**The Global Brotherhood of Phillie: How One Man’s Nickname Became the World’s Favorite Identity Crisis** In a world where nations rise and fall on the whims of algorithms and the most powerful man in any room is usually holding a smartphone, humanity has found a new unifying force: the humble “Phillie.” From the cigarette-tinged backrooms…
**The Santa Barbara Bowl: How a Californian Amphitheater Became Humanity’s Last Honest Diplomat** In an era when international summits accomplish little beyond photo ops and the United Nations has become the world’s most expensive suggestion box, a modest outdoor venue perched on a California hillside has quietly emerged as our species’ most effective instrument of…
**The Global Court Jester: How Sonia Sotomayor Became the World’s Accidental Diplomat** While Washington obsesses over whether Supreme Court justices should be able to count to nine without taking their shoes off, the rest of the world has discovered something peculiar: Sonia Sotomayor has become America’s most unlikely export since the McRib. From the favelas…
Nobody Wants This—But the Planet Keeps Getting It Anyway By Our Man in the Departures Lounge GENEVA—At precisely 14:03 Central European Time, the latest global consensus was delivered via diplomatic cable, subtitled tweet, and a half-hearted Slack emoji: “Nobody wants this.” The memo, drafted in six languages and one exhausted sigh, refers to everything from…
**The Severn Bridge: Humanity’s 1.6-Mile Monument to Not Getting Wet Ankles** While the rest of the world debates whether bridges should connect people or keep them out, Wales and England have been quietly perfecting the art of suspended cooperation since 1966. The Severn Bridge—two miles of steel and concrete that somehow manages to unite the…
**The Breezy Bowl Revolution: How Humanity’s Latest Bathroom Innovation Became a Geopolitical Powder Keg** In the grand theater of human progress, where we’ve split atoms, sequenced genomes, and convinced ourselves that cryptocurrency is a good idea, we now arrive at our crowning achievement: the Breezy Bowl. This $399 “intelligent air-drying toilet seat” promises to liberate…
**The Upside Down World Order: How Stranger Things Became Our Global Reality Show** If you’ve been wondering why the world feels increasingly like we’re all trapped in a supernatural 80s fever dream, congratulations—you’ve been paying attention. While Netflix’s *Stranger Things* ostensibly chronicles the paranormal adventures of precocious children battling interdimensional monsters, it’s become something far…
**The Beautiful Brutality: How the Women’s Rugby World Cup Became Humanity’s Most Honest Diplomatic Channel** In a world where international relations have devolved into Twitter spats between nuclear powers and trade wars fought over soybeans, there’s something refreshingly primal about watching women from thirty nations beat the living daylights out of each other—legally, on a…
**The Global Obsession with Five-Letter Words: How Wordle Help Became a Diplomatic Crisis** GENEVA—While the Doomsday Clock ticked ominously at 90 seconds to midnight, representatives from 193 nations gathered last week for what the UN modestly billed as “Emergency Session 47-B: Addressing Digital Inequality in Wordle Assistance.” The emergency, it seems, was that half the…
**The United Nations of Toxicity: How League of Legends Became the World’s Most Effective Diplomatic Pressure Cooker** While traditional international organizations struggle with language barriers and cultural differences, Riot Games has inadvertently solved global communication problems by creating a universal language of flaming, feeding, and “gg ez” spam. League of Legends, the free-to-play masterpiece of…
**Tamron Hall: America’s Daytime Therapist Goes Global** While the world burns through its usual cocktail of geopolitical chaos and existential dread, an unlikely export has emerged from the American television industrial complex: Tamron Hall, the former NBC correspondent turned daytime talk show host who’s managed to convince millions that their problems can be solved in…
The World According to 9/11 Times A global correspondent’s sardonic travelogue through the age that began with two falling towers and never quite ended By the time the North Tower folded itself into a neat heap of irony at 10:28 a.m. Eastern, it was already happy-hour in Singapore, siesta in Madrid, and Tuesday’s second cup…
