With rising fuel prices and more talk about alternative fuel sources, energy has become one of the top concerns for voters in this election. There’s the question of what to do about rising gas prices, and whether we should pursue more offshore drilling. Americans want to know the candidates' priorities on wind, natural gas, biofuels and solar power, and their positions on nuclear energy and on the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative. We’ll see where the candidates stand on energy.

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• TBA

Have you ever walked into a party, didn’t know anyone, and felt the air get colder? We’ve long paired feelings of social rejection or isolation with coldness - think "chilly reception," "cold shoulder" or an "icy stare," while someone else might have a "warm smile."

Feelings of being lonely and cold have long been lumped together. Take the song "Lonely this Christmas" from the 1970s. A recent paper suggests there’s something to that.

Chen-Bo Zhong is a social psychologist at the University of Toronto. He heard "Lonely this Christmas" and decided to investigate. He’s the lead author on a study that appears in the journal Psychological Science. In another project, he discussed how metaphors such as “dirty hands” or “clean records” show a connection between morality and physical cleanliness. We called him to find out more about the growing body of research referred to as "embodied cognition."

(Photo by peter.ca)

At a campaign rally in Ft. Meyers, Fl. this week, County Sheriff Mike Scott took the stage to introduce Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin and yelled: "On Nov. 4th, let’s leave Barack Hussein Obama wondering what happened!"

The intent is clear: Barack Obama is a Muslim just like Saddam Hussein and all the other bad guys. That people believe it despite proof to the contrary unserscores cynicism at best, or willful ignorance of facts at the worst. Consider the message to the nation’s six million Muslims: being Muslim is a problem.

"How does it feel to be a problem?," W.E.B. DuBois asked in his classic The Souls of Black Folk just over a century ago. Today, a growing population of Arab and Muslim Americans are the latest "problem." Government surveillance and detentions, workplace discrimination, and threats of vigilante violence are a reality for many Arab Americans, whether Muslim or not. A 2006 poll found that 39 percent of Americans admit to holding prejudice against Muslims and believe that they should carry special IDs.

Moustafa Bayoumi is associate professor of English at Brooklyn College, and the co-editor of The Edward Said Reader. He followed seven young Arab-Americans living in Brooklyn to answer the question, which is also the title of his new book: "How does it feel to be a problem?"

Click here to read an excerpt from How Does it Feel to Be a Problem?

(Photo by Kevin Tyson)

Candidates criticize each other on the national economic rescue plan, taxes, social security and energy.

Today on Word of Mouth, we look at a web application that’s growing in popularity, even if it’s hard to explain why. Twitter is a social networking site with a minimalist approach. Users are asked to participate simply by writing what they’re doing at any given moment. If you’re baking a loaf of bread, twitter it. Getting ready for work? Twitter it. Thinking about buying a new sofa? Let the world know.

You have a small amount of space to type exactly what you’re doing at any given moment. Non-Twitter users usually scratch their head when they first hear about it. But once you try it out, it’s easy to find yourself hooked.

It started as a way for friends to follow the minutiae of each other’s lives. But now it’s become a window on public opinion – you can search for terms like “Wall Street” or “football” and see what thousands of people are saying about those topics. And now with campaign season heating up, Twitter is becoming the hot place to tap into the national political dialogue. Even some journalists were twittering during the first Presidential debate, including public radio hosts like Brooke Gladstone and John Hockenberry, sharing their thoughts with the world in real time.

New York Times editor Saul Hansell recently wrote about Twitter and the elections, and joins us with more.

Word of Mouth launched its Twitter page today! You can follow us at twitter.com/wordofmouth. Tell us how you use Twitter. For example, a listener named Christopher wrote to tell us that Twitter has evolved for him from a glorified text messaging service to a constant conversation with a growing number of friends. He also says it keeps him much more aware during this political season.