August 6, 2017

LOS I N G I T
Life in the post-diet age when youre not supposed
ed to tryy to lose weight because theres not supposed to be
any shame in not being skinny unless of course
co
ou se youre
urrse you fat. By Taffy Brodesser-Akner
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August 6, 2017

First Words Blending In For much of the countrys history, Americans have By Laila Lalami
11 worried about whether newcomers will assimilate to our way
of life. But weve never quite decided what that means.

On Technology An Island in the Stream The disappearance of SoundCloud By Jenna Wortham

14 has become a real possibility. What would that mean for the
music culture that thrives on the site?

Diagnosis What Didnt Hurt He thought he was getting the same By Lisa Sanders, M.D.
18 stomach bug that his co-worker had. But his symptoms wound
up being completely different.

18 14 26

The Ethicist Against His Will Can you keep a baby your boyfriend By Kwame Anthony Appiah
22 doesnt want?

Letter of Ghosting A seed of indifference that leads to a By Maya Binyam

24 Recommendation disappearing act.

Eat Burn Your Vegetables For this Mexican-style slaw, employ By Sam Sifton
26 the power of fire and smoke.

Talk Nicolle Wallace The political analyst thinks White House Interview by Ana Marie Cox
54 staffers need to have a limit.

Behind the Cover Jake Silverstein, editor in chief: We set out to convey, through the 8 Contributors 25 Tip
exploding scale and the playfully contradictory cover line, the infuriating dissonance 9 The Thread 50 Puzzles
of a culture that has begun to reject dieting but has yet to embrace bodies that arent skinny. 13 New Sentences 52 Puzzles
Photo illustration by Todd McLellan. 17 Poem (Puzzle answers on Page 53)
22 Judge John Hodgman

4 Continued on Page 6
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August 6, 2017

Galaxy Quest Forty years after the launch of the Voyager probes, their By Kim Tingley
28 mission is winding down and with it, the careers of the
aging engineers who steer them across the universe.

Losing It Life in the post-diet age when no one ever diets because By Ta y Brodesser-Akner
34 thats bad for you and because theres no shame in not being
skinny unless of course youre fat.

Guilt by Omission Noura Jackson spent nine years in prison for murder, until it By Emily Bazelon
40 was revealed that prosecutors had withheld a crucial piece of
evidence a frequent occurrence that is almost never punished.

The full-scale Voyager model at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.
Photograph by Graeme Mitchell for The New York Times.

The No. 1 rule with spacecraft is:

Dont change it if you dont have to.
Page 28

6 Copyright 2017 The New York Times

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Contributors

Taffy Brodesser- Losing It, Editor in Chief JAKE SILVERSTEIN

Akner Page 34 Deputy Editors JESSICA LUSTIG,
BILL WASIK
Managing Editor ERIKA SOMMER
Taffy Brodesser-Akner is a contributing writer for
Design Director GAIL BICHLER
the magazine. In September, she will become
Director of Photography KATHY RYAN
a features writer for The Timess culture desk
Art Director MATT WILLEY
and a staff writer for the magazine. Her first
Features Editor ILENA SILVERMAN
novel, about marriage and middle age, will be Politics Editor CHARLES HOMANS
published by Random House in 2018. This week, Special Projects Editor CAITLIN ROPER
Brodesser-Akner writes about Weight Watchers, Story Editors NITSUH ABEBE,
the question of long-term success in dieting and MICHAEL BENOIST,

cultural changes around weight loss. What SHEILA GLASER,

is so interesting to me is that people maintain CLAIRE GUTIERREZ,

LUKE MITCHELL,
tremendous good will toward the company,
DEAN ROBINSON,
she says. Despite what we know about weight
WILLY STALEY,
recidivism and how susceptible everyone is to
SASHA WEISS
it, people are way more willing to blame their will
Associate Editors JEANNIE CHOI,
Photographed by Kathy Ryan at The New York Times than their physiology. JAZMINE HUGHES
on July 26, 2017, at 5:30 p.m. Chief National Correspondent MARK LEIBOVICH
Staff Writers SAM ANDERSON,
Emily Bazelon Guilt by Omission, Emily Bazelon is a staff writer for the magazine EMILY BAZELON,
Page 40 and the Truman Capote fellow at Yale Law SUSAN DOMINUS,

School. She last wrote a First Words column about MAUREEN DOWD,
NIKOLE HANNAH-JONES,
Donald Trumps dismissal of political norms.
JONATHAN MAHLER,
WESLEY MORRIS,
Laila Lalami First Words, Laila Lalami is the author, most recently, of The
JENNA WORTHAM
Page 11 Moors Account. She last wrote a First Words
Writers at Large C. J. CHIVERS,
column about our countrys concept of borders. PAMELA COLLOFF,
NICHOLAS CONFESSORE,
JIM RUTENBERG
Kim Tingley Galaxy Quest, Kim Tingley is a contributing writer for the David Carr Fellow JOHN HERRMAN
Page 28 magazine. She last wrote about the future Deputy Art Director BEN GRANDGENETT

of automation. Digital Art Director RODRIGO DE BENITO SANZ

Deputy Photo Editor JESSICA DIMSON
Associate Photo Editors STACEY BAKER,
AMY KELLNER,
Jenna Wortham On Technology, Jenna Wortham is a staff writer for the magazine.
CHRISTINE WALSH
Page 14 She last wrote about finding a more inclusive vision
Virtual Reality Editor JENNA PIROG
of fitness on Instagram. Copy Chief ROB HOERBURGER
Copy Editors HARVEY DICKSON,
DANIEL FROMSON,

Dear Reader: Would You Steal From a 91% No

MARGARET PREBULA,
ANDREW WILLETT

Store if No One Was Watching? 6% Maybe 2% Yes

Head of Research
Research Editors
NANDI RODRIGO
ROBERT LIGUORI,
RENE MICHAEL,
Every week the magazine publishes the results of
LIA MILLER,
a study conducted online in June 2017 by The New
STEVEN STERN,
York Timess research-and-analytics department, MARK VAN DE WALLE
reecting the opinions of 2,903 subscribers who Production Chief ANICK PLEVEN
choose to participate. This weeks question: If you Production Editors PATTY RUSH,
knew that no one would see, would you steal a small * Rounded to nearest whole percentage HILARY SHANAHAN
item, like candy or gum, from a store? Editorial Assistant LIZ GERECITANO BRINN

Publisher: ANDY WRIGHT Advertising Directors: MARIA ELIASON (Luxury and Retail) MICHAEL GILBRIDE (Fashion, Luxury, Beauty and Home) SHARI KAPLAN (Live Entertainment and Books) NANCY
KARPF (Fine Arts and Education) MAGGIE KISELICK (Automotive, Technology and Telecom) SCOTT M. KUNZ (International Fashion) JOHN RIGGIO (Recruitment) JOSH SCHANEN (Media, Studios and
Travel) ROBERT SCUDDER (Advocacy) SARAH THORPE (Corporate, Health Care, Liquor and Packaged Goods) BRENDAN WALSH (Finance and Real Estate) National Sales Office Advertising Directors:
KYLE AMICK (Atlanta/Southeast) LAUREN FUNKE (Florida/Southeast) MAGGIE KISELICK (Detroit) CHRISTOPHER REAM (Los Angeles/San Francisco/Northwest) JIMMY SAUNDERS (Chicago/Midwest)
ROBERT SCUDDER (Boston/Northeast/Washington) KAREN FARINA (Magazine Director) MARILYN M C CAULEY (Managing Director, Specialty Printing) THOMAS GILLESPIE (Manager, Magazine Layout).
To advertise, email karen.farina@nytimes.com.

8 8.6.17
 The Thread
Readers respond to the 7.23.2017 issue.
RE: MOSUL
James Verini wrote about life in Mosul
during Iraqs campaign to retake the city
from ISIS.
This is the sort of deep journalism only
possible with the resources of an estab-
lished news organization with highly
trained professionals reporting, writ-
ing, photographing and producing. The
details and places in this piece drive
home again the incalculable cost of the
political decision made by the United
States 14 years ago to invade and occupy
Iraq without international support, with-
out invitation and especially without any
clear idea of how much and how long
that decision would continue to aect
the United States and its interests.
Ralph Begleiter, Ocean View, Del.
When America marched into Iraq with
our big stick and whacked that giant hor-
nets nest, we did not pause to contem-
plate what comes after the heroic and sat-
isfying act of whacking something. Well,
some of us did, but we werent the ones
with the guns. We were armed with im-
sy protest signs that bent and uttered
in the streets of Chicago, Madison, San
Francisco, New York.
And now, as the gray dust of exploded
cinder block drifts through Mosul, were
treated to beautiful, horric reporting
like this. My house is made of wood,
not cinder block. My familys only real
defense is a robust, serious and coura-
geous democracy. I and others watch in
horror at how quickly that defense can
begin to crumble, and we wonder whats
next. Our leader is a madman.
Carl Whiting, Wheeler, Ore.
Photograph by Peter van Agtmael
RE: ABORTION PILL
Ruth Graham wrote about the anti-abortion
movements campaign to elevate abortion-
pill reversal.
As obstetrician-gynecologists, we are
committed to supporting women in
the decisions they make about their
reproductive lives. We do this with
the most up-to-date and rigorously test-
ed scientic evidence. When it comes to
womens health, patients deserve the very
best information upon which to base their
decisions. The hypothetical possibility of
an abortion-pill reversal as promoted by
Dr. George Delgado may have biologi-
cal plausibility, but it does not meet this
crucial standard of evidence-based care.
This hypothesis would need to undergo
rigorous scientic testing and quality
peer review before it could be validly rec-
ommended to women. We would welcome
a tested and proven method for helping the
rare patient who changes her mind after
initiating a medical abortion. But until so-
called abortion-pill reversal has undergone
the same stringent study as any other med-
ical therapy, oering it to women to say
nothing of requiring their doctors to oer it
is unethical at best and harmful at worst.
Drs. Abigail Cutler, Aileen Gariepy, Mere-
dith Pensak, and Nancy Stanwood, Section of
Family Planning, Department of Obstetrics,
Gynecology and Reproductive Sciences, Yale
University School of Medicine
Women having personal agency over
our lives and reproduction is essential
to our dignity as full human beings. We
call that being pro-choice. Choice is after the heroic
the operative word. If a woman has sec-
ond thoughts after taking the rst pill,
this is a choice she can utilize to express
that choice. It is her decision to make.
Illustrations by Giacomo Gambineri
The problem comes when legislation
denies women the ability to choose.
Stripping women of our choice aside
from being state intrusion into a very
personal matter deeply infantilizes
us, suggesting that we are not mature
enough to make that very adult choice
THE STORY,
for ourselves, while also demanding that
ON TWITTER we take on the profoundly adult respon-
sibilities of motherhood.
The cover of this
weekends
Ellen Goldin, Brooklyn
@NYTmag along
with the other
photos, all by
@pvanagtmael
are incredibly
arresting.
@tylersbugg
Ive had two abortions. The rst time
was because of birth-control failure; my
diaphragm was not tted properly. The
second time was because of rape. Both
occurred when I was 21. I am now 60. I
have never regretted either abortion. In
fact, I have always felt very grateful that
I was able to get safe, legal, aordable
abortions a few years after Roe v. Wade.
If women change their minds and
want to reverse the process, thats their
choice. I had no doubt or uncertainty
doing it, and I felt only relief as soon
as I knew it was done. Its all about
choice. Demand for reversals doesnt
mean women really dont want to have
abortions. They just want the right to
change their mind.
Shelley Diamond, San Francisco
CORRECTION
An article on July 9 about Marine recruits
We did not at Parris Island referred incorrectly to the
pause to tenures of Col. Daniel Haas and Lt. Col.
contemplate Kate Germano. Haas had been there about
a year not several years before Germano
what comes arrived in 2014, and Haas left in the summer
of 2015, not the fall. And it was the command-
and satisfying ing general of the depot not Haas who
relieved Germano of her command.
act of whacking
something. Send your thoughts to magazine@nytimes.com.
9
 OBAMA
THE CALL OF HISTORY
PETER BAKER

A vivid and in-depth illustrated

account of the Obama presidency
by Peter Baker, the chief
White House correspondent
of The New York Times.

The presidency of Barack Hussein Obama was

all about hopes those that were realized and those
that were dashed. From the authors Epilogue

An elegant and evocative look back at the Obama

years as history by one of the most astute observers
of the modern presidency. Michael Beschloss

A compelling rst look at a consequential

presidency that will be studied forever and here
is where we will all start that conversation.
Jon Meacham

Masterfully written and stunningly illustrated.

Douglas Brinkley

w i t h mor e t h a n
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First Words

For much of the countrys history, Americans have worried about whether newcomers will
assimilate to our way of life. But in all that time, weve never quite decided what that word
means. By Laila Lalami

Blending In
The problem is, my seatmate said, they dont assimilate. We were
about 30,000 feet in the air, nearly an hour from our destination,
and I was beginning to regret the turn our conversation had taken.
It started out as small talk. He told me he owned a butcher shop in
Gardena, about 15 miles south of Los Angeles, but was contemplating
retirement. I knew the area well, having lived nearby when I was
in graduate school, though I hadnt been there in years. Oh,
its changed a lot, he told me. We have all those Koreans now.
Ordinarily, my instinct would have been to return to the novel I was
reading, but this was just two months after the election, and I was
still trying to parse for myself what was happening in the country.
They have their own schools, he said. They send their kids there
on Sundays so they can learn Korean. What does assimilation
mean these days? The word has its roots in the Latin simulare,
meaning to make similar. Immigrants are expected, over an undened
period, to become like other Americans, a process metaphorically
described as a melting pot. But what this means, in practice, remains
8.6.17 11
First Words

unsettled. After all, Americans have

always been a heterogeneous population
racially, religiously, regionally. By what
criteria is an outsider judged to t into
such a diverse nation? For some, assim-
ilation is based on pragmatic consider-
ations, like achieving some uency in the
dominant language, some educational or
economic success, some familiarity with
the countrys history and culture. For
others, it runs deeper and involves relin-
quishing all ties, even linguistic ones, to
the old country. For yet others, the whole
idea of assimilation is wrongheaded, and
integration a dynamic process that
retains the connotation of individuality
is seen as the better model. Think salad
bowl, rather than melting pot: Each ingre-
dient keeps its avor, even as it mixes
with others.
Whichever model they prefer, Ameri-
cans pride themselves on being a nation
of immigrants. Starting in 1903, people
arriving at Ellis Island were greeted by
a copper statue whose pedestal bore the
words, Give me your tired, your poor,
your huddled masses yearning to breathe
free. One of this countrys most cher-
ished myths is the idea that, no matter
where you come from, if you work hard,
you can be successful. But these ideals
have always been combined with a deep
suspicion of newcomers.
In 1890, this newspaper ran an article
explaining that while the red and black
assimilate in New York, not so the Chi-
naman. Cartoons of the era depicted
Irish refugees as drunken apes and Chi- Immigrants contribute to America in a By what but for the commentator Ann Coulter, the
nese immigrants as cannibals swallowing million dierent ways, from growing the shooting in Minnesota would never have
Uncle Sam. At dierent times, the United food on our tables to creating the tech- criteria is happened in Australia because they have
States barred or curtailed the arrival of nologies we use every day. They commit an outsider fewer than 10k Somalis. We have >100k.
Chinese, Italian, Irish, Jewish and, most far fewer crimes than native-born citizens. judged to Earlier this month, the Fox News per-
recently, Muslim immigrants. During the But hardly a week goes by when poor sonality Tucker Carlson ran a segment in
Great Depression, as many as one million assimilation isnt blamed for oenses t into such which he said citizens of a small town in
Mexicans and Mexican-Americans were involving immigrants and the entire a diverse Pennsylvania claimed that several dozen
deported under the pretext that they were project of immigration called into ques- nation? Roma who had been resettled there def-
to blame for the economic downturn. tion. In Michigan, an Indian-American ecate in public, chop the heads o chick-
The pendulum between hope and fear emergency-room doctor who belongs to ens, leave trash everywhere. (The police
continues to swing today. We are a coun- the Dawoodi Bohra community, a Shiite said they issued citations where relevant.)
try where people of all backgrounds, all Muslim sect, was charged with perform- The group doesnt seem at all interested
nations of origin, all languages, all reli- ing female genital mutilation on several in integrating, Carlson complained. You
gions, all races, can make a home, Hillary young girls. In Minnesota, a black police have to assume its a statement.
Clinton told an immigrant-advocacy con- ocer, the rst Somali-American cop in One reason immigration is continu-
ference in New York in 2015. By contrast, his precinct, shot an unarmed Australian ously debated in America is that there
Donald Trump warned on the campaign woman. Both incidents were immediately is no consensus on whether assimila-
trail that not everyone who seeks to join seized upon by the far right as examples of tion should be about national principles
our country will be able to successfully the inability or refusal of Muslims to or national identity. Those who believe
assimilate. Last November, one of these assimilate. So far this year, American police that assimilation is a matter of principle
visions of assimilation won out. ocers have killed more than 500 people, emphasize a belief in the Constitution

