If you type “Russian” into a search bar in 2024, the autocomplete suggestions read like a fever dream: “Russian oil price cap,” “Russian war crimes,” “Russian salad dressing – still safe?” Somewhere between the sanctions and the dill, the word itself has become a geopolitical Rorschach test: what you see tells the world exactly where…
Ozzy’s Lullaby Goes Global: How Four Brummies from the Black Country Accidentally Invented the Soundtrack to Modern Dystopia By the time the first distorted chord of “Black Sabbath” crawled out of Tony Iommi’s amputated fingertips in 1970, the planet was already busy rehearsing its own apocalypse. Vietnam was on television nightly, the Cold War had…
Auckland, Wednesday – Somewhere in the Pacific, two sheep-shackled nations are squaring off again like estranged siblings arguing over who forgot to return the family boomerang. To the rest of the planet, the New Zealand vs Australia rivalry is a quaint sideshow—cute accents, excellent coffee, and the faint possibility that one of them might actually…
Adam Driver and the Global Cult of the Unlikely Leading Man By Dave’s Locker Foreign Correspondent (currently self-exiled in a Reykjavik basement) PARIS—Somewhere between a NATO summit and the collapse of the third streaming platform this week, the planet decided its most bankable export is a 6-foot-3 former Marine with the gait of an irritated…
The planet has always been a messy chessboard, but lately it feels as though someone upended the pieces, set the board on fire, and then demanded we keep playing. From the Black Sea to the South China Sea, from the Sahel to the Amazon, the refrain is the same: one battle after another, each marketed…
To the untrained eye, Peter Mandelson is merely a British peer in a succession of bespoke suits—tailor’s bills paid, one assumes, by the same mysterious offshore account that funds half the House of Lords’ dry-cleaning. Yet from Beijing boardrooms to Brussels back-channels, his silhouette keeps popping up like a well-dressed glitch in the matrix. Mention…
Merseyrail: How a 75-Kilometre Northern English Toy Train Became a Global Metaphor for Low Expectations By Our Correspondent in Exile, currently drinking instant coffee on a bench outside Liverpool Central In the pantheon of world transport, Merseyrail rarely sits beside the Shinkansen, the Paris Métro, or whatever fever dream Elon Musk is digging under Miami…
Bagpuss, the saggy cloth cat from 1974, is currently enjoying a second life on four continents—streaming in 17 languages, trending on Brazilian fan-art forums, and inspiring a boutique line of ethically sourced felt mice in Kyoto. All this for a programme that was originally cobbled together in a converted cowshed outside Leeds with a budget…
Paddy Power: How a Bookmaker from the Emerald Isle Accidentally Became a Global Barometer of Late-Stage Capitalism By Our Correspondent in the Cheap Seats, Thursday DUBLIN—If the world were a casino, Paddy Power would be the loudest, most unapologetic croupier, forever shouting the odds on everything from the next pope to the precise shade of…
The Conjuring: Last Rites—A Global Séance in Dolby Atmos By Our Man in the Cheap Seats, Somewhere Over the Atlantic The trailer dropped at 3 a.m. in Manila, 9 p.m. in Paris, and just in time for the Lagos rush hour, which means Warner Bros. has finally synchronized humanity’s circadian rhythms around the only thing…
**The Global Report Card: How Ofsted Became the World’s Favorite Educational Punching Bag** While American parents fret over Common Core and Finnish educators smugly sip coffee atop PISA rankings, Britain’s Ofsted inspectors have quietly become the international gold standard for educational anxiety. From Shanghai to São Paulo, education ministers now dream of their own miniature…
Angelina Jolie, the woman who turned a vial of blood and a penchant for adopting half the planet into a one-woman foreign policy, has spent the past two decades auditioning for the role of “Earth’s Concerned Mom.” From refugee camps to the UN’s gilded antechambers, she has perfected the art of looking photogenically anguished while…
