Why do your children need “Hamilton” in their lives? It’s true that the musical — a biopic of U.S founding father Alexander Hamilton — is almost three hours long and tackles a variety of adult themes: war, government, sex, deceit, murder. It’s also, however, a great entry point into American history.

While it may not be our history - the music and depth this music has is more than enough to be entertained and indulge in the history.

The beauty of running sans headphones is that you get to finally be alone with your thoughts. This is also the horror of running without headphones: what if you don’t want to be alone with your thoughts?

There was once a time when YouTube was a low-fi dumping ground for terrible home movies and the occasional cat video. Then the music industry got involved - and everything changed overnight.

In 1979, two years after the death of Elvis Presley, a gold vinyl appeared in record stores across America. The album was titled 'Reborn' and featured a masked man bedecked in an Elvis-style jumpsuit and trademark pompadour. His name was Orion - and his singing voice was eerily similar to the king of rock and roll.

Could it be that Elvis was still alive and performing under a new name?

Trying to find the perfect iOS apps can be tough, and we’re willing to bet that your iPhone or iPad is full of pages and pages of apps. There’s just so much out there, it’s hard to come up with a short list of favourites. We understand. Allow us to help you with our freshly updated Lifehacker Pack for iOS.

There are so many Windows apps out there, that picking a list of the very best, most must-install software for your desktop or laptop feels daunting. We've pored over pages of recommendations, countless forum posts, and lots of comments to come up with this year's Lifehacker Pack for Windows, a list of software champions across four categories: productivity, internet/communications, music/photos/video and utilities.

Which Android app is worth a spot on your new smartphone or tablet? Trying to find the very best of the best is a challenging process, because there are millions of apps to pick from on the Google Play Store. Even if you just scan Google’s “top free” or “top paid” list on a daily basis, you’ll miss out on a lot of digital gems. Allow us to help you out with our freshly updated Lifehacker Pack for Android.

My husband and I both played instruments growing up, so we sort of assumed that musical ability and interest was deeply embedded in our genes. It wasn’t a matter of whether our son played in a band; it was a matter of which instrument—or instrumentS!—he would choose.

The free version of Spotify just got a little better. The music streaming service has extended Spotify Connect, a feature that lets you control music on compatible speakers through phones, laptops and other devices over Wi-Fi to free accounts. Prior to the change, free subscribers could only connect to smart speakers via Bluetooth, which generally provides a... spottier connection. (Sorry. Had to).

Back in 2009, the Free Music Archive was founded as a place where artists could share their music, and listeners could download songs legally. Now, it’s shutting down—so now’s the time to download any tunes off the service you’d like to have in your own personal library.

If you like making playlists, you're more likely to buy video games. That's some of the data Spotify collected for its new tool, Spotify.Me, which helps brands use people's listening habits to predict their personality traits and better market products to them.

I love overly dramatic cover songs, the kind you hear in movie trailers where some lady is stage-whispering "He did the mash, he did the Monster Mash" while the Inception sound blasts over shots of a robot wizard tornado. I play them in two moods: feeling extremely dramatic and pumped up, or feeling goofy. So I took a few dozen of these songs and I made a dramatic, embarrassing Spotify playlist.

In the '80s, a turtle taught kids how to code, with the educational programming language Logo. Now the browser-based music sequencer turtle.audio combines Logo and Mario Paint to let you program synth loops.

When your friends express hurt feelings over something you deem trivial, it is appropriate to take the piss out of them by miming a violin performance. If you want to take your mockery to the next level, this video tutorial explains how to make tiny violins out of paddle pop sticks.

You might know Chris Ballew as the frontman of '90s alt-rock band The Presidents of the United States of America. But if you’re under, say, eight, you’re probably most familiar with him as Caspar Babypants, a “kindie-rock” icon who makes family-friendly music about topics such as a bubble that doesn’t follow the crowd, a tick that finds residence in a free couch, and a blackberry pie that falls from the sky. An experienced dad of two, he shared with us how he parents.

You've got a week before Christmas music starts seeping into every crevice of the ambient soundscape. So let's throw one last hurrah of Halloween music. With the help of my colleagues throughout Gizmodo Media, some YouTube recommendations, and old episodes of Dr. Demento, I've built a playlist (embedded above) of 52 songs for Halloween.

The subject of file backups and online storage came up the other day at a Lifehacker staff meeting, and resident door-holder Nick Douglas chimed in that his solution for backing up his laptop was easy: He never keeps any important files on it. Everything — and he means everything — lives in the cloud.

Just because a song is old doesn’t mean it will trigger nostalgia. If you keep Beyoncé in regular rotation, listening to “Crazy in Love” probably won’t take you back to 2003 every time. But I’ve found a kind of music that’s way more likely to trigger nostalgia: The one hit wonder.

Early morning runs can be rough, but to get through them it helps to have a little teamwork, camaraderie, and gleeful singing about death. Fortunately, military running cadences are available on all your favourite streaming services.