Journalism
How the news is made and defended, at the level of a first-year college course: what separates journalism from commentary and public relations; how each of the craft's rules came out of a case, from the Zenger trial to Rolling Stone's retraction; reporting from people and from records; verification and the fakes; writing, the edit, and ethics; the law of the press, from Sullivan to the 2025-26 suits; investigative reporting; press freedom around the world; and artificial intelligence as tool, author, and defendant. Where the craft argues with itself, over bias, objectivity, and Sullivan, each side's case comes before the course's reading. Every module has a worked example, from a metro desk's day to an investigation from tip to impact.
## Religion: Who Believes, Who Leads, and Who Pays
About 3¾ hours · Last updated October 2026
The world's religions as they are today, with as much history as it takes to explain them. Who believes what, by Pew's count and the World Christian Database's, and why the two differ by hundreds of millions; why faith grows in Africa and South Asia and fades where people are older and richer; how the Catholic Church is run and paid for, from the Curia and the conclave to Peter's Pence and the American bankruptcies; Orthodoxy, the Anglicans, and the churches with no center at all; who speaks for Islam, from Al-Azhar to Najaf, and its money, from zakat to sukuk; Hinduism's temples and the state, the Sikhs' elected committee, Buddhism's monks, and who will choose the next Dalai Lama; Judaism's many authorities and Israel's rabbinate; and how states fund, favor, and restrict religion, from Germany's church tax to America's tax exemption. Brought to October: Leo XIV's changes to the Vatican's money, Iran's new Supreme Leader, the conservative Anglicans' rival council, Japan's final order dissolving the Unification Church, Lula's re-election and the evangelical vote, and the campaign before Israel's election of October 27. Where the field argues, from secularization to tax exemption, each side makes its case before the evidence. Thirteen worked examples, from conclave arithmetic to Italy's 8 per thousand.