Favorite Articles

I’ve been a professional reporter for more than twenty years, and while I’ve spent the majority of my career at two newspapers, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, I’ve written for a variety of magazines, blogs, and other sources. Below is a list of my favorites, which I continually add to as time goes by.

From The New York Times

I've been writing for the Times since 2007. I created "Well," a daily health blog, and also write a weekly column. These are some of my favorite articles from the Times.

• A Clutter Too Deep for Mere Bins and Shelves
  Clutter is usually viewed as a house problem. But often it’s really a person problem.


• An Enduring Measure of Fitness: The Pushup
  As a symbol of health and wellness, nothing surpasses the simple push-up.


• Better Running Through Walking
  I am more couch potato than runner. But not long ago, I decided to get myself into shape to run in the New York City Marathon…I’m using the “run-walk” method, popularized by the distance coach Jeff Galloway, a member of the 1972 Olympic team.


• Finding The Best Way to Cook All Those Vegetables
  Are there ways to get more from the vegetables you already eat? A growing body of research shows that when it comes to vegetables, it’s not only how much we eat, but how we prepare them, that influences the amount of phytochemicals, vitamins and other n


• In Sisters, Love and Urge to Ring Her Neck
  Psychology literature is filled with studies on the complexity of sibling relationships, which are typically the longest relationships we have in a lifetime. The sister relationship is one of the most prone to conflict and rivalry.


• Inside the Mind of the Boy Dating Your Daughter
  Are boys that age really defined primarily by their sexual urges? Or does the stereotype fall short, telling us less about teenage males and more about a culture that seems to have consistently low expectations of its boys?


• The Cat Who Got Swine Flu
  The first documented case of a feline with the new H1N1 virus, commonly called swine flu.


• The Jiggle Factor
  Exercise is all about moving your body. But some body parts move more than you want them to.


• The Myth of Rampant Teenage Promiscuity
  In many ways, today’s teenagers are more conservative about sex than previous generations.

Magazines, Blogs, etc.

In addition to my work at the New York Times I also write periodically for magazines and websites. Here are some of my favorites.

• How NIH Misread Hormone Study (Wall Street Journal)
  On July 9, 2002, federal government health officials announced that they had halted a major study of menopause hormones, saying the drugs increased a woman’s risk of heart attack by 29%. But in the five years since, it’s become clear that some aspects of


• How To Give Your Child a Longer Life (Mombu.com)
  It may be hard to believe that the health decisions you make for a five-year-old today will still count when he or she is 50. But a growing body of evidence shows that childhood is actually the best time to start protecting an aging body, buckling it in f


• Ladies and Germs (More Magazine)
  Two science writers discuss animal jokes and why parasites are our friends


• Lessons Learned from Doctors, Patients and My Mother (Wall Street Journal)
  When my mother was diagnosed with a life-threatening cancer a few summers ago, she was convinced that my knowledge of the medical system would help save her.


• The Secrets of Successful Aging (Wall Street Journal)
  Today, the average person in the U.S. lives for nearly 78 years. But what about those people who beat the average? Why do some men and women defy the chronological odds to live longer and in good health? Increasingly, the scientific community is shifting


• What the Viagra Experience is Really Like (USRF.org)
  For all its ubiquity, Viagra is surprisingly misunderstood. We all know what it does — and what it helps men do — but beyond that, how much does anyone really know about the Viagra experience?

Podcasts

Here are some of my favorite podcasts from the "Well" blog.

• Do Doctors View Women as "Pre-Pregnant?"
  A recent report raised concerns about women of childbearing age sharing prescription drugs. While the focus of the study was on drug sharing, readers of the Well blog took the discussion in an entirely different direction.


• The Well Podcast: An Overweigh Child's Photo Stirs Debate
  [A] photo appeared with a recent post I wrote about childhood obesity. Readers were critical of me not only for showing the picture, but for my later comment that I found the picture to be “sad.” I see a child who likely is teased by peers and is at r


• The Well Podcast: More Fun With Optical Illusions
  Last week, my post about the spinning dancer drove many readers to distraction…I asked one of the world’s leading authorities on optical illusions, Al Seckel, to talk about the spinning dancer and other optical illusions.


• The Well Podcast: More on Wasted Food
  To learn more about the link between health and food waste, I spoke with journalist Jonathan Bloom, whose Web site WastedFood.com tracks the numerous ways Americans waste food.


• The Well Podcast: Talking About Autism
  [A recent busy] post on the Well blog is about Hannah Poling, a 9-year-old girl at the center of a new controversy about autism and vaccines.


• The Well Podcast: Understanding Elevator Dreams
  What do you dream about? Many readers of the Well blog apparently are dreaming about elevators…Readers shared numerous stories of their own elevator experiences, and many of them recounted their own elevator dreams and nightmares…