One of the most difficult conversations we can have in our society has to do with race. In some ways the conversation is complicated by recent milestone events in racial equality like the election of President Barack Obama. But, Jay Smooth says that milestones like that are exactly the reason why we need to think and communicate more effectively about race as such milestones can obfuscate the real inequalities that still remain in our society.

All teenagers have been warned: “don’t give into peer pressure.” We hear that peer pressure can do things like lead to drugs and binge drinking and unplanned pregnancies. Maybe peer pressure will make you drop out of school and join a gang. But in Tina Rosenberg’s opinion, peer pressure isn’t all bad. The Pulitzer Prize-winner is the author of a new book called “Join the Club: How Peer Pressure Can Transform the World.” She argues that peer pressure is a very versatile tool.

"Houses aren't refuges from history. They are where history ends up."

This is the latest assertion from Bill Bryson, who first made national headlines when he attempted to hike the Appalachian Trail, as documented in "A Walk in the Woods." Bryson turns his attention closer to home in his newest book “At Home: A Short History of Private Life.”

Going room by room through the modern home, Bryson looks at the objects that surround us in our everyday lives, from sofas to forks, and traces the history of those objects and the rooms they inhabit.

This week, when Portia de Rossi filed a petition to change her name to Portia DeGeneres, it got all of us talking about name changes around marriages. Who changes their name when they get married, anyway? A lot of us do, it turns out – 77 to 95 percent of women, at least. But a recent study found that women who change their names are perceived to be worth lower salaries than women who don’t.

If you're married, did you keep your name, take your partner's or take a new name altogether?

These days, we're hearing profanity from the mouth of an 11-year-old girl in a box office hit and from the Vice President of the United States. Is cursing becoming more acceptable?

Today is New Year's Eve, and that means citizens of the world will be ringing in 2010 when the clock hits midnight. We're leaping through time zones with reporters from across the globe for a look at how some cities are getting ready to celebrate. Tristana Moore is a BBC Correspondent in Munich; Phil Mercer reports for the BBC from Sydney, and Anna Sale is a producer for The Takeaway in New York.  Sale called in from Times Square, where many hundreds of millions around the world will watch the ball drop at midnight EST.

On Mondays we take a few minutes to take stock of our family lives.  It’s also the Monday after Christmas, only a few days away from New Year's Eve. We're joined by our family contributor Ylonda Caviness, longtime family and parenting journalist and mother of three, along with Andrea Price, mother of two; both discuss meaningful New Year's resolutions (or "goals," as Price likes to call them) we can make for our family.

BBC correspondent Christopher Landau traveled to the Gaza Strip, where he reported on the lives of unwed mothers - and their children - in the region. He joins us with his account.

A decades-experienced elephant trainer with Ringling Bros./Barnum & Bailey's left a notarized letter and photos to be opened after he died, documenting long years of elephant treatment that troubled him and his wife. David Montgomery wrote the story for yesterday's Washington Post; he takes us inside the story PETA calls abuse and Ringling Bros. calls responsible training methodology.

In the 1980s, HIV, the virus which causes AIDS, carried a deadly stigma.  The virus was initially thought only to spread among communities which put themselves “at risk.”  AIDS was a “gay” disease, or the killer of “drug addicts” and needle-sharers.  

Yesterday, Dennis deLeon, former New York City Human Rights Commissioner and prominent latino AIDS activist, died in Manhattan at 61 years old from heart failure.  deLeon was one of the first city officials to announce that he was infected with HIV.  The work he and others did to build awareness and education of HIV/AIDS helped reduce the virus' stigma.

Yet in some communities, HIV remains a potent killer.  According to the CDC, African-Americans account for 51 percent of our country's HIV/AIDS cases – while only making up 12 percent of our population.

In an attempt to draw attention to and combat the spread of HIV/AIDS, the National Black Leadership Commission, led by African-American clergy, convened in Detroit yesterday. The conference brings together religious, political and labor leaders in hopes of pushing a Congressional bill that would help tackle the spread of the virus in at-risk communities.

In this conversation we speak with Rev. Horace Sheffield, of New Galilee Baptist Church in Detroit, who spearheaded the conference; along with Dazon Dixon Diallo, the Founder and President of Sister Love, a women’s HIV/AIDS and Reproductive Justice Organization in Atlanta, Georgia.  Together, they discuss some of the structural and social reasons that make the African-American community so vulnerable to infection. 

Recent studies have shown that parents with young kids can put a solid marriage on the rocks.  So what happens when you add a national economic crisis to the mix?  Yale psychology professor Susan Nolen-Hoeksema and Lamar Tyler, blogger at the parenting website BlackandMarriedwithKids.com, say that it's particularly hard for loving married couples to connect when times are tough.

