The Atlantic Blogs

Psychics Who Hear Voices Could Be On to Something

Joseph Frankel

The ways some “healthy voice hearers” cope might be able to help people with psychotic disorders.

Jessica Dorner was lying in bed at her cousin’s house when her grandmother, a “pushy lady” in an apron who had been dead for several years, appeared in front of her. “I know you can see me,” Jessica heard her say, “and you need to do something about it.”

It was a lonely time in Jessica’s life. She was living away from home for the first time, and she thinks her grandmother was drawn by some sense of that. She eventually told her parents what happened, and according to her they were concerned, but not overly panicked. “My parents are probably the least judgmental people I know,” she said.

As Jessica tells it, over the next two years, spirits visited her every now and again. Her brother-in-law’s deceased father began forming before her, ghostlike, just as her grandmother did. And while the experiences were intense and at times made her feel “crazy,” she said, they were infrequent, and insists that they were never a real source of suffering.

Tourists explore the courtyard of Suleymaniye Mosque in Istanbul. — Tim Graham / Getty

A Newly Discovered Manuscript and Its Lesson on Islam

Joel Blecher

Early drafts of a canonical work show how Muslims' understanding of their faith has evolved.

“What does the Koran say about…?” is perhaps the most common question my students ask me in the Islamic history courses I teach. It’s an understandable question, but they will be disappointed with the answer if they hope it will explain how Islam has been interpreted and practiced for all of history.

In the post-enlightenment West, a society historically influenced by Protestantism’s “back-to-the-Bible” appeal, many of my students have grown up imbibing a public discourse obsessed with a religious or civil tradition’s origins and founding documents—the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament, the Constitution—and by extension often assume that the only book of consequence for Muslims is the Koran. After 9/11, sales of the Koran skyrocketed. More recently, in the wake of the Orlando nightclub shooting, news outlets from Haaretz to Newsweek ran pieces asking “What Does the Koran Say about Being Gay?” And over the past month, as ISIS called for increased attacks during Ramadan, the Koran was again scrutinized as the source of the violence.

The Bachelorette Reveals Itself for What It Is

Megan Garber

The show, this season, with exploitative plotlines that treat racism as entertainment, is becoming harder and harder to defend.

This post reveals minor plot points for The Bachelorette Season 13 Episode 6.

A few years ago, in response to a combination of scientific studies, legal cases, and human tragedies, commentators began to question the morality of watching American football. We’d always known the sport was an especially dangerous one to play—that, indeed, is part of its brute appeal—but now there was undeniable evidence of that brutality, rendered in statistic and awful anecdote. To watch the violence play out, it became increasingly clear, was to be in some way complicit in it—to cast a silent vote, not with one’s pocketbook but with one’s attention, in favor of all that violence continuing.

The Bachelorette, of course, depicts a sport only in the loosest sense; the show is very rarely violent in the literal sense of the term. And yet it has recently adopted the same rough outlines that football acquired a few years before: The show, always questionable, has become in its latest season more troubling than it has even been before. Recent episodes of the long-running ABC show have laid bare just how craven and exploitative its producers have become. Problems that have long been simmering in its world have come to a boil. Watching it has become harder and harder to enjoy—and, like that other blood sport, harder and harder to defend.

All photos courtesy of Alex Tizon and his family

My Family’s Slave

Alex Tizon

She lived with us for 56 years. She raised me and my siblings without pay. I was 11, a typical American kid, before I realized who she was.

The ashes filled a black plastic box about the size of a toaster. It weighed three and a half pounds. I put it in a canvas tote bag and packed it in my suitcase this past July for the transpacific flight to Manila. From there I would travel by car to a rural village. When I arrived, I would hand over all that was left of the woman who had spent 56 years as a slave in my family’s household.

That Time the TSA Found a Scientist’s 3-D-Printed Mouse Penis

Ed Yong

And other tales from the intersection of science and airport security

When Martin Cohn passed through airport security at Ronald Reagan Airport, he figured that he’d probably get some questions about the 3-D-printed model of a mouse penis in his bag.

The model is 15 centimeters long, made of clear translucent plastic, and indisputably phallic— like the dismembered member of some monstrous, transparent, 11-foot rodent. One of Cohn’s colleagues had already been questioned about it when she carried it on an outward flight from Gainesville to Washington D.C. She put it through the security scanner, and the bag got pulled. A TSA official looked inside, winked at her, and let her go. She was amused but embarrassed, so Cohn offered to take the model home on the return flight.

The Wall Street Journal's Editor: Beware Calling Donald Trump a Liar

Conor Friedersdorf

Gerard Baker thinks the president lies all the time, but insists that applying that appellation puts too high a burden on news organizations.

Last January, Gerard Baker, editor-in-chief of the Wall Street Journal, urged caution in using the word “lie” to label untruths spoken by Donald Trump. Last week, The New York Times published an opinion article titled “Trump’s Lies” that purported to be a definitive list of the president’s falsehoods, invoking the word “lie” repeatedly.

