Category Archives: Features

‘It’s the Life of the Mind’: How Books Bind Princeton Together

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By Kim Hong

Inside the glass doors and beyond the pyramid of books, life-sized yellow spoons with tiny handles hang upside down from the ceiling. College and high school students alike roam the book tables beneath the suspended utensils. But at Labyrinth Books on Nassau Street, readers of all ages can be spotted too. “The little kids love the spoons hanging from the ceiling,” said general manager Virginia Harabin. “You see a lot of little kids look up and go, ‘Woah.’”

The spoons aren’t the only way Harabin and her staff at Labyrinth Books weave together a community as strong as a Chinese finger trap. “It’s a matter of keeping up with kids,” Harabin said. “It was the kids who made us have a manga section.”

A must-go for Princeton University students, the indie bookstore has become more than just a family business. Orange and black notebooks are available on discount to Princeton students on a shelf in the lower level, where the store used to sell textbooks as well. 

Since the rise of PDFs, the area has shifted its focus to serving as an event space for writers, published or not. “The bookstore is kind of like a gateway and a mediator between the university and the town,” said Harabin, motioning from one side to another.

Princeton’s book spaces aren’t just utilized by university students, though. The Princeton Public Library (PPL) serves the diverse town and its many tourists. The library’s accessibility is a point of pride. “I think we have nine world languages represented at the moment physically in terms of books for adults and for children,” said Nora Walsh, PPL’s Adult Services Librarian. 

In the aftermath of Covid and amidst the increasingly pervasive use of technology in society, both Labyrinth Books and PPL have taken risks to expand or further invest in their staff and facilities instead of shying away. As a result, both spaces have strengthened how they serve the town’s diverse community. 

“There was a mother and two small children. One was three or four, and one was a baby that should have been in the walker, ” said RoMa Johnson, an author and volunteer writing group leader at PPL. “But the mother was carrying the baby, and the walker was filled with books!” 

Johnson’s voice rose as she remembered the quirkiness of the sight. “I mean, literally, this high,” RoMa said, laughing and raising her hand a foot or two above the table. She hosts several writer’s workshops in-person and online at PPL, open to anyone who can make it. “There was a man from Iran who was writing stories about his childhood,” she said, her tone filled with wonder and pride. “In the same group, I had a woman from Poland and another woman from China.” 

Labyrinth Books’ effort to remain integrated with the Princeton community shows in the intentional way they’ve taken care of their staff and store design. “We even think about the physical location, to make sure the YA section is distinct and apart a little bit, enough from the kid section,” Harabin said. “Because kids and young adults are not the same, and they don’t want to be treated the same.” 

After Covid, Labyrinth continued to close doors at 6 PM instead of returning to its pre-pandemic evening hours, said Harabin. As someone who has always wanted to work in a bookstore, she makes sure that Labyrinth’s staff want to be there. 

“There are certain things that you do for your staff, maybe that aren’t even the best thing for business, but we have to balance those things,” Harabin said. “There’s no doubt that people who come to the store, either for one visit or who come every day, they get to know the staff. It’s like your bartender, your barista.”

It’s true. Labyrinth’s staff can be seen chatting with visitors about book recommendations, Princeton, or anything else, either between shelves or at the check-out desk, where local artists promote their work on stickers and postcards. 

Local writers also get a chance to be spotlighted to the Princeton community. “We want to help them build an audience as they help us build ours,” said Alyssa Kopanyi, the events coordinator for Labyrinth Books. 

The tightly-woven relationship between Labyrinth and its patrons have protected the bookstore, allowing its staff to follow their own path, despite what others may say. “We had Mohammed Al-Kurd, who’s a young Palestinian journalist and writer. We had a huge packed room for that,” Harabin said. “There were some people who told us that we shouldn’t have an event like that. They objected on political grounds.”

However, Harabin and Kopanyi’s determination to pour their Labyrinth hearts into Princeton’s ever-shifting cup has only made their community all the more robust, allowing the bookstore and its staff to sustain themselves regardless of how much the community around the town’s book spaces has changed. 

As Harabin says: “Nothing stays the same. We don’t stay the same. But it stays interesting because it’s books and it’s people and it’s the life of the mind.”

