New Mexico’s freshman Democrat in the US Senate, Tom Udall, is trying to invoke the “constitutional option”—an arcane point of constitutional law that allows each house of Congress to make up its own rules on the first day of each session. Udall’s goal? To end the use of the filibuster to block legislation.

Highlights from a year of interviews

Charlotte Jackson has owned and operated her namesake gallery for 22 years. Last summer, she moved its location from Marcy Street to the Railyard, increasing square footage from 1,700 to 4,000. Charlotte Jackson Fine Art specializes in contemporary American and European art.

Peter Baston, a longtime consultant who grew up shuttling between England and Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), is borderline fanatical when it comes to ensuring businesses operate at maximum efficiency.

Gunther Aron is a sculptor and jeweler who came to the United States in 1948 and studied at the Chicago Art Institute and Institute of Design. For the annual Plaza Hanukkah celebration and menorah lighting, Aron lights a 6-foot-tall welded-steel menorah he created.

Noted food writer Michael Pollan’s advice to the world is to “eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” Pollan’s advice has a whole different meaning for members of Overeaters Anonymous, the organization that provides community for people with eating issues, and uses the familiar 12 steps of other dependency-related programs.

Santa Fe understands the importance of introducing kids to art at an early age, and so, it seems, does the White House. On Oct. 20, in a ceremony at the White House, representatives from Fine Arts for Children and Teens (FACT) were presented with the National Arts and Humanities Youth Program Award.

If you missed the last episode of WNYC’s Radiolab, then you missed Geoffrey West, a theoretical physicist at the Santa Fe Institute, explaining his research on city size and behavior.

Leslie Hayes always wanted to be a doctor—but she had no way of knowing she’d become one of the go-to physicians for heroin addicts in Rio Arriba County. Hayes’ clients at the Española clinic, El Centro Family Health, aren’t the only ones who have noticed her work.

Michael Sumner and his wife Melody Sumner Carnahan founded Burning Books in Oakland, Calif., in 1979. When the couple moved to New Mexico in 1989, what began as a publishing company evolved into an “artist-run, weirdness-driven organization dedicated to the production and publication of unmuzzled literature, music, and art.”