When The Mountain Goats' founder John Darnielle was a teenager, he went through a self-destructive phase. "Your intelligence doesn't override your desire to destroy yourself," Darnielle tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross. "I really, really did not...
According to reports about the Adrian Peterson felony abuse indictment, Peterson’s 4-year-old son pushed another of Peterson’s sons off a video game. Peterson then retrieved a tree branch — called a “switch” —...
My phone pinged. I knew instantly what the alert was, because the heading is always the same. I had signed up for a criminal notification system to keep tabs on the man I called my father. “This email is to inform you that the offender...
The indictment last week of the N.F.L. player Adrian Peterson by a Texas grand jury for reckless or negligent injury to a child has set into relief the harmful disciplinary practices of some black families. Mr. Peterson used a...
African-American elementary students in California were chronically truant at nearly four times the rate of all students during the last school year, according to a state report released Friday, that said poverty and suspensions were...
Twenty years ago this week, President Bill Clinton signed into law the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994. It put more cops on the streets, imposed tougher prison sentences, and increased funding for prisons. The thinking was...
Undocumented immigrant mothers and children are kept in excessively cold conditions, given undercooked food and mocked by guards in a detention facility in Artesia, New Mexico, an attorney alleged after a visit there. "The unnecessary cruelty is...
Minnesota Vikings running back Adrian Peterson was indicted in a child injury case last week after reportedly using a small tree branch to hit his 4-year-old son in May 2014. Peterson has also been accused of abusing his other young son, though his...
More than 20 national education and civil rights advocates sent a letter Monday to Department of Defense officials, urging them to stop giving U.S. school police departments anti-mine vehicles, military-grade firearms like M16s and even grenade...
Nearly one in five children in the United States lived in poverty last year, with a much higher proportion of poverty among African-American and Hispanic children, new U.S. Census figures released Tuesday show. Overall, the number of children...
On a clear morning this past February, the inmates in the B Yard of Pelican Bay State Prison filed out of their cellblock a few at a time and let a cool, salty breeze blow across their bodies. Their home, the California prison...
The housing crisis and credit collapse that together comprised the Great Recession disproportionately affected minorities in America in at least two specific ways. As recent research from Rice University and Cornell University has demonstrated,...
Recently, the world learned that Jihadists had stoned a Syrian woman to death for "adultery." Stoning, a barbaric form of death by torture, involves the throwing of stones at a person until they die. In recent days, more accounts have been...
If your belt needs to be let out a notch, you're not alone. The average American waistline is growing even though obesity rates haven't grown. And excess abdominal fat increases the risk of heart disease, diabetes and stroke. The collective...
In 2013, 6.3 million children under the age of 5 died. That's a tragic statistic — yet it represents a 49 percent drop from 1990, according to data released Tuesday by the United Nations. Dr. Mickey Chopra, the head of UNICEF's global...