Inside Princeton’s Literary Living Room

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By Thien Nguyen

Before they walk across the stage, some Princeton University graduates make one final pit stop: Labyrinth Books. They wander the familiar shelves and say goodbye to the faces of the employees. “A lot of times students, when they’re graduating, will come in to say goodbye,” said Virginia Harabin, the bookstore’s general manager. “Or they’ll come back and say, ‘I always came here. I always came here to hang out in the stacks.’”

For those students, this small independent bookstore on Nassau Street was more than just a place to purchase assigned books for the syllabus. “‘This was my refuge,’” Harabin recounted students saying. “This was my place where I could get away.”

Beyond the university, Princeton is home to a rich literary community. Young children arrive for story time, high school and college students fill tables after class, working adults open their laptops, and retirees finally begin the stories they have spent years imagining. Across their various workshops and book tours — which are free and open for all to attend — Princeton Public Library and Labyrinth Books offer spaces to connect. Together, these local institutions transform Princeton’s “literary prestige” into something people can encounter daily. 

As Nora Walsh, the Adult Services Librarian at Princeton Public Library, described, “one of our taglines has been that we are the community’s living room.” Many people drop by on weekdays, using the second floor as a place to work and study. On the first floor, young children can be found running around in the play space. Movies, video games, magazines, CDs, and other physical media are available for rent on shelves. The library also offers Tonieboxes for young children to play with, which are often checked out.

The library is offered as a space beyond just checking out and retrieving books. It’s a space that meets people where they are. RoMa Johnson has been leading writing groups like the Writers Room critique group for ten years. It offers community and feedback for many writers, from young adults over the age of 18 to those up into their 80s. The group is also diverse in its participants. ”There was a woman recently here from China who didn’t speak much English. She wrote in Chinese and then had it translated for others to read,” said Johnson. “The other day, we had a drop-in meeting. There was a man from Iran who was writing stories about his childhood.”

Labyrinth Books came to Princeton in 2007 as a store primarily to sell coursebooks for Princeton students. “Our relationship with the students is foundational for us,” said Harabin. “They needed somebody. So we came to serve students and to serve the university and the faculty there.”

Despite no longer offering the required course materials for students, Labyrinth Books remains a foundational center for this local community. Alyssa Kopanyi, the bookstore’s events coordinator, ensures that “the bookstore is a gateway and a mediator between the university and the town.”

The events hosted by the bookstore take place in the basement, with a maximum capacity of 225. All the events are conversations between an author and an interviewer. During many events, Kopanyi recalled, “I looked out, and everyone had a notebook. This is a room exclusively for writers, and that was really wonderful.” After these events, people would line up to get their copies signed and get advice from the author about their own manuscripts. 

Labyrinth also makes an effort to use their platform to promote local authors. Events like the Writers on Writing Series focus primarily on advertising books by local authors. The bookstore partners with other prominent authors to co-sponsor events, bridging the gap by creating a mentorship between local authors and popular authors. 

The store and library also tailor themselves to a young audience. They frequently come in and request manga, romance, and science fiction offerings. As Harabin described, “I learn so much from our customers every day, all the time. We try to offer lots of things. But we also respond back to things that they’re asking for.”

Both Labyrinth and the Princeton Public Library build Princeton’s literary culture through their daily encounters with scholars, residents, young readers, booksellers, aspiring writers, or even just a curious audience. “This is a place for lifelong learners in so many ways, right?” says Harabin. “It’s all a little bit ineffable, but it’s also just very much part of the fabric of what we’re doing.”

Princeton Reporters Keep Local Journalism Alive

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By Shane Mukasa

From Benjamin Franklin and Samuel Kelmer’s 18th century transformation of the Pennsylvania Gazette to the hard-hitting journalism that covers the milestones and phenomena of our lives today, reporting has become a means for communities to understand the world around them. Whether it’s the talk of the town or a little league game, there’s something special about a local story that shows the humanity in all of us.

Recent years have seen the unfortunate and uncertain side effects of waning local journalism. In 2025, only 21% of Americans said that they follow local news very closely and only 8% said that they preferred getting their news from a local paper. The Star-Ledger, once a bustling newspaper based in Newark, NJ, closed its print operations in 2025. According to a Rutgers University-New Brunswick report, New Jersey lost more than 100 local media outlets statewide between 2020 and 2025. Does this spell the end of local journalism; outclassed by its cooler, hipper social media site counterparts? 

