This year’s Emmy Award winners will be announced Tuesday. No, not those Emmys – the News and Documentary Emmys, which feature the best TV and online reporting from the past year. The gowns are less flashy, but you’ll feel smarter after watching.
The I Files team has screened hundreds of hours of videos and compiled a list of 17 interesting takeaways from this year’s nominees. Take a look and tweet us @ifiles with any other compelling facts you’ve discovered.
1. Narwhals really exist.
Via ABC News’ “Nightline:” Tracking Elusive Narwhals in the Arctic
2. An estimated 10 to 20 percent of Mauritanians live in slavery.
Via CNN: Mauritania: Slavery’s last stronghold
3. In North Korea, if one family member is considered disloyal, three generations of that family could be incarcerated for life.
Via CBS News’ “60 Minutes:” North Korean prisoner escaped after 23 brutal years
4. Babies might know the difference between right and wrong as early as 3 months. (But that still won’t help you convince them to sleep through the night.)
Via CBS News’ “60 Minutes”: Born good? Babies help unlock the origins of morality
5. Cross burnings aren’t just a relic of the past – hate groups in America have doubled over the past decade.
Via ABC News’ “Nightline:” Inside the New Ku Klux Klan
6. Keep an eye on your iPad the next time you go to the airport. Nearly 400 TSA screeners have been fired for alleged theft.
Via ABC News’ “Nightline:” The Case of the Missing iPad
7. People who suffer face blindness don’t recognize the faces of celebrities or their own family members.
Via CBS News’ “60 Minutes:” Face Blindness
8. Because U.S. Border Patrol agents are part of the Department of Homeland Security, they are not subject to the same public scrutiny as police officers when they use their weapons.
Via PBS’ “Need to Know:” Crossing the Line at the Border
9. You can buy unproven stem cell treatments on the Internet.
Via CBS News’ “60 Minutes”: Stem Cell Fraud
10. Twenty-four horses die every week at racetracks around the country.
Via The New York Times: Breakdown: Death and Disarray at America’s Racetracks
11. A lot about great white sharks is still a mystery – we don’t know where they breed, feed or give birth.
Via CBS’ “This Morning:” Tagging Great Whites
12. There is a surprisingly coordinated underground world of assisted suicide in the U.S.
Via PBS FRONTLINE: The Suicide Plan
13. One unintended consequence of the war on drugs: Families in Afghanistan have been forced to sell their daughters to smugglers to repay debts after the Afghan government destroyed their opium crops.
Via PBS FRONTLINE: Opium Brides
14. About 1 in 5 children in the U.S. live below the poverty line.
15. Fake debt collectors con Americans out of millions of dollars a year by convincing them to hand over money for old bills they’ve already paid.
Via ABC News’ “Brian Ross Investigates:” “Phantom” Debt Collectors Scam Americans
16. Conservationists and rangers in Kenya are cutting off elephants’ tusks to protect the animals from ivory poachers.
Via CBS News: Kenya cracks down on elephant poaching
17. In an avalanche, your body will freeze in whatever position it’s in the moment the snow stops moving, so you should stretch out your hands and puncture the snow’s surface to alert possible rescuers.
Via The New York Times: Snow Fall
Now that you’ve had the chance to sample a few of the nominees, please take a moment to subscribe to The I Files. We’ll point you to new provocative and groundbreaking stories every day, not just during awards season – though you can go ahead and don that gown while watching our channel. We won’t tell.
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