https://stephenmoore.medium.com/?source=post_page-----18e5304a4422-----------------------------------

Stephen Moore

https://marker.medium.com/tiktok-stirs-up-the-food-industry-as-it-enters-the-kitchen-18e5304a4422?source=post_page-----18e5304a4422-----------------------------------

Dec 30, 2021·3 min read

Photo: GettyImages

TikTok had one hell of a 2021. Turbocharged by the pandemic restrictions, the site reached the landmark of 1 billion monthly users and even surpassed Google to become 2021’s most visited domain. Fresh off the news…

Reviewing the predictions I made for 2021 and making some new ones for the new year

Photo by Artturi Jalli on Unsplash

“Plans are worthless, but planning is everything.”

— Dwight D. Eisenhower

Making predictions is a shitty business. The events leading up to the realization of any prediction make it seem less extraordinary. And when you get it wrong, you’re an insufferable numbskull. The value of a prediction is in the act of making it, not the prediction itself. Contemplating what may happen encourages us to take responsibility for decisions we make in the present. Also, revisiting a prediction and asking why it did/didn’t come to fruition provides insight into the machinations of our world and whether we are progressing or regressing.

“An economist is an expert who will know tomorrow why the things he predicted yesterday didn’t happen today.”

— Laurence J. Peter, Canadian writer & educator

So let’s review last year’s predictions to hold ourselves accountable. 2021 was a good year (maybe our best yet) in terms of understanding the world we might live in.

2021 Predictions Review

Apple Acquires Peloton

Predicted: Dec 2020

We envisaged Apple swallowing Peloton, and a transfer of two to four hours of attention/week of the most influential people in the West to iOS. Apple hasn’t bitten, but it could (and should). Its nearly $3 trillion market cap is 240 times larger than Peloton’s, i.e. whale to krill. And over the past 12 months, as Peloton stock has plummeted, the relative cost for Apple to acquire the company (i.e. dilution) has declined 90%.

Bitcoin Hits $50,000

Predicted: Dec 2020

Disco. We predicted this when BTC was at $22,000. The Gordon Sumner of cryptocurrencies breached $50,000 two months later. Crypto startups raised $32 billion-plus in venture capital in 2021, a fivefold increase from 2020. Bitcoin remains the bedrock of one of the fastest growing sectors in history, a hedge against inflation and FOBI (fear of being an idiot).

Twitter Hits $60, and Dorsey Is Ousted by June 2021

Predicted: Dec 2020

Twitter reached $60 and has since dropped. But the real win was corporate governance. It’s strange, as you age, what gives you joy — and this did. #Pathetic. A win for us (because we were right) and for shareholders, who will reap the benefits of having a CEO who doesn’t spend 90% of his time with his first family.

Restoration Hardware Hits $1,000, and Sonos Reaches $40

Predicted: Dec 2020

The pandemic catalyzed a dispersion that brought the office to the home. We predicted a commensurate reallocation of capital to home improvement and, with it, the stocks of companies such as Restoration Hardware and Sonos. Resto didn’t explode as we thought it would, but it still registered a 16% increase year over year. Sonos … did explode. It doubled in March to more than $40 and ended the year up 36%.

Airbnb Hits $200/Share and Enters Commercial Real Estate

Predicted: Dec 2020

We predicted this when Airbnb was $68 per share. The shares hit $200 within three months. We also predicted Airbnb would do to commercial real estate what it did to hotels. That is, disperse the value of centralized, asset-heavy real estate holders across a network of commercial properties. We’ll see.

We Might Work

Predicted: Apr 2020

Remote work represents a structural shift, and we believed 2021 would be the year of WeWork’s un-undoing. Correct. WeWork had a successful IPO in April at a more realistic valuation: $9 billion vs. its psilocybin-induced $47 billion valuation in 2019. The company also replaced desk-renting Jesus with Sandeep Mathrani. Meanwhile, 94% of Manhattan’s office workers are still hybrid or fully remote, and We’s model looks like it will endure as hybrid work becomes the new normal.

