LATE NIGHT POLITICS
Comedians like Samantha Bee, Trevor Noah and Seth Meyers have brought late-night TV a long way, “from Carson, when I was a kid, to nowadays, [when it’s] really sharp and really partisan,” said MSNBC’s Kate Snow, in a discussion of TIME’s Sept. 26 cover story, by Richard Zoglin, about how late night has gotten more political than ever. In the Federalist, David Marcus argued that there was nothing new about the “phenomenon of [hosts] siding with liberals.” But others praised the story, describing the comics, in the words of Courtney Fay on Twitter, as “educated, intelligent, informed and denouncing hate and racism.”
LIFE AS A “NONE”
Susanna Schrobsdorff’s Sept. 26 essay on being one of the growing number of religiously unaffiliated and agnostic Americans struck a chord with people of all faiths. “She’s right that longing for faith proves there is a reason to have it,” wrote Diane Lowrey of Houston, urging the columnist to give religion more of a chance so as not do “to her children what her atheist father did to her.” Nicholas Longo of Racine, Wisc., meanwhile, invited Schrobsdorff to attend a Unitarian Universalist service, where “the majority of us are agnostics or atheists.” Sally Oey of Ann Arbor, Mich., praised the writer as”brave to share the story of her own and her mother’s agnosticism,” but expressed frustration that the essay ended with the idea of God’s possible existence. “Why don’t we ever hear the other version,” she asked, “the one which starts with the pious believer who finally has a story-worthy epiphany that God really doesn’t exist?”
REEFS IN DANGER
Richard Vevers of XL Catlin Seaview Survey captures the effect of climate change on coral, particularly the bleaching that occurs when it dies. But in March, at the New Caledonia Barrier Reef (below) in the South Pacific, he saw dying coral lit up in a burst of color. See more, in 360° panorama, at time.com/coral
WINNING PLACES
For its annual list of America’s best places to live, Money analyzed taxes, education and more. The ranking of 2016’s top towns–at money.com/bestplaces–is led by the three below:
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