MILWAUKEE—In a world where the Arctic is on fire and central bankers play Jenga with interest rates, the planet paused last night to watch two American ball clubs named after beer and law enforcement chase a small white sphere across a manicured lawn. The Brewers versus the Rangers, a mid-May interleague tilt that, on paper,…
From the vantage point of a hotel bar in Phnom Penh—where the barman insists on playing 1990s American sitcom theme songs at funeral-parlor volume—the Cubs versus Braves tussle feels less like a ballgame and more like an allegory for late-stage capitalism’s greatest hits. Two franchises, each clutching century-old grievances like passports to self-pity, meet in…
Ashton Kutcher: The Last American Export That Still Works by our correspondent in a café whose Wi-Fi password is literally “password123” PARIS—On the same day the French government announced yet another bailout for baguette artisans, Ashton Kutcher was in Davos explaining to a roomful of unelected technocrats how blockchain can stop child trafficking. Somewhere in…
Chang’an: The City That Invented Globalization, Then Got Rebranded By Dave’s Locker Foreign Desk If you want to see the birthplace of twenty-first-century supply-chain anxiety, you need to look 1,400 years backward and 8,000 kilometers east of Davos. Welcome to Chang’an—modern-day Xi’an—where cosmopolitan merchants once haggled over bolts of silk and, presumably, complained that the…
Royals vs Guardians: How a Pedigreed Pastime Became a Global Power Struggle The phrase “Royals vs Guardians” sounds like the elevator pitch for a Netflix fantasy series—complete with brooding heirs, moody castles, and a CGI dragon voiced by a disgraced Oscar winner. In reality, the drama is unfolding on baseball diamonds from Kansas City to…
Mets vs Phillies: Two Rust-Belt City-States Fight Over a Pastime While the Planet Melts By Ignacio “Nacho” Valdez, International Correspondent, currently hiding from his bar tab in Athens If you squint at the right moment—say, during a 3-2 changeup that dies in the humid Philadelphia night—the Mets-Phillies rivalry starts to look like a low-stakes reenactment…
PARIS—Somewhere between the baguette crumbs and the hushed reverence of Court 2 at Roland-Garros, Alycia Parks is busy reminding the planet that power tennis is no longer the monopoly of Eastern European finishing schools or Floridian academies staffed by ex-Soviet taskmasters with a vitamin-B12 drip. Instead, the 6-foot-1 product of suburban Atlanta—pop. 500K, humidity 200%—has…
Renée Zellweger and the Collapsible World Order By our correspondent drinking coffee in three time zones at once In the grand geopolitical casino, you wouldn’t normally bet on a Texan who once pretended to be British for two whole films. Yet Renée Zellweger—yes, the woman who made millions by squeezing into impossibly large knickers and…
Moise Kean and the Global Transfer Carousel: How a Striker’s Career Became a Metaphor for Everything Wrong (and Right) with International Football By the time Moise Kean turned 24, the Italian striker had collected more passport stamps than most foreign correspondents. Born near Turin to Ivorian parents, fast-tracked by Juventus, dispatched to Everton, loaned to…
The global religion that requires no churches, only screens, kicked off again last weekend. From Lagos barrios to Lapland igloos, billions of the faithful gathered around flickering rectangles to watch twenty-two millionaires chase a ball and, more importantly, one another’s existential dread. Football on television has quietly become the most successful empire of the 21st…
The Curious Global Career of Kendrick Bourne, or How a Slot Receiver Became a Metaphor for 21st-Century Mobility In a world where supply chains snap like cheap earbuds and passports mutate into status symbols, the professional wanderings of Kendrick Lamar Bourne—yes, that really is his government name—offer a darkly comic masterclass in modern transience. While…
Olivia Rodrigo and the Global Export of Heartbreak Diplomacy By Dave’s Locker International Desk PARIS—While the United Nations Security Council was busy vetoing itself into irrelevance last week, a 20-year-old from Temecula, California, quietly achieved what seasoned envoys have failed to do for decades: unite the planet in shared, slightly masochistic misery. Olivia Rodrigo’s sophomore…
