Serri Graslie
-
From the people on our money to the effects of calling someone black, this week, we bring you four reads that illuminate a bit of history or pieces of regulation you may not have known about.
-
Two rock climbers are close to finishing a hugely ambitious project on El Capitan in the Yosemite Valley — free-climbing the Dawn Wall. They talked to NPR's Melissa Block from the rock face.
-
The rural Texas town was established as a "freedom colony" with land given to former slaves after the Civil War. O. Rufus Lovett photographed Weeping Mary and its residents for 11 years.
-
Organizers of the Winter Games are preparing to serve up quite a bit of the hearty, deep-red Russian soup. Which is kind of ironic, says Russian food writer Anya von Bremzen, since borscht carries with it complicated political implications. And not all borschts are created equal, she warns.
-
Dish Network announced this week that it will shutter the 300 or so remaining Blockbuster stores it owns across the country. But in some places, dozens of the video stores will have an unlikely afterlife.
-
Hungry bugs and warmer temperatures mean pine trees aren't producing as many seeds as they once did, driving up the cost of Italian pine nuts to $120 per pound in some cases. Cookbook author Julia della Croce found a colorful — and delicious — alternative in pistachios.
-
Homemade sodas are hot these days: Americans bought more than 1.2 million home carbonators last year. For the Fourth of July, we asked mixologist Gina Chersevani to help us tap into the trend with a soda float inspired by Independence Day.
-
Postwar marketing of convenience foods pushed our grandmothers to take many shortcuts in the kitchen that modern foodies might find unpalatable. Many involved Jell-O. Cookbook author Jeremy Jackson updated his grandma Mildred's famous strawberry cake recipe to remove this old-school secret ingredient.
-
Wojciech Inglot was a chemist and entrepreneur who tried to come up with a more healthful alternative to traditional nail polish. He died Feb. 23.