Every now and then, a guest says something that stays with me long after the recording. This week, it was Dr. Cailín Murray , an anthropologist at Ball State University who studies the intersection of folklore, belief, and the stories we tell about what haunts us.   “It’s not whether you believe in ghosts or not. We’re all made up of ghosts because we carry their DNA.”   Isn’t that great?!   So maybe, we’re all a little haunted, too.   Not by rattling chains or flickering lig

Shirley Jackson’s brilliant literature, monsters, and your scary neighbor. October invites us to play with fear. We pull the blanket to our chin or peek between our fingers, safely terrified by ghosts, vampires, and the things that go bump in the night. I’ve been thinking a lot about monsters and what they speak to in our larger society. But lately I've been thinking about the monsters hiding in shadows, but those just outside our front door. Because real horror rarely announ

Darkness falls across the land / The midnight hour is close at hand / Creatures crawl in search of blood / To terrorize y'alls...

The word empathy has been having a real moment recently, but it’s worth pausing on what it  means and how it’s different from sympathy. I...