Terry Gross

Aaron Sorkin is creator of the new ABC TV show, "Sports Night" a behind-the-scenes look at a cable sports newscast, like ESPN. It's been described as "a home run" and "the most consistently funny, intelligent, and emotional of any new-season series." Sorkin also wrote the films "An American President," and "A Few Good Men."

Criminologist Richard Wright. He teaches at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. He'll discuss the statistics released last month by the Justice Department showing that the crime rate has been falling steadily since 1991. He'll also discuss the link between the crime rate and the decline in crack use which he has studied. Wright is the co-author of the book, "Armed Robbers in Action: Stickups and Street Culture" (1997, Northeastern University Press).

Musician and singer Peter Wolf. He's the former lead singer with the J. Geils Band which he was with for 17 years. He's been a solo artist for a while. On his latest CD "Fool's Parade" (Mercury) he's incorporated the Memphis sound.

Richard Ford, the Pulitzer Prize winning author of the novel "Independence Day," has edited and collected a new selection of short stories by the great Russian playwright and short-story writer Anton Chekhov. It's called "The Essential Tales of Chekhov" (Ecco Press)

First violinist Arnold Steinhardt is one of the founding members of the Guarneri (Gwa-NAIR-ee) String Quartet, which has been playing together for 35 years. He's written a new memoir, "Indivisible by Four: A String Quartet in Pursuit of Harmony" (Farrar Straus & Giroux). The Quartet is considered to be one of the finest string quartets performing today.

John Boorman directed the new film the The General, based on the life of the notorious Irish thief and gangster Martin Cahill. Cahill stole about 60 million dollars in a series of ingenioius robberies he masterminded in the 1980's. Boorman has directed many other films including Deliverance, Point Blank, Hope and Glory, Excalibur, The Emerald Forest, and Beyond Rangoon.

Jon Voigt is one of the stars of John Boorman's new film The General. Voigt and Boorman go back a long way.Voigt co-starred in Boorman's 1972 film Deliverance. But it was Voigt's leading role in the 1969 film Midnight Cowboy that made him a star. Jon Voigt won an Academy Award in 1979 for his role as a paraplegic Vietnam veteran, in Coming Home. His recent films include Mission Impossible, and The Rainmaker. He's also in the new film Enemy of
the State.

Caroline Hebard is the co-founder of the U.S. Disaster Response Team. She and her German shepherd dogs have carried out search and rescue missions at the world's most tragic disaster sites: earthquakes in Japan, Mexico and Armenia, floods in Tennessee, huriccanes, and bridge collapses. The work is dangerous: trainers often follow their dogs into a collapsed building. Hebard lives in Bernardsville, New Jersey with her husband, children and dogs. Her book "So That Others May Live" was published in 1995. (Bantam Books). This originally aired 1/2/96.

Temple Grandin is one of the nation’s top designers of livestock facilities. She is also autistic. Grandin was also one of the subjects in Oliver Sacks' book, "An Anthropologist On Mars: Seven Paradoxical Tales". In Grandin's book, Thinking in Pictures: and other reports from my life with Autism she describes how her inner-autistic world has led her to develop animal empathy. Her book is published by Doubleday 1995. Thisi originally aired 11/27/95.

Animation pioneer Chuck Jones was born in Spokane, Washington in 1912. He has become one of the best known animators in American history. He created: Pepé LePew and, most famously, Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote. But he also worked as an animator on Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck. His books include his autobiography Chuck Amuck, a children's book William, the Backwards Skunk, and How to Draw from the Fun Side of Your Brain. Our interview was recorded in 1989.