For four years, thousands of British servicemen fought with the Taliban for the district of Sangin – the most violent part of Afghanistan. The fighting cost 106 British lives, including Staff-Sergeant Olaf Schmidt, who won the George Cross there. Last year, the British withdrew – handing the area over to the US Marines. Ben Anderson, [...]

Iran’s nuclear program presents a threat to international stability. Yet successive American administrations-Republican and Democratic alike-have misread the intentions and actions of the Iranian regime. How dangerous is a nuclear Iran, even if it never detonates a weapon? What are the guiding principles of the Iranian leadership? To what lengths would the regime go to [...]

From The Auther: “A very cool combination of some of my rants connected with some great video editing by a youtube user named TheParadigmShift.” – Joe Rogan

The dramatic stories of North Koreans who are risking everything, including torture and execution, to escape the repression and hunger of their homeland and reach safety in the South. The border between the two Koreas is so heavily guarded that refugees are forced to flee into China, dodging border guards and risking freezing to death [...]

The Battle of the Somme, fought in the summer and autumn of 1916, was one of the largest battles of the First World War. With more than one million casualties, it was also one of the bloodiest battles in human history. The Allied forces attempted to break through the German lines along a 25-mile (40 [...]

Based on the book They Marched Into Sunlight by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist David Maraniss, Two Days in October tells the story of two turbulent days in October 1967 when history turned a corner. In Vietnam, a U.S. battalion unwittingly marched into a Viet Cong trap. Sixty-one young men were killed and as many wounded. The [...]

Louis Theroux spends time with a small and very committed subculture of ultra-nationalist Jewish settlers. He discovers a group of people who consider it their religious and political obligation to populate some of the most sensitive and disputed areas of the West Bank, especially those with a spiritual significance dating back to the Bible. Throughout [...]

In Russia, Sept. 1 is the Day of Knowledge, a joyous annual event marking the start of the new school year. But Knowledge Day 2004 was different at School No. 1 in Beslan: A group of heavily armed rebel extremists stormed the school, holding more than a thousand children and adults hostage in a sweltering [...]

Sebastian Junger and Tim Hetherington’s year dug in with the Second Platoon in one of Afghanistan’s most strategically crucial valleys reveals extraordinary insight into the surreal combination of back breaking labor, deadly firefights, and camaraderie as the soldiers painfully push back the Taliban.