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A chance meeting with Richard Pryor — and its lasting impact

Every career begins with a defining moment, an instant when preparation meets courage and the future quietly changes course. For me, that moment came in 1983, when, at just 21 years old, I brought Richard Pryor to speak before more than 1,500 employees at the U.S. Department of Agriculture in Washington, D.C. I was young, untested and responsible for selecting a keynote speaker. Instead of choosing the safe or expected option, I took a risk and set my sights on Pryor — not the comedian the world knew but the thinker, the truth-teller behind the myth. It was his first-ever straight ...

Dear Annie: Look for love in the little things

Dear Readers, Valentine’s Day has a funny way of making people take attendance of who remembered the holiday, who didn’t, who has plans, who pretends they do, who smiles at the grocery store display of roses and who speeds past it like it might ask a personal question. If today feels joyful for you, wonderful. Enjoy every bit of it. If today feels tender, lonely, complicated or just plain annoying, you are not alone. Love is not a neat holiday. It is a living thing, and it shows up in far more places than a fancy dinner reservation. We have all been taught in one way or another ...

Ironstone ceramics became a durable alternative to porcelain

If you’re familiar with 19th-century ceramics, you probably know about ironstone. It was first made by English potter Miles Mason, who sold Chinese export porcelain and decided to make his own replacements for broken dishes. To make these replacements, he created a ceramic using slag from processing iron, which his son patented as ironstone in 1813. Heavy, durable and hard to chip, it was clearly different from porcelain, but quickly became a favorite for tableware. Many other potteries began making ironstone, especially in the Staffordshire district of England. Albion Pottery, also ...

AI companion apps exacerbate teen mental health concerns

Troubling stories about dangerous encounters with chatbots continue to surface in the news, with two recent reports from NPR that focused on teen suicide and mental health worsening due to people seeking “sentient” relationships with artificial intelligence. The teen suicide story ran last September, featuring grieving parents, Matthew and Maria Raine, and Megan Garcia, who shared heartbreaking ordeals of their sons taking their lives after engaging with chatbots. The Raines’ son, Adam, committed suicide in April of last year, and they had no idea of his involvement with ChatGPT. ...

What patients and families should know about kidney transplants

When we think about organ transplants, kidney transplants are often the most common and the most successful. General surgeons frequently encounter questions from patients and families who want to better understand what a kidney transplant involves, who it is for and what life looks like ...

Voter ID shouldn’t be this controversial

President Trump says that “Republicans” should “nationalize the election” or at least take over voting in up to 15 places where he says voting is corrupt. His evidence of fraudulent voting is that he lost in such places in 2020, and since it is axiomatic that he won everywhere, the reported results are proof of the fraud. This is all delusional, narcissistic nonsense. But at this point, if you still claim it’s an open question whether Trump actually lost the 2020 election (he did), you’re immune to the facts or just lying — either about not having made up your mind or ...