DAVID HOPKINSON: THE MAN WHO ACCIDENTALLY BECAME A GLOBAL POLICY WEATHER VANE By Our Correspondent Somewhere over the Mid-Atlantic If you’ve never heard of David Hopkinson, congratulations—you’ve been spared the vertigo of watching a mid-level British civil servant mutate, overnight, into the planet’s favourite geopolitical Rorschach test. In March, Hopkinson—until recently a modest director at…
Kate Middleton, Duchess of Cambridge, Is the Last Global Fairy Tale Standing—And That Should Terrify Us All By Our Correspondent in Self-Imposed Exile from Several Commonwealth Realms Somewhere between the collapse of the British pound and the collapse of British politics lies Catherine, Princess of Wales—still smiling that serene, orthodontically perfect smile while the rest…
Stacey Williams and the Algorithmic Afterlife By Our Correspondent, Somewhere over the Mid-Atlantic In the grand bazaar of global notoriety, where reputations are bartered for clicks and redemption arcs are sold by the pound, one name has lately been passed from Lagos group chats to Berlin newsrooms with the hushed urgency usually reserved for currency…
Melania Trump: The World’s Most Expensive Sphinx Finally Speaks—Sort Of By Dave’s Foreign Correspondent, currently self-medicating with Slovenian wine in an undisclosed Balkan café The global press corps collectively dropped its lukewarm espresso this week when Melania Trump—international woman of mystery, former catalogue sphinx, and current resident of a gilded Florida mausoleum—stepped back into the…
England vs South Africa: Two Former Empires Attempt Sport While the Planet Burns By Our Man in the Cheap Seats, Somewhere Over the Indian Ocean LONDON—If you squint through the smog and the smugness, Tuesday’s Oval showdown between England and South Africa looks like a simple cricket match. Two teams, 22 millionaires in whites, a…
England vs South Africa: Two Nations, One Cricket Match, and the Illusion of Global Significance By Our Correspondent Who’s Learned to Love the Absurd London—For 48 hours this weekend, the planet’s most urgent diplomatic crisis is not Ukraine, Gaza, or the slow-motion implosion of the Antarctic ice shelf, but whether a red leather sphere can…
NFL 2025 Schedule: The Empire’s 272-Game Roadshow Rolls On, and the Rest of the World Pretends Not to Watch By the time the NFL unveiled its 2025 regular-season slate on Thursday night—an event now ceremonially streamed to 195 countries, including some that still outlaw American football as “ritualized concussion”—the league had already booked more hotel…
Savannah Guthrie: America’s Alarm Clock at the End of the World Dispatch from the Bureau of Smiling Through the Apocalypse By the time the sun claws its way over the Pacific, Savannah Guthrie has already interviewed two heads of state, moderated a town-hall-slash-brawl, and reminded a bleary-eyed planet that yes, it is indeed Tuesday. For…
ConocoPhillips: The Friendly Neighborhood Oil Giant Quietly Reshaping the Planet Byline: From a press-room somewhere between Houston and Hades There’s a moment, somewhere between the third espresso and the fourth climate report, when you realize ConocoPhillips is less an energy company and more a planetary-scale bartender—mixing equal parts liquefied dinosaurs, shareholder dividends, and geopolitical hangover….
Strands Hints: The World’s Newest Guilty Pleasure in a Guilt-Free Wrapper By Dave’s International Affairs Correspondent, nursing a lukewarm espresso in Terminal 3 Somewhere between the collapse of a second regional bank and the third coup rumor of the week, the planet discovered it could still be distracted by a daily puzzle that looks like…
The NFL’s Global Roadshow: How One League Exports Helmeted Capitalism to a Bewildered Planet By Dave’s Locker International Desk Every September, while most of the world is busy arguing about energy prices, coups, or the correct pronunciation of “GIF,” roughly 120 million humans from Minsk to Manila suddenly acquire opinions on third-string cornerbacks. The culprit:…
Stephen Colbert Goes Global: How One Satirist Became the World’s Emergency Laugh Track By the time the laughter dies down in Studio 6A, it’s already echoing off the Kremlin’s red bricks, ricocheting around a Lagos co-working space, and slithering into a Berlin bar where expats pretend they’re still shocked by American politics. Stephen Colbert—once merely…
