Stories

For years, neighbors in a Chicago suburb knew they were being watched.
Sometimes it was subtle – an odd car parked outside at all hours, workmen on the phone lines at 3 a.m. Sometimes it wasn’t; men showed up, flashed FBI badges and asked questions for an hour.
“We had all this paranoia in the neighborhood,” recalled Assia Boundaoui (shown here), who has made a PBS film about it. “People didn’t trust each other. We were constantly censoring ourselves.” Read more…

Cody Rhodes fondly recalls the years when his dad’s crashy/smashy world soared.
That was when Dusty Rhodes was a World Championship Wrestling star. “From 1995 to 2001, it was the highest-rated show on TNT …. It was a crazy time for wrestling,” Cody said.
Now this may be Crazy Time II. Suddenly, wrestlers are filling up our TV sets.
That peaks Friday, when WWE’s “SmackDown” — which was confined to cable for two decades – moves to Fox. It’s a chance for WWE “to be a part of this talented, sports-obsessed network,” said Charlotte Flair (shown here), who (like her dad, Ric Flair) has been a pro-wrestling champion. Read more…

It can be one person’s biggest fear, another’s yummiest delicacy.
It has as many arms as the Beatles, as many hearts as the Three Stooges, as many brains as Albert Einstein. It got here perhaps 300 million years before we did and may remain – thanks to its survival skills – after we’re gone.
It’s the octopus, the subject of the “Nature” season-opener Wednesday (Oct. 2) on PBS. It’s been known as the kraken in Norse mythology … and as Heidi (shown here) in David Scheel’s home.
“Friends (were) very taken with the animal,” Scheel said. “But the notion that it was in my living room was just a little bit odd.” Read more…