Electroweak couplings of the $\tau$ lepton

The tau lepton is the heaviest known lepton and studies of its production and decay allow measurements of its couplings to the electroweak gauge bosons. In particular, sensitive tests of the idea of lepton universality are possible, with the hope that some light will be shed on not just the nature of the origin of mass, but also on why there seem to be three generations. The recent LEP results provide most of this experimental data, and very recently measurements of the anomalous magnetic and electric dipole moments of the tau have been performed. I present an overview of all these results, and discuss what this means in the framework of the standard model and attempts to go beyond it. (16 refs).