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Henry Alford's "Comic Investigations."

Author Henry Alford. Newsday reviewer Adam Begley mused about what to call Alford. "New York prankster?" Manhattan Monkeyshine Maven?" "Gotham Caparist?" His publisher calls him an investigative humorist. Alford has chronicled his offbeat investigations in his new book "Municipal Bondage: One Man's Anxiety-Producing Adventures in the Big City." (Random House.) Alford writes of his efforts to enter professions for which he was completely untutored--cosmetologist, snack food creator, dog groomer, earlobe model. He includes essays about city life and ventures into the realm of the hypothetical in sections beginning with the phrase "What if . . .?"

14:48
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Other segments from the episode on March 15, 1994

Fresh Air with Terry Gross, March 15, 1994: Interview with Gary Orfield; Interview with Henry Alford; Review of the album "Tougher than Tough: The Story of Jamaican Music."
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22:16

Gary Orfield Discusses the Re-Segregation of U. S. Schools.

Gary Orfield. He is a professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and Director of its Project on School Desegregation. His report, "The Growth of Segregation in American Schools: Changing Patterns of Separation and Poverty since 1968" was recently issued to the National School Board Association. In 1954 the United States Supreme Court found that the races in America's schools were segregated and the education was unequal. For awhile, integration was on the increase. But Orfield has found that today our schools have slipped backward.

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A Laugh A Minute, On Screen And In Life.

Nora Ephron, the essayist, novelist, screenwriter and film director, died Tuesday night in Manhattan. She was 71, and suffered from leukemia. Fresh Air remembers the creator of Silkwood and When Harry Met Sally with excerpts from a 2006 interview from WHYY's Radio Times.

Journalist and filmmaker Nora Ephron smiles at the camera

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