Dear Thief is, without a doubt, stronger and more raw, the book her fans knew she could write. But just when the world should have behaved as if it had been waiting for that very novel to arrive, Harvey’s career seemed to lose momentum. Her editor Dan Franklin explains, a little despairingly, that “the really […]
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The Class That Teaches Doctors ‘Clinical Empathy’
While empathy courses are rarely required in medical training, interest in them is growing, experts say, and programs are underway at Jefferson Medical College and at Columbia University School of Medicine. Columbia has pioneered a program in narrative medicine, which emphasizes the importance of understanding patients’ life stories in providing compassionate care.
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So Long, Sweet Briar College
On March 3, the president of Sweet Briar College, a historic all-women’s liberal arts school, announced its impending closure.
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The Transformative Power of Dressing in Drag
The excellent and underfunded nonprofit art and politics magazine Guernica has a special issue this month dedicated to exploring the boundaries of gender. In it, novelist Alexander Chee writes about the surprising realizations he had the first time he dressed in drag for a night on the town with the man he loves: He is really spellbound, though, in a […]
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Why the Porn Industry Can’t Beat the Pirates
Keeping porn from getting ripped and posted is impossible. After having free pornography clips easily accessible for years, nobody expects that customers will ever buy DVDs in the numbers they once did. The porn industry’s sales figures are disputed; estimates range from a few billion to as high as $14 billion, a widely cited figure from a 1998 […]
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What Does It Mean to Be a ‘Cinderella Story’?
To try to figure out what exactly that story is and why we still have it, we have to separate out the folk tale that is Cinderella, though, from the turn of phrase that is “Cinderella story.” Americans will call almost anything a Cinderella story that involves a good thing happening to someone nice. We slap that title on movies and books, but also on basketball games won by tiny schools full of scrawny nerds, small businesses that thrive and even political ascendancies that upend established powers.
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The Origins of ‘You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin”
TERRY GROSS: So were you writing the song on assignment? Were you writing it for The Righteous Brothers? BARRY MANN: Yes. CYNTHIA WEIL: When we wrote the song, they weren’t that crazy about it (laughter). GROSS: Really? MANN: Well, when I sang it – I loved The Everly Brothers at the time, and I sounded […]
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‘Something Great is Ending’: On ‘Parks & Recreation’
“Parks & Recreation” may have begun as a The Office spinoff, but it ended its seventh season on its own delightful, lauded terms. At Uproxx, Ashley Burns and Chloe Schildhause compiled a spoiler-free oral history of “Parks & Recreation,” the biggest little show that could. This one’s for you, Pawnee.
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How ‘Body Worlds’ Inspired People to Leave Their Bodies to Science
Von Hagens has no shortage of donors. His exhibitions have used 1,100 bodies – but he claims to have another 12,100 living donors signed up. One is Emma Knott, a PR consultant in London. “I was so inspired after I saw the exhibition], which is why I made that decision,” she says. But does she have reservations? “Not really, I mean let’s face it I’m going to be dead.” For her, the attraction lies in encouraging people to get excited about science and anatomy.
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Is This the Future? What Dinner With a Disney MagicBand Is Like
Their MagicBands, tech-studded wristbands available to every visitor to the Magic Kingdom, feature a long-range radio that can transmit more than 40 feet in every direction. The hostess, on her modified iPhone, received a signal when the family was just a few paces away. Tanner family inbound! The kitchen also queued up: Two French onion soups, two roast beef sandwiches! When they sat down, a radio receiver in the table picked up the signals from their MagicBands and triangulated their location using another receiver in the ceiling. The server—as in waitperson, not computer array—knew what they ordered before they even approached the restaurant and knew where they were sitting.