Roblox Stock Doubles from Its Offer Price Within Six Months

Predicted: Dec 2020

Twelve months ago, Roblox was a private company valued at $4 billion. Today its market cap is roughly $60 billion. The stock doubled from its reference price within three months of listing and continued to rise. Roblox has whipped up a typhoon of capital as it inspires interest in player-created virtual worlds. Roblox was Meta before (wait for it) Meta.

AT&T Divests Time Warner Assets

Predicted: Jan 2020

We predicted this two years ago after AT&T started junking up Time Warner’s luxury product (HBO) with a mess of variants (HBO Go, HBO Now, HBO Max) — the equivalent of Hermès selling JanSport backpacks next to Birkin bags. We were early on this one (a good thing). In May, AT&T announced it would spin off WarnerMedia and combine it with Discovery. The deal’s expected to be completed in mid-2022.

CNN Goes Behind a Paywall

Predicted: Dec 2020

Not only did we get this right … No Mercy/No Malice (the show) is going behind the paywall with it after the Bloomberg newsroom freaked out at my impression of the Village People. (Worth it.) If this sounds like another white guy failing up, trust your instincts. Tune into CNN+ this March, when I’ll become the Andy Summers to Chris Wallace and Eva Longoria’s Sting and Stuart Copeland.

OK, to infinity and beyond: 2022 predictions.

2022 Predictions (Teaser)

Join us on January 4 for the full experience (sign up here) — but here are the cliff notes.

“People can foresee the future only when it coincides with their own wishes.”

— George Orwell, British writer

The Zuckerverse Is the Biggest Tech Fail of 2022

The value proposition of exiting this reality for a new one is nihilistic — a symptom of an epidemic that’s infected the most fortunate people on the planet. Many of our tech billionaires, letting their inner child stunt their outer man, are focused on leaving this universe or creating an alternative one. This is not visionary; on the contrary, it’s void of the leadership we need to address the problems of this planet in this universe.

What’s more precarious, however, is the notion that we’d trust Zuckerberg to be our shepherd in this new world after he chipped away at the self-esteem of our children and harvested, leaked, and sold the personal data of more people than the population of Earth’s southern hemisphere plus India. The mortal who controls the envisioned metaverse would be rendered a god, and the Zuck is a first-ballot hall of fame candidate for people who deserve dramatically less power.

There are already several metaverses. The Appleverse boasts several thousand metaverses sitting on top of one of the most accretive business models in history (the app store) with a portal (Airpods) that ships 40 times as many orders as the Meta portal (Oculus). Apple has already submitted a patent to install a camera in its Airpods and is even experimenting with temperature sensors for health monitoring. The Airpods business alone generates roughly $12 billion a year, more than Shopify, Snap, and Twitter combined.

More reasons Facebook’s VR headset is uniquely positioned to fail: It causes motion sickness and skin rashes and prevents other people from having sex with you. It also doesn’t pass the Crocs Test. Whenever a product seems to be garnering a degree of hype incommensurate with its value, ask yourself: Do people like it more than a rubber clog with holes in it? Answer: Not even close. The firm that will realize (some of) this meta vision with what may be the biggest tech IPO of 2022 is Epic Games. Epic is also the best/worst acquisition for Meta/society that should not happen if the DOJ still has a pulse.

Fundamentals and Valuations Reunite

The second-, fourth-, and fifth-most Googled news searches of 2021 were AMC stock, Dogecoin, and GME stock, respectively. GameStop has produced returns this year 28 times greater than the S&P 500; AMC beat it by 38 times. Tesla is the sixth-most valuable company in the world, with an enterprise value 23 times its sales. The fifth-most valuable carmaker in the world, Rivian, hasn’t delivered any vehicles. If 2021 was the year of the bubble, 2022 may be the year of the pop.

