Cover-ups & Secrets
MKUltra: What the CIA Actually Did, and What It Didn't
The mind-control programme was real. The mythology it seeded is a separate thing.
Unravelled
Unravelled
Some stories refuse to die. The moon landing that never happened, the monster in the loch, the plot behind the plot — they outlive every correction thrown at them, because being false was never really the point. Unravelled takes those stories seriously and asks the more interesting questions: where each one came from, how it spread, and what real history lies tangled underneath. The goal is always understanding. Written by Wren.
Hoaxes & Fakes
Pizzagate: How a Lie Walked Into a Pizzeria
A false story with no basement, and a man with a real rifle.
Cover-ups & Secrets
Operation Northwoods: The Plan That Was Real and the Plot That Wasn't
The Joint Chiefs really did propose staging attacks on Americans. Then it was refused.
Hoaxes & Fakes
The Zinoviev Letter: The Forgery That Toppled a Government
A fake instruction from Moscow, printed four days before an election.
Myths & Misconceptions
The Colour of Comfort: The Kraft Mac & Cheese Dye Panic
How a food blogger's petition turned Yellow 5 and Yellow 6 into a national argument.
Hoaxes & Fakes
Extra Virgin? The Long History of Olive Oil Fraud
Adulterating oil is as old as the amphora, and the modern version is subtler.
Myths & Misconceptions
Why Farmed Salmon Is Dyed Pink
The colour on your plate is chosen from a fan chart. That's less sinister than it sounds — and more interesting.
Cover-ups & Secrets
Katyn: The Forest, the Forgery, and the Denial
For half a century, one government blamed the other for a massacre it had committed itself.
Cover-ups & Secrets
COINTELPRO: When the Paranoia Was Filed in Triplicate
The activists who said they were being watched were right, and had the paperwork coming.
Cover-ups & Secrets
The Great Sugar Cover-Up: How Fat Took the Blame
In 1967, three Harvard scientists were quietly paid to point the finger at fat.
Cover-ups & Secrets
Thalidomide: The Drug, the Cover-Up, and the Woman Who Said No
The tragedy that was real, the warnings that were buried, and the myth of the lone regulator.
Cover-ups & Secrets
Operation Gladio: The Secret Armies Left Behind
NATO really did hide weapons across Europe. What they were for is the harder question.
Myths & Misconceptions
The Fish That Frightened Everyone: GM Salmon
The first genetically engineered animal approved for food spent 25 years in regulatory limbo.
Cover-ups & Secrets
The Gulf of Tonkin: The Attack That Half-Happened
One clash was real. The second, which launched a war, almost certainly never occurred.
Hoaxes & Fakes
Honey Laundering: The Global Trade in Fake Gold
Transhipped, diluted with syrup, and relabelled — the honey trade has a forgery problem.
Hoaxes & Fakes
The Protocols of the Elders of Zion: Anatomy of a Forgery
The most murderous hoax in publishing history, and the plagiarism that built it.
Myths & Misconceptions
The Great Egg Scare: How Cholesterol Got the Wrong Villain
For half a century the egg was public enemy number one. The evidence was always thinner than the fear.
Hoaxes & Fakes
The Vaccine–Autism Myth: The Study That Was Withdrawn
How twelve children, a retracted paper, and a struck-off doctor made a myth that outlived the science.
Cover-ups & Secrets
The Reichstag Fire: Who Lit the Match, and Why We Still Argue
Ninety years on, the most consequential arson in modern history is still contested.
Cover-ups & Secrets
The Business Plot: The Coup Against Roosevelt That Nobody Was Charged For
A decorated general testified that Wall Street asked him to march on Washington.
Cover-ups & Secrets
Iran-Contra: The Conspiracy That Confessed on Television
A secret arms deal and a secret war, unravelled on live daytime TV.
Cover-ups & Secrets
The Bitter Bean: Chocolate's Child-Labour Supply Chain
Twenty years of pledges, and the cocoa still comes with a cost the label never mentions.
Cover-ups & Secrets
Tuskegee: The Study That Earned Every Suspicion
For forty years the US Public Health Service watched men die of a curable disease.
Cover-ups & Secrets
Big Sugar's Playbook: How an Industry Manufactured Doubt
The tactics were borrowed from tobacco, and they worked for decades.
Myths & Misconceptions
The Beaver in Your Vanilla
Yes, castoreum is real. No, it is almost certainly not in your ice cream.
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