The Boilermakers Abroad: How Purdue Football Became the World’s Most Improbable Soft-Power Asset By the time the Purdue “All-American” Marching Band struck up its halftime rendition of “The William Tell Overture” in Dublin last August, half the spectators were wondering why the corn-fed brass section had smuggled a sousaphone onto sacred Irish soil, and the…
In the pantheon of world capitals, Wellington is the one that keeps its head down, politely coughs into its sleeve, and still manages to be the only place on the planet where a mid-grade earthquake counts as Tuesday’s coffee break. From Reykjavík to Riyadh, the city’s name evokes two immediate images: a boot-shaped harbour that…
Romania vs. Canada: A Bloodless Cold War Over Maple Syrup, Mici, and Existential Dread By Ileana Drăghiciu, Bucharest Correspondent-at-Large The world’s attention has been trained on flashpoints with better lighting—Gaza, Kyiv, the South China Sea—but quietly, in the fluorescent glow of hotel conference rooms and trade-fair booths, Romania and Canada have been circling each other…
By the time the rest of the planet had finished arguing about the correct pronunciation of “Omicron,” the Chicago Sky quietly won a WNBA championship. That sentence alone should tell you how geopolitically lopsided our attention spans have become. While COP26 delegates in Glasgow were busy swapping business cards printed on recycled oat milk cartons,…
Countdown: Season 2 – When the World Holds Its Breath, Again By Dave’s Locker Foreign Desk Geneva—If you listen very carefully above the hum of espresso machines in the Palais des Nations canteen, you can hear it: the low, collective murmur of diplomats rehearsing the phrase “red line” in sixteen languages. Countdown: Season 2 has…
