The company has spent billions on cases about one of its most popular products. As its executives try a brazen new legal strategy to stop the litigation, corporate America takes note: Johnson & Johnson has always insisted, including to this magazine, that its baby powder is “safe, asbestos-free, and does not cause cancer”; however, a 2016 […]
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Lucky’s Last Run
“One dog and two complete strangers set out to run across America.”
Welcome to Cancerland
Esteemed journalist and activist Barbara Ehrenreich died Sept. 1, at the age of 81. A prolific author, Ehrenreich wrote seminal books and essays about economic inequality, feminism, and many other topics. But among her most celebrated works is a deeply personal one, which she wrote after being diagnosed with breast cancer: I could take my […]
Where Truffles Thrive, the Week’s Top 5, and a Member Drive
“Before we became such a complex profusion of cells, we were driven by chemical impulse, which a truffle knows better than anyone. That’s why they fetch the prices they do. Why animals will harm themselves to unearth a fruit. Why truffle hunters are poisoning one another’s dogs. Why suspected truffle thieves in French orchards get […]
What the Journey Brings, and Our Weekly Top 5
“I-95 is an artery of ambition, movement, and flight. A place where millions of people hurry toward love and loss, carrying their hope, their grief, their ordinary Tuesdays, all at 70 miles per hour.” A favorite program of mine is Race Across the World. The concept is simple: Teams must cross entire countries without flying, armed only […]
An Open Palm
Fowzia Karimi moved from Oakland, California to Denton, Texas in 2014, deep in grief following the death of her mother. In Texas she found an unexpected, pervasive warmth and kindness among the community, one that not only helped her to navigate the “vast foggy wilderness” of grief, but also to face her own cancer diagnosis […]
The Meaning of Tattoos and Our Top 5 of the Week
“When my father-in-law was growing up in Baltimore and misbehaved in Hebrew school with his friends, their teachers would calmly unbutton their cuffs and roll up their sleeves, revealing their tattoos from Auschwitz. I’ve seen worse, the tattoos said. Or perhaps, This could happen to you.” What does your tattoo mean? It’s a question often asked of […]
Ten Outstanding Short Stories to Read in 2025
Kickstart your reading year with 10 short stories selected by longtime contributor Pravesh Bhardwaj.
The Power and Peril of the ICU
“…sometimes ICU care doesn’t buy time; it imposes burdens on what time we have left.”
Scar Stories: The Toll of Colon Cancer
“When Chadwick Boseman died from colon cancer, Ibram X. Kendi, one of the country’s most renowned historians of racism, felt moved to speak up about his own fight against a disease that disproportionately afflicts Black men. He decided to reveal the scars from his own surgery—to wear them as visible signs of triumph over adversity. […]