12 8.6.17 Photo illustration by Derek Brahney

 and the rule of law; in life, liberty and the
pursuit of happiness; and in a strong work
ethic and equality. Where necessary, they
support policy changes to further deter
any cultural customs that defy those val-
ues. For example, Rick Snyder, the gov-
ernor of Michigan, signed a new law that
increases existing penalties for anyone
who performs female genital mutilation
on a minor.
But for those who believe that assim-
ilation is a matter of identity as many
on the far right do nothing short of the
abandonment of all traces of your her-
itage will do. The alt-right pundit Milo
Yiannopoulos, an immigrant himself, told
a campus group in January that the hijab
is not something that should ever be seen
on American women. The perception
that visible signs of religious identity are
indicators of deep and sinister splits in
society can lead to rabid fears of wholly
imaginary threats. Several states have
passed anti-Shariah measures, in fear that
Muslims will seek to impose their own
religious laws on unsuspecting Ameri-
cans. The fact that Muslims make up 1
percent of the U.S. population and that
such an agenda is both a statistical and
a Constitutional impossibility has done
nothing to temper this fear. It is no lon-
ger a fringe belief: The white nationalist
Richard Spencer told a reporter that he
once bonded with Stephen Miller, now
a senior White House adviser, over con-
cerns that immigrants from non-European
countries were not assimilating.
Debates about assimilation are dier-
ent from debates about undocumented
immigration, even though they are often
mixed together. Concerns about undocu-
mented immigration typically center on
competition for jobs or the use of public
resources, but complaints about assimi-
lation are mostly about identity a neb-
ulous mix of race, religion and language.
In May, a survey by the Public Religion
Research Institute and The Atlantic found
that white working-class voters were 3.5
times more likely to support Donald
Trump if they reported feeling like a
stranger in their own land. My seatmate
on that airplane was a small-business
Illustration by Kyle Hilton
owner, yet he did not seem worried
about Korean-Americans taking busi-
ness away from him; he seemed more
aggrieved that their children studied two
languages, or that his community fea-
tured store signs and church marquees
in an alphabet he could not read. Others For those
might object to their neighbors wearing
skullcaps, or eating fermented duck eggs, who believe
or listening to Tejano music and call assimilation is
these concerns about assimilation, too. a matter of
It should be clear by now that assim-
ilation is primarily about power. In identity, nothing
Morocco, where I was born, I never short of the
heard members of Parliament express abandonment
outrage that French immigrants or
expats, as they might call themselves of all traces of
eat pork, drink wine or have extra- your heritage
marital sex, in plain contradiction of will do.
local norms. If they do adopt the coun-
trys customs or speak its language, they
arent said to have assimilated but to
have gone native. In France, by con- lation, many people end up throwing up
trast, politicians regularly lament that
people descended from North African
immigrants choose halal food options
New Sentences By Sam Anderson
The meanest trick you
can play on a raccoon,
a friend and science writer
once told me, is to give it
a sugar cube.
I have been an animal lover since early
childhood, and one of my favorite
animal facts, central to my whole
understanding of the natural world,
has to do with raccoons: that they love
to wash their food, and their tiny
humanoid paws, in creeks. They spend
From An most of their lives, I have always
Arrangement of
Skin: Essays imagined, hunched over swift-running
(Counterpoint, streams, scrubbing in like doctors,
2017, Page 178), getting ready for the highly technical
a collection by
business of being raccoons.
the poet and
essayist Anna After reading this sentence from Anna
Journey. Journey, I interrupted my wife. Listen to
for school lunches or want to attend
classes in head scarves. One result is a
daily experience of rejection, which only
makes assimilation more dicult.
America is dierent from Europe in
one signicant way: It has a long and
successful history of integrating its
immigrants, even if each new genera-
tion thinks that the challenges it faces
are unique and unprecedented. It is a
nation in which people will wear green
on St. Patricks Day without thinking
much about the periods during which the
Irish were accused of contaminating the
nation with their foreign habits. Because
there is no objective measure of assimi-
their hands and saying, I know it when I
see it. The question is: Who is doing the
judging here?
this, I said. The best way to prank a
raccoon is to give it a sugar cube. When
it washes the cube in the nearest stream,
the sugar will dissolve, and the raccoon
will have no idea what happened.
For decades, my wife has been
listening to me talk about raccoon
hand-washing, and this was finally
a bridge too far. It cannot be true,
she said, that raccoons wash all
of their food.
They do, I said.
What about when they eat out of
garbage cans? she said. Youre telling
me they go running back and forth to
streams to wash each piece of garbage?
I had no response to this. My wife
clacked for a few seconds on her laptop.
Raccoons do not have a very good grip
because of the lack of opposable
thumbs, she read, triumphantly, and
so they often hold items with two hands
and frequently roll objects between
their hands. If this behavior happens
near water it also looks like washing.
Raccoons, it turns out, do sometimes dip
things in water, including sugary things,
but theyre not actually washing them.
I felt bereft. My whole life, I had
been holding on to this solid and
wonderful cube of childhood certainty
pure, sweet, bright and true but
now I looked down to see that I was
clutching only ice-cold creek water.
13
On Technology By Jenna Wortham
The disappearance of SoundCloud
has become a real possibility. What
would that mean for the music culture
that thrives on the site?
14 8.6.17
This summer, an engineer named Mat-
thew Healy moved to Berlin to work at
SoundCloud, a popular music-streaming
service. He started his job on a Monday.
On Thursday, a companywide meeting
was called. Healy and his new co-work-
ers assumed it was about the acquisition
rumors swirling around the company.
Instead, Healy learned that he and 172
other employees roughly 40 percent
of the companys sta were being laid
o. The rest of the day is a blur, he wrote
in a post about his experience online. I
now realize that I was in shock.
After the layos, the technology blog
TechCrunch published a report claiming
that SoundCloud had enough money to
nance itself for only 80 days. Though the
company disputed the report, the possi-
bility that SoundCloud might disappear
sent a shock through the web. Data hoard-
ers began trying to download the bulk
of the services public archive in order
to preserve it. Musicians like deadmau5,
a Canadian electronic-music producer,
tossed out suggestions on Twitter for
how the company could save the service.
Chance the Rapper tweeted: Im work-
ing on the SoundCloud thing.
Since its start in 2008, SoundCloud has
been a digital space for diverse music
cultures to ourish, far beyond the inu-
ence of mainstream label trends. For
lesser-known artists, it has been a place
where you can attract the attention of fans
and the record industry without having
to work the usual channels. There is now
a huge roster of successful artists who
rst emerged on SoundCloud, including
the R.&B. singer Kehlani, the electronic
musician Ta-Ha, the pop musician Dylan
Brady and the rapper Lil Yachty, to name
just a few.
Part of what made the service so vital
was the way that established artists stayed
plugged into it. When an unknown Atlanta
musician named Makonnen self-released
an EP online and on SoundCloud, Miley
Cyrus shared an image on Instagram
agging one of his singles, while another
song, Tuesday, caught the attention of
the Toronto rapper Drake. Drake record-
ed a remix of the song and eventually
signed Makonnen to his own label, OVO
Sound. This, of course, is what most musi-
cians want, but Makonnen later said in an
interview that he was frustrated by the
glacial label process, which delayed the
follow-up to his EP. SoundCloud allowed
Illustration by Jon Han Next Week: On Photography, by Teju Cole
On Technology
artists to bypass that process.
Even now, the site houses a large pool
of musicians, many of them unsigned,
who are part of international music cul-
tures that largely do not exist anywhere
else online. In a recent Times article, my
colleague Jon Caramanica chronicled the
rise of SoundCloud rap, a subgenre of
rap released primarily on the streaming
service that he described as the most
vital and disruptive new movement in
hip-hop thanks to rebellious music, volca-
nic energy and occasional acts of malev-
olence. As he noted, it rose as a rebuttal
to the hyperproduced sound of artists like
Drake. It was music made entirely to be
distributed online, yet it created its own
culture oline something unlikely to
have emerged from the imagination of
your typical record-label executive.
16 8.6.17
The death of SoundCloud, then, would
mean more than the sunsetting of a ser-
vice: It could mean the erasure of a decade
of internet sound culture, says Jace Clay-
ton, a musician and the author of Uproot:
Travels in 21st-Century Music and Digital
Culture. He reminded me of an online
music service called imeem, which
MySpace bought in 2009 in the hope of
absorbing its 16 million users into its own
platform. But the struggling service shut
down, and all the music uploaded and
shared to it was lost, including what Clay-
ton recalls to be a very eclectic subset of
black Chicago house music. What does
it mean if someone can delete hundreds
and thousands of hours of sound culture
overnight? he asked.
SoundCloud always let me get lost in a
warren of music that Id never heard or
Illustration by Jon Han
even heard of before. Once, it was Japa-
nese trap songs. Another time it was Ethi-
opian jazz music. It somehow manages to
evoke some of the most appealing features
of oline music culture, like browsing
through bins in a record store or catching
indie acts at an underground club.
SoundCloud took a community-rst
approach to building its business, priori-
tizing nding artists to post on its service
over making deals with music labels to
license their music, the approach taken
by Spotify. The music industry was still in
the process of adapting to a digital ecosys-
tem when SoundCloud emerged; illegal
le-sharing was rampant. But when the
industry nally began squelching unautho-
rized distribution of artists tracks, Sound-
Jenna Wortham
is a sta writer Cloud was hit hard. D.J.s were also told
for the magazine. to take down mixes of songs they didnt
own the rights to, and many of the remixes
the site was known for were removed.
SoundCloud was very much built in the
dot-com-era mentality of building an
audience and then nding a way to make
money, Mark Mulligan, a music-industry
analyst, told me. SoundCloud struggled
to monetize the service. Artists who paid
to be featured on the site balked at hav-
ing ads run against their music, and when
the company introduced its own version
of a subscription service, called Go, the
response was tepid. How do you persuade
people who have been using your services
free to start paying $5 or $10 a month?
Generally speaking, the business of
music streaming is treacherous at best:
Consumers dont seem to want to pay
big money for access to digital music ser-
vices, so companies must keep the fees
low. But the more those subscribers listen
to music, the more these services have
to pay the labels for access. Even Spotify,
which has the largest user base of all the
streaming services, still diverts more
than half its revenue back to the labels
for licensing fees. And the most popular
artists Rihanna, Future, Drake are all
releasing music exclusively through the
streaming service that pays them to do
so; or in the case of Beyonc and Jay-Z,
through the streaming service they own,
Tidal. A start-up like SoundCloud stands
almost no chance of competing.
For the most part, streaming services
feel sterile and devoid of community.
Spotify, Tidal and even YouTube to a
degree are vast and rich troves of music,
but they primarily function as search
engines organized by algorithms. You
typically have to know what youre look-
ing for in order to nd it. They have tried
to remedy that drawback with custom-
ized playlists, but still they feel devoid
of a human touch. Serendipity is rare.
By contrast, the most successful online
communities, like SoundCloud, have the
feel of public spaces, where everyone can
contribute to the culture. They feel as if
they belong to the community that sus-
tains them. But of course thats not how
it works. In Who Owns Culture?, Susan
Scadi writes: Community-generated
art forms have tremendous economic
and social value yet most source com-
munities have little control over them.
SoundClouds fan base may soon learn
this lesson the hard way. The services
founder, Alexander Ljung, declined to
What does it be interviewed for this column, but after to stay. Whether SoundCloud can last
Chance the Rapper tweeted about his another 10 years remains to be seen. But
mean if someone interest in saving SoundCloud, the men the moral of its struggle is clear: As digital
can delete talked on the phone, which Chance report- culture becomes more tied to the success
hundreds and ed was very fruitful. Ljung agreed, tweet- of the platforms where it ourishes, there
ing that for now, SoundCloud was here is always a risk of it disappearing forever.
thousands of
hours of sound Poem Selected by Terrance Hayes
culture
Sometimes form is the only way to hold a poems intensities. This poem, a loose pantoum,
overnight? gives feeling shape. It braids hymnal and elegy. It emits a near-ecstatic passion. I often
pause over the line anything can be a drug if you love it. True that. This poem deals with
those intensities between feeling nothing and feeling everything. This poet, Sam Sax, is
addicted to feeling.
Prediagnosis
By Sam Sax
when i was born i felt nothing
but life ripping open before me,
the doctors white face & coat,
everyone seemed happy i was alive.
but life ripping open before me
led to me ripped open before life.
everyone seemed happy. i was alive
but only for a short time.
me ripped open. before life
i was dependent on milk & men
but only for a short time.
anything can be a drug if you love it.
dependent on milk & men
my overdose a slow child inside me
anyone can be a drug if you love him
all i needed was time.
my overdose a slow-growing child
my man a cancer of light
he said all i needed was time
he left me & i tried to leave life.
my man. my cancer light.
my doctors white face & coat.
he left me, my life
when i was born i felt everything
Terrance Hayes is the author of ve collections of poetry, most recently How to Be Drawn, which was a
nalist for the National Book Award in 2015. His fourth collection, Lighthead, won the 2010 National Book
Award. Sam Sax is a poet whose debut collection, Madness, will be published in September by Penguin.
Illustration by R. O. Blechman 17
Diagnosis By Lisa Sanders, M.D.

When Dr. Jennifer Girard walked into

He thought he was getting the same the darkened room, her rst thought
was that the 61-year-old man looked too

stomach bug that his co-worker had. healthy to be in the hospital. It was well
past midnight, and though his pale blue
eyes had the puness of fatigue, he was
But his symptoms wound up being awake and alert.
She introduced herself to her newest

completely dierent. patient. She was a resident nishing up

her second year of training and was caring
for the patients who came in that night.

A Sudden Fever
He sat up, put on his glasses and explained
why he had come to the hospital. Hed just
returned home to Boston from a weeklong
trip to Edinburgh. Once back, his co-work-
er, a young woman half his age, developed
a horrible stomach illness lots of pain
and diarrhea that kept her home for the
next two days. But hed felt ne.
Around the time she was starting to
feel better, he woke up feeling tired and
achy. A museum curator, he was leading
a group that day to a nearby town to view
a collection, and he thought he could
manage. But that afternoon, on the way
home in the tour bus, he began to shiver.
He went home and got into bed. He dug
up a thermometer and stuck it under his
tongue. It read 101.
The next day he was too sick to work.
He was expecting that he had the same
stomach bug his co-worker had. But
though his stomach felt tender, the vio-
lent symptoms never arrived. He just felt
feverish and sore. When his temperature
rose to 103 the following day, he called
his doctors oce and went in the next
afternoon. He was still blazing with fever,
and the doctor sent him to Beth Israel
Deaconess Medical Center in Boston.

The Danger of a Helpful Drug
In the E.R., he was given high-dose acet-
aminophen to bring his fever down. And
he spent the rest of the day being ques-
tioned, prodded, poked and scanned.
None of the tests were revealing, but no
one wanted to send him home, either. He
understood why. For the past two years,
hed been taking a medication called
etanercept for Sjogrens syndrome. The
drug works by tamping down the immune
system, and that limited his ability to ght
o infections.
Sjogrens is an autoimmune disorder

18 8.6.17 Illustration by Andreas Samuelsson

 WE STARTED

A BIOTECH REVOLUTION THAT

SAVES MILLIONS OF LIVES A YEAR

2017 City of Hope

He is Art Riggs, Ph.D., chair of the Department of Diabetes and Metabolic Diseases Research. At City of Hope, Dr. Riggs
work led to discoveries such as synthetic human insulin, used by millions of patients around the world to manage their
disease. Dr. Riggs also improved antibodies through recombinant DNA technology. This breakthrough produced engineered
antibodies that are the basis for some of todays most widely used smart cancer drugs. At City of Hope, we believe the future
cant wait for the future. Find out more at CityofHope.org
Diagnosis
a somewhat mysterious type of disease
in which the bodys own white blood
cells attack normal tissue as if it were an
invading organism in this case wreak-
ing havoc on the glands that make tears
and saliva, as well as on some of the
joints. A weekly injection of etanercept
had been helpful, eliminating his joint
pain. But he knew that because of this
drug, he was almost helpless in the face
of a serious infection.
Once the acetaminophen kicked in, the
patient felt much better. The E.R. doctors
decided to admit him overnight. If, as the
doctors suspected, he had a virus, hed
be ne the next day and could go home.
In Search of Infections
When Girard rst heard about her new
patient, she read up on the infections to
which people who took etanercept were
susceptible. It was a long list. Viruses
couldnt be treated before diagnosis,
so she focused on bacterial infections.
One bacterium that attacks those with
immune deciencies is food-borne and
called listeria. It is often found in unpas-
teurized milk and cheeses and tends
to cause horrible nausea, vomiting and
diarrhea, which he didnt have. Legio-
nella pneumonia is another infection
more common in those who take the
medication, but he didnt have a cough
and wasnt short of breath. A much more
common bug, staph aureus, could cause
joint infections though again, he didnt
have any complaints about his joints.
Still, she planned to start him on
broad-spectrum antibiotics to cover all
these threats. But when she met him, he
didnt look like someone who had a ter-
rible infection. The doctors in the E.R.
hadnt given him antibiotics. She could
hold o on the antibiotics and just watch
and wait but if he had one of the infec-
tions shed read about, delaying treatment
even a few hours could be deadly. To make
matters more complicated, he thought
he was allergic to penicillin though he
couldnt remember what happened when
he took it. This shifted the risk-benet
ratio. The normally low-stakes decision
of whether to start an antibiotic changed
when doing so could be so dangerous.
She asked a colleague, another resident,
to assess the patient. Girard didnt tell her
co-worker that she planned on an antibiotic;
she just asked her to see the patient and
20 8.6.17
give a recommendation. The co-worker
saw the patient and agreed. Even though
he looked well, if he had an infection, he
was practically defenseless against it. She
should give him the antibiotics.
A New Fever
Because he had a history of a penicillin
allergy, Girard would have to test him to
make sure he could tolerate the medica-
tion, which was not penicillin but a close
cousin. Girard ordered a test dose to be
given. If he was going to have a serious
reaction to the medicine, he would have
a rash or his blood pressure would drop.
Neither happened. So he got the full dose.
A couple of hours later, Girard got a
call. The patient had spiked a tempera-
ture of 102. She ran down to see him. His
face was shiny with a thin layer of sweat,
and his cheeks were rosy. And though
he looked uncomfortable, his heart and
blood pressure were ne. Thank goodness
shed given him antibiotics, she thought
Lisa Sanders, M.D.,
to herself. She ordered another dose of
is a contributing writer Tylenol, and when she came back for one
for the magazine and nal look at him, he was sound asleep.
the author of Every His temperature was gone. The sweaty
Patient Tells a Story:
Medical Mysteries and gleam and rosy cheeks had disappeared.
the Art of Diagnosis.
If you have a solved
case to share with
An Answer Emerges
Dr. Sanders, write her
at lisasandersmd@ The next night, when Girard returned
gmail.com. to the hospital for her overnight shift,
Illustration by Andreas Samuelsson
the rst thing she did was check on this
patient. She had admitted five other
patients, but he was the one she worried
about from home after signing him over
to the day team. In the hours since she
last saw him, his blood had grown an
organism in the lab. It was too early to
know precisely what it was. But it was
clear that it was bacteria robust enough
to grow quickly in a petri dish and that it
wasnt staph aureus or Legionella. The list
of other possibilities was long, and none
really seemed to t.
It was another two days before they
could nally identify the bug. It was liste-
ria. Girard and just about everyone car-
ing for the man was surprised. As a phy-
sician, you get these pictures in your head
about diseases. For Girard, listeriosis was
a disease that you got from unpasteurized
milk and soft cheeses and that caused nau-
sea, vomiting and diarrhea. She did a little
more reading on the unusual infection
and found that while people with normal
immune systems may experience these
symptoms, they usually recover quickly,
like the patients co-worker. In pregnant
women, people over 65 or anyone with an
impaired immune system, however, the
infection can break out of the digestive
track sometimes without manifesting
the typical symptoms and get into the
bloodstream. From there it can spread
like wildre through the entire body.
This form of the infection, called inva-
sive listeriosis, can be fatal up to 30 per-
cent of the time in these patients. Indeed,
though less common than botulism, liste-
riosis can be just as deadly. Early treat-
ment with antibiotics can be lifesaving.
If this was a food-borne illness, which
food had carried the bacteria? Though
the man and his co-worker did not have
unpasteurized milk or soft cheese on
their trip, an internet search showed
an outbreak of listeria this summer in
Scotland linked to smoked beef. Neither
of them had eaten smoked beef, but
they had shared some smoked salmon.
Exactly where theyd picked up the bug
remained a mystery.
Once the medical team knew what he
had, they could tailor the antibiotics. He
completed his three-week treatment in
July. His doctors instructed him to take
it easy for the rest of the summer, but at
this point he feels mostly back to normal
and has returned to his museum and the
work he loves.
Addiction Kids
Money Betrayal
Dating Trauma
Forgiveness Sex
Empathy is the
best medicine.
Dear Sugars is a podcast hosted by
Cheryl Strayed and Steve Almond that gives
listeners the guidance, perspective and
understanding needed to shake the baggage.

nytimes.com/dearsugars
The Ethicist By Kwame Anthony Appiah
Can I Keep
A Baby My
Boyfriend
Doesnt Want?
I am 38 and accidentally pregnant.
It turns out my boyfriend does not ever
want children, never mind after just
a few months of dating; he wants me to
have an abortion. I am pro-choice and
not attached to what has begun to grow
inside me. I had hoped to fall in love
with a man and have a child with him,
but I am well aware that Im running
out of time. While Im apparently quite
fertile, as time goes on the odds of
getting pregnant get tougher, and there
are enormous costs in egg freezing and/
or I.V.F. For these reasons, Im leaning
heavily toward having the baby. My
boyfriend is disturbed, angry and upset
that I would have his baby against
his will, as he put it. The point being,
I think, that I can nd another guy
or get inseminated, so its not fair to have
his baby because of my biological-clock
concerns. Ive read a lot about the ethics
of expecting him to be involved or
pay for support if he doesnt want the
child but not about whether its O.K.
to choose to have the child at all.
I told him he can, guilt-free, have no
involvement, but thats not the issue for him
Are there ethical implications to consider
here, especially because it is technically
half his hes not a sperm donor who
To submit a query: chose to let someone have his baby and not
Send an email to be involved and Im not against abortion
ethicist@nytimes (and have seriously considered it)? If it
.com; or send mail
to The Ethicist, The matters, he thought I was on birth control
New York Times (but never asked, and I had requested that
Magazine, 620 he use a condom once before), so he didnt
Eighth Avenue, New
think he was having unprotected sex.
York, N.Y. 10018.
(Include a daytime
phone number.) Name Withheld
22 8.6.17 Illustration by Tomi Um
Lets start with your startling last sen- that once he has a biological child, he
tence. It is, to put it mildly, unwise for
a fertile heterosexual couple to have
intercourse without discussing whether
will be partly responsible for it, even
if he agreed to neither the pregnancy
nor the birth. And because you have no
either is using contraceptives. (For that
matter, its unwise to have unprotected
sex under any circumstances, unless you
idea what your future life course will
be, you cant be certain you will never
require his help: Suppose, for example,
are both sure of the health status of the
other party and you are in a monoga-
mous relationship.) That you never had
your child one day needs a bone-mar-
row transplant and your boyfriend is
likely to be the best donor. Then, too,
this conversation is not your fault alone.
Men have often left the management of
birth control to women, but this habit is
an ongoing relationship with you would
involve a relationship with your child.
In a variety of ways, having the baby
neither fair nor prudent. Although your entails conditions and obligations that
boyfriend doesnt want you to have this he doesnt want.
baby, he had it in his power to try to make I dont have much sympathy, though,
sure the pregnancy didnt happen. Part with the idea that he has property rights
of his anger may derive from the notion in his sperm or half-rights in the baby.
that you deliberately misled him, in order Children arent property, and we should
to try to entrap him with the child. It is think about their futures in terms of their
an uncharitable thought, yet not an unfa- interests, our relationships with them
miliar one. And it matters that he shares and the responsibilities those connec-
responsibility for the current impasse. tions entail. So both his feelings and the
There are practical and legal conse- prospective interests of the child may
quences to consider. Im not a lawyer, provide some grounds for ending the
but as a general rule, a father must help pregnancy. (It may seem odd to say that
support a child even if he didnt want consideration of someones interests
it. Otherwise every deadbeat dad could may count against continuing his or her
claim to be an unwilling one. And of existence, yet thats sometimes the case.)
course, he cannot force you to have an Ideally, in weighing all these consider-
abortion. (I am not going to consider the ations, you would be discussing them
question of whether abortion is morally calmly with him sharing your concerns
permissible: You think it is, and I respect and hearing the full range of his consid-
that view.) Its worth noting, however, erations although, in the current state
that your boyfriends reasons for not of your relationship, that may be dicult.
wanting a child are probably more than You might consider going together to
financial. Therefore, promising not to crisis counseling of some sort.
ask for child support wont really meet Youre within your rights, of course, to
his objections. He may well recognize drop the boyfriend and keep the child.
Bonus Advice From Judge John Hodgman
Andy writes: My college friend Bill says chicken tenders are
an appetizer. I think that they are an entree. (Theyre often
served with fries.) I cant imagine starting a meal with
chicken tenders and moving on to an even heavier entree.
Chicken tenders are like subatomic particles: They change
nature in context. They are an appetizer in any restaurant
that has more than one television above the bar. They are
an entree in any establishment where fried food is served
Illustration by Kyle Hilton
outside from a window. They are a mystery insofar as why
anyone would ever eat one when there is fried chicken in the
world or, for that matter, fried clams. The reason you cant
imagine eating chicken tenders as an appetizer is that you are
growing up and your youthful metabolism is fading. It is
time to put childish things aside. Sorry, Bill: Eat actual food!
You want this child, and you are willing of the settlement on schedule, but she is now The case against with addiction, it would seem, make her
to take care of it on your own. The fact seven months late on the nal payment. likely to be a dicult tenant.
that women bear the greater risks of If she completes her payments, there will mercy here is Your choice is between mercy (letting
bringing children into the world makes be no legal record of her rents tardiness. that in letting her o the nal payment and allowing her
it natural to grant their wishes greater If she misses a payment, however, I can le her off the hook, to appear reformed) and justice (insisting
weight than those of the men who are a judgment against her, which will remain on your legal and moral right to get what
still (if only for the moment) also neces- on the record and make it public that she is you may well she owes). The case against mercy here is
sary. But the fact that your wishes ulti- a challenging tenant. I have compassion for land others on it. that in letting her o the hook, you may
mately have greater weight doesnt mean her, as she is battling addiction. Is it ethical well land others on it. As the aging courtier
that his wishes have none. for me to le the judgment even though Escalus says in Shakespeares Measure for
she has paid 90 percent of what is owed? Measure, Pardon is . . . the nurse of second
I am a student, and I have an opportunity woe. And the woe here may also be for her,
to go to Rwanda to conduct research Name Withheld because part of dealing with addiction is
on the legacy of sexual violence in the learning to live up to your commitments.
wake of the genocide. Its an incredible There are reasons for the legal record Still, as the compassionate Isabella
opportunity, but Im afraid that the fact of judgment to disappear only if your says to the sternly inexible Angelo in
that I am a rape survivor will create bias ex-roommate meets its terms. One is the same play, in urging forgiveness for
in my work. Do you have any suggestions? to provide her an incentive to complete her brother: I do think that you might
the payments. Another is that landlords pardon him,/And neither heaven nor
Name Withheld inquiring about her reliability will be bet- man grieve at the mercy.
ter able to evaluate it. Clearly, the policy
What makes science objective is not has already failed in the former purpose.
Kwame Anthony Appiah teaches philosophy
the objectivity of individual scientists. Allowing her to escape her record under- at N.Y.U. He is the author of Cosmopolitanism and
It is the procedures for gathering, inter- mines the latter purpose. Her problems The Honor Code: How Moral Revolutions Happen.
preting and challenging data and theo-
ries produced by fallible human beings.
If every scientist had to have no stake
in an issue, social science would be
impossible, because in the social scienc-
es, everybody has social identities that
can be at stake in their work. Having a
variety of stakes and perspectives can
improve the science. Many daft things
that were said about women and black
people when scientists were almost
always male and white have been cor-
rected after the arrival of women and
blacks in science. The perspective of
a rape survivor on the significance of
rape is as important as the perspectives
of those who have no experience of it.
Of course, it needs to be filtered, like all
perspectives, through proper methods.
The worry is not whether you can con-
tribute to good research on the topic; its
how you will handle being exposed over
and over again to the stories of women
who have been through horrendous sex-
ual violence. But you must have made the
judgment that you can deal with it. And
in some measure, this is a challenge for
everyone, rape survivor or not, who does
this important work.

