Editor’s Note: This is an excerpt from an article titled 25 Things to Do Before The End of the World in the upcoming 2025 issue of PLAYBOY. Preorder a copy before it hits newsstands here.

Humans have been using wood to build furniture and shelter for tens of thousands of years. You’re probably sitting in a building held up with wood right now. The craft didn’t change much until the advent of power tools in the early 20th century. In recent years there’s been a revival of the older tradition of hand tool woodworking: no electricity, just sharp blades, your muscle, and your evolving skill.
Look at a chair or a table built in the traditional way, and you’ll seldom see nails or screws holding it together. The wooden parts fit together like a three-dimensional puzzle. Strength to strength. Every detail for a reason. Glue holds the joints in place, but the strength is in the joinery itself.
You can start with not much more than a half dozen tools, some limited instruction, and patience—a saw, a mallet, a couple of chisels, a bench plane, a combination square, and a vise will allow you to do an amazing number of things. Look up master teachers like Paul Sellers and Christopher Schwarz on YouTube.
Why would you do this? For starters, friends will marvel at the beautiful things you made with your hands. You’ll also get in tune with yourself. Power tools have their place. But using them on wood is like dynamiting a tunnel through a mountain instead of hiking up and over its peak. A hand tool woodworker knows where wood is strong and weak and uses that knowledge—jujitsu-like—to coax it into breaking just how and where he wants. There’s nothing virtual about it: Wood is real. And unless you toss your creation out a window or light it on fire, what you build can easily outlive you.
Hand work requires you to slow down. Way down. Sometimes, when I’m working on a piece, I’ll feel the urge to speed up. Then I remember. Why? I’m here for this experience, the suppleness of the materials and the mastery of skills growing in my hands over time. It’s an antidote for our sped-up, disposable world. And you’ll never lose a limb or a finger to a chisel or a handsaw. —JOSH MARSHALL

As the Byrds taught us, there’s a time to laugh and a time to weep. I’d argue there’s also a time to do things that are totally irrational and so far outside the bounds of your normal life that they rearrange your sense of self. For me, this meant driving a deadly mountain pass in South Africa, a rocky dirt road that winds up and over the Drakensberg Mountains and into the tiny nation of Lesotho.
Known as the Sani Pass, it’s a rite of passage for young South Africans (and, I later learned, the inspiration for the Nissan Sani). Appropriately enough, I made the drive with friends in an old stick-shift Nissan 4×4. We were just out of college—a summer idyll before real life set in. I’m not sure why we rented a manual; I was the only one who could drive stick, and I’m not even a particularly skillful driver. In any event, I’d been at the wheel for hours by the time we approached the mountains, a late-afternoon light falling across the ridges. J.R.R. Tolkien was born in South Africa, and I remember thinking it looked like Middle Earth.
The road was narrow, the dropoff harrowing, the guardrail nonexistent. It was summer, which is South Africa’s winter, and as we climbed higher we began to see patches of ice. At one switchback, we stopped for a picture of the dusk-lit valley below us. When I tried to restart the truck, it rolled backward before I could give it gas. Fear flooded my body; I thought of us sliding off the road and down the rocky escarpment. After I parked the car, my friend Chris had a plan: He put two large rocks behind the rear tires, took the driver’s seat, punched us forward, and somehow lurched his way up the mountain. At the top, border patrol agents inspected our passports and waved us through. What we didn’t realize was that we’d have to descend the other side of the mountain in the dark and drive 50 miles before we came to a town.
Over the next few weeks, we put 3,000 miles on that Nissan. I put some serious miles, too, on the odometer of my mind. And every now and then, when I find myself at a frightful juncture, I think of the Sani Pass. Sometimes you have to forget your fears and just step on the gas. — ALEX HOYT

THE CLIMATE CRISIS is no fun for skiers. In the United States alone, the average season over the past half century is down by five to seven days. So whether it’s a solo expedition, a guided backcountry blast with the boys, or a family trip to a full-fledged resort, now’s the time to book the ultimate powder trip.
UNITED STATES: If you love steeps but hate crowds, try a national park. Beartooth Powder Guides in Cooke City, Montana, takes skiers of all levels into Yellowstone and the surrounding ranges. At night, you and your buddies can hoist some celebratory drinks before crashing in your yurt.
CANADA: A similar experience, but with plusher accommodations, is Canada’s Baldface, a former site for the Natural Selection Tour. By day, it’s snowcat touring and powder laps in southern British Columbia’s Valhalla Range. By night, think massage and sauna.
FRANCE: Zermatt and St. Moritz are obvious luxe picks in the Alps, but with global warming hammering Switzerland’s resorts, take the family instead to Courchevel in the French Alps for massive terrain, reliable snow, and fantastic cuisine.
JAPAN: If you don’t want to be surrounded by a thousand Australians crashing Niseko for spring break, check out Stealth Backcountry. You’ll relax in its 60-year-old Japanese farmhouse (nicknamed “the powder dojo”) between backcountry tours around Hokkaido, not to mention all the onsen (hot springs) and sushi you can take. — ROSECRANS BALDWIN

