BBC Newsround: The Empire’s Kindergarten Desk Explains the World While the World Burns By Our Man in the Departure Lounge, somewhere between duty-free and existential dread In the grand bazaar of global news, where war correspondents growl over satellite phones and oligarchs purchase entire front pages like impulse gum, BBC Newsround remains the only stall…
Aldi Shopper Avoids Dishwasher Tablets There but Buys Them at Sainsbury’s Instead: The Geopolitics of Suds and Self-Deception By the time you read this, somewhere in the post-industrial sprawl of northern England, a man named Gary—forty-something, fleece-clad, haunted by the memory of interest rates he once understood—has once again completed the weekly sacrament: Aldi for…
Jerusalem—population 900,000, contested percentage roughly 100—has once again reminded the world that some cities refuse to behave like mere dots on a map. While the rest of us argue over parking tickets, this limestone labyrinth is busy hosting a millennia-old multiplayer grudge match with no respawn button. From an international standpoint, Jerusalem is the diplomatic…
Hollow Knight: Silksong Reviews – Or, How the World Unites in the Sweet Agony of Waiting By Dave’s International Correspondent-at-Large (and Part-Time Masochist) The planet’s diplomats may be failing on climate, trade, and whatever a “rules-based order” is supposed to mean this week, but give humanity a 2-D Metroidvania sequel and suddenly we achieve a…
The Global Classroom: Four Walls, Infinite Debt, and the Quiet Collapse of Enlightenment By Santiago “Santi” Valdez, roving correspondent, recently expelled from three continents’ worth of PTA meetings PARIS—Somewhere between the chalk dust and the tear gas, the classroom still pretends it’s the last neutral zone on Earth. From Lagos to Luleå, the ritual is…
Global Team-Building: The World’s Favorite Ritual of Organized Chaos By our roving correspondent, still jet-lagged in three time zones If you watch the news long enough, you’ll notice the planet is basically one colossal group project nobody asked to join. From the UN Security Council’s monthly passive-aggressive potluck to your office’s “synergy circle,” teams are…
Versace, or: How a Dead Italian Playboy Became the Patron Saint of Post-Soviet Oligarchs By A Correspondent Who Once Bought a Knock-Off Belt in Istanbul and Still Has Nightmares The House of Versace began, as all great luxury brands do, with a family melodrama: a gifted tailor from Calabria, a fatal dose of ambition, and…
Harriet Harman and the Curious Persistence of British Politeness in a World on Fire By Our Man in the Departures Lounge, watching the last flight to sanity taxi away without us. LONDON—On the very day Elon Musk was busy turning Twitter into X, the oceans were rehearsing new temperature records, and a Russian missile politely…
The Global Gospel of the Scratch-and-Pray: Why the World Gambles on Six Magic Numbers By “Lucky” László Kovács, International Desk Somewhere between the refugee camp outside Cox’s Bazar and the air-conditioned lottery kiosks of Madrid’s Barajas Airport, the same slip of paper is doing the rounds: a lottery ticket, flimsy as a cease-fire promise and…
Ashley Graham: The Planet-Sized Supermodel Who Refuses to Shrink (and Why That Terrifies Every Government from Oslo to Ouagadougou) When Ashley Graham sashays down a runway in Milan, the seismic ripples are measurable on every Richter scale from Reykjavík to Riyadh. The 36-year-old Nebraska export—equal parts collagen, charisma, and calculated rebellion—has done something no multinational…
The iron serpent, that 19th-century miracle we still pretend is the future, is slithering across the globe with renewed swagger. From Mumbai’s sweat-soaked commuter carriages to Switzerland’s punctual-as-a-Swiss-banker milk runs, trains are enjoying what marketing departments call a “renaissance” and what the rest of us call “the moment when humanity remembers it can move horizontally…
Oleksandr Usyk and the Sweet Science of Existential Dread By C. Marlowe, International Correspondent, somewhere over the Black Sea KYIV—When Oleksandr Usyk slipped through the ropes at the King Abdullah Sports City in Jeddah last year to relieve Anthony Joshua of his alphabet soup of belts, the punch he landed on the collective jaw of…
