Great reads: Near death experiences, banner ads and bird migration

The best things we've been reading/looking at this week:


Chris Dall, senior producer: Finally, now we know who's clicking on those banner ads.

Kryssy Pease, associate producer: While there isn't a whole lot of reading here, the pictures of New York City 100+ years ago are incredible. I wonder what it would have been like to live back then.

Tom Weber: How birds migrate via magnetic fields.

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(A flock of nothern ducks fly over Nove Mlyny water reservoirs on February 2, 2012. Photo credit: RADEK MICA/AFP/Getty Images)


Maddy Mahon, assistant producer: I've always thought that near death experiences could be categorized with alien abductions and Bigfoot sightings, but this Salon article by a professor at the University of Montreal may have changed my mind.

Emily Kaiser, associate digital producer: I really liked the storytelling in this piece about forgiveness. And watch this horrifying video of a girl falling into a sinkhole in China. (She's fine.)

Alex DiPalma, assistant producer: Came across this New York Times magazine story from 2006 while doing research for next week's show on resilience. Really interesting examination of how people overcome adversity.

Meggan Ellingboe, assistant producer: Maybe it's because I just discovered the show "Friday Night Lights" (now off air) that I would think a film fest of sports movies would be interesting to attend. It seems that sports and the culture around particular ones can be as much a window into a region's culture as the arts.

However, as long as I mention the arts, here's a clip of art narrating history:


--Stephanie Curtis, social media host