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Centenarian Manohar Aich, also known as India's Pocket Hercules, runs an old-fashioned gym in Kolkata, India. Commentator Sandip Roy visited India's first Mr. Universe, who has little patience with the craze for fancy gym equipment that has swept middle-class India.

What if Darth Vader was controlling not just the Death Star, but also the Yankees? Commentator Hart Seely thinks he, like Luke's father, can influence plays on the field from afar. How do you affect your team from your couch? Tell us your secret baseball-watching rituals in the comments.

Behind the glamour and the star power, deep inequality persists in Los Angeles. For commentator John Ridley, living through the riots taught him about the city's many dimensions. Do you have stories of the riots? Tell us about your experiences in the comments.

I've been curious about a question I haven't heard in the stories about U.S. Secret Service agents misbehaving before President Obama's arrival at the Summit of the Americas in Cartagena, Colombia. Why were world leaders meeting in a place with legalized prostitution anyway?

As it sits straddling both Europe and the Mid East, Turkey is a country experiencing rapid change and demographic transformations. Andrew Finkel of Foreign Policy elucidates ten things you didn't know about Turkey.

They say it's like a whole other country, but in 1836 it really was one. Now, 167 years after Texas achieved statehood, NPR is re-liberating the Longhorn State. From big-hair foreign policy to laissez-faire economics, this is what a modern Republic of Texas might look like.

Seventeen-year-old Trayvon Martin was shot and killed on Feb. 26 in Sanford, Fla., by a neighborhood watch volunteer who claims self-defense. In this essay author Tayari Jones reflects on the history of violence toward African-American boys.

While religion is diminishing in Great Britain, it remains a powerful force in the U.S. British author Alain de Botton suggests that faith is intermittently too useful, effective and intelligent to be abandoned to the religious alone.

Rush Limbaugh said a number of things about Sandra Fluke that created such a stir that he ultimately had to apologize. But most of the reactions focused on that one word: slut. Linguist Geoff Nunberg observes that our reaction to the word says quite a lot about the society we live in.

Good food and company can overcome differences. Commentator Gwen Thompkins remarks on how one chat with someone who holds far different political beliefs can broaden minds and remind you of why you believe what you do.