Society & Culture

The Canadian singer-songwriter discusses the death of her sister and singing partner Kate McGarrigle, who died in 2010. Their early albums have been remastered and are part of a new collection, which also includes previously unreleased songs.

The phrase "a few bad apples" is much more popular now than it was decades ago. Linguist Geoff Nunberg says the phrase may owe its popularity to a change in meaning -- and The Osmond Brothers.

Stewart O'Nan's moodily comic novel, Emily, Alone, follows an 80-year-old woman as she navigates the minutia of everyday life. O'Nan explains how he got inside Emily's head -- and why he wanted to write about the daily indignities of getting older.

A trio of rousing adventure flicks -- Fast Five, 13 Assassins and Legend of the Fist: The Return of Chen Zhen -- all opened this past week. David Edelstein says each one is pretty singular, in its own way.

Tina Fey's new memoir Bossypants contains her thoughts on juggling motherhood, acting, writing and executive producing 30 Rock. Fey joins Fresh Air's Terry Gross for a wide-ranging conversation about her years in comedy, her childhood and her 2008 portrayal of Sarah Palin on Saturday Night Live.

In his new novel, Emily, Alone, Stewart O'Nan explores the topics of widowhood and old age -- but the book never feels stale, says Fresh Air's Maureen Corrigan. Instead, it is a charming, quiet meditation on getting older.

The HBO miniseries Mildred Pierce is based on the 1941 novel by John M. Cain, replacing Joan Crawford -- who won an Oscar for the 1945 film version -- with Kate Winslet. TV critic David Bianculli says Winslet does wonders with her role -- and will be tough to beat, come Emmy season.

Linguist Geoff Nunberg says everyone's using the phrase "we're broke" these days to justify cuts in government programs and services. But what does "we're broke" actually mean? The answer, says Nunberg, is tricker than you think.

Dan Savage is an advice columnist who spawned a worldwide movement after hearing one too many times about anguished gay teens committing suicide. Savage and his husband, Terry Miller, talk about their "It Gets Better" project, which now has over 10,000 video submissions.

Mark Olsen and Will Scheffer, who wrote and produced the HBO drama, explain the show's surprise ending -- and why it's going to be hard for them to let their fictive polygamous family go after five seasons.

Baseball's official historian, John Thorn, sets the record straight on the game's earliest days ...in the 1700s. Yes, that's right, baseball started decades before Abner Doubleday supposedly created the game at Cooperstown -- and it only became popular when professional gamblers took an interest.

Frank Calabrese Jr. has written a memoir about brining down his father's murderous Chicago crime family. In Operation Family Secrets, Frank details how he helped the FBI convict his father of several murders by wearing a hidden wire and taping his father's conversations.

Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami's Certified Copy appears to tell a simple story -- two people, played by Juliette Binoche and William Shimell, are mistaken for a long-married couple. But there are plot twists that will "ping-pong around your mind for days," says critic David Edelstein.

Pastor Jennifer Knust says that the Bible shouldn't be used as a guidebook for marriage or sexuality because passages related to sex, monogamy, homosexuality and gender roles are more complex and nuanced than popular culture has led us to believe.

Sam Chwat, a dialect specialist who worked closeley with people in business, politics and the film industry who wanted to lose their regional accents, died last Thursday. in 1994, Chwat explained how he helped clients like Robert DeNiro and Julia Roberts lose their famous accents.

Former CIA operatives Robert and Dayna Baer met on the job and fell in love. They talk about their relationship and some of their assignments in The Company We Keep: A Husband-and-Wife True-Life Spy Story.

Suze Rotolo, who strongly influenced Bob Dylan's songwriting and walked beside him on the album cover for The Freewheeling Bob Dylan, died of lung cancer on Friday. She was 67. Fresh Air remembers Dylan's muse with excerpts from a 2008 interview.

The Farrelly brothers' latest comedy stars Owen Wilson and Jason Sudeikis as sexually frustrated men given a week off from marriage by their spouses. Movie critic David Edelstein says the movie's premise — while creepy — leaves viewers "with a sad and wise view of adulthood."

After the Civil War, the United States seemed poised to grant equal rights to blacks. But the Supreme Court's rulings in the late 19th century kept blacks segregated for decades, says constitutional scholar Lawrence Goldstone.

Allison Pearson follows up her 2002 best-seller, I Don't Know How She Does It, with I Think I Love You, a novel about a teenage girl's obsession with teen star David Cassidy. The book wasn't hard for Pearson to write. When she was growing up, she was madly in love with Cassidy too.