“Everything you do, especially in this business is important.” Says Rich Rein, a longtime New Jersey journalist. Rein’s career, which spans six decades, began in 1965. As a student writer for The Daily Princeton, Rein oversaw coverage of major American historical moments like the Civil Rights Movement and the Vietnam War. In 1984 he founded U.S. 1, a local business and entertainment journal that he ran for over three decades before stepping down in 2019. Today Rein edits TAPinto Princeton, a digital-only publication that covers the politics, arts, and life in the town of Princeton. 

Rein refers to the process of assembling stories for TAPinto Princeton as “putting together a smorgasbord.” To Rein, the story of a cat stuck in a tree, and the team of fifth graders who created a “human chain” to rescue the cat, demonstrates everything right about local media. Stories like this, written by local reporters, don’t just highlight the tribulations of a town, but also the niches that make a town unique. 

“We really do a service to the community,” says Anne Levin, a longtime local reporter who writes for Town Topics and Princeton Magazine. Publications like Town Topics, and others like it, operate at smaller numbers than in their glory day. Town Topics is a weekly, print-only newspaper that depends on the work of experienced journalists. In the past, the paper’s younger interns have moved on after two years. “As they should,” Levin said. The industry that Levin joined six decades ago is changing. The Washington Post recently laid off one-third of its workforce and scaled back its local news reporting. These developments reflect a shift in priorities for media outlets looking to stay alive in an increasingly competitive media landscape.

These changes threaten an institution historically dedicated to covering communities and defending the truth. How can local media survive and thrive in this environment? This is a question that Ayinde Merill, a program officer for the New Jersey Civic Information Consortium, is trying to answer. The Consortium works to support and sustain local reporting by funding local publications and projects that support small newsrooms, as well as programs that train students and community members to become storytellers and newsroom reporters. A vast majority of the Consortium’s grantees are “small, community-led newsrooms,” Marill said. His work is keeping journalism alive through the work of people who don’t just believe in themselves, but who believe that the purpose of local media is to uplift perspectives from the communities it serves.  

The state of journalism today is not clear. The purpose of telling stories isn’t changing, but the way that we tell them is. Social media and AI are shaping the way we share and consume information, but within a changing world, four New Jerseyans are finding ways to keep journalism alive. When Rein opens a blank document to write a story, he remembers something that a mentor once told him: “This could be the greatest thing I’ve ever written in my life.” 

In Princeton, Local Newspapers Live On

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By Stella Vrapi

The timeless thump of a newspaper hits the ground, crinkling slightly as the paper repulses from the interaction, inexorably asserting its presence. Hundreds more imitate this process in small towns across the country, piling up on the lawns of houses, cascading as the illumination of knowledge at the hands of print spreads. That same sound has reverberated for decades as print news outlets have maintained themselves within their local communities.

One of these local print publications, Town Topics, is based in Princeton, New Jersey. The paper has published weekly community news stories since 1946. Localized print journalism plays a large part in informing readers about stories pertaining to their community. “I know there are six members of council and there’s the mayor,” said Anne Levin, a staff writer at Town Topics. “I know the personalities of each one of them. I know their quirks, I know what they’re going to talk about.” 

Town Topics is the most prominent independent print newspaper in Princeton. It used to compete for readership with the Princeton Packet, which was founded in 1786. Generations of New Jersey families have all experienced the timeless thump upon their unchanging lawns, worn with the tender experiences of each local community. Yet, even the Princeton Packet, one of New Jersey’s oldest newspapers, halted its local commercial printing in late 2015.

Presently, the familiar thump has manifested as a ding ding ding! Many local print newspapers have turned digital amidst the technological advances of the 21st century. Rich Rein, a lifelong journalist and Princeton resident, is deeply ingrained within the local community. Five years ago, he founded an all-digital newspaper, TAPinto Princeton, which publishes stories daily. “One of the things I’m trying to do with TAPinto Princeton is to turn it into a community-owned publication, so that it is literally owned by a group of us in the community,” Rein said. 

Regardless of the medium, local journalism serves to uplift the truths that wouldn’t be covered by larger, general outlets, creating a collective sense of agency. As Rein points out, despite print and digital publications often being compared within local journalism, the two work in unison to build a united, driven community.

