The Art of Singing Operetta.

Comic and actor Howie Mandel. Mandel is one of the stars of "St. Elsewhere," the acclaimed NBC weekly series that follows the lives of the medical staff of the beleaguered St. Eligius, a fictional hospital set in a rough-and-tumble Boston neighborhood. Today, May 25, is final episode of the seven-year series.

Writer Orville Schell. His latest book, Discos and Democracy: China in the Throes of Reform, chronicles one year in China's rush toward Democracy, and the country's continuing love-hate relationship with the West. Schell's work appears regularly in The New Yorker.

Language Commentator Geoffrey Nunberg examines the idioms of Berkeley, California, one of the most liberal and tolerant communities in America.