At its best, hip-hop reveals the complexity of the human voice, and few artists show that better than DMX did. The sound that came out of Earl Simmons’s mouth was often called a growl or rasp, but those terms seem insufficient upon the occasion of his death, today, at age 50. You heard breath and bone in that voice. Its dissonance and musicality were kind of like an electric guitar. It started parties by jolting fight-or-flight reflexes.

Earlier this week, The Hollywood Reporter published a detailed cover story on the veteran film and theater producer Scott Rudin’s alleged mistreatment of his employees. The piece features on-the-record testimonies from former staffers and a slew of accusations describing physical assaults, traumatizing outbursts, unreasonable demands, and a penchant for throwing things.

Debbie Gustafson of Dresher, Pennsylvania, was on the trip of a lifetime, touring the Galápagos with her family last March, when she began to feel the effects of COVID-19. Though her physical symptoms—diarrhea, dry cough, chills—were considered mild by doctors, her fatigue was crushing, and her mind was trapped in a fog. Once an avid reader, she couldn’t get through a page. “My eyes darted everywhere. I had no focus,” she told me.

Like other members of the British Royal Family, Prince Philip’s reputation is now defined by his portrayal in The Crown: a stern father, a reluctant consort, a man’s man who struggled to play second fiddle to his wife. It could be worse.The Queen’s husband has died two months short of his 100th birthday, and his death inevitably invites comparisons between the world he was born into and the one he has left behind.

After I became a parent, I created a secret ritual: Once a year, I would take a vacation day from work, tell absolutely no one in my family about it, and go see the latest Marvel blockbuster. In the mostly empty theater, I’d forget about the long hours commuting in standstill traffic, the dark circles that had formed under my eyes after a child woke me up multiple times a night, and all the other mundane sources of suburban exhaustion.