Today, local news coverage is threatened by a myriad of challenges. One is accessibility. Ayinde Merrill is a grassroots community organizer who works as a Program Officer for the New Jersey Civic Information Consortium, a grant-making organization which funds community and news organizations. “If there’s a news desert somewhere in New Jersey, I’ll go to that place, I’ll figure out who’s there, who’s not there, how people get their information, what information is missing, and find ways to start news projects there,” Merrill said. 

Many communities in New Jersey, though, lack the presence of local journalistic outlets entirely. Salem City in South Jersey, home to immigrants and a large Black population, is a news desert. “They aren’t the wealthiest people in the world, but they still deserve local news to figure out what’s happening in their community,” said Merrill. The historical marginalization of communities of color has resulted in distrust and a lack of accountability between journalistic outlets and the people they serve.

In addition to inaccessibility, local journalism is struggling under severe funding constraints. According to Merrill, the Consortium’s budget was cut by the state for fiscal year 2027 until lawmakers restored $1 million in funding after community leaders lobbied. Dwindling print publications that fail to sustain themselves are bought out by larger companies or shuttered for good. This is what happened to The Trenton Times, where Levin previously worked. 

“There’s less interaction between the institution, the municipal institution, the civic institution, and the civic newspaper,” said Rein. Surviving small publications are often understaffed, Town Topics and TAPinto Princeton included. At TAPinto Princeton, Rain is the only full-time staff member alongside “a cadre of about five or six freelance writers.” 

Even with staffing and funding cuts, local publications have remained optimistic and dedicated to their craft, continuing a legacy of local representation led by the people. “I feel like we really do a service to the community, and that’s a nice thing to feel,” said Levin. 

Rein feels similarly. “Others of us, including myself, work for nothing, and it’s a bizarre kind of place you get to in life where you don’t want to be paid,” he said. Rein, like Levin, is motivated solely by the love for his community, attesting to the strength of these local publications to persist in the face of adversity.

In spite of these challenges, local newspapers continue to thump and ding, and will well into the future. In the words of Rich Rein, “Amazingly, we all do die, but other people go on.”

The Princeton Lab That Can Read Your Mind

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By Kaden Paz Leyva

The Princeton Social Neuroscience lab is tucked into the basement of the Peretsman Scully Hall.

Inside, the lab has enough space for two people to be scanned at the same time as they talk, argue and laugh about their moments together. On the other side of the room with a computer system, a researcher charts their brain activity over time, searching for the moments when the two minds move together and the moments when they become disconnected.

The intensity of this work is deserving of the lab’s unofficial motto: “Your brain is on my mind.”

The lab studies and specializes in how people understand their own minds and that of others. Their research includes guessing what a friend is thinking and the tension one feels with a stranger. But the researchers themselves say that the lab is not only trying to answer the neurosociological questions of the mind. It’s also trying to make their research reach beyond academia, in language and in papers that people beyond the field may be interested to read. This makes the lab one-of-a-kind. 

The goal of their distinctive work, hyperscanning, lies at the center of the lab. It works by placing two people in the MRI machine simultaneously. There, these two people have a conversation and talk about issues in their relationship. Meanwhile, their brains are being measured mid-conversation. Princeton’s building layout allows researchers to run both MRIs simultaneously.

Graduate student Yeaju Kim said the hyperscanning is what drew her to work on the lab in the first place. “I was interested in human social interaction because I thought that the most human thing we could do was talk to each other,” said Kim. “We have our own language and I think that’s a really unique characteristic of our lives.” Watching two people’s brain’s activity align, she said, reveals things much deeper than physical mimicry. It is the moment of synchronization that goes beyond simply moving or speaking the same way. According to Kim, the lab examines “the way to understand the way you think and how others think.”

The research divides the brain scans into roughly 8,000 tiny 3D units called voxels and compares them across two people to see where brain activity overlaps. When researchers overlap the two scans on a 3D scan, it creates zones using different shades of red. Areas of the brain that appear darker means that the two people share similar patterns in their brains. That’s usually seen more between friends than between strangers. 

The process is slow and exacting. Researchers need around 100 hours of running code with the data before beginning to analyze it. Since the lab’s coding platform is prone to breaking down, those in the lab have to learn code from scratch to be able to continue with analysis. 

Through having to monitor simultaneous MRIs, keeping participants still through the scan and making participants comfortable even though they can not see each other’s faces, it’s an intricate process. Kim still said watching the data come together makes the work rewarding. This gives her a rare and thorough window into how people connect. 