The watering hole of hype and speculation should start to run dry this year. Company valuations will begin reuniting with fundamentals and proven business models. Larger-than-life CEOs chasing larger-than-reality total addressable markets will become a point of remorse, not promise. Story stonks and meme coins and the illusory movements behind them will start to spell C-R-A-S-H, not M-O-O-N. As such, we predict that by the end of the year:

• GameStop and AMC’s stocks will be below $10 per share.

• Tesla, Rivian, and Lucid’s stocks will be cut in half.

Bring it, Tesla Taliban. Re Rivian: It’s shaping up to be a great company, like Tesla, and I pre-ordered one — again, like Tesla. (Sidebar: 2018 Falcon Model-X for sale, no reasonable offer refused.) However, when you claim your TAM is solving climate change and register valuations of $1 million-plus per car sold, you’re falling victim to the same dangerous trend ignored over the past two decades: Prioritizing asset values, disconnected from economic growth, over productivity or citizenship.

Nuclear Will Explode

Hollywood has levied destruction on many brands in our society, including high school bullies, axe murderers, and evil emperors. There is one brand, however, that’s been unfairly and problematically tarnished: nuclear energy.

Godzilla was the product of nuclear radiation in the ocean. The Atomic Twister was a fictional tornado whose greatest danger was crashing into a nuclear reactor in Tennessee. The most evil man in Springfield owns the nuclear power plant.

Our apprehension toward this powerful clean-energy source stems from a one-off disaster in Chernobyl (also dramatized as a miniseries). In reality, nuclear power is one of the safest energy sources in the world, registering accident- and pollution-related death rates roughly 300 times lower than those of coal and oil. And it produces no CO2.

But … it has a terrible reputation: 62% of the world population opposes the use of nuclear energy. It’s time to rebrand nuclear. Josh Wolfe believes we should call it “Elemental Energy.”

There’s more where this came from, but we’re saving it for January 4. I’ll be covering, among other things: space travel, NFTs, fintech, and the future of luxury. If you can’t make it (or you just want to watch it again), we’ll send a recording after the event.

Andy Levene

I am going to stay home tonight. Not getting Covid before 2022 is my new Squid Game. I will take pause to contemplate the reward and joy I get from my animals (sons) and beasts (dogs). I will resolve to be stronger, demonstrate grace, and be a positive force in the lives of my sons, as well as young men I have no connection to — as several men did for me growing up. More than anything, I will remember my cousin Andy Levene, who died at 52 earlier this week from Covid complications. Andy was ebullient, handsome, and in perfect health. He chose not to get vaccinated. He is survived by his mother, sister, and 9-year-old son.

I wish for each of you a 2022 full of health, prosperity, and time with loved ones.

Life is so rich,

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Eric Weiner

https://forge.medium.com/in-praise-of-new-years-resolutions-125086b70ca?source=post_page-----125086b70ca-----------------------------------

Dec 29, 2021·4 min read

Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash

In recent years, a grim narrative about New Year’s resolutions has gelled: they don’t work. Not only are they doomed to fail, we’re told, but they can actually prove counterproductive, sapping your spirit and deflating your confidence. The takeaway: don’t bother.

Not so fast. There is mounting evidence that “contrary to widespread public opinion, a…

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Cory Doctorow

https://doctorow.medium.com/happy-public-domain-day-2c4520dd2f3a?source=post_page-----2c4520dd2f3a-----------------------------------

1 day ago·6 min read

On January 1, 2019 something extraordinary happened. For the first time since 1998, the American public domain got bigger.

What happened in 1998? Congress — led by Rep Sonny Bono — extended the copyright on all works by 20 years. Works that had already been in the public domain went back…

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Linda Castrilli

https://index.medium.com/i-took-an-extended-break-from-the-rat-race-here-are-lessons-learned-that-i-never-want-to-lose-942da44c924?source=post_page-----942da44c924-----------------------------------

Dec 16, 2021·6 min read

Photo: GettyImages

In the spring of 2021, I left the corporate job I had been in for the prior seventeen years.