The Prohibition-era “IYKYK” libation from Neat Bourbon Bar & Bottle Shop in Louis- ville, Kentucky, will blow your mind (and, at $1,000 per coupe, perhaps your budget). This sublime off-menu riff on a Vieux Carré, courtesy of mixologist Dante Wheat, employs rye and Benedictine from the 1930s, cognac from the 1920s, modern ver- mouth and bitters, and two gold foil–wrapped cherries—“because we can,” Wheat says. Follow it with a Florida Snow, a $13 cocaine-inspired margarita that numbs your mouth via Buzz Button–infused tequila. “It’s supposed to taste like sitting in a Miami hotel bar on Christmas Eve in 1982,” Wheat says. Indeed, it does. —SEAN EVANS

CAN FRIENDS BE LOVERS? In theory, sure. In practice, it’s complicated. The stakes are high. There are many minefields. But like espresso and martinis, sometimes friendship and sex can go together. As a sexpert who’s drawn to steamy and impossible relationships myself, here’s how I would proceed.
READ THE ROOM. This doesn’t have to be a good idea, but it has to be within the realms of healthy and appropriate. In other words, if your friend is married and monogamous and has never expressed interest in straying—I would not go there. If your friend is struggling with their mental health or real life problems, wait until they’re feeling centered again.
SET THE STAGE. You gotta let your friend know you’re a great fuck. The straightforward approach is to say, “You know, I have a magical [insert preferred word for dick/ pussy here], right?” I mean, who’s going to be mad about that? The slicker way might be a throwaway line about a recent relationship, like “He/she/they were really into the sex. They couldn’t get enough. That always happens with me!” By the way, if that’s a stretch and you’re not even sure you’re a good hookup, consider this a moment of sexual manifestation.
ESTABLISH THE PERMISSION STRUCTURE. Get cocktails at a tight bar where you know your knees will touch. Binge Bravo together on a cozy couch. A wave of passion might overcome both of you, but most likely you’re going to have to put it out there. Be honest, direct, and confident. For example: “I want to kiss you. It does not have to change our friendship. If it feels weird, we can stop, but I actually think it’s going to feel really good.”
START SLOW. Then—if you get the green light—you kiss. And you’ll see how natural and wonderful, or weird and cringe, it all feels. I hope your sexual connection is ridiculously hot. If it is, congrats: You’re now in an FWB situation. Cool! But how do you actually manage the friendship and the fucking?
BUCKLE UP. I asked my friend Bailey, who is newly sleeping with her good friend, about the maintenance of it all. “You have to stare jealousy in the eye, right away,” she says. “You have to figure out how to handle hearing about your FWB’s dating and sex life, because that’s the reality. You’re both still single, ya know?” This is where you might need to remind yourself that this is one of your favorite humans, who you happen to be sleeping with, and wish them as much pleasure and self-discovery as possible. Remember, you get what you give.
HAVE AN EXIT STRATEGY. The most probable glitch is that one of you will catch feelings and push to become a couple-couple, and then it’s awkward and potentially fatal. All you can do to preempt that pitfall is promise each other (and mean it) that if things get murky in the attachment department, you have the right to reboot the friendship, with no more benefits, and take the temperature way down. Maybe you can come up with a code word that signals “start over.”
STAY COOL. Look, an FWB doesn’t come with a playbook. The dynamic simply requires honest communication. Before they attended a mutual friend’s recent party together, Bailey and her FWB discussed what they were comfortable with. Their decision? “Do our own thing,” she says. “Flirt with whoever we wanted to…keep our little fling private…stay firmly in friend zone.” That night, there was no drama. In fact, “if anything, our sexy secret added some heat.” Which Bailey harnessed for a hookup with… another dude, whom she is also friends with. —ALYSSA SHELASKY