Palantir Knows Everything About You
An investigation into Peter Thiel’s data mining company reveals the extent of the surveillance done by government and corporate clients using their technology.
The Tyrant and His Enablers
Stephen Greenblatt, Professor of the Humanities at Harvard and Shakespeare scholar, examines the author’s preoccupation with politics, and more specifically with tyranny and how it comes about.
A Terrifying Journey Through the World’s Most Dangerous Jungle
The Darien Gap between Colombia and Panama is a treacherous stretch of jungle filled with drug smuggling gangs that’s almost impassable. It is also a major route for migrants trying to reach the USA.
Homer and Harold
Harold Israel and Homer Cummings were from very different backgrounds and met when the latter was the state’s attorney in the former’s 1924 murder trial. Cummings proceeded to deliver a performance that “will live in the annals as a standard by which other prosecutors will be judged.” More remarkable even than that is the enduring involvement they had in each other’s lives. The story of the trial was noteworthy enough to be made into a film, but the story of their lifelong association is just as remarkable.
Tales from the new Silk Road
Stories from different players involved in a vast Chinese infrastructure project aimed at expanding trade routes – a “bid to shape our century”.
The Lost Children of Tuam
The tragic story of the fate awaiting the Irish children born out of wedlock who ended up at St. Mary’s Mother and Baby Home in Tuam.
“Oh My God, This Is So F***ed Up”: Inside Silicon Valley’s Secretive, Orgiastic Dark Side
A piece examining the sex party culture in Silicon Valley.
An unsolved murder at Italy’s most notorious tower block
The story of a murder at an apartment block marketed as a luxury development when it opened in 1968, but now “like an inverse of Dante’s layers of hell”. The building is disintegrating, but houses a large and diverse population, including an estimated 50 drug dealers. This is a story about the changes in fortune in the Italian economy, urban development, immigration, integration, and failing public infrastructure.
Inside the Very Big, Very Controversial Business of Dog Cloning
A look at the controversial, lucrative world of dog cloning, a practice that first leapt into the public consciousness via celebrity customers such as Barbra Streisand.
This is What a Feminist Looks Like
President Barack Obama lays out his personal perspective on feminism.