I’ve been rereading Watership Down, the classic by Richard Adams. It’s a story about rabbits, but it’s also about much more than that. A part of me is always worried about revisiting an old classic, since I’m afraid that I’ll notice that it just isn’t as magical as I remembered. In the case of Watership Down, I had no reason to be concerned. I was happy to see that my friends Hazel, Fiver, Bigwig, and the rest of the clan were still just as lively the second…

I just spent the past week in Vegas, and boy, did my skin feel like it was actually sizzling in that 100-degree heat. The sun feels much stronger out there—and indeed, the UV index was 9 in Vegas today, compared to 7 in NYC. You can look up the UV index for your city here on the EPA’s website. It definitely served as a catalyst for getting serious about finding a quality sunscreen that I could apply on my body every day (without going broke). And I think I found it: Alba Botanica…

If you’ve ever seen the package for an Asian sunscreen before, you may have noticed a lot of plus signs on the bottle. They aren’t just there to make you feel positive (get it? ha!)—they actually refer to the sunscreen’s level of UVA protection. SPF measures a sunscreen’s UVB protection. Europe and Asia actually have established UVA testing and labeling standards (hence the PA+++ on labels). However, this doesn’t mean that you can’t ask companies directly,…