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The big news from the Social Security Administration is the ousting of a champion: Liam has dethroned Noah as the nation’s most popular boy name. This was the headline of its newly released baby-name report, an annual synthesis of Social Security card applications from the past year that offers a fascinating cultural statement and doubles as a tip sheet for expectant parents.

When Oprah Winfrey was first asked the question, the talk-show queen was left tongue-tied.

Erica Tighe was 26 when she made the leap: She would set out on her own to be a calligrapher. Full time. In order to pay her $800 rent and cellphone bill and $1,000 college loan payment and also hopefully afford some food.

Little did he know what a noble purpose awaited him when Don Ritchie settled into a house on Old South Head Road back in 1964. The former Navy seaman and retired salesman was eager to soak in the stunning view with his wife: an ocean cliff at Watsons Bay in Eastern Sydney known as The Gap.

When it came time to interview prospective sailors for his expedition across Antarctica, Ernest Shackleton had clear-cut criteria.

The themes emerge predictably. When it comes to New Year’s resolutions, we gravitate toward the biggies: Get healthy, get organized, get a life. We vow to travel more, read more, save more and volunteer more.

Oprah Winfrey sings and claps when presented with the $69 lunch box that makes her 2017 “Favorite Things” list.

Even before she was married, Emily Stimpson Chapman asked for baby prayers.

Hurricane Harvey stranded Father David Bergeron in his pick-up the night it ripped through Houston. The 38-year-old priest had been visiting his brother and had to pull over on an overpass three miles from his home in the flood-ravaged southeast side.

Nicholas Owen was canonized 364 years after his death.

The old man with the typewriter would like a word with us texters and tweeters: Don’t be a blockhead.

Rachel Gardner has a bad habit: She says yes when she ought to say no.

The place infants nod off and teens open up is also where road-weary adults will probe their spirituality: in the car.

Spend a day in a surgery waiting room and you’ll witness a hundred quiet acts of mercy.

Don Currey was a 30-year-old graduate student when he cut down the world’s oldest tree.

It is the book that somehow surfaces when you need it most – manna for the multitasker, solace for the stressed.

There is no scrapbook of Kathy Webb’s life as a Dominican sister. No picture frames or friendship bracelets, no nun memorabilia perched in a closet or buried in a trunk.

On Sunday night the email landed in Mike Foss’ inbox: He had been named to Forbes’ “30 Under 30,” the business magazine’s annual list of rising stars younger than 30.

Carly Poppalardo had blisters on her feet when she drove home from an eight-hour session of professional organizing last Thursday, threw a bag of Trader Joe’s pre-cut veggies and simmer sauce on the stove, flipped on “The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills” and sank into the couch.

Belinda Monahan has analyzed more than 100,000 animal bones in Armenia dating back from the early Bronze Age (1,200 B.C.) to the medieval period.