In 1962, Siffre spent two months living in total isolation in a subterranean cave, without access to clock, calendar, or sun. Sleeping and eating only when his body told him to, his goal was to discover how the natural rhythms of human life would be affected by living “beyond time.”

How Frank and Jamie McCourt bought the Dodgers for “for less than the price of an oceanfront home in Southampton” and eventually became entangled in one of the most expensive divorces in California history, which laid bare their finances and confirmed what many already knew: they had bankrupted one of the most storied franchises in baseball.

In all, the McCourts reportedly took $108 million out of the team in personal distributions over five years—a sum that Molly Knight, a reporter with ESPN who has extensively covered the story, notes is eerily similar to the cash payment that she says Frank McCourt has claimed he made for the team.

“Has anybody in Westchester County ever called the New York Times his or her ‘friend’? I realize that the rest of America, in its post-Katrina fatigue, is pretty tired of hearing New Orleanians, the city’s acolytes and defenders, always carrying on about how it’s the most unique city in America, but, the fact is, it is. Get over it.

And so, too, is its newspaper.”

“Which is the largest country in the world, economically speaking? It’s America, the United States. Do you know why? Because way back—this is history, you can look it up on the Internet—the colonization was done by men who believed in the word of God. And they were tithers. That’s why you see on the dollar bill: ‘In God we trust.”

"I was a member of a fraternity that asked pledges, in order to become a brother, to: swim in a kiddie pool of vomit, urine, fecal matter, semen and rotten food products; eat omelets made of vomit; chug cups of vinegar, which in one case caused a pledge to vomit blood; drink beer poured down fellow pledges' ass cracks... among other abuses."

“I saw the son of a bitch while I was up on my tractor, running the rotary cutter along a wall of green sagegrass that was five feet high. It was August in Mississippi, hot, on over in the afternoon but not near sundown. The sky had softened, and the coyote was trotting along in the open like the most unconcerned thing you could imagine.”

John Ackerman has spent millions procuring a majority of the known caves in Minnesota, which add up to dozens of miles of underground passageways and likely make him the largest cave owner in the U.S. He collects and charts them in the name of preservation, but his controversial methods have created many opponents.

In the wake of revolution, Libyans envision their future.

A profile of the “smart person’s” astrologer, and the people who believe in horopscopes.

The author on his 25 years in solitary confinement.

A participant in a deadly shooting spree decides to snitch on his friends.

A profile of Russell Baze, the winningest jockey in American history.

Investigating the burning of ancient books by rebels in Timbuktu.

Tourism at the site of the worst nuclear disaster in history.

On police brutality in New York and the race riots of 1964.

Why six people admitted roles in two murders they most likely didn’t commit.

They lose millions in a Florida real estate scam.

A couple’s only son is killed in Iraq.

On the rise in gay teens who are cast out by their families.

An argument for ordering in, among other things.

The impossible task of touring a tractor factory in post-Soviet Belarus.

An American enrolls in a Beijing ping-pong school. A series of humiliations ensue.

Debates surrounding physician-assisted dying in the U.S.

Exploring remote atolls in the South Pacific.

How a small-town comptroller became the biggest municipal embezzler in U.S. history.