What did Gerard Baker think about that?

Katie Couric asked him at the Aspen Ideas Festival, co-hosted by The Aspen Institute and The Atlantic, eliciting an extended defense of his reticence in using the l-word that began with an admission that he personally thinks that Trump lies a lot.

“What I think is not really important,” he began. “I think the president probably lies a lot, right? I think the president makes things up at times. I think I've got a fair amount of reasons for believing that.”

Dorms for Grownups: A Solution for Lonely Millennials?

Alana Semuels

In a new model of living, residents will have their own “microunits” built around a shared living space for cooking, eating and hanging out.

SYRACUSE—This office looks like a pretty typical co-working space, what with the guy with a ponytail coding in one corner, the pile of bikes clustered in another, and the minimalist desks spread across a light-filled room. Troy Evans opened this space, CoWorks, in a downtown building here in February.

Coworking is probably a familiar concept at this point, but Evans wants to take his idea a step further. On Friday, on the top two floors of the building, he’s starting construction on a space he envisions as a dorm for Millennials, though he cringes at the word “dorm.” Commonspace, as he’s calling it, will feature 21 microunits, which each pack a tiny kitchen, bathroom, bedroom, and living space into 300-square-feet. The microunits surround shared common areas including a chef’s kitchen, a game room, and a TV room. Worried about the complicated social dynamics of so many Millennials in one living unit? Fear not, Evans and partner John Talarico are hiring a “social engineer” who will facilitate group events and maintain harmony among roommates.

IM_photo / chromatos / Joshua Rainey Photography / Luis Carlos Jimenez del rio / Shutterstock / hmbldt / Zak Bickel / The Atlantic

The Bespoke High Is the Future of Marijuana

Mary H.K. Choi

A California company makes weed vaporizers to suit every mood—here’s what happened when I tried them.

I’d been traveling for work—to Europe then to Asia then to Europe again while pinging back and forth from L.A. to New York. For months my carryon contained the sneakers that I didn’t use in the hotel gyms I never visited. I was exhausted to the brink of tears since previous to this spate of travel. I had a schedule so rote I could give myself jetlag by sliding lunch up half an hour.

I’d gone straight to the weed store from LAX—ragged—trundling my suitcase past the spangly Turkish restaurant with the outline of a hookah on the sign, ducking into the alleyway with the Thai massage parlor on one end and my dispensary on the other. On the inside the shop looks like a cross between an Apple flagship and a Danish lighting boutique except there’s a security guard with a gun and a brown-haired girl who checks your ID and card and buzzes you through.

Power Causes Brain Damage

Jerry Useem

How leaders lose mental capacities—most notably for reading other people—that were essential to their rise

If power were a prescription drug, it would come with a long list of known side effects. It can intoxicate. It can corrupt. It can even make Henry Kissinger believe that he’s sexually magnetic. But can it cause brain damage?

When various lawmakers lit into John Stumpf at a congressional hearing last fall, each seemed to find a fresh way to flay the now-former CEO of Wells Fargo for failing to stop some 5,000 employees from setting up phony accounts for customers. But it was Stumpf’s performance that stood out. Here was a man who had risen to the top of the world’s most valuable bank, yet he seemed utterly unable to read a room. Although he apologized, he didn’t appear chastened or remorseful. Nor did he seem defiant or smug or even insincere. He looked disoriented, like a jet-lagged space traveler just arrived from Planet Stumpf, where deference to him is a natural law and 5,000 a commendably small number. Even the most direct barbs—“You have got to be kidding me” (Sean Duffy of Wisconsin); “I can’t believe some of what I’m hearing here” (Gregory Meeks of New York)—failed to shake him awake.

Pell leaves the Quirinale hotel in Rome on March 3, 2016. — Alessandro Bianchi / Reuters

Vatican Cardinal Charged With Sexual Assault

Aria Bendix

Pell is the highest-ranking Vatican official to ever incur the charges in the church’s longstanding history of abuse.

Australia’s most senior member of the Catholic Church, Cardinal George Pell, was charged with multiple counts of sexual assault on Wednesday, making him the highest-ranking Vatican official to ever incur the charges. Pell is also the chief financial adviser to Pope Francis, whose “zero tolerance” policy toward sexual assault has been accused of lacking follow-through and failing to curb the church’s longstanding legacy of abuse.

On Wednesday, Australia’s Victoria Police said multiple complainants had come forward against Pell, but did not provide any further detail regarding the nature of the alleged assaults. The charges are considered “historic sexual offenses,” indicating that they occurred many years ago. According to the Associated Press, two men have previously accused Pell, then a senior priest in Melbourne, of touching them inappropriately at a swimming pool in the late 1970s. Pell, whose religious career spans more than 50 years, has consistently denied the allegations.