A few years ago, my roommate lost

her job and stopped paying her rent. After
she moved out, we wound up in court.
We settled on a payment plan for the full
amount. She paid the rst 90 percent
Letter of Recommendation
Ghosting
By Maya Binyam
In my fathers house, my stepmother
cooks dinner. First she sweats the onions,
then she sears the meat. On special occa-
sions, she mixes dough with our ground
from enset, a plant that resembles the
banana tree.
Enset has roots that are white, and
when theyre ground into powder, its
packed into little baggies. When my
father travels to Ethiopia, he returns
with these white baggies tucked into the
pockets of his suitcase, which is one rea-
son, among many, that it is dicult for
him to cross the border and come home.
24 8.6.17
A few years ago, he began to dis-
appear. First he skipped the onions,
then he skipped the meat. Eventually
he skipped the special occasions, and
when he arrived home, after the bap-
tism or graduation or wedding had
long since ended, he had no desire to
eat. When I asked him to explain his
absences, he said, Yes. When I asked
him where he kept disappearing off to,
he said, O.K.
If it werent for my fathers age (hes
63), or for his eventual return, I would be
tempted to call his unexplained absences
Photo illustration by Mike McQuade
A means of by a name popular among young peo-
Woman: Peathegee Inc/Blend Images/Getty Images
self-preservation.
ple: ghosting. The millennial neologism
for an age-old conundrum, ghosting
describes the situation in which a per-
son Tinder match, roommate, friend
exits a relationship swiftly and with-
out discernible cause. Though its itera-
tions are diuse and occur along varying
degrees of intimacy, the word is gener-
ally used by those who are left behind:
He ghosted me, or I was ghosted, or
I was ghosted on.
Because I fear my fathers absence, I
mimic his behavior and hope he might
not be forgotten. I often close the chan-
nels of communication that I am expect-
ed to sustain, texting people I love only
when I feel like it and answering the
phone only when the caller is unknown.
In November, the morning after the pres-
idential election, a childhood friend sent
me a text: Sup? I told him I was scared
for my family. When he wrote back later
that day to let me know that he, too, was
scared about his LSATs I stopped
responding; we havent spoken since.
At a coee shop, an Australian asked
me what I was reading. I said, Great
Expectations, a terrible novel. He told
me he had gotten his Ph.D. studying
apartheid and then wondered aloud
which was more depressing: apartheid
or the work of Charles Dickens. When
he asked if I wanted to get a drink later
that week to continue the conversation,
I said, O.K. but never showed up.
According to the internet, this is very
bad behavior. If you care about someone,
and even if you dont, you are meant to
explain in terms both clean and fair
why you are unable to fulll the terms of
their attachment: I feel sick, or I have
depression, or You are boring, and I am
disappointed. Those of us who neglect
to disclose the seed of our indierence,
or neglect to disclose the fact of our
indierence altogether, are typically
assumed to be selsh.
Its no coincidence that ghosting arose
as a collective fascination at a time of
peak connectivity. When friends and
acquaintances are almost always a swipe
and a tap within reach, disappearing
without a trace cuts especially deep. But
the very function of ghosting is to halt
the ow of information, and nearly every
explainer written in its name How to
Deal With Being Ghosted, How to Tell
If Youre About to Be Ghosted, Why
Friends Ghost on Even Their Closest
Pals berates those who ghost for
intentionally spinning silence into pain.
Ghosters withhold information whose
admission would be likely to provide
relief in others, manipulating the terms
of friendship, kinship and romantic love
to appear in favor of a life lived in private.
If healthy relationships especial-
ly in the digital age are predicated
on answerability, it makes sense that a
lack of communication would feel like a
breach of trust. But articulating negative
feelings with tact is a task most often
If you care assigned to those whose feelings are
assumed to be trivial. When fear for my
about someone, family black, migratory and therefore
and even if targets of the state is equated with the
you dont, you mundane anxiety of a standardized test,
I nd it a relief to absent myself from
are meant to the calculation. Saying, without anger,
explain why This is how you hurt me feels routine,
you are unable like a ditty, and articulating the need for
isolation Now I intend to disappear
to fulll the is always a betrayal of the need itself.
terms of their Because society demands that people of
attachment. color both accept oense and facilitate
its reconciliation, we are rarely aord-
ed the privacy we need. Ghosting, then,
provides a line of ight. Freed from the
ties that hurt us, or bore us, or make
us feel uneasy, nally we can turn our
attention inward.
Tip By Malia Wollan
How to Lament
You must have visible tears, says
James M. Wilce, an anthropology pro-
fessor at Northern Arizona University
who studies lamentation, or what he
calls melodic wailing with words. Wet
cheeks are the minimum: In some plac-
es, funeral keeners throw themselves to
the ground, sway their bodies or beat
at their chests. These age-old, songlike
wailing traditions are found worldwide
one ethnomusicologist studying in
Egypt has noted that modern mourners
raise their clenched sts skyward in the
exact posture depicted in ancient tomb
paintings but theyre disappearing
from most places. Not so in Finland,
Maya Binyam where an organization that Wilce stud-
is a writer living
ies runs instructional workshops on
in New York. She is
a senior editor lamenting as the Karelian people of the
at The New Inquiry. region have done for centuries. These
Illustration by Radio
Some months after my father began
to arrive at dinner on time, he drove
me through the neighborhood by his
office, a route we had driven many
times before. I asked him, once again,
where he had run off to all those nights.
Pulling over to the side of the road, he
said, There is an excellent meditation
studio inside that building. I looked
at the building, which looked like
nothing. Confused, I asked him what
he knew about meditation. I know
much about meditation, he told me.
I came here once daily. I meditated, I
ate my dinner and, when I was finished,
I returned home.
The information, it seemed, had
become necessary. My father, like the
rest of us, was just trying to get better.
three-day classes add a modern twist:
Rather than being performed solely at a
wake (by what Finns call a cry woman),
impromptu requiems are devoted to all
manner of emotional hardship, from
divorce to illness.
A lament should be mostly improvised,
with some basic lyrics built around a sim-
ple descending melodic phrase of four or
ve notes. Use alliteration, Wilce says.
Never rhyme. Choose poetic language
thick with metaphor and circumlocu-
tion. Whats emanating from your throat
should sound unpolished, marked by
cracking and what linguists call ingres-
sive phonation, or vocalizing as you suck
in breath. It has to feel raw, Wilce says.
Once you have your tune and text, your
performance should oscillate between
unscripted, chest-racking sobs and the
more practiced bits that sound like song.
Keep coming back to the tonic center,
Wilce says. Go on for ve minutes or ve
hours its up to you.
In the course of his research, Wilce
participated in six workshops; in the
rst, he lamented the death of his older
sister when he was a toddler. She died
more than half a century ago, and he has
talked about it in various types of ther-
apy throughout his adulthood, but this
musical wailing among Finnish-speaking
strangers was the most cathartic way he
had ever addressed his grief. Be prepared
for something that is not stereotypical,
modern, Protestant or dry-eyed, Wilce
says. Be prepared to be overcome.
25
Eat By Sam Sifton

Burn Your Vegetables

For this Mexican-style slaw, employ the power of re and smoke.

Less than a year ago, for reasons perhaps

best explored in a clinical setting, my
friend Brendan McCarthy started to build
parrillas, huge and heavy wood-burning
grills of the sort common in Argentina, to
a design of his own making. He welded
together a metal cart and attached steel
walls to three sides of it. He fabricated a
re cage to hold burning wood on one
side of the carts top and hung a grill
beside it, on cables that allow it to be
cranked up and down over embers raked
from the re. You can cook six or seven
racks of ribs or legs of lamb or an entire
case of eggplants on the thing. The rst
parrilla took more than a month to build
and weighs around 400 pounds.
McCarthy is not a cook, and only lately
a welder. He is a professional shing guide.
As such, he is a student of behavior of
people as well as of sh. He gured those
who like to stalk saltwater game sh in
shallow water, or to chase them through
the tide rips that mount o the islands
of the Northeastern coast, might thrill
as well to cooking on a parrilla, with its
evocation of grilling in the wilds of Argen-
tina, after a day hunting monster trout. He
put the parrillas up for sale.
This was, I thought, a little crazy. Build
grills? Why not just oer trips to sh in
Argentina? He only shrugged. He wanted
to build things out of steel, the way some-
one might wake up and want one day to
write a poem, or to plant roses. And it
turned out he wasnt wrong. If you want
one of his grills right now, youll need to
wait in line. He cant keep up production.
(The shing gets in the way.)
Because McCarthy builds his parrillas in
a shop behind my house, Ive been able to
cook on an early model all summer long,
searing steaks, hanging chickens and pine-
apples on hooks from the bar that runs
over the grill and re cage, re-smoking
chops, ribs, whole sh, clams and pounds
and pounds of vegetables. The cooking is
dierent from traditional grilling, because
you can moderate the heat more easily,

26 8.6.17 Photographs by Gentl and Hyers Food stylist: Maggie Ruggiero. Prop stylist: Amy Wilson.
cranking the grates high above the coals
to where theyre taking on more smoke
than heat, or lowering them into an inferno
to apply a burn.
Ive learned a lot from that burn, les-
sons that apply not just to big machines
like the parrilla but also to little charcoal
grills shaped like football helmets, to
cheap braziers, to state-owned grills in
parks or at beaches, to anywhere you cook
outside over re. Most important: Burn
your vegetables. Scrape the char from the
exterior, and whats left is delicate and
smoky, softened and sweet. It can be a
revelation, a primitive joy.
Every summer has a song. This years
is shaping up to be Luis Fonsi and Daddy
Yankees Despacito, featuring Justin with heavy cream (or buttermilk if you
Bieber, which seems to play from every
third car in the parking lot at the beach. I
think every summer has a recipe too, and
this one is mine, Despacito for the grill: thickness. Feel like stirring into that some
whole cabbage cooked over re until it is
blistered and black. After grilling, I remove
the exterior leaves, cut out the core and
slice the smoky, pale interior into shreds.
I dress it with Mexican crema to create a
hot slaw of incredible sweet-smokiness,
the perfect accompaniment to almost
anything youd think to cook on the grill.
It is lovely in tacos. It is a great match for
ribs. It is brilliant with corn.
And it is simple to make. Just put a
couple of whole cabbages over a hot re
and leave them there, turning every few
minutes when you get a chance, until they
look like something tragic and ruined.
Comment: nytimes.com/magazine
You dont need to season them, or to oil
them, or to remove the thick outer leaves
the way youd do if you were cooking
them lightly or shredding them raw. You
just need to burn them, slowly and deep-
ly, so that they soften within and take on
the avor of re.
When it comes to making the slaw, note
that the crema is as important as the cab-
bage. Crema is thinner than sour cream,
a little more tangy, slightly salty. It cloaks
the shredded cabbage lightly and coun-
teracts the smokiness while at the same
time elevating it. (Its the Bieber part of
the song.) You can buy crema at the mar-
ket, or at least in some markets, but dont
fret if you cant. Just combine sour cream
have any), some lime juice and salt, and
let it set on the counter at room tempera-
ture until it has come together into velvety
hot sauce, or a tablespoon of adobo from
a can of chipotles, some chopped cilan-
tro, an extra spray of lime? Please do. Hot
slaw welcomes improvisation. Nothing
can ruin what started out ruined.
Hot Slaw, Mexican-Style
Time: 1 hour
For the crema:
1 cup sour cream
1 cup heavy cream
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1 tablespoon freshly squeezed lime juice
Put the cabbages For the slaw:
1 small purple cabbage
over the re 1 small green cabbage
and leave them 1 small bunch cilantro, the leaves cleaned
there, until and roughly chopped, approximately
cup
they look like 1 cup crema, or to taste
something tragic 1 tablespoon freshly squeezed lime juice,
and ruined. or to taste
1 tablespoon adobo from a can of
chipotles en adobo, or hot pepper sauce
to taste (optional)
Kosher salt and freshly ground black
pepper, to taste
1. Make the crema the night before, or
many nights before, the day you want to
cook. Whisk the sour cream and heavy
cream together in a bowl, then add the
salt and the lime juice, and whisk again.
Cover the bowl, and allow it to sit at room
temperature for a minimum of 2 hours
and ideally overnight. It will thicken nicely.
Use right away, or transfer to a jar and
store in the refrigerator until ready to use.
2. When you are ready to make the slaw,
build a fire in your grill, leaving about of
grill free of coals, or set one burner of a gas
grill to high. When the fire is ready, place
the cabbages, whole, onto the fire or over
the open burner, and allow them to roast in
the heat of the open flames, turning them
every few minutes and allowing them to rest
occasionally on the cooler side of the grill,
until they are blackened, blistered and a little
soft to the touch, approximately 30 to 45
minutes. You are not looking to incinerate
them so much as to cook them aggressively.
You will discard most of the burned exterior.
3. Meanwhile, make the dressing. Whisk
the cilantro into the crema in a bowl,
and add the lime juice and, if youre using,
adobo or hot sauce to taste, along with
a little salt and pepper.
4. When the cabbages are blackened and
have softened to the point where you can
insert a knife into each one fairly easily,
remove them to a cutting board. Once they
have cooled slightly, take off most of the
blackened exterior leaves. Cut each cabbage
in half, then use your knife to remove the
cores. Slice the cabbage into thin strips,
as for a coleslaw, and add them to a large
serving bowl.
5. Apply about a cup of the crema to
the sliced cabbage, and toss to combine.
Continue adding crema until you have
enough to coat all the cabbage, then taste
and adjust seasonings. (You can save the
rest of the crema for another use, keeping
it in a closed jar in the refrigerator.) Serve
with grilled meats or alone.
Serves 6-8.
27
Galaxy

Quest
 Forty years after the launch of the Voyager probes,
their mission is winding down and with it, the careers
of the aging engineers who steer them across the universe.

