**Lulu Sun vs. Yafan Wang: The Ping-Pong Diplomacy of the Internet Age** Alright, folks, grab your paddles and get ready to serve because we’re diving into the most unexpected global showdown since Rocky met Ivan Drago. Lulu Sun and Yafan Wang, two Chinese table tennis prodigies, have taken the internet by storm, and not just…
# Zambia vs Niger: The Battle for the Internet’s Heart (and Hashtags) Alright, folks, buckle up! The internet has a new obsession, and it’s not another dance challenge or a viral TikTok trend. No, this time, it’s a good old-fashioned, geopolitical showdown between two African nations: Zambia and Niger. But why, you ask? Why are…
Tomorrowland: A Global EDM Church Where Even the Apocalypse Has a VIP Pass by Your Jaded Foreign Correspondent, filing from the festival’s pop-up consulate in Boom, Belgium Every last weekend of July, 400,000 pilgrims abandon their day jobs, nationalities, and remaining serotonin to worship at Tomorrowland—an electronic bacchanalia so vast it hands out faux passports…
The Last Cassidy Standing: How a 1970s Teen Idol Quietly Became the Global Metaphor We Deserve By *Dave’s Locker International Desk* Somewhere between Tehran’s uranium centrifuges and the latest TikTok dance craze, Shaun Cassidy—yes, that Shaun Cassidy—has improbably become a geopolitical Rorschach test. While diplomats argue over whose missiles can reach whose suburbs, the former…
From the vantage point of a bar-stool in downtown Lagos, a taxi rank in Buenos Aires, and a noodle stall in Chengdu, the name Gareth Southgate still ricochets across the planet with the hollow ping of a ball skimming the crossbar. To most of humanity—those who regard football as either a periodic bout of mass…
EURO DISNEYLAND, OR HOW THE AMERICAN DREAM LEARNED TO SAY “BONJOUR” WHILE STILL SPEAKING DOLLAR Marne-la-Vallée, France — In the year 1992, when the Iron Curtain was still fluttering in the breeze and “globalization” just sounded like a fancy French verb, Mickey Mouse parachuted into Europe with a pair of white gloves and a corporate…
Lou Holtz: The Last American Pep-Talk Evangelist Who Still Thinks the Cold War Is On By the time most Europeans can locate South Bend, Indiana on a map, the man who put it there has already been canonized, caricatured, and quietly filed under “quaint” by the rest of the planet. Lou Holtz—octogenarian, motivational mercenary, and…
Jackie Chan Spills Across Borders Like Cheap Soy Sauce: A Global Love Affair with Controlled Chaos By Our Man in the Departures Lounge Somewhere over the Sea of Japan, half the passengers on JAL 005 are watching Rush Hour on seat-back screens, while the other half are scrolling TikTok clips of Jackie Chan dangling from…
Robin Roberts, the woman who has spent more than two decades coaxing pre-caffeinated Americans into facing the day, is not a head of state, a Nobel laureate, or even—remarkably—someone with a verified TikTok dance. Yet from Lagos to Lisbon, her name has quietly slipped into the global vernacular as shorthand for unflappable optimism and, more…
Steve Martin: The World’s Favorite American Who Forgot to Be Obnoxious By our roving correspondent, still jet-lagged from a red-eye that smelled faintly of wet tweed and existential dread. In an era when a single off-key tweet can ignite a trade war, Steve Martin continues to tour the planet with a banjo on his knee…
Vanna White, Empress of the Spinning World By C. Delgado, International Desk, Dave’s Locker In a world where the nightly news is a roulette wheel of war crimes, climate catastrophes, and crypto scams, there is one immutable fixture: Vanna White silently gliding across a glowing alphabet like a benevolent ghost of late-stage capitalism. From São…
Chicken Shop Diplomacy: How Amelia Dimoldenberg Accidentally Became Soft Power in a Deep-Fried World By Dave’s Locker Foreign Desk LONDON—In the grand, gilded tradition of British exports—colonialism, the Beatles, and whatever Boris Johnson is—comes Amelia Dimoldenberg, a 30-year-old journalist armed only with a microphone, a deadpan stare, and the caloric equivalent of a NATO stockpile….
