Terry Gross

Father Thomas Keating teaches the centuries old art of Contemplative Prayer This prayer is done without words and even without thoughts. Keating believes this opens the heart and mind to God. Keating teaches at the St Benedict's Monastery in Snowmass, Colorado. The Monastery also supports a network of prayer workshops through Contemplative Outreach Ltd. in Butler, New Jersey. (Interview by Marty Moss-Coane)

Veteran journalist Ben H. Bagdikian discusses the recent buyout offers for ABC & CBS. Bagdikian's book The Media Monopoly (Beacon Press 1983) examines the influence corporate ownership has on programming. Bagdikian newest book Double Vision, (Beacon 1995) is his personal memoir. He has been a Washington bureau chief and foreign correspondent for the Providence Journal, an assistant managing editor for the Washington Post and a dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California at Berkeley. (Interview by Marty Moss-Coane)

Jo Giovannoni, she is the editor of Harley Women. She says the sound of a loud Harley can hardly be described as noise but finds the word "music" a better description and she says women are changing the image of "bikers."

Freelance firefighter Peter Leschak battles forest fires in the Northwoods and the West...He's not a smoke jumper he says, he’s a grunt-hiking to remote locations, putting out fires sometimes on his hands and knees-spark by spark. His memoir is called Hellroaring. (Interview by Marty Moss-Coane)

Novelist Jane Hamilton. Her novel A Map of the World (Anchor Books), is a searing account of guilt and forgiveness and an unflinching portrait of small town mean spiritedness. This is Hamilton's second novel, her first, The Book of Ruth, won the PEN/Hemingway Foundation Award in 1989. (Interview by Marty Moss-Coane)

This Sunday marks the 50th anniversary of the dropping of the first atomic bomb. We talk with James Yamazaki, the Japanese-American pediatrician who was sent to Nagasaki four years later to study the impact of radiation on children. Yamazaki has written a memoir about his life and work in Nagasaki called Children of the Atomic Bomb. He is currently clinical professor of Pediatrics in the School of Medicine at the University of California. (Interview by Marty Moss-Coane)

Indian filmmaker, Blondie Singh Khan has made his share of popular Indian cinema produced in Bombay called Bollywood. He has taken all the clichés and multiplied them tenfold. He talks about his new film based on the novel by Shashi Tharoor. (Interview by Marty Moss-Coane)

Investigations Editor for the Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel Fred Schulte. He has received many awards for consumer-oriented journalism including the George Polk award for exposing patient abuses in health maintenance organization. Schulte's new book Fleeced (Prometheus), looks into telemarketing rip-offs and how to avoid them. (Interview by Marty Moss-Coane)

Clinical Psychologist Judith S. Wallerstein. She is widely considered the world's foremost authority on the effects of divorce. Wallerstein is the co-author of Second Chances: Men, Women, and Children a Decade after Divorce. Her new book The Good Marriage: How and Why Love Lasts (Houghton Mifflin), which she co-wrote with Sandra Blakeslee, takes a look at marriages that work. Wallerstein is the founder and executive director of the Center for the Family in Transition. (Interview by Marty Moss-Coane)

Nurse Christina Schmitz. She volunteers with the international medical relief organization, Doctors Without Borders. Schmitz was in Srebrenica when it fell. She has also volunteered with Doctors Without Borders in Croatia, Liberia, Kurdistan, South Sudan, and Chechnya. (Interview by Marty Moss-Coane)