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‘People pay to be told lies’: the rise and fall of the world’s first ayahuasca multinational

Alberto Varela claimed he wanted to use sacred plant medicine to free people’s minds. But as the organisation grew, his followers discovered a darker reality. By Sam Edwards. Read by Sid Sagar. Help support our independent journalism at theguardian.com/longreadpod

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  When I met Craig he was 13 and homeless. I still thought his life might tu…

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  Money talks: the deep ties between Twitter and Saudi Arabia

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  From the archive: A day in the life of (almost) every vending machine in t…

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  ‘They take the money and go’: why not everyone is mourning the end of USAID

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  ‘I knew in my head we were dying’: the last voyage of the Scandies Rose

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  From the archive: ‘If you decide to cut staff, people die’: how Nottingham…

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  ‘Scamming became the new farming’: inside India’s cybercrime villages

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  From the archive: how we lost our sensory connection with food – and how t…

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  The Pushkin job: unmasking the thieves behind an international rare books …

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  ‘The jobless should lead the attack’: a radical Jamaican journalist in 192…

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  From the archive: ‘We are so divided now’: how China controls thought and …

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  Special Edition: Behind the scenes at the Long Read

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  Counting down to zero: the final warning from a climate diplomat

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  Extremely offline: what happened when a Pacific island was cut off from th…

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  From the archive: A drowning world: Kenya’s quiet slide underwater

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  ‘Americans are democracy’s equivalent of second-generation wealth’: a Chin…