Lab manager Amy Nguyen came to the lab with experience largely in developmental and clinical psychology. Nguyen’s outside perspective has shaped how she will communicate and publish the lab’s findings in a language that will be understandable both to people who aren’t already a genius in the field and to those who are an expert.

Researchers in the lab are careful to note that basic science like this isn’t exactly designed to produce immediate applications in the real world. But Nguyen said the couple’s research could eventually help bring different approaches to relationships.

The willingness to explain and look into a more iterative side of research alongside the big findings of a lab is part of what researchers say sets the lab apart. As Nguyen put it, most people seem to picture a wet lab for dissection when they think of neuroscience, not realizing how much of the work is coding, math and careful design.

As the lab continues to study how two minds can be studied at once, the researchers say the bigger goal hasn’t changed: understanding not just how people think but how they think about each other, and making sure that understanding doesn’t stay locked inside a lab.

Small Businesses Hold Princeton’s Hearts

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By Ximena Garcia

A temple-like wooden structure decorated with fairy lights hangs over neatly placed, color-coded goods: candles, books, bowls and plates. A white cat sits in the center, greeting each customer with a cheeky smile beneath a sign that reads: MIYA TABLE & HOME.

“It’s so pretty,” said Heidi Moon, the owner of Miya Table & Home, pointing out the structure. “We thought that it looked very much like a temple, and the Chinese character for Miya actually means shrine or temple.”

Miya Table & Home is a local business in Princeton, New Jersey, selling Japanese tableware and gifts. After introducing their goods to Princeton with a pop-up shop, Miya Table & Home opened a permanent store in April 2018. Through their struggles, the store remained consistent with what made Princeton fall in love with them in the first place: their authenticity. 

95% of Miya Table & Home’s products are imported from Japan. With the help of an agent, they select the items best catered to their tastes. It is crucial for them to select products based on what they genuinely enjoy instead of what is popular in Japan.   

“I think over the years we’ve kind of developed a certain eye for it and we have a certain aesthetic and we never get anything we don’t like,” Moon said. “We don’t get pressured into getting something that we don’t like just because somebody says it does well.” 

This philosophy extends to other businesses in Princeton. French restaurant Kristine’s prioritizes granting their clients a true taste of French dining. Founding chef Nicolas Démurgé upholds this mission by ensuring that every aspect of the restaurant, especially the menu, adds to the culinary experience. 

“When you open a French restaurant abroad, you know if you have a burger on your menu, you are going to sell more burgers than classic Frenchies. You don’t want to go too much into this direction because at one point you are going to lose your identity,” he said. “At one point, I took off, for example, the burger on the menu because I was selling it way too much. That’s not the experience we want. You can get a burger everywhere.” 

Named after Démurgé’s daughter and mother, Kristine’s opened in November 2019, offering an assortment of French-influenced dishes such as jambalaya. At Kristine’s, prepping these dishes requires the chefs to look beyond the seasonings and craft an impactful moment for the client. 

“Food, it’s about culture more than about skills. It’s about memories. You have awesome dishes from your grandmother, your mom, and your friends. It’s a part of yourself because it’s some strong memories of flavors. And you can remember some flavor forever. It’s so impressive,” said Démurgé. 

JaZams, a toy and book store in Princeton, values nostalgia, too. Customers are greeted by a wall of endless LEGO sets, the fluffy stuffed animals and vibrant assortment of toys. Co-owner Joanne Farrugia smiles wide as she explains the process that goes into choosing the toys they sell. Analogous to Miya Table & Home, Farrugia states that they are intentional with each toy and book they place on their shelves. Their care has continuously rewarded them by placing them ahead of consumer trends, allowing them to serve Princeton with a reliable stock for in-demand products. 

For example, when Sonny Angels gained popularity, other retailers struggled to carry them. This wasn’t the case for JaZams. 

“When it became really, really hot, we had all these great connections with our manufacturers, so that we were able to still carry it,” Farrugia said. “When a new store would come in and say ‘We want that because it’s hot and it’s selling,’ they would be like, ‘No, we don’t have enough.’ So in these cases, that really served us well.” 

Each of these businesses’ efforts to deliver quality goods and experiences to Princeton has undoubtedly won them many fans. The love is reciprocated through community collaboration and engagement. 

