FROM THE PRICE AND PROMISE of a single egg to the life of the chicken who laid it, here are eight stories that reflect upon the world’s most popular bird.

FOOD IS A NECESSITY for every living being, but where our food comes from is not considered often enough. With gratitude for the crops that feed us and the people who grow and harvest them, Orion ...

It’s easy to forget this step, but it’s a prerequisite. It’s letting the tears fall for how long you’ve been part of it all, ...

How do you future-proof the present? How can you contextualize a specific moment? These are the questions that keep bubbling up when I meet with Helene Larsson Pousette and Robert Duffley in June of ...

The Course Writing Rhizomatically Rhizomes are the runners that many plants and trees (like sassafras, elder, Solomon’s seal, ferns, and mayapples) send forth as they spread outward from a “mother” ...

AS THE WEATHER GETS WARMER each year, something unavoidable happens: the insects come back out. While some find the bugs ...

ONE WEEK IN HEAVEN THE CHINESE CHARACTER for silkworm (蚕) is composed of the symbol for sky (天) and the symbol for worm (虫). They are heavenly worms. China’s Sichuan Province, a damp, landlocked ...

PRIVATE CARS WERE RELATIVELY SCARCE in 1919 and horse-drawn conveyances were still common. In residential districts, electric streetlights had not yet replaced many of the old gaslights. And within ...

IT WAS THROUGH THE GLASS SCREEN of my windshield that I first saw the people, residents of the city of Philadelphia, where I also live, who suffer from drug addictions so severe that they live, ...

I had always longed to meet an octopus. Now was my chance: senior aquarist Scott Dowd arranged an introduction. In a back room, he would open the top of Athena’s tank. If she consented, I could touch ...

PEOPLE HAVE BEEN eating mushrooms for at least twelve thousand years, according to the fungal micro-remains found in Paleolithic dental samples in a mountain cave in Eastern Spain. Yet the idea of ...

THE CHICKEN WAS UNWELL. She no longer ran to the summons of the leftovers pail to scratch at the compost heap with the other hens. Morning found her in a corner of the henhouse facing the wall, with ...