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Do You Believe in Life After Death? These Scientists Study It.

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Do You Believe in Life After Death? These Scientists Study It.

Upon arrival at the family’s home, the team was shown into the kitchen. A child, who was three, the youngest of four home-schooled siblings, peeked from behind her mother’s legs, looking up shyly. She wore a baggy Minnie Mouse shirt and went to perch between her grandparents on a banquette, watching everyone take their seats around the dining table.

“Let’s start from the very beginning,” Dr. Tucker said after the paperwork had been signed by Misty, the child’s 28-year-old mother. “It all began with the puzzle piece?”

A few months earlier, mother and child had been looking at a wooden puzzle of the United States, with each state represented by a cartoon of a person or object. Misty’s daughter pointed excitedly at the jagged piece representing Illinois, which had an abstract illustration of Abraham Lincoln.

“That’s Pom,” her daughter exclaimed. “He doesn’t have his hat on.”

This was indeed a drawing of Abraham Lincoln without his hat, but more important, there was no name under the image indicating who he was. Following weeks of endless talk about “Pom” bleeding out after being hurt and being carried to a too-small bed — which the family had started to think could be related to Lincoln’s assassination — they began to consider that their daughter had been present for the historical moment. This was despite the family having no prior belief in reincarnation, nor any particular interest in Lincoln.

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On the drive to Amherst, Dr. Tucker confessed his hesitation in taking on this particular case — or any case connected to a famous individual. “If you say your child was Babe Ruth, for example, there would be lots of information online,” he said. “When we get those cases, usually it’s that the parents are into it. Still, it’s all a little strange to be coming out of a three-year-old’s mouth. Now if she had said her daughter was Lincoln, I probably wouldn’t have made the trip.”

Lately, Dr. Tucker has been giving the children picture tests. “Where we think we know the person they’re talking about, we’ll show them a picture from that life, and then show them another picture — a dummy picture — from somewhere else, to see if they can pick out the right one,” he said. “You have to have a few pictures for it to mean anything. I had one where the kid remembered dying in Vietnam. I showed him eight pairs of pictures and a couple of them he didn’t make any choice on, but the others he was six out of six. So, you know, that makes you think. But this girl is so young, that I don’t think we can do that.”

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‘Wait Wait’ for June 13, 2026: With Not My Job guest Robert Smigel

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‘Wait Wait’ for June 13, 2026: With Not My Job guest Robert Smigel

Robert Smigel attends Netflix’s “Happy Gilmore 2” New York Premiere at Jazz at Lincoln Center on July 21, 2025 in New York City. (Photo by Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images)

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This week’s show was recorded in Chicago with host Peter Sagal, judge and scorekeeper Alzo Slade, Not My Job guest Robert Smigel and panelists Josh Gondelman, Shantira Jackson, and Shane Torres. Click the audio link above to hear the whole show.

Who’s Alzo This Time

America’s Team; Siri Killed Romance; Doritos, Cheetos and Chex, Oh My!

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Panel Questions

The Rise of Barmacies.

Bluff The Listener

Our panelists tell three stories about someone getting some game-changing advice, only one of which is true

Not My Job: Legendary comedy writer the hand behind Triumph the Insult Comic Dog Robert Smigel answers our questions about service animals

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Peter talks to legendary comedy writer and the man behind Triumph, The Insult Comic Dog, Robert Smigel. Robert plays our game called, “Insult dog, meet SERVICE dog?” Three questions about service animals.

Panel Questions

Goodbye Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner; John Travolta Frolics!

Limericks

Alzo Slade reads three news-related limericks: The Drink Of the Summer; Apex Squirrels; A Meal Made For and From a Caveman

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Lightning Fill In The Blank

All the news we couldn’t fit anywhere else

Predictions

Our panelists predict, after smart phones dropped the birth rate, what can we do to get it up?

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Low-resistance tires could cut drivers’ costs while supporting environment in California

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Low-resistance tires could cut drivers’ costs while supporting environment in California

More than 20 years after legislators first told the California Energy Commission that replacement tires need to be as energy-efficient as original tires, the agency is taking action.

