Kristen V. Brown

Donald Trump’s first term saw a great deal of political polarization. Right- and left-leaning Americans disagreed about environmental regulation and immigration. They disagreed about vaccines and reproductive rights. And they disagreed about whether or not to have children: As Republicans […]

At about midnight each weekday, a group of five men and women arrives at the darkened restaurant doors of Sobre Masa in Brooklyn and performs a sacred art of transformation. Heirloom corn—hundreds of pounds in shades of blue, yellow, red—is

One dreary November Monday as I was enjoying a morning cup of tea, my phone alerted me that my cat, Avalanche, was exercising less than usual. For the past six weeks, Avalanche has worn a sleek black-and-gold collar that tracks

The second time I freaked out about bedbugs, my landlord suggested I might be overreacting, just a tad. My husband and I had fought back an infestation just five months earlier; now, after finding a single bedbug on my pillow—sated

Abortion policy in America is at a stalemate. Republicans will take control of Congress in January, ready to block any national protections—but with a slim majority, making a national ban unlikely. At the state level, pro-choice advocates have focused for

Produced by ElevenLabs and News Over Audio (NOA) using AI narration. Sign up for Being Human, a newsletter that explores wellness culture, mortality and disease, and other mysteries of the body and the mind. When Mary-Claire King discovered the first

The news came four years ago, at the end of a casual phone call. Bill’s family had always thought it was a freak coincidence that his father and grandfather both had ALS. But at the end of a catch-up, Bill’s

In the fall of 2021, Tammi Kromenaker started looking for a new home for her North Dakota abortion clinic. For more than 20 years, Red River Women’s Clinic had provided abortion care to the Fargo area, most of that time

The little clump of cells looked almost like a human embryo. Created from stem cells, without eggs, sperm, or a womb, the embryo model had a yolk sac and a proto-placenta, resembling a state that real human embryos reach after

23andMe is not doing well. Its stock is on the verge of being delisted. It shut down its in-house drug-development unit last month, only the latest in several rounds of layoffs. Last week, the entire board of directors quit, save