Before anyone knew what to call it, there was something strange about him. Osi Umenyiora’s absence had been noted by UK viewers of “The Breakdown” on the NFL UK & Ireland channel for weeks. Jason Bell’s chair remained vacant. On the internet, people initially asked, half-jokingly, where he had disappeared to. The truth was unknown to everyone outside of a select few. He was lying in a hospital bed, unable to move or speak, his body in a state of disarray that precludes press releases. The silence broke in a way that seemed unplanned when he eventually made a comeback…
Author: Jack Ward
Observing a politician openly discuss his own demise has a way of resetting the atmosphere. The former Republican senator from Nebraska, Ben Sasse, has been doing that for months, and it doesn’t get any easier to observe. He talks about his daughters, jokes about keeping the pharmacy in business, and sits in front of cameras with the dried red marks of a drug rash crusted across his face. Despite all of this, he somehow comes across as less performative than most healthy people on television. He seems to have discovered something that the rest of us are still trying to…
When something seems strange on TV, older athletes receive a certain kind of attention. An excessively long pause. One side is pulled more than the other by this smile. This story actually starts there, on an NBA TV set sometime in late 2024, with viewers silently wondering if Isiah Thomas was okay as they leaned closer to their screens. Well, he wasn’t. However, he was also safe. In late December 2024, Thomas finally said it aloud while speaking with Mark Jackson on the Come and Talk 2 Me podcast. Bell’s palsy. A sudden weakening of the facial muscles on one…
Observing a well-known face become silent is unnerving. Corey Minor, the creator of the Smart Christians Channel, has been a consistent, even predictable, figure in a section of YouTube where Christian content producers analyze scripture, criticize culture, and sometimes engage in lengthy, repetitive comment threads. The videos stopped almost overnight after that. He didn’t recognize the voice on the other end of his channel. It belonged to his spouse. Posted early in the morning, Sharay Minor’s note was brief and almost clinical. Around 12:20 AM, she had driven Corey to the hospital. He was in excruciating pain. Anyone who has…
When a well-known face disappears from television, an odd thing happens. People take notice. Then they begin speculating. The word “illness” then, almost unavoidably, starts to cling to the name like a barnacle that won’t come off. Donny Deutsch, the boisterous, opinionated, and sometimes explosive adman-turned-pundit who founded one of the nation’s largest agencies before becoming a mainstay on cable news panels, has essentially experienced that. Today, when you search for his name, the autocomplete results practically lean in your direction: Parkinson’s disease, weight gain, skin condition, and forehead. There is no mistaking the implication. There must be a problem.…
The first time most people noticed something was off about Brian Daboll, it wasn’t the playcalling. The jawline was the culprit. He was noticeably smaller, the polo shirt no longer strained at the chest, and the walk along the sidelines seemed somehow lighter when training camp began in late July 2024, with the humidity of New Jersey already bearing down on the Quest Diagnostics fields. He finally acknowledged that it was fifty pounds. Of all things, Pilates. He had wandered into a Wyckoff studio after seeing it over dinner. To his credit, Daboll was open about how it happened. It…
The way Intellia Therapeutics has been appearing on traders’ screens lately has an almost theatrical quality. NTLA opened at $12.14 on a muggy Wednesday in late April, briefly rose, and then fell throughout the morning as almost 17 million shares—nearly four times its average daily volume—were traded. The stock had dropped nearly nine percent by New York lunchtime. The pattern would have been evident to anyone watching the tape: a swift bid, followed by sellers intervening, and then another wave. It appeared to be more of a slow dispute between two parties who couldn’t agree on the value of this…
Sarah Danh was dancing at her own wedding in Canyon Lake a few weeks ago. It’s the kind of Texas evening where the music continues to play in the parking lot long after the ceremony and the light hangs low over the water. By all accounts, she was gorgeous, twenty-seven, and recently married to Luke Gradl. That night’s photos are still making the rounds on the internet. They resemble any other album from a wedding. They don’t. Something inside her body broke two days into their honeymoon in Tokyo. Later on, physicians would refer to it as acute liver failure.…