The Curious Export of Greg Gutfeld: How America’s Snarkiest Late-Night Host Became a Global Rorschach Test PARIS—On a rain-slick Wednesday in the Marais, the barman at Le Mary Celeste muted France-Inter mid-interview with Emmanuel Macron and flicked on the subtitled feed of “Gutfeld!” The move drew zero protests; the patrons—mostly advertising strategists pretending to read…
Laura Loomer and the Global Export of American Outrage By the time Laura Loomer’s latest stunt ricochets across the planet—whether she’s handcuffing herself to a social-media HQ or live-streaming a deportation fantasy from a private jet—it has already been digested, memed, and monetized from São Paulo to Singapore. What began as a distinctly Floridian form…
Anna Paulina Luna and the Global Ripple Effect of Florida’s Favorite Firebrand By our man in the cheap seats, somewhere over the Atlantic When Anna Paulina Luna strode onto the floor of the U.S. House last January sporting aviators, a scowl, and the sort of confidence that only comes from having already survived Twitter, TikTok,…
The sun never sets on the Margot Robbie empire. Somewhere between a Bondi Beach surf shack and the marble boardrooms of Burbank, the Australian export has quietly become the most efficient soft-power weapon the Commonwealth never budgeted for. While Canberra argues over submarines it may never receive, Robbie has already infiltrated multiplexes from Mumbai to…
Stephen Curry, the 6-foot-2 human highlight reel from Akron-by-way-of-Davidson, has spent the last decade turning the world’s most American pastime into a kind of transnational cult—and he did it by weaponizing geometry like a bored teenager with a protractor and a grudge. While other superstars sold sneakers, Curry sold parabolas: rainbow arcs that travel farther…
Sally Dynevor: The Cobblestone Diplomat Quietly Redrawing Global Maps in a Weatherfield Cardigan By “Dave’s International Despatch & Ironing Service” LONDON—While the rest of us doom-scroll through cascading crises—crypto tsunamis in Montenegro, methane burps in Siberia, election cycles that feel like recurring hangovers—one woman in a sensible pastel twinset has been exporting a uniquely British…
Mark Ruffalo: The Accidental Superpower the World Has to Live With By Dave’s Foreign Bureau Chief, still jet-lagged in Copenhagen Somewhere between the red carpets and the climate summits, Mark Ruffalo mutated from affable character actor into a one-man NGO with excellent cheekbones. While other Hollywood exports sell protein powder or failed streaming services, Ruffalo…
**The Bella Epoch: How a WWE Diva Became the Perfect Metaphor for Our Global Identity Crisis** In the grand theater of international affairs—where nuclear powers play chicken in the Taiwan Strait and central banks perform interpretive dance with inflation rates—it’s oddly fitting that Nikki Bella, a professional wrestler from Scottsdale, Arizona, has emerged as our…
Rupert Murdoch, 93, has announced—again, with the weary inevitability of a Bond villain returning for one last sequel—that he will finally loosen his grip on the Death Star of global media. Or, more accurately, he’ll shuffle sideways into the honorary title of “Chairman Emeritus” of Fox and News Corp while his son Lachlan assumes the…
SYDNEY—If you squint at the skyline long enough, you can almost see the Murdoch empire’s shadow lengthening across three oceans, a Rorschach blot of satellites, tabloids, and streaming pixels. At the blot’s center stands Lachlan Murdoch: heir, enigma, and—depending on which brunch table you pollute—either the last lion tamer of legacy media or the trust-fund…
Tom Hanks, West Point, and the Global Theater of Soft Power By Our Bureau Chief for Existential Irony, Geneva It is a truth universally acknowledged that when a beloved American actor dons a cadet-grey uniform, the world leans in—partly out of curiosity, mostly out of the same rubber-necking instinct that makes us watch multi-car pile-ups…
Tom Phillips, the man who once turned the entire internet into a participatory art installation called “A Humument,” has died at 87, leaving behind a planet-wide game of exquisite corpse that none of us realized we were playing. From Lagos to Lima, Beijing to Bognor Regis, his legacy is less a tombstone than a Post-it…
