Society & Culture

Film Critic John Powers reviews the new movie Black and White.

This year marks the centennial of the birth of German-born Kurt Weill, considered one of the 20th century’s most influential composers. And Monday, April 3, is the 50th anniversary of his death. He and lyricist Bertolt Brecht revolutionized musical theatre with a blend of cabaret and classical traditions resulting in “The Threepenny Opera” “Seven Deadly Sins” and others. In 1933 Weill, a Jew, fled Berlin and in 1935 came to America where he began working in American theatre. We talk about Weill with Kim Kowlake (Koe-WALL-kee), President of the Kurt Weill Foundation for Music.

Linguist Geoffrey Nunberg discusses the word hacker.

Writer Ernesto Quinonez His debut novel, “Bodega Dreams” (Vintage books), is set in Spanish Harlem. Like his narrator, Quinonez is half Ecuadorean, half-Puerto Rican. A reviewer in the Kirkus Reviews writes of the book, “Edgy, street-smart. . . An admirable debut, brimming with energy and refreshingly devoid of genre clichés.”

Linguist Geoff Nunberg on the difference between irony and sarcasm.

Tens of thousands of African-American men, women, and children were lynched by mobs in the United States between 1882 and 1968. Some of these lynchings were photographed, and the photos were saved as souvenirs, and were even sometimes used as postcards. Antique dealer James Allen came across these disturbing images and began to collect them. His collection is currently on display at the New York Historical Society. The book about Allen’s collection, called “Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography in America” (Twin Palms Publishers) was published earlier this year.

Director/writer Kimberly Pierce and actress Hilary Swank from the film "Boys Don't Cry." The movie Is based on a true story about a Nebraskan teenage girl, Teena Brandon, who successfully passed herself off as a boy, Brandon Teena. When her true Identity Is discovered, she's raped by two men, and killed after bringing charges against them. SWANK has been nominated for an Academy Award for her portrayal, so has her co-star Chloe Sevigny who plays Teena's girlfriend Lana.

Poets Sonia Sanchez and Michael Harper. The two are featured on a new CD anthology, "Our Souls Have Grown Deep Like the Rivers" (Rhino) a collection of African American poetry from 1919 to 1999. It Includes the work of Langston Hughes, W.E.B. DuBois, Maya Angelou, Gil Scott-heron, Amiri Baraka and others.

Senior editor at The Atlantic Monthly, Barbara Wallraff, and author of the magazine’s “Word Count” column. Her new book about language usage is “”Word Count: Wherein verbal virtue is rewarded, crimes against the language are punished, and poetic justice is done” (Harcourt).

Actress Anne Heche. She wrote and directed a segment of the upcoming HBO film “If These Walls Could Talk 2” a look at the lesbian experience thru three different decades. The segment, set in the year 2000, stars Sharon Stone, and Heche’s real-life lover, Ellen Degeneres, who is also one of the film’s executive producers. The film debuts on Sunday, March 5th.

Linguist Geoff Nunberg considers the difficulties we’re having talking about the new millennium.

Law Professor Alfred Brophy. In 1921, what many call the bloodiest race riot in US history took place in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Now 80 years later, a state commission has recommended reparations be made to the aged black survivors of the riots. Brophy, a professor at the Oklahoma City University Law School, researched the issue of reparations and the riot for the state commission.

Kinney Booker. He is one of the survivors of the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921. He provides a first person account of the riot.

Law Professor Alfred Brophy. In 1921, what many call the bloodiest race riot in US history took place in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Now 80 years later, a state commission has recommended reparations be made to the aged black survivors of the riots. Brophy, a professor at the Oklahoma City University Law School, researched the issue of reparations and the riot for the state commission.

Retired U.S. Navy flight surgeon and NASA astronaut Capt. Jerry Linenger ("Linn-en-jer") In his new book, Off the Planet: Surviving Five Perilous Months Aboard the Space Station Mir" (McGraw-Hill) he chronicles his five months on board the Russian Space station "Mir" a ramshackle place he described as "six school buses all hooked together." During his five months there, they had numerous brushes with death, lacking adequate supplies, and battling constant system failures.

Karl Evanzz is an on-line editor at the Washington Post, and author of "The Messenger: The Rise and Fall of Elijah Muhammad" (Pantheon Books) the founder and "Prophet" of the Nation of Islam. Evanzz talked to Muhammad's children, his apostles, and had access to previously unreleased FBI files about him.

Michael Eric Dyson Is the author of the new book "I May Not Get There With You: The True Martin Luther King, Jr." (The Free Press). In It, Dyson argues that Martin Luther King Jr, the human being, with flaws and gifts serves us better than the romanticized and Idealized King. Dyson is also the author of "Making Malcolm: The Myth and Meaning of Malcolm X," and other books. Dyson Is an ordained Baptist minister and a Professor at DePaul University.

Linguist Geoff Nunberg on the word "virtual" as In virtual reality.

David Reimer was born a boy in 1967, but after a botched circumcision, and on the advise of doctors, his sex was surgically altered and he was raised as a girl. He also had an identical twin brother. Told of his surgery at the age of 14, Reimer decided to live as a male. Reimer’s case became a landmark because of its value to the study of nature vs. nurture. He’s the subject of the new book, “As Nature Made Him: The Boy Who was Raised as a Girl” (HarperCollins) by John Colapinto. We’ll hear from Reimer and Colapinto.

Writer and traveler Patrick Symmes. He writes about Latin American politics, globalization and Third world travel for the magazines Harper’s, Outside, Wired, and Conde Nast Traveler. He’s written his first book: “Chasing Che: A Motorcycle Journey in Search of the Guevara Legend” (Vintage Books). Symmes traces the path of Ernesto “Che” Guevara who in 1952 traveled via motorcycle across South America from Argentina to Cuba and emerged a revolutionary. Guevara was an upper class Argentine medical student before he started the journey, but the poverty he saw radicalized him.