What do yesterday's results say about President Obama's coattails? And, what now for the GOP, which failed in its attempt to push through a more conservative Republican in New York state. Will the party try the same tactic in Florida, where conservatives have set their sights on moderate Republican Charlie Crist? We speak with Peter Wallsten, who covers national politics for the Wall Street Journal.

Mattel recently released a new line of black Barbie dolls — they have wider noses and fuller lips, but their hair is smooth and silky, and little girls can keep it that way with a hair straightening kit. We speak with Francie Latour, associate editor at Wellesley Magazine, about why hair has such importance for black women and what she calls "the line the new black Barbies won't cross."

University of North Carolina Chapel Hill is moving one of its most popular freshman courses, Spanish 101, out of the classroom and into cyberspace.  We talk to Larry King, chair of the Romance Languages and Literatures Department about the change.

David Furst is a photographer for Agence France Press. His photo of four American Marines, all women, resting in Afghanistan caught our eye recently. He's back in the U.S. this week and joins us for a conversation about that picture and his work as an embedded photographer in a war zone.

Writer and editor Judith Jones found herself among the 28 million Americans who live alone after her husband of 45 years, the noted food writer Evan Jones, died. Getting back into the kitchen, she says, was a way of honoring their life together, and it was a way of honoring herself, eating better, and saving money too. Jones has written a book with recipes and techniques for cooking small-scale, and she's brought along insights from a life of work editing authors from Julia Child to John Updike. Her new book is "The Pleasures of Cooking for One".