At last week’s Philadelphia Orchestra concert, Yannick Nézet-Séguin was so frustrated by repeatedly ringing phones that he stopped the music. What’s behind the growing smartphone scourge? Alaina Johns considers.

A fairly faithful adaptation of Judy Blume’s classic 1970 novel is hitting theaters. It expands the stories of three generations of women, reminding us that it’s not just tweens who are in transition. Alaina Johns considers.

Because of inaccurate and stigmatizing “autism awareness” campaigns, it took writer and educator Bridget Scanlan a long time to learn that she herself is autistic. Now, she advocates a new paradigm of acceptance.

Anndee Hochman remembers her daughter’s childhood in a home that was open to others who needed it. But eventually, the little girl asks: who is that person on the street?

Joan Rittberg grew up as a boy, but from the time she was a teenager, she knew something wasn’t right. Now, instead of wishing she had transitioned earlier, she focuses on loving the woman she is today.

The regional premiere of Empathitrax, now onstage at Suzanne Roberts, deals in troubling tropes of depression without preparing its audience. Alaina Johns considers.

Anndee Hochman was never a dog person … until her daughter brought home a poodle puppy who got into the chocolate. How do we live and love when catastrophe is always waiting?

Writer and musician Danie Ocean Jackson has learned how hard it can be to sense the world from the inside out rather than the outside in, but it’s more necessary than ever.

By the time she was 26, Daralyse Lyons had been hospitalized for her eating disorder 18 times. But she was finally finding her path to recovery, and knows that others can, too.

Local music icon Jerry Blavat, a South Philly native, passed away on January 20, 2023. Susan Schaefer remembers how a whole new world opened up when she danced to Blavat’s tunes at Wagner’s Ballroom in the 1960s.