Tamara Stanners wanted to make a good impression as a new radio announcer, so she volunteered to be frozen alive in a 5000-pound block of ice for a charity event. The response to her chilling experience was anything but lukewarm.

Toshiko Adilman left her husband, her two young boys, and the comfort of their home for a job as an interpreter on a movie filmed in Antarctica. But the exhilarating, temporary gig almost became a permanent disaster when she found herself stranded, and literally shipwrecked, thousands of miles from home.

Erin Stanfield went abroad hoping to expand her small town horizons, only to end up with a job as a mascot (where she dressed as her hometown's literary hero) at a theme park built to look like a tiny replica of the town she just left.

Cicely Hansen is the proprietor of Decades of Fashion in the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco. Her store is rooted in her love of vintage fashion, and her formative years as a teenager in the '60s partaking in the iconic Summer of Love.

Dr. Floyd Huen has been fighting for the rights of Asian Americans since joining the activist movement at the University of California, Berkeley in the 1960s. Now he's grappling with the fact that some members of that community think he's trying to harm instead of heal.

Former EPA scientist Gretchen Gehrke spends her evenings and weekends protecting the climate data that she and her colleagues used to collect.

Tareq Hadhad was set on a career in medicine until war broke out in Syria, forcing his family to flee to a small island in the Canadian Maritimes where he learned that whether healing through medicine or peace-making with chocolate, both paths can lead to a sweeter life for his family.

Widower Joe Bartley felt like life was passing him by, sitting in his small-town flat with little to do and no one to talk to. So, he decided to pound the proverbial pavement and get back to work. The question was, who would hire him?

Retired corporate executive Paul Critchlow was becoming increasingly horrified with all the blank spaces in his calendar. When a friend of his offered him a summer internship at Pfizer, he jumped at the chance, and his experience proved to be much more meaningful than just filling time.

Without people like Greg Zerafa, Chris Bedetto, and Jerry Greaney there would be no New York Times to greet you at your doorstep each morning. Meet the men who are literally behind the machine.