“All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players; They have their exits, and their entrances, And one man in his time plays many parts, His acts being seven ages.”…

One day in late December 1899, Elie Metchnikoff, one of the world’s most famous biologists, woke up to discover he had found the key to immortality. That, at least, was what the…

For the loved ones we’ve all lost, for the families that we can still save, let’s make America the country that cures cancer once and for all. —President Barack Obama, State…

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…