Inside Mark Zuckerberg’s Lost Notebook
An author writing a book on Facebook (‘Facebook: The Inside Story’) gets access to a 17-page section of Mark Zuckerberg’s early notebooks, entitled “Book of Change.”
The Hustlers at Scores
This 2015 story of dancers at a New York strip club conning customers has been turned into a hit 2019 film starring Jennifer Lopez and Constance Wu.
Was Jeanne Calment the Oldest Person Who Ever Lived—or a Fraud?
Jeanne Calment was 122 years of age when she died in France in 1997, and the oldest person in the world. It was only some years after her death that people started to question whether 1875 was in fact the year of her birth, and suggesting that the woman who claimed to be Jeanne Calment was in fact her daughter Yvonne. This is a fascinating story of gerontology (including such alarming nuggets as the the Gompertz law which states that “the mortality rate for adult humans roughly doubles with every additional eight years of age”) and social history.
How Saudi Arabia Infiltrated Twitter
The extraordinary allegations presented in this story suggest that two Twitter employees used privileged access to internal systems to identify private user information and share it with the Saudi state.
A Search for the Source of Italy’s Malaise
A look at Italy, where research suggests inhabitants have a lower degree of satisfaction with the status quo than their peers across a broad range of opinions and indicators, from antipathy for membership of the EU, concerns about loneliness and fear of unemployment to a declining birth rate, and an increasing number of academics leaving the country.
‘The intelligence coup of the century’
The explosive story of Crypto AG, a Swiss firm that for decades supplied cryptography technology to numerous world governments, and provided a back door to US and West German intelligence services in the process.
Yuval Noah Harari’s History of Everyone, Ever
An expansive profile of the author of two of the last decade’s biggest non-fiction hits – Sapiens, and Homo Deus.
Dominic Cummings and the battle for Downing Street
A profile of Dominic Cummings by the Newsnight political editor.
Going the Distance (and Beyond) to Catch Marathon Cheaters
A man who made it his mission to catch marathon cheats encountered a case that was to have unforeseen, and tragic, consequences.
Collaborators in creation
A look at the interplay between “physical and social technologies” in driving human progress.