Tires on new cars have low “rolling resistance,” meaning there is less friction and drag on the engine as it propels the car forward. That boosts a car’s overall miles per gallon.

The public has until Tuesday to weigh in on a proposal that would require replacement tires sold in California be as energy-efficient as the average new care tire by 2031. California would be the first state with such a rule.

The effort comes as the Trump administration seeks to dismantle federal fuel economy standards and has blocked the state’s ability to strengthen its greenhouse gas emissions rules for cars.

“At a time when the Trump administration is driving up harmful emissions and driving up costs for drivers, this is a tool that California has, to cut costs and clean up the air,” said Bill Magavern, policy directory at the advocacy group Coalition for Clean Air . “It doesn’t require any approval from the federal government.”

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The commission estimates that once the rule is in full effect, drivers will save $153 over the life of their tires, after accounting for the higher cost of the more efficient wheels, which add about $26 per set. By 2035, the rule would reduce yearly gasoline demand by the equivalent of one to two months of one California refinery’s annual production.

As for carbon dioxide emissions, it would be the equivalent, annually, of taking 400,000 cars off the road, the commission said.

Many members of the public expressed support in a public hearing Wednesday. But some said low rolling resistance tires are less safe and don’t last as long.

In response to similar feedback, the commission already included new grip standards in its proposal and produced a study that found tire efficiency does not affect lifespan. It also relaxed efficiency requirements for long-lasting tires.

People who race and collect cars and buy ultra high-performance tires for other reasons are also not pleased.

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“As part of California car culture, enthusiasts who take vehicles to the track and enjoy a variety of higher-grip, lower-treadwear options would be disproportionately impacted,” wrote commenter Tommy Wong. Motor sport and trade publications are panning the rule.

As for tire manufacturers and dealers, the industry is split. Michelin, Discount Tire and EV-tire maker Enso are on board with the rule, but Goodyear, Yokohama and the California Tire Dealers Association are pushing back, arguing that the efficient tires would cost more than agency estimates.

Consumer Reports and the Consumer Federation of America said the agency’s cost estimates were “well-grounded” and that the rule was a “much needed response to the affordability crisis.”

Energy commission staffer Ken Rider stressed that people probably won’t notice much of a difference if the rule is enacted because so many cars on the road already use these tires.

“There is a significant number of popular replacement tires that already meet [the requirements] that are safe, long-lasting, and competitively priced,” Rider said. “They are made across a variety of manufacturers, across a variety of vehicle shapes and sizes.”

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A spokesperson for the commission said staff is considering more revisions to the proposal, which could lead to another round of public comment. Once the rule is final, it must be voted on by the commission.

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Gene Shalit, longtime ‘Today’ show movie critic, dies at 100

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Gene Shalit, longtime ‘Today’ show movie critic, dies at 100

Film critic Gene Shalit is seen during a toast with Today show cast and crew at the end of Katie Couric’s final show on May 31, 2006, in New York.

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NEW YORK — Gene Shalit, a movie critic and arts reporter for the “Today” show over four decades who was known for his puffy hair, oversized handlebar mustache and affection for groan-inducing puns, has died. He was 100.

Shalit’s family announced the death Friday to NBC News, saying in a statement that he “passed away peacefully today after 100 years of an amazing life.”

Shalit joined “Today” as a contributor in 1970 and became arts editor in 1973, later settling in for his segment, “Critic’s Corner.” When he left the show in 2010, he was one of the last high-profile film critics on a major network.

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“What resonated above his unusual appearance was his incredible wit, his remarkable intelligence. But he didn’t pound you over the head with it. He amused you. He enlightened and amused whatever subject he was on,” Guy Ludwig, Shalit’s producer for more than 20 years, wrote in an essay of his time.

It was no coincidence that Chicago critics Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel’s local “thumbs-up, thumbs-down” movie-review program, “Sneak Previews,” went national on PBS in the late 1970s and that “Today” show’s ABC rival, “Good Morning America,” hired Joel Siegel to be its movie critic in 1981.

“Shalit was instrumental in changing the balance of critical power in America. When he began his ‘Today’ tenure, newspapers and magazines were the primary sources for movie reviews. That’s where cinematic opinion was sparked and shaped,” The Plain Dealer wrote in 2010, calling Shalit “Daniel Boone in a bow tie and Groucho glasses.”

