Helen Flanagan, the Cheshire-raised former Coronation Street ingenue turned perennial headline-magnet, has once again managed to ricochet across the planet’s newsfeeds like a rogue ping-pong ball in a wind tunnel. This week it isn’t a jungle in Australia or a mansion in Dubai that has the world rubber-necking, but a single Instagram story in which…
The Man Who Invented Modern Fame, One Acquittal at a Time How a modest Armenian-American lawyer accidentally blueprinted the global attention economy we now inhabit PARIS—Long before TikTok teenagers monetized their breakfast choices, before Instagram influencers turned existential dread into sponsored content, before reality television metastasized into a $100 billion global industry, there was Robert…
The Tiffany Paradox: How a Little Blue Box Became the World’s Most Expensive Security Blanket In a world where nuclear codes change hands like baseball cards and democracy itself seems to be having a midlife crisis, humanity has found its true north: a robin’s-egg-blue box that promises everything will be okay if you just pay…
The Kennedy Curse Goes Global: America’s Most Dramatic Dynasty Continues to Captivate the World’s Morbid Fascination The Kennedy name travels well—perhaps too well for the family’s own good. From Cape Cod to Canberra, this American dynasty has become the world’s favorite cautionary tale about ambition, power, and the universe’s apparent sense of humor when it…
Mercury Prize 2025: Britain’s Musical Self-Congratulations Go Global By our correspondent who has witnessed the slow-motion collapse of Western civilization but still appreciates a good bassline The Mercury Prize—the UK’s annual exercise in proving that Britannia still rules the waves, at least metaphorically—descended upon London’s Hammersmith Apollo last night with all the self-congratulatory pomp of…
Laufey: The 24-Year-Old Jazz Bard Who Convinced TikTok That Heartbreak Is a Luxury Good By Dave’s International Desk Somewhere between the collapse of the global supply chain and the collapse of your last talking stage, an Icelandic-Chinese cellist named Laufey (pronounced “LIE-vay,” because of course it is) has quietly become the sonic comfort blanket for…
