Society & Culture

The term "populist" has been heavily used by the media lately, most often coupled with "rage," but also with "AIG" and "pitchfork." Linguist Geoff Nunberg examines the roots of the term as well as its current usage.

In Ramin Bahrani's new film, Goodbye Solo, a Senegalese immigrant cabdriver tries to save an elderly passenger who he suspects is suicidal. Reviewer David Edelstein calls it a "film of overflowing humanism."

John Hope Franklin died March 25 at the age of 94. As a historian, scholar, and activist Franklin advanced African-American causes throughout his career. Fresh Air remembers the historian and scholar with an interview from 1990.

Critic-at-large David Edelstein considers Paul Rudd's search for "bromance" in I Love You Man and the spy-romance of Julia Roberts and Clive Owen in Duplicity.

Isabel Gillies grapples with the sudden dissolution of her marriage in the memoir Happens Every Day. Critic Maureen Corrigan calls this "all too-true story" a "compulsive" and "chilling" late-night read.

Fresh Air's film critic reviews Everlasting Moments, the latest from Jan Troell, the 77-year-old Swedish director best known in the U.S. for the '70s epics The Emigrants and The New Land.

Elaine Showalter's A Jury Of Her Peers offers a literary history of American women writers spanning from the tales of Puritan Anne Bradstreet to the modern-day gay cowboy stories of Annie Proulx. Maureen Corrigan has a review.

Comic actor Danny McBride stars in Eastbound and Down, a new HBO series about a washed-up baseball star who becomes a substitute gym teacher.

Atlantic contributing editor Ta-Nehisi Coates describes growing up with a father who was a member of the Black Panthers in his new memoir, The Beautiful Struggle.

Ryan Kules lost an arm and a leg in 2005 when an IED hit his vehicle in Iraq. Now the former Army captain works with the Wounded Warrior Project to help severely injured soldiers transition into the workforce.

Director Kelly Reichardt's new film, Wendy And Lucy, has been described as the "best art-house girl-and-dog story you're ever going to see." Reichardt joins Fresh Air to discuss her work.

James Bobin is the co-creator and director of HBO's series Flight Of The Conchords. He has been nominated for eight Emmys since 2003 for his work on Conchords and Da Ali G Show.

Bill Paxton plays Bill Henrickson, the head of a polygamous family in the HBO series Big Love. He received Golden Globe nominations for his work on the show in 2007 and 2008.

Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist John Updike died of lung cancer on Jan. 27. Fresh Air remembers the writer with archival interviews from 1988, 1989 and 1997.

Although many Americans heard Barack Obama's inauguration speech, they probably weren't listening for plyptotons and catachresis — but Geoff Nunberg was.

Rivers Cuomo, the lead singer, guitarist, and songwriter of the rock band Weezer, has released a solo set of at-home demos called Alone and Alone II.

Natasha Trethewey won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for poetry for her book Native Guard. Her parents had an interracial marriage while it was still illegal in Mississippi, and Tretheway's poetry often draws on her childhood as a biracial child in the south.

Ta-Nehisi Coates grew up in the post-civil rights era, son of a publisher and former Black Panther; he's a contributing editor and blogger for The Atlantic magazine and author of the memoir The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, 2 Sons, and An Unlikely Road to Manhood.

Congressman John Lewis (D-Ga.) became part of the civil-rights movement while he was a teenager. From 1963 to 1966, he chaired the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. And he became a close associate of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. Lewis has been a congressman since 1987.

Transportation expert Daniel Sperling estimates that the world's car population — which currently stands at 1 billion vehicles — is likely to double in the next 20 years. Sperling is the co-author (with Deborah Gordon) of Two Billion Cars: Driving Toward Sustainability.