Do you remember the media frenzy over lab-grown meat? Why, several years later, has it not become a supermarket staple? Erin Somers investigates with wry humor as she throws herself, and her taste buds, into exploring why cultivated meat has yet to take over the world. You’ll devour this piece.

The two of them ate with forks and knives, passing the plate, sawing off thoughtful bites. Chewing slowly. Afterward they rendered their verdicts. “I would say it is somewhere on the spectrum between a Boca Burger and McDonald’s,” Schonwald told a reporter from NBC. “The absence of fat makes a big difference. It has the texture, which I was not expecting. It was like an animal-protein cake.” Rützler noted the burger’s blandness to a reporter from Science. “There is room for improvement here,” she said. At the end of the event, roughly $150,000 worth of burger remained uneaten. But none of this stopped Post from predicting that meat cultivated in a lab would become a consumer product within the decade.

David Kushner first met Anthony Curcio nearly two decades ago, to tell the story of how Curcio masterminded a $400,000 bank robbery and escaped on an inner tube. His latest on Curcio is every bit as outlandish: After his release from federal prison, Curcio waded deep into the trading card industry, dealing in top-rated Michael Jordan and Nolan Ryan cards and coming under scrutiny for suspected fraud. Curcio contends that the real villain is Collectors Holdings, a private company that owns Professional Sports Authenticator, which evaluates and assigns value to trading cards. A thrilling piece of reporting about authenticity—as an idea, a value, and maybe even a front.

Three months later, on the early morning of May 23, 2024, Curcio was walking through his neighborhood in Redmond. It was quiet — what he called “raccoon hours.” Then he heard cars coming up behind him. FBI agents stormed him, guns drawn; he counted around 20. “What the fuck is this about?” he said. “You’re here for sports cards?” He told them about the judgment he’d just won against Captain Ticket. They said they knew all about it.

In July 2025, a protester shot a cop outside an ICE detention facility in North Texas. The federal government alleged the incident was the result of an “antifa” terrorist plot involving a network of friends and acquaintances united in leftist beliefs. The case that ensued was chilling:

It didn’t matter that little evidence of a premeditated attack on law enforcement ever emerged. It didn’t matter that every defendant, except the actual shooter, was exonerated of the original attempted murder charges. It didn’t even matter that prosecutors struggled to show the defendants belonged to an “antifa cell.” In the end, they convinced the jury that Batten and most of her co-defendants were guilty of rioting, conspiracy, using explosives, and supporting terrorists.

In a Fort Worth courtroom in June, a right-wing judge sentenced Batten to 50 years behind bars—a stark warning to others who might challenge the president’s agenda.