It was the first time since graduating college — and we’re talking early 1990s here — that I had been unemployed. Back then, OJ Simpson wasn’t yet on trial for murder and Prince…

Photo by Barry Zhou on Unsplash

I lost two students last month.

Not students who are currently enrolled in my class, although I have experienced that particular sort of devastation. No, these students were in my class several years ago. My kids. Any teacher will tell you that this is how it works.

When a student comes into my classroom, I tell them they have a lifetime warranty on their experience as my student. Struggling in college? Call. Need a reference? Email. Want to meet up for an in-person pep-talk? Text.

Many do.

I’ve attended college graduations and weddings and baby showers and birthday parties to celebrate them. I’ve held their brand new babies. I’ve let toddlers waddle across the colored tiles in my classroom as their parents fill me in on their adult lives. I’ve met them for brunches, lunches, dinners, and coffees. I’ve scheduled their appointments with therapists and talked them through post-college crises.

I tell them to call. Many do.

The ones who don’t are the ones who linger in my mind. They’re the ones I wonder about on some random cloudy afternoon as I drive down Interstate 5, my mind wandering to the crystal-clear centers of otherwise foggy memories: the stickers they carefully arranged on their water bottle or the playfully doodled notes they left on their assignments or the tears they shed as they sat in my classroom and cried over a break-up.

In sixteen years of teaching, I have yet to be able to convey the depth of the care I feel for my students. Every day they sit in front of me, vulnerable in their roles as learners, trusting me to guide them in a manner that will make them feel valued and capable. It’s the greatest responsibility of my life.

I just wish they knew.

I wish they knew that I root for them as I grade their essays.

I wish they knew that I see their pain on a bad day, the pain they try to hide behind a hoodie, and I cross my fingers, hoping that the next time I see them, the hood will be down and the smile will be back.

I wish they knew that I see them vying for acceptance every day, earnestness sparking quietly in their eyes, even as they work so heartbreakingly hard to make it seem like they don’t care what anyone else thinks.

I wish they knew how often they make me laugh — even when I have to hide it.

I wish they knew just how much they’re capable of accomplishing — especially when they have resigned themselves to the fate of being “bad” in school.

I wish they knew how much I love the notes they leave for me — on assignments, on the whiteboard, and on post-its. The crooked smiley faces and the silly jokes are fuel for another day.

I wish they knew that I carry their successes and failures with me long after the final bell of the day.

I wish they knew that I cross my fingers and toes for them on graduation day. That I hope post-high school life is everything they hope it will be and more. That if I could pave the road they’re about to travel to glass-like smoothness, I would. But I can’t and I know it’s for the best.

I wish my students knew how much I think about them after they leave me. I wish they knew how proud I am when they become mothers, fathers, teachers, nurses, lawyers, mechanics, firefighters, baristas, artists, welders, problem-solvers, soul-searchers, world-travelers, or whatever it is that fills them with a sense of their own tremendous worth.

I try to tell them these things— explicitly first — and then through my actions. I talk to them every single day. I try to cultivate silly little inside jokes with them. I tell them I’m glad they’ve come to class — even when they’re 30 minutes late. I invite them to stay after school if they need help — or just a quiet place to work. I encourage them to join the clubs I advise, and I tell them I miss them on the days that they’re gone.

I lost two students last month. Gone forever. Two truncated sentences in what should have been two full-length stories of vivacity and accomplishment.

I can’t help but wonder if they knew the richness they added to *my *life.

I hope they did.

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Ryan Fan

https://index.medium.com/i-had-perfect-attendance-at-work-and-have-gained-nothing-for-it-1f6329f1f2ff?source=post_page-----1f6329f1f2ff-----------------------------------

Dec 24·6 min read

Photo: krakenimages/Unsplash

Before yesterday, I had almost perfect attendance at work in my two and a half years of teaching. But I finally called out to get a COVID test after my fiancee tested positive for COVID.

