CLEVELAND, OHIO—Somewhere between the rust-belt skyline that looks like Berlin after an especially bitter winter and the Cuyahoga River, famous for once being flammable, the Cleveland Browns continue their noble quest to teach the planet that hope is a renewable resource—mainly because it keeps getting crushed and recycled. From the vantage point of a globe…
The Curious Diplomacy of Shedeur Sanders: How a Quarterback Became the World’s Most Unwilling Soft-Power Asset By Our Man in Geneva (Where Else?) GENEVA—In the marble corridors of the Palais des Nations, where diplomats habitually argue over comma placement in climate accords, the newest topic of cocktail-hour chatter is not grain corridors or submarine cables…
PARIS—Somewhere between the Seine’s reflection of a burning Citroën and the clink of overpriced rosé at Café de Flore sits Eva Longoria, proving that when America exports its sitcom leftovers, the rest of the world graciously reheats them into haute cuisine. Two decades after she sashayed across Wisteria Lane in stilettos sharp enough to qualify…
OSMOND IN THE TIME OF CHOLERA (AND TIKTOK) From the Diplomatic Lounge of Dave’s Locker, somewhere above the 38th parallel The name Donny Osmond still triggers Pavlovian flashbacks in three distinct planetary zones. In Manila karaoke bars, “Puppy Love” is the go-to apology ballad for husbands who forgot their anniversaries—nothing says contrition like a falsetto…
PARIS — While Emmanuel Macron was busy explaining to pensioners why their retirement age now matches the half-life of uranium, another French institution was quietly choosing its next high priest: the head coach of Notre-Dame de Paris. Yes, the cathedral—charred, scaffolded, and currently more steel exoskeleton than house of God—has hired a “coach.” Not for…
The BBC schedule, that timid spreadsheet of imperial nostalgia, still beams out from London with the solemnity of a butler announcing dinner. Yet what looks like a quaint list of “Gardeners’ World” and “Antiques Roadshow” is, in truth, a soft-power stealth bomber making nightly landings in 180-odd territories. While Washington exports aircraft carriers and Beijing…
Bananas in the Anthropocene: A Fruit That Thinks It’s a Baseball Team For a planet currently busy stockpiling canned beans and iodine tablets, it is oddly reassuring to watch 7,000 Georgians—actual Georgians, not the Eurasian variety—lose their collective minds over a yellow-clad circus that calls itself the Savannah Bananas. From the outside, the spectacle resembles…
Patrick Kielty: The Accidental Diplomat Who Proves the World Runs on Banter By Our Man in the Green Room When historians eventually write the obituary for the late, unlamented “Global Age of Earnestness,” they will almost certainly footnote Patrick Kielty—Northern Irish stand-up turned BBC chat-show sphinx—as the man who demonstrated that international soft power can…
**The Accidental Diplomat: How Kumail Nanjiani Became Pakistan’s Most Effective Cultural Export (Whether He Wanted To Or Not)** *From Dave’s Locker International Bureau* Kumail Nanjiani’s journey from Karachi to Silicon Valley’s favorite everyman represents perhaps the most successful soft-power operation Pakistan never intended to launch. While diplomats in Islamabad wrestle with geopolitical headaches and IMF…
Kareena Kapoor: Global Soft-Power in a Size-Zero Sari By Our Man in Mumbai (and Everywhere Else with Wi-Fi) There is a moment, somewhere between the seventh Instagram reel and the algorithmic abyss, when the planet collectively pauses to watch a Bollywood actress sip iced coffee on a balcony in Bandra. That actress is usually Kareena…
Fatal Frame 2: A Global Séance in Pixels, or How Japan Taught the World to Fear Its Own Camera Roll By Our Bureau Chief of Supernatural Trade Relations, currently hiding in a Kyoto capsule hotel that still smells of 2003. Kyoto, Japan – While the rest of the planet was busy inventing selfie sticks and…
Donkey Kong Bananza DLC: The Barrel Heard ’Round the World By our man at the console, Berlin bureau, with a Wi-Fi connection slightly better than Crimea’s Somewhere between the Russian Central Bank’s 21 % emergency rate hike and the news that Bangladeshi garment workers are now paid in mobile-game vouchers, Nintendo quietly dropped the Donkey…
