As a maker of prosthetic eyes, Christina Leitzel was told as an apprentice to treat her craft much as an expert art forger would: create a perfect match of one of nature’s most intricate canvases. But just as there are many ways to lose an eye — to cancer or to a fall; to a…
“I’m a writer and my husband runs a nonprofit organization. We have two teenagers and are the type of family that typically goes to national parks, museums and cultural events for our vacations. We’re big on educational travel. Now that the kids are old enough to be left behind, my husband and I are looking…
New research shows that semaglutide, the compound in the weight-loss drug Wegovy, could treat an increasingly common liver disease. The study, published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine, included 800 adults with a severe form of liver disease known as metabolic dysfunction-associated steatohepatitis, or MASH. People develop MASH after fat builds up in…
Imagine sitting down for a meal at a restaurant with a view of the ocean. You are on vacation, and the restaurant’s décor includes fishnets, pictures of boats and taxidermied exemplars of the local catch. You order a plate of shrimp, reasonably expecting it to have come from nearby waters. Way too often it comes…
To be completely honest, I don’t care that much whether chicken meat is white or dark. For me, it’s all about the skin. (Well, it’s also about the feet, tail and innards, but that’s a newsletter for another time.) It doesn’t even have to be crispy skin — I like it steamed and chewy, brittle…
Less than an hour from Cork Airport, but tucked away off the main tourist trails, Ireland’s Blackwater Valley is steeped in natural splendor and Old World romance. The area gets its name from the Munster Blackwater — a deep, fast-flowing river that wends through the verdant landscape before joining the Atlantic Ocean at the medieval…
Your hips are your body’s powerhouse. You rely on them to jump, run, pick up bags of groceries and get in and out of your car. But if your hips or their surrounding muscles are tight or weak, other parts of your body — from your ankles to your lower back — have to step…
It’s been almost a year since Miranda July released her hit novel, “All Fours.” The novel features a woman in her mid-40s who heads out on a solo road trip across the country, only to stop at a roadside motel 30 minutes from her home. She winds up staying there for three weeks, exploring and…
The happiness curve is collapsing. For decades, research showed that the way people experienced happiness across their lifetimes looked like a U-shaped curve. Happiness tended to be high when they were young, then dipped in midlife, only to rise again as they grew old. But recent surveys suggest that young adults aren’t as happy as…
Times Insider explains who we are and what we do and delivers behind-the-scenes insights into how our journalism comes together. It was around 2 a.m. when the birds started to chirp outside of Carousel, a trendy bar in Bushwick, Brooklyn. I was with a small, committed group of friends, lingering as we considered our next…