Table of contents for September 12, 2016 in TIME Magazine

WOW? NOT NOW The famous "Wow!" signal detected in 1977 is often cited as evidence for alien life. But in January, a Florida academic determined that the 72-second emission likely came from two comets. SPACE HEATER In 2015, Australian astronomers figured out that the baffling radio signals they had detected during daytime for the past 17 years were caused not by E.T. but by a microwave in their observatory. SIGNAL FAILURE Scientists in Arecibo, Puerto Rico, were disappointed in 1997 when a signal seemingly from a constellation 22 light-years away turned out to be from a satellite a million miles from Earth.…

It's easy for adults to bemoan that kids today are growing up typing, not writing. But the typed word is no less intellectual than longhand, argues Anne Trubek in her new book, The History and Uncertain Future of Handwriting. Our attachments to handwriting, she explains, are "primarily emotional," and our associations with intelligence and neat lettering have fluctuated over time--we've variously linked bad handwriting with intelligence (think: doctors) and stupidity (teachers have been found to subconsciously give lower grades to papers with worse penmanship). What's important is not the neatness of our prose but the volume: "If anything, we are in a golden age of writing," Trubek contends. "Most Americans write hundreds if not thousands more words a day than they did 10 or 20 years ago. We have supplanted…

1 How you believe meat was raised affects how good it tastes A new study in the journal PLOS One found that people thought meat looked, smelled and tasted better when they were told it had been raised on a humane farm as opposed to an industrial feedlot. 2 Coffee addiction might be genetic A study in Scientific Reports that compared how much coffee people drink to their genomes found that a certain gene, PDSS2, may make people more receptive to caffeine. This could help explain why some people get more of a kick from their morning coffee. 3 Older people are happier than people in their 20s A study in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, which focused on a sampling of people ages 21 to 99 in San Diego,…

"I legislated" is not a phrase typically associated with corporate executives, who lack constitutional powers. Yet during a television interview on Aug. 25, Mylan CEO Heather Bresch used just those words as she described a program that expanded the availability of her company's EpiPen epinephrine injectors, which deliver epinephrine during allergic reactions, in schools across the country. Bresch made herself personally responsible for the law. As the daughter of Joseph Manchin III, the senior U.S. Senator from West Virginia, perhaps Bresch could be forgiven for her overreach. Still, what she unwittingly brought into the open was deeply revealing: when it comes to pharmaceutical policies, the line between the regulated and the regulators has become blurred. The last time entanglement between the public and private sectors was this front and center…

New Hampshire Senator Kelly Ayotte's biggest challenge stood just a few feet away from her at the rustic cottage near Concord. While Ayotte made her rounds, posing for pictures and hugging friends, retired teacher Ellen Bryan wiped sweat from her brow and described why she had not yet made up her mind about who she would vote for in November. Bryan, 64, likes the Republican Ayotte and even said she leaned toward supporting her, but then tears welled in her eyes as she remembered the 2012 mass shooting in Newtown, Conn. She also remembered Ayotte's decision to vote against tighter gun laws in the aftermath. "I'm not a gun fan," said Bryan, a self-described military brat who grew up around guns and has family members who hunt. "There's a time…

Emily Blunt has come a long way from her starmaking turn as a Louboutin-loving fashionista in 2006's The Devil Wears Prada. To play the lead role in The Girl on the Train, out Oct. 7, she had to deglamorize like never before. "Talk about no makeup," she says over salmon teriyaki and iced green tea at a Brooklyn sushi joint on a late-summer evening. "We added makeup to make me look even more like I had no makeup." Each day she was decorated with prosthetic under-eye bags, varicose veins and rosacea, along with a changing array of contact lenses meant to evoke various stages of inebriation: pinkish for buzzed, bloodshot for hammered, tinged with yellow for brutally hung over. Yet for all the attention lavished on the minutiae of her…

When the Beatles came to America in 1964, the band and its entourage took over an entire wing on the 12th floor of New York City's Plaza Hotel, surrounded by screaming fans outside and inundated by reporters and showbiz VIPs inside. Yet even with all that space, the Liverpool lads couldn't find a place to relax. "We had a floor full of people who wanted a piece of us--a phone call or a signature or this or that," Ringo Starr tells TIME. "And we ended up in one of the bathrooms--the four of us! That was one of those incredible moments in my life, that we ended up laughing in the toilets just to get a break from the constant [demands] sucking us dry." The mania that compelled the rock…

