Michael McIntyre: How a Man in Skinny Jeans Became the UN’s Unofficial Jester of the Apocalypse Byline: Dave’s Locker foreign desk, filed from an over-air-conditioned lounge in Singapore where the gin is warm but the Wi-Fi is existential. Walk into any expat bar from Lagos to Lima and you’ll hear the same low-grade grumbling about…
Thomas Skinner Strictly: The Glitterball as Geopolitical Football By Our Man in the Greenroom, still hung-over from diplomatic canapés LONDON – Somewhere between a bunting-draped Blackpool Tower and a hastily booked EasyJet to Marbella, Thomas Skinner—the East-End mattress mogul turned meme-savant—has become the most unlikely soft-power export Britain has produced since the Queen parachuted into…
In the grand, ceaseless carnival of American college football—an enterprise that combines the pageantry of medieval jousting with the merchandising genius of Disney—tonight’s modest sideshow features Tulane versus Ole Miss. To the uninitiated, this may appear to be a regional skirmish over bragging rights and a bronze boot called the “Magnolia Bowl,” a trophy whose…
UNC vs UCF: A Microscopic Lens on the Macroscopic Collapse of Western Soft Power By Our Man in the Departure Lounge, Somewhere Over the Atlantic On the surface, Saturday’s gridiron tussle between the University of North Carolina (motto: “Lux libertas,” roughly “Debt and daylight”) and the University of Central Florida (motto: “Reach for the stars—then…
From the banks of the Willamette to the war rooms of Davos, the planet pauses this weekend for a proxy battle that, on paper, is merely a college football game between Oregon State and the University of Oregon. In practice, it is a perfect Petri dish for every neurosis the 21st century has on offer:…
Rangers Score Today, Earth Still Spinning: A Dispatch From The Front Lines of Futility NEW YORK—Another day, another 3-2 victory for the New York Rangers, and somewhere a hedge-fund manager in Geneva just made or lost the GDP of Moldova on exactly how many seconds elapsed between the second and third goals. The puck crossed…
Cade Klubnik, quarterback savior of the Clemson Tigers, woke up last Saturday on a continent that still thinks a “tight end” is an unfortunate consequence of yoga class. Yet by nightfall, his 38-35 overtime escape against Notre Dame had ricocheted through encrypted group chats from Singapore to São Paulo, proving once again that American college…
Cole Palmer: The Quiet English Kid Quietly Reshaping Global Football’s Hierarchy By Dave’s Foreign Desk, somewhere between a damp Tuesday in Manchester and a sun-baked Champions League night LONDON — The world’s supply chains are sputtering, glaciers are auditioning for puddles, and democracy is locked in a never-ending group chat with itself, yet the planet’s…
The United States has always excelled at exporting two things: weapons-grade optimism and television. USA Network, the plucky cable channel that once promised “Characters Welcome,” is the softer, more insidious sibling of those F-35s—flying under most foreign radars while still reshaping the global skyline. From its birth in 1977 as the Madison Square Garden Sports…
Jasmine Harman and the Global Cottage-Core Arms Race By Our Correspondent in the Department of Soft-Furnishings Geopolitics You may know Jasmine Harman as the relentlessly upbeat presenter who once persuaded a retired couple from Southend to trade a three-bed semi for a crumbling finca in Alicante on A Place in the Sun. What you probably…
Madrid, Spain – The sun still rises over the Plaza Mayor, but only after it has checked the La Liga standings on its phone. At the top, Real Madrid sit with that monarchical inevitability which makes republicans quietly despair. Ancelotti’s gentlemen lead Girona by a margin so slim it could be negotiated away over a…
PARIS — Somewhere between the Champs-Élysées and the nearest tax haven, Kylian Mbappé has become the planet’s most expensive argument starter. From Dakar to Dubai, Seoul to São Paulo, the 25-year-old Frenchman now functions less as a footballer and more as a Rorschach test for the late-capitalist world order. Mention his name and you’ll learn…
