irons: the last of the gentleman villains, now globe-trotting in the twilight of the monocled misanthrope, has become an unlikely barometer for how the world prefers its decay—slow, articulate, and wrapped in cashmere. From the marbled corridors of Brideshead to the fluorescent purgatory of the International Criminal Court in The Hague (Netflix’s upcoming limited…
Banksy’s Global Game of Monopoly: How a Spray-Can Prankster Became the World’s Favorite Dissident Asset By Matteo “Macabre” Moretti, roaming correspondent, currently caffeinating in a Lisbon café that still smells faintly of fresh stencils. LONDON—PARIS—TOKYO—(Reuters of the Ridiculous)—Somewhere between the fall of the Berlin Wall and the rise of TikTok, humanity collectively agreed that a…
Geneva, Switzerland – While the World Health Organization debates the next pandemic treaty and the IMF recalibrates the global misery index, there is one metric that quietly unites the planet: the gravitational pull of Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson’s biceps. From Lagos bootleg kiosks to Seoul’s 4DX temples of Dolby Atmos, the man who once wrestled…
Tricolor: The Flag That Conquered the World, One Stripe at a Time By Dave’s International Desk Somewhere between the fall of the Bastille and the rise of Instagram filters, humanity discovered a delightful shortcut to nation-branding: three horizontal stripes. The tricolor—those gloriously symmetrical bands of red, white, and occasionally regrettable green—has become the IKEA flat-pack…
