Terry Gross

Charley Rosen is author of the new novel "Barney Polan's Game" (Seven Stories Press) The book is largely based on the real-life college basketball point-shaving scandal in 1950 and 51. Rosen also wrote a non-fiction account of this in "Scandals of 51: How the Gamblers Almost Killed College Basketball".

Meredith F. Small has written the new book "Our Babies, Ourselves: How Biology and Culture Shape the Way We Are". (Anchor books) Small explores the various cultural practices used in raising babies. She is also the author of "Female Choices: Sexual Behavior of Female Primates" and "What's Love Got to Do With It?" Small is a professor of anthropology at Cornell University in New York State. (Interview by Barbara Bogaev)

This week, former "Washington Post" publisher Katharine Graham won a Pulitzer Prize for her autobiography "Personal History" (Knopf). In this archive interview, Graham reflects on how she overcame personal doubts in order to run the paper she inherited. Graham's father owned "the Post" and later her husband, Phil Graham, took over. Graham became publisher, after her husband's suicide in 1963, though she knew little about the managerial or journalistic aspects of the position.

Poet laureate Robert Pinsky reads poems from his book "The Figured Wheel: New and Collected Poems" (Farrar Straus & Giroux). Robert Pinsky was named poet laureate on March 28, 1997. His previous books of poetry include The Inferno of Dante, An Explanation of America (Princeton), The Want Bone (Ecco), and History of My Heart, awarded the William Carlos Williams Prize of the Poetry Society of America. His collection of essays, Poetry and the World, was nominated for the National Book Critics Circle award in criticism.

Journalist, conservative pundit, and former Presidential candidate Patrick Buchanan. His new book is "The Great Betrayal: How American Sovereignty and Social Justice Are Being Sacrificed to the Gods of the Global Economy" (Little, Brown and Company).

Filmmaker Wayne Wang. With the films "Chan is Missing," "Dim Sum," "Slamdance" and "Eat a Bowl of Tea," to his credit, Wang was the first Chinese-American film director to make an impact in the American film industry. Wang went on to direct "The Joy Luck Club," and the films "Smoke" and "Blue in the Face." His newest film is set in Hong Kong, "Chinese Box" starring Jeremy Irons.

Oscar winning British actor Jeremy Irons. He stars in two new movies this year: "Chinese Box" and "Man in the Iron Mask". His films include: "The French Lieutenant's Woman," "Brideshead Revisited," "Reversal of Fortune," and "Dead Ringers."

Artist Chuck Close. He's been called "the most methodical artist that has ever lived in America" and the "reigning portraitist of the Information Age." He creates jumbo size faces on canvas (8 or 9 feet high), copying them from photographs. They are painted in a dotted faux pointillist style. In 1989 Close suffered a stroke which left him paralyzed from the neck down, gaining partial use of his hand with a brace, he learned to paint all over again. There's currently a retrospective of his work exhibited at The Museum of Modern Art in New York.

British standup comic Eddie Izzard. The cross-dressing comic is a household name in England, but little known here. His new one-man show is "Dress to Kill" (at New York's Westbeth Theater, in the West Village). A New York Times review describes him as "a ticklingly entertaining hybrid of mainstream cultural influences and offbeat personal tendencies." (Interview by Barbara Bogaev)