Table of contents for May 23, 2016 in TIME Magazine

For the past six years, columnist and assistant managing editor Rana Foroohar has explored the global economy for TIME from practically every angle. She has interviewed and profiled some of its most influential players--including CEOs like Mary Barra and Howard Schultz, investors Carl Icahn and Warren Buffett, and Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen. She has used her Curious Capitalist column to explore vital issues, from the impact of immigration reform to the prospects for the stock market and our retirement accounts. And she has ventured anywhere necessary to connect TIME's readers with the real economy, whether that's a production line in Schenectady, N.Y., shipping batteries around the world, or a Chicago high school where educators and business leaders are figuring out how to help young people prepare for the jobs…

THE CASE FOR ... Both are unafraid to use brash language. Trump calls Mexicans rapists; the controversial former mayor of Davao City jokes about gang rape. One vows to build a wall at the Mexican border; the other threatens to "butcher" criminals. Both have used stump speeches to brag about the size of their manhood. Both men have run populist campaigns that have had global repercussions. Trump's plan to halt Muslim immigration was condemned worldwide, while Duterte's remark that he "should have been first" in the 1989 gang rape of a missionary drew censure from the U.S. and Australia. ... AND AGAINST Duterte, raised Catholic, is an advocate for minority groups, fiercely backing calls by his country's marginalized Moro Muslims for greater autonomy, and has even supported gay marriage. Trump…

WHAT IS THE TRENDING BOX? It's the widget in the top right corner of the Facebook home page (when you first log in from a computer) that lists major news items relevant to your interests. It's different from News Feed, the center column, which features posts from your friends. WHO DECIDES WHAT'S IN IT? A group of curators, who pick from a pool of popular stories surfaced by an algorithm. Unlike traditional news sites, which run staff mastheads and bylines, Facebook keeps their names private; the widget doesn't indicate human involvement. WHY ARE SOME PEOPLE UPSET? Because some 63% of U.S. adult users get a portion of their news from Facebook, up from 47% in 2013. That gives the social network significant power--and has sparked more calls for transparency to…

In March 2007, a retired FBI agent named Bob Levinson, fretting about his income and his relevance, flew to the Iranian island of Kish. There he had arranged to meet an African-American convert to Islam known as Dawud Salahuddin, who had lived in Iran since 1980, the year he assassinated an enemy of the Islamic Republic in the foyer of a suburban Washington home. Levinson's hope was to recruit Salahuddin as a spy, though Levinson was not one himself. He had a modest contract with the CIA, but not the part that runs agents. Things did not go well on Kish. Salahuddin was detained, and Levinson disappeared. In Missing Man: The American Spy Who Vanished in Iran, New York Times reporter Barry Meier provides a fine-grained chronology of the so-far…

One of the most unexpected things about having children is how the quest to mold perfect little humans ultimately becomes a project of making yourself a better person. Though hardly revolutionary, this epiphany came to me recently when I was talking to an inanimate object, Amazon's Echo speaker, in front of my 18-month-old Jack. "Echo, turn on the lights. Echo, set my thermostat to 72 degrees. Echo, play 'Wheels on the Bus,'" I commanded the gadget, which understands and responds to an ever growing set of orders (including, no surprise, "Echo, buy more diapers"). Every time I said "Echo," Jack's eyes shot up to the cylinder-shaped speaker atop the refrigerator, its glowing blue halo indicating it was listening. Then, one day, the inevitable happened: "Uggo!" Jack barked. "Bus!" After I…

Geoff Dyer is often bored; in fact he's surpassingly eloquent on the subject of his own boredom. He's bored following the footsteps of Paul Gauguin in Polynesia. He's bored amid the splendors of Beijing's Forbidden City: "Jeez, it went on forever, and every bit looked exactly the same as every other bit." He's beyond bored in the remote Norwegian town of Longyearbyen, where he's gone in search of the northern lights: "It was like a lifetime of disappointment compressed into less than a week, which actually felt like it had lasted the best--in the sense of worst--part of a lifetime." His zealous frankness about his boredom is, ironically, one of the things that makes Dyer himself never boring. As you read you actually catch yourself thinking, If only Geoff Dyer…

