Kristen Meinzer

Does swearing betray a lack of education and class on the part of its speaker? Anya Saffir, Shakespeare director and faculty of the Atlantic Acting School, doesn’t think so.

Have we gotten a tad too lax about swearing these days? Do we swear more than we should? Or, is there something else bigger going on? Columbia University linguist John McWhorter expla...

In recent days the tables have turned in Egypt. Thousands of Morsi supporters have taken to the streets, both in Egypt and here in the United States, with hundreds in Egypt facing inj...

Many of us see our golden years as a time when we can sit back, relax, and leave our strenuous days behind us. But for the athletes featured in the new documentary, "Age of Champions,...

Independence Day is of course one of Hollywood's favorite holidays. The box offices offer up some of summer's expected big hits. Hitting the theaters this weekend is Disney's "The Lon...

When's the last time Johnny Depp played an average, regular guy? What exactly are those yellow egg-shaped things in the "Despicable Me" movies? And does Kevin Hart really need to expl...

In 1918 Irving Berlin composed a show tune called "God Bless America." But he never would have imagined that his work would eventually become a nationally known patriotic anthem. Sher...

Johnny Depp plays Tonto, a Native America character, in the new Disney film “The Lone Ranger.” With Depp in the role, the long tradition of non-Native actors playing Tonto continues, ...

Tokyo, Rio, Athens, London and Sydney: What do these cities have in common? They’ve all hosted the modern Olympic games. And if Tulsa (yes, that Tulsa—the one in Oklahoma) has its way...

Every Friday The Takeaway looks at the new films set to open up at the box office. In this week's look, our resident Movie Date Podcast team—Rafer Guzman, film critic for Newsday, and...

In this week's Movie Date podcast, Rafer wonders if "White House Down" might be the exact same movie as "Olympus Has Fallen,"Kristen tries to fake out Rafer with her feelings about "T...

"How to Make Money Selling Drugs" is a new documentary film written and directed by Matthew Cooke and produced in partnership with Bret Marcus and Adrian Grenier. The film, making its...

In our current world, where there are so many news stories circulating via so many media, it’s sometimes hard to wrap our heads around the stories, much less figure out which side we ...

  This week, Rafer and Kristen look at two monster movies, one of which deals with the training and coming of age of monsters ("Monsters University") and one which deals with their a...

Moviegoers face no shortage of great movies to choose from this weekend: "Monsters University" is the prequel to Disney/Pixar's "Monsters, Inc."; Brad Pitt stars in "World War Z", a z...

We all know Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech. But it turns out August 1963 wasn't the first time that King delivered that speech. 

This week, the American Medical Association officially recognized obesity as a disease. But not all physicians agree on whether this new categorization makes sense. Dr. Stephen Cook, ...

Humorist, writer, and Daily Show "resident expert" John Hodgman has been thinking about the end of the world, and joking about it for the past year on stages across America. His new s...

We’re only a couple weeks away from Independence Day, and in anticipation of our nation’s birthday, we’re looking at the concept of freedom. What is it? How did it come to be an Ameri...

In this week's Movie Date podcast, Rafer and Kristen talk about the dark side of Superman, the bright side of the apocalypse, and the inside of Paris Hilton's closet. It's all in hono...