This week Facebook announced the formation of a new Safety Advisory Board to monitor online crimes, such as cyber-bullying and stalking.  That announcement got us thinking about the people most likely to use those sites, and the most vulnerable to those crimes: teenagers. 

The issue becomes even more serious when you consider the statistics.  According to a new survey conducted by MTV and the Associated Press, almost half of sexually active young people report being involved in sexting, or sending nude photos of themselves or their sexual partners via cell phone.

 Amanda Lenhart, Senior Research Specialist at The Pew Research Center’s The Internet and American Life Project and Bryan Taylor, Unit Chief for Crimes Against Persons in the Canyon County Prosecutors Office, say that these digital-world problems are on the rise and educating kids about them is the only way to prepare them.

For many families the holidays are a time of togetherness, good food and especially, presents. But in the middle of an economic downturn, it is harder than ever for many families to stack the hearth high with gifts for the kids. We talk with two parents who have been thinking a lot about downsizing their holidays. Marvin Powell lost his job with General Motors in October, and when he tried to explain a leaner Christmas to his son, the six-year-old suprised him with some youthful wisdom, saying "Daddy, [presents] are not even what its about. It's about being thankful." Ylonda Gault Caviness, longtime parenting journalist for the website iVillage, shares her tips on how to explain a scaled-back holiday to children.

President Obama met with his Chinese counterpart, Hu Jintao, today for talks that ran the gamut from climate change to Taiwan to global security. Residents of China watched Obama's visit carefully, as did many Chinese-Americans. Shirong Chen is the BBC's China editor; he joins us from London. We're also joined by members of different generations of Chinese-Americans for their take on how Obama did. David Zhang is an associate professor of pathology and oncological sciences at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, and Jenny Jiang is a junior, studying marketing at the University of Pennsylvania.

During his current trip to Asia, President Obama will meet with a variety of leaders and diplomats. He will also meet  two members of Japan's royal family: Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko. The fiercely private royal family has long been surrounded by secrecy and rumors. We talk to John Burnham Schwartz, best-selling novelist and screenwriter. He is author of "The Commoner," which is a novel loosely based on the lives of some members of the Japanese royal family.

Voters in Maine voted yesterday to revoke gay marriage in the state. Opponents of gay marriage frequently bring up the hypothetical effects of gay parenting on kids as a reason to deny gay couples the right to marry. At this point we don't have to rely on hypotheticals, however: We now have a generation of kids who have grown up with gay parents and can speak for themselves. One of those kids, Becca Lazarus, tells us about her life with two gay dads, while New York Times Motherlode writer Lisa Belkin explains the results of recent research.

Pope Benedict XVI is paving the way for Anglican groups to take communion with the Catholic Church. In recent years some conservative Anglicans have been angered by their church’s decision to accept female priests and openly gay bishops. Retired Rev. George Langberg, Bishop of the Northeast Anglican Church in America, says he's happy about the move. But he says Anglicans won't be "converting," but instead simply entering into communion with Catholics. John Allen, senior correspondent for the National Catholic Reporter, joins us with more of the story.

Nick Weaver revealed to his mom that he was gay when he was 12 years old. Now he is 15 and lives in Tulsa, Okla. Both he and his mom, Pam Anderson, talk with us about the challenges pre-teens face when coming out of the closet. We also speak to Benoit Denizet-Lewis, who wrote a cover story in this Sunday's New York Times Magazine about a growing trend among young gay men and women: coming out earlier in life.

The famed moralist and writer Samuel Johnson was born 300 years old today. Randy Cohen, who writes The Ethicist column for The New York Times Magazine, gives us his take on what the crusty, eminently quotable moralist might have made of some of our present-day dilemmas.

1784. ÆTAT.- And now I am arrived at the last year of the life of Samuel Johnson, a year in which, although passed in severe indisposition, he nevertheless gave many evidences of the continuance of those wondrous powers of mind, which raised him so high in the intellectual world. His conversation and his letters of this year were in no respect inferiour to those of former years.
--James Boswell, "The Life of Samuel Johnson"

infa'usting. The act of making unlucky. An odd and inelegant word.
--Samuel Johnson, in "Johnson's Dictionary"

Public outbursts and their consequences seem a lot more common, of late. Last week, Representative Joe Wilson (R-South Carolina) heckled the president during an address to both houses of Congress, and now faces a possible Congressional censure. This week, Serena Williams lost her cool (not to mention $10,500 in fines) when she lashed out at a line judge at the U.S. Open. Kanye West appeared on Jay Leno's show last night to apologize after he broke script at Sunday's MTV Video Music Awards and grabbed the microphone from Taylor Swift to praise Beyonce's video.

For more on public outbursts, we talk to Randy Cohen, who writes "The Ethicist" column in the New York Times Magazine and Latoya Peterson, editor of the online blog Racialicious.

Watch Kanye West on The Jay Leno Show apologizing for his outburst: