Mdou Moctar: Tarhatazed

Mdou Moctar, a Tuareg guitarist raised in northern Niger, debuted his first studio band album, Ilana (The Creator) last week. From it comes “Tarhatazed,” a blazing, seven-minute-long track laden with Hendrix-rivaling solos—especially from the four-minute mark on. Moctar boasts an odd origin story: he was raised in a family that forbade music and built his first guitar out of spare wood and brake wires.

Newly Discovered Evidence Confirms the Sudden Demise of Dinosaurs

In the excavated terrain of the Hell Creek geological formation, an archaeologist named Robert DePalma made a discovery. The theory that dinosaurs met their demise at the impact of a planet-rattling meteor is generally uncontested, but some researchers felt they were doomed well before the day it hit. Dinosaur fossils are never found less than nine feet below the layer of soot—known as the “KT …

United Airlines Offers X Gender Option for Non-Binary Passengers

Last year New York City (independently from the state) joined Oregon, California and Washington in offering a third gender option (X) on birth certificates. But many other official documents and forms (like passports, licenses, immigration visas) require people to choose male or female—making the process of representing oneself to governing bodies more stressful and less accurate. Now United has become the first airline to also …