Mau Mau
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This is the story of a few documents that tumbled out of the secret archives of the biggest empire the world has ever known, offering a glimpse of histories waiting to be rewritten.
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Oh, wait, you're listening to Radio Lab from WNYC. Hey, I'm Jada Boomeran. I'm Robert Krollwich. This is Radio Lab. Today, we're going to start off with a building, not just any building, but a building that is heavy with secrets. Yeah. And it's a building we first really learned about or at least got a picture of from this woman. Katie Englehart. I'm a reporter at Vice News in London. And Katie, like now all of us at Radio Lab, is... Obsessed. Devastatingly obsessed. With this place called Hanselope Park. So Hansel Park is this huge sprawling complex in Buckinghamshire, near a town called Milton Keynes. Which isn't too far from London, and our producer, Jamie York, happened to be in London on vacation, so we asked him, well, why don't you just grab your tape recorder and go down there. Yeah, let's do this. Check it out. So it's a bit of a drive from London. About an hour and a half on the M1, M2. You approach this sort of beautiful town with adorable little posh cottages and little pugs. That's not from around here. I'm looking for Hanselope Park. Yeah. It's your sort of typical ye old a British village. We'll change the guard dogs. Very, very secure place. About a four minute drive past that ye oldy town. You go through some fields, crest over a hill, and there it is. This massive, massive building surrounded by razor wire. Let's see what's going on here. So the archives are housed in a purpose built building from the 90s. These are archives, by the way, from the largest empire ever known. It's like if you were creating a movie set for, like, a secret of government compound where they keep secret files, you would literally just make this. Jamie parked a quarter mile away and walked up to the gate. There's a big, looks like a electrified fence. Through the gate. I'm taller than me. Past these traffic spikes. And just as he barely stepped inside. Are you in a call? I am. We're not comfortable with any of this activity you're doing. A guard grabs him, takes him to a guard house. I can just ask what that is.
Transcription truncated.
This is the story of a few documents that tumbled out of the secret archives of the biggest empire the world has ever known, offering a glimpse of histories waiting to be rewritten.