Society & Culture

From the telegraph to the typewriter to the text message, every new technology inspires rhapsodies about the effect it'll have on language — especially the language of the young. Geoff Nunberg points out that language — and the young — somehow manage to survive.

Artist Don Bachardy was a teenager when he met then middle-aged novelist Christopher Isherwood on a California beach. But the two had a romance that lasted until Isherwood's death in 1986. Their relationship is the subject of the documentary Chris and Don: A Love Story.

Martinis, misogyny and men behaving badly: AMC's drama series remembers an era's excesses in stunning style. The setting: a Manhattan ad agency, circa 1960. The first season has just been released on DVD.

Linguist Geoff Nunberg reflects on the life and language of the late comedian George Carlin, who died last month.

Pixar has always focused on loss, decay, and the dark side of materialism. Here that theme extends to the ruination of the planet — and Wall-E ranks among the most sublime feature-length works of animation ever made in this country.

In the 1970s, George Carlin's seven dirty words routine was the center of a famous obscenity case. More recently, the comic was named the recipient of the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor. Carlin died of heart failure Sunday at the age of 71.

The debut short-story collection by Nigerian writer and Jesuit priest Uwem Akpan offers a sobering view of a world in which atrocity is commonplace, and the unthinkable is the everyday.

Rapper, producer, fashion designer, restaurateur, grass-roots organizer and Broadway actor? Sean "Diddy" Combs might be the hardest-working man in hip-hop. He talks to Terry Gross about his career — and the "characters" behind his ever-changing names.

Singer and actress Kelli O'Hara has received three Tony nominations in as many years. She currently stars in the crowd-pleasing revival of South Pacific.

Her father was Louis Armstrong's music director and a noted bandleader in his own right; her mother was a member of the iconic International Sweethearts of Rhythm. Critic Nat Hentoff says that pedigree — and her own unmistakable chops — make Cat Russell "the real thing" in a crowd of jazz wannabes "who couldn't lasted through a chorus in a contest with Ella Fitzgerald or Betty Carter."

Singer-songwriter Sheryl Crow performs three songs from her new album, Detours, plus a portion of a song from an early album that she persuaded the record company not to release.

Four years after Sex and the City's TV finale, Carrie Bradshaw and her posse return — a little older, a little more settled, but with Cosmos still in hand. If you loved the TV show, the movie will fly by; if you hated it, brace yourself.

When Bob Morris' widowed father decided to start dating again — at the age of 80 — guess who found himself sorting through the personals? In Assisted Loving, Morris chronicles the search for Dad's new Ms. Right — and his own misadventures in the romantic jungle that is Manhattan's gay ghetto.

Linguist Geoff Nunberg considers the changing definitions of "love" and "marriage."

U.S. Senator Jim Webb, a onetime Republican who won his Senate seat as a Democrat, has stayed clear of endorsing a candidate in the Democratic primaries. The retired Marine explains why — and talks about his disagreements with the Bush administration, the legislation he's introduced to expand benefits for Iraq War veterans, and his new book, A Time to Fight.

Fresh Air film critic David Edelstein reviews Reprise, the first feature film by Norwegian writer and director Joachim Trier.

Air travel keeps getting more confusing, frustrating and expensive, says columnist Scott McCartney. McCartney, who's covered the industry for 12 years at The Wall Street Journal, writes the paper's "Middle Seat" column.

Artist Suze Rotolo — the woman walking beside Bob Dylan on the album cover for The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan — was Dylan's girlfriend in the '60s. She's written about the relationship, and about that era's New York, in a new memoir.

In his new collection, Hardheaded Weather: New and Selected Poems, poet Cornelius Eady writes of his transition from urban renter to rural homeowner and the encroachment of middle age.

Fresh Air linguist Geoff Nunberg considers the evolution of the meaning of the "e" word.