Born in 2014

If you were born in 2014, you came into a year when race in America forced itself back to the center of the national conversation. Michael Brown was shot and killed by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri in August, and the subsequent protests—and the militarized police response, armored vehicles and tear gas in an American suburb—were watched on every screen in the country. "Hands up, don't shoot" became a chant.

Eric Garner died in New York in July after a police officer's chokehold, his words "I can't breathe" becoming a phrase that would persist for years. The Black Lives Matter movement, founded the previous year after Trayvon Martin's shooting, was finding its voice and its reach. ISIS declared a caliphate in Syria and Iraq and the foreign policy establishment grappled with a new shape of threat.

The Ebola outbreak in West Africa reached American shores and a brief but intense national panic ensued. *Boyhood*, filmed over twelve years, was the critical marvel. *Guardians of the Galaxy* was the pure fun.

"Happy" by Pharrell was inescapable in a way few songs manage. Serial, the podcast, arrived and launched a new medium. Taylor Swift released *1989* and pivoted to pure pop.

The World Cup was in Brazil and the US team advanced further than expected before falling to Belgium. The country was learning, or learning to argue about learning, something important.