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It was a series of upending life events over a period of years—some bad, some good, all unexpected and disorienting—that gradually propelled me into a state of mind-numbing, body-exhausting burnout. First, there was my husband’s cancer, his surgery, and the seven months spent watching him suffer through the spirit-breaking ordeal of chemotherapy. During those months, I’d prayed and cried and white-knuckled my way through an endless, dark valley of alternating fear, anguish, and desperate...

A new California law that gives all juveniles the right to a hearing before they can be transferred to adult court will require training and vigilance across the state to put in place, supporters say. Among the many boxes to check off: Many defenders, prosecutors and judges have to learn how to apply the law’s intricacies. The juvenile system as a whole has to prepare to offer services to teenagers who likely would have ended up in adult prison. And the legal community will have to grapple...

Immigration has become a favorite political buzzword leading up to today’s election, taken to symbolize the fundamental differences between our two major presidential candidates. But the recent spike in discussions around immigration can obscure a long stalemate: America has been stuck on immigration reform for three decades. Whoever takes control of the Oval Office in January will inherit a legacy of immigration-law false starts — and face the burden of trying to beat that streak. [For more...

Nationwide, a movement is growing to address what civil rights advocates have called a “wealth-based detention scheme”—the traditional bail system, which often holds arrestees who can’t scrape together the funds to post bail, even for minor offenses. About 450,000 Americans are held in jails each day because of inability to pay, according to the Southern Center for Human Rights in Atlanta and Equal Justice Under Law, a Washington-based civil rights group. Eric Holder, the former attorney...

In April , Creative Learning Preschool in the center of downtown Madison, Wisconsin, launched an ambitious campaign : to raise half a million dollars to buy the building they had operated out of for 19 years. As rents continue to spike in Madison, public day cares have struggled to stay in place. The only other nonprofit child care option for downtown parents, Red Caboose, announced a move to the east side of the city in September. If Creative Learning were forced out, “there would be nobody...

On a recent morning, 15 women gathered in a mint-green classroom at First Lutheran Church in Longmont, Colorado, to learn more about the fundamentals of childcare. They talked about mapping out daily schedules with time for reading activities, group play, meals, and naps. They traded tips about the inexpensive educational materials available at Dollar Tree stores. But this was no Saturday-morning babysitting boot camp. It was part of a 120-hour training course that will eventually earn...

Not only does criminalization and mass incarceration disproportionately affect people of color, immigrants, and low-income Americans, the disparity is also apparent among LGBT people in those demographic categories, a recent study by the Center for American Progress found. The analysis noted that more than 7 percent of people in U.S. prisons and jails, identified as lesbian, gay, or bisexual. That is almost double the percentage of Americans overall who identify as such. Francis Nichols is a...

Most of the 3rd-graders in Anita Parameswaran’s class at Daniel Webster Elementary in San Francisco have had experiences so awful that their brains won’t let them easily forget. “Whether it be that they’ve been sexually molested, or they’ve seen domestic violence, or shootings, or they know somebody who’s passed away,” Parameswaran said, “I would say every single year about 75 percent, give or take, come in with a lot of trauma.” Now a national campaign is recognizing, backed by research on...

When James Redford showed up for our interview, I initially thought there must’ve been some sort of mistake. The man seated across the table from me looked so much like his father—the iconic star of “ Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid ,” “The Candidate,” “All the President’s Men” and “ All Is Lost ”—that I assumed Robert Redford had simply showed up in his son’s place. Yet this was indeed James, an accomplished filmmaker in his own right, not to mention a tremendously gracious and...

Donald Trump’s presidential campaign famously made much ado about “inner cities”—those hellish parts of U.S. metros where “the blacks” live . As my colleague Brentin Mock recently pointed out , the phrase is decades-old innuendo for black crime. Outdated as it may be, there is a nugget of truth that can be extracted from it: Too many cities do have pockets of concentrated poverty—and Democrats as well as Republicans need to take responsibility for that . But the same is increasingly true of...

Take a deep breath, expanding your belly. Pause. Exhale slowly to the count of five. Repeat four times. Congratulations. You’ve just calmed your nervous system. Controlled breathing, like what you just practiced, has been shown to reduce stress, increase alertness and boost your immune system. For centuries yogis have used breath control, or pranayama, to promote concentration and improve vitality. Buddha advocated breath-meditation as a way to reach enlightenment. Science is just beginning...

Erik Vance didn't go to a doctor until he was 18; he grew up in California in a family that practiced Christian Science. "For the first half of my life, I never questioned the power of God to heal me," Vance writes in his new book, Suggestible You : Placebos, False Memories, Hypnosis, and the Power of Your Astonishing Brain. As a young man, Vance left the faith behind, but as he became a science journalist he didn't stop thinking about how people's beliefs and expectations affect their...