Prologue

Vauhini Vara lost her sister when she was in college.

Senior editor David Kestenbaum helps his kids set up an ant farm.

Producer Sean Cole has, unfortunately, experienced something known as “cumulative grief” this year.

There’s a machine lots of us encounter as a big impersonal, mechanical apparatus, that has a ghost in it.

Brian and Peg disagree over a very important thing.

Carmen Milito tells Ira the story of a date she went on as a teenager, and the bird her mom brought to the occasion.