Is an older woman who travels alone to a foreign country brave and independent ... or is she nuts? Come with me to Mexico, swim with me through some pretty scary underground caves, dance with me on Día de Muertos and tell me what you think.

How and where did most Jews learn to ski and skate and play tennis and golf? Not at the country clubs and resorts that banned them. Who was the first American Jew to earn Olympic medals in a Nordic sport? Tune in and learn about the role that Borscht Belt hotels such as Grossinger's played in teaching immigrant Jews the skills they would need to become, well, American.

Bingeing on the old Mary Tyler Moore Show took me back to my own first job--like Mary, I worked in a newsroom--and led me to ponder what we've lost and gained in decreeing that any type of workplace intimacy is verboten.

Were you forced to take a foreign language in high school? Do you remember sitting through hour after hour of language lab? So many people now speak English, why should we Americans bother to learn Spanish or French or German or Chinese or Urdu? And why on earth would anyone approaching their final years on the planet care if they could correctly conjugate the verb hacer?

I really, really want a dog. Why don't I get one? If I do, will you pay for all its vet bills? Does everyone need to be a doggie parent to a furbaby? Can't you just own a mutt?

Have you ever had a hard time convincing someone that something is wrong with your car, your house, or your computer and they really do need to fix it? Of course you have. I can't help you fix whatever needs fixing, but I invite you to compare your frustrations with mine.

Believe it or not, I've been told I had cancer SIX TIMES. Luckily, five of those diagnoses were wrong. But why were so many doctors so eager to tell me that I had a fatal disease? Is that any better than the way it used to be, when everyone--including doctors--were afraid to so much as utter the word?

Did you play a musical instrument in elementary school? Did you give it up? Why? Do you wish you had continued taking lessons? Is it ever too late to try again?