On November 9, a divided Supreme Court heard arguments in two cases about just punishment for juveniles convicted of non-homicide offenses. Are life sentences imposed on juvenile offenders cruel and unusual?

In a new book about inspirational poet Mattie Stepanek, who died in 2004, his mother Jeni writes about his short life and lasting legacy.

Read and watch more of Kim Lawton's interview with Jeni Stepanek, who says her son, best-selling poet and speaker Mattie Stepanek, had "a universal message--give and you shall receive."

In his book "Gray Land: Soldiers on War," portrait and documentary photographer Barry Goldstein writes that "even at its best, day-to-day life in a combat zone has a corrosive effect on mind, body, and spirit."

Listen to this week's show.

"If any event ever merited the description of miracle," says the Rev. Christian Fuhrer, it was the 1989 revolution that reunited East and West Germany, "a revolution that grew out of the church."

Twenty years ago, a nonviolent movement emerged from the sanctuary of historic St. Nikolai Evangelical Lutheran Church in Leipzig. It was rooted, according to its pastor, in weekly prayers for peace and readings from the Sermon on the Mount that countered "the reality of political hopelessness."

Hastings Center bioethicist and philosopher Daniel Callahan says the common good as a moral value should be the foundation for American health care reform, but it has been largely absent from the current public debate.

Read an excerpt from a new book on medical technology costs and health care by Daniel Callahan, who advocates "an open discussion on what counts as good or bad choices, wise or imprudent ones, and our social obligations to our community as we make them."

City planner Stephen Goldsmith says this private development project of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints creates a "we-they" divide. Jason Mathis of Salt Lake City's Downtown Alliance says the church is creating "a community that is going to last for the next hundred years."