Jessie Waddell

Dec 27

·

5

min read

Image by Nickola_Che on Shutterstock

As I write this article, it’s noon on Monday 27th of December. It’s the eve of my 31st birthday, and I’m exhausted, but my brain won’t stop running miles. I feel grateful this year because I have this outlet. When my brain gets too busy, I can write, process and make sense of the chaos. Before I started writing, it was…

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Barack Obama

https://barackobama.medium.com/my-statement-on-the-passing-of-archbishop-desmond-tutu-c54927e7c7cc?source=post_page-----c54927e7c7cc-----------------------------------

·3 days ago

Photo by Pete Souza

Archbishop Desmond Tutu was a mentor, a friend, and a moral compass for me and so many others. A universal spirit, Archbishop Tutu was grounded in the struggle for liberation and justice in his own country, but also concerned with injustice everywhere. He never lost his impish sense of humor and willingness to find humanity in his adversaries, and Michelle and I will miss him dearly.

“Granite erratic, Dudmaston” by Richard Webb is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/?ref=openverse&atype=rich

It was the rock that caught my eye. Dappled with lichen and lighted by the afternoon sun, it appeared to be the perfect place for contemplation. A spot where you could sit and write your novel, ponder your place in the universe, and perhaps reach some kind of equilibrium with the planet.

One email notification led Carla Barnes to question her whole identity and try to find it again. Barnes expected the email — even looked forward to it — but it delivered an unexpected shock. The email held the results of her at-home DNA test. It revealed her ethnicity, a list of her DNA relatives, and a secret her mother kept from her for her entire life. When she opened her results, she didn’t second guess the accuracy of her ethnicity, but the list of relatives the test identified made her question its validity. As she scrolled through the list of people with whom she shared DNA, she noticed some obvious oversights. The test failed to identify any of her family members from her father’s side as DNA relatives.

Barnes’s experience provided her membership in a growing community — those who experience a non-parental event (NPE). An NPE occurs when a person discovers they are not genetically related to the parent or parents who raised them. The acronym first stood for non-paternity event and some use it to mean not parent expected. Others also often use the term MPE, or misattributed parental event, to refer to these situations. People created these different terms and acronyms to be more inclusive of all situations and to make these discoveries more personal and less scientific.

NPEs can result from a multitude of situations, including adoption, sperm or egg donation, kidnapping, rape, adultery, a mistake during IVF or artificial insemination, and a range of other scenarios. While NPEs themselves are not new, it is becoming increasingly easier to discover them. “This stuff has always existed, but we’re just now on the brink of discovering how frequent this is,” Barnes says. The prevalence of and increased accessibility to at-home DNA testing has led many people to discover their own NPE, and those discoveries and the emotional challenges they create have led to the growth of organizations that seek to support those who experience them. NPE Friends Fellowship, a non-profit that aims to support and raise awareness for NPEs, says that 5% to 10% of people who take an at-home DNA test discover an NPE. NPE Friends Fellowship began in June of 2017 as a Facebook group of people who experienced NPEs supporting each other. The group grew to 20 members after a week and more than 1,000 after a year. The group currently boasts more than 11,000 members and grows every week.

And the growth of the at-home DNA test business helps fuel these experiences and these communities. In a 2020 blog post by Ancestry, then president and CEO Margo Georgiadis said that 30 million people “started a DNA journey” worldwide. 23andMe alone has sold more than 12 million of their DNA test kits since they began in 2006. While these millions of tests likely resulted in a large number of NPE discoveries, most users who decide to spit in a little vial do not seek to discover or verify their biological parents. Another Ancestry blog post outlines some of the main reasons users do decide to take a DNA test including seeking out the specifics of their ethnicity, connecting with distant relatives, and making discoveries about their family trees. DNA test takers also often get their test kit as a gift from a loved one as the biggest DNA test companies run sales around the holiday season. In Barnes’ situation, she hoped that taking a DNA test would help fill in the gaps of the family tree that she started researching and building more than a decade earlier. Rather than being able to see it grow more branches, she instead had to watch half of the roots of her family tree die and disappear.

