Macklemore is an unlikely rapper: he’s from the Pacific Northwest, he’s white, he’s proud of wearing secondhand clothes. His single “Thrift Shop” recently topped the Billboard Hot 100, making him the first unsigned artist to do so in more than a decade. But Macklemore ...

Bonus Track: How Macklemore got his name

At just 24, Thao Nguyen put out one of 2008's best indie rock records, We Brave Bee Stings and All. But she didn’t turn into a rock star overnight. Thao grew up in Arlington, Virginia, where her mother owned a coin laundromat and dry cleaning business. She started working there ...

Bonus Track: "We The Common (For Valerie Bolden)"

Pop music's not what it used to be. A study published in the Journal of Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts tracked the mood of pop songs over five decades of Billboard charts, and it confirms that pop has changed in substantial ways. Far more of today’s hits are now in minor ...

Graphic: How pop has become sadder since the 1960s

Beasts of the Southern Wild is 30-year-old director Benh Zeitlin’s first feature and it’s caused a serious splash: it’s up for four Oscars this weekend, including Best Picture and Best Director. Its six-year-old star, Quevenzhané Wallis, is up for Best Actress — now nine, she’s the ...

Video: A scene from Beasts of the Southern Wild

Listener Susan Evans grew up in rural Louisiana during the 1950s and '60s. Her first year of high school was also the first year of federally enforced integration in her town — and that did not sit well with her white parents. Susan was never comfortable with her family’s casual racism ...