Longreads

Meteorologist-turned-adventurer Felicity Aston has had a soft spot for Antarctica ever since she learned of the ill-fated British explorer Robert Falcon Scott:

"On day four, I found myself on a very narrow part of the glacier that I was traversing up, called the Leverett Glacier, and all the wind that comes from the South Pole gets kind of funneled down through this tiny gap in the mountains. The glacier is probably only about 10 kilometers wide, if that. It was katabatic winds that are very forceful and directional and they can last for days. I kind of in my mind thought, 'Oh, if I just keep skiing, I'll ski through this,' but as I started up the glacier, it got to the point where I started thinking, 'I'm not sure I'm going to be able to get the tent up if it gets any stronger.'"

Quora (left and right); Geeklist (center)At the South by Southwest Interactive festival in March, I attended a talk titled "Adding Value as a Non-Technical No Talent Ass-Clown." It was given by Matt…

"Enbridge Covered Up Oil" reads the hat that John Bolenbaugh wears while filming submerged tar sands crude along the banks of the Kalamazoo River in Battle Creek, Michigan. Photos: Mary Anne…

Mon Aug. 20, 2007 12:00 AM PDT Rob Santana awoke terrified. He'd had that dream again, the one where silver wires ran under his shirt and into his pants, connecting to electrodes attached to his…

Cory Thoman/ShutterstockWe all know that many American conservatives have issues with Charles Darwin, and the theory of evolution. But Albert Einstein, and the theory of relativity? If you're…

Cory Thoman/ShutterstockWe all know that many American conservatives have issues with Charles Darwin, and the theory of evolution. But Albert Einstein, and the theory of relativity? If you're…

How Tim Murphy used CouchSurfing.org to crash with perfect strangers and see the country on the cheap (without getting killed by an ax murderer):

"But even in the most familiar of circumstances, it's tough to shake the feeling that you're dropping, Being John Malkovich-style, into someone else's life. Take Sonia, a 30-year-old family practitioner we stayed with in Glasgow, Kentucky, a courthouse town in Barren County ("#1 most livable rural community in America!") about an hour east of Bowling Green. At the time, she was the only active surfer in a town of about 14,000. On the night we arrive, the county courthouse steps have been appropriated by a Last Days Baptist revival. Sonia rolls her eyes when I relay the news."

Photo: AP/Wide World Photos Do you know the Bob Dylan song "The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll"? Put it on now and listen to it, if you happen to have it on a CD or an album. If you don't, or you…

Illustration: John HendrixOn a warm, sticky winter morning, I waited nervously in a parking lot in Foshan, a city in southeastern China's smog-choked Pearl River delta, for a man I'd never met. His…