Modern egg production is far from the old farmyard hen.

Today, thousands of specialized laying chickens may live under one roof in carefully controlled environments designed around feed, water, lighting, ventilation, disease control, and egg collection. The result is an extraordinarily efficient system that can produce tens of thousands of eggs a day.

But that efficiency also brings questions about animal welfare, disease, and the sheer scale of industrial agriculture.

A crowded poultry house is more than a photograph of chickens. It shows how dramatically American food production has changed.

Read more: The Industrial Chicken: How Egg Production Became a Factory System

Outside the Bruce R. Thompson U.S. Courthouse in Reno, Nevada, stands Michael Heizer’s Perforated Object, a massive steel sculpture based on a tiny bighorn sheep horn artifact more than 1,500 years old.

Heizer’s father, archaeologist Robert F. Heizer, recovered the original object from Humboldt Cave in 1936 during an excavation. Archaeologists found about 90 holes drilled through it, and it was associated with the burial belongings of a person they identified as a Shoshone shaman. Its actual purpose remains unknown.

Michael Heizer later enlarged the object roughly 450 times, turning something small enough to hold in one hand into a 27-foot-long steel sculpture.

But the story isn’t simply about an ancient artifact becoming modern art.

The original came from a Native burial. That raises questions about the era’s archaeological practices, when excavators routinely removed human remains and funerary objects from Native graves for study. Native artists have since challenged both the excavation and the transformation of the burial object into public art.

That gives Perforated Object a meaning far more complicated than its appearance suggests.

It is at once archaeology, family history, public art, and a reminder that the way we treat the past can become part of the story itself.

Read more details in Perforated Object: An Ancient Mystery Reimagined in Steel.

Braum’s may look like a regional fast-food and ice cream chain, but it is really something much more unusual.

The family-owned company raises its own dairy cows, processes its own milk, makes its own ice cream and bakery products, operates its own refrigerated trucks, and owns the stores where everything is sold.

That tightly controlled farm-to-store system is also why Braum’s remains regional. Its more than 300 stores are concentrated in Oklahoma, Texas, Kansas, Missouri, and Arkansas, generally within about 300 miles of its operation near Tuttle, Oklahoma.

Braum’s isn’t simply a restaurant that sells dairy products. It is a dairy operation that built an entire restaurant and grocery chain around its farm.

Read more at Braum’s: The Regional Dairy Empire That Refuses to Go National