It started with an unsubstantiated rumor. “You can laugh now,” Johnny Carson said on The Tonight Show on December 19, 1973, “but there is an acute shortage of toilet paper.” There wasn’t—but it didn’t matter. The broadcast sent America into a mass panic. Millions of shoppers swarmed into grocery stores and began hoarding toilet paper. Ex nihilo, […]

The danger from the Wuhan coronavirus comes from public panic and government responses, not the disease itself.

An overview of testimony by Ariane M. Tabatabai presented before the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on the Middle East, North Africa, and International Terrorism on January 28, 2020.

Chad’s geographic challenge of being on the crossroads of West Central and East Africa. By Stephen Rakowski Sub-Saharan Africa Analyst, Stratfor

In this short video, Stratfor Latin America Analyst Paulo Gregoire explains how the trade tensions between China and the U.S. could effect the Brazilian and Argentinian economies.

Uzbekistan has been growing in geopolitical significance as it emerges from the isolationist policies of long-serving President Islam Karimov, who died in 2016. Karimov’s successor, Shavkat Mirziyoyev, has expanded Uzbekistan’s security cooperation with external powers, including Russia, China and the United States, and has worked to address long-standing border demarcation and water-sharing issues with neighbors like […]

The Etruscans were a powerful clan with an alien tongue and strange customs. They emerged in what is now central Italy sometime around the 6th century BC.  And no one is more obsessed with the Etruscans than the Italians themselves. The Etruscans, who lived in Etruria, were known as Tyrrhenians by the Greeks. They were […]

Alexei Leonov almost lost his life during the space walk which lasted about 12 minutes. He was connected to the aircraft by a 16ft rope. He died at 85.