An NPE discovery can take some people on an emotional journey of rediscovering their identity, but for others, the information is as insignificant as what they ate for breakfast. One NPE, who wishes to remain anonymous due to the fact that much of her extended family is unaware of the situation, took a 23andMe DNA test and discovered a half sibling she never knew about. After repeated attempts to convince her parents to explain the half-sibling she found, her mom called her crying and finally admitted that she was conceived through a sperm donor due to infertility issues with her parents. This new information, though, failed to alter her self-perception. “For me, it almost turned into, rather than being this emotional event, it was kind of just a detective, mystery-solving thing,” she says. She does not feel as though she lost any connection to the man who raised her even with the knowledge that they are not genetically related. “Honestly, I don’t care. This doesn’t, from my perspective, change anything. My dad is still my dad,” she says. “Sure, he didn’t donate genetic material to me, but I think that fatherhood is so much more than that.”

“My dad is still my dad. Sure, he didn’t donate genetic material to me, but I think that fatherhood is so much more than that.”

— Anonymous NPE

For many people who discover their own NPE, they question their own identity, not just the identity of their biological parents. “It’s probably like grief of a parent who loses a kid. It’s probably on that level,” Barnes says. “No one has died, but a part of your reality and your truth of yourself has died when you hear something different.” Those who discover the truth of their ancestry through an at-home DNA test often feel an extra level of hurt than if a loved one had told them. “It adds a betrayal factor on top of the issue in itself,” Barnes says.

An NPE discovery can lead to a person questioning not only who their parents are, but who they are too. | Original photo by Caleb Oquendo

Barnes recalls that the stress and crisis of the situation would wake her up in the middle of the night. Instead of putting her head back down on the pillow, Barnes would instead pick up her phone and start searching the internet for answers to her questions. Googling phrases such as “my dad is not my dad,” “mom had an affair,” and “I don’t know my dad” did not result in any support for Barnes, but she kept trying. Two years after her initial DNA test, she learned the term NPE from a New York Times article. It was then, as the brightness of her phone’s screen shone on her face, that she felt less alone in her experience, and she used the term to find some support and understanding. “I found some communities on Facebook. I found other people who had stories like me, but I had to search for it,” she says. “It took a long time.”

“No one has died, but a part of your reality and your truth of yourself has died when you hear something different.”

— Carla Barnes

Jodi Klugman-Rabb also discovered her NPE situation through an at-home DNA test. But the shock and realization of what the results meant took longer than Barnes’ immediate shock. In fact, the chaos of life, including having young children and a career, kept her from truly understanding the reality presented in her genetic report. Two years after taking the DNA test, while on vacation in Mexico and reading a book poolside, Klugman-Rabb relaxed enough to process her results. The test revealed that she was 50% Scottish and not 50% German like she was expecting. She used this information to deduce that she was not genetically related to the man she believed was her father. This revelation made her rethink who she was. “It destabilizes your sense of identity and creates an identity crisis,” Klugman-Rabb says.

With improved and accessible DNA technology, more and more people are discovering their own NPE and being left to deal with an identity crisis. In the past few years, various support efforts emerged to help NPEs deal with the turmoil that a discovery causes. One of these efforts is the non-profit organization NPE Friends Fellowship. The organization began in 2017 as a Facebook group that was created by NPEs and for NPEs. As it became more in demand, the group expanded to a non-profit organization in 2018. In addition to the original Facebook group, the organization also holds a yearly conference for those in the NPE community to meet each other, works with researchers to get more data about NPEs, and provides grants to help people financially afford to travel to see their newfound biological family. The organization hopes that their efforts will help raise awareness for NPEs and provide them and their affected loved ones with support. “It’s a multi-sided coin. The NPE is at the nucleus of what we do, they’re at the heart, they’re at the core, but we know there’s a ripple effect. So, our long term goals are to make sure that we provide resources and support to that entire ripple,” Rebekah Drumsta, Director of Public Relations at NPE Friends Fellowship, says.

