CATEGORIES

VIRGINIA PASTORAL

IN MIDDLEBURG, THE COMMONWEALTH'S MOST STORIED SMALL TOWN, OCTOBER WELCOMES A HOST OF TREASURED TRADITIONS

Housemates JULIA FOX and RICHIE SHAZAM on MOVING IN together, the beauty of CHOSEN FAMILIES, and what it means to MAKE A HOME

In January 2023, Julia Fox posted a tour of the Manhattan apartment she was living in with her young son, Valentino, to TikTok, and it immediately went viral.

All WRAPPED Up

What's SO MAGICAL about a MAX MARA COAT? Why the ITALIAN label's enviable OUTERWEAR has become a bona fide OBSESSION.

IN GOOD COMPANY

BIRDS OF A FEATHER MAY FLOCK TOGETHER, but what about other collectives of critters-and what do you call them when they do?

Sparrow Look-Alikes

Distinct sounds help separate these similar species

ON THE MOVE

Birds approach the challenges of migration in surprising ways. Learn about how they walk, swim or take the scenic route during their travels.

Embracing the Darkness

From black plants to moody decor, Gothic garden elements can offer a unique outlet to express your dark side

Autumn Wonders

Fall colors offer befitting backdrops for these stunning reader photos

Red-Hot Plants

Scarlet-hued berries add a pop of color to any garden

YOUR OWN Perfect Prairie

Learn how to cultivate an oasis of grassland flora in your backyard

Maple Mania - Amazing facts about this fall foliage mainstay

Amazing facts about this fall foliage mainstay

Sense or Nonsense? - Why some birds can taste and smell - but others can't

Does a porcelain berry taste like a blueberry to a gray catbird? Does a block of lard smell like frying bacon to a northern flicker? The short answer is no. While some avian species do have a well-adapted sense of taste or smell, they can't distinguish between flavors and odors the way humans can. They're not picking up every ingredient in the suet you put out, says José Ramírez-Garofalo, an ornithology researcher at Rutgers University in New Jersey and the director of Freshkills Biological Station in Staten Island, New York.

Food-Focused and Fierce - Meet Canada jays and learn why they eat almost anything they can find

Even if you haven't heard of Canada jays, you've heard of their relatives. Members of the corvid family, they belong to the same group as American crows, blackbilled magpies, and jays including blue, Steller's and scrub. "Unlike many of the other jays, a Canada jay doesn't have a crest of any kind; it just has a rounded head," says Dale Gentry, director of conservation for Audubon Upper Mississippi River.In 2018, the Canada jay's name was changed from gray jay, but Dale thinks the former adjective was fitting. "Most of its body is shades of gray with some white," he says. "There are different subspecies that have different physical traits, but most of them have some lighter coloring on their foreheads, upper breasts and throats, each with a darker streak that starts at each eye and goes back."

THE GE NERAL

How ELIZABETH PRELOGAR, America's low-key, high-powered solicitor general, is holding the Supreme Court's feet to the fire

BAD FAITH

From exiled actors to academics, influencers to intellectuals, VF gets under the hood of the Catholic right's celebrity conversion industrial complex

STRANGER Things

The Democrats' short hot summer of \"weird\"

FUNNY BUSINESS

NEARLY 50 YEARS AGO, SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE LAUNCHED A REVOLUTION THAT CHANGED COMEDY, TELEVISION, AND THE MOVIES. NOW DIRECTOR JASON REITMAN HAS RE-CREATED THE CHAOTIC HOURS BEFORE SNL'S FIRST EPISODE. LIVE FROM NEW YORK, IT'S 1975!

