For twelve years, Randy Cohen offered advice on life’s most vexing moral questions, large and small: Should you ever "out" a cheating spouse? Is it OK for pastors to download old sermons from the Internet? This week, Cohen reflects back on what he learned as the resident “Ethicist” for The New York Times Magazine. From September 2011.

 

Randy Cohen, host of WAMC's "Person, Place, Thing"

Kenneth Ballen spent five years interviewing more than one hundred Islamic radicals and terrorists, trying to understand their real motivations. What he found were young men who were often vulnerable, scared and full of conflicting emotions - in other words, not too different from the rest of us. From November 2011.
 

Kenneth Ballen, author of "Terrorists in Love: The Real Lives of Islamic Radicals"

Four years ago this month, the state of Texas removed more than 400 children from Yearning for Zion Ranch. They were members of the FLDS, a fundamentalist branch of the Mormon Church accused of underage marriage and sexual abuse of minors. It was the largest detention of children in government history, carried out with SWAT teams, snipers, helicopters, and automatic weapons. A new book reflects back on that event, and explores why military-style raids on minority religions have skyrocketed in the last 20 years.
 

Pictured: The FLDS temple at the Yearning for Zion Ranch in Eldorado, Texas.

Stuart Wright, co-editor of "Saints Under Siege: The Texas State Raid on the Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints"