Health & Medicine

Critic-at-large Laurie Stone reviews two plays currently in production which reflect contemporary anxieties about sex. While As Is strips sex of pleasure, Les Liaisons Dangereuses revels in "pornotopic" eroticism.

In his new memoir, The Body Silent, anthropologist Robert Francis Murphy explores his experiences as a quadriplegic, a condition brought on by a spinal tumor.

Graham Chapman came out while working on the sketch comedy show Monty Python's Flying Circus. He discusses his activism to support gay rights, as well as the many times the television program lampooned conventional masculinity.

Scandals involving Robert Bauman's alcoholism and soliciting of an underage male prostitute heralded the end of this career as a Maryland congressman. He writes about the experience and how he came to peace with his identity in his new book, The Gentleman from Maryland.

John Phillips, who led The Mamas and the Papas, has a new autobiography, which details the tensions, drug use, and affairs that ultimately led to the band's demise.

Shearing was born blind and began learning piano at age 4. Both practical limitations and prejudice kept him from playing certain kinds of gigs. But during World War II, while many fellow musicians served in the military, Shearing was given more opportunities to work. He later moved to the United States to further his career.

Spencer joins Fresh Air to talk about how became a writer and what life is like now that he's established himself. His newest book, Waking the Dead, grapples with ideas of loss -- a theme prominent in his breakout novel, Endless Love.

Robert Stone's novels explore the drug culture of the 1960s and the Vietnam War--both of which he lived through. Often associated with Ken Kesey's LSD-fueled Merry Band of Pranksters, Stone now lives a quiet life in New England.

Bob Guccione, Jr.'s father ran Penthouse magazine. The younger Guccione worked for the family business for years before launching Spin, a rock and roll-themed magazine.

Phyllis Diller became a comedian at the age 37; she and her husband, who had five children together, believed it would be the best way for her to support the family financially. She is known for her frazzled onstage persona, jokes about her imagined husband Fang, and her many plastic surgeries.

Shearing was born blind and began learning piano at age 4. Both practical limitations and prejudice kept him from playing certain kinds of gigs. But during World War II, while many fellow musicians served in the military, Shearing was given more opportunities to work. He later moved to the United States to further his career.

Spencer joins Fresh Air to talk about how became a writer and what life is like now that he's established himself. His newest book, Waking the Dead, grapples with ideas of loss -- a theme prominent in his breakout novel, Endless Love.

Frequent Fresh Air guest Spalding Gray takes stories about his life and anxieties and transforms them into comedic monologues he delivers in a direct fashion. His monologues include "Sex and Death to the Age of Fourteen," "A Personal History of American Theater," and "Swimming to Cambodia." His current monologue is "The Terrors of Pleasure," and it chronicles his attempts to "grow up" and experience ownership by purchasing a house in the Catskills.

Robert Stone counts promises and peoples' failure to keep them, what we chose to perceive in others and how that perception can be deceptive, and the difficulty of behaving decently as themes of his novels. He describes himself as a "writer of his times," and his work often addresses topical issues. His latest novel is "Children of Light."

R. D. Laing is a psychiatrist who challenged conventional views in the 1960s with his proposal that schizophrenia was an adaptive behavior, "a sane response to an insane world," as opposed to an illness. The counterculture embraced Laing's views, but they were controversial in academic circles. In 1965, Laing formed the Philadelphia (for brotherly love, not the city) Association, an alternative treatment center for schizophrenics.

Philadelphia lawyer David Webber is the legal director of the Philadelphia AIDS Task Force's Advocacy Committee and the counsel for the Philadelphia Lesbian and Gay Task Force. Last year he represented a person with AIDS who was fired from his job. Webber joins the show to discuss the legal and civil liberty issues associated with the disease.

The AIDS crisis has scared many people from donating or receiving blood from the Red Cross. Kathleen Denton, Director of Communications for the Southeastern Pennsylvania Chapter of the Red Cross, says those fears are unfounded. Denton explains that a test developed last April screens for the presence of antibodies to the HTLV-III virus, which is believed to cause AIDS. All blood is screened before being added to the pool. (Interview By Amy Salit)

On the second part of this special edition of Fresh Air addressing the AIDS epidemic, Terry Gross speaks with writer Dennis Altman, author of the new book "AIDS in the Mind of America." One of its subjects is the impact of the disease on the gay male community. The Australian Altman has previously written about the gay movement, and worked with the Institute for Health Policy Studies at the University of California Medical School. Altman offers his thoughts on whether AIDS should be considered a "gay disease."

On the second part of this special edition of Fresh Air addressing the AIDS epidemic, Terry Gross speaks with Philadelphia lawyer David Webber, legal director of the Philadelphia AIDS Task Force's Advocacy Committee and the counsel for the Philadelphia Lesbian and Gay Task Force. Last year he represented a person with AIDS who was fired from his job. Webber joins the show to discuss the legal and civil liberty issues associated with the disease.

Webber and Gross respond to listener calls about the legal and media aspects of the AIDS crisis.