Índex per April 4, 2016 a TIME Magazine

To some extent, Americans are what they buy. Consumption trends--what people purchase more of, and what they suddenly stop buying--reveal a lot about what's happening in U.S. culture. Here are four products experiencing a recent surge in demand. HOT DOGS Burger King kicked off a pricing war by adding grilled dogs to its menu, leading veteran sellers like 7-Eleven and Checkers to offer deals. The result: more people eating fast-food hot dogs. BOWL MEALS Sales of entrees served in bowls are up significantly over the past five years. Chefs like how they mix flavors, while diners view them as healthy (no bread, lots of veggies) and pretty (hello, Instagram). GUNS A string of mass shootings and a fear of new gun-buying regulations have pushed firearm sales to all-time…

On a recent weekend, a 6-year-old named Lexi was playing with her foster siblings in their backyard in Santa Clarita, Calif. Days later, on March 21, social workers took Lexi from her foster parents, Rusty and Summer Page, who have raised her since she was 2, and placed her with distant relatives in Utah. Even though the Utah family is related to Lexi only by marriage, a judge ruled that she should be placed with them. At issue is the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA,) a 1978 federal law meant to keep Native American families intact. Lexi is one sixty-fourth Choctaw. The Pages, who have tried repeatedly to adopt Lexi, have appealed the case to the California Supreme Court. The fight has reignited tensions over custody of Native American children,…

One of the first public battles over solar power was fought at the very highest political level. President Jimmy Carter saw solar power as an antidote to U.S. dependence on foreign oil, and he installed panels on the roof of the White House during his time in office. But his successor, Ronald Reagan, was less enamored of renewable energy's potential--and had the panels removed in one of his first acts as President. Today the war over rooftop solar still rages, if at a lower register. In the past decade, the value of annual rooftop installations has soared more than twentyfold, to $7.4 billion in the U.S. in 2015, and analysts expect the total number of homes with solar panels to cross the 1 million threshold this year. But whether that…

Dates are important to a person who knows he's dying of cancer. There's the day when he learned he was sick. There's the date of his first surgery, or of the first time a vein in his forearm was punctured with a tube full of poison. There are also those dates in the future--each one a temporal goalpost that represents hope when every day feels doubtful. For Mike Hindt, who was diagnosed two years ago with metastatic pancreatic cancer, that date was April 23, 2016. That's when the first of his four children will get married, and despite his dismal prognosis, Hindt, 56, was determined to see his second oldest say his vows. The trouble was, Mike had run out of traditional treatment options. He had already had extensive surgery…

Many chapter books have documented the love between a boy and his dog. Sara Pennypacker's moving February novel, Pax, already a best seller, tweaks the formula by focusing on a boy, Peter, and his fox, Pax. The two have been inseparable for years when Peter's father goes to war and an evacuation forces Peter to abandon Pax. Pennypacker is gifted at drawing her reader into an ambiguous but familiar place: there are Jolly Ranchers and baseball diamonds but nary an iPhone. And if it's unclear why Pax and Peter are evacuating, it doesn't matter. They are determined to reunite, and therein lies the momentum of the novel. Pennypacker's elegant language and insight into human nature spin a fable extolling empathy above all. Peter sometimes feels as if he's seeing through…

'This is a dark moment for our nation. We need calm and solidarity.' Charles Michel, Belgian Prime Minister, after a series of terrorist attacks in Brussels left at least 34 people dead and more than 200 injured Prince The musician announced that he'll release a memoir in 2017 GOOD WEEK BAD WEEK Prince Andrew The British royal was accused of illegally ramming through park gates with his car 'We shouldn't have to drop to our knees at any point.' Serena Williams, tennis star, responding to outrage over tennis official Raymond Moore's statement that female players "ride on the coattails of the men." Moore, who soon apologized and resigned, had also said, "If I was a lady player, I'd go down every night on my knees and thank God that…

It's easy to assume that dreams are nothing but neural nonsense: a series of random scenes and images, with few discernible health benefits, that distract us while we sleep. But modern neuroscience tells a different story--namely, that dreams can prime us to be spiritual, in one form or another. To understand why, it helps to understand what happens to our bodies when we dream. Though we may not be physically conscious during sleep, at times our brains remain extremely active, especially in the networks responsible for visual imagination, emotional memories and instinctual responses. These are the elements that characterize what psychologist C.G. Jung called "big dreams": intense, memorable experiences such as magical flying, visitations from the dead, nightmares of demonic attack and lucid dreams of higher consciousness. And such dreams…

