What Donahue knew was that we—especially women—were eager, desperate, to be understood, to learn and learn and learn. We call his job “host” when, in fact, the way he did it, passing the microphone through the audience, running up, down, around, putting it here and here and here, was closer to “switchboard operator”. It was “the hot dog vendor at Madison Square Garden.” The man got involved. He let us question more than he did – he would only edit, interpret, clarify. Egalitarianism ruled. Articulation too. And anyone who needed a microphone usually got one.

The show was both what was on our minds and what never crossed our minds. Atheism. Nazism. Colorism. Delivery. Prison. rapists. AIDS. Chippendales, Chernobyl, Cher. Call it a fetish, Phil Donahue tried to get to the bottom of it, sometimes trying it himself. (Let us never forget the episode when he entered in a long skirt, blouse and kitty bow for one of the many cross-dressing studies in the series.) Now it’s time to add that “Donahue” was morning talk show. He arrived in Philadelphia every weekday at 9 a.m., which meant that in the summer I could learn about compulsive shopping or changing gender roles from the same kitchen TV as my grandmother.

Sex and sexuality were the main themes of the series. There was so much that needed to be confessed, corrected, supported, obeyed. For that, Donahue needed an expert. Many times the expert was dr. Ruth, a godsend who didn’t make it to this country until her late 20s and didn’t make it to television until her 50s. Ruth Westheimer came to us from Germany, where she started as Karola Ruth Siegel and tethered as her life spun, as he mocked fiction. Her family most likely perished in the Auschwitz death camps after being transferred to the safety of a Swiss orphanage, where she was expected to clean. Twists include sniper training for one of the military units that would become the Israel Defense Forces, being maimed by a cannonball on her 20th birthday, research at Planned Parenthood in Harlem, single motherhood and three husbands. She received her doctorate in education from Columbia University, and spent her postdoctoral studies researching human sexuality. And because her timing was perfect, she emerged at the dawn of the 1980s, a lovable vector of an era of craze for gnomish sages (Zelda Rubinstein, Linda Hunt, Yoda), branding masterpieces, and nastiness.

Hers is the era of Mapplethorpe and Madonna, Prince, Skinemax and 2 Live Crew. In his radio and television shows, in a series of books ia A player column and with her promiscuous approach to talk-show appearances, she aimed to cleanse sex of shame, promote sexual literacy. Her feline accent and cheerful allusions have represented Honda Prelude, Pepsi, Sling TV and Herbal Essences, among others. (“Hey!” she says to a young passenger in the elevator. “Here me come down.”) Instructions for the game of good sex dr. Ruth is said to be playable up to four pairs; the record is vulval and includes stops on “Yeast Infection”, “Chauvinism” and “Goose Him”.

In “Donahue” she is direct, explicit, revealing, witty, clear, common sense, serious, vivid. Professional therapist. It was Donahue who made the comedy. On one visit in 1987the caller needs advice about her cheating husband because he wants to have sex more often than she does. dr. Ruth tells Donahue that if the caller wants to keep the marriage and her husband wants to do it all the time, “then she should masturbate him. And it’s perfectly fine for him to masturbate a few times.” The crowd is ecstatic or just squirming. So Donahue reaches into his parochial-school-pupil war chest and pulls out a joke about a teacher telling third-grade boys, “Don’t play with yourself or you’ll go blind.” And Donahue raises his hand like a kid in the back of the classroom and asks, “Can I do this until I need glasses?” Westheimer giggles, perhaps noticing the large frown on Donahue’s face. This was a cold open that day.

They were the children of merchants, these two; his father was in the furniture business, hers sold what people in the clothing industry call ideas. They inherited the retail space for people and packaging. When a “Donahue” audience member asks Westheimer if her own husband believes she practices what she preaches, she says that’s why she never brings him anywhere. “He would say to you and Phil, ‘Don’t listen to her. It’s all a story,’” which annoys the audience.

But think about what she was talking about – and think about how she said it. My favorite word dr. Ruth was a “pleasure”. From a German mouth, the word conveys what the American language lacks: sensual exposure. She promised to talk about sex to a mass audience using appropriate terminology. Damned euphemisms. The wait for tickets to “Donahue” was as long as a year and a half they could curse them too. But of all Westheimer presented, of all the terms she used precisely, pleasure was her most convincing product, a gift she believed we could give to others, a gift she swore we owed ourselves.

I miss the talk show that Donahue reinvented. I miss the way dr. Ruth talked about sex. It’s kind of fitting that this anti-dogmatic but priestly Irish Catholic would occasionally join forces with a carnal, happy survivor Jew to encourage exploration of our bodies while showing respect, civility, reciprocity. They believed in us, that we are all interesting, that we can be credible panelists in the discourse of life. Trauma, trivia, tubal ligation: Let’s talk about it! Fear did not seem to occur to them. Or if it did, it never deterred. They set out bravely. — And with her encouragement, we bravely came.

Wesley Morris is a critic for The New York Times and a resident writer for the magazine.