Coming Out in Middle School

Austin didn’t know what to wear to his first gay dance last spring. It was bad enough that the gangly 13-year-old from Sand Springs, Okla., had to go without his boyfriend at the time, a 14-year-old star athlete at another middle school, but there were also laundry issues. “I don’t have any clean clothes!” he complained to me by text message, his favored method of communication.

Published: Sep 23, 2009
Length: 27 minutes (6,850 words)

The Referendum

Recently an editor asked me for an essay about arrested adolescence, joking: “Of course, I thought of you.”

Published: Sep 17, 2009
Length: 5 minutes (1,373 words)

The Holy Grail of the Unconscious

Carl Jung founded the field of analytical psychology and, along with Sigmund Freud, was responsible for popularizing the idea that a person’s interior life merited not just attention but dedicated exploration — a notion that has since propelled tens of millions of people into psychotherapy.

Published: Sep 16, 2009
Length: 31 minutes (7,921 words)

The Right Way to Pray?

“Prayer is like other activities,” the Rev. Daniel Henderson told me when we met at the tabernacle the week before Easter. He was visiting Brooklyn with a group of seminary students from Virginia. “You learn from people who are already good at it.”

Published: Sep 16, 2009
Length: 18 minutes (4,691 words)

Clean Water Laws Are Neglected, at a Cost in Suffering

Jennifer Hall-Massey knows not to drink the tap water in her home near Charleston, W.Va. In fact, her entire family tries to avoid any contact with the water. Her youngest son has scabs on his arms, legs and chest where the bathwater — polluted with lead, nickel and other heavy metals — caused painful rashes. Many of his brother’s teeth were capped to replace enamel that was eaten away.

Published: Sep 12, 2009
Length: 19 minutes (4,849 words)

Are Your Friends Making You Fat?

Scientists have for the first time found some solid basis for a potentially powerful theory in epidemiology: that good behaviors — like quitting smoking or staying slender or being happy — pass from friend to friend almost as if they were contagious viruses.

Published: Sep 10, 2009
Length: 30 minutes (7,695 words)

The New Israel Lobby

In July, President Obama met for 45 minutes with leaders of American Jewish organizations. All presidents meet with Israel’s advocates. Obama, however, had taken his time, and powerhouse figures of the Jewish community were grumbling.

Published: Sep 9, 2009
Length: 18 minutes (4,739 words)

How Did Economists Get It So Wrong?

Few economists saw our current crisis coming, but this predictive failure was the least of the field’s problems. More important was the profession’s blindness to the very possibility of catastrophic failures in a market economy.

Published: Sep 2, 2009
Length: 26 minutes (6,695 words)

Bringing ‘Where the Wild Things Are’ to the Screen

“Where the Wild Things Are” is arguably of a piece with Spike Jonze’s earlier works; it features moments of transcendent beauty and moments of profound silliness. Just as in “Jackass,” characters smash things and throw things at one another.

Author: Saki Knafo
Published: Sep 2, 2009
Length: 29 minutes (7,482 words)

The Deadly Choices at Memorial

Within days, the grisly tableau became the focus of an investigation into what happened when the floodwaters of Hurricane Katrina marooned Memorial Medical Center in Uptown New Orleans.

Author: Sheri Fink
Published: Aug 25, 2009
Length: 51 minutes (12,801 words)