Society & Culture

Brothers Rob and Nate Corddry are both former correspondents on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.

Now Rob Corddry has a new Fox sitcom, The Winner (by the creators of The Family Guy), about a 32-year-old virgin who still lives at home. It airs on Sunday nights.

Nate Corddry currently plays a TV performer and writer on the show Studio 60, which airs Monday nights on NBC.

Ben Yagoda is the author of When You Catch an Adjective, Kill It. It's a guide to writing that capitalizes on the lively advice of writers from Mark Twain (author of the title quote) to Stephen King.

Linguist Geoff Nunberg considers the sending of Valentine's messages via telephone, the postal system, and e-mail. What does it say about the evolution of personal communication?

Writer Nuruddin Farah's new novel, Knots, is about the terrible conditions for women in Somalia. The central character is a Somali-Canadian woman who returns to Mogadiscio, her native city.

Underground comic book artist Robert Crumb created ZAP COMIX and is the artist behind such 1960s and 1970s icons as Mr. Natural, Fritz the Cat, and Keep-on-Truckin. His wife, Aline Kominsky Crumb, was one of the earliest underground female cartoonists. Her new book, Need More Love: A Graphic Memoir, chronicles her life and career. Robert's new book is The Sweeter Side of R. Crumb.

The famous, or perhaps notorious, model Anna Nicole Smith died last week, prompting a tsunami of media coverage. Here's a look at the reasons for all the hoopla. One shouldn't be embarrassed about finding her story fascinating.

In his new book, Dr. Michael Stein uses the stories of patients, including that of his terminally ill brother-in-law, to explore the personal side of sickness. Stein, a professor of medicine and community health at Brown University Medical School, discusses The Lonely Patient: How We Experience Illness.

A linguistic perspective on when an apology is not an apology.

In his new book, Going Down Jericho Road, historian Michael Honey chronicles the campaign which the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was working on at the time of his death. Honey is a former civil liberties organizer and a professor of ethics, gender and labor studies and American history at the University of Washington, Tacoma.

Republican pollster Frank Luntz advises politicians on the language they should use to win elections and promote their policies. Although he works on one side of the aisle, he says that what he does is essentially nonpartisan, seeking clarity and simplicity in language. His critics disagree, and have accused him of using language that misrepresents policies to "sell" them to the public. Frank Luntz is the author of Words That Work.

Novelist Robert Stone has written a new memoir that begins with a stint in the Navy in the late 1950s, continues through his work as a journalist in Vietnam and then includes his counterculture years in the 1970s, taking hallucinogenic drugs, cross-country road trips, and hanging out with Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters. His memoir is, Prime Green: Remembering the Sixties. Stone's novels include Dog Soldiers (which was adapted into the film Who'll Stop the Rain), and Outerbridge Reach.

The 2006 award season is drawing to a close and linguist Geoff Nunberg gets in just under the wire with the announcement of the first annual Becky award, bestowed by a group of linguists.

Fresh Air critic at-large John Powers will talk about the events that defined American culture this year. Highlights include the Borat movie, Stephen Colbert's speech at the White House correspondent's dinner, George Allen's use of a racial slur during the 2006 U.S. Senate race in Virginia, and the rise of YouTube.com as a mechanism for rapid dissemination of information. John Powers is also a critic for Vogue magazine.

The end of the year brings with it "word of the year" designations from professional societies and dictionaries. Linguist Geoff Nunberg considers some of the words that made headlines this past year, including some newsmaking racial epithets.

New York Times reporter Alex Kuczynski's new book is Beauty Junkies: Inside our $15 Billion Obsession with Cosmetic Surgery. No stranger to "beauty maintenance," Kuczynski has had botox, an eye-lift, and liposuction, but gave it up after a bad experience with lip augmentation.

Brian Whitaker is the Middle East editor for the British newspaper The Guardian, and his new book is Unspeakable Love: Gay and Lesbian Life in the Middle East. Whitaker also runs the al-Bab Web site, which aims to provide Arab cultural and political information to non-Arabs.

Israeli gay rights activist Noa Sattath is the executive director of Jerusalem Open House, an organization devoted to fostering gay pride. Last month, the city hosted WorldPride 2006: Love Without Borders, an international pride gathering. A gay pride rally was held at a university stadium in Jerusalem under tight security. A march was planned but did not take place.

Ariel Levy is a contributing editor at New York magazine, where she writes about sexuality, culture and gender politics. Her new book is Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture. One reviewer writes that Levy "strips the 'Girls Gone Wild' culture of its cuteness in her provocative [book], arguing that post-feminist poster girls such as Playboy Bunnies offer only faux empowerment."

Writer and producer Ed Burns draws on his experience as a former Baltimore detective to create the acclaimed HBO series The Wire, now in its fourth season. It's a crime drama with a central theme of surveillance technology used to capture drug dealers.