Society & Culture

Once word got out about Sen. Harry Reid's recently reported 2008 remarks about then-candidate Barack Obama's skin color and speech, just about everybody thought he needed to apologize — not least Reid himself. But people had different stories about why.

David Edelstein reviews "Youth in Revolt."

Vogue Magazine film critic John Powers talks about the year in media: the major events, the trending topics and the evolution of social networking.

What does it mean to be Good Without God? Greg Epstein, Humanist Chaplain at Harvard University, asks this question in his new book, which explores the faith of the nonreligious. It may sound like a contradiction, but Epstein believes that human ethics are independent of belief in a supernatural power.

Bob Hunter, a member of the secretive religious group The Family, responds to a November Fresh Air interview about the group's role in both U.S. and Ugandan politics. Hunter is credited as the liaison between the Family and leaders of the current Ugandan administration, which has proposed a brutal anti-gay law.

The influential photographer died of cancer Sunday. He was 63. In remembrance, we listen to a 1989 interview with him about his Pictures from Home, a decade-long project in which he observed the effects of his father's job loss on his family — a poignant topic once more.

This interview was originally broadcast July 12, 1989.

Linguist Geoff Nunberg considers the new words that came out of the last decade.

The actor and director shares memories and discusses the work of his late father, journalist and novelist Dominick Dunne, who became famous for covering the lives and trials of celebrities. He died in August at the age of 83.

Tom Ford has put his creative sensibilities to work in the service of a Christopher Isherwood tale: A Single Man, which marks Ford's big-screen directorial debut.

In remote places along the southwest border of the U.S., the consequences of recent immigration crackdown have become evident. Journalist Tom Barry says that prisons here hold both legal and illegal immigrants for deportation, many far away from their homes and families.

In an apocalyptic-movie age, The Road is the doomiest. A close translation of Cormac McCarthy's novel, the film tracks a father and son as they fight to survive in an ash-gray world haunted by death and global destruction. Critic David Edelstein says that its depiction of unbearable extremity, John Hillcoat's film achieves a kind of sublimity.

Martin Scorcese said of Sam Fuller's work, "If you don't like the films of Sam Fuller, then you just don't like cinema." The maverick screenwriter and director died in 1997, but a new 7-disc selection of his work embodies what's most enjoyable and enduring about pulp fiction.

The seventh season finale of Curb Your Enthusiasm capped a year-long storyline about Larry finally agreeing to a produce a reunion episode of Seinfeld when he co-created with Jerry Seinfeld. TV critic David Bianculli explains how both programs -- the show and the show within the show -- were a comedic cop and a perfect end to the season.

Judith Fox's new book of photographs is an intimate portrait of a loved one's submergence into Alzheimer's. I Still Do is a chronicle of her husband's journey with the disease.

When Sacha Baron Cohen grants an interview, it's usually in character -- as Borat, the clueless faux-Kazakh journalist; or as Bruno, the outrageously shallow, ostentatiously gay Austrian fashionista at the center of Cohen's most recent film. Today, though, Cohen joins Fresh Air as himself, for a conversation with Terry Gross and Bruno director Larry Charles.

Counting words has become a popular new device in assessing political speech. The number of first-person singular pronouns in a speech can turn a modest public figure into a pompous politician. Linguist Geoffrey Nunberg suggests that counting words isn't very revealing unless we consider their context as well.

This month Woody Harrelson stars plays Capt. Tony Stone in a new movie about the costs of war. His character notifies the families of fallen soldiers. Harrelson's performance is already generating Oscar chatter.

Director Wes Anderson's first animated film is based on Roald Dahl's cheerfully wicked children's book about a wily fox who wages war on three farmers. Critic David Edelstein says the film -- with its stop-motion animation, big-name voice talent and quirky mannerisms -- achieves a degree of realism that isn't always apparent in the cult director's work.