By raising his children on folk and country music, my green-eyed father created a sonic environment that exposed my brother, sister, and me to one of the most macabre, and American, categories of song...

As he leads me on a tour of Scarecrow Video, longtime buyer Mark Steiner spots former employee Xoe Amer in the new releases section and waves. Steiner, who started working at Scarecrow in 1992 and retired in September, has worked with Amer’s mom, witnessed Xoe grow up, and seen her work at Scarecrow’s erstwhile coffee […]

Among his many talents, the New York City mayor is a social media savant, with a flair for friendly, informative, approachable communications that pretty much single-handedly led him, in a matter of m...

Remember the rash of gross-out cooking videos from a few years ago? Unhinged recipes, usually featuring white women cheerily throwing chicken stock, ground beef, and nacho cheese sauce in a big vat or...

My “Specimen Ballot” for the 2026 General Election was delivered by the U.S.P.S. to me recently, from the Baltimore City Board of Elections. Homework time for the scheduled Nov. 3 elections. Open t…

A woman found the agent asleep on her lawn early Friday, and her 72-year-old father shot the agent after he assaulted her, the police said.

“I could say the stupidest things, and you’d clap. ‘Oh, I love you so — it’s true,” the president told a crowd in Tennessee.

Donald Trump’s promised invasion or takeover or purchase of Greenland—which would have portended the end of NATO—appears to be off the table for now, the result of a united front of opposition present...

As the head of the International Committee of the Red Cross, Mirjana Spoljaric goes to both sides of conflicts. She’s worried that our warring world is spiraling out of control.

a fiery writer-owned cooperative

New fiction from Kate Wagner; Brian Hioe on the implications of certain snack foods

Indignity Vol. 6, No. 77

In 2015, the author and musician Ishmael Reed became incensed by the increasing success of the new smash hit, Hamilton, which featured predominantly Black and Latino performers playing the Founding Fa...

Three years into a genocide

PDF viewer and free download for Chicago Reader's print issue of October 2026 (Volume 56, Number 1). The Food Issue.