Tag Archives: real story

Being Gay in Albania

Up until the mid-90s, if you were openly gay in Albania, you would be sent to prison. Many homosexuals still face bigotry and violence, even in their own homes.

In the last five years, Albania has seen a dynamic LGBTQ movement. Gay activists have created secret guest houses in Tirana that offer shelter to young homosexuals who have been brutally abused.

We traveled to Albania and recorded rare glimpses into the lives of people who have been victimized and neglected because of their sexual orientation in one of Europe’s most homophobic countries.

Pirates of the Danube

In Serbia, we explore how pirates, mostly through deals made with international boat crews, illegally load off oil, ores or fertilizers that they later sell on black market. Such activities are often followed with great risks and violence between rival gangs is quite common.

The Danube flow through Serbia is 600 kilometers long and a lot of international transport goes along the river. Serbia has been blacklisted by a number of international companies because of illegal river trade or, more commonly said, piracy.

America’s Billion Dollar Divorce Industry

There are one million divorces in the United States every year —that’s one every 36 seconds, nearly 2,400 per day, and 16,800 per week. It’s hardly surprising, then, that the divorce industry is worth a whopping $50 billion annually—that’s a hell of lot of heartbreak.

In the divorce capital of the world, New York City, we explore the industries making heartbreak bearable and learn that—whether it’s divorce merchandise, “conscious uncoupling,” or “reverse-wedding” planning—people’s attitudes toward the sanctity of marriage are changing, while Americans in particular are adopting new-age rituals as a way to call time on their relationships.

The Dark Side of Psychadelic Tourism

Tulum is experiencing an explosion of people taking Bufo Alvarius. Also called “speed-toading,” it involves smoking the milked poison of the Sonoran Desert toad in a glass pipe and is considered to be the most powerful hallucinogen in the world. Now, growing numbers of psychedelic tourists are traveling to Tulum where Bufo ceremonies are legal, in search of a life-changing experience. However, there are many reports of profoundly negative experiences, lasting psychosis and allegations of sexual assault during ceremonies. Matt Shea visits Tulum to see and experience this Bufo tourism firsthand, to discover whether taking the world’s most powerful hallucinogen is worth the risk.

The FBI’s Secret Spy Planes

John Wiseman is a planespotter. He spends his days tracking radio data from planes across the country, logging them and mapping their movements.

He’s noticed lots of weird things over the years, like military contractor planes dropping sterile fruit flies over LA as part of a fruit fly eradication program. When he heard rumours that planes circling over mass protests and riots in Baltimore were related to FBI surveillance, he began an intense research mission, collating seven billion raw aircraft transponder pings.

He found that certain transponder codes were being used by aircraft registered to front companies, many of which used PO boxes also used by the US Department of Justice. He put together a list of hundreds of suspected FBI planes, which the FBI eventually admitted were them. A massive FBI surveillance program was revealed – the planes circle locations all over the United States, spying on the people below and, in certain circumstances, mimicking cell phone towers to get digital data from the people below.

Fukushima’s Nuclear Legacy

Ten years later, the scars of the earthquake and nuclear disaster are still visible in Fukushima, Japan.

Today, the population of Fukushima prefecture remains 180,000 less than before the triple disaster.