Terry Gross

Singer-songwriter Neil Sedaka, who marks his 50th anniversary in the music business this year, helped create what's known as the Brill Building sound in the late '50s and early '60s. He's been inducted into the Songwriter's Hall of Fame, but he got his start as a classical pianist. He joins Terry Gross to talk about his life as a performer — and about The Definitive Collection, a career-spanning greatest-hits compendium.

Jon Alpert and Matthew O'Neill recently won a coveted Peabody Award for their documentary Baghdad ER, which takes viewers inside the 86th Combat Support Hospital, the U.S. Army's primary medical facility in Iraq. Sometimes unflinchingly graphic in its reportage, the film tells the stories of the hospital's doctors and wounded soldiers. (5/29/2006)

You may know Irish actor Gabriel Byrne from The Usual Suspects, or from Miller's Crossing, or from Into the West — a film he helped produce, as well as perform in. But before finding his way into acting in his late 20s, he tried his hand at archeology, teaching and even short-order cooking. His new movie is Jindabyne.

Journalist Kenneth Weiss writes for the Los Angeles Times, where he has covered the California coast and the oceans for five years. His five-part series "Altered Oceans," written with Usha Lee McFarling, explores how pollution has changed the basic chemistry of the oceans, raising questions about long-term marine health. The series recently won a George Polk Award.

Guest host Dave Davies talks with Peter Berg, executive producer of NBC's Friday Night Lights, who also directed and co-wrote the 2004 film of the same title.

In Sick: The Untold Story of America's Health Care Crisis — and the People Who Pay the Price, author Jonathan Cohn looks at case studies of patients struggling with the U.S. health-care system to explain why a profit-based model means some people don't get the care they need. Cohn, a senior editor at The New Republic, advocates a government-regulated single-payer system.

Walter Isaacson, former managing editor of Time magazine and author of best-selling biographies of Benjamin Franklin and Henry Kissinger, has turned his attention to the 20th century's scientific poster boy: Albert Einstein, whose family life was as difficult as his career was distinguished.

Isaacson's book Einstein: His Life and Universe represents the first complete history of the theoretical-physicist-turned- refugee to draw upon all of Einstein's papers, many of which were unsealed last summer.

Mike White is the Hollywood screenwriter behind hit films including The School of Rock, The Good Girl and Chuck & Buck. Now he has directed Year of the Dog, a "not very funny" comedy about a woman grieving for her lost pet; it stars Peter Sarsgaard and Saturday Night Live veteran Molly Shannon.

Guest host Dave Davies interviews Rabbi Michael Schudrich, chief rabbi of Poland — and a New York native. He moved to Warsaw in 1990 to help rebuild Jewish communities there. It was a homecoming of sorts: Schudrich's grandparents emigrated from Poland before World War II.

Lorraine Bracco plays Dr. Jennifer Melfi, the woman saddled with the job of psychoanalyzing mob boss Tony Soprano. She's also an Academy Award nominee for Martin Scorsese's Goodfellas — another mob story, in which she played the wife of a gangster. Bracco talks to Terry Gross about her memoir, On the Couch. Rebroadcast from June 6, 2006