Bill O’Reilly’s ouster really is a big deal. Time was when the FCC had a regulation called The Fairness Doctrine - a rule that required broadcasters to present controversial issues in an evenhanded way. But in 1987, a time of deregulation, that doctrine was scrapped – leading to intense partisanship in broadcasting and notably the birth of Fox News.

I learned about LaCrosse, Wisconsin, from a Planet Money episode called, The Town Where Everyone Talks About Death - a city of more than fifty thousand residents, where ninety-six per cent of them have an Advance Care Plan on file.

In the spring of 1969 I worked in the apple orchards at Scott Farm in Dummerston. And back then I’d never heard of climate change. Yet today, Zeke Goodband, the manager of Scott Farm is relying more on wild bees for pollination because they work in cooler temperatures and tolerate wind and wet weather. And Goodband says native bees seem more resilient and better able to deal with climate instability.

Many small colleges are struggling with low inquiry, application, and admission rates, including here in the Northeast. Rising tuitions, student loan abuses, and radical change in employment patterns have discouraged many students who then choose to bypass college and just enter the workforce at a lower level of opportunity.

The use of online communication to advance social causes has created some clever new words, like clicktivsm – the signing of online petitions to feel part of social change.

We’re approaching a critical date in the world of college admissions – the day students put down their deposits and name their college choices. But admissions officers and college presidents already know one thing for sure – that the incoming class will have more women than men.

Thirty thousand men and women are in Hopkinton, Massachusetts to take part in the one hundred and twenty first running of the Boston Marathon. As the participants crowd together at the start, the energy will build until it’s released by the starting gun. And as the competitors surge forward, enthusiastic spectators will cheer them along for twenty six point two miles.

For decades now, American colleges have been working to identify their first African-American students. The implicit message is that any college that can claim an early black student has a legacy of tolerance.

Walter Scheidel, a Stanford humanities professor, builds on Joseph Stiglitz's and Thomas Piketty's work on economic inequality with his own book, The Great Leveler, Violence and the History of Inequality from the Stone Age to the Twenty-first Century.

Just a few days ago, a black vulture appeared above Walpole, New Hampshire, thirty-seven years after I confirmed the first turkey vulture nest in northern New England.