Just about the only time that an execution will raise more than eyebrow is when a woman is scheduled to be put to death. This was certainly the case with condemned Georgia murderer Kelly Gissendaner. Pope Francis chimed in and pleaded for Georgia to spare her life. Tens of thousands signed a petition pleading for mercy. Gissendaner's daughters, who also happened to be the daughters of the man whom she was complicit in his murder in 1997, also pleaded for her life. 

Local bishops, not the pope, traditionally run church life and sometimes political life from Mexico to Argentina, but the reach of Pope Benedict XVI, who announced his retirement effective Feb. 28, has been unique. For decades, when Ratzinger’s shoe dropped, the tremor reverberated over Latin America, where half of the world’s 1 billion Catholics live. Amid speculation about who will be the next pope are suggestions that the time may have come for a Latin American prelate or someone from the global south. 

Billing themselves as the black male version of “The View,” the Table of Truth can’t be accused of plowing an oversaturated field.  And listening to the podcast’s Backlash episode, the conversation meandering from planking to the dearth of African-American comic book heroes, it’s kind of  true.  Except Elisabeth Hasselback couldn’t improve a 19^th-century tale of a slave with superpowers like these guys can.  The Table of Truth -- four friends and entrepreneurs on the cutting edge of hat tilting -- broadcasts  conversations you overhear on the subway and quote to your friends later.