Katie, a Canadian businesswoman who runs a small online store called The Witchery, was surprised when she got an email from Square a couple of weeks ago, telling her that her account had been temporarily suspended for selling "occult" items. The online credit card processing service, with the ubiquitous white box that plugs into iPads and iPhones, had become an integral part of her business, both online and in-person.

The meeting of 16th and Mission streets in San Francisco is a busy place. During the day, bible-thumping evangelists with portable microphone amps half-preach, half-yell to passersby in Spanish, trying to wake them up from their daily routines. At night, near the same intersection, a man named Maurice and his partner Star try a different approach for bringing people together.

In the days since his inauguration, Donald Trump has given women around the country—and the world—new motivation to fight for equality. After the Women’s March ended, which was estimated to be the largest peaceful demonstration in U.S. history, many were left wondering: Now what? If you’re reading this, we’re confident there will be more marches, calls to senators, and civic engagement in your future.

Downtown San Francisco’s Tenderloin district could soon be home to the first government-sanctioned transgender district in the world. Last week, San Francisco Supervisor Jane Kim announced legislation that would create the Compton’s Transgender, Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual District in San Francisco.

I've fallen in love with Southern Arizona, thanks to the contributors and guests of today's show. San Francisco-based journalist Breena Kerr shines a light on the colourful, quirky afterworld of old copper mining town, Bisbee. I love this piece. Megan Kimble of Edible Baja Arizona reveals Tucson's rich, inclusive, community-based food scene, of which great restaurants are just one thing.

Just a few years ago, Canggu in Bali was a tiny village surrounded by paddy fields. These days, its rapid development as a surfing spot seems to throw up a new grey wall every day. But while the break-neck speed of building brings growing pains, it's created perfect conditions for one group: graffiti artists.

If you’ve ever stepped to the edge of a high rooftop and felt that you might jump off, despite the fact that you don’t want to die, you’re not alone—but most people don’t know that. In reality, many people experience this feeling at one time or another, according to Jennifer Hames, who led the study, “An urge to jump affirms the urge to live,” for the Journal of Affective Disorders.

March marked the first time in a drought-parched decade that Anza-Borrego Desert State Park—located in the Colorado Desert about two hours outside San Diego—saw 10 inches of rain. This is according to Norb Ruhmke, acting district superintendent for the Colorado Desert District. In a normal full year, he says, the Anza-Borrego desert gets six inches.

There's a new global insomnia map to waste your time looking at make you feel less alone while you're not sleeping. The map uses Twitter data from the last 24 hours to track people around the globe who are staying up all night, phones in hand. It searches for tweets with phrases like "can't sleep," in 17 of the world's most-spoken languages, then plots them geographically, each dot representing a cluster of sleepless tweeters in one region.

Ideology, privation, compromise: Washington, DC owes its layout to all three. Yet the city on the hill still embodies the hopes its founders had for a brand new country. By contrast, Donald Trump has been reluctant even to live in the White House. Between Christmas and New Year, Breena Kerr took to the capital's empty streets to report on the dreams that made the city and the ideas that will shape it in years to come.

When I heard that Air India had created a women-only section on its domestic flights last week, I breathed a sigh of temporary relief. Every country has a social problem (or many) that come up again and again, defying attempts to get them under control and exposing deep-seated cultural beliefs that are often unpleasant and vexing.

The final case study takes us deep into the Californian desert, where an unlikely collection of people gather around an unlikely story. If you find yourself driving through California’s Mojave desert, the scorching sun and the flat, scrubby terrain can make you wonder if you’re on another planet. But arrive at one unremarkable crossroads in the town of Landers, 40 miles north of Palm Springs, and a bone-white, spaceship-shaped dome, rising above the flatness of bleached sand and brown tumbleweeds, will heighten the feeling.

In the days following the election, transgender people and their allies began planning for possible disruptions in their ability to live life as normal under a Trump Administration. For some, that meant taking steps to change names and gender markers on identifying documents in case policies were changed to make that more difficult.

Monday’s Electoral College vote is here, along with a frantic, last-ditch effort to change the minds of those who will (probably) elect Donald Trump for President. If you need a reminder of how the Electoral College works, there are 538 electors whose votes decide the winner of the presidential race.

As the road and rail networks on the island of Oahu expand, so a ferocious tug of war is intensifying over its untouched wilderness. Breena Kerr takes to the wheel along the most beautiful highway in America and explores whether it's better to keep the country country. When you’re on the beach in Waikiki, on the Hawaiian island of Oahu, the following truth seems impossible: you are in the most isolated place on earth – along with a million other people and thousands of piña coladas.

If you’ve ever had a mystical experience and wanted to share it with others, perhaps you’ve run up against this common challenge: You know it was real – maybe it was the most real thing that’s ever happened to you – but it’s hard to communicate that sentiment without feeling a little nutty. After all, if you live in the Western World, mysticism is regarded with a push-pull of fascination and snarky cynicism.