Special Counsel Robert Mueller yesterday announced the first charges in his investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election. Political scientist Rachel Caufield of Drake University walks us through the 12 charges faced by Trump’s onetime campaign manager Paul Manafort and his associate Rick Gates – and why a guilty plea by former campaign advisor George Papadopoulos could be what really gave the GOP an early fright on Monday.

Boo! It’s Halloween, a day to dress up, eat candy and to scare and be scared. While we may say that we do not like feeling fearful, the full-throttled observance of a day devoted to fear proves otherwise, write Arash Javanbakht and Linda Saab of Wayne State University. Many of us do enjoy being scared, but this begs a question: why do some enjoy fright and others do not? Many of our responses to fear depend on context, the authors write, in one of a collection of articles on Halloween.

As part of our series on death and dying, Elon University’s Brian Walsh explains how the Civil War and President Abraham Lincoln transformed the way we memorialize and bury our dead, turning what was a simple and private affair into the modern American funeral industry.