Publications — Word for Word

Summer 2024 — Vol. 1

Fall 2026 — Vol. 2

Coming soon!

Fall 2025 — Vol. 3

Spotlight

Vol. 2 · Fall ’26

Article

The Consumptive’s Kiss: Tuberculosis and the Elegance of Death

How a disease became a fashion — and what that says about who gets to be beautiful while sick.

A postcard found in a drug store basement leads into a history of sanatoriums, romanticized suffering, and the strange nineteenth-century glamor built around a disease that was, for most who had it, anything but glamorous.

Finn Ryan · 6 min read

More to read

Article

Philosophy of Practice — Or Rather, Philosophy of Communication

A doctor-in-training on Barthes, photography, and what it means to really see a patient.

Max Brody · 4 min read

Article

Restructuring the World to Deconstruct Prejudice

Elevators tell you to take the stairs in a fire. What universal design reveals about who campuses are really built for.

Tova Tachau · 5 min read

Article

Demystifying the Hispanic Paradox

The health data that shouldn’t make sense — and the epigenetics that might explain why it does.

Samantha Wu · 5 min read

Article

How Upbringing Shapes Us – Literally

Childhood isn’t just formative for the mind. New research traces how it reshapes the heart, lungs, and brain.

Annika Richard · 4 min read

Interview

The Sound of Music: Neuroscience, Therapy, and Medicine

A Penn neuroscience grad on teaching his grandmother piano through dementia, and what music does that medicine can’t.

with Kevin Bryan · 9 min read

Empowering voices
previously unheard