You tweeted to Donald Trump on your wife's birthday saying he doesn't understand love. What doesn't he get? I haven't heard from him any compassionate thinking, any opening of his heart, any love for anybody except him and his family. You have also tweeted that Trump is a loser, a lunatic, and that he is not welcome in Cancún. Are these things that a former head of state can only say on Twitter? It's key and crucial to speak the truth, to communicate the truth. And I speak the way I feel, the way I perceive, the way I think. Donald, his aggressiveness, has come to the world's attention. For us in Mexico we consider him an absolute danger. After you apologized for offending Trump, he said, "I accept his…

'I'm going to continue to stand with the people that are being oppressed.' Colin Kaepernick, San Francisco 49ers quarterback, explaining his decision not to stand during the national anthem; he said he does not want to "show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color," citing police brutality as one of many injustices 323 The number of reindeer killed by a lightning strike in Norway 1 hour The length of time British TV network ITV shut down several of its channels Aug. 27 to encourage viewers to exercise instead 'Today begins the end of the suffering, the pain and the tragedy of war.' Juan Manuel Santos, president of Colombia, praising an agreement between the government and FARC rebels that ended more than 50…

Comic madness is wonderful: to watch a character on television or in the movies blow his stack or flip his lid is a kind of safety valve for the stresses of everyday living. But it's the people who seem accidentally funny who always get us the most, and that was Gene Wilder's gift. Wilder, who died on Aug. 29 at age 83, hadn't had a major film or television role in more than 20 years. But the work he did in the 1970s has not only endured with the people who saw it the first time around, but also resonates with younger audiences who are seeing it for the first time. Even in his nuttiest roles, Wilder always came off, first and foremost, as serene and sweet-natured, practically glowing with…

This has been an election year filled with sloppy sociology. Democrats, as usual, mistakenly see voters primarily as members of vast, amorphous "identity" groups rather than as individuals. Now the Republicans have joined in. "An odd symmetry has emerged between the political parties," William Galston of the Brookings Institution told me recently. "Many Democrats have viewed racial and ethnic minorities as victims in the grip of larger forces, and now Republicans are doing the same with the white working class." Remarkably, the operating mythology of both groups--encouraged by ideologues on the right and politically correct ninnies on the left--is that they are oppressed by each other. The current term of art among black intellectuals is white privilege and the current concern is police brutality. Among Latinos, the concern is bigotry…

The British royal family has been fodder for all manner of entertainment, but Netflix's ambitious new show The Crown, premiering Nov. 4, aims to be the first to dramatize Queen Elizabeth II's life in full. The series was budgeted at an estimated $156 million and will span five seasons, one for each decade of the Queen's reign. "What effect does it have on a woman to suddenly become two people, Elizabeth Windsor and Elizabeth Regina?" asks Peter Morgan, the series' Oscar-nominated creator. The show suggests, for example, that her coronation adversely affected her marriage. "She was only 25," Morgan says. "Philip was forced to give up his naval career and become her consort. That led to all sorts of tensions." This is not Morgan's first go-round with Elizabeth: he also…

Fairy tales usually involve a happily-ever-after, and Ransom Riggs and Tahereh Mafi's love story is no exception. Riggs, 37, and Mafi, 28, were already best-selling writers when they met: he is the author of the Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children series, a time-travel story about a Florida teen who visits Wales and discovers a community of kids with magical powers. She is the author of the Shatter Me series, whose heroine lives under a corrupt regime and has the power to kill by touch. The two swam "in the same waters of Southern California young-adult-bookhood," Riggs says, and a mutual author friend introduced them. Both had recently gotten divorced, and the shared state of mind "fast-forwarded our friendship," Mafi says. They married in 2013 and later held a reception…

