Category Archives: Politics

News: Pence Enters GOP Race, Ukraine Dam Breach Fallout, CNN Fires Its CEO

The Globalist Podcast, Thursday, June 8, 2023: Former US vice president Mike Pence bids for the 2024 Republican nomination.

Plus: the fallout continues from the Kakhovka dam blast, the Japanese military reconsiders its tattoo ban and the toad species that is wreaking havoc in Australia.

News: Ukraine Dam Breach Flooding, Blinken In Saudi Arabia, Crowded GOP Field

The Globalist Podcast, Wednesday, June 7, 2023: Ukraine’s Nova Kakhovka dam: what we know about the breach.

Plus: US secretary of state Antony Blinken visits Saudi Arabia, Brazil says goodbye to a bossa nova legend and why the French military working with science-fiction writers.

Front Cover: The Atlantic Magazine – July/Aug 2023

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The Atlantic Magazine – July/August 2023 issue: Mark Leibovich goes inside the MLB’s desperate effort to rescue America’s pastime from irrelevance

‘HELL WELCOMES ALL’

A graphic illustration of black, pixelated video-game characters on a red background.

Can hard-core gamers learn to play well with others? By Spencer Kornhaber

Playing a prerelease version of Diablo IV, the latest installment in a 26-year-old adventure series about battling the forces of hell, I faced swarms of demons that yowled and belched. My character, a sorcerer, shot them with lightning bolts, producing a jet-engine roar. 

HOW BASEBALL SAVED ITSELF

Inside the desperate effort to rescue America’s pastime from irrelevance By Mark Leibovich

A photograph of a baseball outfielder on green field with fans silhouetted in the foreground.

Where in the name of human rain delays is Juan Soto?

The stud outfielder is late. Everyone keeps checking their phones—the antsy Major League Baseball officials, the San Diego Padres PR guy, the handful of reporters, and the assorted hangers-on you encounter around baseball clubhouses. Everyone is wondering when the Padres superstar will show up. He was supposed to be here half an hour ago, just after this baseball players’ sanctum opened and we were allowed to join them in their most elemental of baseball activities: waiting around.

News: Major Ukraine Dam Destroyed, Multinational Naval Drills In Indonesia

The Globalist Podcast, Tuesday, June 6, 2023: Ukraine‘s Kakhovska dam was completely destroyed; naval drills in Indonesia bring together Chinese, Russian and US forces, we get the latest from Jakarta.

Plus: reports of mass arrests in Kyrgyzstan, our technology correspondent is in California as Apple announces its newest releases and why Studio Ghibli’s forthcoming film will be unique.

Opinion: Global Fertility’s Crash, Scotland Populism Unravels, Bad Bunny Rises

‘Editor’s Picks’ Podcast (June 5, 2023) A selection of three essential articles read aloud from the latest issue of The Economist. This week, the economic consequences of the global collapse in fertility, Scotland’s holiday from reality (10:10) and the business of the rapper, Bad Bunny (18:10). 

Global fertility has collapsed, with profound economic consequences

What might change the world’s dire demographic trajectory?

Even as artificial intelligence (ai) leads to surging optimism in some quarters, the baby bust hangs over the future of the world economy.

Scotland has been on a ten-year holiday from reality

Populism can unravel quickly. But its effects are long-lasting

Scotland was the first part of Britain to get high on populist referendums. In 2014, two years before the Brexit vote, the Scottish independence campaign exhorted people to ignore the experts and revel in a glorious national renewal.

Bad Bunny, a superstar rapper, is good business

PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA - SEPTEMBER 04: Bad Bunny attends Made In America Festival on September 04, 2022 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. (Photo by Shareif Ziyadat/WireImage)

On Spotify and Netflix Spanish seems to be taking over the world

In November Spotify crowned Bad Bunny, a rapper from Puerto Rico, its most-streamed artist for the third year in a row.

Previews: The New Yorker Magazine – June 12, 2023

Sasha Velours “The Look of Pride”
Art by Sasha Velour

The New Yorker – June 12, 2023 issue: The artist behind the cover for the June 12, 2023, issue, Sasha Velour, is a gender-fluid drag queen, author, television and theatre performer, and visual artist. In 2017, she was named the winner of the ninth season of “RuPaul’s Drag Race.” 

