How to Build a Secret 'Facebook'

For years, William Binney, a retired NSA cryptographer, has been telling anyone who will listen about a vast data gathering operation being conducted by his former employers that could build a "social graph" of nearly any user of the American internet, like some massive, secret social network. Full story

Julian Assange and Alex Gibney's "Secrets" War

On March 10th, Julian Assange received an email from the filmmaker Alex Gibney. Gibney wanted to interview him for his new film about WikiLeaks. Assange was suspicious about the film Gibney was making. He told Gibney he would only participate under a few conditions. Those alleged… Full story

The Chinese Internet Wants Obama to Solve a Decades-Old Poisoning Mystery

On May 3, a Chinese expat posted a petition on the White House website demanding justice for Zhu Ling's poisoning. In six days, the page, written in poorly translated English, has collected more than 140,000 signatures, well over the threshold of 100,000 signatures in 30 days tha… Full story

A Meteor Exploded Above Russia This Morning

While the world waits for an asteroid to graze the orbits of our television satellites, citizens of central Russia were greeted this morning by a more mortality shaking kind of astronomical event: a giant meteorite exploded across the atmosphere. Full story

Was Lance Armstrong Taking Jerk-Enhancing Drugs?

The interview that Lance Armstrong gave to Oprah Winfrey was a masterful slice of a never-ending sports-fabulism spectacle, and while it made for good TV at times, it was also nearly infuriating to watch. Full story

Censorship Protests Are Erupting in China Because No One Likes to Drink Toxic Chemicals

Last week, nine tons of aniline, a toxic chemical, poisoned Changzhi's water supply. After citizens took to the web to demand an explanation for why they hadn't been informed of the leak, Beijing started to clamp down on free speech. Full story

'Zero Dark Thirty': Interrogating Reality

The "problem" with "Zero Dark Thirty"'s portrayal of torture isn't the portrayal itself, but what it represents. Even though waterboarding is now prohibited, that hasn't diminished its value for some in government. To assume torture is a thing of the past—or to criticize "Zero Da… Full story

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Blowing Up Asteroids with Neil deGrasse Tyson

What are the chances of an asteroid colliding with earth and causing hundreds of millions of people to drown in tidal waves the size of skyscrapers? For this piece, we talked to science's No. 1 booster, Neil deGrasse Tyson, about what it would take to stop an asteroid from hittin… Full story

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A Death on the Frontier

The unprecedented hunt for the the Higgs boson or "God particle" may have culminated at Europe's largest particle accelerator, but it was the product of an effort that began thousands of miles away at another atom smasher beneath the Illinois prairie. Full story

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Spaced Out: Making Mars with Tom Sachs

Artist Tom Sachs has recreated an entire four-week mission to Mars with little more than wood, glue and household objects. Working with Nasa and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, his studio built go-kart rovers, a model rocket, and a giant lunar excursion module to turn the fabled P… Full story