What Happened When A Tiny Nation Got Filthy Rich Overnight
Nauru, an island in the South Pacific, is known for its high rate of poverty and unemployment. Only a few decades ago, the island was listed among world’s richest countries while it was a major phosphate exporter but as the resources exhausted, the national systems started to fail.
The Diamond Cartel: History’s Greatest Monopoly
A cartel is a group of companies coming together to fix the price of a product. Like how major oil countries come together as the cartel OPEC, to fix the price of crude oil, except with a diamond. Once these locals catch on to how profitable the diamond trade is, they’ll started trading diamonds and smuggling it.
What Happened To Donald Trump’s $365 Million Airline?
For a short time in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s, Donald Trump owned an airline. In 1989, Trump raised $365 million to purchase the Eastern Shuttle. Within 18 months, the airline lost over $125 million, and by 1992, Trump decided it was time to walk away.
How ‘1917’ Was Filmed To Look Like One Shot
“1917” stars George MacKay, Dean-Charles Chapman, Colin Firth, and Benedict Cumberbatch and was filmed to look like one continuous shot. Cinematographer Roger Deakins explains how he and director Sam Mendes did it, from digging up a mile of trenches to attaching cameras to cranes and drones.
Gun Shop, America’s Love Affair With Guns
This film shows 2,328 firearms, out of the 393 million currently in the US. Arranged in a dizzying 24 frames per second progression, from handguns to semi-automatic rifles, “Gun Shop” encourages viewers to critically examine America’s love affair with guns.
Who Killed Two Journalists In Ukraine? And Why?
An investigation and trial has answered some of the questions about what happened to Andrei Mironov and the Italian photographer he was accompanying. Yet so much remains uncertain. Theirs is a story of the murky nature of facts in a war zone. It’s a story of elusive moral clarity in a land where death comes from who knows where.
Can One Earthquake Trigger Another On The Other Side Of The World?
It’s well known that natural disasters can cause others in their immediate vicinity, for instance, hurricanes are often accompanied by flooding, and earthquakes are followed by aftershocks. But what about longer distance interactions? Could one earthquake trigger another on the other side of the world?
Watch Picasso Make A Masterpiece
‘Le Mystère Picasso’ is a remarkable documentary film made by French director, Henri-Georges Clouzot, in which stop-action and time-lapse photography are used to capture Picasso at work. Not many of the works he created for the documentary survive but here’s how one of them came to be.
A Stunning 4K Timelapse Of The Gunhilde Maersk
A stunning 4K timelapse of container ship Gunhilde Maersk at sea from Ho-Chi Minh City, Vietnam to Ningbo, China and the incredible loading sequences at each port. A montage of over 78,000 5D Mk3 RAW files. Edited by Toby Smith to create a stunning day to night sequence in 4K.
A Hero In The Sky (And On The Ground)
Ann Sim lives a double life. A member of Singapore Airlines cabin crew, she is also a volunteer medic with the Singapore Civil Defence Force, which responds to all kinds of emergency situations. While her job offers her the opportunity to see the world, Sim’s volunteer work enables her to give back to her community.
How Offshore Oil Rigs Work
Offshore oil rigs are inherently a higher-cost, higher-risk method of oil extraction, but the oceans are, of course, home to a huge proportion of the world’s oil reserves so, if there are no more low-cost oilfields on land, that’s where the companies go.
Why Caviar Is So Expensive
Caviar is one of the most expensive foods in the world. Selling for up to $35,000 per kilo, it’s revered and relished by aristocrats across the globe. But it’s an acquired taste. Turns out, caviar wasn’t always so valuable.
Flat 13: Facing Down Apartheid
This is the story of the apartment in downtown Johannesburg that, between the late 1940s and early 1960s, became a hub of resistance against apartheid.
Exploring Detroit’s Largest Abandoned High School
This video explores one of the largest abandoned schools in Detroit, Cooley High School. At its peak, the school had over 3,400 students enrolled. At the center of the school is a beautiful auditorium with amazing architectural details, but unfortunately suffered a fire in 2017.
How Singapore Solved Housing
Because 80% of the population lives in one of its one million public apartments, they carry no social stigma and are enjoyed by the rich and poor alike. Singapore has adopted such a unique set of policies that the usual measures fail to accurately capture just how far ahead it is.
Hotel Chevalier: A Short Film By Wes Anderson
Natalie Portman and Jason Schwartzman are lovers who reunite in a Paris hotel room, in Wes Anderson’s 2007 prelude to The Darjeeling Limited. All cunningly soundtracked by Peter Sarstedt’s 1969 hit, “Where Do You Go To (My Lovely)?”
The Jungle Prince Of Delhi
For 40 years, journalists chronicled the eccentric royal family of Oudh, deposed aristocrats who lived in a ruined palace in the Indian capital. It was a tragic, astonishing story. But was it true?
Invasion: In An Era Of Reconciliation, Indigenous Land Is Being Taken At Gunpoint
Invasion is a film about the Unist’ot’en Camp, Gidimt’en checkpoint and the larger Wet’suwet’en Nation standing up to the Canadian government and corporations who continue colonial violence against Indigenous people.
Chasing Colombia’s ‘Cocaine Hippos’
After the Colombian National Police killed Escobar in 1993, zoos and private collectors acquired the animals, all except the hippopotamuses. They are only hippos in the wild outside Africa. Escobar started with four hippos. Today, a UC San Diego biologist estimates there are 80 to 100.
Why Is There Still Poverty In America?
In America almost 40m people—one eighth of its population—live in poverty. Why does the richest big country in the world still have so many people living in profound need?
Tourism Is Eating The World
The number of international tourist arrivals has been increasing more or less exponentially since the mid-20th century, and totaled about 1.4 billion in 2018. Europe has seen the biggest share, but the Asia-Pacific region is growing fast.