Society & Culture

Critic-at-Large Laurie Stone looks at the new sexism as typified in the female leads in the films "Fatal Attraction," "The Big Easy" and "Baby Boom," three of the most successful fall films.

Jan Harold Brunvand traces the origin of the urban legend about the choking doberman.

Playwright Albert Innaurato. His works include the long-running hit "Gemini," "Coming of Age in SoHo" and "The Transformation of Benno Blimpie."

Betty White, longtime television actress. She currently stars in the NBC series "The Golden Girls."

Mamie Van Doren, one of Hollywood's blond bombshells in the fifties and sixties. She starred in the cult classics "Untamed Youth," "High School Confidential," and "Born Reckless." She's written a kiss-and-tell memoir called Playing the Field.

Language Commentator Jan Harold Brunvand will delve into the urban legend of the young woman who overdid it at the tanning salon and cooked her insides.

English writer Ian McEwan, whose new novel is called The Child in Time. It's about the loss of a child and the child that endures through adulthood.

TV Critic David Bianculli will preview the new ABC series "thirtysomething."

Issac Asimov [a.k.a. Paul French], the dean of science fiction writers. Asmiov is arguably one of the most widely published authors ever.

Language Commentator Geoffrey Nunberg will discuss the effects of Minitel, the computer distributed by the telephone system in France that has brought a word processor to every home with a phone.

Anti-Apartheid activist Randall Robinson, founder and director of Trans Africa, a lobbying group that focuses on Africa and the Caribbean.

Indian writer Ved Mehta. He's written several books of autobiography, most all of which have been serialized in "The New Yorker" magazine. His autobiographies are poignant accounts of his blindness, his education in England, and the role that language came to play in his life.

Col. Joe Conmy, technical advisor to the film "Hamburger Hill." As a field commander in Vietnam, Conmy participated in many of the battles depicted in the film. The U.S. Army also hired Conmy as technical advisor in the Francis Ford Coppola film "Gardens of Stone."

Jan Harold Brunvand explores urban legends and the etymology of earwigs.

Author Toni Morrison, acclaimed for her honest depiction of black life in her books, Song of Solomon, Sula, and Tar Baby. Her first novel in seven years has just been published. It's titled Beloved.

Adam Hochschild, founder of the leftist magazine "Mother Jones." He's written a memoir about his ambivalent relationship with his father, an industrialist who operated a string of gold and diamond mines in South Africa.

Author and traveller Bruce Chatwin. His new book, Songlines, is a semi-fictional account of the myths that structure the lives of Australia's aborigines. Chatwin's early works include the acclaimed travel book In Patagonia.

Language commentator Geoffrey Nunberg on the efforts of France's culture guardians to keep American expressions out of the language.

Michael Denneny a senior editor at St. Martin's Press. His latest project is a small press called Stonewall Inn Editions, specializing in gay literature.

Comic Emo Philips. He'll share the neurotic, insecure, post-adolescent persona that has made him one of the hottest neurotic, insecure, post-adolescent comics today.