Society & Culture

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.

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

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."

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.

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.

Jehan Sadat, wife of the late Egyptian President Anwar Sadat.

Humorist Alfred Gingold describes the sensation of sorting through a sprawling record collection with a loved one.

Writer Jay Stevens has a new book about the creation of LSD in the 1940s, research into its therapeutic and weaponized potential in the 1950s, and its role in the 1960s counterculture--fueled in part by the influence of people like Timothy Leary, Ken Kesey and Aldous Huxley.

While vacationing in France, linguist Geoff Nunberg visited a museum exhibit showcasing an early edition of the Grand Larousse dictionary. He considers the cultural significance of this text, and what it says about how the French view language.

Humorist Alice Kahn considers the scientific and cultural debate over the existence of G-spot, and the affect it's had on women's sexuality.