Do you see hostage taker Kyle as an everyman, standing in for Americans who feel screwed by the recession? Definitely. He starts off threatening, filled with righteous rage. Yet you see simple things you completely relate to. It's not a clean heroes-vs.-villains narrative. It isn't. And yet when you get to what really happened, [it's] pretty simple. Somebody abused the system out of greed. And that's all Kyle was looking for: moral vindication. It's not like he was saying, Give me money. He was saying, Give me dignity. His rhetoric about the system being rigged sounds a lot like that of Bernie Sanders. We wrote it first! But listen, it's a dialogue that's out there. The film is equal parts cynicism and hope. Leaving the theater you could have some…

Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a law on May 2 offering a free hectare (2.5 acres) of land to any citizen who moves to the country's sparsely populated far east, including the northern Arctic, deep Siberia and the coast near Japan. He's in good company: 1. MARQUETTE, KANS. The small prairie town is one of a handful in the state that distribute lots to potential new residents for community and economic improvement. In Marquette, U.S. citizens can apply for free land if they agree to build housing on their new plots. 2. PITCAIRN ISLANDS These four British islands in the South Pacific are among the most isolated in the world and have fewer than 50 residents. The local government gives land to settlers of all nations, who can apply for…

ANNOUNCED By the White House, that President Obama will visit Hiroshima, in the first visit there by a sitting American President since the U.S. dropped an atomic bomb on the city at the end of World War II. The White House said Obama will not apologize for the bombing. DIED Robert Bennett, 82, a former three-term Republican U.S. Senator from Utah who became one of the first victims of the Tea Party movement when he was ousted before a 2010 primary. •William Schallert, 93, a character actor who had roles in TV, movies and theater over several decades, most notably as the father and uncle of the "identical cousins" on The Patty Duke Show in the 1960s. WON The Kentucky Derby, by Nyquist. The horse, who won by 1¼ lengths,…

In the age of sexting and tinder, it's common to hear older generations bemoan the death of dating--especially compared with other decades, when it was de rigueur to meet for dinner and a movie. But did those "good old days" ever actually exist? In her new book, Labor of Love, author Moira Weigel argues that for as long as modern dating has existed in the U.S.--since the early 1900s, when young women left their homes for work in the outside world--there have been critics of the way it's carried out. Early on, it was the meet-ups themselves; women who were treated to meals and shows were likened to prostitutes. By the '50s and '60s, parents were lamenting the decay of moral values as their kids were "parking" and going to…

THEIR SIZE All three planets are about the diameter of Venus or Earth, which means they probably have rocky surfaces where life can emerge and thrive. THEY'RE WARM The planets orbit very close to their star, which should make them too hot, except the star is what's known as an "ultracool dwarf," meaning that close is good. That could make for shirt-sleeve temps. THEY'RE WET (MAYBE) Water is common in space. If it exists on these three worlds with their balmy temperatures, it would likely be liquid. THEY HAVE AIR (MAYBE) It takes gravity to hold on to atmosphere. Mars, with half the size and gravity of Earth, lost its air. The three new planets are big enough to keep their air--if they have it. --Jeffrey Kluger…

A large body of research shows that emotional experience improves with age. People are slower to show anger and more prone to see silver linings. They solve emotionally charged conflicts more effectively and are more likely to forgive and forget. So the prospect of millions of baby boomers entering a stage in life that brings wisdom and emotional balance has many researchers excited about the possibility that they will, as they enter their final years, build a better world. After all, not only are boomers distinguished by their numbers, which will intensify their impact on society, but they are also different from earlier cohorts of aging Americans: going gently into that good night doesn't appeal to a generation that, in its youth, wanted to start a social revolution. But a…

Maria Bamford is your favorite comedian's favorite comedian, so unafraid of going into wild absurdism in search of jokes that she sometimes seems not to be joking at all. On the new Netflix series Lady Dynamite, she plays "Maria Bamford," a woman whose pasted-on smile never fades. When Maria improvises a rant about the Holocaust-pondering philosopher Hannah Arendt at a network sitcom gig, she is convinced she nailed it, yet the room is wincing. It's all a matter of perspective, and both real and fictitious Marias bear uncalibrated social compasses. Bamford has long joked about her real-life struggles with bipolar and obsessive-compulsive disorders, and Dynamite does more than depict her pain--it gives itself over to instability, with jarring lows and zesty highs. In our heroine's ill-advised quest for stardom, everyone…