A House Divided

The Mellon dynasty has long been known for its old money refinement and discretion. But when TIM MELLON became Donald Trump's biggest donor many members of the family were mystified-and not afraid to talk about it

THE BILLIONAIRE'S SECRET

THE GERMAN INDUSTRIALIST KLAUSMICHAEL KUEHNE, BORN IN 1937, IS ONE OF THE RICHEST PEOPLE IN THE WORLD, WITH MORE MONEY THAN KEN GRIFFIN, OR MACKENZIE SCOTT, OR FRANÇOIS PINAULT. WHERE DID HIS FAMILY FORTUNE COME FROM? THE NAZIS KNOW

Give and Let Give -Melinda French Gates is speaking out for the rights of women and girls, embracing her role as godmother to her fellow philanthropists, and getting political, even when it's a little uncomfortable.

Melinda French Gates is speaking out for the rights of women and girls, embracing her role as godmother to her fellow philanthropists, and getting political, even when it's a little uncomfortable.

Boys and Their Toys - Inside the hypermacho, Bible-thumping alt-tech universe trying to take on Silicon Valley-from El Segundo

For more than two years, in the small, unassuming beach town of El Segundo, California, dozens of young men have gathered with a singular mission: to save America. They will do this, they say, by building the next generation of great tech companies. They call what they are building real shit—not like what the software engineers make up north, writing code on shiny MacBooks. Instead, these men have a taste for the tangible: They spend their workdays toiling in labs and manufacturing lines, their nights sleeping on couches and bunk beds. Some are making drones to try to control the weather. Others are building nuclear reactors and military weaponry designed to fight Russia and China.

Books- Rachel Kushner's Surprising Swerve - She and her narrators have always relied on swagger-but not this time.

Sometimes I am boggled by the gallery of souls I've known. By the lore. The wild history, unsung, Rachel Kushner writes in The Hard Crowd, her 2021 essay collection. People crowd in and talk to me in dreams. People who died or disappeared or whose connection to my own life makes no logical sense, but exists as strong as ever, in a past that seeps and stains instead of fades. As a girl in San Francisco's Sunset District, Kushner ran with a group whom she has described as ratty delinquents-kids who fought, who set fires, who got high too young and too often, who in some cases wound up incarcerated or addicted or dead. At 16, she headed to UC Berkeley for college, but returned to the city after graduating working at bars and immersing herself in the motorcycle scene. Almost immersing herself, anyway. Even when she was a 14-year-old sampling strangers' drugs at rock concerts, some piece of Kushner was an observer as well as a participant, a student of unsung histories.

The Football Bro - Pat McAfee brings a casual new style to ESPN.

If, on a cool weekend morning in autumn, you happen to be watching “College GameDay,” on ESPN, don’t worry about figuring out which of the broadcasters behind the improbably long desk is Pat McAfee. He’s the one with the roast-pork tan, his hair cut high and tight, likely tieless among his more businesslike colleagues. The rest of the onair crew—Lee Corso, Rece Davis, Kirk Herbstreit, Desmond Howard, and, newly, the former University of Alabama coach Nick Saban—tend to look and dress and talk like participants in an old-school Republican-primary debate. McAfee, though, favors windowpane checks on his jackets and a slip of chest poking out from behind his two or three open buttons. If the others are politicians, he’s the cool-coded megachurch pastor who sometimes acts as their spiritual adviser.

HUGO HAMILTON AUTOBAHN

On the Autobahn outside Frankfurt. November. The fields were covered in a thin sheet of snow.

WITH THE MOSTEST

The very rich hours of Pamela Harriman.

EYES WIDE SHUT

How Monet shared a private world.

SORRY I'M NOT YOUR CLOWN TODAY

Bowen Yang's trip to Oz, by way of conversion therapy and S..N.L.”

JOY RIDE

Grant Petersen wants to preserve the craft, and delight, of cycling.

LET'S HAVE A LONG TALK ABOUT OUR RELATIONSHIP JUST BEFORE BED!

Babe, are you nodding off? I know we’re both exhausted after a long day, a dinner party at which you made a three-word comment that left me feeling like you don’t know me at all, and the subsequent ninety-minute fight that culminated in a tentative truce.

TRY IT ON

How Law Roach reimagined red-carpet style.