KHOMUTYNSI, Ukraine — Valery Kravchuk, a seasoned mushroom hunter, pushed aside some dead leaves to reveal his prize: a beautiful blusher, so called because it turns pink when pinched. “Mushrooms are like magnets for me,” he said. “I feel them.” This fall, Ukrainians have been driving their cars down country roads, getting out and walking…
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People with Covid-19, the illness caused by the coronavirus, are most infectious about two days before symptoms begin and for five days afterward, according to a new analysis of previous research. A few patients who are extremely ill or have impaired immune systems may expel — or “shed” — the virus for as long as…
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In 2015, the chairman and controlling shareholder of the luxury goods group Richemont, Johann Rupert, took to the stage at an industry conference in Monte Carlo and issued a rallying cry to some of his biggest rivals. “I invited the other big groups to create a singular, dominant neutral platform for the luxury goods industry…
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Imitation is the best kind of flattery. All creative people, whether they be writers, artists, dancers, singers or actors, know that. Think about the performers on a TV show like “The Voice,” who sometimes perform the song of a judge they are targeting. Sometimes, it is imitation that gets them on the team of their…
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In the spring, just before lockdown hit North Carolina, Steve Bahnaman met some friends at a Cider Brewery, just outside Raleigh, for an evening of bar trivia. His team, Covid Operations (this was back before Covid-19 puns were “super tired,” he explained), won the competition that night. The prize: $40 in bar cash. “Which I’m…
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As any parent overseeing homeschool knows: Zoom P.E. is hardly a hard-driving Peloton class. It’s more like your kid lying on the floor of the living room doing halfhearted leg-lifts by the light of her laptop. Many students, particularly tweens and teens, are not moving their bodies as much as they are supposed to be…
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The Indigenous people of the land now called North America are often only brought up in the past tense in primary school classrooms. The fact is they are a growing population, an increasing demographic in the country and in Congress, yet most Americans are woefully uninformed about their histories and present-day struggles. Podcasts can help…
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Until the coronavirus pandemic, their meetings took place quietly, every day, discreet gatherings in the basements of churches, a spare room at the YMCA, the back of a cafe. But members of Alcoholics Anonymous and other groups of recovering substance abusers found the doors quickly shut this spring, to prevent the spread of Covid-19. What…
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Since the beginning of the pandemic, Paul Fredette and Karen Karper Fredette have made some changes to their lives: Ms. Fredette stopped attending her local exercise class, and the couple whittled their interactions with their neighbors down to waves. But in many ways, seclusion comes naturally to them. From a house they call Still Wood,…
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In the midst of the pandemic, diamonds (at least newly mined ones) may have lost their luster. But in the studio of his New York apartment, John Hatleberg is betting it will soon be back. For months, he has been at work hunched over a gem-faceting machine, where he is cutting and polishing a synthetic…
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