It's o.k. if you're reading this on a screen. The medium matters less than expected for a book called Paper, according to Mark Kurlansky, master of the mononymous title (Cod, Salt). In popular legend, paper was invented in 105 C.E. by Cai Lun, a eunuch in the Chinese court, and over the next 2,000 years spread ideas and changed the world, thanks largely to Gutenberg. Kurlansky says that's all wrong--and not just because paper predates Cai Lun. That inventions create social change is what he calls a "technological fallacy." In his view, the world changes first and tools stick if they meet its new needs. Same goes for the digital tools of a potentially paperless age. Kurlansky argues convincingly that his subject gets too much credit, at the risk of…

LOVE IT Adele stopped her concert in Denmark to praise Beyoncé's Lemonade: 'How is it even possible that she only ever gets better? How is that possible? She is Jesus f-cking Christ.' Dana Carvey revived his Church Lady character on SNL for the first time since 2011. Disney found its young Han Solo for an upcoming Star Wars spin-off: actor Alden Ehrenreich. As part of a charity event, Krispy Kreme U.K. will sell Nutella-filled doughnuts from a vending machine in London. Scientists discovered a new species of glow-in-the-dark jellyfish while exploring the deep waters of the Mariana Trench (via a probe). Justin Timberlake dropped his first solo single in almost three years; it's called "Can't Stop the Feeling!" Time's weekly take on what popped in culture LEAVE IT Budweiser is…

Eight years ago, with the publication of Susan Jacoby's The Age of American Unreason, our country had a debate about whether its citizens were becoming less intelligent. This year, we had a debate about how big Donald Trump's penis is. While we have not resolved the latter, we have answered the former. Former means first, and latter means second. Two years before Jacoby's book came out, Mike Judge set his sci-fi comedy Idiocracy 500 years in the future, when President Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho, a former champion professional wrestler, peppers his speeches with curses. Trump, who is in the World Wrestling Entertainment Hall of Fame, has used a curse or two when a facial expression could not fully convey his policy points. He has also used his candidacy…

This is a moment of high anxiety in Saudi Arabia. Oil prices are half the level the Saudi government needs in order to balance its books, and it is burning through cash reserves. Global oversupply ensures no rebound for the foreseeable future. Rival Iran is on the rise. Traditional Saudi allies, including the U.S., are keeping their distance. Finally, the kingdom stands on the verge of a generational change in leadership, and there's a risk of a succession fight when King Salman dies. There is nothing the Saudis need more than comprehensive economic reform. The kingdom must end its deep dependence on oil revenue and build a dynamic 21st century economy. The current path can't be sustained much longer. That's why the kingdom has launched Vision 2030. Led by the…

Peaches Monroee was a young woman of no particular fame when she posted a video about her eyebrows on social network Vine two years ago. But that changed in the seconds it took her to describe those eyebrows as being "on fleek." Spurred by her unfamiliar slang (and charm), the post went viral. Soon IHOP was tweeting about "pancakes on fleek." Kim Kardashian West was using an #EyebrowsOnFleek hashtag to caption a selfie. Public curiosity soared. By late 2014, an average of 27,000 people were typing "What does on fleek mean?" into their Google search bars every month. About a year later, Dictionary.com got around to adding a definition: "flawlessly styled, groomed ... looking great." The yearlong lapse----which is relatively fast for a traditional dictionary to add a word----highlights a…

A smile flashes across George C. Wolfe's face as he makes a rather startling admission. He hasn't yet seen Hamilton, the megahit musical that has rewritten Broadway history, nabbed a record 16 Tony nominations and is sold out until somewhere near the end of the Trump Administration. "I've been working," he says simply. "I literally haven't had a chance to see it." Excuse accepted. For the past few months Wolfe has been racing to finish his own Broadway musical--titled, not so simply, Shuffle Along, or The Making of the Musical Sensation of 1921 and All That Followed. The show opened at the Music Box Theater on the last day of the Broadway season, drawing mostly enthusiastic reviews and garnering an impressive 10 Tony nominations of its own. In another season,…

In the era of Twitter and Snapchat, can a prime-time special break through? I think there's still a market for this kind of product. Otherwise Barbara wouldn't have been doing it for so long, and Diane wouldn't still be doing it occasionally. It's nice to have something beautifully done, where the interview isn't rushed and you don't have to cut the guest off because a hard break is coming. It will sing in a way that an hour of live television just never can. You met with Donald Trump on his own turf. How did you break the ice? It wasn't challenging. He was very warm from the moment I walked in. I think he greatly appreciated the fact that I reached out and was willing to go to him.…