James' World 2

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Every morning, Kathy Reagan Young steps out of the shower in her Virginia Beach home, towels off, dons a pair of protective goggles, and stands nine inches from a light box the size of a small space heater. Young presses a button, and the box’s bulbs begin to glow a ghostly purple. She briefly bathes her torso in the ultraviolet rays coming from the bulbs, four minutes per side. Then she goes about her day.

That Young can have an ordinary day is remarkable. In 2008, she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis (MS), a terrible malady in which the body’s own immune system attacks the sheaths that insulate the nerves, destroying them bit by bit. Symptoms begin with weakness, spasms, vision and speech problems, intense fatigue, and what Young calls “cog fog”—chronic low-grade cognitive impairment. Flare-ups can lead to periods of motor-control loss and paralysis. Young, an advocate for MS patients and creator of a popular podcast, has suffered through many such episodes. But things improved with the arrival of her light box.

Ultraviolet (UV) light boxes, which emit only a narrow bandwidth of light that is not linked to skin cancer, have been used for years in the treatment of psoriasis. Young got a prescription from her doctor, and the box was sent to her by a medical-device company called Cytokind that is hoping to expand such use to MS and other autoimmune diseases and was looking for some practical patient feedback. She tried out the device and gave them some pointers: make it smaller and easier to hold because MS often makes your hands go numb, and build in timed reminders to overcome the cog fog. Then, to her surprise, she found that her fatigue disappeared a few months after she started using it.

For years, Young had been forced to rest in bed many times a day, but that stopped with what she calls her UV-fueled rebirth. “I was in a meeting, and someone said to me, ‘Wow, you seem like you’re pretty high energy!’” Young says. “And I guess I hadn’t really thought about it. And then two days later, my daughter said to me, ‘Mom, what are you on?’ I think we were all a little surprised by how quickly and definitively it happened.” Her MS Disease Activity (MSDA) score, which rates MS severity based on the levels of key inflammatory molecules in the blood, was a 1 out of 10, the best possible score, and it has stayed low for more than a year. MS has no cure, and Young still suffers from transient pain and tingling, but the return of her vitality has made it all more bearable. “It’s incredible,” she says. “My friends used to invite me to things, and I’d say yes, but I always canceled because I was wiped out. Well, not anymore.”

Young is one of the first people in the U.S. to test UV phototherapy as an MS treatment, but she may be at the forefront of a revolution in how we think about light and a huge class of diseases. Autoimmune diseases such as MS and type 1 diabetes occur when our natural defenses—our immune systems—viciously turn against our own bodies and organs. These illnesses are estimated to affect more than 350 million people worldwide. Treatments have been elusive.

Although only a handful of clinical trials for MS light therapy have been conducted in people, evidence from a number of medical studies now shows that UV light, the highest-energy part of the solar spectrum that reaches Earth’s surface, has a surprising ability to calm an immune system that has bolted out of control. The new studies offer tantalizing hints that UV therapy might also work for other autoimmune diseases such as type 1 diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, Crohn’s disease, and colitis. All are more common in people who get very little sun exposure, as are maladies such as Alzheimer’s and cardiovascular disease that appear to have some immune system and inflammatory connections.

Now, scientists are hoping to decipher the pathways through which UV light causes the immune system to back down from its alarm state. They are tracking the way molecules in the skin, such as urocanic acid and lumisterol, which can affect immune system activity, respond to a shot of photons by triggering a cascade of signals that reach every organ in the body. Advocates say this work might lead to a blockbuster drug, an Ozempic for autoimmunity.

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Taylor Callery

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They only need one name. Whoopi. Will. Viola. Denzel. Cynthia. Morgan. Legends who carved their names into Hollywood’s highest peaks—often without a safety net. Before they were box-office draws, they were underdogs, fighting for roles that weren’t just afterthoughts, battling Hollywood’s narrow definition of “marketability,” and rewriting the script for what Black talent looks like on screen.

It’s easy to believe the war is over. In an era where Lupita Nyong’o wins an Oscar for her breakout role, where Jordan Peele reinvents horror, and where Beyoncé drops a Renaissance film that sells out theaters worldwide, it almost seems like we’ve arrived. But anyone who’s lived through Hollywood’s cycle of short-term amnesia knows better.

That’s exactly why Academy Award nominee Reginald Hudlin and Shola Lynch set out to make Number One on the Call Sheet. The film ​​sets out to remind us that Black actors aren’t just here; they’ve been here, fighting for space, legacy, and respect since the dawn of cinema. Directed by Hudlin (House Party, Boomerang) and Lynch (Free Angela and All Political Prisoners) and executive producer Bryan Smiley (HARTBEAT), the two-part documentary digs into the unfiltered reality of being Black in Hollywood. Not just the wins, but the near-misses, the coded rejection, and glass ceilings that, though cracked, haven’t fully shattered. Featuring over 30 actors, the doc unpacks what it really means to be number one on the call sheet when the system wasn’t built for you in the first place.

Pulling off a project of this scale? It took the “Avengers,” as the directors call them, to get these stars to sit down. Hudlin shares, “A lot of it came down to personal relationships. It was me either calling the person or Datari calling the person, calling their agent, calling their publicist.”

For many, the title alone says it all. The phrase “number one on the call sheet” carries weight—it’s a distinction that comes with prestige and responsibility. It means you’re the lead, the face of the production, the one everything revolves around. However, for Black actors, that title has historically been elusive. It’s a seat at the table that, for too long, felt reserved for someone else.

“The battles fought by the previous generation paved the way for us. Now, it’s our turn to fight,” Hudlin says.

The documentary dives deep into those journeys, tracing a history that starts long before today’s stars. Before Denzel’s commanding presence or Viola’s gut-wrenching monologues, there was Sam Lucas, the first Black actor to play Uncle Tom in a 1914 silent film. There was Hattie McDaniel, who won an Oscar for Gone with the Wind in 1940 but was forced to sit in a segregated section of the ceremony. There was Sidney Poitier, who carried the weight of dignity and grace in every role he took. Dorothy Dandridge, who dazzled Hollywood but was cast aside too soon. Every step forward was hard won, and every door cracked open had to be pried wide. “One of the lines I love in the men’s film is, what do you do when you get to the top of the mountain? Make more mountains. You gotta keep going. You can’t stop dreaming,” Lynch says.

The project is split into two films—one focusing on men, the other on women—and each takes a different lens to what it means to lead while Black. The men’s segment, Number One on the Call Sheet: Black Leading Men in Hollywood, directed by Hudlin and produced by Jamie Foxx, Kevin Hart, Datari Turner and Dan Cogan, takes on the evolution of Black male stardom, from trailblazers like Richard Roundtree in Shaft to Will Smith redefining what a global movie star could be.

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Photography By: Xavier Scott Marshall

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