By Kim Tingley
Credit by Name Surname

29

I
n the early spring of 1977, Larry Zottarelli, a
40-year-old computer engineer at NASAs Jet
Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, set out for
Cape Canaveral, Fla., in his Toyota Corolla. A Los
Angeles native, he had never ventured as far as
Tijuana, but he had a per diem, and he liked to
drive. Just east of Orlando, a causeway carried
him over the Indian and Banana Rivers to a trian-
gular spit of sand jutting into the Atlantic, where
the Air Force keeps a base. His journey terminat-
ed at a cavernous military hangar.
A eet of JPL trucks made the trip under
armored guard to the same destination. Their
cargo was unwrapped inside the hangar high bay,
a gleaming silo stocked with tool racks and ladder
trucks. Engineers began to assemble the various
pieces. Gradually, two identical spacecraft took
shape. They were dubbed Voyager I and II, and
their mission was to make the rst color photo-
graphs and close-up measurements of Jupiter, Sat-
urn and their moons. Then, if all went well, they
might press onward into uncharted territory.
It took six months, working in shifts around
the clock, for the NASA crew to reassemble
and test the spacecraft. As the rst launch date,
Aug. 20, drew near, they folded the camera and
instrument boom down against the spacecrafts
spindly body like a birds wing; gingerly they
pushed it, satellite dish rst, up inside a metal
capsule hanging from the high bay ceiling. Once
mated, the capsule and its cargo a probe no
bigger than a Volkswagen Beetle that, along with
its twin, had nevertheless taken 1,500 engineers
ve years and more than $200 million to build
were towed to the launchpad.
By T-minus two hours, a select few engineers,
too nervous to sit down, stood at computers
outside the high bay, overseeing the spacecraft
telemetry. Elsewhere in the hangar, scientists,
NASA brass from Washington and several dozen
nonessential engineers Zottarelli among
30 8.6.17 Photographs by Graeme Mitchell for The New York Times. Opening pages, left: NASA/JPL-Caltech. Right: Graeme Mitchell for The New York Times.
them huddled around TV monitors. At T-mi-
nus 30 seconds, the spacecrafts engines roared
to life, and many of the nonessentials took o
running out of the room and toward the exit
seven, six, ve. They burst out into the morn-
ing. Shielding their eyes, they peered across a
at expanse at smoke billowing on the horizon.
Slowly and silently, the capsule rose out of the
cloud, its rockets trailing ames. In an instant,
there came a terric boom as the sound waves
from blasto hit the hangar like a gong, ringing
it as the spacecraft disappeared.
Sun Kang Matsumoto
An engineer, she started with
the Voyager team in 1985.
Opening pages, left: A test model
of Voyager in 1977. Right: Larry
Zottarelli, who recently retired from
the Voyager flight crew.
Two weeks later, after the second launch,
everyone headed home. The show was over
both spacecraft were performing awlessly but
behind the scenes, the mission, on a tight budget,
lagged in hiring the more than 200 computer engi-
neers needed to shepherd the spacecraft through
a planetary encounter. Many of those on the ight
team were fresh out of college, running the most
sophisticated electronics systems in the world.
They had barely had a chance to jell, when, in April
1978, not yet halfway to Jupiter, Voyager 1 expe-
rienced a problem. Its scan platform, where the
cameras and instruments are mounted, got stuck.
As the engineers scrambled to gure out what
they could do from more than 100 million miles
away, someone forgot to send a weekly command
to reset a timer on the other spacecraft. When it
ran down without hearing from Earth, it triggered
so-called fault-protection software, 600 lines of
code that respond to malfunctions automatical-
ly. In this instance, fault protection assumed the
radio receiver was broken and switched to the
backup. On the mission-control monitors in a
situation like this, the crawl of numbers report-
ing the status of the receivers would have turned
crimson: a red alarm.
Realizing their mistake, the engineers tried to
stop the fault-protection routine, but the newly
awakened backup receiver would not register their
command. Helpless, they waited for the spacecraft
to reason its way back to the original receiver;
when it did, and the command went through nor-
mally, they were giddy with relief. They were still
high-ving when the working receiver shorted out
like a blown fuse. Now it really was dead.
Fortunately, the malfunctioning backup
receiver was still drawing current. They guessed
that its oscillator, which allows it to accept a
wide range of frequencies, had quit, essential-
ly shrinking the target for transmissions from
Earth. Assuming a much narrower bandwidth,
and manually subtracting the Doppler eect,
they recalibrated their signal. It worked but
to this day, the same calculation must precede
every command. The original receiver remains
useless: one engineers simple oversight nearly
doomed humankinds lone visit to Uranus and
Neptune. You like to think you have checks and
balances, Chris Jones, JPLs chief engineer, who
designed Voyagers fault protection, told me. In
reality, we all worry about being that person.
Today the Voyagers are 10 billion and 13 billion
miles away, the farthest man-made objects from
Earth. The 40th anniversary of their launch will be
celebrated next month. We tend to think of space
as vacant, but it is actually matter, created, as
everything in the universe is, by the explosions of
ancient stars. Within our planetary neighborhood,
this space is made up of dierent particles than
the space outside is, because of supersonic wind
that blows out from the surface of our sun at a
million miles per hour. The wind generates a bub-
ble around our solar system called the heliosphere.
Five years ago, Voyager 1 reached the boundary
where the heliosphere gives way to interstellar
space, a region as novel to us and potentially
relevant as the Pacic was to Europeans 500
years ago. The data the probes are collecting are
challenging fundamental physics and will provide
clues to the biggest of questions: Why did our sun
give birth to life only here? Where else, within our
solar system or others, are we most likely to nd
evidence that we are not alone?
The mission quite possibly represents the end
of an era of space exploration in which the main
goal is observation rather than commercializa-
tion. In internal memos, Trump-administration
advisers have referred to NASAs traditional con-
tractors as Old Space and proposed refocus-
ing its budget on supporting the growth of the
private New Space industry, Politico reported
in February. Economic development of space
will begin in near-Earth orbit and on the moon,
according to the presidents transition team, with
private lunar landers staking out de facto prop-
erty rights for Americans on the moon, by 2020.
All explorations demand sacrices in exchange
for uncertain outcomes. Some of those sacrices
are social: how many resources we collectively
devote to a given pursuit of knowledge. But anoth-
er portion is borne by the explorer alone, who
used to be rewarded with adventure and fame if
not fortune. For the foreseeable future, Voyager
seems destined to remain in the running for the
title of Mankinds Greatest Journey, which might
just make its nine ight-team engineers most of
whom have been with the mission since the Rea-
gan administration our greatest living explor-
ers. They also may be the last people left on the
planet who can operate the spacecrafts onboard
computers, which have 235,000 times less memo-
ry and 175,000 times less speed than a 16-gigabyte
smartphone. And while its true that these pio-
neers havent gone anywhere themselves, they are
arguably every bit as dauntless as more celebrated
predecessors. Magellan never had to steer a vessel
from the connes of a dun-colored rental oce,
let alone stay at the helm long enough to qualify
for a senior discount at the McDonalds next door.
Their uency in archaic programming lan-
guages will become only more crucial as the
years go on, because even as the probes harvest
priceless information from the cosmos, they are
running out of fuel. (Decaying plutonium sup-
plies their power.) By 2030 at the latest, they will
not have enough juice left to run a single experi-
ment. And even that best case comes with a major
caveat: that the ight-team members forgo retire-
ment to squeeze the most out of every last watt.
One of the greatest obstacles to planetary science
has always been the human life span: Typically,
Ed Stone
A project scientist, he joined the
Voyager team in 1972.
for instance, a direct ight to Neptune would take
about 30 years. But in the spring of 1965, Gary
Flandro, a doctoral student at Caltech, noticed
that all four outer planets Jupiter, Saturn,
Uranus and Neptune would align on the same
side of the sun in the 1980s. If a spacecraft were
launched in the mid- to late 1970s, it could use
the gravity of the rst body to slingshot to the
second, and so on. Such a trajectory would add
enough speed to shorten the total journey by
almost two-thirds. Whats more, this orbital con-
guration would not appear again for 175 years.
The Voyagers carried cameras and instruments
for analyzing atmospheric temperatures, moon
masses, gravitational and magnetic elds and
radiation levels. Reaching Jupiter in 1979, they
captured images of lightning in its cloud tops
and astounded scientists who had assumed all
moons were as barren as our own with pictures
of eight active volcanoes on its satellite Io; Euro-
pa, another Jovan moon, was encased in a shell of
water ice, cracked in places by what appeared to
be the tides of an ocean below. The photographs
revealed themselves on control-room monitors
pixel by pixel, row by row. I would be sitting in
here at night sometimes when the Voyager mission
was ying, Esker Davis, project manager for the
Saturn encounter, told David W. Swift, who pub-
lished an oral history of the mission in 1997, after
Daviss death. And my wife would call up and ask
what I was doing. I said, Just watching pictures
come in, being the rst person to see this picture.
The mission would have ended there, but Presi-
dent Ronald Reagan bestowed an extension, possi-
bly swayed by the real-time briengs hosted by Ed
Stone, the projects lead scientist, on the occasion
of every planetary encounter. Hundreds of report-
ers, as well as politicians and celebrities, attended,
packing into a cramped JPL auditorium for the
debuts of Uranus in 1986 and Neptune in 1989.
The nal yby, of Neptunes moon Triton,
took place on a hot August night. Afterward,
everyone celebrated with Champagne, cold cuts
and drunken singing; on the JPL lawn, Chuck
Berry performed Johnny B. Goode, one of the
tracks included on gold-plated records of human
sights and sounds attached to the spacecraft for
any intelligent life that might nd them. Then,
gradually, the hallways grew quiet. Stone and
his colleagues moved on to new projects while
analyzing Voyager data part time; the ight team
laid o 150 engineers (many of whom went on
to sta subsequent missions). The probes new
goal was to reach interstellar space. But though
scientists had measured the speed of the solar
wind that forms the heliosphere, the properties
of the matter beyond it had never been analyzed.
How much pressure it exerted on the bubble, and
thus the size of the bubble, were a mystery. So,
too, was how long years? decades? it might
take a craft to escape it.
At the missions outset, the ight-team mem-
bers were mischievous kids. They relieved stress
with games and pranks: bowling in the hallway,
using soda cans as pins; lling desk drawers with
plastic bags of live goldsh; making scientists
compete in disco-pose contests. Now, by 1990,
they were older, with kids of their own. They had
experienced the deaths of colleagues and watched
others marriages falter as a result of long hours
at the lab. With no planets to explore, they spent
the decade doing routine spacecraft maintenance
with a fraction of their bygone manpower. Six of
the current nine engineers were on the team then.
Sun Kang Matsumoto, who joined the mission in
85, studied so diligently to master the new roles
pressed upon her that her sons learned the space-
craft contours by osmosis. When her eldest was 8,
he surprised her with a perfect Lego model; now
in college, he calls and asks, How is Voyager?
Like, How is Grandma? Matsumoto says.
The mission originally occupied three oors of
Building 264 on the JPL campus, home to many
of the labs highest-prole projects. But soon
after Neptune, says Jeerson Hall, who joined
the project in 1978, we were booted out. Their
rst move was into the former oces of a main-
frame-computer company in Sierra Madre. In
2002, after more sta cuts, they moved to a rental
suite in Altadena. NASA reviewed the mission
to determine if it should be canceled altogether.
The scientists models, meanwhile, began to
reveal subtle changes in the raw data. By late
The New York Times Magazine 31
2004, it was clear that Voyager 1s magnetometer
had detected an abrupt increase in the strength
of the surrounding magnetic eld, suggesting
the probe had entered the outermost layer of the
heliospheric bubble, the heliosheath. This is
where the solar wind ions abruptly slow as they
press outward against the surrounding interstel-
lar matter and swerve to create a cometlike tail. A
wind of interstellar ions ows around the outside
of the bubble like water around the bow of a ship.
Finally, on Aug. 25, 2012, the density of particles
around the spacecraft precipitously increased,
as though it had plunged from sky to sea. It had
crossed the threshold of interstellar space.
I but the radio signals take 19 hours and 12 hours to
n 2016, the year he turned 80, Zottarelli, the
ight teams most experienced programmer,
gave six months notice and spent the time
training a successor. None of the other engi-
neers, only one of whom is under 50, have a
replacement in waiting in the event that they
abdicate more suddenly. Unlike the astrophys-
icists who devise experiments for Voyager and
who interpret the results, the core ight-team
members dont have the luxury of being able to
work simultaneously on other missions. Over
decades, the crew members who have remained
have forgone promotions, the lure of nearby Sil-
icon Valley and, more recently, retirement, to
stay with the spacecraft. NASA funding, which
peaked during the Apollo program in the 1960s,
has dwindled, making it next to impossible to
recruit young computer-science majors away
from the likes of Google and Facebook.
Last autumn, I drove through the San Gabriel
Valley to a squat concrete building beside Scott-
Fox Puppy Preschool. Suzanne Dodd, 56, the mis-
sions project manager, answered the door. She
wore red-framed glasses over sharp blue eyes, and
her fair hair was cut short. She escorted me past
the vestibule to a common room ringed by oce
doors. Hanging over the cubicle partitions in the
center was a shingle that read Mission Control. Bits have been known to ip to the opposite
You can see where we are in the culture, she value, changing the instruction the same way
said, with a mild sweep of her palm. Voyager was
her rst job. She pointed out a used microche
reader that Tom Weeks, a hardware engineer and
the self-described mission librarian, purchased
on eBay to read old diagnostics reports. To con-
serve power on the spacecraft, the engineers must
decide what to turn o when, and for how long
which means estimating how cold they can let
32 8.6.17
Tom Weeks
A hardware engineer, he started
with Voyager in 1983.
each component get. (On Voyager 2, because of the
broken oscillator, any change in temperature also
tweaks the receiver frequency.) Turning the heat-
ers o for a while is the safest way to get enough
power to run the instruments, but the lower the
overall wattage drops, the faster parts will freeze.
One of the teams most valuable insights so far:
Spinning the wheels of an eight-track tape record-
er the spacecrafts only data-storage option
generates a bit of additional heat.
Enrique Medina, the power subsystem expert,
was preparing to implement a patch, an
update that would turn o a heater on Voyager 2
in order to run the gyroscope, roll the spacecraft
and calibrate the magnetometer. Even though
they simulate every patch with software, there
is plenty of room for human error. Far more
often, hardware fails for no evident reason. In
1998, Voyager 2 reacted to a command by going
silent. For 64 hours straight, the ight team stud-
ied the specic instruction consisting of 18
bits, or 1s and 0s that preceded the blackout.
the properties of our own will help us interpret
that swapping a single letter turns cat into
cut. The question was: What instruction had at extreme levels is toxic to life as we know it.
they accidentally given and how could they
undo it? At last, modeling the outcome of each
possible bit, they discovered one that turned
o the exciter, which generates the spacecrafts
radio signal; when they turned it back on, the
transmissions resumed. A similar scare took
place in 2010, when a bit involved in formatting
telemetry ipped, turning the transmissions to
gibberish. A lot of our anomalies weve come up
with workarounds for, and at the time we didnt
know why it happened, Weeks explained. Dodd
added, The No. 1 rule with spacecraft is: Dont
change it if you dont have to.
In the mission-control cubby, Medina, who is
68 and a grandfather of four, with a husky voice
and a Tom Selleck mustache, rolled a chair over
to two pairs of monitors labeled with construc-
tion-paper signs that read: Voyager Mission Con-
trol Hardware, PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH. He
jiggled a mouse, and one of the screens woke to
a stream of numbers and letters describing the
health of Voyager 1.
Because they have only four kilobytes of com-
puter storage, the spacecraft transmit data 24/7,
reach Earth. The three antenna dishes big enough
to register them are shared, so Voyager gets only
four to six hours of reception time per spacecraft
per day; outside these often odd windows, their
data dissipate into the ether. Medina gestured to
another computer in the corner that monitors the
telemetry that comes in when the oce is empty
and, if it detects an anomaly, phones an on-call
engineer: the Voyager Alarm Monitor Processor
Including Remote Examination tool. We call it
Vampire, Medina said, because it works in the
middle of the night.
In March 2014, after news broke that Voyag-
er 1 had crossed into interstellar space, I spoke
with Medina over the phone. I would not leave
my wife to go with Angelina Jolie, as exciting as
that sounds, he told me. And I would not leave
Voyager to go to the new Mars missions. I will
not leave Voyager until it ceases to exist. Or until
I cease to exist.
A
ll the billions of stars in the universe, hosts to bil-
lions of planets, have a heliosphere. Understanding
observations of those systems. Voyager 1 has shown
that it blocks 75 percent of cosmic radiation, which
This is not a static number: Our sun is orbiting
the galaxy at 125 miles per second; its interstellar
environment and thus the size and shape of its
heliosphere is constantly in ux.
If the pressure outside got high enough, and
there are some areas in the Milky Way galaxy
Photographs by Graeme Mitchell for The New York Times
where it would be high enough, it could com-
press the heliosphere down to where in fact the
boundary is almost to where we are. And that
would change the radiation environment of the
planets, which is important when you want to try
to understand anything about the origin of life,
Ed Stone, the science-team leader, told me when
I visited him at Caltech last fall. Here on Earth,
wherever theres liquid water, whether its boiling
water coming out of the vents or frozen water,
there are microbes there. So life is remarkably
robust where theres water.
He went on: I think that one of the biggest ques-
tions is, Can we nd a spot here in the solar system
where theres microbial life? If theres no microbial
life anywhere else, that would be surprising, given
here on Earth it appeared fairly quickly after the
end of the bombardment, an epic rain of asteroids
some four billion years ago. If one could ever nd
some evidence of it here in the solar system where
we could get a sample, then one could look at the
DNA. All life on Earth has a related DNA. Is that
true for everywhere? Either answer would be amaz-
ing. Either theres only one way that life evolves, or
no, theres more than one way.
In his oce, Stone stood on tiptoe to lift an
intricate model of Voyager from the top of a
bookcase. At 81, he moves more stily than the
Stone of NASA archival footage. Otherwise, he
is remarkably unchanged. On a bulletin board
behind his computer, he pins the latest graphs of
the rate of charged particles that each spacecraft
has detected. A drastic dip in low-energy ones is
what convinced him that Voyager 1 had exited the
heliosphere, and he is eager for Voyager 2, which
entered the heliosheath from a dierent angle in
2007, to see a comparable drop before it goes quiet.
When we started this, I realized we were on
a mission of discovery, he said. I just had no
idea how much discovery there was going to be.
And I certainly had no idea that it would last as
long as it has. After we lose contact with them,
the spacecraft will continue to orbit the galaxy
for billions of years, never striking another star.
Space, Stone said, is really empty.
Astrophysicists who study the heliosphere
wage a constant battle against apathy when it
comes to invisible substances nearly 100 times
farther away from us than the sun is. I hear a lot
of people saying, So what? I try to explain: Its
like your home, Merav Opher, a professor of
astrophysics at Boston University and a member
of the Voyager science team, told me. You just
found out the walls arent walls. Theyre porous.
I think its existential. In 2006, Opher and Stone
published a landmark paper in The Astrophysical
Journal predicting that Voyager 2 would encoun-
ter the heliosphere boundary closer to the sun
than its twin had, pointing to a startling contra-
diction: The heliosphere must be asymmetrical;
it is not a sphere after all.
There is passionate disagreement about what
its exact shape is. (The Voyager scientists argue
over practically every scrap of data; a few hold-
outs insist that Voyager 1 has yet to reach interstel-
lar space.) In 1961, Eugene Parker, the renowned
astrophysicist who rst predicted the existence of
a heliosphere, hypothesized that it might look like
a comet compressed in front with a tail in back.
Earlier this year, Tom Krimigis, the emeritus head
of the Applied Physics Laboratory at Johns Hop-
kins University and the principal investigator for
Voyagers Low-Energy Charged Particle Exper-
iment, published a paper in Nature Astronomy
showing that the heliosphere has a very short tail
and kind of moves through space like a clenched
st. His instrument has also shown that cosmic
rays expected to ow toward the heliosphere
uniformly from across interstellar space actu-
ally move quite dierently depending on their
orientation to the interstellar magnetic eld.
Every once in a while, a tsunami passes Voyag-
er, Krimigis told me, referring to these waves.
The galaxy was supposed to be a calm sea, and
thats not what we nd.
Opher believes that the inuence of the suns
magnetic eld may warp the heliosphere into the
shape of a croissant. At its plump center, inter-
stellar matter presses in closer than previously
thought which would mean we are less isolated
from the rest of the galaxy than we believe.
Last Sept. 29, a Thursday, Larry Zottarelli awoke
before 7, as he did most weekdays, and dressed
Enrique Medina
An attitude and articulation
control system engineer,
he joined the team in 1986.
gesturing toward his empty wall calendar. Life
quietly so as not to disturb his sleeping wife. He
raked a comb through his silver hair, donned
trifocals and a calculator watch and drove to
the oce. He brewed his rst mug of coee in
the eciency kitchen and carried it to his desk.
Hed been on the job for 40 years; the next day
would be his last. A printed-out email taped to
his computer hutch had instructions for handing
in his badge and parking pass and collecting
his nal paycheck. He had cleared out most of
his belongings, except two gallon-size Ziploc
bags, in which he had sealed the plastic arms
of his oce chair to protect them from disin-
tegrating under the daily weight of his elbows.
Sitting facing the door, backed by a windowless,
conch-pink brick wall, he brought to mind a
hermit crab wearing a seashell.
Later that morning, when Zottarelli entered
the conference room to attend his last daily ight-
team brieng, his colleague Adans Ko, 58, was
arranging takeout containers of dim sum on the
table for a celebration. He threw an arm around
his shoulders and said, Larry is going to give
me a kiss today! Matsumoto, who was holding a
camera, said, O.K., look at me. She was making
a photo album for him. When the party broke up,
I found Zottarellis replacement, Lu Yang, at her
desk. I asked her if he had given her any specic
advice. Whatever the problem, you go there and
solve it, she said, and laughed.
In retirement, Zottarelli told me, he would
like to see Florida again. He wonders how it has
changed. In his garage is a 1954 Swallow Doretti,
a xer-upper. It probably needs new brakes, he
said. I asked him if there was anywhere he liked
to drive for fun. No, he replied. Not anymore.
I had stopped by his oce to say goodbye and
ask him what he planned to do with his new-
found freedom. I pictured him in the Doretti,
ying down the Pacic Coast Highway, wind
in his hair. But he seemed to be in no mood
for talking. I wished him well and turned to go.
Then he spoke. I expect my second stroke will
be on the 17th of November, he said ruefully,
expectancy is ve to seven years at my age on
retiring, so He paused. That was humor, I
guess. Im not looking forward to being even
older. Got no choice in the matter.
I asked if he ever found himself thinking about
the billions of years that the Voyagers will circle
the center of the galaxy, long after our sun has
exploded, scattering more stardust throughout
the universe. Of course, he said. I was raised
in the Roman Rite. Im pretty much an atheist.
But what is the meaning of life? Its not Monty
Python, O.K.?
Had he reached any conclusions about what it
is? Well, on Earth, yeah, he said. One species
always prepares the way for the next generation
thats all.
The New York Times Magazine 33
 LIFE IN THE POST-
NO ONE EVER D
THAT'S BAD FOR YOU A
NOT ACTUALLY TRY T
ANYTHING LIKE THAT
FOLLOW A HEALTH
PLAN BECAUSE T
IN NOT BEING SKINN
COURSE YOU

34
T-DIET AGE WHEN
DIETS BECAUSE
AND YOU SHOULD
TO LOSE WEIGHT OR
AT INSTEAD JUST
THY NUTRITION
THERE IS NO SHAME
NY UNLESS OF
OU'RE FAT.

