Word of Mouth

Mollie Katzen is a legend in my kitchen. The Moosewood Cookbook and the Enchanted Broccoli Forest were the first cookbooks I owned. Their hand drawn illustrations and folksy writing guided me through Moussaka and Swedish Cabbage Soup from college and on through adulthood.

A professor of mine once mentioned a study that said that over the course of Walter Cronkite's career, his vocabulary on year got smaller and smaller to accommodate a less verbose american public.

Film critics are in trouble. The century-old profession grew up alongside cinema, and the thoughtful reviews and theoretical writings from high-profile critics shaped how we understand the movies. But ...

Kids are notorious for getting into trouble. Whether it’s skipping class, picking fights, or slipping away in the family wagon for a midnight joy ride, mischievous behavior is a headache for most parents. What if breaking some of the rules was actually a sign of a child’s future success?

We've heard a number of stories about people who are out of work over the past year. Families on the edge of foreclosure, retirees who’ve lost their life savings, and people starting again from scratch.

When a surgeon steps into the operating room, what lies under a patient’s skin is a bit of a mystery. Medical modeling is helping tunlock the unknown with 3-D models based on a patient’s actual anatomy.

The restaurant business is a crap shoot. Three out of four restaurants close within three years. So, it might seem downright nuts to open a new restaurant during the worst recession since the great depression.

Every time we go to the store, we face a myriad of decisions. Single or two-ply? Earth-friendly or generic? Organic or eco-safe? It’s not easy to discern the most environmentally friendly products and companies from those in green-friendly packaging.

In the rural town of Greensboro, Alabama, a group of designers is hard at work, baking pies. Three full-time volunteers run an innovative experiment called PieLab: part design studio and part pie shop.

Here's an investment opportunity in a big growth industry: the prison business. Yes, there are rape scandals, murders, and riots, but many investors know a “buy” when they see it. Bryant Urstadt is a contributor to Harper's Magazine. ...

Thanksgiving is just over a week away. A day when many of the grateful wash down turkey and stuffing with a glass of wine, or celebrate visits from old friends over a cold beer, or two.

In the fall of 1965, Harvard professor Timothy Leary embarked on the Harvard Psilocybin Project in the hopes of finding new ways to reform convicted criminals, treat alcoholism, and help the population at large.

Every morning we wake up, brush our teeth, wash our hair, make a cup of coffee, and ingest thousands of chemicals. From the flame retardants on our bed sheets to the plastic tube surrounding our toothpaste, items we use each day are laden with chemicals. ...

Most video games are full of camouflaged men and buxom women flipping and kicking on the screen, carrying machine guns and leaving explosions of dust and blood in their wake. But if you reboot and discover the DIY video game movement, you might see something a bit more refined.