The United Nations has climate summits, Davos has its alpine power brunches, and the global poor have… MrBeast. Somewhere between the two-billionth view and the latest video in which he cures 1,000 blind people with the casual flourish of a man ordering dim sum, Jimmy Donaldson has quietly become the most influential foreign-aid program the…
PARIS — In a world where geopolitical alliances crumble faster than a croissant in July, one American export has managed to retain diplomatic immunity: Hailee Steinfeld’s face. The 27-year-old singer-actress-emoji-enthusiast has quietly become the soft-power equivalent of an aircraft carrier, bobbing along the 24-hour news cycle projecting cultural hegemony without ever firing a shot—unless you…
The Curious Case of Sophie Turner, or How the North Remembers the Global Soap Opera By the time the news alerts pinged from Reykjavík to Rabat, Sophie Turner—once best known for looking stoically miserable in a fur cloak—had already become a trans-Atlantic custody piñata. A routine divorce filing in Miami-Dade County ricocheted across time zones,…
TinyTan and the Global Shrinking of Attention Spans By Our Correspondent, Still Recovering from a 7-Second Reel of Existential Dread SEOUL—Somewhere between the DMZ and the nearest duty-free Bulgogi stand, seven pastel figurines the height of a credit card have become the most efficient diplomats South Korea never hired. TinyTan—BTS reimagined as chibi mercenaries—now storm…
From the Ruins of the American Empire, a Six-Stringed Consolation Prize Dave’s Locker Foreign Desk | 12 June 2025 Paris—It is 2 a.m. on the Rive Gauche and the bistros have finally run out of rosé. Somewhere between a tab of questionable MDMA and a heated debate on whether NATO still exists, a busker breaks…
Marvel’s Angela: How a Forgotten Spawn Sidekick Quietly Conquered the Global Imagination By A. S. de Winter, International Cultural Correspondent Somewhere between a NATO summit and the latest crypto scandal, the planet’s collective id decided that what it really needed was a six-foot-tall, platinum-haired Valkyrie-lawyer who can audit your taxes and then split you in…
The Vuelta a España, the Tour’s moody younger sibling who still wears black nail polish at 35, kicked off last weekend under a sun so brutal even the asphalt looked apologetic. While the planet elsewhere debated which apocalypse to schedule next—climate, debt, or the next crypto-currency—2,000 kilometres of Iberian tarmac offered an alternate reality where…
Nate Bargatze and the Soft Power of the American Mumble: How One Tennessee Everyman Quietly Became the Planet’s Preferred Sedative By Dave’s Locker Foreign Desk PARIS—On any given Thursday, while ministers in Brussels argue over grain tariffs and Beijing’s censors sharpen their knives for the next celebrity, a 44-year-old man from Old Hickory, Tennessee, is…
