Society & Culture

New music composer John Harbison was drawn to classical music because the genre leant itself to longer pieces and a deeper exploration of musical ideas. He often writes for his wife, the violinist Rosemary Harbison.

Critic Ken Tucker says that the movie adaptation of the celebrated play Crimes of the Heart, now shrunk down for home consumption, is no better--and sometimes worse--than many popular television shows.

Luis Valdez grew up in a migrant worker family; he later wrote plays about Mexican Americans and worked as a labor activist in the 1960s. His new movie, La Bamba, opens soon.

Brothers Luis and Daniel Valens' collaborated on a biopic of the late singer's life, called La Bamba. They discuss how they tracked down Valens' family to learn more about his early life.

Linguist Geoff Nunberg reflects on recent efforts to make English the official language at the state and federal levels. He says that such measures only hurt immigrants seeking essential services.

Psychotherapist Eileen Simpson grew up as an orphan; her mother died from tuberculosis. As a young adult, she moved to Greenwich Village and married the poet John Berryman. Writing came to her later in life, after she split up with the renowned poet. Her new book is called Orphans: Real and Imaginary.

New Yorker fashion reporter Kennedy Fraser has a new book of her work for the magazine, called Scenes from the Fashionable World.

Language commentator Geoff Nunberg argues that the increasingly insular and unintelligible vocabulary of businesses stems from a growing adherence to corporate culture.

Former New York Times reporter Joyce Maynard moved to New Hampshire to start a family, where she started her Domestic Affairs column, which examines her new life as a writer and mother. A book of the same name has just been published.

Irwin Blye is a private investigator who has coauthored a book about his trade. He joins Fresh Air to talk about what his day-to-day work looks like--in contrast to the detectives of novels and films.

Sam Charters is a white northerner who studies the history black southern music. He moved to Louisiana to learn about forgotten jazz players and make field recordings of unknown blues musicians.

Linguist Geoff Nunberg unpacks worries about different kinds of cultural and technical illiteracy--which he believes could more accurately be described as ignorance. Nunberg says we should be more concerned with the often overlooked problem of functional illiteracy.

Nien Cheng and her husband were educated abroad and lived a comfortable, bourgeois life before China's Cultural Revolution. Though Cheng faced persecution, interrogation, and imprisonment, she was mostly able to maintain her lifestyle--and her loyalty to her country. She now lives in Washington, D.C.

Television critic David Bianculli reviews the new A&E miniseries The Life and Loves of a She-Devil, which he says surprises at every turn with its tales of sex and betrayal.

Linguist Geoff Nunberg reviews the current Broadway production of George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion, which stars Peter O'Toole, who, says Nunberg, turns the play from a fairy tale into a farce.

Book critic John Leonard says the memoir section of Eileen Simpson's new hybrid book, about her own experiences as an orphan, is compelling and insightful; her later meditations on the idea of orphanhood are less successful.

John Schlesinger's new movie The Believers leans on racist ideas of African religion to create an uncomfortable cinematic experience based on human sacrifice.

Village Voice style editor Mary Peacock considers the role women's magazines play in shaping women's fashion. She talks to Fresh Air's Terry Gross about the latest trends.

Language commentator Geoff Nunberg considers which phrases and slang from the 1960s endured, and which ones sound dated today.