Episodes

The U.S. has spent nearly $100 billion on reconstruction projects in Afghanistan, the most spent on any country in history. But John Sopko, special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction, has found that much of that money has been wasted and misused, and has even fallen into the hands of the Taliban. Shane Smith heads to Afghanistan for a tour of American taxpayer dollars gone down the drain. Rio de Janeiro is working hard to remedy its reputation as a drug and murder capital in time for the upcoming World Cup and Olympics. The Special Police Operations Battalion (BOPE) has been charged with pacifying the slums (favelas), but BOPE's military occupation of increasing numbers of favelas has been criticized as heavy-handed. Some corrupt members of the BOPE, together with ex-police, have formed militia gangs of their own and are controlling many favelas by sinister means, openly extorting, torturing, killing and making criminals disappear. Still, there are hundreds of favelas, untouched by pacification, that remain under the control of drug gangs who act with complete impunity. Ben Anderson looks behind the picturesque façade of Rio's marketing campaign to reveal the dark underbelly of the city.

Greenland recorded its highest temperatures ever in 2013. Though some say that's not cause for concern, the equivalent of three Chesapeake Bays'-worth of water melts off the island every year, affecting sea levels around the world. Shane Smith embarks on an expedition to Greenland with climate scientist Jason Box to discover the reasons for the melting, and how the resulting sea level rise will mean devastation sooner than expected. Millions of men, women and children work as bonded laborers in Pakistan's brick kilns. This abusive practice is facilitated by the devastating disenfranchisement of workers and by the pervasive corruption of the brick kiln industry and Pakistani law enforcement. Fazeelat Aslam goes to the brick kilns to see the conditions and learn how certain organizations are fighting back by rescuing the workers from this modern-day slavery.

David Choe examines the scrap metal trade in America and Suroosh Alvi explores the effects of drone strikes in Afghanistan.

'A Syria of Their Own' - Thomas Morton goes to the frontline of the battle for a Kurdish state to follow the story of Syria's forgotten ethnic group, the Kurds. 'White Gold' - Rhino horn has been coveted in Eastern medicine for centuries. Vikram Gandhi traces the trade from Southern Africa to Vietnam to understand this illicit phenomenon which has been on the rise.

'Terrorist University' - Dagestan is Russia's hotbed for Muslim extremism; Shane Smith heads there to follow in the footsteps of Boston Marathon Bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev who spent six months there. 'Armageddon Now' - Thomas Morton looks at the Israel-Palestinian conflict and the surprising Evangelical support for the Jewish State.

Rocky Mountain High: Impact of legalized marijuana in Colorado; North Korean Defectors: The struggles of North Korean defectors relocating to South Korea.

“The Pink Gang Rebellion” - The brutal details of a 2012 gang rape on a Delhi bus focused international attention on India’s rampant rape issue. Inept law enforcement, the social stigma associated with rape, and a patriarchal social structure have allowed sexual assaults to plague Indian women. Delhi’s police department has vowed to hire more female officers and set up a help desk, but these measures are hardly a solution. Rapes in Delhi doubled in 2013, and as bad as it is in Delhi, the Indian countryside is even worse. Instead of investigating rape cases, rural police officers often ignore victims and their families. But one woman, Sampat Pal, has galvanized a group of rural women into the Gulabi Gang, or Pink Gang, to combat the injustice of sexual assault. Gelareh Kiazand heads to rural Indian to investigate the issue and embed with this revolutionary gang. “Genetic Passport” - From 1949 to 1989, the Soviet Union, determined to prepare for nuclear warfare, detonated more than 450 nuclear bombs in an area of Kazakhstan known as the Semipalatinsk Test Site. For hundreds of thousands of Kazakhs, radiation not only surrounded them, but became part of their DNA. In an effort to curtail the birth of a new generation of deformed children, a Kazakh doctor recently tried to implement a mandatory “genetic passport” allowing people to know if their genes were damaged by radiation. Thomas Morton goes to Kazakhstan to learn more about this controversial initiative.

As humanity’s appetite for energy grows exponentially, the extraction industry scrambles to the most remote regions on Earth to satisfy demand. In the undeveloped Melanesian country of Papua New Guinea, America’s Exxon Mobil has staked its claim to a $19 billion dollar liquid natural-gas project expected to start production in late 2014. Vikram Gandhi heads to Papua New Guinea to investigate. Over in Texas, Thomas Morton investigates the climate catastrophe, and discovers firsthand the local responses, which often involve reaching out for divine intervention.

Shane Smith heads to Louisiana to report on the lasting effects of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Then, Ben Anderson goes deep into Houthi-controlled territory to learn about the group that’s fighting, and beating, Al Qaeda in the east, Saudi Arabia in the north, and Yemen’s central government in the south.

Investigating the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan; veterans struggling with mental illness and addiction.

"Heroin Warfare" (correspondent: Suroosh Alvi) - Since the U.S. occupation of Afghanistan, heroin production in the region has skyrocketed, making the country the number-one producer by a large margin. Though Iran, Afghanistan's neighbor, is an ultraconservative country, Afghan heroin flowing across the border has actually caused Iran to have the worst heroin use problem in the world. Suroosh Alvi gets a rare look inside Iran to meet the suffering heroin addicts, and see how the country is coping with the illegal drug trade. "The Coldest War" (correspondent: David Choe) - With the polar ice caps shrinking due to global warming, new trade routes are being exposed, along with billions of dollars' worth of natural-resource reserves. This is prime real estate and the five nations bordering the Arctic are readying themselves to fight for it. David Choe heads north to witness NATO forces participating in the largest polar military exercise in history. The problem is that there's one non-NATO country that already considers itself rightful owner of the region: Russia. With Vladimir Putin's recent military annexation of Crimea, there's a definite possibility its aggressions will boil over, returning the international community to precarious Cold War footing.

"Surveillance City" (correspondent: Vikram Gandhi) - Camden, New Jersey is one of the poorest and drug-ridden cities in the country, and its murder rate is 12 times the national average. In 2011, the city cut its police force almost in half, with nearly 80,000 residents regularly being policed by 12 cops at a time. The state stepped in to overhaul the department, introducing an experimental "Metro" security apparatus equipped with futuristic technologies like gunshot detecting, triangulation microphones, and automatic license-plate readers. As similar surveillance systems are implemented across the country, Vikram Gandhi goes to Camden to see how these tactics are working, how residents feel about their loss of privacy, and what the future of policing might be. "The Forgotten War" (correspondent: Ben Anderson) - A decade ago, the crisis in Darfur was a cause celebre. American politicians, activists, and celebrities took to the media to condemn Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir for his brutal genocide, and to send out a call for justice and aid his victims. Yet today, world attention has waned, despite the fact that President Bashir remains in power. People continue to die, and millions of refugees remain in overburdened camps filled with malnourished children. Without sufficient aid from the international community, Sudanese rebel groups are stepping in to fight for justice on their own terms. Ben Anderson goes to the refugee camps in Chad and Sudan to meet the victims the world has forgotten, and the rebels poised for civil war.