Food deserts on Chicago's South Side have shrunk some since 2006, and this has provided health benefits to the communities.
County jails used to be just stopovers for inmates headed to state prisons. But as Arkansas' state facilities have reached capacity, jails are increasingly being used to hold prisoners long term.
The groups who spend the most on lobbying lawmakers in Washington are well-known: ExxonMobil, Boeing, AT&T, General Electric.
I took a job as a reporter in India, where I lived with several married couples, which got me interested in why some marriages work and others fail. Back home, many women of my generation were also putting off marriage or not getting married at all, which only led me to more questions.
When Neil Young caught two women incessantly texting at a concert in 2012, he began mock typing on an invisible phone on stage until the women noticed and apparently left the show.
Much has been written about Trump's style of speech, which linguists have said is often unintelligible yet deeply compelling. Orwell's famous 1946 essay, 'Politics and the English Language,' centers on the use of abstract words, often by politicians, to obscure reality.
Buckhannon, population 5,639, is a deeply conservative town and long has been. While coal is its past, oil and gas are its likely future. It's a town where guns are sold at yard sales, where Pentecostal churches are nearly as common as restaurants, and where distrust of Hillary Clinton is visceral and deep-seated.
Just a decade after 'Living in Bondage,' Nollywood films, made in some 300 languages, were being watched in both urban and rural areas, distributed on both the streets and online, and finding their way into international festivals.
In 1984, Jim Koch used his family's lager recipe to start Boston Beer Company, which has since become the largest 'craft' brewer in the country. He brews Samuel Adams, a rich lager named after the American revolutionary that comes with the tagline, 'Take pride in your beer.'
Over its 40 years, Muppets on 'Sesame Street' have addressed AIDS, divorce, a parent's deployment overseas, and a death in the family. But the show is addressing incarceration in a way it didn't used to: by bringing the show directly to the kids and families it wants to reach.
'Sesame Street' was built on the idea that a show that could capture a child's attention could also give the child an education. That idea turned out to be wildly successful.
In Mumbai, I found, people practiced a showy, demonstrative kind of love, one unafraid of affection or emotion.
Showy displays of love don't come naturally to everyone. They don't come naturally to me. They also come with a risk: a risk of rejection, being made to feel silly, or making yourself into a spectacle.
The lack of space and a growing prison population has strained resources and put pressure on all levels of the penal system.
Xenophobia is defined as the uncontrollable fear of foreigners. That fear should not dictate the immigration dialogue any longer.