Miya Table & Home has hosted events with the Arts Council of Princeton, including a New Year’s social in which the community painted figures that held cultural significance. 

Kristine’s partners with non-profits. They currently have an upcoming event with The Blue Bears Special Meals, a non-profit for individuals with special needs. Supporting local organizations he aligns with is one of Démurgé’s favorite parts of the job.

JaZams has also given back to the community in various ways. Most recently, they celebrated their thirty-year anniversary with the Princeton community by providing a carousel and free carnival games. 

“Our mission is always to make everything accessible, for all families, no matter their economic status,” said Farrugia. “That way, they can come with a whole bunch of kids and they can play.” 

Pank-a-Squith Shows the Never-ending Nature of Suffrage

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By Yaretzi Cobian

Rolling dice and moving pawns as a medium of learning about suffrage may sound unusual, especially if the game has origins from an entirely different country. Yet one such game has found its place in the archives of Princeton University. 

Pank-a-Squith, a table-top board game created in 1909 by the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU), was named after Emmilene Pankhurst and Herbert Asquith, prominent figures in the suffragist movement in England during the early 1900s. The premise of the game: You do not win until you reach the last square, granting you the right to vote. To achieve this is nearly impossible. Only setbacks are guaranteed.

The WSPU was formed in the early 1900s in England and primarily focused on helping women win the right to vote. The union, solely run by women, created the board game as a fundraiser for their foundation, as well as a means of illustrating the common obstacles suffragists encountered in their fight for voting rights.

The combination of the names Pankhurst and Asquith represent a dichotomy between suffragists and opposing government bodies. Emmilene Pankhurst founded the WSPU in 1903 and played an element in the union and in the British suffrage movement. For his part, Herbert Asquith, England’s Prime Minister from 1908 to 1916, was a leader in the anti-suffrage movement. The two were such polar opposites that in 1910, a group of suffragettes attacked Herbert outside the House of Commons. 

The rules of Pank-a-Squith are similar to those of Candyland or Snakes and Ladders: Roll the dice and move across the board accordingly. Pank-a-Squith comes with unique consequences, depicting prejudice in game board illustrations. Each square on Pank-a-Squith has a distinctive image of a barrier faced by suffragettes. Square 36, for example, depicts the government’s actions using an icon of a policeman in addition to jail bars and handcuffs, reminds players that the British government used incarceration as a tactic to silence women.

Out of the 50 total squares that compose Pank-a-Squith, 16 have an added consequence when a player lands on them, including missing a multitude of turns or having to return to a previous square. The final square makes you roll the dice again to cast the exact number needed. If not, you count back by what you are over by, adding another obstacle to winning. These repercussions make Pank-a-Squith a never-ending game.

Although some groups of women gained suffrage over a century ago, the Brennan Center for Justice suggests threats to women’s voting rights have not gone away. Just like Pank-a-Squith, the fight for women’s suffrage may never end. 

At Princeton Social Neuroscience Lab, Your Brain is on Their Mind

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By Angie Sepulveda

As you enter the dimly-lit and scary room, you prepare mentally for the dissection of your brain. You are dressed in white hospital clothes with medical patches attached to various sorts of wires all over your head. The needle slowly approaches your brain to initiate your lobotomy. You are an incoming neuroscience subject for research at Princeton, but are you really?

That’s how many people, including seven out of ten Princeton Summer Journal reporters, imagine neuroscience research: like a lobotomy. But the Princeton Social Neuroscience Lab dispels false notions about their profession, showing that neuroscience is simply the study of the brain and nervous system. The social neuroscientists ensure security, confidentiality and accessibility for all who participate in the research they do to further comprehend human interaction and behavioral patterns. According to Yeaju Kim, a rising second-year Ph.D. student at Princeton, this research is a tool to study how others “express thoughts and how broadly we understand others’ thoughts.”

Presently, a select number of Princeton neuroscientists are researching the potential brain scan patterns between a couple’s conversations of conflict. As the consent forms, provided by lab manager Amy Nguyen, describe, the purpose of this research “is to explore how minds synchronize as romantic couples interact with each other.” The methodology that will be utilized to gain understanding in this study will recruit several couples, place them in MRI machines and record the brain patterns shown through two structured conversations. 

