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The Shazam Effect
Record companies are tracking download and search data to predict which new songs will be hits. This has been good for business—but is it bad for music?
The real roots of midlife crisis, the curious case of Jesus's wife, when schools are too strict, the coming fall of Facebook, the new science of hit songs, and more
Record companies are tracking download and search data to predict which new songs will be hits. This has been good for business—but is it bad for music?
Lab tests have suggested that a papyrus scrap mentioning Jesus’s wife is authentic. Why do most scholars believe it’s fake?
The backlash against no-excuses discipline in high school
Science keeps revealing how much we don't, perhaps can't, know. Yet humans seek closure, which should make religious pluralists of us all.
Remembering a time when Islamist extremists wanted to persuade reporters, not kill them
How gender and place shape um and uh
Despite his best efforts, Maryland’s Martin O’Malley might be the most ignored candidate of 2016.
A better way to dispense prescriptions
Why many companies now take their cues from religious sects
When to be yourself, and when not to be
The social network's future dominance is far from assured.
How nature itself could become a city’s best defense against extreme weather
The demise of America’s cigarette addiction has been greatly exaggerated.
The toy-crazed "kidults" of South Korea
A very short book excerpt
Dylan Thomas embodied the essence of poetry—even if his poems themselves have not held up well.
Why unplanned births are a bigger problem than unmarried parents
Working the literary landscape of international espionage, the novelist Denis Johnson specializes in madness.
A Bauhaus artist’s classic, with a new app, is eye-opening.
Why it’s so hard to get a decent drink before your flight—and why that may soon change
Peter Stamm’s All Days Are Night follows two characters in search of a cure.
Responses and reverberations
What was the greatest gift of all time?