A couple of days after I discovered my brother Maury’s body in his house on Elm Drive, in the flats of Beverly Hills, I met two childhood friends for lunch at Factor’s Deli. That was more than eight years ago. I hadn’t seen Julie, one of my post-college roommates, or Ellyn, my best friend since seventh grade, in a long time. After years of navigating the troubled waters of Maury’s life - his deteriorating heart, his increasing paranoia, and the relentless challenges of seriou

Thursday August 20, 2026 By Laura Ornest In July, Harvard professor Dr. Karen Thornber invited me to visit her summer school zoom class where she screened OUTSIDER to some 20 undergrad students from all over the world. The class was COMP S-120: Disease, Illness, and Health Through Literature. OUTSIDER was now in the company of Tolstoy’s “The Death of Ivan Ilyitch” and Dr. Jeremy Nobel’s book “Project Unlonely”. I was humbled and honored that Dr. Thornber thought so highly o