Cat Schuknecht
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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? -
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.
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If we do a favor for someone we know, we think we've done a good deed. What we don't tend to ask is: Who have we harmed by treating this person with more kindness than we show toward others? This week, in the second of our two-part series on moral decision-making, we consider how actions that come from a place of love can lead to a more unjust world.
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In the months since the spread of the coronavirus, stories of selfishness and exploitation have become all too familiar: people ignoring social distancing guidelines, or even selling medical equipment at inflated prices. Most of our public and economic policies take aim at these sorts of people — the wrongdoers and the profiteers. But is there a hidden cost to the rest of us when we put bad actors at the center of our thinking? Do the measures we put in place to curtail the selfish inadvertently hurt our capacity to do right by others?
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One day after the United States signed an agreement with the Taliban, Ashraf Ghani said a proposed prisoner swap between the Taliban and his government could not be a precondition for talks.
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Jeffrey Epstein died by apparent suicide on Saturday while awaiting trial on charges of sex trafficking. With no defendant to stand in court, the criminal case against Epstein is effectively over.
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Former students at the Dalton School in Manhattan remember Epstein as a young, charismatic teacher. More than four decades later, Epstein stands accused of sexually abusing dozens of underaged girls.
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Alabama officials tell NPR that if the FBI had shared its case file, they would have investigated the James Reeb murder case while one of the assailants was still alive.
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A fourth man was involved in the 1965 attack on civil rights worker and minister James Reeb, but that man was never identified or charged in Reeb's murder, an NPR investigation revealed.
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