After more than a week of gruesome media coverage, linguist Geoff Nunberg takes a close look at the words we use to describe events that mesmerize and horrify, that sensitize and desensitize, that transfix and repel us at the same time.

Singer, actor, writer, director and producer Barbra Streisand plays a well-meaning if overbearing Jewish mom in The Guilt Trip. The star says her own mother both encouraged her talents and was jealous of them.

Herman Blake and his six siblings struggled so much during the '40s that one brother decided to drop out of school and help support the family. A friend of the family stepped in and made sure that didn't happen, despite her own meager means. That sacrifice taught the Blake children the value of an education.

Following the GOP's losses in the 2012 elections, there has been a lot of hand-wringing about what the party should do next. David Brooks, Laura Ingraham, Mickey Edwards and Ralph Reed take on the Republicans' future in the latest Intelligence Squared U.S. debate.

The bombing attack at the Boston Marathon Monday could have caused scrambling and panic. Instead, the tragedy revealed the city's character as people rushed to help each other.

Robert Siegel talks to regular political commentators E.J. Dionne of The Washington Post and Brookings Institution, and David Brooks of The New York Times. They discuss gun control legislation.

Jack Richmond was a young father when his leg was crushed in a work accident. Though in denial at first that it would need to be amputated, he quickly realized he could share his experience to help other amputees, as he tells his daughter, Reagan, on a visit to StoryCorps.