The 1920s experiment to reverse-engineer wild cows.

How we try - and usually fail - to fight the mosquito.

A history of the fowl.

The search for a missing ultramarathoner in New Mexico’s Gila Wilderness, and the life that lead him there.

Is creativity in our genes? A self-made scholar’s search for the answer.

A series of random and unsettling snapshots of two brothers.

"Michael’s brother is on the diving board again and then not, his body in the air and taking up so much space. He gets closer and closer and the water turns to glass. Michael feels like he’s dreaming. The water cracks and breaks and scatters. Michael’s brother is in pieces. He screams and Michael deep-breathes and Michael closes his eyes"

From prison, a member of the Earth Liberation Front tells her story.

Residents of a small New Hampshire town deal with various problems and hardships.

"I unchained my bike and rode out through the center of Carlisle towards Jack’s house. A couple of times, I had told Wesley that I was done being a thief. It was like when Jack decided to stop drinking. Quitting’s easy, Jack told me, I’ve done it hundreds of times. I was scared at night, when I would hear cars pull up, and wonder if someone I had ripped off was after me."

An undercover cop infiltrates a group of British activists, befriending and then betraying them.

On spending six months on the southern coast of Argentina with the “Jane Goodall of penguins” and several hundred of her research subjects.

Scientists quarrel about the fate of animals living in the 1,600 square mile exclusion zone.

Ed Rosenthal recounts the six days he got lost in Joshua Tree National Park.

An imaginative, unpopular boy and a depressed older man face the dangers of winter.

"Something was wrong here. A person needed a coat. Even if the person was a grownup. The pond was frozen. The duck thermometer said ten. If the person was mental, all the more reason to come to his aid, as had not Jesus said, Blessed are those who help those who cannot help themselves, but are too mental, doddering, or have a disability?"

A chronicle of the 2010 wildfire that burned down 169 homes in Colorado, told via the people who lived through it.

Passengers and a tour bus driver share personal stories and local legends.

"Fraser Island is the world’s biggest sand island. It is made up entirely of sand. I like to say that a good island is just like a person: if you can understand its one main factor, you can understand the whole thing. The sand is what makes the island the way it is. It is all sand, blown together by the wind and taken here from the coast of New South Wales. That is why we have the trees we do, and why the beach and dirt are our roads. So you could say the island is the way it is because of sand from the wind."

The night when Terry Thompson let his zoo-worthy collection of big animals, including lions and a bear, into the wilds of Zanesville, Ohio before shooting himself in the head.

A thirteen-year-old adoptee born in Russia with fetal alcohol syndrome, his golden sheperd Chancer, and the trainer who taught Chancer to bond emotionally with disabled children.

A profile of Harold Hamm, oil baron.

A profile of celebrity astrophysicist Neil Tyson.

The search for what makes identical twins different.

On prospecting for space rocks in Kansas.

I first learned about cloud lovers in a police report concerning a man who received a blowjob from a young woman and went mad. The man — let's call him Carl (police reports have the names of suspects and victims redacted) — was in his 40s, and the woman, let's call her Lisa, was almost 18. The two first met in the fall of 2003 at a local TV station that was holding a contest to find the best video footage of Northwest clouds. According to the report, which was lost when I cleaned my messy desk in 2005 (I'm recalling all of this from an imperfect memory), Carl, who was married and well-to-do, fell in love with Lisa, whose family was not so well-off, upon seeing her for the first time. He had a videocassette in his hand; she had a videocassette in her hand. He showed his tape to the station's weatherman (sun, sky, clouds). She showed hers (clouds, sky, sun). During the contest, his eyes could not escape her beauty. After the contest, the impression she made on his mind intensified. That bewitching coin in the short story by Jorge Luis Borges, "The Zahir," comes to mind. If a person sees this coin only once, the memory of its image begins to more and more dominate his/her thoughts and dreams. Soon the coin becomes the mind's sole reality. Lisa's face was Carl's Zahir.

On a breed at risk.

The case for why a cup of joe is about to become a luxury item.