Milk is mundane in most contexts, but you can’t help noticing when it is smeared across the upper lips of America’s government officials. An image of Donald Trump sporting a…

Many Americans enthusiastically partake in Dry January, but it is rarely pitched as fun. After the holiday stretch of office parties and family gatherings, Americans have come to use the…

The Save gas station on the west side of Gary, Indiana, wants customers to know that they can pay for their groceries with food stamps. When I pulled into the…

Before Adam Sharples became a molecular physiologist studying muscle memory, he played professional rugby. Over his years as an athlete, he noticed that he and his teammates seemed to return…

Antiviral drugs for influenza, the best known of which is Tamiflu, are—let’s be honest—not exactly miracle cures. They marginally shorten the course of illness, especially if taken within the first…

The flu situation in the United States right now is, in a word, bad. Infections have skyrocketed in recent weeks, filling hospitals nearly to capacity; viral levels are “high” or…

On a recent Tuesday morning, I was blessed with a miracle in a mini-mart. I had set out to find the protein bar I kept hearing about, only to find…

Every night before bedtime, my daughter tilts back her head so that a pair of metal plates inside her mouth can be cranked apart another quarter of a millimeter. We…

The deer were out there. The crisp tracks in the snow made that clear. Three hours into our hunt through the frigid New Hampshire woods, Ryan Calsbeek, a rangy 51-year-old…

Every few weeks I turn up in a hospital gown at a medical exam room in Massachusetts and describe a set of symptoms that I don’t really have. Students listen…