It was the most ambitious social experiment ever conducted by the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development. And one of the most surprising. In 1994, HUD randomly assigned…

Lauren R. Weinstein is a cartoonist based in New Jersey. She is currently working on a graphic novel tentatively entitled How to Draw a Nose. Her previous books include Girl Stories and The…

Mintamir makes sure all five of her children wear shoes, so that they don’t share her fate. She wants to protect their feet from magic. She lives in the corner of a cornfield in…

A few years ago, when my oldest daughter was still nursing, I went through a panicky phase. I had committed to a run of public-speaking engagements, and I constantly worried that I…

My father, a neurologist, once had a patient who was tormented, in the most visceral sense, by a poem. Philip was 12 years old and a student at a prestigious boarding school in Princeton,…

For Kai Brothers, 1981 marked the beginning and the end of a golden era. That was the year he turned 19, moved to San Francisco to join one of the world’s largest gay communities,…

What do Jamie Lee Curtis, gut bacteria, and a long forgotten Russian scientist have in common? Why, yogurt, of course. But wait, the answer is not that easy. Behind it stretches a…

One day in March 2010, Isak McCune started clearing his throat with a forceful, violent sound. The New Hampshire toddler was 3, with a Beatles mop of blonde hair and a cuddly, loving…

I had little idea of what I would discover when I set out to find and photograph the oldest living things in the world. I expected that researching, traveling, and photographing would…

Jack Gernsheimer met my car at the bottom of the lane. He looked good this summery Sunday, rested and tan. The logo on his T-shirt was one he and his brother designed years ago, featuring…