Terry Gross

As head of the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, Jack Goldsmith led the team of lawyers that advises the presidency on the limits of executive power. During his tenure, he battled the Bush White House on the now-infamous "torture memos," as well as on issues of surveillance and the detention and trial of suspected terrorists. Goldsmith resigned his post after nine months.

Executive producer and actor Jeff Garlin and actress Susie Essman discuss the upcoming season of the HBO comedy series Curb Your Enthusiasm.

Garlin plays Larry David's affable best friend and agent. Essman plays Garlin's wife and as such is known for her vitriol, no-nonsense attitude and foul mouth.

Boston Globe reporter Charlie Savage won a 2007 Pulitzer Prize for a series detailing how often President Bush used "signing statements" — controversial assertions of a chief executive's right to bypass provisions of new laws.

Now Savage has written a book describing how the Bush-Cheney administration has expanded executive power. It's called Takeover: The Return of the Imperial Presidency and the Subversion of American Democracy.

In The Israel Lobby, which grew out of a controversial 2006 article in the London Review of Books, Stephen Walt and co-author John Mearsheimer examine the impact of the Israel lobby on U.S. foreign policy. They argue that American support for Israel cannot be fully explained on either strategic or moral grounds.

Walt teaches international affairs at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government.

In The Deadliest Lies, Anti-Defamation League national director Abraham Foxman responds to The Israel Lobby, arguing that Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer's work "serves merely as an attractive new package for disseminating a series of familiar but false beliefs" about Jews and Israel.

During his heyday in the early 1970s, shock-rock icon Alice Cooper dressed like a ghoul with a gaunt face and mascara-streaked eyes. His hits included "I'm Eighteen," "School's Out" and "Welcome to My Nightmare." In a memoir — Alice Cooper: Golf Monster, he recounts how he used his obsession with golf to overcome his addiction to alcohol.

This interview was originally broadcast on May 17, 2007.

Director, screenwriter, musician and actor Christopher Guest co-wrote the rock parody This Is Spinal Tap, as well as the mockumentaries Best in Show and A Mighty Wind. He was also a writer and regular performer on Saturday Night Live.

Leader and bassist of the band Kiss, Gene Simmons. The band rose to prominence and popularity in the mid 1970s. They were known for their Halloweenish face paint, black-leather outfits, eight-inch platform heels and grandiose stage shows where Simmons spit out blood, belched fire, and stuck out his seven-inch tongue.

Vocal coach Melissa Cross is known as the "Scream Queen" for her work teaching metal, punk and hardcore performers how to use their voice without ruining their vocal chords. She teaches them how to growl, bark, bellow and scream. Cross is classically trained and has her own instructional DVD titled The Zen of Screaming: Vocal Instruction for a New Breed.

Actor, comedian, composer and musician Michael McKean is best known for co-starring in the spoofs This is Spinal Tap, Best in Show and A Mighty Wind. He got his start playing Lenny in the 1970s sitcom Laverne and Shirley.