Credit by Name Surname Photo illustration by Todd McLellan


J
ames Chambers was watching membership sign-
ups on Jan. 4, 2015, like a stock ticker it was that
rst Sunday of the year, the day we all decide that
this is it, were not going to stay fat for one more
day. At the time, he was Weight Watchers chief
executive, and he sat watching, waiting for the
line on the graph to begin its skyward trajectory.
Chambers knew consumer sentiment had been
changing the company was in its fourth year of
member-recruitment decline. But they also had
a new marketing campaign to help reverse the
generally dismal trend. But the weekend came
and went, and the people never showed up. More
than two-thirds of Americans were what pub-
lic-health ocials called overweight or obese,
and this was the oldest and most trusted diet
company in the world. Where were the people?
Weight Watchers was at a loss.
Chambers called Deb Benovitz, the companys
senior vice president and global head of consumer
insights. Were having one of the worst Januaries
that anyone could have imagined, she remembers
him telling her. In the dieting business, January
will tell you everything you need to know about
the rest of the year. Nothing like we had antici-
pated. Chambers and Benovitz knew that peo-
ple had developed a kind of diet fatigue. Weight
Watchers had recently tried the new marketing
campaign, called Help With the Hard Part, an
attempt at radical honesty. No one wanted radical
honesty. Chambers told Benovitz that they need-
ed to gure out what was going on and how to x
it before the February board meeting.
Benovitz got to work. She traveled the coun-
try, interviewing members, former members
and people they thought should be members
about their attitudes toward dieting. She heard
that they no longer wanted to talk about diet-
ing and weight loss. They wanted to become t! Be your healthiest! GET STRONG! replaced diet
healthy so they could be t. They wanted to language like Get lean! Control your eating! Lose 10
eat clean so they could be strong. pounds this month! In late 2015, Womens Health,
If you had been watching closely, you could see
that the change had come slowly. Dieting was
now considered tacky. It was anti-feminist. It was
arcane. In the new millennium, all bodies should
be accepted, and any inclination to change a body
was proof of a lack of acceptance of it. Weight
loss was a pursuit that had, somehow, landed on
36 8.6.17
the wrong side of political correctness. People Diet companies suered for being associated
wanted nothing to do with it. Except that many with dieting. Lean Cuisine repositioned itself as
of them did: They wanted to be thinner. They a modern eating company, not a diet company.
wanted to be not quite so fat. Not that there was In fact, Lean Cuisine went so far in their pivot
anything wrong with being fat! They just wanted that in 2016 they introduced a Google Chrome
to call dieting something else entirely. extension that would lter mentions of the word
A study out of Georgia Southern Universi- diet and dieting; it apparently did this to
tys Jiann-Ping Hsu College of Public Health, show that just because it was called Lean Cui-
published in The Journal of the American sine, that didnt mean it was a diet company. You
Medical Association in March, monitored atti- cant be held responsible for what your parents
tudes toward losing weight over three periods named you!
between 1988 and 2014. In the rst period, 1988- Weight Watchers saw all this happening and
94, 56 percent of fat adults reported that they concluded that people didnt have faith in diets.
tried to lose weight. In the last period, 2009-14, The company decided that what it oered was
only 49 percent said so. not a diet program but a lifestyle program. It
The change had been spurred not just by was a behavior-modication program. (For the
dieting fatigue but also by real questions about sake of expediency here, I will call its program
dietings long-term ecacy. In Weight Watch- a diet because it prescribes amounts of food.)
SOME FAT PEOPLE BEGAN TO WONDER IF THERE
WAS EVEN A PROVEN AND EFFECTIVE WAY TO BECOME
AND STAY THIN ANYWAY. THEY BEGAN TO ASK
THEMSELVES IF THEY SHOULD BE DIETING AT ALL.
ers own research, the average weight loss in any When Deb Benovitz returned from her travels
behavior-modication program is about a 5 per- with news of dietings new language changes, the
cent reduction of body weight after six months, company realized that something had to change
with a return of a third of the weight lost at two more than its marketing approach.
years. There were studies that appeared to indi-
cate that the cycle of weight loss and weight gain Oprah Winfrey on her show in
could cause long-term damage to the metabo- 1988, with a wagon of fat to
represent the 67 pounds she lost
lism. Those studies led to more studies, which while on Optifast.
suggested that once your body reaches a certain
weight, it is nearly impossible to exist at a much
lower weight for an extended period of time.
Even more studies began to question whether
or not its so bad to be fat in the rst place; one
notably suggested that fatter people lived longer
than thin ones.
These questions began to lter into the main-
stream. Womens magazines started shifting the
verbal displays on their covers, from the aggres-
sive hard-body stance of old to one with gentler
language, acknowledging that perhaps a wom-
ens magazine doesnt know for sure what size
your body should be, or what size it can be: Get
a holdout, announced in its own pages that it
was doing away with the cover phrases drop
two sizes and bikini body. The word wellness
came to prominence. People were now fasting
and eating clean and cleansing and making life-
style changes, which, by all available evidence,
is exactly like dieting.
 Weight Watchers chief science ocer is
Gary Foster, a psychologist the rst in that
position, which previously had been held by
dietitians. What he and his team realized from
Benovitzs research was that dieters wanted
a holistic approach to eating, one that helped
really change their bodies, yes, but in a way that
was sustainable and positive. He got to work
creating a new approach that would become
known as Beyond the Scale: He used all avail-
able mind-body research to try to gure out a
way for members to appreciate benets of the
program besides weight loss. This would help
them stay on the program during setbacks and
beyond their weight-loss period and allow the
program to inltrate their lives beyond mealtime
and beyond plain old eating suggestions.
The company would move away from giving
its members goal weights. It expanded its cogni-
tive-behavioral strategies, which taught members
to challenge unhelpful thinking and to respond
to their emotions with reason, as opposed to
with food or despair. It developed workshops
that used meditation and qigong and didnt once
mention food or weight. It updated its apps and
introduced a social-media program, Connect.
It became as holistic-minded as the people told
Benovitz they wanted a program to be.
But Weight Watchers was still a company
called Weight Watchers, and it had to gure out
a way to communicate all of this change to the
public. People had too many associations with the
brand. It needed someone other than the usual
celebrity spokesdieter, a fat famous person who
Winfrey: Charles Bennet/Associated Press. Nidetch: Martha Holmes/LIFE Images Collection/Getty Images.
could be paid somewhere between $250,000 and
$2 million to do the talk show circuit and People
covers for a year. It needed someone who could
fast-track the message that it was worth taking a
new look at Weight Watchers.
When the company called Oprah Winfrey in
July 2015, she was standing on the lawn of her
home in Maui with a sprained ankle, an injury she
sustained while hiking in the mountains. In the
month since her convalescence began, she had
gained 17 pounds. Her struggles with weight were,
at this point, a cultural meme. How could you
explain the failure of someone so goal-oriented
and successful someone so successful that
her name was invoked as a symbol of success as
often as it was ever used to summon her? Weight
Watchers had reached out to her in the past, but
she politely declined. This time she bought a 10
percent stake in the company for $43 million, and
Weight Watchers stockholders rejoiced.
But the verbal changes around dieting had
indicated something deeper than just a mar-
keting issue; they pointed straight back to the
fatigue that was hurting Weight Watchers in the
rst place. So, yes, many people celebrated the
new partnership. But others meaning, anyone
Jean Nidetch, founder of Weight
Watchers, in 1972.
who for a majority of their lives had been watch-
ing Oprah cycle up and down through dierent
sizes felt a little confused by the move. What
was Oprah, a person whose very brand meant
enlightenment and progress, doing on anoth-
er diet? It was hard not to suspect that she was
trapped, like so many of us are, in a culture that
says one thing about fatness and means some-
thing very dierent.
ack in 1963, when
B
Jean Nidetch held
the rst what-would-
be-known-as-Weight-
Watchers meetings
above a movie theater
in Queens, things
seemed clearer: It
was bad to be fat, and it was good to be thin, and
fat people wanted to be thin, and thin people
wanted to help them get there. Her memoirs,
The Story of Weight Watchers, reads about
as current as a cigarette ad featuring smoking
babies. If strawberry shortcake made you
break out in purple spots, you wouldnt eat it,
she wrote. Youd be allergic to it. But, do you
think fat is prettier than purple spots? Its uglier
and harder to get rid of.
Its frankness seems like an anachronism now,
but you have to consider that at the time, this kind
of straight talk was a glass of cold water in the
desert for many fat people, who privately won-
dered why it was so hard for them to reduce the
size of their bodies when it seemed so eortless
for the people who walked around thin. Nidetch
lost her weight in her late 30s, after a lifetime of
self-loathing and embarrassment; the last indig-
nity was the time someone asked when her baby
was due when she was denitively not pregnant.
She went to a city-run obesity clinic, and when
she left the program, she kept the diet it gave her.
She mimeographed it and handed it out to people
whom she had gathered to spread the word about
how weight loss could provide freedom and hope.
(The diet would evolve from an eating plan to a
more democratic system of balanced exchanges
to an absolute laissez-faire system of points, as
the company realized that the more autonomy
and the less deprivation people experienced in
their dieting limitless choices, if not limitless
amounts the more likely theyd be to stay on the
diet.) But Nidetch knew that it wasnt just the food
that was the problem; it was the problem that
was the problem. What fat people needed was
one another. They needed a space in which they
could talk openly about the physical struggles
and daily humiliations of walking around in a fat
body, and just how much that sucked.
These same ideas were articulated more stark-
ly a few years later, but with a dierent prescrip-
tion. In 1967, a fat man named Lew Louderback
unleashed an essay in The Saturday Evening Post
arguing that the wisdom around thinness could
be applied only to thin people that fat people
suered physically and psychologically when
trying to maintain thin-person weights, and that
this maintenance seemed to be temporary at best
and largely destructive emotionally.
He went on to write a book called Fat Power,
which helped give birth to what would become
known as the fat-acceptance movement. That
movement has varying degrees of militancy, but
generally asks the public to put aside its bias and
learn something new to not think of fat people
as lazy; to not deny them medical care; to not
exclude them from their basic rights. It suggests
that we re-examine what we think we know about
fatness, that we consider trying to love and care
for our bodies at whatever size they are now.
There were more books and more essays and
more challenges to the status quo in the decades
to come. In 2008, Linda Bacon, a researcher who
holds graduate degrees in physiology, psychology
and exercise science with a specialty in nutrition,
wrote a seminal fat-acceptance book, Health
at Every Size: The Surprising Truth About Your
Weight, which used peer-reviewed research to
bolster these ideas. She gave seminars to doc-
tors on fat phobia and weight bias in an eort to
help them understand how their views on obesi-
ty were hurting their patients and not allowing
them to examine fatness neutrally. For example,
there is evidence that stress and discrimination
The New York Times Magazine 37
THE FADDISH AND SOMETIMES QUESTIONABLE HISTORY OF AMERICAN WEIGHT LOSS
La Parle Obesity Soap
1903
play a strong role in the insulin resistance and
diabetes and heart disease for which weight typi-
cally takes the blame.
With the rise of social media, the movement
began to inltrate the culture in other ways, too.
Fat-acceptance and body-positivity activists began
posting pictures of themselves on Instagram
just regular pictures, deant for their lack of
apology. There were intuitive-eating workshops
and body-positivity training camps. There were
bloggers and authors asking exactly how much of
your life you were willing to put o in pursuit of a
diet, or until you got to a certain weight, even tem-
porarily. Normal, nonmilitant, nonactivist people
began asking themselves if it was that bad to be
fat if it was that unhealthy, or that ugly, to be
fat. And yet the most telling thing about the way
the fat-acceptance movement is received in our
society may be that its Wikipedia entry contains
two quotes from people criticizing it before it
mentions even one person who espouses it. In
this world, we are witness to a moment when
the word optimal is used in conjunction with
the word body, when people are trying to mold
themselves into high-performance, precision
machines. The idea of a fat machine makes no
sense when you are easily fueled and refueled on
Whole Foods and Soylent.
In other words, all this activism didnt make the
world more comfortable with fat people or diet-
ing. Society doesnt normally change the words
for things unless were fundamentally uncomfort-
able with the concepts beneath them. Consider
the verbal game of chicken weve played with the
38 8.6.17
Lucky Strike Cigarettes
1929
people all this aects: Fat people went from being
called fat (which is mean) to being called over-
weight (a polite-seeming euphemism that either
accidentally or not accidentally implies that there
is a standard weight) to being called zaftig/chub-
by/pleasingly plump (just dont) to curvy (which
seems to imbue size with a sexuality and optimism
where it should just be sexually and emotionally
neutral) and back to fat (because its only your
judgment of fat people that made it a bad word in
the rst place, and maybe being fat isnt as bad as
weve been made to believe). It bears mentioning
that Weight Watchers doesnt have a standardized
word for its demographic, but Foster uses the term
people with overweight.
As the ideas that sprang from the fat-acceptance
movement began to trickle into the mainstream,
fat people began to wonder what it might be like
to put all this aside and just live their lives. Some
asked themselves if they thought they could g-
ure out a way to not want to be thin; some began
to ask themselves if they actually liked the way
they looked. They began to wonder if there was
even a proven and eective way to become and
stay thin anyway. They began to ask themselves
if they should be dieting at all.
LAST FALL, I WAS WITH FOSTER, Weight Watchers
chief science ocer, as he walked the halls of Obe-
sity Week, the annual conference of the Obesity
Society. The conference includes study presen-
tations, each one a possible clue to the mystery
of fatness. We attended a presentation on a new
study of a weight-loss medication. People on the
Domino Sugar
1950s
medication lost weight, but once they were o,
the weight came back. If only we could get peo-
ples weight down, the presenters said, they could
have a fresh start. Out in the hall, Foster shook
his head. Theres a bias and a stigma: Well give
these people medication for a short period, but
then theyve got to y straight and get will power.
Its nonsense. This tough love Im going to be
hard on myself you know, in some perverse way,
if it were true, we might try to leverage it, but its
not. The harder you are on yourself, the worse you
do. In his career before Weight Watchers, Foster
Soap, Domino, Ayds, Slim-Fast: the Advertising Archives. Lucky Strike: Stanford Research
was the founder and director of the Center for
Into the Impact of Tobacco Advertising. Metrecal: The Jim Heimann Collection/Taschen.
Obesity Research and Education at Temple Uni-
versity. Neutralizing the morality talk and stigma
that surround obesity, he says, would make it a lot
easier to gure out how to deal with it.
By the time of the conference, the Oprah-
Weight Watchers partnership had proved a clear
success. Within a year, the company was up to
2.8 million members; by the rst quarter of 2017
it would be 3.6 million. Oprah had brought an
audience to Beyond the Scale, the holistic model
Foster helped create. He says that initial weight
loss on the program in 2016 was up 15 percent
from what it was the year before. Of course people
should want to manage their weight, he said, the
same way theyd want to manage their diabetes. It
would seem preposterous if we would say to peo-
ple with diabetes, Dont manage your diabetes.
Or their asthma. All three are chronic conditions;
why, he asks, would we assume we should give up
on weight? When people lose weight, he points
out, they see improvements in risk factors. Data
 Metrecal Shakes
1969
is data. Modifying your eating is hard, he says,
but its worth it. No one can tell you that lowering
weight doesnt also lower other health factors like
hypertension and high cholesterol and joint pain.
Maybe thats true. Most mainstream sources
agree on this, but there are denitely some
researchers who dont; there are some who think
that people who end up fat have dierent physi-
ologies, and that fatness is just one component of
them. Consider the uptick, as Foster calls it, that
comes after two years on a diet when, say, the per-
son who lost 5 percent of her weight has gained a
third of it back. Think about those numbers. If you
weigh 300 pounds, you will lose 15 pounds in six
months. Youll keep it o for a year or two, maybe.
Five pounds is likely to return. Of course, these
are people who dont stay on a diet-maintenance
plan; but the average dieter certainly doesnt, and
its worth it to ask why a person wouldnt stay on
a program that oered such rewards. Is it because
they couldnt? Its worth it to ask if the programs
are right and all these humans trying very hard
at them are wrong. And also, where are the 300-
pound people who want to lose just 15 pounds
in the rst place? I havent met those people. But
mainly, what it comes down to is this: Weight
Watchers is designed to be successful only if you
can stay on Weight Watchers forever.
And there were also questions about dietings
long-term eects on the body. A study done by
the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive
and Kidney Diseases, which is part of the Nation-
al Institutes of Health. The study followed con-
testants who had appeared on the eighth season
Ayds Diet Candy
1970s
of The Biggest Loser, all of whom had normal
resting metabolisms for their size when the sea-
son began. As the contestants experienced radi-
cal, sweeps-week weight loss, their metabolisms
slowed, and stayed slow afterward. To maintain his
weight loss, one contestants resting metabolism
now required 800 calories fewer per day than a
man of his size. It might be that when you have
been fat, your body doesnt behave the way a thin
body does, even when you become thinner.
Foster shook his head at that one. He hears about
the Biggest Loser study a lot, but he doesnt think
it conveys accurate information. It uses a very
small sample under extreme conditions. He cited
his own and others studies examining the meta-
bolic rate, fat distribution and psychological state
of people before they lose weight, after they lose
weight and after they regain the weight. Nothing
is changed, he said. Im not saying thats a good he worked for a corporation but its also what
outcome or something we should celebrate but
this idea that the act of managing your weight and
losing weight has somehow set you up to be in a
worse spot just isnt borne out by the science.
Here is the thing about this particular debate
at this particular moment: Everyone has much
the same data, but there are plenty of people who
would interpret the data dierently from the way
Foster does. Ive spoken to countless (I literally
stopped keeping count) obesity researchers and
dietitians and biologists and doctors. The answer
becomes one of point of view: Is fat inherently
bad, or can it be neutral?
We cant answer that yet. There is still too much
debate. So in the meantime, a fat person has to
Slim-Fast Shakes
2004
consider the data she has access to meaning
studies, yes, but also her own experience and the
experience of her fat peers and ask: Do you
believe that you, a fat person, can ever be mean-
ingfully thinner for a meaningful amount of time?
Is a diet successful if it stops being successful
once youre done with it? Ive interviewed Foster
before. Back in 2011, when he was at Temple, he
published a study about the ecacy of dierent
kinds of diets. They all led to similar losses, and
they all led to similar rates of recidivism. When
I spoke with him back then, I asked him why we
should continue dieting if the outcomes were so
bad. He was concerned that I would suggest to my
readers that dieting wasnt worth it. He told me
that people didnt need that kind of discourage-
ment. This attitude is what makes him so credible
to me his message was the same long before
makes this so depressing.
I do not recommend being a fat person at Obe-
sity Week. Over the years, the event has become
a week long, and it contains a robust trade show.
After Foster left me to go to a meeting, I walked the
trade-show oor and saw all the products being
shown to the obesity specialists in attendance. I
watched a video of a new kind of retractor that
will more easily hold open belly skin while part
of a stomach is cut out and sewn up, because
you cant eat as much if your stomach is made
smaller. I watched a person showing a model
of a balloon youd insert into the stomach of a
patient that would take up volume so that she
wouldnt be so hungry, to (Continued on Page 48)
The New York Times Magazine 39
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40
G U I LT B Y O M I S S I O N
NOURA JACKSON SPENT NINE YEARS IN PRISON FOR
MURDER, UNTIL IT WAS REVEALED THAT PROSECUTORS
HAD WITHHELD A CRUCIAL PIECE OF EVIDENCE A
SHOCKINGLY FREQUENT OCCURRENCE THAT IS ALMOST
NEVER PUNISHED.

BY EMILY BAZELON
PHOTOGRAPHS BY
HARRIS MIZRAHI
 N

oura Jackson called 911 at 5 a.m. on Sunday, June
5, 2005. Please, I need, I need an ambulance, I
need an ambulance right now! she cried. Some-
one broke into my house. My mom my mom
is bleeding. She panted as she waited a few long
seconds for the operator to transfer her. Shes
not breathing, Noura said, sounding desperate,
when an emergency dispatcher came on the line.
Shes not breathing. Shes not breathing. Please
help me. Theres blood everywhere!
When the police arrived, Jennifer Jacksons
body lay on her bedroom oor in the brick home
she owned in a well-kept Memphis neighbor-
hood. Nouras mother, a 39-year-old successful
investment banker, had been stabbed 50 times.
The brutal violence on a quiet block made local
headlines, generating shock and anxiety in the
middle-class corners of the city.
The police began their investigation with few
leads. Jackson lived alone with her only child,
Noura, who was 18 at the time. She had divorced
Nouras father when Noura was a baby. Investi-
gators found broken glass on the kitchen oor,
from a windowpane in the door that led from the
garage to the kitchen. But the window seemed
to have been broken from the inside, because
the hole it made lined up with a door lock that
could be seen only from the kitchen. And no
one had seen an intruder. The police questioned
Jacksons on-again-o-again boyfriend. He called
her around midnight on the night she was killed
but told the police that he hung up before she
answered and then went to sleep at his home,
more than an hour from Memphis.
The police also questioned Noura. She said she
found her mothers body when she came home
after being out all night. She had gone to a couple
of parties with friends and then drove around by
herself, stopping at a gas station and a Taco Bell.
With concern about the case mounting
Mystery Stabbing Death Unsolved, local ABC
news reported that August the case went to
Amy Weirich, who at 40 was a rising star in the
Memphis prosecutors oce. A long-distance
runner and the mother of four children, Weirich
was a former chief of the gang-and-narcotics
unit and the rst woman to be named deputy
district attorney in Shelby County. She was con-
sidered a highly skilled trial lawyer.
Studying the case, she developed a theory:
Noura was bridling under her mothers rules and
killed her for money that she could use to keep
partying with her friends. Jacksons estate was
valued at $1.5 million, including a life insurance
policy. Weirich also argued that Noura and her
mother were struggling over whether to sell a few
cars that Noura inherited from her father, Nazmi
Hassanieh, a former Lebanese Army captain.
After a long separation, Noura got back in touch
with her father when she was 16, and he texted
and called her often. Sixteen months before her
mother was killed, Hassanieh was shot to death
in a Memphis convenience store he owned. His
murder was never solved.
The police came to arrest Noura that Septem-
ber as she was nishing up a babysitting job. She
had no history of violence, and the case quickly
became a local sensation. Weirich asked for a life
sentence. The judge, Chris Craft, eventually set
a bond of $500,000. Unable to pay, Noura spent
a total of three and a half years in jail awaiting
trial, on a heavy regimen of anti-anxiety and
antidepressant medication.
Nouras private lawyer, Valerie Corder, thought
Weirichs case was weak. At the time of Nou-
ras indictment, the police were waiting for the
DNA results from samples taken from the blood
spattered around Jacksons bedroom. When the
results came back, they suggested that two or
three people, whose identities were unknown
to the police, had been in Jacksons bedroom.
Nouras DNA was excluded as a match for any of
the three DNA proles. But Weirich dismissed
the absence of Nouras DNA. The DNA results
didnt point to anything, as DNA often doesnt, Weirich asked Hammack if Noura had ever done
she told me in an interview this past spring. No
physical evidence ever linked Noura to the killing.
Nouras trial aired live on Court TV in February
2009. Over two weeks, Weirich called witness
after witness to portray Noura as rebellious and
angry. One neighbor said that in the weeks before
the murder, she overheard Noura demanding
money from her mother in a rage. Nouras
half uncle said he heard Noura and her mother
arguing over the cars. An aunt said Noura grew
sullen when Jackson talked about sending her to
boarding school and testing her for drugs. At the
time of the trial, two of Nouras aunts and the half
uncle were suing her for the value of her mothers
life insurance policy and the rest of her estate.
Weirich and Stephen Jones, a second prosecu-
tor who assisted at the trial, also introduced sever-
al witnesses who described Nouras partying, sex
life and drug use (mostly alcohol, marijuana and
the opioid Lortab, which she was prescribed when
she was 16 for pain she experienced from endo-
metriosis, a disorder of the uterine tissue). Much
of the testimony was tangential to Jacksons death,
but Judge Craft made the questionable decision
to allow it, giving Weirich the chance to paint a
picture of a teenager spinning out of control.
The prosecution presented a great deal of tes-
timony about a small cut on Nouras left hand,
covered with adhesive tape between her thumb
and forenger, on the morning Jackson was
killed. Asked how she got the cut, Noura gave
diering explanations to friends and her aunts
and half uncle, they told the jury. The police
testied that in her initial statement about where
she was in the early morning hours when Jack-
son was killed, Noura did not mention a stop
she made around 4 a.m. at Walgreens. The jury
saw grainy video footage of her buying bandages
and skin-care products.
Near the end of the trial, Weirich introduced the
only witness who placed Noura at the scene of the
crime in the crucial time before her mothers body
was found. Andrew Hammack, a friend of Nouras,
testied that she called him between about 4 a.m.
and 5 a.m. and asked him to meet her at her house.
that before and if he considered the request nor-
mal. He said no. She needed a cover-up, Jones
told the jury in his closing argument. Someone to
go inside with her so that they could say, Yeah, I
was with her when she found her mothers body.
Corder, Nouras lawyer, was worried about the
eect of the medication Noura was taking, and

42 8.6.17
how she would hold up under cross-examination, weak opponents. A friend said her husband, who dicult to overstate the importance of this por-
and advised her not to testify. Corder called no is also a lawyer, began talking about moving the tion of Mr. Hammacks testimony, the justices
witnesses, emphasizing instead to the jury that family into the Governors Mansion one day. wrote, pointing out that no DNA evidence linked
the DNA evidence pointed away from Noura to Noura to the crime scene and that the blood of
unknown suspects. In her nal argument, Weirich Five days after the jury found Noura guilty in unknown individuals was present in the victims
stood facing Noura and raised the question the 2009, Stephen Jones, the assistant prosecutor on bed. Hammacks note suggested that he might not
defense left unanswered by discouraging Noura the case, led a motion to submit an omitted have told the truth when he testied that Noura
from testifying. Just tell us where you were! she statement a handwritten note that Andrew called and asked him to meet her at her house,
shouted, throwing up her hands in a gesture of Hammack, Nouras friend, gave to the police in the justices said. (Cellphone records showed that
impatience. Thats all we are asking, Noura! the early days of the murder investigation. Jones Hammack texted Noura and that she called him,
The jury deliberated for nine hours and then later said he received Hammacks note from the but they did not show the content of the texts or
led back into the courtroom. Noura, her thick police in the middle of the trial, tucked it into a whether he answered the call. Hammack did not
dark hair falling to her shoulders, sat with her ap of his notebook intending to give it to Corder respond to repeated requests for comment.) The
hands folded in her lap, wearing a blue and white and then forgot about it until he put away his court also explained how Nouras lawyer could
owered dress. She tried to make eye contact notebook after the case ended. have used the note to argue that Mr. Hammack
with some of the jurors, but they avoided her In the note, Hammack wrote that on the night himself was a plausible suspect. The note contra-
gaze. When she heard the words guilty of of Jacksons death, he left his cellphone with a dicted Hammacks alibi, opening a line of inquiry
second-degree murder, her head fell. friend and later was rolling on XTC, a refer- about his whereabouts when Jackson was killed.
After the trial, Weirich spoke to the local news ence to the drug also known as Ecstasy or Molly. And it cast in a new light a visit Hammacks friends
media. Its a great verdict, she said. Noura was Corder, who asked Weirich and Jones repeatedly made to the Memphis police station a week after
sentenced to a prison term of 20 years and nine before and during the trial if they had given her Jacksons murder, which Corder tried to explore
months. Weirichs victory helped start her politi- all the states information related to Hammack, at the trial. The friends reported that they didnt
cal career. In January 2011, she was appointed dis- believed that the note raised questions about know where Hammack was that night and that he
trict attorney in Shelby County, after the elected Hammacks credibility that she would have raised had been acting strangely since then. The police
district attorney left to join the administration of during the trial. Based in large part on the newly didnt pursue the lead.
Gov. Bill Haslam. Weirich, a Republican, became disclosed evidence, Corder appealed Nouras The Tennessee Supreme Court called Jones
the rst woman to hold that post. She then won conviction to the Tennessee Supreme Court. and Weirichs failure to disclose Hammacks note
election in 2012 and 2014 with 65 percent of the On Aug. 22, 2014, the Tennessee Supreme Court before trial a agrant violation of Nouras con-
vote, running on a law-and-order message against unanimously overturned Nouras conviction. It is stitutional rights. The justices also overturned

AM Y WEI R I C H AT A N EWS CON F ER EN C E I N M ARC H.

