First Things RSS Feed - Aaron Kheriaty https://www.firstthings.com/author/aaron-kheriaty en-us Copyright 2025 First Things. All Rights Reserved. ft@firstthings.com (The Editors) ft@firstthings.com (The Editors) Mon, 20 Jan 2025 16:55:23 -0500 https://d2201k5v4hmrsv.cloudfront.net/img/favicon-196.png First Things RSS Feed Image https://www.firstthings.com/rss/author/aaron-kheriaty 60 The Rise of the Biomedical Security State https://www.firstthings.com/blogs/firstthoughts/2022/12/the-rise-of-the-biomedical-security-state https://www.firstthings.com/blogs/firstthoughts/2022/12/the-rise-of-the-biomedical-security-state Fri, 30 Dec 2022 15:30:00 -0500 Roger Severino and Aaron Kheriaty sit down for a wide ranging interview about COVID-19, medical ethics, and the future of biomedical technology. This interview discusses, in particular, Dr. Kheriaty's recent book, “ The New Abnormal: The Rise of the Biomedical Security State .”  

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]]> Refounding Social Science https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2021/08/refounding-social-science https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2021/08/refounding-social-science Tue, 10 Aug 2021 06:00:00 -0400 The Quick Fix:
Why Fad Psychology Can't Cure Our Social Ills
by jesse singal 
 farrar, strauss and giroux, 352 pages, $28

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]]> Card-Carrying Precadavers https://www.firstthings.com/article/2018/06/card-carrying-precadavers https://www.firstthings.com/article/2018/06/card-carrying-precadavers Fri, 01 Jun 2018 00:00:00 -0400 It has been almost twenty years since I dissected a dead human body. It still seems strange: My first encounter with a human body to learn the art of healing was an encounter with a corpse. What is more, I took this body to pieces. In any other context, this act would have been a felony.

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]]> Cyber Self-Harm https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2018/01/cyber-self-harm https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2018/01/cyber-self-harm Mon, 29 Jan 2018 06:00:00 -0500 On August 2, 2013, fourteen-year-old Hannah Smith of Leicestershire, England, hanged herself and was found dead by her sister. She reportedly had been harassed online for months prior to her death, and her anguished father demanded an investigation into the cyber-bullying that had driven her to suicide. The investigation revealed, however, that the cruel messages Hannah had received on social media had in fact been posted by Hannah herself . If these messages had wounded her, the wounds were self-inflicted.

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]]> Dying of Despair https://www.firstthings.com/article/2017/08/dying-of-despair https://www.firstthings.com/article/2017/08/dying-of-despair Tue, 01 Aug 2017 00:00:00 -0400 On November 4, 2014, ­­sixteen-year-old Cameron Lee, a popular, athletic, straight-A student at Henry M. Gunn High School in Palo Alto, California, leapt in front of a commuter train. His suicide note provided no clear reason for his act; there were no apparent signs of mental illness, and he was not a bullied misfit. His death followed two other student suicides just three weeks prior, one from the same school and another from a nearby private high. Three months later, another senior at Gunn, by then known to local students as “the suicide school,” jumped to his death from the roof of his family’s home.  

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]]> Killer Show https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2017/05/killer-show https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2017/05/killer-show Mon, 08 May 2017 06:00:00 -0400 Thirteen Reasons Why begins just after high school sophomore Hannah Baker has killed herself. Over the course of thirteen episodes in Netflix’s controversial new miniseries, Hannah narrates in voiceover the events that led up to her suicide, as other characters listen with dread to the cassette tapes she has left behind. “It’s me, live and in stereo,” the first tape begins. “I am about to tell you the story of my life—more specifically, why my life ended.” Then she says, “If you’re listening to this tape, you’re one of the reasons why.”

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]]> Apostolate of Death https://www.firstthings.com/article/2015/04/apostolate-of-death https://www.firstthings.com/article/2015/04/apostolate-of-death Wed, 01 Apr 2015 00:00:00 -0400 On November 1, after posting a Facebook message stating, “Today is the day I have chosen to pass away with dignity in the face of my terminal illness, this terrible brain cancer,” twenty-nine-year-old Brittany Maynard took a lethal dose of barbiturates, prescribed by an Oregon physician, and ended her own life. One newspaper opinion columnist spoke with almost religious awe when she noted that “Maynard has ascended to martyr-saint status as an advocate for the right to suicide in the throes of terminal illness.”

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]]> The Era of the Narcissist https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2010/02/the-era-of-the-narcissist https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2010/02/the-era-of-the-narcissist Tue, 16 Feb 2010 00:03:00 -0500 Of all the astonishing features of the medieval cathedrals, one feature must stand out as particularly surprising to the modern mind: We have no idea who designed and built them. In a fashion quite foreign to contemporary practice, the architects and builders did not bother to sign their names on the cornerstones. The anonymity of the great souls responsible surely seems strange to our age. Why build the cathedral of Notre-Dame de Chartres if you can’t take credit for it? No lasting fame? No immortalized human glory? We are, if not scandalized, at the very least perplexed by the humility of these forgotten artists who labored in obscurity. Do and disappear? This is not how we roll in the America of the twenty-first century.

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