‘The Intelligence Coup Of The Century’
For more than half a century, governments all over the world trusted a single company, Crypto AG, to keep the communications of their spies, soldiers and diplomats secret. But what none of its customers ever knew was that Crypto AG was secretly owned by the CIA.
Heaven Or High Water: Selling Miami’s Last 50 Years
The consensus among informed observers is that the sea will rise in Miami Beach somewhere between 13 and 34 inches by 2050. Sunset Harbour is expected to fare slightly worse, and to do so more quickly. Thus, I felt the Sunset Harbour area was a good place to start pretending to buy a home here.
London Underground 1970-1980 By Mike Goldwater
The first thing that strikes anyone who regularly rides on the London Underground is how clean it looks in Mike Goldwater’s photographs. Homeward bound tourists keen to recapture the thrill of minding the gap and cooling their heels on overcrowded platforms are not offered a range of signature scents.
Nietzsche On How To Find Yourself And The True Value Of Education
Friedrich Nietzsche considered the journey of self-discovery one of the greatest and most fertile existential difficulties. “Any human being who does not wish to be part of the masses need only stop making things easy for himself. “Be yourself! All that you are now doing, thinking, desiring, all that is not you.”
What Ever Happened To Waterbeds?
After a heyday in the late 1980s in which nearly one out of every four mattresses sold was a waterbed mattress, the industry dried up in the 1990s, leaving behind a sense of unfilled promise and thousands upon thousands of unsold vinyl shells.
The Roman Wall That Split Britain Into Two Parts
Hadrian’s Wall was a 73 mile barrier stretching from coast to coast, splitting the warlike north of Britain from the more docile south. It was the Roman Empire’s way of imposing peace in a hostile land.
Meet The Americans Who Moved To Europe And Went Awol On Their Student Loans
The amount of money adults in the US owe due to educations is over $1.3 trillion and jumps up by more than $2,000 every second. The average borrower owes $28,000. Some cash-strapped former students are choosing to leave America behind in order to avoid paying off their giant debts.
What Brought Beyoncé, U2, And BTS To Amish Country?
Rock Lititz is a one-of-a-kind production community in Amish Country. They aim to be a one-stop shop for major bands: They build the stage, they design the lighting, they do the sound, and after a couple days or a week or a month of rehearsals, they send you off to tour the world.
The Death Of The Hippies
Professional photographer Joe Samberg remembers how drugs destroyed Berkeley’s Telegraph Avenue scene. Still, the hippies did end up having a lasting impact on American culture—even if it wasn’t quite the one they’d intended.
Revisiting The Seven Weeks In 1991 That Changed Music History Forever
In rock history, 1991 is most often seen as The Year Everything Changed. A procession of landmark releases from August to September 1991 helped transform alt.rock’s steadily growing snowball into an all-enveloping avalanche.
Up In The Air: Meet The Man Who Flies Around The World For Free
Ben Schlappig, 25, is one of the biggest stars among an elite group of obsessive flyers whose mission is to outwit the airlines. They’re self-styled competitors with a singular objective: fly for free, as much as they can, without getting caught.
How The Killing Of An Abusive Father By His Daughters Fuelled Russia’s Culture Wars
News of the killing of three teenage sisters quickly spread across Russia, and in the months that followed, the country was divided over what drove the sisters to kill their own father. It inspired a campaign for change – and a backlash from the patriarchy.
Burning Out
Search and rescue teams train for the worst conditions. But the worst conditions are getting worse. Search teams are stretched. Rescuers are burning out. We are all less safe. Are search and rescue teams ready for the next big disaster?
I Stumbled Across A Huge Airbnb Scam That’s Taking Over London
As the short-term rental goldrush gathers pace, Airbnb empires are being rapidly scaled and monetized. This is the curious tale of a man called Christian, the Catholic church, David Schwimmer’s wife, a secret hotel and an Airbnb scam running riot on the streets of London.
Remembering The Nucleon, Ford’s 1958 Nuclear-powered Concept Car That Never Was
Nearly 30 years before the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, engineers at Ford designed and made a 3/8 scale model of a car, which it said would be powered by a nuclear reactor in the trunk.
Killer, Kleptocrat, Genius, Spy: The Many Myths Of Vladimir Putin
Putin’s recent ubiquity has brought great prominence to the practice of Putinology. This enterprise – the production of commentary and analysis about Putin and his motivations, based on necessarily partial, incomplete and sometimes entirely false information – has existed as a distinct intellectual industry for over a decade.
The Great Buenos Aires Bank Heist
They were an all-star crew. They cooked up the perfect plan. And when they pulled off the caper of the century, it made them more than a fortune—it made them folk heroes.
How A Volcano In Hawaii Became A Battleground For Astronomy
Native Hawaiians are protecting the mountain of Maunakea, at the heart of Hawaii’s Big Island, from the construction of the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) at its summit, where the facility would join venerable observatories like the twin Keck domes and NASA’s Infrared Telescope Facility.
Unearthed Photos Reveal What Happened To Those Who Dared To Flee Through The Berlin Wall
The US filmmaker Scott Calonico obtained a cache of photographs from security service records of the former German Democratic Republic (GDR). One sequence in these never-before-seen images shows the arrest of a West German couple and the East German family they were trying to smuggle out in the boot of their car on 3 September 1988.
The Secret History Of A Cold War Mastermind
The legend of Gus Weiss, hero of the Cold War, ends 11 stories below the balcony of his condo at the Watergate complex in Washington, DC, on November 25, 2003. A broken corpse on the sidewalk. He was a shrewd intelligence insider, pulled off an audacious tech hack against the Soviets in the last century. Or did he?
The Art Of Losing Friends And Alienating People
Our culture long ago made peace with the fragility of matrimony, but we still have high expectations for friendships. If you really care about someone, you should be able to pick up where you left off, no matter how long it’s been. Friendship’s something you don’t really lose, right?