Society & Culture

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.

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

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.

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.

Paul Polak, founder of the nonprofit International Development Enterprises, has spent 25 years working to eradicate poverty. In Out of Poverty, he says simple technologies and a willingness to listen are key — and that government subsidies can do more harm than good.

Brothers David and Anton Treuer are members of the Ojibwe nation from the Leech Lake Reservation in northern Minnesota. Both professors, they work to preserve the Ojibwe language, one of the few Native American languages in active use.

Three years ago, journalist Steve Lopez met a homeless musician on skid row in Los Angeles. He soon learned that the man, Nathaniel Ayers, had once been a promising violinist, and that he had left the Juilliard School because of his struggle with mental illness. Ayers is the subject of Lopez's new book, The Soloist.

Linguist Geoff Nunberg considers the phrase "under the bus," which has been used throughout the heated presidential primaries.

It's been four years since Gene Robinson was consecrated bishop of a rural Episcopal diocese in New Hampshire. He's faced challenges and controversies as that denomination's first openly gay bishop — and he's written about them in a new memoir, In the Eye of the Storm.

It's one of the most common words in English, and one of the most maligned. But it has been doing useful work for centuries, and lately it's acquired a new, hip meaning. Fresh Air linguist Geoff Nunberg gives us his thoughts on the little word, "um."

Analysts wondered if Barack Obama's speech on race in Philadelphia last month was the beginning of a "national conversation" on the subject. Meanwhile, Fresh Air's contributing linguist Geoff Nunberg is wondering what, exactly, a "national conversation" is — and when we started talking about them.

The Rev. James H. Cone founded black liberation theology, which has roots in 1960s civil-rights activism. In an interview with Terry Gross, he explains the movement — and comments on controversial sermons by the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama's longtime minister and a black liberation theology proponent.

Theologian Dwight Hopkins provides a historical perspective on black liberation theology. Hopkins is an ordained Baptist minister and a professor of theology at the University of Chicago Divinity School.

The DVD set Forbidden Hollywood Collection, Vol. 2 consists of five pre-Hays Code movies: The Divorcee, A Free Soul, Night Nurse, Three on a Match, and Female.

In Meg Wolitzer's new novel, a group of smart, successful women choose full-time motherhood over promising professional careers — and come to terms with the effects of that decision a decade later.