Readers respond to an editorial about the death penalty. Also: The benefits of small talk; calling all teenagers.

Death positivity involves acknowledging death as simply the final phase of life. It emphasizes open discussions around death and education on the options, rights, and choices surrounding it. Share on Pinterest Illustration by Brittany England Death can be ...

Public attention to the death penalty often focuses on the method of execution and questions about innocence and guilt. But the use of capital punishment has waned in the United States since the late 1990s, giving rise to an increasingly widespread ...

Executions are on the rise in the United States. After creeping upward since the coronavirus pandemic, when the country's use of the death penalty reached a historic low, the numbers have skyrocketed this year. Identifying a previous year in which the ...

The editorial board is a group of opinion journalists whose views are informed by expertise, research, debate and certain longstanding values. It is separate from the newsroom. The use of the death penalty has risen sharply in the United States, with more ...

Social Security may provide a one-time $255 death benefit to your loved ones when you die. But that amount has not changed in 70 years. A new bill has been introduced in the Senate to raise that amount to $2,900 to reflect today's cost of living.

Death. It’s the one certainty we all share, yet it’s become the shadow we dare not name. How did this happen? How did something as natural and sacred as death transform into a subject of fear and avoidance? Understanding this shift—from reverence to ...

USA TODAY deputy wellness editor David Oliver moderated a panel on death and grief at SXSW. Here's how it happened.