September Social Security Payments Go Global: How 70 Million Americans’ $113 Billion Windfall Shakes Markets from Manila to Milan By the time the first electronic deposit hits a retiree’s account in Biloxi at 12:01 a.m. on the third of September, a bond trader in Singapore has already slammed three espressos and refreshed her Bloomberg terminal…
Jessica Brady’s Tumor: One Cell’s Rebellion, Two Billion Heartbeats, and the Whole Damn Planet Watching By our correspondent, nursing a flat white in Terminal 3 and pretending the Wi-Fi isn’t harvesting his organs There’s nothing like a single cancer diagnosis to remind the world that borders are essentially decorative. When Australian soccer star Jessica Brady,…
The Underground Empire: How Metro Systems Became the World’s Most Expensive Tombstones By our correspondent who has spent too many hours staring at tunnel walls They say you can tell everything about a civilization by where it chooses to bury its dead. These days we skip the cemetery and go straight to the metro: climate-controlled,…
The United States National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration—better known as NOAA—has once again opened its seasonal spectacle of Technicolor panic maps, politely reminding the rest of the planet that when America sneezes, the world catches a cold front. Every June, like clockwork, the agency’s hurricane outlook drops onto global newsrooms with the subtlety of a…
Phil Mitchell: How a Fictional East-End Hardman Became a Global Benchmark for Societal Collapse By Our Man in the Departure Lounge, Dave’s Locker Foreign Desk It began, as all world-historic shifts do, with a bald man shouting in a launderette. Thirty-odd years later, Phil Mitchell—East-End bovver boy turned walking public-health warning—has quietly become the planet’s…
Social Security Payments: The World’s Most Inclusive Lottery Nobody Wins Geneva, Switzerland — While Swiss bankers polish the brass nameplates that still read “Numbered Accounts R Us,” a far more democratic form of wealth redistribution is quietly taking place in 180-odd countries: governments mailing, wiring, or—if the local cell tower hasn’t been repossessed—WhatsApp-ing money to…
Immigration: The World’s Longest-Running Season Finale By “Borderline” Benito K., Senior Correspondent, Somewhere Over the Atlantic If Earth were a reality show, immigration would be the cliff-hanger no scriptwriter dares resolve—too lucrative, too messy, and the audience keeps hate-watching. Every continent is simultaneously auditioning newcomers and locking the greenroom door. The same governments that begged…
Taylor Swift Cinema Showgirl: One Nation’s Pop Star Becomes the Planet’s State-Sponsored Diversion By the time the lights dimmed in a repurposed multiplex in Lagos last Friday, the ticket taker had already run out of souvenir wristbands. In Jakarta, scalpers were accepting payment in goat curry. And in Reykjavík, the mayor politely asked citizens to…
The Rising Tide We Bought on Credit By Our Jaded Correspondent in a Drier-Than-Average Café, Bangkok The United Nations likes to say that floods are “the most common natural disaster,” which is diplomatic code for “the one we keep inviting back to dinner.” From the neon-drowned streets of Seoul to the newly aquatic boulevards of…
Chasing Status on a Shrinking Planet: The Global Cult of the Sapphire Reserve By Dave’s International Affairs Desk (with a boarding pass full of receipts) In the duty-free cathedral of Terminal 3, somewhere between the Hermès scarves and the 24-hour massage chairs, you can spot them by the glint of metal: the Sapphire Reserve cardholders….
PARIS—While the Seine lurches through another heatwave and the Olympic rings rust politely on the skyline, a 23-year-old from California has convinced 17.4 million strangers that watching him screech into his phone is the new appointment viewing. Alex Warren—TikTok’s answer to a skateboard with anxiety—has officially cracked the global attention economy, proving that international diplomacy…
Liverpool vs Southampton: A Micro-Drama for a Macro-Mess By our man in the cheap seats, wondering if the apocalypse has VAR The planet is busy imploding—ice shelves calving like bored royals, shipping lanes turning into jacuzzis, and democracy being auctioned off between smartphone notifications—yet for ninety-odd minutes on a damp English Saturday, a reasonable slice…