Let it be recorded that on March 21, 2016, addressing the American Israel Public Affairs Committee in Washington, D.C., Donald Trump used a teleprompter. This is progress. It shows that Trump understands that, on occasion, care must be exercised in his choice of words. Not that he had much to say. He played within the usual pander lines observed by his fellow candidates. There were nuanced differences with Hillary Clinton and John Kasich, both of whom were very well received by this crowd, but the essential message was the same: Israel is our BFF, it will decide when and how to make peace with the Palestinians, and Iran had better be careful about anti-Israel aggression in word or deed. And while Trump speaking with a teleprompter doesn't quite approach the…

Steve Martin was riding his bike alongside Manhattan's West Side Highway a couple of summers back when the idea first struck him. He and singer-songwriter Edie Brickell, his collaborator on the Grammy-winning 2013 bluegrass album Love Has Come for You, had been toying with the notion of writing a Broadway musical together. They felt their music--rootsy, melodic, often narrative-driven--would adapt well to the theater. All they needed was a story. Martin's bicycle epiphany was to use one of their songs, "Sarah Jane and the Iron Mountain Baby," as a jumping-off point. With Brickell's encouragement, he set about writing a book for the show--a story set in Asheville, N.C., at the end of World War II, when a hometown boy returns from the war and then, via flashbacks to the 1920s,…

You recorded a whole other album before this one and scrapped the material, saying it didn't feel right. What felt right about these songs? It was really a lifesaver record for me. It wasn't until I had to go through the worst tragedy that it really opened up a channel for me to be like, "God gave me a gift. I'm going to use it now. Because if I don't, I'm going to die." Are you offended when the media focus on the men in your life [ex-husband Gavin Rossdale and new beau Blake Shelton] and not your career? This new tabloid fame that I've got definitely came from being on TV--that just takes it to a different place. I'm just so grateful for [The Voice]. To be on a…

For all its innovation, Netflix has been reveling in Trump-like nostalgia lately for a past that wasn't always so great the first time around. In the wake of the dreadful Fuller House, it reunites That '70s Show stars Ashton Kutcher and Danny Masterson as brothers on The Ranch, a low-energy, laugh-tracked sitcom that feels like a midseason replacement from 1978. Its first 10 episodes arrive on April 1, with another 10 slated for later this year. Kutcher plays a college football star who returns, deflated, to his childhood home. It's startling how little magnetism he brings to a character who has supposedly cruised through life on charm. Masterson is the overshadowed, snarky sibling who still tends the cattle. Better is Sam Elliott as the paterfamilias resistant to change, especially if…

I'm not a sleep scientist, though I certainly talked to as many of them as I could find for The Sleep Revolution. The fact is, we're all conducting a longitudinal study of our sleep patterns, all the time, every night. It's easy to get so caught up in the day-to-day ebb and flow of our lives that we forget to look back, find patterns, isolate variables and make sense of our lifetime's worth of knowledge to make necessary adjustments. So here is a bag of tricks to help, including some favorites of my own and others based on research: [This article consists of 4 illustrations. Please see hardcopy of magazine or PDF.] 1. SKIP THE NIGHTCAP Many people believe that a quick drink before bed helps them get to sleep--and…

LOVE IT First Lady Michelle Obama assembled a team of artists, including Missy Elliott, Kelly Clarkson and Zendaya, to record a women's-empowerment anthem: "This Is for My Girls." Domino's announced it will debut a pizza-delivery robot in New Zealand. Kanye West cracked a joke before accepting a free ride from a paparazzo: 'I don't need Uber anymore. I just have the paps take me where I wanna go.' Nike finally unveiled its Back to the Future--inspired self-tying shoes. A Willy Wonka--inspired restaurant is opening at Universal Studios in Orlando; it will feature steampunk-style decor, costumed waiters and menu items like a bacon-brittle milk shake. Daniel Clowes' latest graphic novel, Patience, is "the most grittily realistic time-traveling love story I've ever read," says TIME's Lev Grossman. Time's weekly take on…

Your soap operas on the Oprah Winfrey Network are all hits. What are the differences in outlook between you and Oprah? The great thing about working with her is that she is very aware of my audience and my ability to speak to my audience. We talked about it early on, and she said, "You do what you do, and I'm completely fine with that." It's been great to have a partnership where there is no expectation other than for me to be myself. In the age of Empire and black-ish, do you have any aspiration to produce a broadcast TV series? I tried that early on--with Chuck Lorre, right before Two and a Half Men, we were working on a show. When I found out how broadcast worked, I…

The fallout from the ISIS-claimed attacks in Brussels is all bad and certain to get worse. As ISIS loses territory in Syria and Iraq, it lashes out with terrorist strikes abroad, especially against countries supporting the military campaign against it. Its targets are "soft"--the airport ticketing area where two bombs killed 11 on March 22, the subway at rush hour where 20 more died the same day--and somehow made more vulnerable by the incompetence of Belgium's authorities, who needed four months to capture the last of the plotters of the Paris attacks. "The most wanted man in Europe," Salah Abdeslam, was found 100 meters from his childhood home in Molenbeek, the Muslim neighborhood that stands hard by the clean and orderly headquarters of the European Union. The dream of a…

