I only do this every two years...

Hi—Shane here! I have something rare and exciting to share with you today:

Though I primarily focus my writing on innovation and human behavior—things like teamwork and intellectual humility that you’ve likely read if you’re getting this email—I apparently also like brain-melting torture. So I usually have some sort of investigative journalism side project going on that involves unearthing lots of documents or getting uncooperative sources to talk.

As such, every 18–24 months, I come out with a big investigative story. In the past, it’s been things like getting every U.S. state and government agency to give me their payroll data, so we could look at the way the government pays men vs. women—or investigations into some sort of corruption or crime via The Hatch Institute.

Well I’m excited to announce that today I released, with Sylvia Brindis and Narratively, the results of a multi-year investigation into how the CIA used fake news back in the 1950s to overthrow the government of Guatemala.

You read that right! It turns out that 65 years ago, the U.S. wrote the playbook on how to use fake news to subvert democracy. And Sylvia and I tracked down the audio recordings of the hoax radio station the CIA used—and listened to them in order to fact-check the misleading history about Guatemala that the US government has repeated for years.

The resulting story is one of the most epic things I’ve ever researched. But it has a surprising amount to do with what’s happening now with social media (not to mention my own background studying and practicing content marketing).

So even if this is not your cup of tea, and not the reason you read my writing, I’d really appreciate if you checked out the story, and/or passed it along on social media. I don’t make money from these kinds of projects (and actually go into the hole for them), so the only thing that’s in it for me is that this story gets spread and helps people think a little differently.

I’ll be back with the regular stuff shortly!

Much love,

Shane

P.S. In case you didn’t see my recent email about it, I just opened up a live (virtual) training series called the Dream Teams Leadership Intensive, which launches in October. Check it out here, and if you know someone who you think would be interested, please pass it along!