Last year's heat wave in California is driving prices of avocados through the roof, so some of the state's Mexican restaurants are turning to squash as a substitute in guacamole.

Nine years ago, AMC was riding an original programming high. After trying to compete with Turner Classic Movies at its own game for over two decades, the veteran cable channel developed two flagship original dramas that would define their era of television. Mad Men and Breaking Bad were well on their way to cresting their creative peaks in 2010, which meant it was time for AMC to expand its programming lineup in hopes of a three-peat. What would be its next groundbreaking series?

The media invites us to be inspired by wholly unnecessary crises like UFC hopeful Jordan Williams, who uses dog insulin because he doesn’t have insurance

Dharam Pal Singh, a champion marathon runner from rural India, is 119 years old. At least that’s the age he claims to be. He refers to his passport, voter ID card, and tax-identification card—all government-issued identity documents—to prove his date of birth, which all of the documents list as 1897. But he lacks a birth certificate, likely due to the fact that they were not regularly issued in remote villages in India at the time of Singh’s birth.

Come solar sail away with me

Nancy Segula lives in Ohio, in the Garfield Heights area, where feeding stray animals is against the law. But that didn’t stop her from helping out a few cats when her neighbor abandoned them.

One day, a few years ago, I was rushing from the pool dripping wet when a man with a Russian accent stopped me and said, “You must come to svim with the team.” I was in my early 50s — too old for swim team, I thought. But the coach — Igor was his name — persisted: “I see you are good svimmer.”

A quantum physicist told the Avengers: Endgame writers time travel depicted in Back to the Future is “bullsh-t,” a word of advice ultimately incorporated into a line of dialogue uttered by Ant-Man (Paul Rudd).

Ever since human beings have been jamming themselves into little metal canisters and shooting themselves off into space, there has been one thing everyone wants to know: how do you go to the bathroom? Sure, you can read about how it’s done, and for most people that’s enough. But not for me. I wanted to experience the process. I wanted to know, really know.

The brains of murderers look different from those of people convicted of other crimes—differences that could be linked to how they process empathy and morality.

How big business won and the consumer lost.

Matchmaking sites have officially surpassed friends and family in the world of dating, injecting modern romance with a dose of radical individualism. Maybe that’s the problem.

Dozens of convicted criminals have been hired as cops in Alaska communities. Often, they are the only applicants. In Stebbins, every cop has a criminal record, including the chief.

The author of a message in a bottle has been located some 50 years after he threw it into the Indian Ocean. Paul Gilmore, then 13, dropped the bottle into the ocean while sailing with his family on a liner from the UK to Melbourne. On Tuesday, his note was found in South Australia by 13-year-old Jyah Ellott who was out fishing with his father.

Survivor camps established after shipwrecks provide fascinating data about the societies that groups of people make when it’s left up to them, about how and why social order might vary, and about what arrangements are the most conducive to peace and survival. An archipelago of shipwrecks, formed over centuries, more or less at random, has resulted in people participating, unintentionally, in multiple trials of this experiment. Shipwreck survivors have had a special hold on the human imagination for thousands of years, beginning at least since Homer crafted the Odyssey and stretching through when Shakespeare penned The Tempest, Cervantes...

We take comfort in news about viral acts of kindness toward the sick, the poor and others in need, experts say, but there’s a catch.

The trailblazing computer scientist on being in charge of the software for the 1969 Apollo moon landing

People have long dreamed of re-shaping the Martian climate to make it livable for humans. Carl Sagan was the first outside of the realm of science fiction to propose terraforming. In a 1971 paper, Sagan suggested that vaporizing the northern polar ice caps would "yield ~10 s g cm-2 of atmosphere over the planet, higher global temperatures through the greenhouse effect, and a greatly increased likelihood of liquid water."

It would take 50 years, an audacious proposal even by space travel standards.

Spelling contests have remained a feature in American life since the Puritans landed on Plymouth Rock — but is peaking at 12 years old all it’s cracked up to be?