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Everett Collection Why Singin’ in the Rain Is an Almost Perfect Musical
The 1952 film exemplifies the key elements of a beloved Hollywood genre.
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Jasmin Merdan / Getty Inside R/Relationships, the Unbearably Human Corner of Reddit
How a subreddit seemingly destined to devolve into chaos stays remarkably sane
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Abd Doumany / Getty In Syria, America Had No Good Options
When every policy choice was terrible, finding the least bad one became the only way forward.
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Stringer / Getty Silicon Valley Is One of the Most Polluted Places in the Country
Microchip manufacturers contaminated the groundwater in the 1980s. Almost 40 years later, the cleanup still isn’t complete.
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Jens Schlueter / Getty STEM Is Overrated
College is not just job prep, and the job market changes constantly.
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Stefan Wermuth / Reuters You Can’t Keep Your Parents’ Skulls
Under U.S. law, it’s nearly impossible to get permission to decapitate and de-flesh a relative’s remains.
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Whitman College / The Atlantic How I Became an ‘Accidental’ Professor
My love and respect for the craft of writing fuel my commitment to teaching it. But it was a long time before I could envision academia including someone like me.
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Everett Collection The Paradox of Peanuts
Charles Schulz’s kid characters are precocious, cruel, and nihilistic. They’re also among the most compelling in children’s literature.
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Ben Westhoff The Brazen Way a Chinese Company Pumped Fentanyl Ingredients Into the U.S.
Yuancheng used an army of young, perky salespeople to peddle illegal chemicals to Americans.
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John Marion / Bluegrass The Military-Style Surveillance Technology Being Tested in American Cities
In the eyes of the law, there’s no difference between a photo taken by a smartphone through an airplane window and one taken by an ultrapowerful camera in a helicopter hovering over your backyard.
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Ralph Morse / The LIFE Picture Collection / ... ‘The Fires of Their Ascent’
An excerpt from Of a Fire on the Moon, Norman Mailer’s seminal 1969 account of Apollo 11
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Jack Wilkes / The LIFE Picture Collection / ... The Bizarre Ways America’s First Spy Agency Tried to Overthrow Hitler
From undercover heiresses to hormone-injected vegetables, the early days of the Office of Strategic Services were marked by colorful hires and wild schemes.
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Library of Congress The Philosophy Behind the First American Dictionary
In 1789, Noah Webster called on the newly independent United States to claim its own national version of the English language.
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Heritage Images / Getty The Lucrative Black Market in Human Fat
In 16th- and 17th-century Europe, physicians, butchers, and executioners alike hawked the salutary effects of Axungia hominis.
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Penguin Classics John Okada’s No-No Boy Is a Test of American Character
The re-release of a classic novel about Japanese Americans’ incarceration during World War II is an opportunity to reflect on the nation’s persistent internal conflicts.
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Lee Jin-man / AP The Problem With Social-Media Protests
Online movements can burn out faster than campaigns that spend months or even years forging in-person connections.
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Scott Barbour / Getty Recruiting Women to Online Dating Was a Challenge
Match.com started with questions about weight and explicit sexual preferences. Half the population wasn’t that into it.
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AP Penguins Were a Lonely Explorer’s Best Friends
When the ice closed in, the earliest Antarctic expeditions turned to the birds for discovery, meat, and camaraderie.
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Stringer / Reuters Weibo’s Free-Speech Failure
How a dissident movement almost broke through China’s internet censorship
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Javier Galeano / AP Can a Dolphin Really Commit Rape?
Nature isn’t cruel—it’s just careless.
