Welcome to the age of the boys—yes, those boys. Not the Netflix superheroes or the prep-school rugby squad, but the planetary swarm of young males aged 15-30 who now constitute history’s largest single demographic bloc. The UN calls them a “youth bulge.” Economists prefer the more market-friendly term “demographic dividend.” Development workers whisper the less…
Tom Holland Is Still Clinging to the Multiverse, and the Rest of Us Are Just Trying to Hang On By the time you finish this sentence, Tom Holland will have signed another three-picture deal, watched his latest blockbuster top the box office in seventeen languages, and politely apologized to a Brussels reporter for spoiling something…
Jessica Alba and the Global Afterglow of the American Dream By Dave’s Locker International Desk If you were to drop a pin on the world map every time a non-American has cited Jessica Alba as evidence that the United States still produces something besides student debt and drone footage, the resulting constellation would look suspiciously…
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…