How the Marvel Cinematic Universe Swallowed Hollywood

Many superheroes breaking through the word Hollywood

Robert Redford, Gwyneth Paltrow, Paul Rudd, and Angela Bassett now disappear into movies whose plots can come down to “Keep glowy thing away from bad guy.”

By Michael Schulman

The Writer Who Insists He Knew Tennessee Williams

An illustrated portrait of James Grissom writing on a notepad. From his pen emanates a cloud in which we see a scene...

James Grissom says that he met the playwright and his famous muses, and quoted them extensively in his work. Not everyone believes him.


By Helen Shaw

How a Fringe Legal Theory Became a Threat to Democracy

A seesaw with a collection of colorful US States on one side and the shape of the entire United States on the other. The...

Lawyers tried to use the independent-state-legislature theory to sway the outcomes of the 2000 and 2020 elections. What if it were to become the law of the land?

By Andrew Marantz

An extreme version of the theory could give state legislatures the power to award Electoral College votes however they see fit. Illustrations by Golden Cosmos

News: Ukraine Offensive, UAE Politics In The Middle East, Sweden-NATO Talks

The Globalist Podcast, Monday, June 5, 2023: Journalist Maria Romanenko gives us the latest from Ukraine and we discuss the shifting power dynamics in the UAE.

Plus: Do you need to speak English to become Spain’s next leader? We also look at the stories dominating the papers in Scandinavia with Monocle’s Oslo correspondent, Lars Bevanger.

Sunday Morning: Stories From Zürich & London

June 4, 2023 – Monocle’s editorial director, Tyler Brûlé, Fabienne Kinzelmann and Oliver Strijbis discuss the weekend’s biggest news stories in Zürich.

Plus: we check in with our friends and correspondents in Ljubljana, Hamburg and London.

Saturday Morning: News And Stories From London

Monocle on Saturday, June 3, 2023: Updates on the weekend’s culture news and current affairs with Emma Nelson.

British classical-music radio and television broadcaster Petroc Trelawny reviews the papers, French journalist Agnès Poirier discusses France’s debt and Monocle’s Monica Lillis speaks with author Beth Lewis about cults. 

Preview: New York Times Magazine – June 4, 2023

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THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE (June 4, 2023) – California is the place where the future happens, for good and ill. That’s part of its magic. Read our first-ever California Issue to find out what roads the state will take us down next.

Inside: A fight over a parking lot that explains the housing crisis; the future of California’s power to shape national policy; how the state is adapting to a warming world — and more.

California Builds the Future, for Good and Bad. What’s Next?

An illustration of a California-inspired scene: wildfires, cars on a highway, the writer’s strike in Hollywood, a tent city, drones in the sky, flooding and a marijuana dispensary.

From reparations to tax revolts, the Golden State tries out new ideas all the time. What roads will its latest experiments send us down?

By Laila Lalami

I remember my first glimpse into the future. In August 1992, when I arrived in California as a student, I discovered during orientation that the university required all incoming students to have something called an email account. To access it, I had to call up a text-based mail client on Unix, using a series of line commands. If I needed a file that sat on a university computer in New York, I could use file transfer protocol to download it in Los Angeles, the whole process taking no more than a few minutes. That’s brilliant, I remember thinking.

Can the ‘California Effect’ Survive in a Hyperpartisan America?

A collage illustration showing the California capitol, the Golden Gate Bridge and a surfer hitting the waves, among other California motifs.

For decades the state has been setting policy for the whole nation. Now red states are pushing back.

By Conor Dougherty

For a while this winter, seemingly every text message that Buffy Wicks received asked if she was running for Congress. Representative Barbara Lee, of California’s 12th District, which includes Oakland, had announced that she would enter the race for Dianne Feinstein’s soon-to-be-vacated Senate seat. This decision by Lee, who is 76, created a rare opportunity for the next generation of California Democrats to vie for federal office. And Wicks — a 45-year-old State Assembly member who lives in Lee’s district and was last re-elected with 85 percent of the vote — seemed like a natural candidate.