What If Heaven Is Not For Real?

"Last week, a young man named Alex Malarkey made news when he publicly retracted his story that he'd been to heaven. This, understandably, may not seem like news to some people. But Malarkey's story, based on the tragedy of an auto accident when he was just 6 years old, became a best-selling book called The Boy Who Came Back from Heaven."

"More important, his book, along with others such as Heaven Is for Real — written by Todd Burpo based on the story of his then-young son, Colton — have come to form their own literary genre. Sometimes called "heavenly tourism," these volumes have proven quite lucrative for their publishers. The details of Malarkey's religiously motivated decision to tell the truth can be found elsewhere. But for me, his story raises a deep question about the origins of humanity's very deep anxiety about what happens after death."

Why Ants Handle Traffic Better Than You Do

"Could studying ants reveal clues to reducing highway traffic jams? Physicist Apoorva Nagar at the Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology thinks the answer is yes."

"Nagar says he got interested in the topic when he came across a study by German and Indian researchers showing that ants running along a path were able to maintain a steady speed even when there were a large number of ants on the path."

"Nagar says there are three main reasons ants don't jam up. Number one, ants don't have egos. They don't show off by zooming past people."

"The second thing is, they do not mind a few accidents, or collisions," say Nagar. So unless there's a serious pileup, they just keep going.

One Scientist's Race To Help Microbes Help You

"The rate of recent discoveries about the human microbiome has been dizzying. And Rob Knight wants to crank up the pace."

"One of the top scientists in a field that's discovering possible bacterial influences on everything from diabetes to depression, Knight was also cofounder of a massive citizen science experiment called the American Gut Project. In recent weeks he moved from the University of Colorado, Boulder and took the gut project with him – to the medical school at the University of California, San Diego."

"The project lets anybody, for a $99 fee, have the microbes of the gut, mouth, skin or other orifices inventoried. And it's not just for people, but pets, too. Last year I roped my husband, mom and dog into having their gut microbes analyzed along with mine in hopes of discovering what microscopic stories we share. (You can read more about the results here.)"

United Noshes Dinner Party Aims To Eat Its Way Through Global Cuisine

"The United Nations has 193 member states. And United Noshes aims to recreate meals from every last one of them, alphabetically, as a series of dinner parties."

"The project was started by Jesse Friedman and his wife, Laura Hadden, three years ago, as a way to explore the culinary bounty of New York City. As they cooked food from Algeria to Djibouti to Guyana, United Noshes hosted dinners that ranged from just a few friends gathered around a living room table, to dozens of guests assembled in a banquet hall. And the ingredients have ranged as well — from cashew juice to French charcuterie to fermented corn flour."

Highflying Geese Save Energy By Swooping Like a Roller Coaster

"The bar-headed goose is famous for its long, annual migration from the Indian subcontinent to central Asia, a flight that takes it over snowcapped Himalaya Mountains so high and dangerous that human climbers struggle just to stay alive."

"Scientists had thought these birds might fly up to a high altitude and then stay there for the trip, much like a jet plane. But a study published Thursday in the journal Science shows they actually fly close to the ground, going up and down through the mountains like a roller coaster."

Dollar Rise Is Good News For the US For Now

"If you've traveled outside the U.S. recently, or sent your U.S.-made products abroad, you've probably noticed that the dollar is getting stronger. The stronger dollar is the sign of a healthier U.S. economy, but its strength has the potential to erode growth."

"There are a number of factors behind the dollar's rise, says economist Jens Nordvig, a currency expert at Nomura Securities. The main one is the health of the U.S. economy."

"'When you compare the U.S. economy to the rest of the world, you really have a situation where there's a pretty dramatic outperformance of U.S. growth relative to European growth, Japanese growth, or global growth in general,' Nordvig says."

In Brazil A Once High Flying Economy Takes a Tumble

"It was a terrible Christmas season for stores in Brazil. For the first time in more than a decade — since 2003 — sales went down."

"Roberta Pimenta owns a small shop selling children's clothes at the Butanta mall in Sao Paulo, which is aimed squarely at the middle-class shoppers who live in the area."

