New York Magazine 10/2-10/15/17

1 “Could we be on the cusp of an IVF baby-boom?” Stephen S. Hall asked in his cover story on the reproductive potential of “abnormal” embryos (“A New Last Chance,” September 18–October 1 ). A few readers pointed out that the feature was groundbreaking in the field: @Alison-Rosen tweeted, “In the very specific and not-all-that-openly-talked-about IVF world this is fucking huge.” But Eric For-man, medical and IVF laboratory director at Columbia University Medical Center, responded, “Few experiences are as devastating to a couple struggling with infertility as finally achieving a positive pregnancy test only to have their dreams crushed by miscarriage. There is incontrovertible evidence that chromosomal abnormality is the leading cause of age-related infertility, failed IVF, and miscarriage. Our ability to safely biopsy and test the genetic status of…

Meet the Hefners Oceans of digital ink flowed in the days after Hugh Marston Hefner, founder and editor of Playboy, died on September 27. There was no question about his creative legacy: The magazine he started in 1953 (and continued to edit nearly up to the end) was a triumph of lifestyle branding. Even if you don’t like it, you know what a Playboy man is, or wishes to be. But most of the discussion involved the fact that Hefner was, as we say these days, Problematic. Yes, he perhaps helped loosen the bonds of sexual repression and thus helped women; yes, his magazine crusaded for abortion rights. But above all, he also ran a highly visible and cheerful argument for the objectification of women. Playboy, after all, was not…

THE ELITE, AMBITIOUS CANDIDATE, saying one thing on the stump and another to wealthy donors, willing to cede big dreams for pragmatic fixes … You recognize her, right? Of course you do. She’s Massachusetts senator and progressive firebrand Elizabeth Warren, who in the past few weeks has co-sponsored Bernie Sanders’s new Medicare for All bill, introduced another bill to ban state right-to-work laws, prepared to take on leaders of Equifax on the Senate floor—and been hit with a blast of right-wing messaging and mainstream coverage that feels positively uncanny. The playbook that the right is running against Warren—seeding early criticism designed to weaken her from the left—is pretty ballsy, given that Warren was the politician who most electrified the American left in the years before Sanders mounted his presidential campaign.…

ONE FRIDAY AFTERNOON in May, Ava Otterbein, an 11-year-old aspiring singer-songwriter, was taking a break from a performance in front of the Bluemercury makeup store in Montclair, New Jersey, when she turned around to find a stranger standing at her microphone. He was wearing a black Fear of God cap on backward and started improvising a rap and joking with a small crowd of confused onlookers. Otterbein’s father was about ready to grab the punk by the neck of his Supreme sweatshirt when the boy pointed to Ava’s guitar and amplifier and asked whose stuff it was. At this point, Ava realized the boy at her microphone was Justin Bieber. For several weeks, Montclair, a suburb half an hour from Penn Station, had been abuzz with rumors that Bieber was…

COLIN FARRELL loves to tell the story of how he wasn’t Yorgos Lanthimos’s first choice to star in The Lobster—2015’s great, odd cinematic treat, set in a dystopian future in which single people are turned into animals (or hunted for sport) if they can’t couple up, and the start of a string of collaborations between the two. He’s telling it right now, sitting across the table from Lanthimos in a hotel lobby in Toronto. Another actor had been cast but had to drop out, “and I capitalized!” Farrell says in that lyrical Irish brogue of his, cackling with delight. Later on, I ask Lanthimos why he wanted to work with Farrell, and Farrell jumps in again—lest anyone give him any credit: “Because he lost his actor! They were threatening to…

I speak with my mom every day. I moved here a year ago; I don’t have a lot of friends. I kept texting her, but no response. After five days, she finally got a signal. She was crying. She said, “All your family is safe.” But “there’s not one leaf left. The trees look like they’ve been burned by the wind.” My mom works in a factory. They were able to open, but then they said they don’t have enough diesel for the generator. That means no paycheck. Many people still don’t know that we are U.S. citizens. They think that because we speak Spanish, we’re Mexicans or something. AS TOLD TO JULIA MEAD…