This story about a hit novelist’s complex web of fabrications has gone viral this week, unsurprisingly, as it offers readers an intoxicating combination of literary intrigue, society gossip, and schadenfreude.
An interactive visualisation telling the story of how the periodic table came to be.
The story of Guantanamo Bay before its most recent, and most controversial, use as a prison camp.
A man with chronic health problems was drowning and disconnected from other people, with no help in sight. His exit strategy was to rob a bank.
Contrary to expectations set by the somewhat sensationalist title, this piece offers an insightful unpicking of the geo-political landscape of space exploration, in light of China’s work to catch up with Russian and American capabilities at breakneck speed.
Behind the scenes on the different approaches to hostage negotiations undertaken by governments and private firms around the world.
A pair of jovial scientists seeking to prove the existence of a ninth planet make for a great double act as they scale a mountain in Hawaii to access one of the world’s most powerful telescopes and search the night sky. The author does well to draw out the nobility in their potentially unachievable quest, which could seem quixotic were it not built on such extraordinarily advanced mathematical and astronomical theory.
The story of two American political consultants who helped create attack-based campaign strategies whilst working for Netanyahu, Nixon and others. The piece focuses on how this led them to conceive an anti-George Soros campaign whilst working for Viktor Orbán in Hungary. This definitive ad hominem campaign has since been taken up in numerous other countries and adopted an increasingly virulent anti-Semitic tone.
One of the great biographers writes about his discovery process, writing, and his experience researching the subject of his magnum opus, President Lyndon B. Johnson. Unsurprisingly, it’s a mesmerisingly well-told story.
A piece covering the hornets nest stirred up in scientific and archaeological communities by a paper using DNA analysis to suggest large scale revisions to the story of human migration and habitation over the ages.