Society & Culture

As a child, she had a crush on the 19-year-old preacher in her church. He was known as M-L, but later he became Martin Luther King, Jr.

Film critic David Edelstein reviews Along Came Polly, the new comedy starring Ben Stiller and Jennifer Aniston.

The stage actress and acting coach died Wednesday at the age of 84. She taught for more than 40 years, training actors including Jack Lemmon, Sigourney Weaver, Matthew Broderick and the late Geraldine Page. She and her late husband, Herbert Berghof, founded the HB Studio in New York. This interview first aired Nov. 4, 1998.

Kani, a South African, is best known for his apartheid-era, politically charged collaborations with playwright Athol Fugard. His new play — and his first as a solo playwright is Nothing But the Truth. It's a post-apartheid family drama inspired by the death of his brother, a poet who was killed by the South African police in 1985. Nothing But the Truth is currently playing at the Mitzi Newhouse Theatre at Lincoln Center in New York City. (This interview continues into the second half of the show).

Book critic Maureen Corrigan reviews The Gatekeeper, the new memoir by British academic superstar Terry Eagleton. Also, his new book After Theory (to be published this month in the United States) is a recant of his widely read 1983 book Literary Theory: An Introduction.

He talks about living as a closeted homosexual in the priesthood, finally having an affair with a man, going into therapy and then leaving the ministry. All this occurred by 1992, years before the sexual abuse scandal. Schiavone wrote about his experience in an article in the December 8, 2002 issue of the Boston Globe Magazine.

The 82-year-old historian and rabbi has been at the center of events that shape American Jewish life for more than 50 years. He is the former president of the American Jewish Congress, and helped to found the movement called Peace Now in Israel. His 1959 book, The Zionist Idea, is considered a classic. Last year he wrote his memoir A Jew in America: My Life and a People's Struggle for Identity. His new book is The Fate of Zionism: A Secular Future for Israel and Palestine.

Linguist Geoff Nunberg looks at why some words are considered off-limits.

His new novel is Screaming With the Cannibals. Maynard has been an assignment writer for Reader's Digest for over a decade. He's also written for many other magazines and newspapers. Screaming with the Cannibals is a sequel to his 1988 debut novel, Crum.

Linguist Geoff Nunberg considers the differences between American and British English.

His novel, The Known World, is receiving critical acclaim and has been selected as a finalist for the National Book Award for fiction. It's about a black farmer and former slave who becomes a slave owner. Jones made his literary debut more than 10 years ago with Lost in the City, a collection of short stories about struggling black residents of Washington, D.C. It won the Lannan Literary Award. Until recently Jones made his living as a proofreader for the trade magazine Tax Notes.

Kahn was only 11 years old when his father, legendary architect Louis Kahn, died. We talk with Kahn about My Architect, the award-winning documentary in which he attempts to understand his father through his buildings and his relationships.

The Pernice Brothers' album, Yours, Mine & Ours, was one of the most acclaimed of 2003. Joe Pernice's new book, Meat is Murder, is part of a collection of short books inspired by music albums. The book's title comes from the album of the same name by The Smiths.

Geoff Nunberg discusses the term "fascist."

Shirley Glass discusses "the new infidelity crisis." She's studied extramarital affairs since the mid 1970's and has written a new book called "NOT Just Friends: Protect Your Relationship from Infidelity and Heal the Trauma of Betrayal." She says that the workplace has become the new breeding ground for extramarital affairs. GLASS is, by the way, the mother of Ira Glass, of public radio's "This American Life."

She earned wide critical and popular acclaim and an Emmy for her work on The Garry Moore Show (from 1959-62). The Carol Burnett Show debuted in 1967 and won 22 Emmys in a run of more than a decade. She has starred or appeared in a number of TV movies and specials. In December, she'll be a Kennedy Center honoree for her body of work. In 1981 she struck a blow for fellow celebrities by winning a lawsuit against The National Enquirer tabloid. Her memoir One More Time was recently republished in a paperback edition. There's also a DVD collection of The Carol Burnett Show.

Nunberg talks about idiomatic expressions like "on the up and up." What does it mean when people interpret these sayings differently?

Film critic David Edelstein reviews the new Quentin Tarantino film Kill Bill: Vol. 1.

Nunberg talks about terms used in racial classification, such as Caucasian.