Photograph by Nikki Boertman/The Commercial Appeal The New York Times Magazine 43
the verdict against Noura for another reason
Weirichs closing exclamation in front of the jury
demanding: Just tell us where you were! Thats
all we are asking, Noura! The Constitutions pro-
tection of the right to remain silent means that
a defendants decision not to testify should be
considered o limits to any conscientious pros-
ecutor, the Tennessee justices wrote, so that the
jury doesnt view it as an implicit admission of
guilt. Weirich was doubtless well aware of the
rule, the justices added in a striking footnote, cit-
ing three previous cases in which appellate judges
criticized her and her oce for making prejudicial
statements to the jury.
In the United States, defendants gained the
right to see certain evidence in the governments
possession relatively recently, in the 1960s. Before
that, our rules reected their origin in early mod-
ern Britain, where people suspected of crimes
were required to speak on their own behalf, with-
out a lawyer. In 16th-century trials, people sus-
pected of crimes had no right in advance to learn
of the evidence against them, or even the charges,
because the element of surprise was deemed cru-
cial to ascertaining the truth. The idea of trial
by ambush, as it is called, persisted throughout
the 18th century, even after the accused gained
the presumption of innocence, the right to hire
a lawyer and the right to remain silent. In 1792,
the Lord Chief Justice in Britain rejected a defen-
dants request to see the evidence against him in
advance of trial, saying that such disclosure would
subvert the whole system of criminal law.
Over the next century, however, the British
courts changed course, joining countries like Ger-
many and France to require broad disclosure of
the prosecutions case before trial, including a full
list of witnesses, a summary of how they would
testify and other investigative material, like police
and lab reports. The nascent justice system in the
United States, by contrast, imported Britains ear-
lier rules. Judges in this country emphasized that
defendants might harm or intimidate witnesses if
they knew they were planning to testify.
In March 1963, Justice William J. Brennan Jr.,
an Eisenhower appointee who became one of the
eras leading liberal jurists, criticized the Amer-
ican practice of keeping the prosecutions case
secret before trial in a major speech at Washing-
ton Universitys law school. Brennan argued that
it was particularly ironic that at the Nuremberg
trials, conducted in the late 1940s to bring Nazi
war criminals to justice, Soviet prosecutors pro-
tested the American rules of evidence as unfair
to defendants. Isnt denying access to the facts of
the prosecutions case blind to the superlatively
important public interest in the acquittal of the
innocent? Brennan asked.
Brennans speech was part of a sweeping argu-
ment for criminal-justice reform. Led by Earl War-
ren, the consensus-seeking California governor
chosen as chief justice by Eisenhower, the court
44 8.6.17
revolutionized the process the government must
follow to convict someone of a crime. The Warren
Court gave poor defendants the right to a free
lawyer, barred police ocers from coercing con-
fessions and required them to inform defendants
of their rights (the Miranda warning).
Two months after Brennans Washington Uni-
versity speech, defendants for the rst time won a
constitutional right to see some of the evidence in
the states possession. The ruling came in Brady v.
Maryland, a 1963 appeal by an Air Force veteran,
John Leo Brady, who was sent to death row for
murder. Bradys lawyers argued that prosecutors
should have disclosed that a co-defendant had con-
fessed to the killing. In response, the Warren Court
decreed that before trial, prosecutors must turn
over evidence that is favorable to the defense
if it is material either to guilt or to punishment.
The Brady ruling appeared to rebalance the
scales between the defense and the prosecution,
as British and European courts began doing a
century and a half earlier. For years, however,
little attention was paid to enforcing the Brady
rule, in part because there was little proof it was
being broken. Prosecutors decide what counts
as material or favorable in the heat of bat- prosecutor, who seeks the defendants loss of lib-
tle while the judge and the defense have no
way to see what theyre holding back. Its as if
prosecutors are tennis players calling their own
lines when their opponents, and even the referee,
cant see the other side of the court.
It was only in the 1990s, with the advent of
DNA testing, that defense lawyers gained insight
into how often prosecutors broke the rules by fail-
ing to disclose evidence. As courts reopened old
cases in light of DNA evidence, les sometimes
revealed telltale evidence of innocence facts
that pointed to another suspect or undermined
the credibility of a witness, which, it turned out,
the state possessed all along and never shared.
The lead authors of a 2002 study, James Lieb-
man and Jerey Fagan of Columbia Law School,
reviewed some 2,700 death sentences across the
country. They found that 351 convictions were
ultimately overturned in state appellate courts
and that in about 20 percent of those cases, the
state failed to disclose evidence. Our analyses
reveal that it is in close cases those in which a
small amount of evidence might tip the outcome
in a dierent direction that the risk of serious
error is the greatest, Liebman and Fagan wrote,
raising the chilling possibility that prosecutors
could be more likely to withhold evidence when
proof of guilt was uncertain.
In a 2013 case in which prosecutors misled
the trial judge about the poor track record of the
states forensics expert, Judge Alex Kozinski of
the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth
Circuit rattled the legal profession by declaring
that there was an epidemic of prosecutors
withholding evidence. In March, the National
Registry of Exonerations reported that 70 of the
166 exonerations in 2016 involved government
misconduct, which most frequently entailed the
withholding of evidence. (Nearly 2,000 exonera-
tions have been recorded since 1989.) For many
prosecutors, cheating is unthinkable. And some-
times prosecutors omit evidence without mean-
ing to or because they never receive it from the
police. But one of the systems most disturbing
aspects is that we may never know the number of
hidden-evidence cases. The Catch-22 of Brady
is that you have to nd out theyre hiding some-
thing to have a claim, says Kathleen Ridol, the
lead author of a study of wrongful convictions for
the Northern California Innocence Project. How
many do we miss?
The honor system created by Brady is remark-
ably dierent from the process for disclosing evi-
dence in civil suits, in which both sides are enti-
tled to review relevant documents and to depose
each others witnesses. If the civil plainti, who
seeks primarily the payment of money, must share
his evidence in advance of a trial, wrote Miriam
Baer, a Brooklyn Law School professor and former
assistant United States attorney, in a 2015 article
in The Columbia Law Review, then surely the
erty or life, ought to suer the same obligations.
In research published in July, the Fair Punish-
ment Project at Harvard singled out Weirich, along
with Leon Cannizzaro and Tony Rackauckas, the
district attorneys in New Orleans and Orange
County, Calif., for numerous allegations of mis-
conduct in their oces between 2010 and 2015.
Under Cannizzaro and Rackauckas, multiple mur-
der cases have unraveled when judges found that
prosecutors failed to disclose evidence that mat-
tered for mounting an eective defense. Press o-
cers for the three district attorneys questioned the
validity of the Fair Punishment Projects ndings.
One called the project anti-law-enforcement,
and another said it was a political organization
masquerading as a good-government group. The
Fair Punishment Projects director, Rob Smith,
calls these district attorneys recidivists who are
repeatedly abusing their power.
When Amy Weirich learned to try cases in Shelby
County in the 1990s, her oce had a tradition
called the Hammer Award: a commendation
with a picture of a hammer, which supervisors
or section chiefs typically taped on the oce
door of trial prosecutors who won big convic-
tions or long sentences. When Weirich became
the district attorney six years ago, she continued
the Hammer Awards. I spoke to several former
Shelby County prosecutors who told me that
the reward structure fostered a win-at-all-costs
mind-set, fueled by the belief that everyone is
guilty all the time, as one put it. The measure
of your worth came down to the number of cases
you tried and the outcomes, another said. (They
asked me not to use their names because they
still work as lawyers in Memphis.) One year, the
second former prosecutor told me, he dismissed
the charges in multiple murder cases. The evi-
dence just didnt support a conviction, he said.
But no, I didnt get credit from leadership. In
fact, it hurt me. Doing your prosecutorial duty
in that oce is not considered helpful. Weirich
disagrees, saying Every assistant is told to do
the right thing every day for the right reasons.
The training and supervision of new prosecu-
tors is especially crucial for instilling values. Its
disturbing when a prosecutor with a history of
failing to disclose evidence has the job of over-
seeing the next generation of lawyers, says Ron-
ald Wright, a law professor at Wake Forest and
co-author of a published study based on more
than 250 interviews with prosecutors.
When Weirich took oce, the director of
criminal-trial prosecutors was Tom Henderson,
a longtime Shelby County prosecutor who had
won major trials and helped her rise through
the ranks. Henderson supervised about 50
less-experienced lawyers, though in two death-
penalty cases in the 2000s, courts found that Hen-
derson did not give the defense all the evidence
he should have. (In one case, the result was a
mistrial, and the defendant was later acquitted. In
the other, the judge found that the nondisclosures
were unintentional and didnt aect the verdict.)
Then in the 2012 reversal of the murder convic-
tion of a man named Michael Rimmer, a judge
went further, nding that Henderson purpose-
fully misled the defense about an eyewitness
who identied an alternate suspect in a photo
spread. Henderson said he simply forgot about
the eyewitness identication. Still, the judges
nding led to a public censure, in 2013, from the
Tennessee Board of Professional Responsibility,
an arm of the Tennessee Supreme Court.
But Weirich kept Henderson in his super-
visory role, dismissing his lapses as human
error in the local press. It was hard enough
on him personally and professionally, she told
me. There was no reason for me to do anything
else. (Henderson could not be reached for com-
ment.) Weirichs decision worried Lucian Pera,
a Memphis lawyer and ethics expert. On any
allegation of misconduct that is this serious, an
oce should do an internal investigation, Pera
says. One former assistant district attorney told
me that Weirichs response made it clear that,
quite honestly, she doesnt believe that ethical
violations are important. Weirich says she con-
siders ethical violations of great importance.
After Nouras conviction was overturned in
2014, other questions arose about Weirichs past
practices at trial. Later that year, a judge ordered
Weirich to testify about a murder case she tried
in 2005, in which a man named Vern Braswell
was convicted of killing his wife. On appeal, a
defense attorney and a prosecutor who was new
to the case found a manila envelope in the les.
It was labeled with a sticky note, which the law-
yers said read something along the lines of do
not turn over to defense and was signed with
Weirichs initials. When they later returned to the
les to look inside the envelope, it was gone. In
her testimony, Weirich denied knowing anything
about the envelope. A Tennessee judge ruled last
year that there was no reason to grant a new trial
because the unavailability of any documents
probably didnt prevent Braswell from present-
ing an eective defense.
Weirich and Jones were compelled to testify
privately last winter in a challenge of a murder
conviction in a capital-punishment case. This one
involved the discovery of a letter, not given to the
defense at trial, in which a gang member said the
defendant had been framed. Weirichs and Joness
statements about the letter are not yet public.
In February, the United States Court of
Appeals for the Sixth Circuit reversed the con-
THERE WERE SO MANY THINGS
THE JURY DIDNT KNOW AND SO
MANY QUESTIONS NOBODY COULD
ANSWER BUT ME.
viction of Andrew Thomas, who was prosecuted
by Weirich in a capital-murder case in 2001. At
Thomass trial, Weirich asked the pivotal witness
if she had collected one red cent. The witness
said no, even though she received $750 from the
F.B.I. for cooperating in a previous case against
Thomas. Weirich said she didnt know about the
payment, and federal prosecutors backed her
up on that point. But the appeals court said that
any competent prosecutor would have carefully
reviewed the case le.
Noura learned that the Tennessee Supreme
Court reversed her conviction on an August
2014 evening while she was watching her cell-
mates TV in prison. She had been locked up for
nine years by then, and she had given up on her
appeal. In the 50 years since the Brady ruling, the
Tennessee Supreme Court had reversed only one
conviction because the prosecution had failed to
turn over evidence. But now, watching the news
on mute, Noura saw her name ash across the
screen. She turned up the volume and shouted for
a guard to let her nd the inmates who were her
close friends. I was crying; they were crying,
she told me this past spring. No one ever wins
their appeal in prison, but all of a sudden, I did.
Weirich soon announced that she would retry
the case, but at rst, that didnt dim Nouras
sense of elation. She had a new lawyer, Mike
Working, who was eager to work alongside Val-
erie Corder. And Noura had other supporters,
including friends of her mothers who visited
her in prison regularly; Pat Culp, who runs a
womens prison ministry; and her friends in the
prison, who saw her as a freedom ghter. I was
the one who could make a dierence, because I
had Amy Weirich dead to the wrong, she said.
The Supreme Court said so.
Over the years, Noura replayed the trial in
her head, wondering what would have hap-
pened if she had testied or if her lawyers had
called defense witnesses. Its extremely rare for
daughters to kill their mothers, and when the
crime occurs, it often follows a history of child
abuse. Though Weirich argued at trial that Noura
clashed with her mother, by all accounts Jackson
was loving, and she and Noura were close. Noura
remembered the misery of listening to witnesses
denigrate her relationship with her mother and
biting the inside of her cheek until she tasted
blood. It was almost like a physical experience,
like people are hitting you, and youre standing
stock still, Noura said. There were so many
things the jury didnt know and so many ques-
tions nobody could answer but me.
Noura wanted to explain that she hadnt told
the police about stopping at Walgreens to buy
skin-care products and bandages for the cut
on her hand because she didnt think it was
important. She cut her hand on a broken beer
bottle while she was drinking with friends the
Friday night before her mother died, she says,
and her mother bought the rst package of ban-
dages, jotting down the item on a shopping list,
which the jury didnt see because Judge Craft
questioned its authenticity. One former friend
testied, on cross-examination, that Noura asked
for a bandage at a party on Saturday night. Noura
also had an acrylic-tipped manicure, visible in
photos taken at the party. The police said Jack-
son had fought back against her attacker, but
Nouras manicure was in perfect condition the
next morning, according to pictures taken at the
police station. And if Noura cut her hand killing
her mother, wouldnt blood from her cut have
been found in the spattered bedroom?
Though Noura didnt want to shame her moth-
er, she also wondered whether her mothers vola-
tile relationships with men were connected to her
killing. Jackson married for a second time when
Noura was in elementary school. The relationship
turned abusive and violent by the time it ended in
The New York Times Magazine 45
 N OUR A JAC KS ON AN D H ER M OT H ER , J EN N I F ER , I N T H E EAR LY 20 0 0 S .
2001, according to Nouras half uncle, who testied
that Jacksons ex-husband even brought a gun to
the divorce negotiations. In the months before her
death, Jackson was going out to bars and pick-
ing up strangers. Did one of those encounters go
wrong? The jury had no inkling of that possibility.
Then there was the unsolved murder of Nou-
ras father, which also went unexplored at trial.
At the time of his death in January 2004, Hassan-
ieh was running a limousine service that ferried
clients to and from a strip club next to his con-
venience store. When he was killed in the store,
surveillance video showed the assailant ransack-
ing the place, as if he was looking for something.
Rumors swirled that Hassanieh was renting out
limos to a prostitution ring and had compromis-
ing videotapes of clients who had ridden in his
cars. Jennifer Jackson had collected Hassaniehs
belongings from the store for Noura. Their home
was also ransacked the night of Jacksons murder,
according to the police.
Once her conviction was overturned, Noura
was still charged with murder. She was moved
from the prison she had been living in for nearly
a decade to a jail close to the courthouse. She
had a right to a hearing, where Judge Craft would
decide whether to set a bond she could pay in
order to be released until the new trial. She start-
ed letting herself imagine getting out. Giving
46 8.6.17
administrative reasons, Craft refused to hold the
hearing. Months unspooled while Noura waited
in jail, unable to talk to her friends in prison or
even receive their letters. Her lawyers argued that
Craft should remove Weirich and her oce from
the case and appoint a new prosecutor. As the
reality of standing trial for a second time sank in,
Noura started to ll with dread. The rst time I
didnt know what to expect, she says. But now I
did know. So much of the trial was about my own
emotions being examined. The idea of putting
myself back out there again started to seem awful.
In January 2015, after a ve-month delay, Wei-
rich agreed to hand Nouras case to a neighboring
district attorneys oce. But Judge Craft still did
not grant Noura a bond hearing. That May, the
new prosecutor oered her a deal: a reduced sen-
tence if she pleaded guilty to manslaughter. Her
lawyers checked with the Tennessee Department
of Corrections, which they say told them that
she had enough credits for good behavior and
for working in prison to be released the same
day. A spokeswoman for the department said its
sta members do not recall those conversations
as being erroneous or misleading in any way.
Noura knew that her friends in prison would
feel as though a guilty plea was an act of betrayal.
She felt that way herself. But she was also deep-
ly torn. Her friends outside prison urged her to
seize the chance to get out. Ansley Larsson, a
friend of her mothers, invited Noura to live in
her home after she was released.
Nouras mother and father were lost to her,
and more than anything, she wanted to rebuild
a family. Ive never known always what I wanted
to be, or who I wanted to be with, but the one
thing that has remained constant in my life is
that I wanted to be a mother, Noura told me. If
she went to trial for a second time and lost, her
years of fertility would tick away in prison. I
just wanted out so bad, Noura said. I thought,
People will have to forgive me.
On May 20, 2015, wearing her prison uniform,
an orange top and navy pants, Noura was taken
to a courtroom. A baili she met when she was
arrested at 18 took o her handcus so she could
sign an Alford plea that her lawyers had negoti-
ated, which allows a defendant to acknowledge
that the state has enough evidence to convict
her while she maintains her innocence. Noura
remembers feeling detached from herself, as if
she were performing the part of a person about
to be released from prison.
But a few days after signing her plea agree-
ment, Noura learned, in fact, that she didnt have
enough credits for release; she had more than a
year left to serve. Her regret was scorching and
unrelenting. She had to go back to prison, to face
Photograph from Noura Jackson
friends she knew she had disappointed. She had
traded vindication for her freedom, and now she
had neither. I dont even know if I cried, she says.
I remember feeling sick and embarrassed and
ashamed. She kept thinking that now, for what
felt like nothing, it was her fault that her mothers
murder le was closed. On paper, Im the killer,
she says. Even though I maintain my innocence,
thats what the cops look at. So, somebodys just
getting away, and I helped make that happen.
In 2010, the National District Attorneys Associa-
tion persuaded the American Bar Association to
pass a resolution calling on courts to stop using
the term prosecutorial misconduct for Brady
violations and other infractions that the attorneys
argued were mere errors. It was part of a con-
tinuing eort by prosecutors to ght back against
critics. The language of misconduct feeds a nar-
rative that prosecutors are corrupt, which is poi-
sonous, says Joshua Marquis, a longtime district
attorney in Oregon who pushed for the resolution
as a member of the N.D.A.A.s executive commit-
tee. Police say theres a war on cops. Many of
us career prosecutors feel theres something of
a war on prosecutors.
Recently, however, a number of district attor-
neys have acknowledged that there are problems
in the system, campaigning on a promise to pro-
tect peoples rights. My job is about doing justice,
and that doesnt just mean winning convictions,
says Eric Gonzalez, the acting district attorney in
Brooklyn, who is running for election in the fall.
In cities like Chicago, Orlando, Jacksonville
and Corpus Christi, newly elected district attor-
neys are pushing for accountability in their own
oces. The results of withholding evidence have
been so tragic and unfair, says Kim Ogg, who
was elected district attorney last year for Harris
County in Texas. Mark Dupree, also elected in
November, as the district attorney for Kansas
City, Kan., and its surrounding county, spent four
years as a defense lawyer. Its very unjust to put
defendants in a position where their lawyer cant
protect them because they dont know what the
state has, he says. Omitted evidence is a major
reason for wrongful conviction and for people
taking pleas they shouldnt have taken.
Some reform-minded prosecutors have adopt-
ed an ocewide policy called open le, which
goes far beyond Brady. Instead of deciding which
evidence is favorable and material to guilt or
innocence, prosecutors are required to hand over
nearly everything in their les so that defense
lawyers can see for themselves. The exception
is sensitive information, like a victims medical
record, or names and other identiers that put a
witness at risk. In six states, open-le practices
are the law for all prosecutors. Fifteen states and
the federal courts require prosecutors to reveal
little. The rest lie somewhere in between.
To be meaningful, broad disclosure must take
place long before trial, because plea bargains
account for about 95 percent of all convictions.
I want the defense to have everything I have, a supermarket manager from the Austin suburbs
says John Chisholm, the district attorney in Mil-
waukee, where open le was the established rule
when he began working as a prosecutor in the
1990s. He sees benets in departing from the tra- they had arrested the wrong man, and in 2011,
ditional adversarial model. A lot of times, you
show them what youve got, and it tells them they
dont have a chance, he says. Or on the ip side, ton Act, and also prosecuted Ken Anderson, who
they can call you and say: Ive found something
out you might not know. Would it change your
mind? And then we can talk.
Open-le laws, on their own, dont ensure that
criminal justice will be fair. Ben Grunwald, a law
professor at Duke who has studied the impact
of these laws, calls their promise fragile. The the single most important development in her
police can still home in on one suspect while
ignoring other evidence, Grunwald points out
in an article published this year in The Connecti-
ONLY A TINY NUMBER OF
PROSECUTORS HAVE BEEN
DISBARRED OR JAILED FOR
WITHHOLDING EVIDENCE.
cut Law Review, and overloaded defense lawyers
may not take advantage of the leads the state
makes available.
Yet the old arguments about the virtue of trial
by ambush, and the insurmountable risks of dis-
closure, have largely faded away. Ninety-one per-
cent of prosecutors and 70 percent of defense
lawyers reported that North Carolinas open-le
law worked well, in a study by Jenia Turner, a law Joness cases were disappointing but typical. All
professor at Southern Methodist University Ded-
ham, and Allison Redlich, a professor at George
Mason University, that was published last year in
The Washington & Lee Law Review. Prosecutors
can have blind spots, says Benjamin David, a
district attorney in North Carolina. We get so
convinced that the defendant is guilty. We really
cant be the architects of deciding whats helpful
to the defense and whats not. Now they decide.
In the end, thats liberating.
The system has changed perhaps most drasti-
cally in Texas, a state with more than 300 wrongful
convictions over the last three decades. The
impetus came from the case of Michael Morton,
who spent 24 years in prison for the murder of his
wife. During his appeal, his lawyers discovered
that the police collected evidence that suggested
Morton was exonerated. Two years later, the state
enacted an open-le law, called the Michael Mor-
withheld the evidence in Mortons case when
he was a district attorney. Anderson, who had
since become a judge, pleaded no contest and
left the bench. He also lost his law license and
was sentenced to 10 days in jail. Ogg, the district
attorney in Harris County, calls the Morton case
30 years of criminal practice. Gary Udashen, a
defense lawyer and president of the state Inno-
cence Project, concurs. Now every prosecutor in
the state is nervous about being caught withhold-
ing exculpatory evidence, he says. It changed
the whole landscape.
In truth, in many cases, the consequences for
withholding evidence are relatively minor. Only a
tiny number of prosecutors have been disbarred
or jailed for withholding evidence. Last year, the
Tennessee Board of Professional Responsibility
recommended that Amy Weirich and Stephen
Jones accept a public censure for failing to dis-
close Andrew Hammacks note in Nouras trial.
The prosecutors said they would stand trial
instead. Jones went rst, in January. At a two-
day hearing, he denied remembering Hammacks
note at critical points in the trial that might have
jogged his memory, including Hammacks tes-
timony and Joness use of that testimony in his
closing argument. But a panel of three Memphis
lawyers, one of whom was a former prosecutor,
called Joness account entirely credible and
found him not guilty. Praising the result, Weirich
announced that the Tennessee board had agreed
to dismiss the charges against her in exchange
for a private reprimand.
To Nina Morrison, a lawyer at the Innocence
Project who helped represent Michael Mor-
ton and now leads an initiative on prosecuto-
rial accountability, the results in Weirichs and
too often, we see bar committees give prosecu-
tors every benet of the doubt when they claim
that their failures to disclose exculpatory evi-
dence were unintentional, she says.
Weirichs oce continues to be investigated
for withholding evidence in other cases, despite
an open-le policy that she formalized in 2015.
Last month, the Tennessee board started a new
investigation into Weirichs conduct at Vern Bras-
wells trial, prompted by the disappearance of
the manila envelope from the prosecutions les.
Defense lawyers and former (Continued on Page 53)
The New York Times Magazine 47
Weight Watchers
(Continued from Page 39)
be removed later once her behav-
ior had been modied. I drank a
smoothie with a superfood ingre-
dient I cant pronounce or remem-
ber while someone told me that my
readers would really be interested
in their something-metrics plan for
hydration and portion control. I nar-
rowed my eyes thoughtfully because
it felt rude to be drinking this guys
smoothie without taking him serious-
ly. Theres no such thing as magic,
Tay, the smoothie man was saying.
I nodded in solemn agreement.
Before he left me, I told Foster
that Obesity Week made me sad.
First, it was the profusion of educat-
ed people in the room studying me
and my people as if we were prob-
lems to solve. But second, it was
because if you have this many hun-
dreds of smart and educated people
trying to gure this out, and nobody
has anything for me but superfood
and behavior modication and an
insertable balloon and the removal
of an organ, it must be that there is
no way to solve fatness.
Foster doesnt see it that way, he
told me. I look around this room,
he said, and I see hope. giving hadnt been much better for
By the time Oprah announced that
she was signing on with Weight
Watchers, I was celebrating my
25th anniversary of my rst diet, at
age 15, which I found in an issue of
Shape magazine. I was 5-foot-3 and
weighed 110 pounds. In the inter-
vening years, I did cleanses and had
colonics and relled the prescrip-
tions on three rounds of those diet
pills that made my teeth sweat and
ate two shakes for lunch and just
protein and just good carbs (carbs
are divided into good and bad, like
witches in Oz) and just liquid and
just fruit until dinnertime and just
food the size of my st and two
glasses of lukewarm lemon water.
I had stood up in a room and said,
Hello, my name is Tay, and I am a
compulsive overeater. I had stuck
my nger down my throat, a shot
in the dark that I hoped would be
more sustainable than it was. I had
South Beached, I had Atkinsed, I
had Slim-Fasted. Put it this way:
The Amazon algorithm recently
recommended to me, based on
48 8.6.17
my previous searches, a book-and-
CD combination, Hypnotic Gas-
tric Band: The New Surgery-Free
Weight-Loss System, which oered
a hypnotic equivalent to bariatric
surgery. Put it this way: When I
arrived at Weight Watchers, despite
the fact that I was there as a journal-
ist, I registered for the diet under the
rationale that this was experiential
journalism. When I gave my name
at the counter, the person regis-
tering me furrowed her brow and
said: Thats strange. There are three
other people named Tay Akner. I
said, No, those are all me. now that pound was back. Shed been
In Brooklyn?
Yes, when I was in high school.
In Los Angeles?
Yes, right before I was married.
I stopped her before she could go
on. Theyre all me.
By then I was all in, as if I ever
hadnt been. When I arrived at the
Union, N.J., meeting at 8 a.m. on a
Saturday, it was a few weeks before
Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving is mar-
keted as a fun, festive holiday of fam-
ily gathering, but everyone at that
meeting knew the truth: Thanksgiv-
ing is an existential threat. Thanks-
giving is a killer.
The year leading up to Thanks-
this group. There had been family
deaths and illness. There had been
foreclosures and unemployments
and high-school reunions, and some-
ones daughter was always baking
sticky buns; someones husband
wanted to know where his steak was;
someones son wanted to know why
the meatloaf tasted dierent; some-
ones co-worker was always leaving
doughnuts and bagels on the com-
munal table at the oce. The people,
mostly women, in the folding chairs
had one rule, though: No matter
what happened during the week,
you showed up. This is my church,
a woman named Donna told me. A
few months before, she buried her
mother on a Friday; on Saturday she
came to the meeting.
Dayna, the group leader, stood at
the head of the room. How could you
not love Dayna? She took such care
with her appearance she wore tall
boots and wrap dresses and makeup,
even on Saturday mornings when
everyone else wore sweatpants at
best (or leggings; leggings weigh
less). She gave them star-shaped
stickers o a large roll when they
lost weight or when they had acted
in their best interests over the week.
She remembered their names, even
the ones who hadnt shown up in
months; she gave them hugs.
Today, Donna had gained weight.
She had been holding steady at six
pounds short of her goal. Since
2009 2009 she had shown up
every week and by now had lost 132
pounds, which is an entire other
Donna. But these last six pounds,
my God, what would it take? Shed
been down last week by a pound, and
going to the gym religiously for two
weeks, but thought maybe the not
going to the gym three weeks ago
had caught up with her. Sometimes
being six pounds away from her goal
was harder than being 321 pounds.
Im so frickin aggravated,
she said. She asked me how I did.
I shrugged and told her I had lost
three pounds. But I just started,
so, . . . I said. I didnt want her to
feel bad. Another woman, Amy,
whispered to me, You never want
to say I only lost, . . . because then
everyone will go, Oh, jeez.
I asked the women there, most
of whom were repeat joiners as
well: Shouldnt we be moving
toward acceptance? Here we all
were smart, accomplished, suc-
cessful women (and one man)
and we couldnt maintain what was
proved to be the most eective diet
you could ever try. If we couldnt
stay on this, could we stay on any-
thing? What if the aw wasnt in us
but in the system?
They furrowed their brows and
shook their heads and gave me
funny looks. What was I talking
about? How could a fat person not
want to be thin? Donnas sisters
were all on diabetes medication,
and she wasnt. Her back had hurt
until about 20 pounds ago, and now
she could crawl on the oor with
her grandson as if it were nothing.
I couldnt counter very hard. Each
time I came to a meeting, I was
seduced by the possibility, by the
clean, Calvinist logic, that if you ate
less you would weigh less, that your
body would feed on itself and its fat
reserves until you became smaller
and smaller and more pleasing to
the world and its standards until
you practically disappeared (we are
a culture that fetishizes something
called Size 0). I looked forward to
these meetings, feeling as if these
people were the only ones who
seemed to truly understand my
predicament. But my optimism and
motivation didnt survive my walk
out the door. By the time I got to
my car, I had no idea what to do.
I knew that if this could be done, I
would have done it, and yet I didnt
know why I couldnt do it. Just eat
less, right? Its so simple!
About two years ago, I decided to
yield to what every statistic I knew
was telling me and stop trying to
lose weight at all. I decided to stop
dieting, but when I did, I realized I
couldnt. I didnt know what or how
to eat. I couldnt fathom planning my
food without thinking rst about its
ability to help or hinder a weight-loss
eort. I went to a nutritional thera-
pist to help gure this out (dieting, I
have found, is its own chronic con-
dition), and I paid her every week so
I could tell her that there still had
to be a way for me to lose weight.
When she reminded me that I was
there because I had realized on my
own that there was no way to achieve
this goal, I reminded this wonder-
ful, patient person that she couldnt
possibly understand my desperation
because she was skinny. I had arthri-
tis in my knees, I said. Morality and
society aside, they hurt. I have a sister
with arthritis in her knees, too, but
shes skinny and her knees dont hurt.
I went to an intuitive-eating
class intuitive eating is where you
learn to feed yourself based only on
internal signals and not external
ones like mealtimes or diet plans.
Meaning its just eating what you
want when youre hungry and stop-
ping when youre full. There were six
of us in there, educated, desperate
fat women, doing mindful-eating
exercises and discussing their pit-
falls and challenges. We were given
food. We would smell the food, put
the food on our lips, think about the
food, taste the food, roll the food
around in our mouths, swallow the
food. Are you still hungry? Are you
sure? The rst week it was a raisin. It
progressed to cheese and crackers,
then to cake, then to Easter candy.
We sat there silently, as if we were
aliens who had just arrived on Earth
and were learning what this thing
called food was and why and how
you would eat it. Each time we did
the eating exercise, I would cry.
What is going on for you? the lead-
er would ask. But it was the same
answer every time: I am 41, I would
say. I am 41 and accomplished and
a beloved wife and a good mother
and a hard worker and a contributor
to society and I am learning how to
eat a goddamned raisin. How did
this all go so wrong for me?
They tried to soothe me. They told
me that hatred of fat was a societal
construct, but I never understood
why that should comfort me. I live
in society. I hurt my ankle playing
tennis, activating an old injury, and
an internist I was seeing for the rst
time, without taking any medical
history or vital signs my blood
pressure is pristine, just so you know
told me he couldnt do anything
for me until I lost weight and gave
me a rusty photocopy about food
exchanges. (Another doctor pre-
scribed three months of physical
therapy, and now my ankle is ne.)
I was in Iceland, for a story assign-
ment, and the man who owned my
hotel took me shing and said, Im
not going to insist you wear a life
jacket, since I think youd oat, if
you know what I mean. I ignored
him, and then afterward, back on
land, after I shed cod like a Viking,
he said, I call that survival of the
fattest. A woman getting into a seat
next to me on a plane said, Looks
like this will be a cozy ride, and a
Manhattan taxi driver told me he
liked to watch my jelly shake, by
which I can only presume he meant a
part of my body. I have been asked if
it was my rst time taking Pilates at a
studio where Im on my fth 10-pack.
I have been told at a yoga class that
I have a really great spirit and its
important that I just keep coming.
(Ive been taking yoga for 12 years.) I
was told by a seamstress that she had
never seen a bride not lose weight
for her wedding until she met me.
A crazy man tried to give me candy
outside the Met, and when I polite-
ly declined he screamed at me that
of course I didnt want it, I was fat
enough, and my sister asked me why
I was so upset, clearly that guy was
crazy, and I said, You dont under-
stand because youre skinny, and
on and on forever. (By the way, I am
writing this despite the myriad deg-
radations that I know will appear in
my inbox and in the comments sec-
tion when it is published. I am some-
one who once wrote a body-image
essay for a womens magazine in
which a comment in the margins
from an editor read, Why doesnt
she stop eating so much?)
Back in Union, Dayna stood at
the front of the room. The conver-
sation had shifted to Thanksgiving
foods, how sons home from college
depend on the stun muns, how
husbands will know if theres no but-
ter in the mashed potatoes. Donna
makes an Easter pie with more kinds
of pork than there are pigs roaming
the Earth. Really, the group mem-
bers were worried that despite their
weight loss, they would forget that
they were really fat people on the
inside. Thanksgiving is a killer.
Its just one day, Dayna said.
And all those around her heaved
heavy sighs.
Please hold for Ms. Winfrey.
When Oprah called me, she was
on the same mountain in Hawaii
where she sprained her ankle two
years ago. After a monthslong
search, Weight Watchers had hired
a new C.E.O., Mindy Grossman, for-
merly of the Home Shopping Net-
work. In her oce, Grossman had
talked to me about personalizing the
companys mobile app and creating
greater moments for connection.
She is tan and very blond, with pink
lipstick; she looks like the second
coming of Jean Nidetch. Weight
Watchers had found its business
leader. She was joining the company
after its fourth consecutive quarter
of revenue growth because it had
nally found its spiritual one.
On the release day of the com-
mercial in which Oprah told the
world she loved bread and was
excited to be able to eat it every day
and still lose weight, the graph line
shot up tall and straight at Weight
Watchers. But a lot of us wondered if
maybe Oprah had nally fallen out of
touch. She said in one commercial,
Inside every overweight woman is
a woman she knows she can be, say-
ing shed been buried in her weight
to the point where she couldnt rec-
ognize herself, and the internet did
not love this sentiment, asking exact-
ly why Oprah thought that women
were worthless if they werent thin.
They asked if (Continued on Page 51)
The New York Times Magazine 49
Puzzles

