Meredith Rizzo

In this episode of the Invisibilia podcast, our hosts explore how it feels to be "in between," including the story of one woman who spends so much time daydreaming that it interferes with her life.

Children of people in the country illegally often experience fear and worry — with the shadow of deportation as a constant presence. How can they work through those emotions? One workshop uses comics.

Years of treating grievously injured people starts to wear on a person, a trauma nurse in Minneapolis says. She explores "compassion fatigue" in a semi-autobiographical poem.

After an incorrect dose of a chemotherapy drug for Crohn's disease caused Anne Webster's bone marrow to shut down, she decided that, if she survived, she'd write about her experience.

The science community feels threatened under the current administration. Researchers, educators and activists took to the nation's capital to say that cuts to scientific funding affect us all.

An anesthesiologist and poet says her medical work is well-suited to poetry, as patients move in and out of consciousness under the doctor's watch.

The dementia wing of a nursing home is foreign territory to most people. Photographer Maja Daniels spent three years documenting the lives of people with Alzheimer's in a hospital in France.

Dana Walrath used her skills as an artist and medical anthropologist to chronicle her mother's final years with dementia. The process helped her see beyond the loss and embrace the moment.

A shy woman becomes a brave warrior princess. A man calls on Captain America to help him lose 45 pounds. In costume role play they become part of a community where they can transform themselves.

An architect looked at communities that serve older adults, and didn't like what he saw. By changing habits earlier in life, he says, we can create vibrant communities that will sustain us.

When Ryan Green's son Joel was 1 year old he was diagnosed with an aggressive brain cancer. Over the next few years, he underwent rounds of chemotherapy and radiation, only to have the cancer return.

Feeling helpless, Ryan turned to what he knew as a video game developer. He began ...

Do you remember cutting paper snowflakes in school? Artist Rogan Brown has elevated that simple seasonal art form and taken it to science class.

These large-scale paper sculptures may evoke snow, but actually trade on the forms of bacteria and other organisms. The patterns may feel familiar, but also a ...

Hispanic people much are less likely to get cancer than non-Hispanic whites, but it's also their leading cause of death.

Beneath that puzzling fact lie the complexities and contradictions of the Hispanic health experience in the United States. Since we're talking about 17 percent of the U.S. population, it has ...

When it comes to sports, there seems to be something for everyone.

There are team sports and activities you can do alone. There's exercise that requires equipment, or none at all.

But how much benefit you get from each one depends on a lot of factors, including how much you ...

Sure, playing in the women's World Cup burns a lot more energy than watching the women's World Cup. But the number of calories expended in sports and daily activities isn't always so obvious.

To figure it out, we dove into this database compiled by Arizona State University. It charts ...

It wasn't until Deborah Svoboda dated someone who is trans that she understood how little she understood about being transgender. "I realized how very misunderstood they were, including by me," she says. And that comes from someone who identifies as queer and has lived and worked in diverse communities.

So ...

When Erik Christiansen started smoking pot, he became fascinated by the look of different marijuana strains. But the photographs of marijuana he saw didn't capture the variety.

So he went to the hardware store and picked up two lights and a cardboard box. "I didn't even have a macro lens ...

A month after her father died of sepsis, Jennifer Rodgers began creating maps.

She took a large piece of paper, splattered it with black paint and then tore it into pieces. Then she began to draw: short black lines mimic the steps she walked in the hospital hallway during her ...

After a few cases here and there, measles is making a big push back into the national consciousness.

An outbreak linked to visitors to the Disneyland Resort Theme Parks in Orange County, Calif., has sickened 67 people in California and six other states according to the latest count from the ...

The series on family caregivers that NPR ran over the Fourth of July weekend sparked an extraordinary response, with tens of thousands of comments and likes on Facebook and NPR.org.

Many people responded to the intimate photographs of families caring for sick or disabled parents, siblings and children.

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