Society & Culture

Academy Award-winning writer and director Woody Allen discusses his life and his films — and why audiences shouldn't confuse the two. His latest movie, Whatever Works, tells the story of a "genius" professor in New York who marries a much younger woman.

Author Larry Tye discusses Satchel Paige, a negro league pitcher who helped integrate baseball by touring the country and playing exhibition games with white players.

Linguist Geoff Nunberg has made a living out of parsing phrases. His new book, The Years of Talking Dangerously, analyzes the buzzwords, stock phrases and metaphors that were made popular during the Bush administration's tenure.

From FDR's "New Deal" and LBJ's "Great Society" to Barack Obama's effort to create a "New Foundation", politicians (and their speech writers) have long used words to brand their ideas. Geoff Nunberg reflects on the politics of political phrasing.

Wall Street Journal columnist Scott McCartney says summer travel will be cheaper this year. McCartney pens the Journal's weekly column "The Middle Seat."

Gay rights activist Rodger McFarlane was involved in the earliest efforts to combat the transmission of AIDS during the 1980s. McFarlane, who was 54, died May 15. According to his bother, the cause of death was suicide.

Masterpieces make their own rules — and David Edelstein says it's hard to think of a work comparable to Olivier Assayas's hauntingly beautiful film, about cultural tides and the people carried on them.

Up until last year Amy Poehler was a member of the cast on Saturday Night Live, famous for her impersonation of Hillary Clinton. She now stars in the NBC sitcom, Parks and Recreation.

Once, Dan Gurley oversaw anti-gay campaigns for the Republican National Committee. Now he works for Equality North Carolina, a statewide group dedicated to securing equal rights for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people.

In Outrage, the Oscar-nominated director looks into the hidden lives of some of America's most powerful policymakers — closeted gay legislators and executives with voting records that activists decry as virulently anti-gay. He says it's a film about hypocrisy.

Camilla Taylor, lawyer for the gay-rights group Lambda Legal, was lead lawyer on Varnum v. Brien — the case that led to an Iowa Supreme Court ruling that legalized same-sex marriage there.

Four years ago, novelist Ayelet Waldman sparked a controversy — and wound up on Oprah to defend herself — when she wrote in an essay that she loved her husband more than her children.

Despite the advice of grammarians, linguist Geoff Nunberg believes in the usefulness of the passive voice.

In her new memoir, When You Lie About Your Age, the Terrorists Win: Reflections on Looking in the Mirror, stand-up comedian and Seinfeld writer Carol Leifer recounts her experiences working as a comedian.

Journalist Michelle Goldberg discusses the politics, ideology and history of reproductive rights around the world in her new book The Means of Reproduction.

Jack Wrangler, an icon of gay adult films, died April 7. He appeared in more than 30 gay adult films and 20 straight adult films in the 1970s and 1980s. Fresh Air remembers him with an interview from 1985.

In Let the Right One In, Eli and Oskar are both lonely 12-year-olds — but one of them happens to be a vampire. Critic-at-large John Powers calls the Swedish film "the best vampire movie in the last 75 years."

Psychologist Richard Weissbourd contends that parents who are obsessed with their children's happiness are ignoring other important values — like goodness, empathy, appreciation and caring — that are necessary to a well-rounded personality.

Screenwriter Mike White and his father, gay rights activist Mel White, recently danced, ran and bobsledded around the globe as part of The Amazing Race. The duo talks about their relationship and reality-TV adventures.

By refusing to serve up even one likable main character, Zoe Heller's new novel raises implicit questions about readers' expectations about fiction. Reviewer Maureen Corrigan calls The Believers a "smart, caustic novel."