Terry Gross

Journalist Gretchen Peters argues the U.S. should focus on the opium trade in Afghanistan as a way of combating Taliban. Her new book is Seeds of Terror.

The Boston Globe reporter Charlie Savage noted in a recent article that President Bush has asserted the right to ignore numerous sections of laws passed by Congress. The scrutiny prompted Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA) to call for June hearings to investigate the matter.

Camilla Taylor, lawyer for the gay-rights group Lambda Legal, was lead lawyer on Varnum v. Brien — the case that led to an Iowa Supreme Court ruling that legalized same-sex marriage there.

Once, Dan Gurley oversaw anti-gay campaigns for the Republican National Committee. Now he works for Equality North Carolina, a statewide group dedicated to securing equal rights for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people.

In Outrage, the Oscar-nominated director looks into the hidden lives of some of America's most powerful policymakers — closeted gay legislators and executives with voting records that activists decry as virulently anti-gay. He says it's a film about hypocrisy.

Four years ago, novelist Ayelet Waldman sparked a controversy — and wound up on Oprah to defend herself — when she wrote in an essay that she loved her husband more than her children.

Under piles of manure lies the beetle world of sex and violence. University of Montana professor Douglas Emlen, an expert on the dung beetle, is particularly interested in the insects' weaponry.

With his band the MGs, Booker T. Jones created the classic instrumental "Green Onions." But they were also the studio band for Stax Records, making music with soul artists such as Otis Redding, Ray Charles and Wilson Pickett. His new album, with the Drive-By Truckers as his backup band, is called Potato Hole.

Actor Gabriel Byrne is so convincing and sympathetic in his role as a psychoanalyst on the HBO series In Treatment that people have started telling him their problems.