It’s Friday, May 29. This is The Front Page, your daily window into the world of The Free Press—and our take on the world at large. Today: Alex Berenson on why the latest health-tech fad device is actually making us less healthy. Matti Friedman joins School of War. Our editors’ picks. All that and more.
But before we get to today’s stories, it has been an exciting week over at 60 Minutes, with Bari announcing a new executive producer for the most storied show in TV news: the award-winning investigative journalist and documentary filmmaker Nick Bilton. Read more about it here, and check out Nick’s note to the show’s team. We’re excited to tune in.
Now, our lead story: The Baltimore miracle.
What’s broken? That’s a question we ask a lot here. It’s one you can’t ignore if you want to understand the world, and perhaps even make it better. But if you want to fix what is broken, you need to ask another question—one the media is prone to ignore: What works?
Today’s lead investigation, by Charles Fain Lehman, is an answer to that question, focused on one vital issue in one city. For decades, Baltimore has been synonymous with homicides. In 2020, homicide rates in the city were eight times higher than the national average. Then, starting in late 2022, the rate started falling precipitously. Today’s numbers would have been unimaginable even a few years ago. In April, Baltimore had four homicides, a lower total than for any single month in 50 years.
“What has happened in Baltimore was supposed to be impossible,” writes Charles. The cycle of homicides was, we were told, never going to fall unless America ended its war on drugs, or until systemic racism was fully disassembled. But those fatalistic predictions turned out to be wrong.
So how did Baltimore do it? Charles went to find out. Take the white pill this Friday morning, and read his fantastic dispatch.
—Oliver Wiseman
Your Health Obsession is Narcissism |
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This week, a young, healthy man named Steven Bartlett received 25 million views on X as he described the suffering he faced when he pushed his body to its limits. Did he climb Everest or run a marathon? No. He had a couple of glasses of wine. It’s an extreme example of the popular trend for hyper-optimized biometric tracking. But does any of it make you healthier? Or just more anxious? Alex Berenson has some thoughts. | | |
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I’m an IVF Doctor. Business Is Booming Because Ob-Gyns Aren’t Doing Their Jobs. |
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Everyone has a theory about the fertility crisis: housing costs, smartphones, late-stage capitalism. One group that warrants a little more scrutiny are ob-gyns—the doctors women trust most with their reproductive health. That’s the view of Brian Levine, an ob-gyn and reproductive endocrinologist who says that too many of his colleagues refuse to have honest conversations with their patients about the hard choices women face. | | |
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The Secret Mission to Save Europe’s Jews, with Matti Friedman |
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On the latest “School of War,” Matti Friedman joins Aaron MacLean on the show to discuss the Jews who fought on behalf of the British Army in World War II, how success on the battlefield helped create a nation, and more from his new book, “Out of the Sky: Heroism and Rebirth in Nazi Europe.” | | |
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