Innholdsfortegnelse for Jan-12-15 i The New Yorker

THE BLOOD-TEST BUSINESS The utility of the Theranos blood-testing technology that Ken Auletta writes about is limited to convenience and reduced cost (“Blood, Simpler,” December 15th). These benefits are important, but Elizabeth Holmes appears to believe that her company also empowers people to make decisions about their health based on lab results. This would be true if the clinical significance of a lab test were self-evident, but this is not the case. Accurate interpretation of a lab test is based on much more information than simply the normal value that is supplied next to the result; such judgment requires an understanding of, among other things, biochemistry, anatomy, and pharmacology in the context of someone’s known medical conditions. Most people have trouble getting beyond the vague nomenclature of “bad cholesterol”…

Would a true prophet use an electric salamander as a tongue? That’s what I thought. Last rainfall in the new city, held here until we ship the wounded home, the enemy collecting like aberrant cells across the river. Like me, they are afraid a rainbow will notice and destroy them. Like me, they were born believing their body parts weren’t fucked together right. Is it fate we name? Is it countries? One enemy in whom I planted sixteen seeds. One enemy who attempted to tongue-kiss my eyeholes, two cakes of arsenic tucked beneath his armpits. Look carefully around you. As with a small percentage of my countrymen, I die if I fall asleep in a horizontal position, sucky little prostitute of muscle in the chest. Pinned down by guerrilla holdouts…

NYC PodFest With the success of WBEZ’s “Serial,” it can feel like the medium is taking center stage, which is actually the case at the third annual NYC PodFest. Founded by Jeremy Wein, a podcast enthusiast and the host of “ThisMyShow,” the three-night-long talking party takes place first at Brooklyn’s Bell House and on the final two evenings at Fontana’s, on the Lower East Side. It features tapings of such programs as “The Daily Show Podcast Without Jon Stewart,” which is exactly what it sounds like, and “Gilbert Gottfried’s Amazing Colossal Podcast!,” with the guest Susie Essman, of “Curb Your Enthusiasm.” The comedian Todd Barry is sitting down with the indie rockers Yo La Tengo and other guests for “The Todd Barry Podcast,” and New York’s party-scene duo Andrew…

About her: the air, warm as fact. An imaginary boat heading off to hell, her foot pushing it offshore. The sunlit bank, a mirage of the perfect past. She was barking at the waves, thinking they barked first. But this was not a river. It was Thursday, a word cast in lead. Her eye had turned the water into sky. The poet is a trespasser. The poet is the king of Rome, New York, with one foot in a boat and one against the snowy shore of reason. Wondering if, like a boy, she could go there for a season.…