Margaret Talbot

In the social evolution of a new psychological syndrome, there may be no moment more important than the appearance of its first celebrity victims. A star or maybe a fading star "discloses" a … more

It was not hard to detect some gloating in the coverage of a recent study showing that older fathers are more likely to have children with schizophrenia. Though it was just one study, in … more

Last year, a 10-month-old baby boy died in the hospital after a minor operation went wrong. The baby's parents, an American couple, had two other children and probably could have had another … more

We hope you can join in a brownbag lunch and informal discussion with New America Foundation Senior Fellow Margaret Talbot, who has just finished a major feature story for The New York Times Magazine on a cult actively working to clone a human in the United States. Margaret will talk about what she has learned in researching and writing the story, and you may be surprised to learn just who is working at the frontiers of human genetics.

When you once believed something that now strikes you as absurd, even unhinged, it can be almost impossible to summon that feeling of credulity again. Maybe that is why it is easier … more

The worst way for a famous person to retain her privacy is to demand it. A celebrated recluse will never be left alone in a celebrity culture; her silence is an… more

If you grew up in the 1970's, then you remember a time when the very phrase "staying together for the sake of the children" sounded hopelessly Victorian. Unhappily married couples, so the… more

When Jefferson Alexander Stackhouse was 3 years old, good luck entered his life for the first and maybe the last time. Abandoned as a 2-week-old infant by a… more

In the late 70's, when I was a high school student, you went to summer school if you (a) had failed a class or (b) had absolutely nothing better to do. … more

In 1995, Robert D. Putnam, a political scientist at Harvard University, published an academic journal article that in remarkably short order achieved the kind of name recognition usually reserved for John Grisham… more