Iranian ships provoked four separate incidents with U.S. military vessels in the Persian Gulf at the end of August. And on Aug. 28, a member of the Iranian nuclear negotiating team was arrested by Iranian officials on espionage charges. Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei is growing restless and lashing out. More than a year after the nuclear deal was signed, relations between the U.S. and Iran remain frosty. Tehran is irked by the fact that Washington continues to insist that Syria's Bashar Assad must go, while Iran continues to support him. Tehran is also angered by Washington's continued support for Saudi Arabia--Iran's longtime rival for Middle East dominance--in that country's flailing war effort in Yemen. But most of all, Iran's leaders are deeply frustrated that the nuclear agreement hasn't revitalized…

DIED Juan Gabriel, Mexican singer-songwriter, on Aug. 28 at age 66. The so-called Divo de Juárez was a giant of Latin American music, with over 100 million albums sold and six Grammy nominations. Abu Mohammad al-Adnani, 39, ISIS spokesman and spymaster. He reportedly oversaw external operations, recruitment and training of the terrorist group. ISIS's news outlet reported his death in Syria on Aug. 30, but U.S. authorities had not confirmed it at press time. FLOWN The first regular commercial flight between the U.S. and Cuba in over 50 years, on Aug. 31. The JetBlue flight took off from Fort Lauderdale, Fla., and landed in Santa Clara. Despite the resumption of relations between the countries, U.S. citizens are still prohibited from visiting the island nation as tourists.…

It's easy to dismiss people who believe things that are factually incorrect--that vaccines cause autism, for example, or that climate change isn't real. But if we really want to change how they think, we need to take an honest look at what's driving those beliefs. Because it's not ignorance, it's psychology. All of us are prone to the same fundamental human principles that cause these cases of scientific denial. Research has proven that humans are distinctly uncomfortable with events or phenomena without clear causes, and when we don't know something, we tend to fill in the gaps ourselves. Take autism. Since we don't know why it occurs, it becomes easy to misplace blame. Moreover, humans do not assess risk in a measured or rational manner. Instead, we often conjure an…

CARDIO Walking With the lowest quit rate of any type of exercise, walking improves memory, well-being, heart health and even creativity. Cycling Cycling has been shown to increase brain connectivity, and doing it at any intensity improves a depressed mood. Running Going for a run improves sleep and makes bones stronger. Even just a bit of jogging--5 to 10 minutes a day--is linked to a longer life. STRENGTH Yoga Lift your own body weight and flow through intense poses, and yoga will give you strength with a side of mindfulness and stress relief. Weight training A cheap pair of weights will build muscle and strengthen bone at any age. As an alternative, try resistance bands. Tai chi These slow, gentle movements might not look like much, but tai chi strengthens…

"I want to make this very clear," Issa Rae says as she describes Insecure, the HBO comedy she created and stars on. "This is not the quintessential black-woman experience. It's a very specific experience." The emphasis is unnecessary. Rae, whose popular web series The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl and memoir with the same title catapulted her from office drone to Hollywood up-and-comer, has no trouble getting her points across. And while her show comes at a time when television finally has more than a few nonwhite characters who are not just tokens, Insecure, which premieres Oct. 9, is about as far from a generic idea of the "black-woman experience" as it gets. Rae's character, also called Issa, shares a sharp wit with her creator but lacks direction in work…

Alicia Keys has sung many songs about New York City, but she's never released an ode to the Big Apple quite like "Gramercy Park." The track, which she recently recorded as she prepares her upcoming and still untitled new album, is a marvel of a thing, with warm guitars and buttery vocals built around a hook that fits the star's current mind-set like a glove: "Now you're falling for a person who's not even me," goes the chorus. In a West Hollywood, Calif., recording studio, Keys cranks up the volume and grooves to the steady backbeat, a beatific smile on her face. "There were times where I didn't even know who I was anymore," she tells TIME. "I'd spent so much time trying to be who I thought you wanted…

After I asked my Uber driver how his day was going, Zhirayr pounded on his steering wheel. "I knew this was going to be a good ride!" he yelled. "You know why?" I figured Zhirayr was a fan of my column, enjoyed seeing me on TV or noticed I was not about to vomit from drunkenness. It was none of those things: "You are a five!" At the end of every Uber ride, not only do you rate your driver from one to five stars, but your driver also rates you. This rating was more or less secret until this spring, when Uber began allowing people to check their personal number through its app. Although my drivers see a full five stars when I ask for a ride, my…