The symptoms are here: multiyear droughts, large-scale crop failures, a major city—Cape Town—on the verge of going dry, increasing outbreaks of violence, fears of full-scale water wars. The big question: How do we keep the water flowing?

“There has to be some pleasure in this job, and that’s it. To go around in disguise. To act a character. To pass oneself off as what one is not. To pretend.”

In which the author’s wife attempts to break the world record in Tetris.

On bareback horse relay racing, a Native American tradition:

“It’s going to be America’s next extreme sport,” he predicts. “Compare it to Professional Bull Riders, PBR. Look how big that got—a million in prize money in every city they go to. That’s how Indian Relay is going to be in 10 years. I look for it to be at every track in the country by 2025.

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

“What’s it like to be kidnapped and held for ransom, not as a political prisoner but as an economic one? What’s it like to live in the Ecuadoran jungle for 141 days? What’s it like not to sleep, to be bound in chains, to have your body invaded by living things, to waste away to the point of death?…What’s it like? This is what it’s like.”

In the slums adjacent to Mumbai’s airport.

A trip to a grave in Damascus as shelling started in Homs.

In 2003, Gary Coleman ran for governor of California. But what he really wanted was to have never come to Hollywood in the first place.

How to kick heroin in 24 hours.

To be mentally ill in Ghana.

The writer is reluctantly whisked away to to a small house in upstate New York to attend an ayhuasca ceremony with six strangers.

“Richard Williams raised her to go to war with the world. Post-tennis, she plans to live in it.”

The mentalist’s manipulation techniques give people too sophisticated to believe in the paranormal something quasi-scientific to hang on to.

On Lucille Miller, who in San Bernadino in 1964 was convicted of burning her husband to death in his Volkswagen.

Listening to music in prison.

How Washington left students to drown in debt.

“Adaptation is one explanation of how a lot of executives stay alive. As the fish in the Silurian rivers began to develop swim bladders in order to live in shoal waters, so American executives have developed certain compensating features. The process can be observed particularly in the big cities where conditions are the most trying. Executives have developed an insensitivity to noise, an uncanny time sense (needed in commuting), and an attunement to the city’s terrifying rhythms. Instead of trying to escape the phenomenon of modern life they fling themselves at it.”

Two young girls attempt to murder another in Waukesha, Wisconsin, trying to bring an internet meme to life.

Three deaths in the mountains, and a community left to wonder: How close should we stand to our own mortality to feel alive?

If you were a U.S. prison warden trying to figure out how to kill people with an electric chair in the ‘80s, there was basically one guy to call. His name was Fred A. Leuchter Jr. He ran a business out of his house in the Boston suburbs, providing consulting or execution equipment to at least 27 states between 1979 and 1990. Some of Fred Leuchter’s equipment is still in use today, which is why I wanted to talk to him.

A murder case in Los Angeles, cold since the late ’80s, heats up thanks to breakthroughs in forensic science and leads detectives to “one of the unlikeliest murder suspects in the city’s history.”

Last fall, when the deadliest blaze in America in a century blew through Northern California, thousands of people—including those in the tiny community of Helltown—were forced to flee. This is the story of four friends who stayed to fight.

A good trip on psilocybin might be just the ticket to relieve anxiety and depression, particularly in the terminally ill. But are we ready to dive back in to psychedelic research?