"'It was the worst drop in sales since I've had this store,' Pimenta says. "In seven years it was the worst year I had. And every year you have a 10 percent increase of employees' salary, 10 percent increase in the rent, 10 percent in everything, so it is horrible."

"Pimenta says sales haven't picked up since the holidays. She has lost money this year, as well."

Imagining A Future When the Doctor's Office Is In Your Home

"Extracting medical care from the health care system is all too often an expensive exercise in frustration. Dr. Eric Topol says your smartphone could make it cheaper, faster, better and safer."

"That's the gist of his new book, The Patient Will See You Now. Lots of people are bullish on the future of mobile health to transform health care, but Topol gets extra cred because of his major medical chops: Former head of cardiology at the Cleveland Clinic and present director of the Scripps Translations Science Institute in La Jolla, Calif."

"We caught up with Topol during his book tour to ask him just what mobile, digital health care would be like. Here's an edited version of our conversation."

The Doctor Who Championed Hand Washing and Saved Women's Lives

"This is the story of a man whose ideas could have saved a lot of lives and spared countless numbers of women and newborns' feverish and agonizing deaths."

"You'll notice I said 'could have.'"

"The year was 1846, and our would-be hero was a Hungarian doctor named Ignaz Semmelweis."

"Semmelweis was a man of his time, according to Justin Lessler, an assistant professor at Johns Hopkins School of Public Health."

'Tasty:' How Flavor Helped Makes Us Human

"Our current cultural obsession with food is undeniable. But, while the advent of the foodie may be a 21st century phenomenon, from an evolutionary standpoint, flavor has long helped define who we are as a species, a new book argues."

"In Tasty: the Art and Science of What We Eat, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist John McQuaid offers a broad and deep exploration of the human relationship to flavor."

"'Flavor is the most important ingredient at the core of what we are. It created us,' McQuaid writes."

Trapped In His Body For 12 Years A Man Breaks Free

"What would you do if you were locked in your body, your brain intact but with no way to communicate? How do you survive emotionally when you are invisible to everyone you know and love?"

"That's the first question asked by NPR's new program on human behavior, Invisibilia."

"The first show tells the story of Martin Pistorius, who fell into a mysterious coma as a young boy. He had only one thing left as his mind began to function again — his own thoughts. Here's a glimpse into his story."

Why Bill Gates Is Commissioning Fine Art

"Each year, about 6 million people die from diseases that are preventable with vaccines. And about 1 in 5 children around the world don't have access to life-saving vaccines."

"But those are cold and dry statistics."

"The Art of Saving A Life enlisted more than 30 artists to create images that bring those numbers to life — to spark conversations, interest and, ultimately, funding for vaccines."

Take A Swipe At Bad Cholesterol: Eat An Avocado A Day

"New research finds that eating an avocado per day, as part of an overall diet rich in healthy fats, may help cut the bad kind cholesterol, known as LDL."

"Researchers at Pennsylvania State University recruited 45 overweight participants who agreed to try three different types of cholesterol-lowering diets. Their study was published Wednesday in the Journal of the American Heart Association."

"One was a low-fat diet that included lots of fruits, low-fat dairy, poultry, whole grains and small amounts of red meat."

Uruguay Tries To Tame a Monster Called Cannibis

"To gauge international interest in Uruguay's legal cannabis market, spend just a few minutes at a small marijuana shop called Urugrow in Uruguay's capital, Montevideo."

"In a period of about 10 minutes, owner Juan Manuel Varela gets a call from Brazil. A man from Canada shows up to see what the market would be for his company, which sells child-safe packaging for marijuana products. Shortly after, two American travelers stop by looking to score weed."

"Another lurking pot-preneur, Argentinian Mauricio Luporini, explains to them that under the new law, selling to foreigners is illegal — to their obvious disappointment."

"Afterwards, Luporini says that he is also looking to get a piece of the cannabis market."

