In the ’90s, Microsoft created an annoying paperclip that it quickly retired. Its developers never imagined the virtual assistant would become a cultural icon.

He interrogates the chemistry of smash burgers and probes the elements of wok cooking. But outside J. Kenji López-Alt’s Seattle kitchen, one of America’s most influential home cooks gets a little more reactive. 

A southern resident’s violent capture off Whidbey Island was the original sin of a now-defunct local industry. Decades later, a Lummi-led effort to bring her home is on the verge of an improbable breakthrough. 

Fire took everything they owned. When Ijeoma Oluo and Gabriel Teodros rebuilt, they filled their new home with memories and meaning right from the start. 

An hour south of Seattle, JZ Knight channels a god-like warrior named Ramtha. To outsiders it can look like a cult, a religion, a 40-year-long fake. Clearly, something otherworldly has come to a sleepy corner of Thurston County.