Chanel Dubofsky

by Chanel Dubofsky
If you’re wondering if you are currently, or have ever been, involved in an immersion experience, here are some ways to tell (in no particular order):
You’re away from your normal life—not necessarily geographically, but in a different environment.
Time seems to work in a way that it doesn’t in the “real” world—it slows down, speeds up, a day feels like a year, a month feels like a week.
The people around you, regardless of age or role, feel like family, or at least label t...

True crime can be a tricky genre, full of rubbernecking over human tragedy. However, HBO’s new documentary series, Last Call: When A Serial Killer Stalked Queer New York, has been earning praise from critics for its sophisticated and empathetic approach to its dark material. The focus of the series is less on the notorious murderer or the graphic details of his crimes and more on the victims, their families, and the LGBTQ+ advocacy that arose from this grim tragedy.
Based on the Edgar Award-w...

With episode 7, The Crowded Room finally reveals the big twist that's crucial to the core of understanding the drama series and its brooding protagonist, Danny Sullivan. Danny (Tom Holland) was arrested for a 1979 shooting in New York City, and he's been unfurling his mysterious backstory to a patient but probing listener, Rya Goodwin (Amanda Seyfried). But at long last, the pieces of his story begin to come together as it's revealed that Sullivan suffers from Dissociative Identity Disorder.
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2023, you're flying by. Join Mashable as we look back at everything that's delighted, amazed, or just confused us in 2023.
Somehow, we've reached the halfway point of 2023. If you're looking for some fuel to power you through your commute, to take with you on the road, or to listen to while taking care of daily tasks, there's truly excellent podcast content to choose from.
Each episode of these 10 shows — whether about the origins of the far right, the legalization of MDMA, Elon Musk's Twitte...

The story of a prim Texas housewife who hacked her good friend to death with an ax sounds like a salacious neighborhood rumor or an urban legend, but Candy Montgomery's 1980 murder of Betty Gore was all too real. And, as it happens, it's true crime catnip that's been adapted into a star-studded TV mini-series twice within the past year.
Last summer brought Hulu's Candy, starring Jessica Biel and Melanie Lynskey as Candy and Betty, respectively, alongside Timothy Simons and Pablo Schreiber as ...

Before cracking into Sara Lippmann's novel, Lech, be sure to take a look at the last epigraph. Lippmann gives three quotes to the reader, one from Arielle Greenberg, another from Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, and a final one from Bereshit 12:1, Parshat Lech Lecha. "Lech Lecha," God's charge to Abram, translates to "Go forth. Go for you." Abram (later renamed Abraham by God) is directed to go from his homeland to a new one, where his name will become great and a nation will be established. Wit...

Between June 1962 and January 1964, 13 women were found fatally strangled with their own clothing and sexually assaulted in their homes across the Boston area. The victims – Anna Elsa Šlesers, Mary Mullen, Helen Blake, Nina Nichols, Ida Irga, Jane Sullivan, Sophie Clark, Patricia Bissette, Mary Brown, Beverly Samans, Evelyn Corbin, and Joann Graff — ranged in age from 19 to 85. Their murders were all attributed to one man, ultimately dubbed the Boston Strangler.
Hulu's new thriller, Boston St...

Here's the thing about being a true crime lover: Despite the endless sea of new podcasts being released on a weekly and monthly basis, it's never enough. You've probably already exhausted the many lists recommending the best true crime podcasts of all time. But it couldn't quench your insatiable thirst for more murder, unsolved cases, and investigations into the criminal justice system.
Luckily, there's certainly no shortage of new and recent true crime podcasts that provide more hours of bin...

When I worked in the Jewish life industrial complex on campus about one hundred years ago, I spent much of my time trying to convince students that they weren’t “bad” Jews. They believed they were for all sorts of reasons; they skipped Shabbat services, they didn’t keep kosher, they forgot holidays, they’d never been to Israel, or didn’t want to go. There was no such thing as a “bad” Jew, I insisted. Yet despite such pleas by myself and many others, the “bad Jew” claim has persisted, of cours...

What can you do in a three-minute TikTok video? It turns out that the answer is basically anything: restock a refrigerator, tell people what to read, remind viewers that retail workers are humans, let someone know their partner is cheating, and so much more. For better or for worse, that includes true crime media.
From creators who don't cite their sources to those who stereotype the victims of crimes, all the way to overlooking or attempting to erase the realities of police violence, misogyn...

Do you prefer your true crime to be a little less…murder-y? Do you love a story about someone who cons people like it's their job (because it is)? Are you fascinated by the intricacies of pulling off the perfect scam?

In the canon of literature concerning Jews living unhappily in insular communities, there are typically two possible resolutions for the character: leave one's home, or don't. Felicia Berliner's debut novel Shmutz upends this notion of a binary choice.
Enter Raizl, a soon to be nineteen-year-old Hasidic woman with an online pornography habit. Watching videos secretly on her somewhat contraband laptop (a necessity for her college classes and a source of contention in her family), a fascinated ...

Not everybody wants to be a parent. Ever. As we face down a future without Roe, that reality is especially important to understand. Jewish feminist filmmaker Therese Shechter’s latest documentary, My So-Called Selfish Life, about those who make the choice not to become a mother, is streaming until May 23. The film tackles a subject that is particularly taboo in Jewish communities, where procreation is an imperative and seldom questioned. The moral panic surrounding those who opt out of parent...

Open (Penguin Random House: Harmony, $28.00) documents Rachel Krantz’s long-term relationship with a non-monogamous partner. But, in the way a good memoir should, it also illuminates larger truths about gender and autonomy—as well as what it’s like to return to yourself (or a new version of yourself) after a long time of not being allowed to give credence to your own reality.
When we meet Krantz she’s in her late 20s, and interested both in finding a partner and in retaining her independence....

Early in pregnancy, at your first prenatal appointment, your healthcare provider will typically perform a vaginal ultrasound to confirm two things: 1) the gestational age of the pregnancy, and 2) that the embryo implanted in your uterus and not somewhere else (like the cervix, tubes, or ovaries), where it isn't viable. Why the latter? In about 2% of pregnancies, implantation can happen outside the uterus (most often within the fallopian tube) — this is what's called an ectopic pregnancy.
When...