“Throwing AI into the mix felt like downing a coffee in the middle of a panic attack.”
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Where Truffles Thrive, the Week’s Top 5, and a Member Drive
“Before we became such a complex profusion of cells, we were driven by chemical impulse, which a truffle knows better than anyone. That’s why they fetch the prices they do. Why animals will harm themselves to unearth a fruit. Why truffle hunters are poisoning one another’s dogs. Why suspected truffle thieves in French orchards get […]
Pawns, Puppet Heads, and Paranoia: An Eccentrics Reading List
“They’re a little eccentric” is a phrase I suspect most of us have heard used to describe a certain kind of memorable person. For me, it evokes my childhood dentist — an elderly man who favored colorful bow ties and humming loudly as he worked, and who once wagged his finger in my face and […]
Food, Shared Humanity, and the Week’s Top 5
“Once weekly fare, I now have cholent only a few times a year; I, too, am no longer observant. I don’t think this is a coincidence. Which is to say that, while I stand by the choices I’ve made and the life I am choosing to live—different from how I was raised, but no less […]
Best of 2024: All Our Number Five Story Picks
Every story that appeared in the number five slot in our Weekly Top 5, all in one place.
Girl Genius
She will grow up and leave me and yet never leave me; she will be mine forever, a being I shaped.
The Sabbath Stew
What started as a loophole has remained one of Judaism’s most evocative, redolent foods.
The Battle Over Teaching Chicago’s Schools About Police Torture and Reparations
A little-known city law has educators figuring out how to talk to eighth and tenth grade students about the history of Chicago police abuse.
Our Braided Bread
In my native New York, I don’t feel the need to perfume the air around me with the sweet scent of challah. But here in Iowa, there is a void I need to fill.

