Scott Simon

What is the power of prayer? Is there any?

The front page of Thursday's New York Daily News featured quotes from prominent Republicans about the murders in San Bernardino. Headline writers thought they saw a theme.

Dr. Rand Paul had tweeted, "My thoughts and prayers are ...

A bible story came to life in Queens this week. Jose Moran spent Tuesday morning setting up the Nativity scene at the Holy Child Jesus Church, where he is a custodian. Mr. Moran put up the manger, and went to lunch. And when he came back at about 1 p.m., ...

Jonathan Pollard is out of prison, if not totally free, after 30 years. He's on parole for another five years, during which he'll have to wear a GPS ankle bracelet, won't be able to give interviews, or leave for Israel, where he is considered a hero, and says ...

Millions of people grew up in a time when we had nuclear nightmares. We worried that a few huge bombs might blow up the world, and we rehearsed how we should hide below our school desks if sirens ever sounded.

They'd test those civil defense sirens every Tuesday morning in ...

It's tempting to make jokes about the demands Republican candidates made of broadcasters for future debates — and believe me, I have.

But I've also squirmed to see reporters bark at presidential candidates to raise their hands, yes or no, to reply to a question, as if they were schoolchildren ...

I'd hoped to persuade my daughters to dress up as Angela Merkel and Terry Gross for Halloween tonight. But they've decided to be a goddess and a princess.

Every year or so I try to look at surveys that show which Halloween costumes are most popular. The list must reveal ...

Milton Schwartz might get hauled in front of the Human Resources department these days for the kind of remark that endeared him to generations of women.

"They'd walk in, and he'd say, 'You're a 38B,' " his son, Ben Schwartz, told the Chicago-Sun Times when he father, Milton, died at ...

Barbie is about to talk back. She has talked before, with a pull-string in her back, so she could utter a phrase or two, like, "Let's have a pizza party!"

But Mattel is about to roll out Hello Barbie, who has a mic in her waist that connects to a ...

Ionel Talpazan thought he saw a UFO when he was a boy, and never stopped seeing them. Of course, he created them.

Ionel Talpazan was 60 years old when he died this week, of diabetes and stroke. He was a boy in a small village in Romania, given up by ...

I covered a papal trip to the United States years ago, and my mother made sure my pockets were packed with mass cards, medallions and her rosary.

I found that a lot of reporters, even those who could be hilariously cynical about religion, were similarly overstuffed. We used to have ...

One man's obscenity is another man's name.

This week a scholar of medieval history announced he might have found the earliest recorded evidence of what we must call here "the F-word" being used in English to describe intimate relations.

Dr. Paul Booth of Keele University says he was examining court ...