The Messenger
From “Truth Trucks” to viral videos, Operation Rescue head Troy Newman’s word is his sword.
health
A collection of 94 issues
Life Before Death
If you had to choose between the life of a loved one or the survival of a dozen other people, would you be capable of a rational decision?
Honeymoon Sandy
A Manhattan wedding, a cancer scan, and the largest Atlantic hurricane ever recorded.
The Loss
To understand everything wrong about health care in America today, look to a horrifying trend in amputation.
Anything but Nothing
After a lifetime of mental illness, one woman opts to try electroconvulsive therapy. She discusses her decision with her sister.
This Was No Accident
Forty years after Jaws, why the very first blockbuster should be considered art—and how it helped one man to survive.
Hit Job
An unusual DEA raid on one of LA’s most reputable medical marijuana dispensaries reveals the bewildering conflict between state and federal drug laws.
My Time of Not Dying
Call it Kreider’s Law: You can’t be grateful to be alive your entire life. Especially when there's an arms race going on inside your head.
New York Fashion Week at My House
A visit to the New York studio/living room of a family’s style director who has a week’s worth of laundry ahead of her.
Kiss From a Mall Cop
Your party-conversation brief on the most important stories that no one’s talking about anymore—the plight of the Segway, internet child exchanges, Ebola, the current fortunes of Seal, and more.
It Made Me Feel Like More Than One Person
You can learn how to read a poem, but you can’t choose how it will affect you. Here, a little cough launches a journey through a reader’s mind.
The Long Thanatopsis
Over the next few decades, baby boomers will reinvent how America dies. That gives Generation X one last thing to roll its eyes about, as it follows a step behind.
Buffalo Wild Wings Grill & Bar
In the city of Irvine, in the county of Orange, in the state of California during a season of sports, sometimes America reaches maximum volume.
The Combination Lock Test
A man dies, leaving behind, among other things, a combination lock. Opening it may just prove the existence of the afterlife.
The Vegan Love Palace Bike Tour Test
Nobody stands between one cyclist and her cheese on a vegetable-fueled bike tour through Eastern Europe.
Junglecare
In search of a remedy for MS, a journey out of the gridlock of America’s health system and into the jungles of Belize, where medicine men promise cures for everything that ails you.
The Influencing Machine
When a genetic disease looms, we’re more like our parents than we’d like to believe—and when we become parents, that fear only grows.
Glad I’m Not You
The instinct to applaud boot-strapping and the comeback kid is as American as apple pie. So why does schadenfreude make us feel so good?
What Doesn’t Kill You Doesn’t Kill You
A visit to a bear sanctuary could cure you of your bear phobia. Or it could turn your fear into a full-blown obsession.
An Unthinkably Modern Miracle
In today’s health care system, medicine often comes with a strange, Faustian bargain—including a plan for almost everything except the price.
The Unofficial Roger Ebert Reader on Addiction
When Roger Ebert died, America was deprived of one of its finest critics. We also lost one of our best writers on addiction.
After Birth
A home birth begets a crash course in DIY medical waste disposal.
White Rabbit
When illness erases the fine line between love and obsession.
Having to Do With the Price of Onions
A sharp rise recently in the price of onions in India is about a lot more than just sandwiches. When onions are up, even governments are at risk.
The Cyclist’s Dilemma
Afternoons in the big city are terrible. Sunsets are horrifying, nights are long and anxious. Other people have choices, but not you. Then suddenly, a bicycle.
Where the Himalayan Moss Grows
Going on a five-day cleanse—subsisting on a diet of shots, smoothies, very few actual foods, and no caffeine—leads to visions of apocalypse. From 2013, a quest to find the seven billionth child on Earth.
A Tooth for a Tooth
Modern dentistry does wonders for a rotten molar or a cracked bicuspid—it’s modern dental insurance that falls short.
Overhand Right
Boxing belongs to the young. For an off-and-on wannabe, back in the ring and facing down The Chainsaw, the stakes are higher than they’ll ever be.
Midfield
Your opponents have something to prove, certain wishes they want fulfilled. Also, they really hope their knees don’t blow out before halftime. Welcome to over-40s soccer.
Start of Darkness
The world of the myope is often a nicer place—faces lack wrinkles, and trees seem to be painted by Monet. Then, during a visit to Moscow, a black spot appears.
It's All in Your Head
It begins as a dull ache, then the skull becomes hot and brittle, then the neck stiffens—and then there's no escaping a migraine. A search for relief, temporary or otherwise.
Game Over
The NFL is an emperor with no clothes, no morals, and vaults of gold. As we prepare for Super Bowl XLVII, author Dave Zirin explains how greed and corruption have ruined the game, endangered players, and fleeced the public.
Clenching the Night Away
A mouth guard can do more than save our enamel from nighttime gnashing. It may also shield us from our daily anxieties.
Rhythm in Disguise
Musical therapists can improve patients’ cognitive functioning and motor skills. But sometimes the battle is to keep a mind intact. Avant-garde composition and EKG techno in a London care center.
