The Lioness Roars, Mostly into a Void A global dispatch on what happens when the world’s fiercest predator meets the planet’s most inventive PR department: humanity. There is, apparently, a global shortage of lionesses these days. Not the tawny, four-legged kind—those are still being shot, poisoned, or trafficked at the brisk clip of one every…
Crenshaw: The Melon That Went Global Without Asking Permission by Diego “El Dolor” Morales, International Desk In the beginning, there was the Crenshaw melon—an overachieving hybrid of Persian casaba and cantaloupe that tastes like summer vacation and smells faintly of existential dread. Born in the dusty crucible of California’s Imperial Valley circa 1909, the Crenshaw…
From Madrid to Manila, the phrase “Alec Baldwin’s wife” has become a universal shorthand for a very modern form of global rubber-necking. Hilaria Baldwin—née Hillary Hayward-Thomas of Boston—has managed, without holding elected office, firing a missile, or releasing a K-Pop single, to spark simultaneous outrage on four continents. It’s a remarkable feat for someone whose…
Minnesota Vikings: A Frozen Saga of Nordic Nostalgia and Global Existential Dread By Dave’s Locker International Desk The Minnesota Vikings—a team named after Scandinavian seafarers who once terrorized Europe with axes and questionable facial hair—have become an unlikely export of existential angst wrapped in purple polyester. From the fjords of Tromsø to the karaoke bars…
**The International Incident of Hilaria Baldwin, or How America Exported Its Identity Crisis to Spain** In the grand theater of global absurdities, where nuclear powers play chicken over fishing boats and billionaires race to Mars while Earth burns, the saga of Hilaria Baldwin stands as a peculiar testament to our collective identity crisis—a sort of…
Celtic: How a Tribal Brand Went Viral 2,000 Years Before TikTok By our correspondent, still recovering from a Dublin pub “research” session The word “Celtic” is having a second act—rather impressive for a civilization that technically never survived the first one. From Boston basketball jerseys to Tokyo tattoo parlors, the swirling spirals and knot-work once…
**The Wagyu Whitewash: How Burger King Turned Japan’s Sacred Cow into Global Fast-Food Fodder** *By our correspondent in the departure lounge of dietary disillusion* TOKYO—In the beginning, there was the cow, and the cow was good—so good, in fact, that Japanese emperors once forbade commoners from eating it. Fast-forward eight centuries and the same bovine…
From the Deck of a Slowly Sinking Cruise Ship Somewhere Between the Gulf of Mexico and the Mariana Trench by Our Correspondent-at-Large, still waiting for the Wi-Fi to load The phrase “Sam Houston vs Hawaii” sounds like the kind of fever dream you’d get after eating too much poke washed down with lukewarm Lone Star…
**The Global Rashee Rice Reckoning: How One Grain Became the World’s Most Overachieving Carbohydrate** In the pantheon of foods that have accidentally conquered the world, rashee rice sits somewhere between quinoa (the grain that made Bolivian farmers unable to afford their own lunch) and avocados (the fruit that funds Mexican drug cartels). This particular strain…
