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Cat Schuknecht

  • Patty Ramge leans against her Ford Pinto in 1978. Since then, the car has become one of the most infamous vehicles in American history, known for a design that made it vulnerable in low-speed accidents.
    News from NPR
    The Halo Effect: Why It's So Difficult To Understand The Past
    Shankar Vedantam
    Judy, Lyn and Donna Ulrich were driving to a volleyball game when their Ford Pinto was hit from behind by a Chevy van. The Pinto caught fire, and the three teenagers were burned to death. This week on Hidden Brain, we talk to a former Ford insider who could have voted to recall the Pinto years before the Ulrich girls were killed — but didn't. And we ask, is it possible to fairly evaluate our past actions when we know how things turned out?
  • At seventeen years old, Fred Clay was sentenced to prison for a crime he did not commit. Various flawed ideas in psychology were used to determine his guilt.
    The Night That Lasted A Lifetime: How Psychology Was Misused In Teen's Murder Case
    Shankar Vedantam
    Not long after his sixteenth birthday, Fred Clay was arrested for the murder of a cab driver in Boston. Eventually, Fred was found guilty — but only after police and prosecutors used questionable psychological techniques to single him out as the killer. This week on Hidden Brain, we go back four decades to uncover the harm that arises when flawed ideas from psychology are used to determine that a teenager should spend the rest of his life behind bars.