This weekend, listen to a collection of articles from around The New York Times, read aloud by the reporters who wrote them.

For Giffords, Progress on Gun Safety Is Like Her Recovery: ‘Inch by Inch’

Written and narrated by Sheryl Gay Stolberg

Gabrielle Giffords, 52, who goes by Gabby, is arguably America’s most famous gun violence survivor. She was interviewed at the headquarters of the gun safety group that bears her name. Giffords had come there for an update and a strategy session. The timing of her visit underscored two competing truths: The gun safety movement she helps lead is stronger than ever. But the nation’s gun violence epidemic is worsening.

In part because of the efforts of Giffords, the group Ms. Giffords and her husband founded 10 years ago, so-called red flag laws aimed at keeping guns away from potentially dangerous people have now been enacted in 19 states and the District of Columbia; states adopted dozens of new gun safety laws in 2022 alone. Breaking nearly 30 years of partisan gridlock, Congress passed a modest package of gun safety measures last year. Democrats, who once feared the gun rights lobby, are now running on gun safety platforms.

But already this year, 84 people have died in 49 mass shootings, according to the Gun Violence Archive.

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Women Have Been Misled About Menopause

Written and narrated by Susan Dominus

Menopausal hormone therapy was once the most commonly prescribed treatment in the United States. In the late 1990s, some 15 million women a year were receiving a prescription for it. But in 2002, a single study, its design imperfect, found links between hormone therapy and elevated health risks for women of all ages. Panic set in; in one year, the number of prescriptions plummeted.

Hormone therapy carries risks, to be sure, as do many medications that people take to relieve serious discomfort, but dozens of studies since 2002 have provided reassurance that for healthy women under 60 whose hot flashes are troubling them, the benefits of taking hormones outweigh the risks. The treatment’s reputation, however, has never fully recovered, and the consequences have been wide-reaching.

About 85 percent of women experience menopausal symptoms. Rebecca Thurston, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh who studies menopause, believes that, in general, menopausal women have been underserved — an oversight that she considers one of the great blind spots of medicine. “It suggests that we have a high cultural tolerance for women’s suffering,” Thurston says. “It’s not regarded as important.”

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Mammoth Tusks in the East River? How Joe Rogan Started a ‘Bone Rush.’

Written and narrated by Michael Wilson

In a recent interview on “The Joe Rogan Experience,” which has an estimated audience of 11 million listeners per episode on Spotify, a guest from Alaska presented an explosive discovery: There are tens of thousands of priceless woolly mammoth tusks lying on the river floor.

“I’m going to start a bone rush,” the guest, John Reeves, a fossil collector and gold miner, announced.

“A bone rush?” Mr. Rogan asked.

“Yes, sir,” he replied. “We’ll see if anybody out there’s got a sense of adventure.”

The answer came quickly. The podcast episode, which aired Dec. 30, was an instant sensation. Without hesitation, several teams of men and women from around the country drove, flew and floated to New York City for a chance at finding a many-thousands-year-old artifact that could be worth at least six figures.

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A Small Boat, a Vast Sea and a Desperate Escape From Russia

Written and narrated by Mike Baker

A series of knocks rattled his apartment door one day last fall, and Maksim peered through the peephole to see two soldiers in uniform. They were military enlistment officers, he knew, expanding the vast conscription effort for the war in Ukraine to Russia’s remote Far East.

The 44-year-old fisherman kept in motionless silence until the officers moved along. Knowing they would be back, Maksim went that night to the home of a friend, Sergei, who had received an unwelcome visit of his own. Together, they pored over maps at Sergei’s kitchen table, trying to find a way to flee the country and a war where thousands of young Russian men were dying. Sergei then offered a plan that, at first, seemed unfathomable.

“I propose that we travel by sea,” Sergei said.

The idea was the start of a daring and daunting journey in which the two men set off in a small fishing boat with a 60-horsepower motor to travel hundreds of miles over several days — past Russian border guards and through the treacherous Bering Sea — to win asylum on U.S. shores. It was a desperate quest for freedom, and one that did not go according to plan.

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A Volatile Tool Emerges in the Abortion Battle: State Constitutions

Written and narrated by Kate Zernike

When the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and the constitutional right to abortion in June, it declared that it was sending the issue back to the “people and their elected representatives.” But the fight has largely moved to a different set of supreme courts and constitutions: those in the states.

On a single day this month, South Carolina’s highest court handed down its ruling that the right to privacy in the State Constitution includes a right to abortion, a decision that overturned the state’s six-week abortion ban. Within hours, Idaho’s highest court ruled in the opposite direction, saying that state’s Constitution did not protect abortion rights; the ban there would stand.

Those divergent decisions displayed how volatile and patchwork the fight over abortion rights will be over the next months, as abortion rights advocates and opponents push and pull over state constitutions.

The Times’s narrated articles are made by Tally Abecassis, Parin Behrooz, Anna Diamond, Sarah Diamond, Jack D’Isidoro, Aaron Esposito, Dan Farrell, Elena Hecht, Adrienne Hurst, Emma Kehlbeck, Tanya Pérez, Krish Seenivasan, Kate Winslett, John Woo and Tiana Young. Special thanks to Sam Dolnick, Ryan Wegner, Julia Simon and Desiree Ibekwe.