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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

I have a piece on carbon farming in The New York Times Magazine. It tells the story of the people behind the Marin Carbon Project. A lot ended up on the cutting room floor. At one point, the story was almost 50 percent longer than its current length. So a few things: First, if you want to know more about regenerative agriculture, I highly recommend David Montgomery’s book Growing A Revolution. And if you’re intereste

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

What can we learn from chimps and sheep and maybe even insects that practice medicine on themselves? Read the story at the NY Times magazine.

For decades, Wunsiedel, a German town near the Czech border, has struggled with a parade of unwanted visitors. It was the original burial place of one of Adolf Hitler’s deputies, a man named Rudolf Hess. And every year, to residents’ chagrin, neo-Nazis marched to his grave site. The town had staged counterdemonstrations to dissuade these pilgrims. In 2011 it had exhumed Hess’s body and even removed his grave stone. B