Society & Culture

Shepard, who died Sunday, penned more than 55 plays, including Buried Child. His breakthrough film role was as astronaut Chuck Yeager in The Right Stuff. Originally broadcast in 1998.

Linguist Geoffrey Nunberg comments on the popularity of e-mail. Noting that in this "age of banter" e-mail suits us well.

Betty DeGeneres talks about her life before and after her daughter Ellen Degeneres publicly announced that she is a lesbian. Betty DeGeneres is now the spokesperson for the National Coming Out Project for the Human Rights Campaign. HRC is the nation's largest national lesbian and gay political organization. National Coming Out Day is celebrated every October 11.

Writer Robert Sullivan. His new book "The Meadowlands: Wilderness Adventures At the Edge of a City" (Scribner) is about his intrepid trek into the swamp land five miles outside of New York City, where decades of garbage, chemicals, and corpses have been dumped. Ian Frazier calls is "funny, interesting, surprising and bizarre." Part of the book was excerpted recently in The New York Times Magazine (Feb 15). Sullivan is contributing editor at Vogue. He also writes for The New Yorker, Conde Naste Travler, The New Republic and Rolling Stone.

Michael Bowen is author of a forthcoming book on Sexplotation pioneer filmmaker Doris Wishman. He is a writer based in Brookline, Mass.

Filmmaker Doris Wishman. She's considered to be a pioneer of sexploitation movies, of the "nudie" and softcore sex genre films. Between 1960 and 1978 Wisman wrote, directed and produced 24 low budget films. Her films include "Bad Girls Go to Hell," "Nude on the Moon," and "Too Much, Too Often." Revivals of her films have recently been shown in Boston, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and New York. In August she will receive a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Chicago Underground Film Festival.

Film critic John Powers comments on the Academy Award winners.

Playwright David Henry Hwang (pronounced "Wong"). He received numerous awards for his Broadway debut "M. Butterfly." His newest production "Golden Child" about the struggle between tradition and change in a family in 1918 China, opens on Broadway in April. It received a 1997 Obie Award. (Interview by Babara Bogaev)

Edward Ball has written about his family's role in American Slavery. His book is "Slaves in the Family" which is published by Farrar, Strauss and Giroux. Ball traced his family's history and learned that over six generations his family controlled more than 20 plantations and over four-thousand slaves.

Wall Street Journal reporter Tony Horwitz has written "Confederates In The Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War". It is published by Pantheon. Horwitz explores the subculture of Civil War re-enactment fanatics. Many of these wannabe rebels will run barefoot, sleep in the rain, and starve themselves to recreate the conditions of battle to get a "period rush". Horwitz won a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting at the Wall Street Journal and is the author of "Baghdad Without a Map" and "One for the Road".

Fauziya Kassindja and Layli Miller Bashir have co-written "Do They Hear You When You Cry". It is published by Delacorte Press. The book is based on their experience. Kassindja fled Toga, Africa to escape female genital mutilation. Bashir as a law student fought for Kassindja's freedom. Bashir is the founder of Tahirih Justice Center, which assist women facing human rights abuses.

Dr. Benjamin Spock died yesterday at the age of 94. We'll hear a interview with Spock he did in 1988. (Originally aired 10/5/88)

Film critic John Powers reviews "Love & Death on Long Island."

Mary Gordon is the author of several bestselling novels which are often about the conflicts facing contemporary women. Her novels include "Final Payments" and "The Company of Women." She's also the author of the memoir, "The Shadow Man: A Daughter's Search for Her Father" (Vintage Books, paperback). Gordon's newest novel is "Spending" (Scribner) about a woman painter who finds a patron, muse, and lover in a wealthy commodities broker.

Linguist Geoff Nunberg considers how Yiddish words have entered the everyday speech of even non-Jews.

Historian Ellen Carol Dubois teaches at the University of California, Los Angeles. She's the author of the new biography: "Harriot Stanton Blatch and the Winning of Woman Suffrage" (Yale University Press). Blatch was the daughter of the famous suffragist Elizabeth Cady Stanton. When her mother died, Blatch carried on her mother's work, encouraging women of all classes to participate. Dubois also edited "The Elizabeth Cady Stanton-Susan B. Anthony Reader" (Northeastern University Press)

Historian Barbara Goldsmith. Her new book is both biography and a history of the time. It tells the story of the 19th century feminist and spiritualist Victoria Woodhull, "Other Powers: The Age of suffrage, Spiritualism, and the Scandalous Victoria Woodhull" (Knopf). Victoria Woodhull was the first woman to run for president. She was an ardent feminist who championed for women's rights, but her spiritualism put her outside the mainstream suffrage movement, as well as her attempts to blackmail her enemies.

Journalist William Mann has written a new biography of actor William Haines, "Wisecracker: The Life and Times of William Haines, Hollywood's First Openly Gay Star" (Viking). In 1930 Haines was a big box-office draw. He was also openly-gay to reporters, studio chiefs,and fellow actors. Eventually Haines was booted out of Hollywood, because he refused to give in to studio pressure to conform. He began a highly successful career as an interior designer.

Book critic Maureen Corrigan reviews "The Illusionist" (Scribner) by Dinitia Smith.

Neil Jacobson is Professor of Clinical Psychology at the University of Washington, and a pioneer in the scientific study of marital therapy. He is co-author (w/John Gottman, author of "Why Marriages Succeed or Fail") of "When Men Batter Women: New Insights into Ending Abusive Relationships" (Simon & Schuster). The book is based on their decade of research with 200 couples in which they observed the arguments of severely violent couples. Their research shatters a couple of myths: that women batter too, and that women often provoke men into battering them.