Every year, due to typos, 12,000 Americans are erroneously declared dead by the Social Security Administration. Those affected endure the Orwellian nightmare of convincing the government that they are alive.

Matthew Sweet explores the creative rivalry between the two great British horror studios.

Maybe I’m dying. It’s a thought I’ve had a lot throughout my life. As a child I was paranoid and constantly frightened by everyone’s seemingly fragile health. That comes from being the daughter of someone who is chronically ill. My mother was in and out of the hospital, which meant a lot of my time was spent in and out of the hospital waiting rooms. As I got older... By Al Rosenberg. (March)

A summer stint in a hospital, where poetry is necessary medicine. By Win Bassett.

The heartbreaking loss of my sister to mental illness.

On Seeing and Artifical Eyes, by Jeannie Vanasco

The essayist discusses the complex tragedy of having a loved one take their own life.

Allora & Calzadilla’s video installation The Great Silence (2014) centers on the world’s largest radio telescope, located in Esperanza, Puerto Rico, home to the last remaining population of a critically endangered species of parrots, Amazona vittata. For the work, Allora & Calzadilla collaborated with science fiction author Ted Chiang, who wrote a script in the spirit of a fable that ponders the irreducible gaps between living, nonliving, human, animal, technological, and cosmic actors.

Medical lapses are endangering inmates at the Rose M. Singer Center.

In most states, where euthanasia is illegal, physicians can offer only hints and euphemisms for patients to interpret.

Most would rather not think about it, but that breakdown gives birth to new life.

My cat has been dying for the last two years. It is normal to me now — it is simply the state of affairs. There's a rhythm to her medication: prednisone and urosodiol in the morning, urosodiol again in the evening, chemo every other day, a vitamin B shot once a week. And now, toward the end, painkillers...

His wife was just thirty-four. They had two little girls. The cancer was everywhere, and the parts of dying that nobody talks about were about to start. His best friend came to help out for a couple weeks. And he never left.

When Sandy Bem found out she had Alzheimer’s, she resolved that before the disease stole her mind, she would kill herself. The question was, when?

In 1962, a college student answers an ad: “Mortuary Assistant required.” By Simon Winchester. (2013)

In “Do No Harm,” one of Britain’s foremost neurosurgeons offers an anatomy of error.

By Amanda Taub

Arthur Mondella led a double life: running a family business in Brooklyn and secretly growing marijuana under his factory; when it was exposed, he killed himself.

“One of Us” explores a dark side of contemporary Scandinavia through the life and crimes of Anders Behring Breivik, a mass murderer who killed 77 people, most of them teenagers.

This terrifying disorder turns people into living zombies. But somewhere in the troubled brains of victims may be the ke…