Society & Culture

Language Commentator Geoffrey Nunberg continues his discussion of sexism in language. He says the obvious concerns - like whether to use "mankind" or "humanity" - only scratch the surface.

Writer Gloria Naylor. Her novels, Linden Hills and the recent Mama Day create a world in which blacks achieve success at the expense of their own history and identity. Naylor's first work, The Women of Brewster Place, won the 1983 American Book Award for First Fiction.

Rita Mae Brown, author of the classic feminist novels Rubyfruit Jungle and Southern Discomfort. Her other novels include High Hearts and Six of One. Her latest work, Starting From Scratch: A Different Kind of Writer's Manual, shares with writers her own tips and techniques.

Critic-at-Large Laurie Stone explores the humor of Rodney Dangerfield, the comic who has built a career on getting no respect. Dangerfield is now performing on Broadway.

Humorist Al Gingold expounds on the purchase of a sofa, a key milepost in the coming of age in America.

Arlene Violet, the first female state attorney general in the country. She was also the first nun in Rhode Island to graduate from law school. She has sued a bishop, investigated corrupt judges, retried Claus Von Bulow and the earned the nickname "Attila the Nun." She's written an autobiography titled Convictions.

Ken Tucker reviews the home video release of "The Shadow of the Thin Man," the last of the five "Thin Man" movies, a series made in the 30s and 40s and created by Dashiell Hammett that starred William Powell and Myrna Loy as a dashing husband-and-wife detective team.

Language Commentator Geoffrey Nunberg explores the language and sounds of talking computers and how they handle the subtlety of vocal inflection.

Part II of an interview with filmmaker and writer John Waters.

Lewis H. Lapham, Editor of Harper's Magazine. His new book, Money and Class in America, explores the worship of the dollar - what Lapham calls our "civil religion."

The first part of a two-part interview with filmmaker and writer John Waters. His new film - "Hairspray" - follows a long line of wildly eccentric films like "Polyester," "Pink Flamingos," and "Female Trouble." Like those films, the setting for "Hairspray" is Baltimore. The cast includes Divine, Debbie Harry, Pia Zadora and Sonny Bono.

Critic-at-Large Laurie Stone explores the work by some of the leading performers in feminist and lesbian theater.

Jan Harold Brunvand explores the urban legend about the skier who stops to relieve herself, slips and breaks her arm. As she's leaving the hospital meets other skiers with broken limbs who say when they saw a woman skiing with her pants down they laughed so hard they lost their balance.

Stand-up comic Reno. Her routines lampoon current sexual politics.

Author Kate Simon. Simon is best known for her travel books (Kate Simon's Paris, New York: Places and Pleasures) and for her two vivid memoirs of coming of age in the New York City of the 1920s and 30s. The first, Bronx Primitive: Portraits in a Childhood, portrays the immigrant neighborhoods just after World War I. In the second, A Wider World: Portraits in an Adolescence, Simon recalls her tumultuous adolescence as she discovered the world beyond the neighborhoods of her youth.

Canadian author Jane Rule, one of the best known and most widely read lesbian writers. Rule is best known for her 1985 novel Desert of the Heart, which was later adapted into the movie "Desert Hearts." Her new book is titled Memory Board.

Language Commentator Geoffrey Nunberg discusses the sanitized language defense experts use to describe nuclear war and weapons.

Dr. David Elkind, a professor and author of books on child development. His new book, Miseducation: Preschoolers at Risk, warns of possible dangers to children who are pushed too hard to achieve too much at too early an age.

Critic-at-Large Laurie Stone previews a 5-hour NBC miniseries on the 1913 hanging of a Jewish factory manager in Atlanta, Georgia following the murder a 13-year-old employee of the factory. The case hinged on racial hatred, in this case the prevailing enmity toward Jews, and Laurie praises the production's exploration of how racial divisions have been exploited for political effect. The miniseries is titled "The Murder of Mary Phagan."

Jan Harold Brunvand explores the urban legend about a dead cat package that gets stolen before it reaches its resting place.