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+22 +6
Toward a Pathology of the Possessed
Schizophrenia’s effects are often discussed in metaphors. What is it like to live with those metaphors? By Esmé Weijun Wang.
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+3 +1
Writ in Water
The enduring mystery of Keats’s last words. By Michelle Stacey.
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+12 +1
The Fierce Courage of Nina Simone
Simone’s courage was undeniable, but it was also a shield, even a mask, designed to protect her from hostile forces, real and imagined. White supremacy was not the only hellhound on her trail. By Adam Shatz.
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+33 +8
A Chilean Ex-Soldier Guiltily Recalls His Unit’s Atrocities
Guillermo Padilla says he was part of a commando unit in 1973 that tortured and executed suspected opponents of General Augusto Pinochet. By Pascale Bonnefoy.
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+26 +1
‘Slimy rimes’
Donne’s Contagious London. By Alison Bumke.
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+30 +5
Grieving People Aren't Stupid
“You just need an attitude adjustment.” “You are in need of the truth. If you were to only see it you could get over your loss and have new life.” “You seem like a very angry person and if you just learned to release that anger you would see the path.” One of the consequences of writing about loss and pain very publicly is that some people come to believe that you are, in fact, a deeply angry, troubled, fucked up person. That isn't an accurate description of me at all, ...
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+4 +2
The First Time Texas Killed One of My Clients
An attorney pieces together a life cut short. By Burke M. Butler.
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+17 +1
A Journey to the Medical Netherworld
If your child gets sick, hope for something mechanical. Failing that, wish for something commonplace. This is a mother's quest to find her daughter a diagnosis. By Alison Motluk.
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+27 +4
Fatal mistakes
A nurse gave an infant a fatal overdose of medication. Seven months later she killed herself. Could either death have been prevented? By Sarah Kliff.
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+33 +9
In the Land of Missing Persons
Two families, two bodies, and a wilderness of secrets. By Alex Tizon.
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+17 +3
By the time you read this, I’ll be dead
“Between 1999 and 2001, I helped eight people die, including the poet Al Purdy. Now, as I prepare to take my own life, I’m ready to tell my story.” By John Hofsess.
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+18 +2
The Reckoning
Fifty years ago, when Claire Wilson was eighteen, she was critically wounded during the 1966 University of Texas Tower shooting—the first massacre of its kind. How does the path of a bullet change a life? By Pamela Colloff.
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+37 +4
Scientists Have Identified 11 Indicators of a ‘Good Death’
Admit it, you’re morbidly curious. By Sarah Emerson.
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+8 +1
‘The scene belonged to a disaster movie, not a family holiday’: the day my partner drowned
When Decca Aitkenhead’s partner, Tony, died rescuing their son from a riptide, she believed she had survived the worst time of her life. But there was more to come.
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+13 +1
Silver Ghost
Merle Haggard
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+6 +2
Dave Morton Is Quitting Everest. Maybe. (It's Complicated)
After two years of unimaginable tragedy, everyone from outfitters and Sherpas to would-be climbers and the Nepalese government is questioning the future of commercial mountaineering. And then there’s David Morton, a veteran guide who spent the past year asking: What happens when you try to leave the world’s most lucrative mountain forever? By Abe Streep.
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+11 +2
On Vanishing
Alzheimer’s disease, Harry Houdini, and America's invisible caregivers. By Lynn Casteel Harper.
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+20 +4
A Professor’s Memoir of Life Inside a Ravaged Body
Many narratives of disability convey uplifting messages of hardship overcome. Christina Crosby instead focusses, in brutal detail, on the pain she has suffered. By Michael M. Weinstein.
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+3 +1
The Stories We Live With
Death turned his brother into a cipher, and it would take a return home to collect the pieces of a shattered life. By Philip Connors.
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+35 +5
The Texas Prison Museum Thrives on ‘Dark Tourism’
The gift shop offers shirts honoring the electric chair, “Home of Old Sparky,” and the museum's visitors get a “selectively edited” history of corrections. By Robyn Ross.
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