How Music Heals (Nautilus)
by Kevin Berger
Most of us have experienced music as an emotional support, bringing us pleasure or helping us delve into darker feelings and come out the other side. Song can help people through both psychological and physical difficulties, through a variety of mechanisms that scientists are still learning about.

The Rise of the Self-Coup (The Conversation)
by John Joseph Chin and Joe Wright
Self-coups, in which a sitting leader illegally usurps power from other parts of the government, are becoming more common. The recent attempt in South Korea is unusual in its lack of success. Why do some democracies rebuff these kinds of attacks while others fall?

Beyond Prehistory (Sapiens)
by Stephen Acabado, Marlon Martin, Piphal Heng, Earl John C. Hernandez, and Mylene Q. Lising
Nineteenth-century European archaeologists divided “prehistory” into stone, bronze, and iron ages—and obsessed about “lost civilizations.” These frameworks obscure a lot about cultural changes and continuity from the distant past to the present day.

The Great Monkey Escape (Smithsonian Magazine)
by Greg Daugherty
In 1935, 170 monkeys escaped a Long Island tourist attraction and ran wild, leading to a mad dash featuring big cash rewards, banana-baited traps, and attempts to get the creatures too inebriated to evade capture.

The Perfect Time to Change Your Commute (Slate)
by David Zipper
Getting people out of their cars and onto public transit or bikes is a challenging task—even when good options are out there. The trick to actually making the change may depend not just on what alternatives people hear about but when they get the information.

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