Gambling and the Super Bowl have always gone hand in hand. To University of Iowa sports media scholar Tom Oates, what makes the developments of the past few years so remarkable is the NFL’s stunning reversal on its own attitudes toward betting. Gone are the quaint days of league officials lobbying Congress to put restrictions and guardrails in place.

In the weeks when Swift was dating Healy, a vocal minority of Swifties came head-to-head with a vocal minority of Healy’s defenders. Then the celebrity pair ended their relationship, and collective attention moved on from that topic almost immediately. Several weeks of nonstop debate, attacks, and hand-wringing ended up being utterly meaningless – except to social media companies that converted this brief obsession into clicks, engagement, and ad revenue.

If Wagner does prove to be too controversial or if we finally admit that the Ring Cycle is too long and stuffier than a Lord of the Ring marathon, Strauss, Weber, and Beethoven can give us that German opera fix (as well as many other Austria-Germanic composers, such as Mozart, Schoenberg, and Berg, if we choose not to care too much about political borders and the like). If film witticism and quirk ala Woody Allen is what you’re craving, Noah Baumbach, Sofia Coppola, and Wes Anderson will save the day. And there is definitely no shortage of white male actors and poets. 

When Taylor Swift’s 1989 album became the only record of the year to reach platinum level, that was the second biggest news in music of 2014.  The most important news of the year in the industry came when Swift pulled her entire catalogue from the popular streaming service Spotify one week after the release of her album.  The move, more so than spark a heated though admittedly civil battle between Swift and Spotify, has opened the gates to a debate about the future of the music industry.