Andrew Mueller

London

Contributing Editor at Monocle

Podcast Host at Monocle 24: The Foreign Desk Podcast

Contributing Editor, Monocle. Host of The Foreign Desk on @monocle_radio. New book about Australian football, "Carn", available now. Plays in @theblazingzoos.

Articles

The "special" relationship strikes back as Trump announces US-UK trade deal

6 days ago | monocle.com | Andrew Mueller

UK prime minister Keir Starmer and US president Donald Trump have announced a "breakthrough" trade deal, the first since the latter leader triggered a global trade war. UK prime minister Keir Starmer and US president Donald Trump have announced a "breakthrough" trade deal, the first since the latter leader triggered a global trade war.
The 'Trump effect' on global elections

1 week ago | monocle.com | Andrew Mueller

Centre-left parties rode anti-Trump sentiment to score unexpected landslide victories in Canada and Australia. Could this signal a shift away from MAGA-style politics? US president Donald Trump is often regarded as a divisive disruptor whose principal political skill is for pitting people against each other.
The next Pope needs to be as much of a diplomat as the last

3 weeks ago | monocle.com | Andrew Mueller

In the long history of the role that he inhabited, Pope Francis was among the very few pontiffs who got to have a handover conversation with their predecessor. He ascended to the throne of St Peter in 2013, following the resignation of Benedict XVI. He was the first Jesuit pope and the first from the southern hemisphere. He was born Jorge Mario Bergoglio on 17 December 1936 in Buenos Aires.
How to topple a tyrant

1 month ago | newhumanist.org.uk | Andrew Mueller

How Tyrants Fall: And How Nations Survive (John Murray) by Marcel Dirsus As late as November 1989, Nicolae Ceausescu probably thought things were motoring along pretty nicely. He was 71 years old, and had been the uncontested overlord of Romania since 1967. The 14th Congress of the Romanian Communist Party had just awarded him another five-year term. Construction of his ghastly 3,000-room palace in the heart of Bucharest was proceeding.
AFL 2025 season preview: the field is as open as it’s ever been

2 months ago | gq.com.au | Andrew Mueller
The Agenda: Affairs

2 months ago | monocle.com | Andrew Mueller |Tomos Lewis

LDiplomats head back to Damascus and the US and China compete over technological progress. DIPLOMACY ––– CUBA & THE VATICANPennies from heavenAmong the flurry of announcements made by Joe Biden at the end of his presidency was something that caught many by surprise: the decision to remove Cuba from the list of state sponsors of terrorism. In return, Havana agreed to release 550 prisoners, many of whom were jailed for taking part in anti-government demonstrations in 2021.
The Agenda: Affairs

Nov 27, 2024 | monocle.com | Andrew Mueller

LThe importance of soft power, Algeria’s chocolate-hazelnut spread and France and Italy’s spat. F&B — ALGERIAHitting the sweet spotIn 2024, Nutella celebrated its 60th year as one of Italy’s most successful exports. But an Algerian upstart has been stealing the thunder of Ferrero Group’s famous chocolate spread. For sweet-toothed aficionados in France, Belgium and the Arab world, 2024 was the year of El Mordjene, a chocolate-and-hazelnut cream made by Algerian confectioner Cebon.
Book review: Fluke by Brian Klaas

Oct 28, 2024 | newhumanist.org.uk | Andrew Mueller

Fluke: Chance, Chaos and Why Everything We Do Matters (John Murray) by Brian Klaas That you are reading this is stupendously unlikely. This is no reflection on New Humanist’s circulation (expanding, I’m told), but merely an attempt to render vaguely sensible the unfathomable odds against any of us existing at all. Each human being alive now is the product of an unbroken sequence of thousands of meetings stretching back millions of years, many if not most of them entirely random.
Bright Eyes - Five Dice, All Threes

Oct 23, 2024 | uncut.co.uk | Andrew Mueller

If you’ve never understood or attempted the Yahtzee-adjacent dice game Threes, the first 100 seconds of Five Dice, All Threes should see you more or less right. This opening fanfare, the near-title track “Five Dice”, consists of a clearly experienced Threes player explaining it to some new mark: in the background, radio static punctuates the flicking of channels between opera, rock, old-timey music and old-school radio dramas.
The FTC Takes Aim at Deceptive AI Claims | JD Supra

Oct 4, 2024 | jdsupra.com | Kathleen Benway |Alexander Brown |Andrew Mueller

Since ChatGPT debuted in November 2022, generative artificial intelligence (AI) has taken the world by storm. Businesses everywhere appear to be embracing AI or advertising new AI-powered products that guarantee impressive results. As AI has become seemingly ubiquitous in the marketplace, so too have claims around AI’s promise to improve peoples’ lives through automation and problem solving.