**The Last Movie Star: Denzel Washington and the Global Art of Not Giving a Damn** In a world where TikTok dancers become geopolitical pundits and reality TV hosts morph into nuclear-armed leaders, Denzel Washington remains stubbornly, gloriously analog. While the planet burns through its fifteenth minute of fame, this 69-year-old actor from Mount Vernon, New…
**SEC Football: America’s Gladiatorial Spectacle and the World’s Quiet Horror** While the rest of the planet grapples with climate change, economic instability, and the occasional attempted coup d’état, the southeastern United States has identified its own existential crisis: whether Alabama can cover the spread against LSU. This, dear international readers, is SEC football—a religious movement…
The Curious Case of Trevor Lawrence: How a Quarterback from Cartersville, Georgia Briefly Became the UN Secretary-General of American Soft Power By the time Trevor Lawrence trotted onto the Wembley pitch last October for the Jacksonville Jaguars’ annual hostage-taking of British NFL fans, the global temperature had risen another 0.2°C, two more democracies had quietly…
Joe Burrow, Quarterback of the Free World? A dispatch from the front lines of American soft power By the time most of Europe is reaching for its second espresso, the American Midwest is already three beers deep into a Bengals Sunday. Somewhere in that amber haze, Joe Burrow—Louisiana lightning in designer sunglasses—drops back to pass,…
**The Grand Illusion: Tom Brady and the Global Theater of American Exceptionalism** In the pantheon of modern deities, where cryptocurrency evangelists rub shoulders with vaccine prophets and wellness gurus, Tom Brady stands as perhaps America’s most perfectly engineered false god—a man whose greatest achievement was convincing the world that throwing an oddly-shaped ball constitutes meaningful…
Mega Millions: How a $1.6 Billion Mirage Seduces the Planet By Our Man in the Cheap Seats At 11 p.m. Eastern last night, a single American lottery draw produced more overnight billionaires than most African stock exchanges manage in a decade. The Mega Millions jackpot—$1.6 billion and change—had swollen to the kind of figure normally…
