Terry Gross

Wall Street Journal correspondent Erik Larson is interested in how companies know the intimate details of our lives. His new book, The Naked Consumer, is an investigation into direct marketing techniques--how corporations collect the vast network of data they use to market their products.

Kim Rich has written a new memoir, "Johnny's Girl," about growing up in Anchorage, Alaska during the oil boom years. Her father was a notorious underworld figure in the city who operated illegal gambling houses and massage parlors all over the city. He was eventually murdered.

Writer Allan Berube wrote the book, "Coming Out Under Fire: The History of Gay Men and Women In World War II." He spent ten years interviewing gay and lesbian veterans, searching out wartime letters, and consulting newly declassified government documents. He found that hundreds of thousands of gays entered the military despite a procedure for screening out homosexuals. Terry will talk with him about the ban on gays in the military and the hearings going on now, and whether it should be repealed.

Harris is the writer and director of "Just Another Girl on the IRT." She became one of few African-American women film directors to have her film released nationally. The film won the special jury prize for a first-time film maker at the Sundance Film Festival. It's about a high school junior, Chantel, who is an A-student, with a gift of gab and an attitude.

It's Oscar night. New Yorker film critic Terrence Rafferty joins Terry to talk about the best and worst of last year's movies, who deserves to win tonight, and who probably will.

The L.A. based musician and performance artist fronted the punk-rock group, Black Flag. He's also the current leader of the Henry Rollins Band. His spoken word act goes back and forth between comedy and serious commentary. He has a new album of these performances, "Boxed Life," and a video, "Talking from the Box."

Goodman may be best known for his role as Dan Connor, Roseanne's husband on the hit TV show "Roseanne." He also has a successful film career, appearing in "Barton Fink," "The Babe," and "Born Yesterday."

What does 'artistic temperament' really mean? In her new book, "Touched With Fire: Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament," Kay Jamison has studied the psychological makeup of many of our most revered artists--Byron, Tennyson, Van Gogh, Hemingway--and linked their genius to manic-depression. Jamison looks at current treatments for manic-depression, and considers their affect on a patient's ability to create. Kay Jamison is Professor of Psychiatry at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

Boris Yeltsin may be forced out of office tomorrow when the Congress of People's Deputies meets in a special session. William Taubman, a political science professor at Amherst College, was in Russia this January, and has visited the beleaguered country five times in the last 18 months. He talks about the current chaotic state of Russian politics.

Carlisle is the granddaughter of renowned Russian writer Leonid Andreyev. She grew up in Paris, but travelled to Russia in the 1960s, where she befriended that country's most prominent writers. For 20 years she was exiled from Russia because of her friendship with Alexander Solzhenitsyn, whose work she published in the west. She returned to her native country in 1989 to find it vastly changed. Her new memoir is "Under A New Sky: A Reunion with Russia."