SPELLING BEE HEX NUTS BAR CODE

By Frank Longo By Patrick Berry By Thinh Van Duc Lai

How many common words of 5 or more letters can
you spell using the letters in the hive? Every answer
must use the center letter at least once. Letters may
be reused in a word. At least one word will use all 7
letters. Proper names and hyphenated words are not
allowed. Score 1 point for each answer, and 3 points
for a word that uses all 7 letters.
Rating: 9 = good; 17 = excellent; 25 = genius
A HEXES
R B
Each nine-letter Row answer reads across its Add horizontal and vertical bars to the grid each
correspondingly lettered row. Each six-letter Hex one unit in length in such a way that no two bars
answer fills its correspondingly numbered hexagon, touch. The numbers at the sides reveal how many bars
starting in one of the six spaces and reading clockwise appear consecutively in their respective rows and
or counterclockwise. As a solving aid, the two shaded columns. Where two or more numbers are given, at
half-hexagons will contain the same three-letter least one row or column must separate the two groups.
sequence (as if the grid is wrapping around vertically).
Ex.
ROWS
A. Vanilla-flavored soft drink (2 wds.) B. Like an
arm held at ones side? C. Figure-8 tracer, perhaps
(2 wds.) D. At a loss
>
1. Syrup-yielding trees 2. Anger 3. Absolutely loved
4. T-bones and rib-eyes 5. Chefs secret 6. Showtime
series set in Miami

O
1
A
L D 2 3
B
F C
4

5 6
D
Our list of words, worth 30 points, appears with last weeks answers.

ACROSTIC
1 C 2 N 3 B 4 V 5 F 6 O 7 W 8 L 9 I 10 A 11 D 12 E 13 T 14 Y 15 U 16 M 17 J 18 K 19 G 20 W 21 F 22 Q 23 O

24 B 25 H 26 Z 27 D 28 C 29 V 30 A 31 L 32 Y 33 R 34 J 35 I 36 M 37 P 38 X 39 G 40 N 41 O 42 S 43 E 44 Z 45 C

By Emily Cox & Henry Rathvon 46 F 47 W 48 H 49 Q 50 U 51 Y 52 O 53 G 54 R 55 P 56 S 57 E 58 I 59 Z 60 B 61 J 62 T 63 K 64 N 65 C 66 Y 67 F 68 R

Guess the words defined below and 69 A 70 W 71 V 72 U 73 Q 74 L 75 H 76 K 77 B 78 M 79 X 80 T 81 D 82 E 83 S 84 R 85 A 86 Z 87 Y 88 V 89 N

write them over their numbered
dashes. Then transfer each letter to 90 U 91 F 92 T 93 H 94 W 95 L 96 G 97 C 98 E 99 M 100 Z 101 O 102 Y 103 V 104 S 105 D 106 B 107 N 108 R 109 U 110 J 111 H 112 X 113 F
the correspondingly numbered square
in the pattern. Black squares indicate 114 K 115 M 116 E 117 L 118 W 119 P 120 N 121 T 122 A 123 R 124 V 125 U 126 O 127 G 128 Z 129 H 130 X 131 W 132 S 133 Q 134 I 135 A

word endings. The filled pattern will

136 F 137 D 138 E 139 T 140 K 141 P 142 H 143 Y 144 L 145 X 146 M 147 O 148 J 149 I 150 Q 151 E 152 V 153 S 154 U 155 D 156 W
contain a quotation reading from left
to right. The first letters of the guessed
157 B 158 L 159 X 160 C 161 G 162 F 163 K 164 J 165 N 166 M 167 T 168 H 169 L 170 Z 171 Q 172 V 173 R 174 G 175 X 176 C 177 I 178 P 179 W
words will form an acrostic giving the
authors name and the title of the work.