“It destabilizes your sense of identity and creates an identity crisis.” — Jodi Klugman-Rabb

In addition to organizations, individuals are also dedicated to working to help and support NPEs through dealing with their discoveries. After discovering their own NPEs, both Barnes and Klugman-Rabb decided to combine their experiences with their careers to help others in situations similar to their own. Barnes, a licensed professional counselor, specializes in working with NPEs. Prior to her own discovery, Barnes worked as a school counselor, but she decided to open up her own practice in Schertz, TX so that she could provide others in her area with the help and support missing for her when she first took her DNA test.

In fact, like Barnes and Klugman-Rabb, many of those who build communities or create resources to help people who experience NPEs do so to address the lack of awareness, information, and support they experienced after a DNA test revealed a secret in their family tree. Klugman-Rabb, a licensed marriage and family therapist, works with NPEs to help them deal with their discovery and its effects. She also works with parents of NPEs prior to a discovery to help them figure out the best way to tell their child the truth. “The anger is going to be there one way or the other. The hurt and confusion is going to be there regardless, but there’s a way to mitigate it so that it’s understandable,” Klugman-Rabb says. “You just have to give an MPE time to work through the feelings to get to that point where they understand it, and that happens with counseling and the ability to talk about it openly with people in their lives.”

In an effort to educate more non-NPE mental health professionals on the appropriate ways of supporting clients working through an NPE discovery, Klugman-Rabb created a curriculum called Parental Identity Discovery. Through webinars, she uses the curriculum to train mental health professionals all over the country on the topic of NPEs so that there are more resources available for NPEs that are equipped to properly help them. She feels that many education and training programs fail to adequately teach mental health professionals how to properly support someone going through an NPE discovery. By combining her experiences and her expertise, she believes her program will prepare professionals to effectively assist those who discover NPEs in the future. “For most people, they just don’t put it together that it’s an identity issue,” Klugman-Rabb says. “So then I decided, well, I have so much of the clinical background already in place, this makes sense that I put together a curriculum to help other people go through this as well.” She also hosts a podcast called “Sex, Lies & The Truth” with Christina Bryan Fitzgibbons, a genetic and family investigator. In the podcast, they interview real people going through a variety of DNA revelations. Klugman-Rabb hopes that between her curriculum and her podcast that she is able to make going through an NPE discovery a little bit easier for others. She says, “It helps to have a safe place to talk about what you’re going through when you’re scared.”

Photo: Carolyn Raship

9 weeks in 2020. 12 essays. Covid-19.

https://johndevore.medium.com/?source=post_page-----f22f8fe7dd26-----------------------------------

John DeVore

https://johndevore.medium.com/scenes-from-quarantine-f22f8fe7dd26?source=post_page-----f22f8fe7dd26-----------------------------------

3 days ago·76 min read

• Hi. My name is John. This collection is possible because of the support of Medium subscribers. Thanks to them, I’m able to write weekly essays about pop culture, politics, and feelings. If you’d like to learn more, click here.

Prologue: December 19th, 2021

https://medium.com/@lindacastrilli?source=post_page-----942da44c924-----------------------------------

Linda Castrilli

https://index.medium.com/i-took-an-extended-break-from-the-rat-race-here-are-lessons-learned-that-i-never-want-to-lose-942da44c924?source=post_page-----942da44c924-----------------------------------

6 days ago·6 min read

Photo: GettyImages

In the spring of 2021, I left the corporate job I had been in for the prior seventeen years.

It was the first time since graduating college — and we’re talking early 1990s here — that I had been unemployed. Back then, OJ Simpson wasn’t yet on trial for murder and Prince…