Football on TV Tonight: 90 Minutes of Global Theatre, Sponsored by an Online Casino You’ve Never Heard Of Bylined from a hotel mini-bar in Doha, where the peanuts cost more than my first apartment. Tonight, somewhere between the war headlines and the weather report, a ball will be kicked on your screen and half the…
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…
Anna Haugh, the Dublin-born chef currently plating polished Irish nostalgia on London’s glossy Myrtle Avenue, has become the latest proof that national identity is now just another garnish—artfully tweezed, Instagram-filtered, and priced by the ounce. From São Paulo to Seoul, menus are littered with “modern Irish” the way diplomatic communiqués are littered with the word…
The Curious Case of Bradley Walsh: How a Cheeky Chappy from Watford Accidentally Became a Soft-Power Superweapon By the time the chyron reading “BRADLEY WALSH LAUGHS AT OWN JOKE FOR 47th TIME” flashed across Japanese breakfast television, it was already too late. The planet had been colonised—politely, inexorably—by a 63-year-old former Pontins Bluecoat whose greatest…
Grace Dent: How One British Critic Became the Canary in the World’s Deep-Fryer By Our Somewhat Stuffed Correspondent, Geneva GENEVA — While the planet busies itself with nuclear brinkmanship and algorithmic overlords, an unlikely barometer of global anxiety has emerged: the gastric fortune-teller known as Grace Dent. The Guardian’s restaurant critic and MasterChef regular has…
The follicular fate of nations: why JJ Watt’s hair matters more than your portfolio By our correspondent, still jet-lagged in three time zones Geneva – While the World Bank convenes panels on sovereign-debt haircuts, an arguably more consequential haircut is trending from Houston to Helsinki: the ever-evolving thatch atop NFL expatriate JJ Watt. Yes, dear…
Scotland vs Belarus: Two Cold Places, One Lukewarm Game, and the Entire Planet Pretending to Care By Our Man in the Departure Lounge, somewhere between Glasgow and Minsk Let us begin with the obvious: there are only so many ways two mid-table nations can disappoint their citizens on a Tuesday night, yet Scotland and Belarus…
Only Murders in the Building: How Three Lonely New Yorkers Became the World’s Most Relatable Diplomats By Our Bureau Chief, Still Recovering from a Long Layover in Newark It began, as most modern catastrophes do, with a podcast. Somewhere between the collapse of global supply chains and the rise of artisanal oxygen bars, three residents…
The World According to Martin Short: How One Canadian Dwarfed the Globe PARIS—In the grand tradition of small men making outsized noise, Martin Short has managed to become the planet’s unofficial court jester without ever holding elected office or firing a single drone. While diplomats in Geneva trade sternly worded communiqués about carbon emissions and…
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…
Laura Whitmore and the Global Cottage Industry of Micro-Celebrity By Our Man in the Departures Lounge, somewhere above the Irish Sea Somewhere in the algorithmic ether between Dublin and Dubai, Laura Whitmore has become a case study in how fame now travels lighter than hand luggage and lands heavier than sanctions. To most passport-holding adults,…
The Curious Diplomacy of Dejounte Murray, or How One Mid-Cycle Trade Became a Soft-Power Parable By Alistair “Ali” Bakhtiar, currently in transit somewhere above the Caspian Sea PARIS—On paper it’s just another NBA salary-cap footnote: Dejounte Murray, the league’s resident triple-double whisperer, leaves the Atlanta Hawks for the New Orleans Pelicans in exchange for a…
