Friday, August 8, 2008

If You Could Talk to Dr. Ruth...

I recently volunteered to review Dr. Ruth's new book Dr. Ruth's Guide to Teens and Sex Today for Parent: Wise Austin magazine. It's a win-win situation: I get a free copy of a book that I might have purchased anyway, I have some incentive/accountability to read a new book that relates to my work, and if I write something coherent/useful, I might get a paragraph published in the magazine. So I was pretty excited about picking up the book on Monday. But once I had it in my hand, a letter fell out of the front. It's a letter from the publisher, highlighting all the ways the book is great and media outlets will want to promote it. And then at the very end, it says... and Dr. Ruth is now available for phone interviews about this book.

Whoa! Interview Dr. Ruth? Really? Wow.

A quick Wikipedia scan tells me that she's 4'7", 80 years old, and was born in Germany. Jewish, she lost both of her parents in the Holocaust. She's a mother of two, grandmother of several. She became the cultural icon she is now in the 80s, when she had a call-in radio show where listeners could ask questions about sex. Most of us know her as a sexuality expert, of course, but would you believe that after WWII, she was trained as a sharpshooter in the Israeli army?!

But back to the question at hand. Could I interview Dr. Ruth? Frankly, I don't even know if I would be permitted to do such a thing. But I think I'm going to ask. But if they say yes, well, then that's where the real work & worry starts! Help me out... what would YOU ask Dr Ruth?

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