Hannah Murray was seventeen when most people first saw her face. She was straying through the first few episodes of Skins as Cassie Ainsworth, a girl who was secretly starving herself in a bedroom in Bristol. Her body was used as a plot device in the show. It turned out that the audience continued to do the same. Murray’s weight is still a topic of discussion nearly twenty years later, and it reveals more about us than it does about her. When you search for her name, you’ll come across an odd archive: 2019 tabloid rumors about whether she was…
Author: Michael Martinez
Football isn’t the first thing that sticks out about Sunday at Old Trafford. It’s the silence. Before kickoff against Liverpool, an 84-year-old man felt ill somewhere in the tunnel area. A few minutes later, one of the most recognizable figures in football was being escorted out of the stadium where he had built his legend. On his way to the hospital was Sir Alex Ferguson, who has seen more games from those directors’ box seats than most fans have in a lifetime. The throng above was still in the dark. The game had already started when the news began to…
One thing about watching Marion Bartoli on a tennis court was that, for some reason, it seemed like she was wrestling with herself more than her opponent. The baseline bouncing. Between points, the shadow fluctuates. The small customs that no one else dared to follow. She was the exceptional winner who turned the sport into a private negotiation with her own nerves. Thus, it came as a shock when word leaked out in 2016 that Wimbledon, the venue she had so loudly loved, had discreetly informed her that she could not participate in a legends’ exhibition because they were afraid…
When something changed on stage on Saturday night in New Orleans, the majority of the audience initially missed it. Don Henley had already made a small joke about how strange it was to play in the sun after spending so many months at the Sphere, and the Eagles were well into their Jazz & Heritage Festival set. It was the kind of warm Louisiana evening where the air feels heavier than the music. The band then began to reduce the size of their scheduled performance. Then, twenty minutes before anyone had anticipated, they were gone. A medical incident involving the…
To put it mildly, the Celtics’ season ended differently than anyone had anticipated. For the next ten years, there was no defensive collapse or last-second three. As Philadelphia left TD Garden with the series, there was nothing but an empty locker, a folded jersey, and Jayson Tatum sitting in street clothes. A Game 7 loss of 109-100 is the kind of outcome that typically provokes discussion about shot selection or coaching changes. Something completely different was sparked by this one. People keep returning to the injury report. The Celtics had no players listed on Friday. Tatum’s left knee stiffness suddenly…
Sitting in a coffee shop in any major city these days, the first thing you notice is how frequently someone looks at their phone, scowls, and then stealthily places it face down on the table. They occasionally release their breath. They don’t all the time. I spoke with a barista at a strip-mall café last month, and she told me that she witnesses the same small ritual of dread every morning before nine. Texts are not being checked by people. The futures are being examined. The way the general public interacts with markets is changing. The boundaries that formerly divided…
At two in the morning, when the only source of light is a phone screen and the only sound is a thumb moving upward repeatedly, there is a certain kind of silence in a living room. In clinics from Karachi to Karlsruhe, that stillness has recently been dubbed “doomscrolling.” Additionally, therapists say the habit has hardened into something more akin to a symptom than a quirk since the U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran started in late February. Finding the trigger is not difficult. After Iranian forces declared the Strait of Hormuz closed, Brent crude surged from about $71 per…
Those who have mastered the art of not needing anyone experience a certain kind of silence. Although it is frequently confused with peace, it is not precisely that. It appears to be calm. It appears to be competent. It appears to someone who just has it together from the outside, and that person typically believes it for a long time. The story of psychology is more nuanced. Extreme self-sufficiency frequently has roots in early childhood, when reaching out was met with absence, dismissal, or unpredictability, according to researchers studying attachment and emotional regulation. With sound reasoning, the child discovers that…