This week’s story takes us to Verkhoyansk, a frozen flyspeck of a town with 1,300 shivering souls deep inside Siberia, six miles from the Arctic Circle. The local delicacy is a version of a Russian favorite called pelmeni: minced reindeer fat rolled in a thin dough, seasoned with horseradish and deep-fried on a stick. (Editor’s… Read More

Taxcutoseum! On June 27, 1997, an unknown British author rolled out her first novel, which she wrote in longhand because she couldn’t afford a typewriter. The book was a success beyond imagining: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone stormed the world and made author J.K. Rowling richer than the Queen. (Seriously, you can look it… Read More

  “Reality” Bites In the world of football, one family stands out among the rest: the Mannings. In tennis, it’s the Williamses. And on television, it’s the Kardashians, Jenners, and various C-list and D-list orbiters that make up the First Family of Reality TV. What many viewers don’t realize is that the Kardashians aren’t just… Read More

Memorial Day weekend is fading in the rearview mirror, and we’ve ventured outside to commemorate those who gave their lives in service to their country. Summer is as officially “open for business” as it can be in this year of coronavirus. But there’s a lesser-known occasion coming up that the average American celebrates three times… Read More

Maurice Fayne, did you think you would get away with it? Did you think styling yourself “Arkansas Mo” on a show like VH1’s “Love & Hip Hop: Atlanta” made you the kind of guy who can pull a con on the down low? When you borrowed $2,045,800 from the Paycheck Protection Program, did you really… Read More

In 1914, Woodrow Wilson signed a proclamation designating the second Sunday in May as Mother’s Day. Ever since then, Americans have spent that day destroying Mom’s kitchen in the name of breakfast in bed, tramping through her garden in the name of bringing her flowers, and making up for the phone calls and compliments they… Read More

American law schools sponsor over 200 law reviews: dense collections of grim, wooden prose, groaning with footnotes. (Chief Justice John Roberts once said “Pick up a copy of any law review that you see, and the first article is likely to be, you know, the influence of Immanuel Kant on evidentiary approaches in 18th Century… Read More

  Life comes at you fast. Two months ago, the Dow was flirting with 30,000, unemployment was at 3.5%, and the economy was looking forward to spring with the rest of us. Today, of course, we’ve put the economy in a medically-induced coma. People who are trapped at home with cranky partners and children are… Read More

Don’t Count Your Chickens… A couple of weeks ago, we wrote about the great toilet paper shortage of 2020. It gave us a great opportunity to indulge in the sort of lowbrow humor that made MAD magazine such a hit with 10-year-old boys. The problem turns out to be simple. Toilet paper makers produce two… Read More

  Our calendar is full of “Hallmark holidays”: meaningless commemorations and celebrations, usually created by marketers and publicists. Just this month, there’s National Talk Like Shakespeare Day, National Hug a Plumber Day, and National Wear Pajamas to Work Day. (That last one may not feel like a celebration right now). Food fans have National Burrito… Read More