At 7 p.m. on May 7, 1824, Ludwig van Beethoven, then 53, strode onto the stage of the magnificent Theater am Kärntnertor in Vienna to help conduct the world premiere of his Ninth Symphony, the last he would ever complete. That performance, whose 200th anniversary is on Tuesday, was unforgettable in many ways. But it…
Before the Met Gala on Monday, the most watched fashion event of the year was likely the “Dune: Part Two” press tour. Attending each premiere were several fashionable actresses the internet has taken to calling “mother”: Zendaya, Florence Pugh, Anya Taylor-Joy, Rebecca Ferguson. Only one of them was an actual mother. Ms. Ferguson reminded me…
When Kris Hallenga was diagnosed with Stage 4 breast cancer — the most advanced form — at 23, questions swirled through her head: “Why didn’t anyone tell me to check my boobs? Why didn’t I know I could get breast cancer at 23?” If she hadn’t known that she could have breast cancer so young,…
Follow live updates on the 2024 Met Gala. On Sunday evening, the rapper Doja Cat swept into an upscale French restaurant in SoHo carrying a disposable Starbucks cup. She stashed it at the bar, and then made her way to the rear of the room to kiss the actress Pamela Anderson on one makeup-free cheek….
Scientists are proposing a new way of understanding the genetics of Alzheimer’s that would mean that up to a fifth of patients would be considered to have a genetically caused form of the disease. Currently, the vast majority of Alzheimer’s cases do not have a clearly identified cause. The new designation, proposed in a study…
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…
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…
On Wednesday, Kendric Cromer, a 12-year-old boy from a suburb of Washington, became the first person in the world with sickle cell disease to begin a commercially approved gene therapy that may cure the condition. For the estimated 20,000 people with sickle cell in the United States who qualify for the treatment, the start of…
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…
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….
