Last week, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released a report—a klaxon, really—warning of the catastrophic consequences of climate change if global political leaders don’t take action right now. For people who’ve been sounding the alarm for decades now, this report is depressing but not surprising; for…

Faked moon landing, #PizzaGate, September 11th was an inside job, Vince Foster was murdered by the Clintons to cover up Whitewater, the Sandy Hook massacre was a hoax—the list of American conspiracy theories is long and bizarre. Side-show paranoid nonsense becomes alarming and enraging, however, when ordinary people…

Well, that was quick: Less than a day after Grassley’s performance at the Senate Judiciary Committee’s hearing investigating Christine Blasey Ford’s allegation of sexual assault against nominee Brett Kavanaugh, a Crowdpac has been started to fund his future opponent in 2022. In roughly 14 hours, it’s raised about…

The news cycle is enough to make you lose hope. Every day brings some fresh horror, or an update on an ongoing horror, or rumblings of horrors to come. It’s like being repeatedly smacked in the face with a tetherball. The events of the last couple of years have pushed some of us to be more politically active, which…

If you’ve ever been in the hospital recovering from a surgery, you know the health care providers will ask you to “rate” your pain on a scale of 1 to 10, so they can administer pain relief if you need it. But assessing mental-health distress doesn’t have a simple 1-10 scale, because mental health isn’t as…

Actors have a saying: You don’t get 100% of the parts you don’t audition for. If you’re an artistic type, or a writerly type, or even just someone who’s looking for a job, you may have found rejections to be so painful that you’ve just stopped applying for things. Social media and streaming TV is so soothing—why would…

Unless you were hiking the Appalachian Trail this weekend, you probably know that Michelle Wolf delivered the standard “roast” at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner on Saturday night and delivered some choice lines skewering the Trump administration and the media. From the reaction, you’d be forgiven for thinking…

Later this year, Stockton, a city in California with a 25% poverty rate, will conduct an unusual experiment: Roughly 100 of its citizens will receive $500 a month for 12-18 months, with no work requirements and no strings attached. Researchers likely will regularly assess the recipients’ health, childcare…

A lot of eggs are being recalled! More than 200 million eggs, in fact, due to a salmonella outbreak that has been traced to a North Carolina farm. This farm has halted distribution of its eggs, which have sickened 22 people. Business Insider reports the eggs were sold primarily at Walmart and Food Lion in nine states:…

What happens if your picky-eating child doesn’t grow out of it? What if you’re begging a 15-year-old to just taste a green vegetable? After all, by the time they’re adolescents, kids have spending money, autonomy, and access to plenty of junk food. So what is a parent supposed to do when the strategies they used when…

When you have babies and small kids, people give you so much advice—breast-feed, bottle-feed, co-sleep, use an infant straightjacket, get an electric swing that achieves as much noise and velocity as a rocket—that you can’t even remember it all. But one thing I do remember is that everyone insisted we make time for a…

It’s college-acceptance-letter season, so if you have a kid in high school, you know that students across the country are anxiously waiting to find out whether they got into Dream U or will have to settle for something less. If you’ve got a high-school junior (or are a high-school junior), you might be thinking ahead…

Last week a vandal, presumably a right-to-life activist, spray-painted “Baby Killer” across the front of a women’s health clinic. The catch? In a plot twist worthy of The Gift of The Magi, it turns out that the clinic was actually a “crisis pregnancy center,” or an anti-choice operation dedicated to talking women out…

When I was a child in small-town West Virginia, there weren’t many options for entertainment after school or on weekends: I could walk to a friend’s house. I could watch TV on our 13 fuzzy channels. Or I could read. And so I read, and read, and read—hours and even whole days would pass with no interruptions. I didn’t…

The school shooting in Parkland, Florida has sparked a wave of student activism across the country: Teenagers are marching, organizing, and taking to social media to pressure their reps for meaningful gun legislation. In the last two weeks students have walked out of school to protest, and there are more protests…

High school and college students are suffering from unprecedented levels of anxiety, and anyone raising teenagers these days knows they’re coping with huge amounts of stress. This goes double for girls, who have what Rachel Simmons calls “role overload” in her new book Enough as She Is: How to Help Girls Move Beyond…

Yesterday, survivors of the mass shooting at Stoneman Douglas High School met their senator, Marco Rubio, at a CNN town hall meeting. It didn’t go well (for Rubio). In fact, he and NRA spokeswoman Dana Loesch were “jeered and lectured” at the forum, which was attended by survivors of the shooting and the father of a…

The workday, for me, has a predictable arc: Those first glorious hours of possibility and productivity; lunch; dead-eyed stare/coma; revival in which a hour or two of work is accomplished; and then one final hour of trying not to click on Olympians curling with cats.

Heartbreaking headlines announcing a new mass shooting in the U.S. have become a grimly familiar part of the news cycle, and yet, legislation placing restrictions on firearms seems to barely budge. Feeling helpless and enraged? You’re not alone—and you’re not helpless. I spoke to Shannon Watts, the founder of Moms…

The first important decision a married couple makes is ... how to get married. Black tie at the Ritz? Clambake at the shore? Backyard potluck? Research shows you might be better off with a cheap—but well-attended—wedding. Scott Stanley and Galena K. Rhoades, professors and researchers for the Institute of Family…