Paul Ainsworth does not grieve in private. When his father passed away in 2015 from pancreatic cancer, Ainsworth did what chefs usually do with challenging material: he worked with it. This time, it’s on roads, in open water, and on bike saddles in Austria rather than in a kitchen. Seeing someone transform a personal loss into a highly visible act of perseverance is both admirable and subtly heartbreaking. Oncology statistics show that the pancreatic cancer that killed his father is at the lower end. It continues to have one of the lowest survival rates of any cancer and is the…
Author: Michael Martinez
Some TV celebrities seem to live a little outside the typical definition of celebrity; they never really attract attention, make few announcements, and yet manage to gain genuine popularity. Among them is Anita Manning. Since 2010, the 78-year-old Glasgow-born antiques expert has been a regular on British television, appearing on shows like Bargain Hunt, Flog It!, and the Antiques Road Trip with a genuine warmth. For this reason, when rumors about her health started to circulate online, people took notice. In all honesty, Anita Manning has never disclosed any illness to the public. There is no official diagnosis, no statement…
The way the internet has chosen to view Erika Kirk is almost unsettling. Not just her sorrow. Not just her political views. Her physique. Her countenance. Her weight. Since taking on the public role that her late husband’s murder forced upon her, Erika has been the focus of a certain kind of scrutiny that is familiar to women in the spotlight: the kind that records every pound, every contour, and every shadow under the eye. Erika Kirk was a basketball player before all of this, and she didn’t wear heels until she was fourteen. In high school, she led her…
Forgetting something your body won’t let go of is a strange kind of betrayal. Years after whatever happened to them, a person can sit in a quiet room and still feel their heart race at a sound that no one else can relate to. The mind believes it has moved on. The body continues to react as though the threat never vanished because it is obstinate and unconvinced. This isn’t some nebulous metaphor used to sound poetic by therapists. It’s more akin to biology performing precisely what it was designed to do, albeit at the wrong moment. The brain’s typical…
Seldom does the room where it takes place appear to be much. A reclining chair, a blood-pressure cuff, a box of tissues, a nurse who looks in every so often across two hours while the edges of the world go soft. This is how esketamine is administered: a nasal spray is used in a clinic under supervision, and the patient is kept motionless until the dissociation subsides before being permitted to drive home. That tiny clinical scene has become something close to hope for the approximately one in three individuals whose depression does not improve after taking two or more…
Every offseason, a certain type of online atmosphere develops around NFL quarterbacks, and this year it centered on Caleb Williams. AI-generated pictures of the Bears’ young quarterback purportedly carrying fifty extra pounds started making the rounds sometime between OTAs and the initial preseason rumors. It’s the kind of joke that goes viral because it’s so blatantly false, yet people continue to spread it. As evidence that absurdity spreads more quickly than nuance, trolls are creating AI versions of Caleb Williams at OTAs with noticeable weight gain. The posts have received hundreds of likes on Instagram and X. Observing this development,…
A player whose last name already carries a certain amount of attention, Kiyan Anthony has been in the spotlight since before he ever set foot on a college court. As his sophomore offseason progresses, it’s difficult to ignore how much the focus has shifted from potential to physical preparedness. On paper, the figures are fairly straightforward: 172 pounds a year ago, 195 pounds now. However, statistics seldom provide a complete picture, and this one seems to be in the process of being written. The trainer who worked with Carmelo Anthony for years near the end of his career, Chris Brickley,…
Since Amanda Batula has been on reality TV for more than ten years, very little about her appearance goes unnoticed. In late February, she shared a video of herself brushing her teeth and mentioning her new aligners, but it was short-lived. In a matter of hours, it developed into a much more extensive and disorganized discussion that has been simmering on the internet for months: what precisely has Amanda Batula done? Here, timing was crucial, and Batula appeared to understand that. Only a few weeks after announcing her divorce from her four-year husband, Kyle Cooke, she made the Invisalign announcement.…