May 7, 2013 •
What does it feel like to go insane and not know why? In her memoir, Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness, author Susannah Cahalan describes what it is like in terrifying detail: “My body continued to stiffen as I inhaled repeatedly, with no exhale. Blood and foam began to spurt out of my mouth through clenched teeth.… This moment, my first serious blackout, marked the line between sanity and insanity. Though I would have moments of lucidity over the coming weeks, I would never again be the same person. This was the start of the dark period of my illness, as I began an existence in purgatory between the real world and a cloudy, fictitious realm made up of hallucinations and paranoia.”
By Jo Magpie
April 13, 2013 •
Obsessive-compulsive disorder dominated my life until the birth of my child pushed me to find sanity.
By Abby Sher
March 21, 2013 •
In her deeply personal account of life in post-earthquake Haiti, journalist Amy Wilentz looks at how outsiders' distorted views of the country have misrepresented its culture and history and encumbered its progress.
By Amy O'Loughlin
March 6, 2013 •
Three men carried out an acid attack on the Bolshoi Ballet's artistic director in January, police say, and one of the celebrated company's dancers has now confessed. But the Bolshoi is not unique in the intensity of its artistic jealousies. From Moscow to London to New York, all the world's a blood-drenched stage.
By Nicole Cipri
February 27, 2013 •
When I first read about Bab al-Mandeb — the “Gate of Tears,” where the Red Sea narrows and powerful ocean currents have sunk countless ships over the ages — I knew I wanted to go there. I wanted to be where it all began: where the human race left Africa, spreading out into the world until they filled every corner of it.
[From Nowhere magazine] By Frank Bures 
January 25, 2013 •
At an early age, Joy Castro ran away from an abusive home and renounced her faith as a Jehovah’s Witness. What she found instead was a new set of beliefs and truths for herself.
By Mandy Van Deven 
December 23, 2012 •
In South Korea, where a Christian minority dominates the country’s culture and politics, fundamentalists are fighting a culture war against their list of abominations: homosexuality, evolution, even Lady Gaga. But one church in Seoul is fighting back, working from within the faith to make it more tolerant — one gay Christian at a time.
Story and photos by Rob York
November 13, 2012 •
The “Blago” scandal may have set new lows for reality TV-abetted shamelessness, but the ex-Illinois governor was just one in a long, storied line of corrupt Chicago politicos. We run through the decades of graft and cronyism that have weighed down the City of the Big Shoulders.
By Nicole Cipri
October 17, 2012 •
He used to make counterfeit credit cards. Now Mansfield Frazier has embarked on an even more audacious project: launching a commercial vineyard in the middle of a poor, inner-city Cleveland neighborhood.
Story and photos by Karen Schaefer
September 14, 2012 •
South Africans found the unlikeliest of musical heroes in their struggle against apartheid: a Detroit-born, Mexican American guitarist named Sixto Rodriguez. The documentary Searching for Sugar Man traces Rodriguez’s rapid ascent from obscurity in Motown to mythology in Cape Town — and the equally sudden oblivion that followed.
By Cherise Fong
August 28, 2012 •
He has played the Kennedy Center and Carnegie Hall. He has performed abroad and earned international acclaim. But most days find Sean Grissom, the Cajun Cellist, playing his favorite venue — the streets and subways of New York City.
By Eli Epstein
July 31, 2012 •
ITF speaks with Andrew Blackwell about his new book,
Visit Sunny Chernobyl, a travel guide to the most polluted places on the planet. Even sites ravaged by radiation and industrial waste, he argues, can still be places of “nature, wildness, and beauty.”
By Susan M. Lee 
May 21, 2012 •
Conservative inflexibility and liberal apathy have endangered the dream of a democratic, secure Jewish state, a prominent American Zionist argues in a new book. But for all his ideas to salvage the two-state solution, Peter Beinart seems really to be documenting its demise.
By Rob York
One Last Kiss for Sonya
By Abby Sher