October 11, 2013: Afternoon
- A new Gallup poll finds most Americans feel dysfunctional government is the top problem America faces.
- Nations' internet populations juxtaposed with the size of their actual populations.
- Mexican drug cartel kidnaps Spanish band Delorean for 30 hours; John Talabot and Pional cancel tours over safety concerns.
- See also: Talabot and Pional are among our top albums of 2012.
- Hecker has seen his music land everywhere from yoga-studio mixtapes to the playlists of black-metal fans.
- Sacco and Vanzetti at the end.
- MIT researchers accidentally discover metal, under certain conditions, can fuse back together after it cracks.
- Whale earwax reveals telling details about the mammal's life, including what chemicals it was exposed to and when it became sexually mature.
- Meet Tucker, the dog who helps track down rare sub-species of orca whales by smelling their poop.
- Study shows elephants can comprehend pointing—a skill even chimpanzees don't have.
- A free-floating planet that doesn't orbit a star is 80 light years away from Earth and "only" six times Jupiter's mass.
- Musicians read mean tweets about themselves.
- Study of Marie Antoinette in four ornate headdresses.
- Fashion photographer "crystallizes" 15-year-old defunct negatives into distressed, haunting portraits.
- Two sci-fi writers and a poet take a road trip.
- Related: In 1979, two weeks before the Iran hostage crisis, a man boarded a hippie bus in search of America.