From the banks of the Euphrates to the neon canyons of Tokyo, the name Jaxson Dart is now muttered with the same hushed reverence once reserved for popes, pop stars, and that guy who figured out how to deep-fry Coca-Cola. Yes, the Ole Miss quarterback—product of Utah prep fields, USC transfer portal purgatory, and a…
Patrick Mahomes, the Kansas City quarterback whose right arm has been called a WMD by Texans who should know, is currently the most effective American export that doesn’t require a congressional waiver. While European governments argue over the price of eggs and Asian supply chains politely implode, Mahomes keeps flinging oblong leather into orbit and…
Walt Disney: The Cheerful Colonist Who Convinced the Planet to Pay for Its Own Fairy Tale By the time the first Eurostar disgorged its cargo of sugar-buzzed children at Marne-la-Vallée in 1992, the French had already surrendered—though not to Germans this time, but to a man who’d been dead for twenty-six years. Walt Disney, the…
Travis Kelce: The Tight End Who Tightened Global Pop Culture’s Moral Waistband by “The Diplomatic Cynic,” Dave’s Locker foreign desk In the grand tapestry of human folly, certain threads shine brighter than others, glittering like disco balls at the apocalypse. Enter Travis Kelce: Kansas City’s 6’5″ security blanket for quarterbacks and, as of 2023, an…
Globalization’s Favorite Wide Receiver: Juju Smith-Schuster and the Absurd, Borderless Theater of NFL Stardom By Our Correspondent in Five Time Zones Simultaneously Somewhere between a TikTok dance in Pittsburgh and a quiet endorsement deal in Lagos, Juju Smith-Schuster became the world’s most accidentally successful soft-power export since K-pop. The man has never filed a trade…
Lee Greenwood and the Curious Export of American Chest-Thumping By Our Man in Exile, Somewhere Over the Pacific The name Lee Greenwood still rings a bell in certain karaoke bars from Manila to Murmansk, usually right after the host announces “Free shots for anyone who hits the high note on the chorus.” For those who…
From Anaheim to Ankara: How a Cartoon Waterfowl Became a Global Rorschach Test By Our Correspondent, still jet-lagged in a Sheraton near LAX ANAHEIM—The arena gates open at 5 p.m. and a flood of humanity pours in: Danish exchange students wearing Teemu Selänne jerseys they found on Depop, a South Korean tour group clutching Mickey…
Beneath the Florida sun—an angry red disc that might as well be the planet’s fever blister—forty-three cars are currently circling the Daytona International Speedway like metallic hornets in a jar. The NASCAR race today is, on the surface, a purely American ritual: high-octane tribal drums, corporate logos flapping like medieval heraldry, and enough burning rubber…
The Accidental Ambassadorship of Emmet Sheehan, or How a Baseball Arm Became a Geopolitical Curveball By L. Marlowe, International Correspondent, somewhere between Narita and Logan TOKYO—When Emmet Sheehan’s 95-mph fastball whistled past Yuki Yanagita in the sixth inning of a sleepy June interleague game, it did more than freeze a cleanup hitter. It froze, very…
The Minnesota Lynx—officially the “MN Lynx” to anyone who’s ever tried to cram a Midwestern tongue-twister into a 280-character tweet—have, for reasons no algorithm can fully explain, become a minor Rorschach test for the rest of the planet. On paper they’re merely a WNBA franchise that plays in a city so cold its airport sells…
CeeDee Lamb and the Global Theater of Catch-and-Release By The Foreign Desk, Dave’s Locker Somewhere between the neon shrine of JerryWorld and the algorithmic bowels of TikTok, CeeDee Lamb—wide-receiver, reluctant fashion influencer, and occasional human piñata for defensive backs—has become the latest export in America’s ongoing experiment: turning kinetic talent into soft power. To the…
Rylan Clark and the Strange, Borderless Afterlife of British Camp By Our Correspondent in a Marriott Lounge Somewhere Over the Atlantic Somewhere between the croissant basket and the CNN ticker announcing yet another currency nosedive, the hotel television flickered to a clip of Rylan Clark—yes, that Rylan, the one whose teeth once outshone the Blackpool…
