Society & Culture

Science journalist Emily Anthes talks about how scientists are engineering mice with tumors and working to create pigs that can grow organs for human transplant and insects that could serve as drones for the military.

In a new memoir, the Major League Baseball catcher opens up about getting drafted in the 62nd round, his feud with Roger Clemens and what it's like to go into retirement. Leaving the game, he says, was "like a small death."

In a profile of Ginsburg for this week's New Yorker, Jeffrey Toobin describes how the incremental philosophy of litigation that helped her win many precedent-setting women's rights cases as a lawyer is reflected in her career as a Supreme Court justice.

Sandra Day O'Connor, the first woman to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court, discusses her new book about the history of the court, and why she doesn't like the term "swing vote." O'Connor served for 24 years, retiring in 2006 to care for her ailing husband.

We're living in an age obsessed with authenticity, says linguist Geoff Nunberg, but we often choose to nitpick the wrong details. Whether it's Downton Abbey, Mad Men, Lincoln or Argo, Nunberg argues, a historical novel or screenplay should give us a translation, not a transcription.

Kevin Cullen and Shelley Murphy, who covered Bulger for years for The Boston Globe, have a new book about the career criminal. Burger was wanted of 19 murders when was captured by the FBI in 2011. He faces trial in June.

In her new book, Slate senior editor Emily Bazelon explores teen bullying, what it is and what it isn't, and how the rise of the Internet and social media make the experience more challenging. "It really can make bullying feel it's 24/7," she says.

Blanco, who read his poem "One Today" at Obama's second inauguration, is the first immigrant, Lation and openly gay poet chosen to read at an inauguration.

Author and sociologist David Cunningham speaks with Fresh Air's Terry Gross about the origins of cross burnings and white hoods, and why North Carolina had more Klan members during the height of the civil rights movement than all other Southern states combined.

To some, Detroit may be a symbol of urban decay; but to journalist Charlie LeDuff, it's home. In Detroit: An American Autopsy, he says the city's heart beats on. "We're still here trying to reconstruct the great thing we once had," he tells Fresh Air's Dave Davies.

The actor, nominated for an Academy Award for his role in David O. Russell's film, talks about watching movies with this father as a kid in Philadelphia, his childhood fascination with soldiers and being up against Daniel Day Lewis for an Oscar.

In his new book, The Double V, Rawn James Jr. argues that to understand race in America one must understand the history of African-Americans in the military. While the turning point came between the world wars, the struggle began with the American Revolution.

There are many theories about where the expression comes from — among them square-riggers with three masts, the amount of cloth in the queen's bridal train, the Shroud of Turin, and a prodigiously well-endowed Scotsman who gets his kilt caught in a door.

The first openly gay bishop in the Episcopal Church will start work with the Center for American Progress, focusing on issues of faith and gay rights. "Gay is not something we do," he says. "It's something we are." His book God Believes in Love: Straight Talk About Gay Marriage was published in September.

The nature writer has an essay in January's Harper's Magazine that details the four years of his childhood during which he says he was routinely raped and molested by a family friend.

The 1971 John Schlesinger film, recently released on Blu-ray, tells the story of a love triangle and makes moving use of a trio from the opera Cosi fan tutte as the film's musical theme.

With his latest film, director Quentin Tarantino was inspired both by spaghetti Westerns and the drama of slavery and the Civil War. The movie is extremely violent — but, says Tarantino, "What happened during slavery times is a thousand times worse. ... If you can't take it, you can't take it."

"Big Data" had just as much to do with President Obama's victory as phrases like "Etch A Sketch" and "47 percent," says linguist Geoff Nunberg. Big Data is also behind anxieties about intrusions on our privacy, whether from the government's anti-terrorist data sweeps or the ads that track us on the Web.

In her new movie, singer, actor, writer, director and producer Barbra Streisand plays a well-meaning if overbearing Jewish mom in The Guilt Trip. The star says her own mother both encouraged her talents and was jealous of them.

In a new book, biographer David Nasaw profiles the father of Robert, John and Teddy, and unpacks the elder Kennedy's influence on his children. "He told them over and over again, 'I'm making all this money so you don't have to make money, so that you can go into public service,'" Nasaw says.