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A gag in “Piker’s Peak,” a Looney Tunes cartoon from 1957, plays off the trope of the Saint Bernard rescue dog carrying brandy to warm up an avalanche victim. After digging Yosemite Sam out of the snow, the dog opens the barrel in its collar to reveal a cocktail shaker and martini glass, and ignores the frozen Sam as it mixes itself a drink.

Last August, over a calm Michigan lake, Karl Duesterhaus, 34, of Chicago, was treated to an unusual phenomenon: the northern lights, which appeared as hazy colors in a brighter-than-usual night sky. It was a cool experience, he said, but he was surprised when he looked at cellphone photos taken the night before.

Many biologists who make the journey to Antarctica go to study the continent’s most iconic animals, including emperor penguins and massive humpback whales. But one team, from the Grainger Bioinformatics Center at the Field Museum in Chicago, has a different to-do list. They want to check out the sex lives of patches of greenish-brown “dust” clinging to rocks.

Rattled nerves and spilled drinks are the most common outcomes of a choppy flight, but intense air turbulence can also cause bodily harm. And while one well-known cause of air turbulence is thunderstorms, it’s poorly understood how far from a tempest shaky conditions are likely to persist.

Clean up efforts are still underway following severe flooding in Spain’s Valencia region, with sewer blockages now the main concern for authorities.

This is the first installment of our new bimonthly column Crews on Cruise, spotlighting the people who work behind the scenes of the world’s most memorable voyages—from bartenders and entertainers to ship captains and expedition leaders.

Around March, the valleys to the north and east of Cuzco, Peru, begin to gleam with pink and crimson — “crowned with amaranth,” the poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow once wrote, “as with flame.” Native to South America, this scentless species of amaranth (Amaranthus caudatus), distinctive for its tentacle-like inflorescences, is prized for the nutty-tasting, protein-rich seeds that develop from its flowers. (Its leaves are also edible.) Known in Peru by its Quechua name, , it was domesticated by Andean peoples some 3,000 years ago and later became a source of sustenance for the Incas and their contemporaries. (A different variety of amaranth was grown by the Aztecs of Mexico.) But the 16th-century Spanish colonizers, writes Jamaica Kincaid in “An Encyclopedia of Gardening for Colored Children” (2024), forced the Incas and the Aztecs to abandon their crops and replace them “with barley, wheat and other European grains.”

Elliott Investment Management tried leveraging its activist stake in Southwest Airlines to push CEO Bob Jordan out – but Jordan is still in charge. Now, he is unpacking how Southwest plans to keep up with competing airlines.

When Canadian singer Bryan Adams’ Mumbai show was announced in August, it sold out within 24 hours. Two weeks later, over 80% tickets in most venues were sold – a total of 75,000 tickets for the six-city tour in December. 

I remember one freezing cold morning in 2015 when I was working at a marketing agency in Canada. That day, I had been tasked with editing a travel article about Málaga, Spain.

Nov 5, 2024 • 7 min read

Booking.com has broken out its crystal ball to share its travel predictions for the year to come. And according to the travel platform, it's going to be a great year for the children of boomers. 

People used to strive simply to live as long as possible, but in recent years, that goal has taken on a new dimension: How long can you live in good health? “The focus now is on health span, not life span,” said Dr. Frank Lipman, a co-author of the 2020 book “The New Rules of Aging Well.” “We generally talk about extending someone’s life, but what’s the use if they’re suffering and disabled and can’t enjoy what they have?”

If I stared too long, the glossy, petrified tree trunk seemed to pulsate energy through the roof, down into the walls and past the fragile washi paper screens. “The house breathes,” Akihiro Tokunaga, the building’s owner, explained, snapping me out of the hypnosis. “You can feel that this tree is still alive.”

Dorey Poder and Damir Konjicija didn’t have a vision for their wedding, because they didn’t think they’d be lucky enough to have one: Damir fled war in Bosnia as a child and grew up in a refugee camp in the Czech Republic, and then the southern United States (Kentucky), while Dorey was raised in a very conservative town in California. “We didn’t know if we would ever get married in our lifetime, so when the time actually came, we looked at each other like, do we want to have a wedding? Or is this just an ‘us’ thing?” says Dorey of the brief consideration to get hitched at city hall.

Whether you're a fan of the traditional, handheld soft taco or enjoy modernist interpretations with different types of meats, veggies, and sauces, there's a taqueria in every US state to suit your tastes.

This story ran as part of the 2024 Readers’ Choice Awards. To find out all the winning cruises, read here.

Southwest Airlines' new assigned seating model — complete with its first-ever extra-legroom seats — is set for takeoff in early 2026.

We released an updated version of our Ask Skift answer engine earlier today. We think it’s a big improvement over the previous iteration, which rolled out in the early days of publishers’ experimentations with generative artificial intelligence. 

A growing number of travelers have shown a preference for spending more money on experiences than possessions, and the travel industry has paid close attention to that shift. Skift Research’s Venture Investment Trends in Travel 2024 report revealed the experiences sector was one of the few in travel to see an increase in venture capital investment.

Since its inception in 2009, Azul has had a remarkable journey. In the past 15 years, Azul has challenged the dominance of GOL-LATAM’s duopoly in Brazil's domestic market, effectively taking control of one-third of the market and overtaking GOL as the second-largest carrier.