As a species, we stand at a precipice, and the choices we make in this moment determine a great many things. We are all participants, and now more than ever we need every hand on deck to right this ship and chart a better course. By Camille Seaman.

In 2009, a man calling himself Peter Bergmann arrived in an Irish town with a plan to disappear forever. By Ciaran Cassidy and Morgan Bushe.

I emerge from this conversation dumbfounded. I've seen this a million times before, but it still gets me every time... By Tim J. Lawrence.

Rosalie Sorrels

One of the most beautiful, amazing, and depressing things I’ve ever done is participate in a whale necropsy. By Jonathan Foley.

Thirty young men spent months burning the bodies of the infected. A year later, many relatives and fellow countrymen still can’t forgive them. By Helene Cooper.

A solitary canoeist meets his fate. By Ben McGrath.

The strange life and tragic death of Julia the gorilla. By Anna Krien.

Every year, roughly 40,000 people die in Minnesota. For some, it’s weeks or months before anyone finds their bodies. Meet the crew who comes in to clean up the mess. By Andy Mannix.

When she miscarried in her mid-30s, Alexandra Kimball felt profoundly alone: abandoned by a feminist movement that didn't recognize her loss, accused by conventional wisdom of waiting too long to conceive, and deprived by society of the rituals that mark other forms of grief.

‘A few years ago I helped push a beached humpback whale back out into the sea, only to witness it return and expire under its own weight on the sand...‘ By Rebecca Giggs.

On the ancient Japanese Buddhist practice of self-mummification. By Erika Nesvold.

A brilliant neurosurgeon offered an untested therapy to dying cancer patients. Was it innovation or overreach? By Emily Eakin.

The Waterboys

The fight that erupted between the female baboons prompted a brief closure of the zoo’s exhibit. Medical records show injuries ranging from deep lacerations near their eyes to hair ripped out and tail injuries. By Liam Casey.

Cemeteries in Greek cities are so overcrowded that bodies are often only kept in the ground for three years. By Chloe Hadjimatheou.

A Los Angeles undertaker wants to end our estrangement from death by bringing corpses back home. By Rebecca Mead.

At the end of our lives, what do we most wish for? For many, it’s simply comfort, respect, love. BJ Miller is a palliative care physician at Zen Hospice Project who thinks deeply about how to create a dignified, graceful end of life for his patients. Take the time to savor this moving talk, which asks big questions about how we think on death and honor life.

Two tragic collisions on the football field, separated by 26 years, have brought together a high school linebacker and a former college running back in search of the answer to a life-altering question. By Eli Saslow.

At the bottom of the biggest underwater cave in the world, diving deeper than almost anyone had ever gone, Dave Shaw found the body of a young man who had disappeared ten years earlier. What happened after Shaw promised to go back is nearly unbelievable, —unless you believe in ghosts. By Tim Zimmermann. (2005)