When Britons vote June 23 on whether the U.K. should remain in the European Union, fear is likely to be the deciding factor. But will it be fear of the economic consequences of British isolation? Or fear of remaining part of a Europe that is deeply troubled? The migrant crisis and terrorism, two issues fairly or unfairly conflated by many voters, are on the rise. The bloody terrorist attack in Brussels will make matters worse. Though Britain is not part of the Schengen Agreement on open borders, recent news from across the Channel will worry Britons. Last year, about 1.8 million migrants entered the E.U. This year, the number will likely rise even higher as migrants, who are mainly Muslim and afraid that Europe's borders are beginning to close, hurry…

DIED Rob Ford, 46, the bombastic former mayor of Toronto whose tenure was marred by his admission that he smoked crack. • Malik Isaac Taylor, also known as Phife Dawg, 45, an American rapper who performed with the hip-hop group A Tribe Called Quest. • Frank Sinatra Jr., 72, son of the legendary singer, who was kidnapped at 19 for just over two days before enjoying a successful music career of his own. • Joe Garagiola, 90, the legendary baseball broadcaster and former catcher for four Major League Baseball teams. ANNOUNCED By Alex Rodriguez of the New York Yankees, that he will retire after the 2017 season. AWARDED Punitive and compensatory damages totaling $140 million to former pro wrestler Terry "Hulk Hogan" Bollea, who sued Gawker Media for invading his…

In a Hail Mary attempt to stop Donald Trump, some conservative leaders have suggested throwing a third-party candidate into the mix. One group, organized by blogger Erick Erickson, wants to run a candidate to deny both Trump and the Democratic nominee the 270 electoral votes needed to win, sending the decision to the Republican-led House. Another camp, following veteran insider William Kristol, wants to run a national campaign. Here's why both plans are primed to fail: No one wants to run Third-party bids are tricky under the best circumstances but impossible without a candidate who can break through the political noise. The list of potential recruits so far--Mitt Romney, former Oklahoma Senator Tom Coburn, former Texas governor Rick Perry (above from left)--have all downplayed the idea. Others on…

Many people are raised to think hard work and talent are the only keys to getting ahead. But in Workplace Poker: Are You Playing the Game, or Just Getting Played?, Dan Rust argues that it's just as important to ace office politics. The key, he writes, is to study your boss and colleagues like an anthropologist. One way: pay close attention to your co-workers' base behavior--how they dress, talk and act--and watch out when they deviate from that norm; that might mean it's the perfect time for an important conversation (or a good day to keep your mouth shut, depending on their personality). Once you're attuned to the quirks of your colleagues, he writes, it should be easier to find ways to promote the work you do without coming across…

Want to trick your kids into eating more veggies? Or get yourself to like foods that are better for the planet? We asked Andrew Zimmern, host and co-creator of Travel Channel's Bizarre Foods, for some tips. 1 TRY DIFFERENT PREPARATIONS A good place to get ideas: other cultures. Consider "the European model" for kale, says Zimmern: Pick it younger, julienne it, rub it with lemon juice and olive oil, and toss it with some lemon juice, salt and Parmesan cheese. 2 INCREASE YOUR EXPOSURE A 2010 study found that children who tried a vegetable they didn't like eight or nine times began to like it more. 3 ADD A FAIL-SAFE INGREDIENT Sugar, fat and salt "have become the sex lube of our culinary generation," says Zimmern. But he's not opposed…

There's a moment on "Pillowtalk," the steamy No. 1 single from ex--One Direction member Zayn Malik, when he sings, "My enemy, my Allah." At least, that's what it sounded like to many of his fans, who excitedly posted on social media about the lyric. (Turns out he's actually saying "my ally." Chalk it up to the British accent.) The misunderstanding is a reminder that Zayn, who goes by just his first name now, is more than one-fifth of the group that kicked off the most recent boy-band renaissance--he's also the West's most popular Muslim pop star. And at a time when Muslims are often generalized about and stigmatized, Zayn's solo career has the potential to do more than boost his star power. His success might make relatable a population not…

Many of Elena Ferrante's devoted fans first fell in love with her writing in the early chapters of My Brilliant Friend, the first of her four Neapolitan novels. That book introduces the protagonist and her companion as 6-year-olds who have already seen too much of how hard life can be in their rough Naples neighborhood, dealing with violence and discouragement but still clinging to the hope of something better. So it's fitting that the mysterious best-selling author would use her keen understanding of the hazards of youth to write a decidedly dark children's book. Ferrante first published The Beach at Night in Italy in 2007, before the success of the Neapolitan novels. Now the 38-page story is getting an English edition by her highly regarded American translator, Ann Goldstein, to…