Search Party (2023)

The unlikely country taking over sumo And what it means for the most beloved Japanese sport. When most people think of sumo wrestling, they think of Japan. It’s the country's national sport and every match is draped in religious Shinto traditions and symbols. But the days of Japanese wrestlers winning every tournament are over. Today, it's the Mongolians - not Japanese- who dominate sumo wrestling. Since 2003, only Mongolians have become yokozuna, the highest-ranked wrestlers. Watch this video to learn how landlocked Mongolia conquered Japan's most cherished sport. It's the perfect collision of geopolitics and sports.

How this little pill took over the Middle East Inside Assad’s captagon empire. The Assad regime fell swiftly in December 2024 and Syrians are still uncovering the harrowing depths of the regime's abuses. But one of the most curious findings are drug seizures. Massive quantities, hidden all over the country, and all are of one type of drug; captagon. Captagon is a narcotic that has quietly swept through the Middle East over the last decade with estimates suggesting that 40% of Saudi youth use it. And it overwhelmingly comes from Syria. This video will take a deep dive into the Assad regime and reveal how it built a captagon empire, used it as a weapon against its neighbors, and ask the question haunting Syria's reconstruction; who will take control of it now that Assad is gone?

Inside Russia's creepy sport farms. Football doesn’t know how deep its gambling addiction goes. Hidden throughout eastern Europe is a network of "sports-betting farms", where minimum wage workers play an endless succession of games -- soccer, basketball, table-tennis, even "bench-soccer" for people to bet on through the site 1xBet. These farms are controversial and there are arrest warrants out for their founders -- yet some of the world's biggest football clubs count 1xBet as a major sponsor. This episode is a collaboration with the award-winning investigative team, Bellingcat.

Trump's on the brink of a third nuclear age. Will Trump pull us back from the brink or push us over it? The world is entering a so-called ‘third nuclear age’. The first age started with the invention of the atomic bomb by US scientists. It’s characterized by the arms-races, brinksmanship, and Cold War competition between the US and USSR. But the second age was much safer. The US and Russia didn’t compete. In fact, they worked together to reduce the amount of nuclear weapons in the world and prevent new ones. Some even dreamed of ridding the world of them entirely. It was an historic period of time, it just didn’t last long. Competition is back, more countries are considering building nukes, and arms-control agreements are falling apart. This is the third nuclear age and Donald Trump is in the driver’s seat.

The mafia is targeting Italian football fans. In 2022, two men were murdered in Milan, Italy. One was a member of one of Italy’s notorious mafia families and the other was the leader of the Inter Milan football club’s fan group. The investigation would lay out how the mafia infiltrated the Inter Milan fan groups and the club itself. It’s just the latest scandal involving the mafia and Italian football. This video takes a deep dive into both worlds and explores how deeply intertwined they are.

Inside the drug crisis right under China's nose. Why this country has the most crime. Myanmar is in free fall. In just four years, the country has become the nexus of the drug trade, a haven for online scam centers, and a major source of illegal mining, all while a civil war rages. How did this happen? And why is it a huge test for the world's newest superpower: China? CORRECTION: 6:54 This is footage of the 2025 earthquake, but the building shown is in Thailand not Myanmar.

How Russia lost chess. And why Vladimir Putin is to blame. Imagine a world where chess wasn’t just a game, but a weapon of ideology — that was the Soviet Union, where grandmasters became symbols of national pride and soft power. Legends like Botvinnik, Spassky, and Kasparov, Russia dominated the chessboard for most of the 20th century, crushing rivals and shaping the global game. But after the fall of the USSR, cracks began to show: corruption scandals, infighting at FIDE, and a new generation of stars rising outside Russia weakened its grip. Today, with Magnus Carlsen refusing to play under FIDE’s old rules and Russia banned from international competition over the war in Ukraine, the once-unshakable empire of Russian chess looks like a shadow of its former self. In this video,

The big flaw in Trump's AI plan. Why is Trump helping Chinese AI? Just a few years ago, the US was alone at the front of the AI race. But today, China's making newsworthy achievements nearly every week. In July, the Trump administration shockingly agreed to let China buy advanced chips, helping China do even more. So how is China making so much progress? Why is Trump helping them? And is the US losing its lead in the world's most important tech race?