Failure Is Much More Common than Success

In his book, Break Open the Sky, Steven Bauman writes:

Despite our near-phobic fear of failure, the facts suggest that it's actually a common, almost ...

31-Year-Old Climber Completes Solo, Gear-Free Summit of Yosemite's El Capitan

In Yosemite National Park stands a 3,000-foot wall of granite known as El Capitan. It's long been a rock climber's dream, but it's a daring ...

Child Gives Up Stuffed Moose to Keep Police Officer Safe

At a routine traffic stop last year, 5-year old Mackenzie Brown sacrificially gave up her own stuffed moose toy to a Pennsylvania police officer, hoping ...

Man Hopes Wal-Mart Sign Will Fall on His Head

Walmart is no stranger to interesting characters—there's even a calendar featuring its eclectic clientele. But a recent Texas patron went to ...

Pre-Columbian Chinese Megaships Ruled The Seas, Then They Burned Them

Long before Christopher Columbus sailed across the Atlantic, a Chinese admiral named Zheng He launched the greatest armada the world had ever seen: more ...

Fishermen Risk Lives To Rescue Whale

In December 2016, Legacy, a small fishing boat cruising near Bodega Bay, California ran into a whale entangled by crab pots. The three fisherman on Legacy ...

Courage To Do 'Whatever It Takes'

Several years ago, an enormous financial crisis loomed in Europe. The very survival of the structure of the euro currency, if not the whole of Europe, ...

Comedian Told to 'Embrace Bombing' to Get Better

The NPR radio show "This American Life" featured a story about a French comedian named Gad Elmaleh, probably the most famous stand-up comedian ...

The First North American Missionary—a Freed Slave

The first missionary from North America was George Liele, a former slave who left the American colonies for Jamaica in 1782 and began a ministry of preaching ...

Scientist Exclaims the Wonder of a Tree's Roots

Science writer Hope Jahren shares an interesting fact about plants, especially how a tiny seed starts to put down roots—the most essential thing ...