“I place a stack of 18 postcards in front of me and write on each of them a question that has been on my mind since I left Pelican Bay: ‘Do you think prolonged SHU confinement is torture?’ I send them to prisoners across the state and 14 write back, all with the same answer: […]
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Russia's Battle with Alcoholism
“You can still see Russia’s drinking problem everywhere—in its cities and especially in its rural, less populated provinces. A 2011 report from the World Health Organization estimated that Russians were drinking an average of about 4 gallons of pure alcohol per year—about 70 percent more than their American counterparts. In 2009, the British medical journal […]
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On Early Puberty
“I stepped out of the bathroom, walked over to my mom, and placed a hand on her shoulder. ‘Mom, I have something to tell you.’ I paused, letting the world slow down for one last moment. ‘I’m hemorrhaging.’ “She didn’t burst into tears, faint, or tear at her hair. She snorted. I was aghast. How […]
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U.S. Health Care Spending for Native Americans
“It’s well-documented that the government’s attempts to meet its obligations to the Native Americans have failed miserably; the primary cause is insufficient funding. Currently, prisoners receive significantly higher per capita health-care funding than Native Americans. The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights reports the federal government spends about $5,000 per capita each year on health care […]
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The Man Whose 'Nonfiction Novel' Came Before Truman Capote
“Rodolfo Walsh was a rare man of words and action, though by all accounts he struggled to reconcile the two. In a relatively short and restless life, he was a masterful chess player, a self-taught sleuth and code breaker, an award-winning fiction author turned investigative reporter, an artist and intellectual who took up a gun […]
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The Real History of Love & Marriage
“Though the murky concept known as ‘love’ has been recorded for all of human history, it was almost never a justification for marriage. ‘Love was considered a reason not to get married,’ says Abbott. ‘It was seen as lust, as something that would dissipate. You could have love or lust for your mistress, if you’re […]
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What the Smartphone Is Doing to Fiction
“There’s nothing worse for plots than cellphones. Once your characters have one, there’s no reason for them to get lost or stranded. Or miss each other at the top of the Empire State Building. If you want anything like that to happen, you either have to explain upfront what happened to the phones or you […]
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“To suffer from gender dysphoria (G.D.), as Michelle Kosilek does, is to exist in a real state for which our only frame of reference may be science fiction. You inhabit a body that other people may regard as perfectly normal, even attractive. But it is not yours. That fact has always been utterly and unmistakably […]
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“Somehow Anthony is blaming me and my 8,000-word story for the fact that everything turned to shit for him. I wish I knew if there was a word for all this. There’s probably a German word for it. And maybe I am naïve, but I am telling you that when you spend so many hours […]
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“As an astronaut, especially during launch, half of the risk of a six-month flight is in the first nine minutes. So as a crew, how do you stay focused, and how do you not get paralyzed by the fear of it? “And the way we do it is to break down what are the risks. […]