Her church’s teachings led to a shame she couldn’t escape

Linda Kay Klein grew up amid the purity movement, a Christian effort to stop premarital sex among teenagers. It put the onus on girls, urging them to treat their sexual appeal as a hazardous substance they had to strictly contain and regulate. But that rhetoric had long-term side effects for Klein and her peers.

Nichole Sobecki for NPR This secretive research is rattling America’s foreign aid officials The U.S. is running studies in four countries that try to answer a simple question: Are our aid programs there more effective than just handing people the cash we would have spent? The early results are setting off alarms, both for what they suggest — that we may not know what poor people need better than they themselves do — and for the political ramifications in the U.S. "In this country, we don't like giving poor people money," a former official says, adding that there's deep fear at USAID of being seen "as just giving handouts." Jesse Costa/WBUR Weekend Listen: Inside the art world's biggest unsolved heist Twenty-eight years ago, two men dressed as police officers got into a Boston museum, tied up the guards and walked out with 13 pieces of art, including three works by Rembrandt. The total value today: $500 million. And unlike fictional depictions of bank robberies, these thieves took their time, spending 81 minutes acquiring their collection. WBUR's Last Seen podcast investigates the crime. Listen on NPR One  |  Download from iTunes Courtesy of Specialized Bicycles The online shopping boom has led to a flood of fakes. With some products, that’s annoying; with bike helmets, it’s life-threatening When Clint Mattacola tests the knockoffs of his company's bike helmets, the results can be pretty grim: "Their skull would have hit the surface — most likely would have suffered from skull fracture, brain damage or death." U.S. Customs officials confiscate almost twice as many counterfeits now as they did 10 years ago thanks to the rise of e-commerce. What has been a problem for fashion designers has spread to airbags, medications, even technology bound for the military. Jami Saunders Photography/Simon & Schuster They were told that keeping themselves pure for marriage would lead to marital ecstasy. Instead, they found a sort of PTSD for intimacy When Linda Kay Klein left her evangelical church, she thought she was free of its attitudes about female sexuality. Instead, she says, "I had so internalized the sexual shaming that I no longer needed external shamers. ... I was more than capable of shaming myself." Her peers from the church told her similar stories. They had learned to fear pleasure, and getting married didn’t suddenly undo that, Klein writes in her new memoir. Naira Davlashyan/AP Russia’s efforts against the U.S. election sought to sow chaos on many issues — but it cheered guns and the NRA to everyone On race, on health care, on women’s rights and gay marriage and on global warming, the professional trolls at Russia’s Internet Research Agency sought to whip up anger and conflict, to infuriate Americans with one another. But a new Clemson study suggests that when it came to the Second Amendment and the NRA, they wanted Americans united in support. "I can't think of another issue where they don't play both sides in order to strike a wedge between them," says one researcher. "It's 100 percent an anomaly." Tom Kleindinst/Marine Biological Laboratory Club kids and octopuses appear to have a shared interest, and it's not bass drops The mollusks and humans parted evolutionary ways a half-billion years ago, and our modern nervous systems could hardly be more different. But even with our completely different brains, new research suggests ecstasy still lights up the same chemical pathways in both species, triggering some of the same gleeful, touchy-feely behavior. Researchers say it suggests animals have been getting positive reinforcement from social interaction for a very long time. You received this message because you're subscribed to our Best of NPR emails. |  Unsubscribe  |  Privacy Policy | NPR 1111 N. CAPITOL ST. NE WASHINGTON DC 20002