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When four bears were raiding his bird feeders, Gov. Peter Shumlin thought he might be able to shoo them away. He ended up sprinting for safety — barely escaping, you might say.

In a new book, To Forgive Design: Understanding Failure, engineer Henry Petroski chronicles disasters from the sinking of the Titanic to the destruction of space shuttles Challenger and Columbia. Petroski discusses why these accidents are often caused by factors other than a design flaw.

From farting fish, to the laws of stupidity, Marc Abrahams (editor and co-founder of The Annals of Improbable Research) has a knack for finding science that "makes you laugh, and then makes you think." Abrahams discusses some improbable research, and why science that might at first seem absurd, matters.

Newark Mayor Cory Booker is part of an elite list of politicians who have rescued people in distress. Here's a partial list of other elected officials who've gone beyond the call of duty.

The big-screen version of The Last Airbender was a box-office disaster, panned by critics and loathed by fans of the popular TV series it was based on. Now, as NPR's Neda Ulaby reports, the original show's creators have been given the rare chance to rebuild their franchise with a new series.

In The Social Conquest of Earth, biologist and naturalist Edward O. Wilson writes of how humans and insects conquered the Earth by forming complex societies based on group cooperation, and he discusses the evolutionary struggle between our altruistic and selfish natures.

Some 70,000 people are attending the National Rifle Association's annual convention in St. Louis. It's hard to find any who support President Obama. But that doesn't mean gun owners are completely sold on Mitt Romney. The presumptive GOP nominee spoke to NRA members Friday to try to change that.

To get elected in southwestern Pennsylvania as a Democrat, it helps to be a conservative one. And because of congressional reapportionment, two conservative Democratic incumbents — Rep. Jason Altmire and Rep. Mark Critz — are facing off for a single seat in their party's primary later this month.

The Cuban jazz pianist was arrested and nearly deported after entering the U.S. from Mexico. Rodriguez's debut album, Sounds of Space, is a collaboration with his idol, Quincy Jones.

Author Philip Kerr's latest novel takes his wartime German gumshoe Bernie Gunther from Berlin to Prague at the behest of notorious SS boss Reynhard Heydrich. Gunther must solve an Agatha Christie-style country house murder mystery in which the suspects are all mass murderers already.