Chicken Confidential: How This Bird Came To Rule the Cultural Roost

"If you looked at Earth from far off in the solar system, would it look like it's run by humans — or chickens? There are about three times as many chickens as people on this planet. And while horses and dogs are often celebrated as humankind's partner in spreading civilization, a new book argues it's really the chicken."

"Andrew Lawler, author of Why Did the Chicken Cross the World?, tells NPR's Scott Simon about the chicken's malleability, its religious symbolism and the most disturbing thing he learned while researching his book."

"You can turn the chicken into almost anything. You can have a tiny little bantam, or you can have a giant Rhode Island red. The chicken is incredibly malleable, which is probably a good reason why we decided to domesticate it and use it for so many purposes. ... Some archaeologists believe that the chicken was domesticated for ... cockfighting and for religious purposes. And it's only later — really, in the past century — that the chicken has been used to eat on a regular basis."

Experts Predict Low Oil Prices Through Next Year

"OPEC's decision not to cut production continues to reverberate through global oil markets, with the price of Europe's benchmark Brent crude falling to a four-year low today — bad news for petroleum exporters in the Middle East and Russia, but good news for nearly everyone else."

"Brent crude oil steadied at about $73 a barrel on Friday after reaching a low of $71.12, its lowest level since July 2010, according to Reuters."

"Igor Sechin, the head of Russia's Rosneft, says he thinks oil prices will average $70-75 per barrel through 2015. That prediction was in line with what Bill Hubard, chief economist at Markets.com, told Reuters: 'I think $70 a barrel will be the new norm. We could see oil go considerably lower.'"

Benedict Cumberbatch Lifts Above Biopic Formula In Imitation Game

"Major studios once churned out scores of great-person biographical pictures. But now you rarely see them except during awards season. They're prime Oscar bait. The new Stephen Hawking biopic, The Theory Of Everything, is a perfect specimen. It's a letdown, finally, but Eddie Redmayne is amazingly tough. He captures the fury inside Hawking's twisted frame."

"And then there's The Imitation Game, which Benedict Cumberbatch lifts far above the standard biopic formula. He's award-caliber strange. He plays the proto-computer genius, World War II code breaker and gay martyr Alan Turing and has the perfect visage for it, with his alien reptile face and hemisphere-wide blue eyes. They could conceivably see patterns and possibilities the rest of us can't glimpse. Human interactions are more of a challenge for Turing. Today, we might diagnose him with Asperger's syndrome, but then he just seemed arrogant. Cumberbatch, as is his wont, gives this indifference to social niceties a comic spin in early scenes. Only later will it have a tragic dimension."

Silicon Valley's Power Over the Free Press: Why It Matters

"A big shift happened in news and information over the past few years: The people who write news and information no longer control the distribution of it. Technology companies do."

"Specifically it's Facebook and Twitter — the large social platforms created in Silicon Valley."

"'We have reached a point of transition where news spaces are no longer owned by newsmakers,' Emily Bell told an audience at the University of Oxford recently. Bell, who led the digital transition of The Guardian, is currently at the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University. (Here's her Guardian column version of the speech.)"

What Microbes Lurked In the Last Public Restroom You Used

"The invisible world of the bathroom isn't pretty — unless you're a microbe. After scanning the microbial zoo of four public restrooms recently, a team of researchers found a diverse swarm of characters that persisted for months despite regular cleaning of the facilities."

"The goal of the study, published in the December issue of Applied and Environmental Microbiology, was to better understand how communities of bacteria and viruses can shift in these very public places across a couple of months."

"To get their down-and-dirty readings, the researchers selected four bathrooms at San Diego State University (in the North Life Sciences building, in case you're in the neighborhood, and want to plan accordingly)."

You Might Be Surprised When You Take Your Temperature

"What's your temperature?"

"That's the question of the hour. The Ebola virus has made taking your temperature part of everyday conversation. People in West Africa are doing it. People returning from the region are doing it. And so are the overly paranoid in the United States."

"For anyone who's been exposed to the virus, a body temperatures of 100.4 or higher has been deemed the point of concern. The goal, of course, is that magic number: 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit."

"Except 98.6 degrees isn't so magical after all. In fact, that might not be your normal temperature."