Terry Gross

Presidential historian Robert Dallek has written about LBJ, JFK, FDR and Ronald Reagan. Now, in his book Nixon and Kissinger: Partners in Power, he tackles two political titans he describes as "self-serving characters with grandiose dreams of recasting world affairs."

Novelist Joshua Ferris makes his debut with Then We Came to the End, a satire about life in a Chicago advertising agency just as the dot-com boom went bust.

Journalist Bill Moyers returns to PBS April 25 with Bill Moyers Journal; the first episode "Buying the War," a 90-minute examination of the role of the press in the run-up to the Iraq War.

The critically acclaimed FX drama The Shield, now in its sixth season, was a recent recipient of the prestigious Peabody Award. Terry talks to creator and writer Shawn Ryan. Rebroadcast from March 14, 2006.

Best known for her portrayal of Detective Claudette Wyms on The Shield, actress CCH Pounder also boasts film credits ranging from Bagdad Cafe to Benny & Joon; her Shield character's recent promotion to the rank of captain promises new story lines. This interview was first broadcast on June 5, 2006.

Jimmy Wales helped create Wikipedia, the interactive online encyclopedia founded in 2001. Users write and edit Wikipedia entries themselves; the site also has a dedicated corps of editors. There are often "edit wars" over entries — some, including the one headlined "2006 Lebanon War," have been edited and then re-edited thousands of times — and Wikipedia's accuracy has been questioned by some professors and colleges, who forbid students to cite it as a source. But Wikipedia, with versions in 250 languages, is one of the top 10 sites on the Internet.

MTV's new Thursday-night sketch-comedy series Human Giant got its start as a collection of Web shorts, and the rise of MySpace and the viral-video explosion helped it develop a big following online. Terry talks with Aziz Ansari, Rob Heubel and Paul Scheer, three of the comics who power the show's alterna-comedy antics.

Sari Nusseibeh is the president of and a professor of philosophy at al-Quds University, the only Arab university in Jerusalem. He's written a memoir, Once Upon a Country: A Palestinian Life; he's also co-author of the People's Voice Initiative, aimed at building grassroots support for a two-state solution in the Middle East. Until December 2002, he was the representative of the Palestinian National Authority in Jerusalem.

Instead of vetoing bills, Savage reported, Bush has quietly used "signing statements" — official documents in which a president lays out his legal interpretation of a bill to be followed when implementing a new law. Other presidents have also used this power, but Bush has used it far more than his predecessors: 750 times, as of the date of Savage's article.

Charlie Savage Talks with Monique Nazareth.