There is a coffee maker in the waiting area of a small private practice in Queens, but it is no longer in use. A few weeks ago, the therapist who oversees the facility, who is in her late forties and has been in the chair for twenty years, casually brought up how people talk about the weather. According to her, clients used to hang around before sessions. They sit down now, staring at the door and their phones. She didn’t notice the room’s tightness a year ago. Around the time gas hit $4, it arrived. There is now one or…
Author: Jack Ward
Nobody gave much thought to what would happen after Harnaaz Sandhu left that stage in Eilat in December 2021, his sash still warm from the lights. The cameras flash, the crowd lands, and then there’s this weird transitional period that no one takes pictures of—the part where a 21-year-old has to move into a New York apartment and instantly become a worldwide icon. People might overlook the human element. The meal, the jet lag, and the strange silence following months of rehearsal. She has now discussed gaining weight multiple times, and her explanations have changed slightly with each interview—something that…
Nearly twenty years later, a scene from Robert Kirkman’s Invincible is still debated on Reddit, and it has nothing to do with the buckets of blood the comic was known for. The panel is silent. After spending ten months in space and fighting a war that most readers couldn’t even pronounce, Mark Grayson returns home to find his girlfriend Eve has changed. heavier. fatigued around the eyes. As expected, the fans went crazy. On paper, the cause of Atom Eve’s weight gain seems almost unremarkable. Eve was on Earth by herself, coping with an unexpected pregnancy while Mark was away…
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…
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.…