Psychologist Justin Barett thinks most children have a natural aptitude for religious belief. He says it's not surprising that so many people believe in spirits or supernatural beings.
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
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The 12 people who died during the attack on the Charlie Hebdo office are on our minds this week. Most of the victims were cartoonists for the French satirical weekly. Its reporters and editor received death threats for the magazine’s depictions of the Prophet Muhammad. A hit-list published in an Al Qaeda magazine in 2013 also named the Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard. Steve Paulson talked with him a few years ago, while Westergaard was living in hiding in Denmark.
“The Unraveling of Mercy Louis" tells the fascinating story of a community that’s nearly torn apart following the discovery of an abandoned baby in a dumpster. A witch hunt ensures and the girls at a local high school soon begin developing mysterious twitches and tics, which quickly intensify. Eventually, the girls in the town are acting as if they’re possessed, thrashing around on the floor or grunting like animals. As strange as it all sounds, Parssinen says the book was inspired by a real episode of mass hysteria in Le Roy, New York.
Lila Azam Zanganeh tells Jim Fleming that Iranian women who supported the Revolution did not expect to lose the rights and freedoms.
Randall Kennedy tells Steve Paulson about some notorious cases where racially mixed children were left in impossible situations by state miscegenation laws.
Marilyn Johnson talks about how librarians are emerging as heroes of the digital age because of their love for the written word, free speech and open access.
Josh Rushing spent 14 years as a Marine and was the spokesman for the U.S. Central Command to the entire Arab world. He now works for Al Jazeera's English language service.
Films about the cold war were a staple of the American film industry for decades, symbols of the Atomic Age.
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