"Art has to be a kind of confession," James Baldwin said, fifty-four years ago. "If you can examine and face your life, you can discover the terms with which you are connected to other lives, and they can discover them, too." Baldwin, more than any other American writer, showed us how every sentence contained the possibility of discovery for both writer and reader. Over the course of the ensuing months, I'm going to ask some of the country's most incredible creators to let readers into the crevices of how they do the work of facing and discovering life. Every creator will be asked the same six questions.

According to a newly released decades-long study of thousands of Americans found that people who qualify as heavy drinkers... well, it said something about them, I'm fairly sure of that.

The thing about Dylan Farrow's open letter accusing her father, Woody Allen, of sexual abuse is: There was not much really new about it. It was new that Dylan Farrow herself was signing her name to the accusations, but Vanity Fair had covered the case, in grim detail, more than two decades ago.

Attention humans: get ready to never pay for another dinner you eat with a mouse ever again.

In addition to just generally being good for you, as noted previously, slimming down to a healthy weight can improve your memory and increase brain activity.

Yeah, so Texas poo-stepping governor Rick Perry wants to abolish some agencies that oversee ... things, and he can't always remember what those things are. But he's not going to let his poor memory stop him from becoming America's next president, so put that in your cowboy hat.

Canadian researchers have been studying a 22-year-old woman and lifelong amnesiac who can't remember the faces of anyone unfamiliar or non-famous. Show her a photo of baby-voiced celebutante Paris Hilton, however, and she has almost no trouble identifying who it is. Paris Hilton's face will not be stopped.

Whoever you are tonight, and whatever it is you're doing, just be glad you're not Rick Perry, whose 53-second fumble has become an instant master class in how not to intimidate your political foes in front of a live, national audience. Do you think he knows he screwed up? Yeah. He knows.

Here's Texas Governor Rick Perry, distinguishing himself once again at Wednesday night's CNBC debate:

German researchers have published a study claiming that quick naps can help the brain process and retain information. Not that you need an excuse to fall asleep at your desk every afternoon.

Today on The View, Barbara and Elizabeth test the recall ability of three people with hyperthymesia, or super-autobiographical memory. Would they be able to remember what happened on any given day over twenty years ago?

A new study from the UK shows that only users of potent "skunk" weed experienced short-term memory loss while high. Hash or herbal pot had no affect on memory due to prevalence of the chemical cannabidol, which mitigates THC's effects.

Today introduced us to Michelle Philpots, who can't remember anything since 1994 due to a horrible car accident. In this video, you'll realize that your problems aren't nearly as bad as hers, but just how rare her condition really is.

Smoking cigarettes may improve your memory, fine motor skills, alertness, and, obviously, looking-cool-ness. They will also give you cancer and make all your food taste like charcoal briquettes. But, again: You will improve your memory, and look totally cool. [Discovery]

Science: Your brain's too small to grasp more than 150 Facebook friends, unless you're very old in which case you'll remember every useless thing, but you'll never be old if you're a NYC minority, because you'll die after surgery. Science!

What's the best way to make a suspected terrorist forget all the crucial details that we need access to in order to thwart the terrorist plot we suspect him of being involved in? Why, torture him. Naturally.

New memory-tinkering research can only mean another wave of Philip K. Dick-inspired movies.

Our story so far: Kurt Eichenwald wrote some stories for the Times a while back (then he left the paper and went to Portfolio then left that mag!) about all the pedophiles on the internet and their multi-zillion-dollar-a-year business selling child porn and exploiting kids. And, well, beyond feeding the current "your children are at risk!" hysteria, some of his methods were kinda creepy and weird? Like donating money to his source before he was a source (a pornographer that he helped "free" from the kid's own porn ring) than he revealed to the Times, and, uh, also signing up for "an illegal porn website as a member and administrator." When asked why he didn't disclose any of this, he claimed to not remember the PayPal payments. Sketchy! Except that Kurt's finally going on NPR today to make everything about this story even more uncomfortable and terrible. Because his epilepsy has become so severe that, "according to his neurologist, he suffers from 'significant memory disruptions.'"