Although the term “neuroscience” might inspire wild, hazardous thoughts, the actual research involves a meticulous process that ensures the safety of subjects in various ways. Every step from start to finish is intentional and serves a strong purpose for the study. 

After ensuring the eligibility of potential participants, such as checking for no new piercings, metal parts inside the body or tattoos above the neck, the couple in the study will embark on warm-up tasks before these structured conversations. Some of these warm-up tasks include “answering a brief relationship questionnaire, recording a few baseline opinions and completing simple rating tasks.” 

This neuroscientific approach strives to have “the risks be minimal and the benefits as proximal as it could get.” Potential risks that come to mind include issues regarding the MRI that are, in actuality, completely untrue. While the subject might be questioning if they have any metal on them, the neuroscientists initiate the safety steps of checking various times with metal detector doors and past medical records. MRI machines often create loud, thudding noises. Instead of enduring this irritating noise, the research subjects in the MRI have specialized headphones with microphones. 

If a participant is still feeling anxious after going through the safety protocols, check-ups and potential opt-out are always available. Even during the process of the structured conversations, participants can call out to researchers at any time they might feel uncomfortable. In case of any potential harm, the neuroscientists show through their consent form they provide well-being resources so participants can “feel okay mentally and emotionally.” 

When it comes to confidentiality, the neuroscientists ensure that all data published cannot be traced back to the participant, meaning no identifying factors will be revealed. While visiting the research lab, all participants’ information was covered to protect their privacy. In fact, after the research is published, the participant is able to request, via email, a three-dimensional scan of their brain. 

Princeton neuroscientists ensure confidentiality and security, both mentally and physically, to obtain findings that aid the comprehension of human interaction and behavioral patterns. In addition to appealing to other researchers, they plan to publish their findings in a way accessible to the public. Even in the initial process of signing the consent forms, all information is made accessible to participants and broken down in simpler terms. Accessibility is a big priority throughout the entirety of the research project.

Neuroscience is not the dissection or grilling of the brain. Being part of neuroscience research does not place the participant in any unsafe position. Better yet, it can provide benefits they would not be able to find elsewhere. The misconceptions that easily paint vivid, horrifying pictures often disregard actual neuroscience research, which, as mentioned by Kim, is needed because studying human interaction is “the most human thing that we can do.” 

The next time you hear the term “neuroscience,” remember that no lobotomy is taking place. Rather, progress is being made towards further comprehension of our own selves.

Small World, Big Heart

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By Hazel Foster

In a world of Amazon ads, Target consumerism and cycles of planned obsolescence, small businesses may seem few and far between. A quick stroll through Princeton, New Jersey shows the opposite. 

In Miya Table & Home, located on Palmer Square W, a wooden, temple-shaped structure in the center of the store holds delicate glassware in shades of navy and cream. The small shop is the single brick and mortar location of Miya Inc., a family-owned wholesale business founded in 1947. The store tested the waters with a holiday pop-up in 2017 before opening their doors in a permanent location in Princeton the following April. It didn’t take much to draw people in. “It was a lot of word of mouth,” said Heidi Moon, the store’s director of sales, marketing and retail. From matcha bowls and tableware painted with cats to sleek notebooks, each item has been carefully selected and displayed by Moon herself. “We make buying trips to Japan twice a year and we go visit factories or we go to different ceramic shows and we curate,” she said. “We select the items that we think would be able to sell well in the U.S.” The result is a retail experience that perfectly encapsulates the intentionality of Japanese design. 

Just a couple blocks over on Witherspoon Street, another establishment seeks to transport its visitors (or at least their taste buds) abroad. At Kristine’s, founding and executive chef Nicholas Démurgé has curated a menu that brings French cuisine to New Jersey. Démurgé earned a degree in engineering and went to business school before becoming a chef. When it came to Kristine’s, he was in the right place at the right time. “The owner wanted to open a French restaurant for years and years and years. It’s hard to build a restaurant without a chef,” he said. “I was hired one year before we opened.” Thankfully, the construction took so long that he had time to work on the menu. Démurgé’s menu is diverse, but he stays true to his roots. If a non-French dish is selling too much, they remove it from the menu. You can get a burger anywhere, but an authentic croque-ratatouille is a little harder to find. 

