Articles

Not long ago, an acquaintance mentioned that her dad wears “wife beaters.” She was referring to the sleeveless, ribbed undershirt also known as an A-shirt. I myself have used the term before — and I’ve worn the shirt plenty — but this time it stopped me cold. Given the torrent of revelations of abuse against women in the #MeToo era, the name suddenly seemed grossly inappropriate. We don’t call our pants “child molest

Michael was on the 55th floor of a high rise in an Asian capital, in a conference room, when his world cracked open. His heart began to race and the building felt as if it were swaying. “I’m dying,” he remembers thinking. He excused himself from his meeting and returned to his hotel room. His mind on fire, he wondered how to call for help, whether insurance would cover him, and what his wife and two

When John Wick and his wife, Peggy Rathmann, bought their ranch in Marin County, Calif., in 1998, it was mostly because they needed more space. Rathmann is an acclaimed children’s book author — “Officer Buckle and Gloria” won a Caldecott Medal in 1996 — and their apartment in San Francisco had become cluttered with her illustrations. They picked out the 540-acre ranch in Nicasio mostly for its large barn, which they

There are lots of reasons to avoid processed foods. They’re often packed with sugar, fat and salt, and they tend to lack certain nutrients critical to health, like fiber. And now, new research suggests that some of the additives that extend the shelf life and improve the texture of these foods may have unintended side effects — not on our bodies directly, but on the human microbiome, the trillions of bacteria living

Once when I was a teenager, my mother called me from the mall because a man was masturbating in the parking lot she needed to walk through to get home. Could I come get her? My mother was small, but not easily intimidated. I had seen her tell off leering men in forceful Puerto Rican Spanish. So if she was asking, it was because she was worried. I picked my scrawny self up and, burning with impotent rage, went to chap

Sickle cell anemia was first described in 1910 and was quickly labeled a “black” disease. At a time when many people were preoccupied with an imagined racial hierarchy, with whites on top, the disease was cited as evidence that people of African descent were inferior. But what of white people who presented with sickle cell anemia? Doctors twisted themselves into knots trying to explain those cases away. White sickle

In recent weeks, wildfires have devastated parts of Northern California, killing at least 42 people, incinerating entire neighborhoods and sending thousands fleeing. I live on the east side of the San Francisco Bay, and for a few days last week, as gray ash rained down on my doorstep, and the sun was tinged an apocalyptic red, air quality was deemed worse than Beijing’s. The fires are now better contained, but this w

On Friday, “Despacito,” the hit song by the Puerto Rican artists Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee, became the most watched video on YouTube ever, with nearly three billion views. And it got there faster than any music video in history. Just over two weeks ago Universal Music announced it was also the most streamed song in history, if you combine the number of times people played the original song or video with a remixed v

There’s a well-to-do couple thinking about having children. They order a battery of genetic tests to ensure that there’s nothing untoward lurking in their genomes. And they discover that they each carry one copy of the sickle cell gene. If their children inherit two copies of the gene, they could develop anemia, which can cause joint pain, weakness and even death. So what should the couple do? For the last two decade