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The article presents a discussion of auditory hallucination, adapted from the book "Muses, Madness and Prophets: Rethinking the History, Science and Meaning of Auditory Hallucination," by Daniel B. Smith.

Several letters to the editor are presented in response to articles in the May 24, 2015 issue's Metropolitan section on idiosyncratic businesses in New York City's neighborhoods and Ginia Bellafante's Big City column on the declining approval of New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio.

The article discusses the author's insights about how he deals with his own anxiety problems.

One day last year, I called my brother Scott in a state of agitation, self-hatred and incipient despair. I got straight to the point. ''I'm in a state of agitation, self-hatred and incipient despair!'' I cried. ''Tell me,'' Scott said. ''What is it?'' [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

LET'S say that, on a whim, you decide to form a baseball franchise made up of history's greatest anxiety sufferers -- a sort of neurotic all-star team, like the 2004 Red Sox, only too debilitated to make it out of the dugout. What would you call the team? Last Rosh Hashana, I asked a group of friends this question, and the answers I got suggested that the team would be exclusively ... Jewish. Responses included but were not limited to the following: the Los Angeles Kvetches, the Brooklyn Nazi Dodgers, the Kansas City Mohels, the Chicago Schlubs, the Miami Meshugeners, the Westchester Rhinoplasties, the Hollywood Indigestives and -- my favorite, a late entry from my brother Scott -- the Upper West Side Ativans. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It's hard to believe that anyone but scholars of modern literature or paid critics have read W. H. Auden's dramatic poem ''The Age of Anxiety'' all the way through, even though it won a Pulitzer Prize in 1948, the year after it was published. It is a difficult work -- allusive, allegorical, at times surreal. But more to the point, it's boring. The characters meet, drink, talk and walk around; then they drink, talk and walk around some more. They do this for 138 pages; then they go home. Auden's title, though: that people know. From the moment it appeared, the phrase has been used to characterize the consciousness of our era, the awareness of everything perilous about the modern world: the degradation of the environment, nuclear energy, religious fundamentalism, threats to privacy and the family, drugs, pornography, violence, terrorism. Since 1990, it has appeared in the title or subtitle of at least two dozen books on subjects ranging from science to politics to parenting to sex (''Mindblowing Sex in the Real World: Hot Tips for Doing It in the Age of Anxiety''). As a sticker on the bumper of the Western world, ''the age of anxiety'' has been ubiquitous for more than six decades now. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents a letter to the editor regarding Alan Greenspan's statement on the trashing off of Social Security and Medicare published in the August 27, 2004 issue of "The New York Times."

Presents letters to the editor concerning the motion picture "The Passion of the Christ," directed by Mel Gibson.