A. Weirdly absurd, off-the-wall H. Guilty of a deadly sin N. Amount by which a team is behind T. Entry point
____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ in the score ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____
85 122 30 69 10 135 48 111 142 25 93 168 129 75 ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ 167 13 62 139 92 121 80
B. Stunned with dismay I. Your ____ will help create the fact 40 107 120 165 64 2 89 U. Put an end to by satisfying
____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ (William James) O. Spin imparted by sporting types ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____
157 3 106 60 24 77 ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ 72 15 109 125 50 154 90
C. Like tousled locks 134 9 149 58 177 35
____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____
41 126 52 6 23 147 101 V. Do a substitutes job (hyph.)
____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ J. Fresh start for a film franchise
65 1 176 160 45 97 28 P. Sign for April Fools Day ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____
____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ 124 29 103 172 71 4 152 88
D. One whose life is barely noticed? 61 110 148 17 34 164 ____ ____ ____ ____ ____
W. Under taker?
K. Elvis Costello song with the line 55 178 37 119 141
____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____
27 155 81 137 11 105 My aim is true Q. First European known to have
____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____
118 7 156 47 20 131 94 179 70
E. Make less sophisticated (2 wds.) ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ crossed the Mississippi River (2 wds.)
163 76 63 114 140 18
X. Exaggerate in performance
____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____
138 98 12 43 57 82 151 116 L. Given more importance than is 133 171 22 49 73 150
____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____
145 112 79 38 130 175 159
F. Make ones get-up-and-go get up warranted R. Matter beyond our grasp
and go? Y. Invalidate
____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____
____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____
____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ 169 8 158 95 74 117 31 144
108 33 84 68 123 173 54
46 21 162 91 136 67 5 113 M. What Cordelia offers King Lear in 51 87 66 32 102 143 14
G. Palindromic pit sight (2 wds.) Act I, Scene I S. Military standard Z. Render secret from unfriendly eyes
____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____
161 174 19 96 127 39 53 166 16 36 78 115 99 146 132 153 42 83 104 56 26 59 100 170 44 86 128

50
Weight Watchers wanted to diet or be thinner. You had to want t-
(Continued from Page 49) ness and strength and just general health. But
this thinking was a prison. So was the one where
she was disempowering women. They said her you just accept yourself and move on. This whole
investment in Weight Watchers was bad news P.C. about accepting yourself as you are you
for women everywhere. One blogger wrote should, 100 percent, she said. But it was that think-
that she was disappointed that she is choosing ing that made her say yes to Weight Watchers. Its
to participate in and endorse a company whose a mechanism to keep myself on track that brings
sole purpose is to tell women that they are not a level of consciousness and awareness to my eat-
enough. The journalist Melissa Harris-Perry gave ing. It actually is, for me, mindful eating, because
a ve-minute Letter of the Week on MSNBC say- the points are so ingrained now. Meaning, Oprah were still trying to tell one another what to want
ing: But, O! You are already precisely the woman wasnt interested in ceding to a movement. She
so many are striving to be, and there is not one was wondering how to nally make this work.
thing that you have done that would have been In the particular moment in time that I got the
more extraordinary if youd done it with a 25-inch call, she told me, I was desperate: Whats going to
waist. Oprahs $43 million investment was now work? Ive tried all of the green juices and protein
worth $110 million. Maybe thats what this was all shakes, and lets do a cleanse, and all that stu.
about in the rst place. That doesnt work. It doesnt last. What is going to
Oprah was used to criticism. Back in 1985, be consistent, keep me conscious and mindful?
Joan Rivers brought Oprah on The Tonight But this thing about acceptance? Why couldnt
Show, and without so much as a warning in accepting herself mean not accepting her weight?
the pre-interview, told her she shouldnt have Why wasnt it an act of love to use any available
let her weight gain happen to her. Youre a means to avoid her genetic predisposition to dia- On Saturday, March 18, Donna, of the meeting
pretty girl, and youre single, Rivers said. Oprah betes? Sure, she could have abandoned her eorts.
explained that she had done everything so far She could have gone hard on acceptance. A mil-
everything! By 1985! She had done the banana- lion people would have bought Oprahs Guide
hot-dog-egg diet (in which you just eat a banana to Body Acceptance. But she couldnt get there.
and a hot dog and an egg). She had done the For your heart to pump, pump, pump, pump, it
pickles-and-peanut-butter diet (in which all you needs the least amount of weight possible to do
eat are pickles and peanut butter). that, she said. So all of the people who are say-
In 1988, she pulled a wagon full of fat onto the ing, Oh, I need to accept myself as I am I cant
stage of her show to show o her 67-pound weight accept myself if Im over 200 pounds, because its
loss. In 1991, she went on the cover of People and too much work on my heart. It causes high blood
declared she was never dieting again. In 1996 she pressure for me. It puts me at risk for diabetes,
wrote a book with Bob Greene about having found because I have diabetes in my family.
the solution. In 2002, she wrote a story in her mag- I nodded into the phone because I didnt want
azine, O, called What I Know for Sure About Mak- Oprah to hear me crying. I wanted to quit dieting,
ing Peace With My Body, in which she announced but had come to realize that dieting was all I had. I
that she had made peace with her body. In 2005, was completely perplexed by food food! Stupid
the cover of O, which usually features just one food! Thats what this was about! I dieted because
Oprah, featured two: a thin one with an exposed I wanted to maintain hope that I could one day
midri leaning on the shoulder of another thin one manage my food intake, because my bewilderment
in a fancy dress. In 2009, she published another around the stu was untenable. When I didnt have
two-Oprah cover. This one was the midri-bearing that hope, I was left with too much worry about
one from the 2005 cover, leaning on a larger Oprah pain, about how much my knees hurt now and
in a purple jogging suit. The cover line said, How how much more they would in just a few years. I
did I let this happen again? could be enlightened about my body. I could have
Oprah sounds like Oprah when you talk with acceptance. But nobody would tell that to the peo-
her she sings your name, Tay! and her voice ple who saw me as a target; nobody would tell that
registers in you in a way that is as familiar to to my knees.
your body as your mothers voice. She told me And yet, I told Oprah, in admitting this,
she doesnt care if shes never skinny again. She I couldnt stop feeling as if I were betraying
cares that she feels as if she has control. For her everyone I knew who was out there trying to nd
whole life, she said, her only goal has been to peace with herself. I couldnt stop thinking that
nd a higher level of consciousness, to remain nothing would change in the world until there
more in the moment than she has ever been in was a kind of uprising.
any other moment. She had never felt stress, even Oh, my God, Tay, Oprah said. I have to ing string theory, with their ease around their
during all those years when she was doing three have a talk with you. I used to say this to my pro-
shows a day. She just ate instead. She had bags of ducers all the time. We are never going to win
potato chips, and people would say, Dont you with this show looking back to see what other
get stressed? and shed think, Whats stress? She people are doing on their shows. The only way
had seen the cultural changes for years. She knew you win is to keep looking forward for yourself.
that you were no longer supposed to say that you Whats best for you?
The you threw me. I didnt know if she meant
you as in my body or you as in me, and it
occurred to me that she could mean both, that some
people think of those two things as the same thing. I
treated my body with such contempt, but my body
wasnt dierent from me. There were no two of
me to put on a magazine cover, just the one of me.
Weight isnt neutral. A womans body isnt neu-
tral. A womans body is everyones business but her
own. Even in our attempts to free one another, we
and what to do. It is terrible to tell people to try
to be thinner; it is also terrible to tell them that
wanting to lose weight is hopeless and wrong.
I dont know if diets can work in the short term
or the long term. For the rst time, I began to
think that this was something worth being made
crazy over. Our bodies deserve our thoughts and
our kindness, our acceptance and our striving.
Our bodies are what carry our thoughts and our
kindness and our acceptance and striving.
in Union, made her goal weight. Six weeks later,
having maintained the weight, she became a life-
time member. If she stayed within a few pounds
of her goal, she could keep using the program
free. There were other lifetime members in our
meeting. There were also former lifetime mem-
bers who were starting over.
Eileen, a lifetime member who sat next to
Donna at every meeting, had bought her a plas-
tic tiara. Donna wore leggings this time, not
sweatpants as usual, with her traditional Uggs
and a eece, and someone pointed out that you
could nally see her shape. She passed around
some old pictures; she was unrecognizable in
them, if you could nd her behind all the other
people in the picture.
I dont think Ill ever feel like a thin person,
Donna said. Her hope is that shell continue to at
least look like one.
Dayna, near sobbing, gave her a bunch of star
stickers o her roll. My heart just feels so happy
today, she said.
We all cheered for Donna, and when I left,
I walked around outside. A skinny woman was
eating a cupcake and talking on her phone, tongu-
ing the icing as if she were on ecstasy. Another
skinny woman drank a regular Dr Pepper as if
it were nothing, as if it were just a drink. I con-
tinued walking and stopped in front of a diner
and watched through the window people eat-
ing cheeseburgers and French fries and talking
gigantically. All these people, I looked at them
as if they were speaking Mandarin or discuss-
food and their ease around their bodies and their
ability to live their lives without the doubt and
self-loathing that brings me to my arthritic knees
still. Theres no such thing as magic, Tay. I shook
my head at the impossibility of it all, and sitting
here writing this, I still do.
The New York Times Magazine 51
Puzzles Edited by Will Shortz

ANCHORS AWAY! 1

17
2 3 4 5

18
6

19
7 8

20
9

21
10 11 12 13

22
14 15 16

By Patrick Berry
23 24 25 26

ACROSS 48 Polished 90 P, to Pythagoras

27 28 29 30
1 Cease! on the 49 Fruit mentioned in 91 Revolver, in
seas the Odyssey Roaring Twenties 31 32 33 34
6 What nonsense! 51 Equal slang
9 Walk on the edge? 52 Actor Stephen 94 Use scissors on 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42
13 Luminary 53 Split, e.g. 95 Governess at
43 44 45 46 47 48
17 Clubs with strobes 54 Kids game in Thorneld
19 Hieroglyphic bird which small 96 Berkeley 49 50 51 52 53
21 ____ Os (chocolaty vessels attack each institution, briey
cereal brand) other? 97 In place of 54 55 56 57 58
22 Asian territory in 59 Rio maker 98 It brings people
the game Risk 60 Flood survivor together 59 60 61 62

23 Roll out 61 ____ Gold, chief of 99 No. of interest to

63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70
24 Sailing vessels sta on The Good some recruiters
that Capn Wife 100 Luxury vessel with 71 72 73 74 75
Crunch might 62 Often-quoted a pair of decks,
commandeer? chairman both of which 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83
27 Cuzco builders 63 A large amount need swabbing?
29 Tetris piece 66 Fishing vessel that 106 Malodorous 84 85 86 87 88

30 Testing times can pull only half a mammal

net behind it? 89 90 91 92 93 94
31 Heavily armored 109 A&M athlete
vessels getting 70 Bruce of The 110 Matisse who 95 96 97 98 99
married? Hateful Eight painted La
35 Smelter input 71 Messenger ____ Danse 100 101 102 103 104 105
36 Whiskey distillers 72 Rare craps roll 111 Cargo vessel full
supply 73 Incapacitate, in a of iPads? 106 107 108 109 110

37 The plot way 114 Mown strips

111 112 113 114 115 116
thickens! 74 Growth ring? 117 Game of
38 Candy in 76 Recreational vessel Thrones, e.g. 117 118 119 120
collectible thats never left 118 Blackens

8/6/17
containers the harbor? 119 Staple of Shinto 121 122 123 124
39 Mideast monarchy 84 1997 action lm rituals
43 Numbers on right- set on a plane 120 Second story?
hand pages 85 X amount 121 Rub out 3 Ambitiously 8 Lookout point 46 Actress Ta 80 Not mainstream
45 Resells ruthlessly 86 Isaac Newton, e.g. 122 Not needing a sought 9 You Send Me 47 Beauty 81 Bellyacher
47 Speaker on a cars 87 Brings up cane, maybe singer, 1957
4 Noninvasive 48 Under goer? 82 Quits, informally
dash 89 Bad at ones job 123 Deadheads hits? medical 10 Coee holder 50 Biathletes do it 83 Nonsensical talk
124 Foolish procedures 11 Works on as a 52 Uncreative 88 Prep for a match
Puzzles Online: Todays puzzle and more 5 Flashlight : U.S. :: cobbler might creation
____ : U.K. 12 Libertarian pundit 90 Dilapidated
than 9,000 past puzzles, nytimes.com/crosswords DOWN 53 Forming spiral
6 Consequential Neal dwelling
($39.95 a year). For the daily puzzle commentary: 1 Kick in patterns
nytimes.com/wordplay. 2 Struggle 7 Addis ____ 13 Head honcho 55 Holy Week 91 Manhandles, with
14 It may end on a follower up
high note 56 ____ State 92 Like the Gemini

KENKEN
Fill the grid with digits so as not to repeat a digit in any row or column, and so that the digits within each
15 D.C.s National ____
16 Chicago-based
fraternal order
18 Mezzanine access
heavily outlined box will produce the target number shown, by using addition, subtraction, multiplication
or division, as indicated in the box. A 5x5 grid will use the digits 15. A 7x7 grid will use 17. 20 They hang around
the rain forest
25 Return from a trip
to the Alps?
26 Pharma watchdog
28 Surveillance aid
31 Coat in a cote
32 Fire
33 Longtime retailer
hurt by Amazon
34 Coverage
provider?
40 Femmes title 75 Elephant ____
41 Choice for an
online gamer
42 Star of Kinsey,
2004
44 Is downright
terrible
KenKen is a registered trademark of Nextoy, LLC. 2017 www.KENKEN.com. All rights reserved.
(Alabamas
nickname)
57 Measure of purity
ights
93 Way out
96 Wares at fairs
58 Cheer with an 97 Around the
accent World in 80 Days
63 ____: A Love Story protagonist
(1998 George
101 Nonpermanent
Burns book)
sculpture medium
64 Like soubise sauce
102 Flower with rays
65 Coat of arms
element 103 Vichyssoise
67 Flock female vegetables
68 Vogue or Elle 104 Single
69 Ehrich ____ a.k.a. 105 Dialect of Arabic
Houdini 106 Entry ticket
70 Chops up 107 Iridescent stone
108 Womens Open
(pastry)
org.
77 It may help
112 Go astray
remove a curse
78 Hold an assembly 113 Roulette bet
79 Revival movement 115 Cool, in the 40s
prex 116 Roguish

52
Answers to puzzles of 7.30.17 Prosecutors Over the winter, Noura decided to move to
(Continued from Page 47) Nashville to live with her girlfriend, whom she
BY DESIGN
met in prison. As ex-felons, they had trouble nd-
J O T T I M I D S N A P I H E A R D prosecutors say the oce is still not transparent. ing an apartment at rst. But when they told one
A N A O P I N E H U L A S O P H I A The people who view a trial as a game continue rental agent about their predicament, oering
M A X W O R K T H E N I G H T S H I F T
E D I T S S A U D E O E E L L E
to look for ways to hold things back, one pros- a few months of rent up front, he talked to the
S A T E O N P I N S A N D N E E D L E S ecutor who left the oce recently told me. You landlord and got them into a quiet complex with
I R O N L I O N S B R A V A R can say you have open le, but if the le isnt plenty of greenery and open space.
V E T S E A T S B O A P A R A G O N
complete, it doesnt really matter, another said. Noura now works as a receptionist in an
H I H O S I M C A R D O R E
C R E D O F I T T O B E T I E D E D T In June, a federal monitor, Sandra Simkins, auto-body shop. (The lawsuit her aunts and half
H A R E M A C R E E N D E S E Z who was appointed by the Justice Department uncle brought over her mothers estate has been
E T U D E J E E P H E A T C H O R E in 2012 because of a history of racial disparities resolved.) She has grown close to her girlfriends
W I N E R I C E L S A R O V E R
S O W C U T A N D D R I E D E N E R O and violations of childrens rights in Shelby Coun- large family. One night in April, while they wait-
U N A L A P O R T E P E E R tys juvenile court, reported a troubling practice. ed for a pizza delivery, Noura played with her
P S Y C H E S T E S P I L E S T A R Prosecutors seeking guilty pleas arbitrarily ask to girlfriends 3-year-old grandson. She made him
O A R C S A T I M E R T H R U
S H O O T S F R O M T H E H I P L E S S
transfer underage teenagers to adult court without a cheese-and-mayonnaise sandwich, and then
R E A L R E G A E R O K Y L E S disclosing crucial evidence to the defense, Sim- they took turns dropping marshmallows into a
T A K E U P A C O L L E C T I O N I N E kins found. She emphasized the disproportionate cup of hot chocolate.
A V E R S E H O O K E E R I E N A T
S E N S E D E D G Y S P A D E E L S
impact on black teenagers and the extraordinary It was an evening of intimacy and solace. For
gravity of the consequences, because transfers Noura, there was also an edge of longing. She had
to adult court are rarely undone. Weirich denies just turned 30, and she wanted to start planning
KENKEN Simkinss ndings. Over the objection of com- to have a baby, part of her reason for taking the
munity groups, Shelby County ocials asked the plea. But Nouras endometriosis had worsened
Justice Department last month to end the moni- and gone largely untreated while she was in
toring of the juvenile court. prison. Now her doctor was recommending a
Darryl Brown, a University of Virginia law pro- hysterectomy, which meant she might never give
fessor who has studied prosecutors practices, birth to her own baby, and that made her ques-
sees a slow but steady march toward greater tion once again her decision to forgo a second
disclosure, but also resistance rooted in what he trial and the chance for exoneration. I thought
thinks of as status quo bias. Youre comfortable I could say: I did this plead guilty and
with the familiar, he says, and you cant imag- years down the road, I would look at my child
ine it could work another way. Increasingly, the and be like, You were every bit worth it. But
SPLIT DECISIONS quality of justice a person receives depends on now I might not have that. Adopting a child also
the place in which he or she is accused of a crime. seemed out of reach given her felony record.
S
T I
U S
P E N D M
M A
A
R O
L T
A R SW D F The one person that would understand what I
A O R E A D N N C P I I U
U L I E O C
C U
R
O R
G N T R
A Z
Z
On a warm and bright morning last summer, feel like would be my mom, Noura said, and
H E V I T
S V
M O
G A R I A A O I O C U
R
B B
Y
G U
Z Noura was taken to a room at the perimeter of shes not here.
A N G D E N C WD N R A Y
G
G I
A D E
F L
A T E A P P L
I E
D
F R the prison, where she changed into a sleeveless Nina Morrison, of the Innocence Project,
V E V I A U C E
E
A R
N
A T E R
I
R I
S blue dress, sent by a friend who got out of prison recently agreed to represent Noura in a bid to
T T L E S D I V G E S T
B
U M U R
A A C I R I O
U L
E R S T
O K
E
the previous year, gathered her hair into a top- use DNA advancements over the last decade to
I B E A A V
L
F F
T
A R
R Y D H P Y S Y
M O
R O A R E knot and put on hoop earrings and ballerina ats. determine who killed her mother. Noura jumped
I Y T P I A U R N S I P
TM
D L
P K A O S
W I
N G
U G
N C T L
As Noura walked through the gates, TV cameras at the chance to retest the evidence. Because
E R L A R G
Z P O E I N
L E
T E D E T E
N T
E caught her hugging Ansley Larsson, her moth- that would open the door back up for the police
ers friend, who was there to pick her up. In the to go look for somebody, she told me.
car, Larsson asked if she wanted to drive by her We sat on the back patio of her house early the
DOUBLE OR NOTHING BAR CODE former house. Everyone in prison talks about next morning. To distract herself, Noura tapped
going home, Noura told me, but it was dierent a kitchen lighter against the arm of her chair: She
DE TA CH for me. I didnt have my old home to go back to. was trying to quit smoking, an old habit. I told her
AL EX I decided I needed to see it. Looking out the about a conversation I had with a Memphis judge,
MA IT AI car window, her eyes lled with tears. The house Lee Coee, about her case. In 2005, Coee was a
ER VI NG had been repainted, the shutters were stained an prosecutor in Shelby County, working alongside
LE AN unfamiliar dark brown and a boat was parked in Weirich. He read the case le on Jennifer Jack-
SA GS the driveway. I knew Id have to make my way. sons murder at the time Weirich asked the grand
As planned, Noura moved in with Larsson, jury to indict Noura.
who lived in another neighborhood. But it was Noura asked to hear the tape of the interview.
Answers to puzzle on Page 50 hard to be back in Memphis. Noura could tell that Based on what was in that le, I would not have
sometimes people recognized her name and face presented that case for an indictment, Coee said.
SPELLING BEE and recoiled. Memories of her mother sometimes The evidence was too thin. I would not have pros-
Floorboard (3 points). Also: Aboard, abroad, afford, ooded her. I never really got to grieve for my ecuted that case based on the standards Ive been
aloof, arbor, ardor, baobab, blood, board, boffo, mom, she told me one night last fall. I was in taught. After hearing his words, Noura looked up,
booboo, broad, brood, dollar, dolor, doodad, droll, drool,
falloff, flood, floor, flora, floral, labor, loofa, oddball,
shock, and then I was locked up, and grieving forgetting she was holding the lighter, which fell
offload. If you found other legitimate dictionary words is something you tuck into your back pocket in from her hands. Its going to take me a long time
in the beehive, feel free to include them in your score. prison, because emotions are a hazard. to wrap my head around that, she said.

The New York Times Magazine 53

Talk

Nicolle Wallace onto something. She had crowds ve

times the size of McCains. We think it
was all about her political skills, but it was
also about her message. She railed against
Thinks White the mainstream media, she attacked all of
us, her own advisers. That her audiences
were so enthusiastic about that was the
House Staffers early signal that the party had changed.
Many people think that, because of
Trumps volatility, were experiencing
Need to potentially unpredecented political
destabilization. How do you think this
administration stacks up to the Bush

Have a Limit White House? Before 9/11, Bush spent

the rst seven or eight months of his
presidency trying to work in a bipartisan
Interview by Ana Marie Cox
manner. He passed the education bill with
Ted Kennedys support; he passed the tax
cut with Max Baucuss support. I mean, he
had some relationships on the other side,
Youre a former Republican commu- and then, obviously, the attack brought
nications strategist who worked for everyone together probably for too
George W. Bush, John McCain and brief a time. Trump went on Twitter and
Sarah Palin, and now you have a show attacked a Republican, his sitting attorney
on MSNBC. Whats it like on that side general and the acting director of F.B.I.
of the table? I was always the squishy all before 11 a.m. today. If something
one on the Bush White House sta. No happened in the national security realm,
one I worked for was ever deceived by my hed need them to assist him in protecting
degrees of conservative principles, and the country. Its almost like that part of
that was my value to them: I understood the job hasnt been explained to him. Hes
the other side. I helped most of the peo- just there trying to do what he thinks the
ple I worked for soften their polarizing president part is.
edges. But to say that I would be totally Do you have any advice for people who
unemployable in todays political climate have to work for President Trump?
is probably an understatement. Thats just They have to have their own red line
not what any of them do. and live by it. Maybe its attacking a
What do you think its like working at morning anchor for her plastic surgery.
the White House right now? Theres a I dont know what it is; its way beyond
pretty high level of alarm based on how what I would stay and tolerate. Everyone
easy it is to get people to talk about whats needs to have a limit, then keep their head
actually happening inside the White down and try to do their job until and
House, and you never know the whole unless that limit is reached. Only Donald
story. As chaotic and dysfunctional as it Trumps White House could make the
looks from the outside, from my expe- Bush years look like the golden age of
rience with Sarah Palin, I know whats presidential history.
known and discussed publicly is usually What do you think youd be covering
just the tip of the iceberg. if you didnt cover Trump? One of the
Do you think we still know only the tip symptoms of the time of Trump is that
of the iceberg with Palin? Well, what I theres no other news. I sometimes think:
Interview has been condensed and edited.

think was unknown was the degree of her If there were another Arab Spring, how
rejection of us asking her to do anything would we cover it? I dont know. Its an
Age: Wallace is the host Her Top 5
that wasnt her own idea. We were dealing 45 of Deadline: White Political Movies: impossible question to test because you
with someone who was maybe ahead of House on MSNBC 1. Dave (1993) cant remove Trump and see what we
Occupation:
her time. Her irreverence and disdain for and a contributor 2. The American would do without him, but its an inter-
Political analyst and
to the Today President (1995)
the establishment of her own party and television anchor
show. She was a 3. Bulworth (1998)
esting question.
her embrace of the isms nativism, Hometown: White House 4. Primary Colors Youve talked about how your parents
isolationism, you know she blew the Orinda, Calif. communications (1998) voted for Trump. Have they changed
walls out on the political norms before director under 5. All the Presidents their views of him? We dont talk about
George W. Bush. Men (1976)
Donald Trump did. She was obviously politics anymore.

54 8.6.17 Photograph by Celeste Sloman

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BLACK YELLOW MAGENTA CYAN NYTM_17_0806_SWE2.pgs 07.26.2017 16:34