Learning to Talk
When a voiceover artist temporarily loses the use of her primary asset, the struggle back to speaking unearths what's gone unsaid for too long.
The Wolf Is Waiting
Imperceptibly and without warning, your pulse accelerates, your mind races, and panic grips your body—for anxiety attack sufferers, every day is a case in survival. A journey to the wild to confront the fear.
Soldier’s Heart
A post-World War II documentary, banned by the military in 1946 but lately released online, is one of the earliest depictions of psychotherapy. But it says even more about contemporary Americans’ interest in the veterans they love to praise.
The Heretic
For decades, the U.S. government banned medical studies of the effects of LSD. But for one longtime, elite researcher, the promise of mind-blowing revelations was just too tempting.
Eyes Wide Open
The next time jet lag ruins your day—exhausted, yawning, blurry-eyed, fiending for any means of correction—what if you were to stop looking for a cure inside purgatory and, instead, embrace the cloud?
Therapist, Know Thyself
For psychotherapists, maintaining a stable, flawless public image is critical. But when a marriage and family counselor actually goes through a mid-life crisis herself, all bets are off and here come the tattoos, affairs, and professional infidelities.
How to Not Kill a Cyclist
A plea for safety from cyclists to motorists.
Humans Playing Humans
As “Mad Men” enters its much-anticipated fifth season, the New York psychotherapist who consulted on the show’s development explains why its characters and storylines feel so ineffably real.
The Art of Choking
Some people require the Heimlich Maneuver a bit more than the rest of us. A report on the four times—so far—that the author has relied on the assistance of others.
Now That Books Mean Nothing
When you’ve long been identified as a “literary type,” how can it be that receiving books as get-well gifts leaves you feeling empty, angry, and determined to chug YouTube straight?
Shorty
When you were a toddler, doctors told your parents you had a "failure to thrive." Which means: You're small, and you're going to be short. Later, when medication helps you grow faster than you’ve ever grown before, the hardest part may be deciding when to stop.
Behind the Pulse
When I collapsed in public two weeks ago, I could hear everything happening around me, but could barely respond. Making sense of it all was even more difficult.
Mastering the Art of American Eating
The USDA recently replaced the almighty food pyramid with a color-coded pie chart. To celebrate our nation’s mixed metaphors about healthy eating, one man decides to spend a month attempting to follow every government recommendation he can find. Nowhere is pie advised.
Your Third Nipple
All your life, you thought you just had an odd-looking little mole. From 2011, what it’s like when a doctor says that you belong in the ranks of Marky Mark, centuries of witches, and Krusty the Clown.
The Hand That Feeds You
Though you can still count on it for antibiotic-free cheese, the farmers' market has become a macrocosm of first-world food neuroses. True stories from behind the rustic wax-paper-lined baskets.
The Age of Mechanical Reproduction
When it comes to in-vitro fertilization, nothing is normal. Your world is upside-down. Your doctor compliments your wife on her monkeys. Then, when every dollar and exertion has gone toward a single hour of hope, it begins to snow.
A Song for Aretha
For decades, America has taken Aretha Franklin for granted, heard and loved and danced to her music without a second thought. Now’s the time to think again.
Heads of the Family
At Thanksgiving, a family takes stock of what they’re thankful for by weighing the most valuable things they own: their heads.
Bright Sun, Long Shadows
As the Cardinals fought for a playoff berth in August, I watched my father-in-law in his own personal battle. A tale of victory and loss.
Intensive Care
Every mother worries her child could suddenly become ill. For one, motherhood requires living with the fear that her son could become just like her.
The High Is Always the Pain and the Pain Is Always the High
Gambling addiction is a simple disease. Living the addiction is a bit more complicated. A chronicle of dependency in seven parts—about poker, “Lolita,” and how to lose $18,000 in less than 36 hours.
Kiss and Tell
When you’re four years old, a kiss is an accessory in a game of dress-up. When you’re the four-year-old’s mother, that kiss comes with a costume trunk of questions.
Why I Don’t Run
Runners run, readers read, and some even do both at the same time. A bookish guide to outpacing your insecurities.
Finding Positive
When pregnancy showed up unbidden, a writer demands a second test, and a third, and a fourth. But then she saw a result many women spend years searching for.
The Silent Epidemic
The first diagnosis can shatter your life—until the condition that follows glues it back together.
The Dinner Party
Your roommate, your girlfriend, and her (and your) boss: It’s a tough table, and they’ll scrutinize your food—and your dwindling frame.
Dead of State
Where politics and democracy fail, nature eventually wins. A number of tyrants and world leaders are currently sick. Ranking the illest.
My First Sonogram
A television news report begets a routine doctor’s appointment begets a personal health scare.
How to Perform Acupuncture
Those who can't do, learn. In this installment of our series in which the clueless apprentice with the experts, we try our hand at needlework.
Don’t Be a Statistic
While H1N1 dominates the headlines, other equally worrisome conditions get lost in the panic. Tips to survive spontaneous human combustion.
