Was He Born That Way, or Brainwashed by a Sexist, Patriarchal Society? — Ok. You got me. I’m a hound dog. Yes, my lovely women colleagues. I did ask you to lunch because I find you attractive. And yes. …

Take your pick from an A-list of celebrities — actors, directors, athletes, writers, musicians — dive deep into their backgrounds so you know everything about them and can ask questions no one else has. Pick their brains in provocative interviews that you transcribe, then dump the sentences into an editorial…

Love hits hard Then life takes hold With pit-bull-like persistence Passion’s flame Grows less intense In spite of our insistence Time’s swift blows Reap loss and grief Work’s stress and constant tension Tie frenzied minds In twisted knots That beggar comprehension Wounds repair Then hardship wanes Companionship grows deeper Togetherness…

“This is the chief of police! Who’s this?” asked the gruff voice at the other end of the phone. The little boy said his name into the phone timidly. He’d dragged a chair from under the gray formica dinette table in the kitchen and slid it across the linoleum floor…

Hunkered down against the frigid Northeast cold on this cozy Christmas Day at home, I hear my laptop ping and find a message from Facebook accompanying the photo above. “Martin, we care about you and the memories you share here,” the message says. …

I’d love to be a fly on the wall when African-American comedian Dave Chappelle talks to his close buddy, Jewish-American comedian and activist Jon Stewart, about Chappelle’s provocative SNL monologue last weekend joking about the penalties Kanye West and Kyrie Irving have recently suffered for spreading anti-Semitic venom through their…

Just as I was about to begin enjoying this beautiful autumn Sunday in New York, my in-box slapped me with an outrage I thought I’d left behind in the summer of 2020. The Week in Ideas newsletter I’d received from the Washington Post informed me of a piece its media…

Otto was the quintessential 1950s charismatic juvenile delinquent. A combination of Elvis Presley, James Dean and the coolest member of the Jets in West Side Story, he was like the big bother I never had, and he lived right next door. Otto’s parents, Mr. and Mrs. Klotz, had fled Germany…

When I got a summer job at the factory where my father worked after my junior year of high school, one of his co-workers told me my dad had “nervous nerves.” That was on one of the days when I came in to work, but my father stayed home on…