The Anti-Met Gala Raises Funds for Medical Debt

Twenty-four hours before the Met Gala, a starkly different sort of gala occurred in Brooklyn at the Bell House, a concert venue that sits on a lonesome industrial street near the Gowanus Canal. It was the second annual Debt Gala, which bills itself as a D.I.Y. alternative to the lavish spring benefit in Manhattan, which…

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Read Your Way Through Montreal

For a little mystery, try Louise Penny’s popular “Three Pines” detective series. Though set in a fictional town in Quebec, her novels often feature Montreal (“Glass Houses” in particular.) Kathy Reichs unearths the bones of the city in her thriller “Déjà Dead.” And Montreal’s rich queer culture is captured in the coming-of-age novels “The Geography…

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Is My Untucked Shirt Too Long?

Is there a limit on the length of an untucked shirt? I have many very good older shirts that were not made to wear untucked. Is it OK to wear them hanging out anyway? — Robert, Mandeville, La. Ah, the joy of an untucked shirt! Who wants the uncomfortable constriction of all that material trapped…

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How Bad Are Ultraprocessed Foods, Really?

In the mid-1990s, Carlos Monteiro, a nutritional epidemiologist in Brazil, noticed something alarming: Obesity rates among children in his country were rising rapidly. To understand why, he and his colleagues at the University of São Paulo scrutinized data on the food buying patterns of Brazilian households to see if they had changed in recent years….

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Are Schools Too Focused on Mental Health?

In recent years, mental health has become a central subject in childhood and adolescence. Teenagers narrate their psychiatric diagnosis and treatment on TikTok and Instagram. School systems, alarmed by rising levels of distress and self-harm, are introducing preventive coursework in emotional self-regulation and mindfulness. Now, some researchers warn that we are in danger of overdoing…

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Cicadas Are Here. Time to Eat.

Over the next six weeks or so, a trillion cicadas will emerge across the Midwest and Southeast for a brief, raucous, once-in-a-lifetime bender. “What an incredible time,” said Joseph Yoon, a particularly exuberant bug enthusiast who will hit the road and forage for the insects as they tunnel up in a mass emergence of two…

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