The first thing that struck me about Francisco "Pancho" León were his hands. Callused and scarred, his palms look like they belong to a cattle roper or someone who escaped a fire. Perhaps a knife fighter. Or maybe ... a man who's worked a sewing machine for the past 40 years.

It was on a plane back from Paris that David Garver felt his life shift. His wife had taken him to the city as a surprise gift for his 50th birthday. “My first and only time to Europe was Paris,” he says, “and it just blew my head wide open.”

I will never look at porn (the same way) again. Not after reading Pulitzer Prize-winning author Chris Hedges’ timely polemical tome Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle. For that matter, I’ll never look at pro wrestling, “Top Chef," higher education, corporate America or much of anything else in quite the same light as I once did. I’ll be too busy stocking my underground bomb shelter with blankets and canned goods ... and books.