
Indigenous chefs championing rise of Native food
By Hailey Bosek Medill Reports Editor’s note: Tribal affiliations, if any, are noted in parentheses after names. Hailey Bosek · Sounds at the Powwow

Historically Republican Vietnamese American community shifting left, according to AAPI Data
By Layna Hong Medill Reports Mai Le, 29, had been in the U.S. for less than a year when Donald Trump was elected for his

Meet the adults who collect American Girl dolls: Ahead of brand’s 40th anniversary, fans share experience with beloved dolls
By Alivia Giles Medill Reports This year, when American Girl celebrates its 40th anniversary, hundreds of thousands of children and adult women will raise a

Crafting as resistance: How 4 Indigenous artists across Chicago use crafting as a tool to resist cultural erasure and sustain culture
By Jenna Mayzouni Medill Reports The sound of the Huehuetl drum thuds gently against the ground as Sergio places it down on the cement playground in Harrison Park, in

This brandy bottles 500 years of Bolivian history: A growing number of trendy Chicago bars are pouring Singani, the spirit director Steven Soderbergh brought to the U.S.
By Paulina Marinkovic Camacho Medill Reports Down an alleyway on Palmer Street, past a nondescript door and centuries-old brick façade, a 500-year-old type of brandy,

Robbins: A small Chicago suburb with a big part in Black history
By Autumn Coleman Medill Reports In 2019, Dawn Colquitt-Anderson walked into her small hometown’s history museum with her 8- and 9-year-old nieces in tow. She

Not their first rodeo: New generation of Black cowboys in Chicagoland lasso cattle for Midwest crowds
Horse hooves knocked chunks of dirt over the steel bars of the arena. Stallions charged 20 mph after a loose steer. Within seconds, a cowboy

LISTEN: Inside a viral facelift: The Guadalajara plastic surgery journey
By Emma Urdangen, Kaitlyn Luckoff and Payton Turkeltaub Medill Reports Americans are traveling to Guadalajara, Mexico, for facelifts that cost a fraction of U.S. prices

The Bumble burnout: As dating app enthusiasm dims, industry scrambles to prove digital matching can still deliver meaningful connections
By Emma Urdangen Medill Reports Walking out of a Washington, D.C., dive bar after her fifth terrible app-date of the month, 23-year-old Carly HoganBruen knew

Asian supermarkets in Chicago serve as community hubs. Now they’re bracing for effects of tariffs.
By Alyssa Rola Medill Reports Every time she gets sick, Wanmin Zhang habitually looks for her personal cure: her parents’ home-cooked Chinese meals. The 28-year-old

Build-A-Bear’s 10-year turnaround: How the company quietly became one of the world’s top specialty retailers
By Payton Turkeltaub Medill Reports From the day the first Build-A-Bear Workshop store opened in the Saint Louis Galleria Mall in 1997 to a line

PHOTOS: ‘More than a sport’: Irish Gaelic games grow, build community in Chicago
By Tom O’Connor Medill Reports Far from Ireland, Gaelic games are thriving in Chicago even as the number of U.S. residents born in Ireland fell