Krishna Pendyala was one of a talented and lucky handful of Indian students to matriculate at the Indian Institute of Technology. An IIT degree was a ticket to a high-status, top-paying job—and it opened the door to emigration to the United States, where there were even more possibilities. At age 18, his whole life was laid out before him…
We’re moving closer to unraveling the mysteries of brain function, thanks to The BRAIN (Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies) Initiative established by the Obama administration. The Initiative received a major boost on September 16, when the National Institutes of Health (NIH) approved initial areas of high-priority research to be supported by $40 million of its 2014 funding. The Initiative’s…
I am empty. A hole as big as the moon inside of me. Bottomless, so I cannot fill it. Nothing in my realm of experience offers knowledge of how to replenish the void that swallowed my soul. I hurt. Each new injury either self-inflicted or by another—emotional or physical—stretches and extends the cavity. Like the tearing of skin and muscle…
Welcome to Second Acts, a series of interviews with interesting people who discovered new pathways midway through their lives. Udo Erasmus, Ph.D., known as the Father of Flax Oil, is responsible for our modern understanding of the importance of essential fatty acids in the human diet. His discoveries came as a result of becoming sick from working with pesticides. It’s a testament…
One summer when I was a teenager, my mother was nervous about a cousin’s impending visit. Pam had become a vegetarian and my mother had no idea how to cook for her. How would she get any protein? My mother was deeply worried. My father, who loved hamburgers and steak, was much calmer. “Tolstoy and Gandhi were vegetarians, and Thoreau…
I was raised by Italian-American parents. At our house, every Sunday dinner was a multi-course extravaganza. Family and neighbors and friends sat down to a table laden with pasta, meatballs, chicken, salad, vegetables…. Meals at our house were all about overabundance, just as in all the popular movies where the Italian mother puts food on the table and hollers, “Mangia!” I…
I grew up in a home that was within earshot of railroad tracks. As a young boy, I had a fanciful notion about what the sound of the choo-choo going by meant. I thought the train was rising in the air and taking off like an airplane as the pitch went higher, then landing out of town as the pitch…