Travel back to Palmer Square and take a trip down memory lane to a world of words and fun from the bygone days of Toys R Us. But unlike Toys R Us, jaZams is still here. Founder and co-owner Joanne Farrugia is celebrating the thirtieth anniversary of the eclectic toy store, which sells trendy toys at a fair price. Farrugia initially intended to become a teacher before changing course. A trip to a friend’s aunt’s toy and bookstore in 1990 inspired her to open a store of her own in 1996. Like the home goods at Miya Table & Home and the menu at Kristine’s, jaZams has been thoughtfully curated. “Every picture book we carry, we read,” she said. They read advance copies, galleys, and e-books, and visit trade shows. For Farrugia, there’s no real sense of competition between businesses in Princeton. “Most of us who are in business together are very, very close,” she said. 

Whether it’s a Japanese zodiac dragon figurine, a French affogato, or a whimsical lava lamp disco ball on the shelf or the table, community is what drives business and brings Princeton together. 

Whether or not you’re interested in revisiting your childhood memories of colorful toy stores, expanding your heart and home to the Japanese culture or giving yourself a taste of France, community is what drives business and brings Princeton together.

Princeton Archives Preserve Women’s Activism

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By Deniana Clemente

On the lowest level of Princeton University’s Firestone Library, you don’t gaze upon history through a glass case. You hold it. After washing your hands, of course. Each artifact introduces another unexpected character from women’s history. 

Thick papers, scratched with erratic penmanship and bruised with typewriter clicks, spill from one binder. They are the arrest records and fingerprints of a 29-year-old Judith Arcana. Behind them are a pair of vibrant booklets with block print cover art. On the 1958 June cover of The Ladder, a well-manicured hand reaches out to stroke a bramble of garden leaves, gently grasped within the hand of another — perhaps a friend?

Women make vital change in their communities through defiant journalism and activism, yet many of these stories sit unvisited in archival collections rather than the public memory. 

Judith was a Jane. Or a part of it, rather. Jane was an underground abortion service of over 100 people, operating in Chicago from 1969 to 1973 to provide nearly 11,000 affordable and discreet abortions. Jane functioned as a community network, where volunteers answered phone calls, counseled women, arranged their appointments and performed abortions themselves. On the arrest documents meticulously preserved by Princeton archivists, “Judith H. Pildes” stares defiantly back, pressing her ink-coated fingers into the rigid boxes long before she became Judith Arcana, writer, poet, and educator.

Sara Howard, Librarian for Gender and Sexuality Studies, invited visitors to study the artifacts with their bare hands, signalling that this history is meant to be interacted with. Arcana’s fingerprints capture the high stakes of her mission, and the extent she was willing to go for it. They are tangible evidence of what many women endured for reproductive freedom, highlighting how they showed up for one another — not just in makeshift operating rooms, but in jail cells, too. Arcana’s arrest records sit in archives while debates over reproductive rights return to state legislatures, reminding visitors that the questions surrounding bodily autonomy remain unresolved. 

In addition to reproductive rights being threatened, queer women and individuals have been targeted by recent policies regarding ID documents and parental recognition. A pattern arises where women’s rights that are under threat today have already been defended by generations of activists dating back to the 1950s. The Ladder magazine, which ran from 1956 through 1972, a time of normalized homophobia, was distributed by the Daughters of Bilitis to educate the public about lesbian women and advocate for their acceptance into mainstream society. In a piece titled “Lesbian Marriage” published in The Ladder in August 1958, a commenter going by the pseudonym of “Ms. Gene Damon” writes that lesbian marriage need not be perceived as a “problem.” She argues that lesbian couples face the same challenges and share the same joys as heterosexual couples, pointing out that most domestic problems regardless of sexuality “are almost always overcome if the people involved really are in love.”

This endearing, almost old-fashioned take reminds people today that many queer people have the same goals of marriage and family as others, yet are disregarded at the policymaking table. As inclusive healthcare is actively being shot down and anti-LGBTQ+ bills targeting same-sex couples and trans people are continuously introduced, artifacts like The Ladder help visitors to question lawmakers. They remind the public that laws should be tailored to the needs of every American, and not only to Americans with identities that are viewed as the “default.”

The struggles of today are the same struggles of yesterday, and the work of these women remains to be studied. They remind visitors of a responsibility to fight for their rights and the rights of all women, and that the most empowering and impactful acts are often ones of defiance.