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?
December 2014
In This Issue
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
Features
The Curious Case of Jesus’s Wife
Lab tests have suggested that a papyrus scrap mentioning Jesus’s wife is authentic. Why do most scholars believe it’s fake?
How Strict Is Too Strict?
The backlash against no-excuses discipline in high school
Why God Will Not Die
Science keeps revealing how much we don't, perhaps can't, know. Yet humans seek closure, which should make religious pluralists of us all.
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Laurent Van Der Stockt/Gamma-Rapho/Getty Before the Beheadings
Remembering a time when Islamist extremists wanted to persuade reporters, not kill them
Post Typography Things That Make You Go ‘Um’
How gender and place shape um and uh
John Cuneo The Long Shot
Despite his best efforts, Maryland’s Martin O’Malley might be the most ignored candidate of 2016.
Gregory Reid The Pill Pusher
A better way to dispense prescriptions
Matt Chase Turning Customers Into Cultists
Why many companies now take their cues from religious sects
Kyle Platts Faking It
When to be yourself, and when not to be
Álvaro Dominguez The Fall of Facebook
The social network's future dominance is far from assured.
Haisam Hussein The Water Next Time
How nature itself could become a city’s best defense against extreme weather
How to Break a National Habit
The demise of America’s cigarette addiction has been greatly exaggerated.
Elle/Cute in Korea Guys in Toyland
The toy-crazed "kidults" of South Korea
Wikipedia Commons The Victorian Condom
A very short book excerpt
The Culture File
Denise Nestor The Last Rock-Star Poet
Dylan Thomas embodied the essence of poetry—even if his poems themselves have not held up well.
Edmon De Haro Pregnancy and the Single Woman
Why unplanned births are a bigger problem than unmarried parents
Chris Koehler Drifter, Dealer, Madman, Spy
Working the literary landscape of international espionage, the novelist Denis Johnson specializes in madness.
Josef Albers The Secrets of Color
A Bauhaus artist’s classic, with a new app, is eye-opening.
Todd Heisler/The New York Times/Redux Your Airport’s Bartender Problem
Why it’s so hard to get a decent drink before your flight—and why that may soon change
A Postmodern Riff on Thomas Mann
Peter Stamm’s All Days Are Night follows two characters in search of a cure.
Departments
The Conversation
Responses and reverberations
Graham Roumieu The Big Question
What was the greatest gift of all time?
Poetry
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