The Ministry of Silly Walks Goes Global: John Cleese and the Export of English Despair By the time you read this, somewhere between São Paulo and Stockholm a streaming algorithm has already nudged a bored teenager toward “Monty Python and the Holy Grail.” That click is not merely late-night procrastination; it is the latest data…
Galatasaray: The Sultan’s Red-and-Yellow Balloon Drifting Above a Burning Bazaar By Our Jaded Correspondent in Transit Lounge 3C, IST Istanbul, that magnificent hinge between Europe and whatever Europe thinks Asia still is, has long specialized in exporting moods rather than mere products—melancholy, menace, magnificence. Galatasaray Football Club is the city’s most portable mood: equal parts…
Somewhere above the Adriatic, at 38,000 feet and a cruising speed that would make most commercial pilots weep quietly into their headsets, the planet’s most expensive pair of sneakers is doing what it does best: being airborne, invisible to civilian radar, and theoretically capable of launching thermonuclear Armageddon while its owner finishes dessert. Welcome aboard…
Every spring, while a quarter of the planet argues about whose passports deserve asterisks and which strongman has the bigger nuclear yacht, a quieter, more honest form of imperialism plays out on manicured rectangles of grass. The UEFA Champions League—once a modest continental knock-out, now a 32-nation carnival of leveraged buy-outs and geopolitical soft power—returns…
Leverkusen, a modest Rhineland city whose name sounds like a pharmaceutical after-dinner mint, has spent most of its life politely clearing its throat in the shadow of Cologne’s cathedral. Yet this spring it has swaggered onto the global stage like an intern who just discovered expense accounts. The cause: Bayer 04 Leverkusen’s first-ever Bundesliga title,…
Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle—The Global Siege of a Cartoon Sword Fight By the time the first teaser for Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle dropped, the planet had already endured two years of plague, three currency crises, and a social-media war whose only casualty was nuance. Naturally, humanity’s reflex was to form orderly queues—Tokyo’s Shinjuku at 4…
Skims: How Shapewear Became the New Soft Power The planet has plenty of pressing garments—diplomatic cables, ballistic vests, papal vestments—but none travel as far, as fast, or as lucratively as the $4 billion waist-whittling spandex empire known simply as Skims. What began in 2019 as Kim Kardashian West’s side hustle has quietly metastasized into a…
Kelly Brook: The Last British Bombshell in a World That’s Already Moved On By Dave’s Locker Global Desk London, Rome, New York, Seoul—wherever you land these days, the phrase “sex symbol” feels as quaint as a rotary phone. Yet somewhere between the algorithmic churn of TikTok torsos and the metaverse’s legless avatars, Kelly Brook still…
Amber Alert: One Woman, 400 Metres, and the Planet’s Brief Obsession By our correspondent, still recovering from a four-year hangover called “Tokyo 2020+1” PARIS—In the grand carnival of human self-congratulation known as the Olympic Games, it takes remarkably little to make the world press pause on the apocalypse feed. This week the globe’s collective thumb…
Luke Bryan: The Last American Cowboy in a World Running Out of Horses DAVE’S LOCKER, International Desk – Somewhere over the Atlantic, at 39,000 feet and counting, a Boeing 787 hums with the latest Luke Bryan single piped through the in-flight entertainment system. A German banker in 12C nods politely, a Lagos tech founder in…
Ed Sheeran’s Mathematics Tour, now staggering into its third calendar year like a drunk tourist who missed the last ferry, has quietly become the planet’s most efficient soft-power export since the British Empire swapped gunboats for guitar chords. From Jakarta’s traffic-choked Gelora Bung Karno to Warsaw’s defiantly rebuilt National Stadium, the red-haired bard from Suffolk…
Gleb Savchenko, the Human Metaphor We Never Ordered By Dave’s Locker Foreign Desk Somewhere between the Danube and the Dolby Theatre, Gleb Savchenko has spent two decades proving that a six-pack can double as a diplomatic passport. The Russian-born, U.S-naturalised ballroom dancer has cha-cha-cha’d from Moscow’s parquet floors to the fluorescent purgatory of Dancing with…
