A racing mind and a pounding heart aren't all bad — the stress response can help humans and other animals deal with the unexpected. So what makes a vital system, which evolved to help us, turn toxic?
The Lafayette Parish Correctional Center in downtown Lafayette, La. By most counts, Louisiana has the highest incarceration rate in the country, but sentencing reformers have loosened some of the state's mandatory minimum sentences and made parole slightly easier to get.
Denny Culbert for NPR
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Egyptians gather at a petrol station in Cairo as the government drastically raised fuel prices to tackle a bloated subsidy system on July 5.
Mahmoud Khaled/AFP/Getty Images
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After the Brazil-Germany semifinal, Google's experimental newsroom focused on search trends that don't rub salt in Brazil's wounds.
Google
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Flint Dollar practices organ at First Presbyterian Church in Milledgeville, Ga. He's working there part time while he pursues a legal complaint against a private Catholic school that declined to renew his position after administrators learned he plans to marry his male partner.
Adam Ragusea/Georgia Public Broadcasting
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