At 6:30 p.m. on July 29th, 2023, 15-year-old Talia Deila Diaz stood just outside the back door of her house, staring into the thick, shadowy rainforest that made up her backyard. She lived in a tiny, isolated village in Peru—right in the heart of the Amazon rainforest. As she looked out into the jungle, she […]

On the evening of December 24, 2001, 48-year-old businessman Kevin Butler was in the kitchen of his Dallas, Texas home, preparing food for a Christmas party he planned to attend the following day. As he focused on the task, he suddenly heard his friend Larry—who spent a lot of time at his house—calling to him

One evening in late 2003, a 22-year-old man named Michael Bridges sat in the stands of a professional hockey game in Calgary, a major city in Canada. As he stared out at the rink, waiting for the players to file in, he couldn’t believe how lucky he was to be there. Michael lived about 700

On the morning of August 30th, 2001, a middle-aged police sergeant named Alan McGregor drove with his partner, Officer Mark David, toward the Huron National Forest — a sprawling nature preserve in northern Michigan. The two officers were headed there to meet a very unlikely detective. One that McGregor believed might finally help him solve

At 7:20 p.m. on Friday, January 12th, 2007, 19-year-old college freshman Wade Steffey walked into Ford Dining Hall, one of five dining halls on Purdue University’s campus. Purdue, a prestigious university in Indiana, is well known for its excellence in both athletics and academics. Wade was an aviation technology student attending Purdue on a full

Something most people don’t know is that you can’t just strap on scuba tanks, dive down to any depth, and then shoot straight back up. That would be a fatal mistake. The air in scuba tanks is compressed and typically consists of oxygen, nitrogen, and sometimes helium. While your body uses up the oxygen as

In the spring of 2017, 21-year-old Antonio Navaret was on top of the world. A Florida native living in the quiet rural suburb of Wimauma, just south of Tampa, Antonio had recently found the love of his life, a young woman named Daisy Martinez. Now, the couple was expecting their first child, and they were

In the early 1980s, John Harter was the classic athletic, popular kid at his high school in Delaware, Ohio—a relatively small town just outside the state capital. But unlike the typical stereotype of high school jocks as arrogant bullies, John was none of those things. He was incredibly friendly, warm-hearted, and seemed to get along

Sevnica is a gorgeous town in the heart of Slovenia, nestled right along the Sava River—one of the longest rivers in Europe. The section of the Sava that flows past Sevnica was once a beloved destination for kayakers and canoers. That was until 2008, when a hydroelectric dam was constructed across the river. This dam

One chilly February evening in 2011, Yang—a man in his 30s—sat down for dinner in his modest home in a remote rural village in China. At the table were his five elderly aunts, with whom he lived and cared for. In Yang’s world, silence was not unusual. Born with a disability that made speech nearly