The Surrogate Life
Being unemployed, and bearing colossal amounts of debt, can drive you to rash measures. Discovering the difficulty of renting out one's womb.
Gimme Shelter
Everyone knows a relative who dabbles in conspiracy theories. For one writer, seeing her brother be targeted by a global cabal—and develop schizophrenia—was all too real.
Stereoblind
After a lifetime of visual miscues, I finally decided to do something about my optical condition. Now comes the hard part: seeing the world through both eyes.
Replacing Things Lost
A diagnosis of breast cancer is mind-blowing. A mastectomy can be devastating. But for some women, reconstructive surgery offers a chance for a silver lining.
Ballad of a Thin Man
In a country so proud of its apple pie, there is an element of distrust for thin men.
Drink Your Meds
The impulse to weigh decisions with coffee spoons can seem charmingly eccentric on TV. But real-life obsessive compulsive disorder is no fun, what with the imminent death and all.
Memorare
While AIDS is still a major killer around the world, it has become a manageable condition for most HIV-positive Americans. Bearing witness to a time when the mortal threat was closer to home.
Exercise Gear
How many fitness-inspired New Year's resolutions does it take to beat down the average individual? How many recommended items of exercise paraphernalia from the writers does it take to rebuild one's spirit? The answer is: never enough.
Back to School
This September students headed back to class to absorb knowledge and life skills. Some even found time to work STDs and partners-in-crime into their curricula.
Like Pulling Teeth
Whether it’s experimental injections, sleep deprivation studies, or freelance writing, sometimes the best way to look after your health is to risk it.
How to Give a Tattoo
Those who can't do, learn. In this installment of our series in which the clueless apprentice with the experts, we pick up a long-sought skill from Brooklyn tattoo artist Duke Riley--who also plays canvas.
Smoke Signals
Looking through a month of news can reveal a lot about what's going on in the world. And in July 2007, everybody was smoking or quitting smoking.
Choose MedCalf
Americans spend more on health care than anyone in the world, yet the quality of our care doesn’t match up. We need a new system—one we can believe in.
Wii Feel Your Pain
Nintendo's gaming system has thrilled many players with its motion-sensing capabilities, some to the point of harm.
We’re Looking Out for You
With slo-mo commercials warning against fender benders, does your insurance company truly have your well-being in mind?
High School Nights Bite
Manhattan press events are like so many proms: the bold and beautiful dance all night long, and the rest of us hug the walls. So why does James Beard Award-winner David Leite keep pulling on his blazer?
Employees Must Double-Wash Hands
The recent E. Coli scare sent many bags of spinach into the trashbin. Now that the FDA says the outbreak is over, how will restaurants assure us what they're serving is safe to eat?
But I Play One on TV
Saving lives is hard enough—what medical professional has time for significant romantic moments in the supplies closet? A lifetime of TV role models.
Am I a Hypochondriac?
Experts answer what they know. The Non-Expert answers anything. This week we introduce a paranoid reader to our personal physician, Dr. Google, who has induced paranoia in more patients than anyone.
Barbaro Responds to Fans
The nation falls in love with an injured horse and a thousand weepy editorials and get-well cards salute his courage. Now our equine hero responds to his well-wishers via his assistant.
Leaner and Meaner
The holidays are behind us, but on many people they've left the signs of second helpings. David Leite anticipated 10 to 15 pounds of damage--so how in hell did he actually lose weight?
Time to Floss
He told everyone what it stood for before, but this week nobody's buying a single detail about James Frey's life--or his tattoo. The true story behind contemporary literature's most in-your-face symbol.
Weighing in About the Holidays
The holidays pose awful temptations for people watching their weight--especially if they're gourmet cooks with families to entertain.
New Ways to Lose Your Lunch
Everybody barfs. But it’s an altogether different product depending on if you’re an infant or the last one standing at tequila happy hour.
A New, Old House
It's true: You can never go home again. Watching a construction team renovate the house you grew up in, and understanding why your parents wanted a new place to live.
Home Surgery
Experts answer what they know. The Non-Expert answers anything. This week we show you how to mend common household wounds with a handful of band-aids, a bottle of ipecac, and a healthy dose of resolve.
TiVo'd
Technology can be a scary thing, in the wrong hands. Luckily, there's help. A visit with an analyst about a personal video problem.
How to Survive a Deathbed
It’s not SARS, and you’re sure it’s something worse. Even though they say it’s just a cold, you’ve already resigned yourself to death’s icy grip. Ways to make the wait a little more worthwhile.
Why Won't You Leave Me Alone?
Some people hear voices inside their head, others simply hear voices, and it tortures them to death. A sufferer begs you to leave him alone, you and your constant demands.
Personal Hygiene on a Shoestring Budget
It’s a cold, menacing world out there, and it doesn’t care whether or not you’ve brushed your teeth this morning. But you care and you’re broke. So what’s going to come between you and your hygiene needs? The law?