Society & Culture

Carley is the executive director of GRASP, The Global and Regional Asperger Syndrome Partnership. In 2000, he and his then 4-year-old son were diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome. GRASP works to educate the public about the disorder.

Her book Eats, Shoots & Leaves, a best seller in Britain, is a narrative history of punctuation. Truss claims that with the advent of e-mail and text messaging, proper punctuation is an endangered species. Truss is also the author of three novels and numerous radio comedy dramas. She has been a television critic and sports columnist for The Times (London). She also won Columnist of the Year award for her work for Women's Journal. She now reviews books for the Sunday Times of London.

Film critic David Edelstein reviews Mean Girls. Saturday Night Live's Tina Fey wrote the screenplay, based on the book Queen Bees and Wannabes: Helping Your Daughter Survive Cliques, Gossip, Boyfriends, and other Realities of Adolescence.

She wrote the screenplay for the new movie Mean Girls. It's based on the book, Queen Bees and Wannabes, by Rosalind Wiseman. Fey also co-stars in the film, along with Lindsay Lohan, Tim Meadows, Amy Poehler and Ana Gasteyer. Fey is co-head writer and writing supervisor for Saturday Night Live. She is the show's first female head writer. She also co-hosts SNL's Weekend Update. She and the writing staff won an Emmy Award for their work in 2002. Before SNL, Fey wrote and performed for the famed Second City in Chicago.

He's best known for his cult films Tales From the Gimli Hospital, (1998) and Careful (1992). His short film The Heart of the World (2000) won a special award from the National Society of Film Critics and was voted one of the 10 best films of the year by J. Hoberman of The Village Voice and A.O. Scott of The New York Times. His new film The Saddest Music in The World stars Isabella Rossellini as a beer baroness in search of, aptly, the saddest music in the world. It also stars Mark McKinney, best known for his work with The Kids in the Hall.

Fresh Air linguist Geoff Nunberg looks at the term 'blogging.'

Critic-at-Large John Powers reviews two recent DVDs, Kill Bill Volume 1 and Lost in Translation.

Sokolove is a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine. His new book, The Ticket Out: Darryl Strawberry and the Boys of Crenshaw, is about the former baseball star whose drug addiction ended his career and the high school team he played for in South Central Los Angeles. Sokolove calls it the greatest assemblage of talent in the history of high school baseball.

Film critic David Edelstein reviews Kill Bill Vol. 2.

Cott is a professor of history at Harvard University. She testified before Vermont's judiciary committee. Vermont became the first state in the country to make civil unions legal for gay and lesbian couples. Cott is the author of Public Vows: A History of Marriage and the Nation (Harvard University).

Witte is Jonas Robitscher professor of law and ethics, and director of the law and religion program at Emory University in Atlanta. He is the author of From Sacrament to Contract: Marriage, Religion, and Law in the Western Tradition.

His new book Little Children is a satirical take on parenthood and suburbia. Perrotta is also the author of the novels Joe College and Election. Election was made into the 1999 movie of the same name.

Powers looks at religion and the media in the wake of public reaction to Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ.

Book critic Maureen Corrigan reviews A Chance Meeting: Intertwined Lives of American Writers and Artists 1854-67, by Rachel Cohen. It's a book about friendships between American writers and artists and photographers.

Nunberg looks at a new kind of fake news — "infoganda."

Film critic David Edelstein reviews Dogville, by director Lars Von Trier.

Terry Gross speaks with Kathie Russo, Spalding Gray's widow.

Film critic David Edelstein reviews Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, starring Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet.

Linguist Geoff Nunberg on the use of profanity.

His new memoir is called When I was Cool: My Life at the Jack Kerouac School. As a teenager, Kashner left his comfortable suburban life on Long Island, N.Y. and became the first student to attend the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics in Boulder, Colo. Kasher's teachers were the great beat writers William Burroughs, Allan Ginsberg, Gregory Corso and Kerouac. Kashner is also the author of a novel, Sinatraland, as well as three non-fiction books. He is a regular contributor to Vanity Fair.