In this week's Movie Date podcast, Rafer and Kristen compare notes on their favorite pharmaceutical drug names. They also ask some big questions, including: Does volleyball really need to be seen in 3D? Should Steven Soderbergh retire? And if the only good part of a date is the kissing at the end...is it really a good date? It's all in honor of this week's big releases: "Top Gun 3D," "Side Effects," and "Identity Thief."

Every Friday, The Takeaway’s Movie Date team, Rafer Guzman and Kristen Meinzer, weigh in on the weekend's film releases. This week, there are three: the crime drama “Side Effects,” the vigilante road trip movie “Identity Theft,” and the 3D re-release of the eighties action classic, “Top Gun.”

As more of us rely on email, texting, and Skype to communicate, the art of letter writing has gradually been coming to an end. But with the death of letters, are we losing something else as well? It’s a question that Martha Tuck Rozett has seriously considered. Martha is an English professor at the University of Albany and author of "When People Wrote Letters: A Family Chronicle."

Many people know Muzak as a catch-all for plain background music, but it's actually the name of a brand and a company. And this week, the company that owns Muzak - Mood Media - had decided to retire the Muzak brand name for good.

Long before Richard Nixon was president or he and Dwight D. Eisenhower were in-laws, the two were allies and adversaries. Their relationship lasted for 20 years, and brought out both the best and worst in each other. The story of their complicated relationship is told in the new book, "Ike and Dick: Portrait of a Strange Political Marriage." The author, Jeffrey Frank, is former senior editor of The New Yorker.

The Super Bowl may be the most watched television event of the year, but that doesn’t mean that other networks don’t try their best to lure viewers. The most talked-about counter programming to the Super Bowl last night, the ninth Animal Planet Puppy Bowl, garnered millions of viewers.

In this week's podcast, Rafer and Kristen play a game of would you rather involving racist hitmen versus zombie kidnappers. Will Rafer choose to be kidnapped? Will Kristen decide on racism? Find out, and along the way, get their thoughts on "Stand Up Guys," "Warm Bodies," and "Bullet to the Head."

Friday is movie day on the Takeaway, when we talk about the weekend’s big releases. This week, there are three: the teen zombie romance, "Warm Bodies"; the Sylvester Stallone buddy shoot-em-up, "Bullet to the Head"; and "Stand up Guys," a crime comedy starring Al Pacino, Christopher Walken. and Alan Arkin.

This weekend, two football teams go head-to-head in the biggest sports event on the American calendar. But this year, the Superbowl isn’t just about two teams. It’s also about two brothers: Jim Harbaugh, head coach the San Francisco 49ers and John Harbaugh, head coach of the Baltimore Ravens.

The National Football League is at the center of a legal case being brought by 4,000 former football players and their wives. The claim? That the N.F.L. covered up life-altering brain injuries. Paul Barrett is covering the case, and the attorney who's arguing it, for Bloomberg Businessweek.

Yesterday a new day dawned on Massachusetts, as John Kerry bid farewell to his post as U.S. senator. His replacement, William "Mo" Cowan, will serve until a permanent successor is chosen in the June 25th special election. Callie Crossley, host of Boston Public Radio, shares more about Cowan and his selection.

It seems we can’t go more than a few months, or even weeks between doping scandals. Has doping always been this prevalent in athletics? Or is it just easier to uncover? Dr. Harvey Shapiro is a physician, medical correspondent, and former doping control officer for the Olympics.

What is truly beautiful to you? Is it the face of someone you love? The first several notes of your favorite song? Or perhaps it’s a sunny day. If you’re Frank Close, it’s none of these things. In fact, that sunny day is the last thing he wants to look at when he seeks beauty. He prefers the opposite: the sun being blocked out, the light being hidden, the magic and mystery of a solar eclipse. 

What would be the economic impact of putting some 11 million people on the pathway to citizenship? And how does one person who has lived his life on the black market come out of the shadows financially? Carlo Alban starred on Sesame Street for five years, but he did so as an undocumented immigrant.

Congress and the White House unveil their comprehensive immigration plans this week, and the hopes of 11 million people hang in the balance. What are their hopes? Are they they optimistic? Anxious? And what’s at stake?

In this week's Movie Date podcast, Rafer and Kristen review "Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters," and in the process, are forced to explore one of Rafer's least favorite movie themes in recent years: the sibling romance. Other movies discussed this week are "Parker," starring Jason Statham and Jennifer Lopez; and "Movie 43," starring Kate Winslet, Hugh Jackman, Halle Berry, Emma Stone, Kate Bosworth, Uma Thurman, and everyone else in Hollywood. Warning to the easily queasy: this podcast includes talk of fecal matter, brother-sister romance, brother-brother romance, misogyny, and menstruation.

It’s been said that truth is stranger than fiction. But when is fiction actually truth? Several Oscar-nominated films this season are inspired by true events.

As "Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters," the latest Grimm re-telling, hits the big screen, we look at where it all began with Maria Tatar, editor and translator of the new "Annotated Brothers Grimm."

What if so many of your employees are racist online that your company can be categorized as an employer of racists? It’s not so hard to gather up and organize this information. In fact, technologist Tom Scott recently did with the help of Facebook’s new Graph Search service.

Welcome to the third Movie Date Award Season Dispatch - in which Rafer and Kristen do not talk about award season at all, and instead focus on the strange intersections of politics and performance. Each dispatch is taken from a live interview, led by WNYC's Amy Eddings, and broadcast during All Things Considered on WNYC.