Yearning for the end of the world
The story of life as a member of an underground church in 1980s Iran, waiting for the end of days and the promised Rapture.
The Drug Runners
The story of the Tarahumara people of Northern Mexico, used by drug cartels to smuggle due to their capacity to run extremely long distances.
Cricket historian, writer, surgeon, spy: the mad world of Major Rowland Bowen
An account of a life less ordinary.
Fishing in Guantanamo Bay
The recent history of Caimanera, the fishing town immediately adjacent to the US military base and prison at Guantanamo Bay.
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”.
A Kingdom for a Horse
A look at the history, culture and future of Kazakhstan anchored in an account of one of its national sports – kokpar – where teams of mounted riders compete to score goals with a goat carcass.
The Last Death-Defying Honey Hunter of Nepal
A look at the life and work of Mauli Dhan and his fellow hunters, who climb rope ladders hundreds of feet up Himalayan cliffs to harvest “mad honey”, a naturally hallucinogenic honey that sells for high prices on the black market.
The Third Person
A story looking at the professionals hired by wives in China to deal with their husbands’ mistresses.
Returning to Second Life
A piece revisiting the alternative virtual world Second Life, which is still surviving and even generating significant revenues, despite receding from popular consciousness in the last decade.
In Defectors From the North, Doctors in South Korea Find Hope and Data
A piece examining a project driven by hope – an in-depth study of the health of North Korean defectors that seeks to understand the long-term impact of living through the regime’s many hardships, with the goal of rendering a future reunification more straightforward.