Society & Culture

Pickett's novel Sideways has been made into a critically acclaimed film starring Thomas Paul Giamatti and Haden Church (left). It's about two ex-college roommates, now middle-aged, who set off on a week's trip through California wine country.

Edmund White has been writing about gay culture in fiction and nonfiction since the 1970s. His new book is a collection of his essays, Arts and Letters. White is director of the creative writing program at Princeton University.

Carlin's seven dirty words routine was the center of a famous obscenity case in the 1970s. He has a new book When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops? His other books include Napalm & Silly Putty, and Brain Droppings.

Stanford linguist and author of Going Nucular Geoff Nunberg discusses the word entrepreneur.

Film critic David Edelstein reviews "sideways".

Balsiger's film George W. Bush: Faith in the White House has been released as an "alternative" to Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 911. Interviewees share their experiences on how President Bush demonstrates his faith. Introduced at the Republican National Convention, the film is now on DVD.

The new documentary Tarnation chronicles writer and director Jonathan Caouette's turbulent childhood with a mentally ill mother. He made the film on his home computer for just a few hundred dollars. Critic David Edelstein has a review.

As President Bush and Sen. John Kerry look to their second face-to-face meeting Friday night, linguist Geoff Nunberg considers the language of the 2004 debates.

TV critic David Bianculli reviews Desperate Housewives, a new series that takes a dark look at suburbia.

Linguist Geoff Nunberg considers how we think bout the Internet and how that is reflected in the language we use to describe it.

John Powers comments on the rise of political Web logs.

Book critic Maureen Corrigan reviews The Love Wife by Gish Jen. The novel tells the story of Carnegie Wong, a second-generation Chinese American and his complicated family life.

She stars in the new film We Don't Live Here Anymore, based on a pair of short stories by Andre Dubus. Dern's acting credits include Focus, I Am Sam, October Sky, the Jurassic Park films, Wild at Heart, and Blue Velvet. She also appeared in the famous coming-out episode of the sitcom Ellen.

Commentator Geoff Nunberg considers brand names. They make up a significant proportion of the average person's vocabulary. Nunberg says the English language is being privatized.

Journalist David Kirkpatrick reports on the conservative movement's issues and leaders for The New York Times.

Her new book is The War on Choice: The Right-Wing Attack on Women's Rights and How to Fight Back.

Book critic Maureen Corrigan reviews The Wasp Eater, the first novel by William Lychack. Corrigan says the book, about a dysfunctional family splitting up in late '70s Connecticut, succeeds at a small goal: conveying the ordinary sadness of connecting with other human beings.

Film critic David Edelstein reviews We Don't Live Here Anymore, based on two novellas by the late Andre Dubus. The film centers on acts of infidelity between two couples in a small college town. Edelstein says the movie is "like a bad marriage greatest hits collection."

(Rebroadcast from Nov. 5, 2002.) Worden was director of the Mutter Museum in Philadelphia. She died on Aug. 2 at the age of 57, from a brief illness. She turned the little-known medical museum into a museum with a worldwide reputation. The museum was founded in the 19th century. It originated with the collection of Dr. Thomas Dent Mutter who gathered unique specimens for teaching purposes. It exhibits medical deformities, pathologies and medical anomalies, like the horned woman, the man with the giant colon, deformed fetuses and a plaster cast of the Siamese twins Chang and Eng Bunker.

Robert Lopez and Jeff Marx are the songwriting team behind the 2004 Tony award-winning Broadway musical Avenue Q (which won Best Musical, Best Original Score, Best Book of a Musical). Their subversive show features people and puppets and is about a group of aimless 30-somethings with low expectations and active libidos. It includes such songs as It Sucks to be Me, Everyone's a Little Bit Racist, If You Were Gay, and I Wish I could Go Back to College.