“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 […]
What Are Memories, Anyway?
The brain is a funny thing. You give it the right cues of depth and immersion, and something that would otherwise be a memory of an image becomes a memory of an experience.
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 […]
Girl Genius
She will grow up and leave me and yet never leave me; she will be mine forever, a being I shaped.
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.
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.

