What does a year of isolation and anxiety do to a developing brain? Starting on April 6, a bearded and earnest neuroscientist at the University of Oregon named Philip Fisher began to send a digital questionnaire — at first weekly, and then, beginning in August, biweekly — to a representative group of a thousand American […]
My Therapists Were Right About Uncertainty
Faced with actual, persistent chaos, I’ve realized there was never a way to outpace danger. Michelle Obama wants to know if I have a plan to vote. The financial-services company hopes I have a plan for retirement. (“Will the world always be this unpredictable?” its paternalistic print ad asks.) My family inquires about the plan […]
Why Did I Think She Wouldn’t Die?
I’m not sure why I imagined Ruth Bader Ginsburg would live — not forever, maybe, but long enough to protect us. Long enough to vote to preserve Joe Biden’s victory in what will surely be a contested win and assure the expulsion, finally, of the troll from the throne and the resumption of recognizable government. […]
The Making of a Molotov Cocktail
Two lawyers, a summer of unrest, and a bottle of Bud Light. It’s an audacious choice to pause in front of an Applebee’s restaurant on Flatbush Avenue and grant an impromptu interview to a video journalist shortly before you allegedly throw a Molotov cocktail into a police car. But the city was out of its […]
Two Weeks With Rachel Noerdlinger, the Movement’s Publicist
It was early June when I first spoke to Rachel Noerdlinger, and she was worrying about the casket. George Floyd’s memorial service in Minneapolis was to be held in 48 hours, and she was considering how images of the coffin, conspicuously placed at the front of the university sanctuary, might impact the national psyche after […]
It Hardly Ever Happens But Sometimes It Does
Last spring, about three months after my breast-cancer diagnosis and six weeks after my mastectomy, I received my “oncotype report,” the document that calculated my mortality risk. The report would give me the odds of being healthy for the next decade and help my doctors advise me on what to do next: would I need […]
The Spaces Between Us
Some of my best friends own country houses. This is not a new discovery. One of the things I have loved best about my life in New York is exactly this, the wide diversity in the affluence of my friends — if you can call a group of mostly white, mostly college-educated, striving people living […]
Walking the Dog Is the Only Time I Feel Sane
This morning I walked the dog. I didn’t sleep much last night (who’s sleeping?) and at 2 a.m. was on the couch texting with a friend about earthquakes and World War II and our sudden mutual alienation from our regular lives that seem, in retrospect, almost silly in their prettiness, but then 8 a.m. rolled […]
The Stabbing in Morningside Park
Every generation, a crime tells a new story about New York. The murder of Tessa Majors is ours. At the 26th precinct, the baby-faced boy had to empty his pockets and hand over his backpack. He was holding $6 in cash. In the backpack, he had a small collection of school notebooks, all blank —“You […]
When You Hit Send Even Though You Know You Shouldn’t
The Cut on Tuesdays A weekly podcast from the Cut and Gimlet Media, with host Molly Fischer. Old emails are a fossil record of our lives. The constant everyday boring things, the big dramatic once-in-a-lifetime things — they’re all in there, trapped like ammonites in the sediment of your inbox. The thing is, it’s so […]
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