647 Article(s) by: Editors

Sowing War, Reaping Profit

For some, the Iraq War is a gift that keeps on giving. The most notorious defense contractors of the Iraq War era are still raking in cash — as are the legislators who enable them.

Art Imitates Life

Oliver Stone’s controversial 1991 political thriller JFK was fiction that poked real holes in the official account of the president’s death.

Iconoclashes

Conspiracy theories are rife with esoteric motifs. But what do those symbols actually represent?

Aliens Built the Pyramids

Some people suspect that humanity’s greatest achievements aren’t human achievements at all.Some people suspect that humanity’s greatest achievements aren’t human achievements at all.

Urban Legends, Urban Truths

The 1998 B-list slasher film Urban Legend unleashes on its protagonists a host of horrors from the American folk canon. Some have their roots in real life.

The Land of Milk and Honey

The Caribbean has a reputation for its lenient tax laws, but the United States is the second-biggest tax haven in the world.

Sea Change

There remains a fortune to be made at sea — but no longer in Somalia. Modern pirates have turned their attention to the Singapore Strait and the South China Sea.

Illness as Metaphor

Between 2013 and 2016, Ebola claimed more than 11,000 lives in West Africa. Beginning in 2018, another two-year wave of the devastating disease caused a further 2,000 deaths in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. These days, even when Ebola itself isn’t spreading, false conspiracy theories about it are.