Last Friday, Lakshmi Ganapathi’s son turned 5, and finally became eligible for his first Pfizer COVID shot. Ganapathi’s family had been anticipating that moment for more than a year, yet as of late, she can’t help but feel the slightest bit deflated. At first, the COVID vaccines’ trickle down the age brackets felt worth the wait because the shots were doing such a stellar job at blocking symptoms.

For many Filipino Americans, SPAM isn’t just a beloved ingredient in a popular breakfast dish: It is a marker of Filipino identity. But after months of reporting on the canned meat and its cultural meaning, Gabrielle Berbey, an associate producer for The Experiment podcast, came to realize that SPAM’s history was far more complex than she’d originally thought. “SPAM, in my family, had this almost lore-like quality about it,” Berbey says.

Russia has invaded a country on NATO’s borders, its leader has repeatedly invoked the specter of nuclear war, and its military is mercilessly bombing civilian targets. China, meanwhile, is ramping up its defense spending, has overtaken the United States in some important areas of defense technology, and just signed a treaty of “friendship” with Russia. Elsewhere, North Korea is testing missiles that can reach the U.S.

Updated at 5:45 p.m. ET on March 29, 2022.At noon on January 6, 2021, then-President Donald Trump spoke to supporters at a rally near the White House. Journalists often quote his incendiary language from the speech: “Fight like hell”; “We will not take it anymore.” But Trump also laid out a precise plan of action for the crowd:
If Mike Pence does the right thing, we win the election. All he has to do, all this is, this is from the No.

It is easy to view the ground as stable, as fixed, as immovable, even when deep down we know that it’s not. Sometimes the earth seems to shudder, as with an earthquake, and sometimes it pops, as with a volcanic eruption. Other times the earth slips, bits of dirt, handfuls of pebbles, beads of water combining and shifting until they coalesce into a cascade that blocks roads, shears homes from their foundations, and claims precious lives.