On nineteenth century invalidism and how societies have drugged themselves through tough transitions across history.

An essay on television and race.

How Bert Schneider, a well-heeled Hollywood producer with a coke problem and a soft spot for radical politics, smuggled Huey Newton, the leader of the Black Panthers who was awaiting trial on a murder charge, into Cuba in 1974.

On Luddites, “bands of men, organized, masked, anonymous, whose object was to destroy machinery used mostly in the textile industry,” and their literary spawn.

Digging for Return of the Jedi set remnants in the desert.

A scholarly dispute devolves into criminal impersonation.

Afghanistan’s Kyrgyz nomads survive in one of Earth’s most remote places, a pocket of land 14,000 feet high where the currency is sheep, the dream is a road, and many will go an entire lifetime without ever seeing a tree.

Learning of a plot against the life of the newly elected Lincoln, Alan Pinkerton decamps to Baltimore and infiltrates the conspiracy.

A trip to CES, “what a World’s Fair might look like if brands were more important than countries.”

Why parties, love, kids, conversation and more are so miserable (at least to Phillip Lopate).

Adventures in public speaking.

A reporter who investigated Scientology tracks down the man who once ran the church’s intelligence operations – and who may hold the secret to years of harassment (and the mysterious death of a pet dog).

The author travels to Dubai; Arab children see snow for the first time, which is made by a Kenyan.

In 1912, 300 miles deep on a trek into the uncharted Antarctic wilderness, Douglas Mawson lost most of his crew and supplies. The story of how he got back.

On leaving New York for Portland.

The story of three friends from Texas and the obstacles they face trying to get a college degree in an age of economic inequality.

A writer’s evolving relationship with guns.

An ill-fated trip down the river with a group of anarchists.

On joy, pleasure and Ecstacy.

A Ugandan bill that would threaten homosexuals with imprisonment, or in some cases death, has its roots in the shadowy American evangelical group known as The Family.

On the internet dating pool.

On William Cockford and his 1800s gambling hall in London, where much of the British aristocracy lost its fortune.

The next generation of America’s most controversial (and likely most despised) church.