Magazine work led to NBC offer

Shalit started as an entertainment columnist for McCall’s magazine, eventually becoming senior film critic for Look magazine in 1968 and writing for Ladies’ Home Journal. His popularity in magazines led to an offer from NBC.

“No one at NBC had seen him. They’d only read his stuff. So he walked into this executive’s office and the executive took one look at him and said, ‘Mr. Shalit, have you ever thought of radio?’” wrote Ludwig. “They didn’t know how the public would react to someone who looked so different from people who were typically on TV in 1967.”

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On the air, Shalit was a middle-of-the-road critic. Of 1986’s classic “Stand By Me,” he said it was different from other movies about youth “because of instead of grossing you out, ‘Stand by You’ is engrossing.”

“Many critics will give so much of the plot of a movie away that they destroy the movie for the viewer… I just don’t give away the story,” he told The Associated Press in 1993.

Highlights in words

He liked “Defiance” starring Daniel Craig and Jude Law, calling it “a vivid dramatization of one of history’s titanic turning points.” But he called “Brokeback Mountain “wildly overpraised, but not by me” and drew condemnation from GLAAD for calling Jake Gyllenhaal’s character, Jack, a “sexual predator.” Shalit apologized.

He called “Frozen” “very cool.” He said the oddball title of “The Men Who Stare at Goats” was “heard to bleat,” and his review of “The Lovely Bones” read in part: “There’s no bones about it.”

He began reviewing on the air the year of “Patton” and “Love Story” and ended his run with a critique of “Shrek Forever After,” of which he noted that the “bellow fellow is now a mellow fellow.” One highlight of this tenure was his descent into a fit of giggles while interviewing Carol Channing.

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He called a remake of “King Kong” so “gargantuan that I must create new words to describe it: fabularious … a brilliantological humongousness of marvelosity.” His take on Steven Spielberg’s adaptation of Alice Walker’s “The Color Purple”: “It should be against the law not to see it.”

In a 1981 interview with John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd, Belushi said Shalit’s hair looked like “an ant farm on fire.” Nevertheless, he peppered his guest with so many questions about their daily life that it felt like therapy. He asked both comedians what their last meals would be. “What do you want to be doing 10 years from now, John Belushi?” Shalit asked. “‘Fiddler on the Roof’” Belushi replied.

During his tenure, he traded quips with anchors ranging from Edwin Newman, Barbara Walters and Jane Pauley to Tom Brokaw, Bryant Gumbel, Katie Couric, Jane Pauley, Al Roker and Meredith Vieira.

Gumbel was not always a fan, once saying Shalit’s reviews “are often late and his interviews aren’t very good.” The critique came in what was supposed to be a confidential memo to Marty Ryan, the show’s executive producer at the time.

In 1994, while in St. Pete Beach, Florida, to cover Major League Baseball spring training, a car hit Shalit as he was crossing a street and broke his leg. After that, “Today” began recording his movie reviews in his home studio.

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Early life

He was born in New York and grew up in Morristown, New Jersey, starting his grammar school’s first newspaper before writing a humor column for the newspaper while a student at Morristown High School. He graduated from the University of Illinois in 1949.

Shalit played the bassoon, but he said he started out on the clarinet.

“I didn’t practice for a few weeks and the teacher got furious,” he recalled in 1988, before playing bassoon in a New York City fundraiser. “He took away my clarinet and as punishment he said, ‘From now on, you’re gonna play THIS.’”

In 1987, he edited a book called “Laughing Matters: A Celebration of American Humor,” saying he wanted to introduce and reintroduce such old and new masters of American humor as Mark Twain, James Thurber and Russell Baker.

Shalit was regularly mocked on “Saturday Night Live” by cast member Horatio Sanz, who would appear on the Weekend Update desk dressed as Shalit and go on an extended, barely coherent rants that punned the title of every movie he reviewed. Shalit also made cameos on “Sesame Street,” “Family Guy” and “Spongebob Squarepants.”

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He is survived by a daughter, Willa Shalit.

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