When it comes to ER visits, Thanksgiving is no Fourth of July (with its finger-sacrificing backyard pyrotechnics) or St. Patrick’s Day (with its vomitous binge drinking). But that doesn’t mean the day of gluttony takes no physical toll. Especially the deep-fried turkeys—the number of home cooking fires...
In this edition of It’s Not a Stupid Question, we’re looking at vibrating—a sensation many of us have experienced at the hands of a massage chair or perhaps something a little more personal. But what is it about jiggling that feels simultaneously soothing and stimulating at the...
Most of us overeat at Thanksgiving, either because we can’t control our appetites or just because, come on, Thanksgiving food is delicious. But no matter how much mashed potato and turkey you manage to guzzle this year, you can take comfort in knowing that compared to some of...
There’s no meal quite like Thanksgiving dinner to remind us that we’re at the absolute mercy of our appetites. No one really needs that third helping of turkey-topped taters—except, perhaps, Tarrare, the disgusting French glutton we talked about in November’s issue of Bathroom Minutes. But since we’re...
Dr. Jerome Pittman, founder of the Gentle Circumcision clinic in Culver City, CA, estimates that he gets through about 15 procedures a day. Newborns in the morning, older kids in the afternoon, adults on Fridays (so they have time to heal before work on Monday). School-age patients...
Annoying as it is, there are parts of our bodies we should be getting checked out way more often than we do. In this edition, we’re taking a long, loving look into your eyes, alongside our expert advisor Dr. Andrea Thau, optometrist and president of the American...
The march of progress has not been kind to comedy. The banana peel gag? Ruined when we developed a modern waste-management system. Seltzer in the face? Hard to accomplish with a can of La Croix. Crossed letters, missed phone calls, mixed-up messages left on answering machines? Driven...
On two separate occasions in August 1943, legendary military commander George S. Patton walked into a field hospital in Italy and slapped a “shell-shocked” private. Today, we’d diagnose the soldiers as suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, but to Patton they were mere cowards. The incidents dogged Patton...
Like the cliché ending of a sports movie, the clock ticked down, one second at a time, until it read zero — a close 27–20 game between the Houston Texans and Kansas City Chiefs now complete. The winning team, the Chiefs, ran onto the field in jubilation. I, however,...
Aaron Yoder, 31, is the head track-and-field and cross-country coach at Bethany College in Kansas. He’s also one of the world’s greatest backward runners, which is exactly what it sounds like (jogging, sprinting or racing backward instead of forward). I do my workout very early in the...
Football season is in full swing, and you know what that means: Hours of sitting on the couch, drinking beer and eating stuff that’s terrible for you. Nachos are delicious, but they’re also a salt and fat bomb that gives your arteries the equivalent of a shoulder...
Mouths are home to many odd sensations, but perhaps one of the strangest is the instant freeze that occurs when following a minty stick of gum with a gulp of cold water. Therefore, in this edition of It’s Not a Stupid Question, we ask why the heck...
