Essays & Interviews

What Martin Luther King, Jr. Knew But Never Said

The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was known for the soaring oratory he deployed as he led a movement for racial equity and social justice using the power of nonviolent protest. One thing he did not talk about was his mental health. In fact, King struggled with depression but rarely discussed it because of his fear it could be used against him and the movement.

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Voices of Transgender Prisoners

A 2021 California law aimed to reduce the violence and degradation experienced by trans prisoners, but reporter Lee Romney found that trans women transferred to a women’s state prison in Chowchilla have suffered new forms of trauma.

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Good Grief: How to Mourn in a Healthy Way

The COVID-19 pandemic has claimed over one million American lives, casting a blanket of grief over the country. Despite its challenges, the pandemic has given us an opportunity to address the topic of grief and how best to cope with this unavoidable part of being human.

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How Elon Musk is leading the charge against family-friendly workplaces

Some of us are old enough to remember the bad old days of startups that regarded children as impediments to parents being on call 24/7. I well remember being asked to stay up until 3 or 4 in the morning at home while engineers rebooted a startup’s system; when the baby began to cry, an executive demanded angrily, “Can you make that noise stop?!” Employers have since made amazing strides toward making workplaces family-friendly, including work at home policies – the latter getting a huge if unintended boost from the pandemic. But since October, multi-billionaire Elon Musk turned his back…

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Thanksgiving Blues and Embracing Gratitude

Thanksgiving is a time of family celebration and gratitude, and some of us can hardly wait to see all our family again. For others, however, Thanksgiving dinner can be triggering. We turned to Bob Sege, a professor of pediatrics at Tufts University who studies childhood trauma and resilience, for his thoughts on the holiday.

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Michael Pollan on the Ebbing Drug War and the Fast-Growing Era of Psychedelic Research

For three decades, in eight books and untold articles, Michael Pollan has been writing and teaching us about the food we eat and the ways people and plants intersect in the natural (and unnatural) world. In the process, he helped create a new field of journalism centered on the food system and its impact on the economy, the environment, and human relationships – not to mention how we prepare and celebrate our meals.  In recent years, he has turned his attention from our palate to our mind – and our use of natural substances to alter it. He is now…

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David Bartley Stepped Back from the Precipice and Now He Helps Others Do the Same

David Bartley may be the hardest working man in suicide prevention and also one of the most vulnerable. He has experienced both horrible abuse and deep depression and found a path forward. In the hundreds of talks and trainings he does, he doesn’t hesitate to mine these experiences and share them with his audience — along with some good animal stories. Kristene Smith, chief executive officer of Mental Health California, calls Bartley a “selfless transformation agent” in the mental health world. “His words sear into you, like daggers of love, digging through your soul to get you to the other…

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