The Astounding Success of Nigerian-Americans and Carlos Watson’s Other Top Stories

Co-founder and Editor-in-Chief Carlos Watson shares his vision for OZY and his favorites from 2018.

As loyal OZY readers, viewers and listeners know, I inherited a love for news and storytelling from my dad. As a kid, he’d send me into the Miami International Airport to buy a pile of newspapers from around the world. Then he’d pore over them for hours, highlighting all the interesting facts he’d found and quizzing us from time to time. Ever since, I’ve been hooked.

I founded OZY in part to quench my thirst for new information. I didn’t just want to know what happened yesterday. I wanted to know what to expect and do tomorrow — where to travel, who to look out for, what trends to consider.

OZY keeps my finger on the pulse, as I hope it does yours, too. In this video, I highlight a few of my favorite stories from the last year, with emoji’s to boot. You can also find links to those stories at the bottom of the page. Enjoy.

These farmers are successfully taking on powerful opponents, from their own government and foreign royals to companies and corrupt officials.

For nearly a week, Swalehe Nkwale saw unfamiliar surveyors place slabs on parts of Nyamitanga Division land 108 miles south of Dar es Salaam. Then one day, he saw a poster on his own farm declaring that he could no longer grow crops there. It was the start of a decade-long battle against British firm African Green Oil (AGO) and the Tanzanian government. They won that fight, but the Nyamitanga villagers didn’t stop once they got their land back in 2016.

They have since mapped their land and registered it with authorities, making it hard for any firm to take it from them in the future. And Nyamitanga isn’t alone.

After blazing a trail through Republican legal circles, Brett Kavanaugh was poised to ascend to the Supreme Court.

The last thing he wanted was for the whole world to see his work. Brett Kavanaugh, a hotshot young attorney in the office of independent counsel Kenneth Starr, was a lead author of the infamous “Starr Report” — a 445-page catalog of the offenses of President William J. Clinton, down to the most salacious detail. Kavanaugh and a colleague wanted to submit perjury and obstruction of justice evidence to Congress, but leave out the narrative of the relationship with intern Monica Lewinsky — which Kavanaugh worried would prompt others to paint Starr as “sex-crazed,” according to journalist Bob Woodward’s Shadow: Five Presidents and the Legacy of Watergate. Starr overruled his protégé. The ensuing frenzy around the tawdry passages proved Kavanaugh right.

OZY examined Kavanaugh's career when he was among 25 potential nominees for the high court, bringing considerable experience in the Republican legal trenches and a flair for the bold in his judicial opinions during more than a decade on the premier steppingstone to First Street. He’d also survived a grueling Senate confirmation fight that stretched over nearly three years — which was good preparation for the Supreme test headed his way.