“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.

Adventures with a group of young Hasidic men looking for God in psychedelic drugs.

One man’s experience with a sex surrogate in gay-conversion therapy.

How sectarian violence has made life in northern Nigeria “incomprehensibly frightful.”

A visit to Glenn Greenwald’s house in Rio.

Due to global warming, this island nation may cease to exist in 20 years.

The challenges of establishing a legal marijuana economy in Washington State.

The tale of the only art exhibit in space.

An illustrated codex, hand-composed in an unknown writing system.

The undoing of Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca, who resigned in January amidst multiple swirling scandals.

What it was like to report on feminism for Playboy in 1969.

Why did a man travel 200 miles to die in a national park?

“You are wondering what kind of people put their house pet in a cat show.”

The 32-year-old Atlanta rapper released three No. 1 albums in seven months.

On the couple and their role in the 2016 election.

In order to keep running, Tom White cut off his own leg.

Growing crops in the city, without soil or natural light.

There is no script for losing a spouse in your 30s.

A year at a “low-performing” high school in San Francisco.

Unprecedented access to six months in the life of the President of the United States.

On Bruce Springsteen’s song, and growing up in a factory town.