All Stories
New York City, deliciously off-script
I ate lamb ribs sticky with tamarind and dates, watched fairy tales transformed into extravagant burlesque, learned to make stained glass and watched people take shots of alcohol poured directly from the head of a bluefin tuna during my latest…
The strange new math behind the price of your groceries
Walmart recently published a list of things it promises not to do to its customers. “We price the product, not the person,” Walmart CEO John Furner announced in a September letter to customers. “Your income, shopping history, urgency or what…
I can’t stop making this cabbage
I have a very specific fantasy about the restaurant I would open, should someone ever hand me a set of keys and an unlimited supply of funds and optimism. It would be a little neighborhood bistro, the sort of place…
Airbnb sold us the comforts of home. Then came the chores
Schadenfreude isn’t listed among Airbnb’s amenities — but this week, it’s practically complimentary. Some Airbnb hosts are threatening to quit the platform, raise their housekeeping fees or pare their rental properties down to the bare essentials rather than accept new…
Americans hate tipping. So why haven’t they stopped?
I am a recovering people-pleaser, though I admit most of the recovering still takes place in private. I rehearse difficult conversations for weeks — on walks by the lake, in the shower, in the mirror — before actually having them.…
Why women dread male Instacart shoppers
When I began using Instacart about five years ago, grocery delivery struck me as an almost preposterous luxury. I hadn’t grown up in a household where paying someone else to do the grocery shopping was a particularly imaginable expense. I’ve…
US inequality is getting worse in ways you might not expect
A Pew Research survey released in October 2026 found that roughly 6 in 10 Americans – including 4 in 10 Republicans – believe there’s too much inequality in the U.S. And a growing share from both major political parties state…
RFK Jr. and MAHA’s measles reckoning
By most metrics, measles in the U.S. is out of control. Last week alone, cases jumped by 8%, with 330 infections reported, outpacing the entire total of cases in 2024, in which the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention counted…
Jalen Hurts shows the price of being unapologetically Black
Jalen Hurts, the Philadelphia Eagles’ starting quarterback, is out for the season to recover from a deep vein blood clot, found after arriving in London for the game in which Hurts played between the Eagles and the Jacksonville Jaguars. A…
Eminem’s Kid Rock collab shows the risk of cozying up to MAGA
He might look like something found in the dumpster at a Lynyrd Skynyrd concert. He might shamelessly plunder the sonics of decades of deep-fried and gravy-smothered hits. But despite everything about his presentation and performance, Kid Rock is not actually…