Linton Weeks

The approximate moment when grumpiness kicks in for men, according to a recently released report, is around age 70.

Then you'd better get off his lawn.

Researchers found that as men grow older — from, say, 50 on — they have fewer obstacles and annoyances to worry ...

In recent pursuits, we have come upon accounts of once-practiced — and somewhat, shall we say, curious — sports that have long since faded into obscurity.

Competitive walking in the 1870s and 1880s, for instance. "In the decades after the Civil War there was mass urbanization in the United States," ...

The marvel-filled Information Age is also turning out to be the muddled-up Epoch of Conjecture. The Era of Error.

Seemingly, we know everything. What is not in Wikipedia can be found through Google. And what Google can't scrape up, the National Security Agency — or international hackers — can. Through ...

Perhaps in a calmer, more innocent era — if there ever was such a thing — April Fools' jokes made more sense. Nowadays the world seems overrun with Impractical Jokers, Crank Yankers and Ali G-type tricksters. And gags that once might have made us ...

"Russia is a hypothetical culture. Ruled by despots for most of our history, we are used to living in fiction rather than reality," writes Nina L. Khrushcheva, who teaches international affairs at The New School. She is also the great granddaughter of the late communist leader of ...

One of the upsides to the seemingly endless winter of 2014 was that you had time to think.

And to ask futuristic questions, such as: What will the American Winter of 2114 be like?

Here are some of the answers.

Milder: In the midst of the Sochi Olympics, the New ...

Sifting through the hundreds and hundreds of replies to NPR's request — Tell Us The 6 Songs Of Your Life — we rediscover just how meaningful music can be in our lives, and the supermagical powers that some songs possess.

I Want To Hold Your Hand, for example ...

Way, way back in the 20^th century, American teenagers turned to the local public library as a great good place to hang out. It was a hotspot for meeting up, and sharing thoughts with, other like-minded people – in books and in the flesh. It was a wormhole in the ...

Speed-reading all rage. Suddenly many speed-reading apps. Spritz. Spreeder. Others.

Some inspired by method RSVP — rapid serial visual presentation.

"Rather than read words

from left to right,"

says Marc Slater, managing director of Spreeder parent company eReflect.

"RSVP

allows

users

to

Springtime. And our thoughts turn to Augusta and lush green courses and a tradition unlike any other.

No not The Masters tournament — FootGolf.

1) What the heck is FootGolf? We ask Laura Balestrini, president of the California-based American FootGolf League. "FootGolf is a precision sport ...

I hate rants.

I can't stand it when people spew and spit and spout off. I hate when folks fume and fulminate. I hate when people go on and on about what they hate, especially superficial problems

* Like when you have to wash all the food off your plate ...

Flying snakes are mysterious. How do they soar? Without wings or other helpful appendages, how do they glide from tree to tree?

A team of American scientists, including Lorena Barba of George Washington University and Jake Socha of Virginia Tech, has been studying the small flying ...

The air was clear. Our prose was not.

We remembered what Scott had told us about a clean, well-designed place called Future of Storytelling. Scott said we could learn from it. He was right and it was good.

Through the website, we discovered the Hemingway App.

For much of the nation, March has come in with a leonine roar.

Are these late-season snow shows examples of climate change? "No," says weather historian Jim Fleming of Colby College. "The polar vortex is a natural and variable stratospheric event. One of its anomalies hit Russia and ...

When I was growing up in Memphis in the 1960s, the Feds — and state and local officials — unveiled plans to build a short stretch of Interstate 40 to connect East Memphis with downtown.

The proposed corridor of concrete would run through Overton Park, a 342-acre green space of ...

At the end of the day, it is tougher than a nickel steak to banish from American popular parlance certain phrases such as "at the end of the day."

The word police at Lake Superior State University in Michigan have been trying to strike the phrase from public discourse since ...

We read about Smart Guns revolutionizing the firearms industry. We shop at Smart Toys stores in the shopping mall. We use Smart Phones, wear Smart Watches and Smart Rings, drink Smart Water. We live in Smart Houses, drive Smart Cars on

Tons of people responded — thoughtfully, wittily, smartly, poignantly — to NPR's recent request: Tell us the six songs of your life.

Sifting through the more than 1,000 annotated playlists, we came up with a few that seem exemplary of the original idea: People telling the stories of ...

For eons in New England, a First Sign of Spring has been sap oozing from a maple tree. In northwestern Montana, officials at Glacier National Park report that a long understood First Sign of Spring is the appearance of a bear — emerging from hibernation. In other parts ...

There are people who do not like Michelle Obama.

This is not a story for, or about, them. This is a story for, and about, people who like the first lady. And perhaps some of the reasons they like her.

In a recent poll by Pew Research Center, ...