Terry Gross

Lane is currently starring in the new Neil Simon comedy on stage, "Laughter on the 23rd Floor." He played Nathan Detroit in the Broadway revival of "Guys and Dolls." Playwright Terrance McNally has written roles for Lane and says, "I need an actor like Nathan to fully express myself. I can't do it with just the words." Lane starred in McNally's "The Lisbon Traviata," and in "Lips Together, Teeth Apart." He also was in the films "Frankie and Johnny," and "Life with Mikey,"

Chwat's "New York Speech Improvement Services" attracts 200 to 250 clients a week. He taught Robert DeNiro how to gain an Appalachian accent for his role in "Cape Fear." Julia Roberts sought him out to relearn her southern drawl for "Steel Magnolias." He helped another southerner, Andie McDowell, after her lines for "Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan" were dubbed by Glenn Close. Chwat also assists people in business, politics, and communications to lose their accents and learn Standard American English.

Writer Mikal Gilmore is the youngest brother of executed killer Gary Gilmore. Gilmore's 1977 death -- at his own request-- by firing squad in Utah, was the first American execution in ten years. Brother Mikal finds seeds of his brother's two murders sown far back in Gilmore family history, and its Mormon roots. When asked why he writes a memoir twenty years after the events, Gilmore says, "I'm writing about it now because for many years I tried to live my life as if I wasn't a member of the same family.

The playwright, housecleaner and former elf to Santa launched his radio commentator career with his SantaLand Diaries, broadcast during NPR's "Morning Edition" in 1992. His humor has been described as a "caustic mix of J. D. Salinger and John Waters." Along with his sister, Amy Sedaris, he wrote the play "Stitches," which was described as a "macabre and hilarious social satire." Now he's made his literary debut with a new collection of stories and essays, called "Barrel Fever."

Dr Sherwin Nuland is a surgeon who teaches at Yale. In his recent book, "How We Die: Reflections on Life's Final Chapter," he writes that few of us have an understanding of the way people die; 80 percent of Americans die in the hospital, and, for the most part their deaths are concealed. Nuland hopes to de-mythologize the process of dying by emphasizing its biological and clinical reality.

In her novels "Dale Loves Sophie to Death" and "Fortunate Lives," Dew explored the ambiguities and intricacies of families. She thought she understood the complexities of family love. But then her son informed her he is gay. Dew has written a new memoir about the experience and its effect on the family, called "The Family Heart."

Buckley has just written a new political satire, "Thank you for Smoking," which pokes fun at everything and everyone associated with the tobacco industry -- from anti-smoking advocates to tobacco company executives. Buckley was George Bush's speechwriter from 1981-1983 when Bush served as Vice President. The son of conservative icon William F. Buckley, he is also the author "The White House Mess" and "Wet Work."

Actor and playwright Vernel Bagneris and pianist Morten Gunnar Larsen perform selections from their show, "Jelly Roll Morton: A Me-morial," with music written by Morton, and a script taken from Library of Congress tapes of Morton from 1938. The New Yorker calls it, "an experimental study, done within a traditional Broadway-musical framework, of the life and death of a black misanthrope. . . a psychomusical." This concert was first broadcast in 1992.

New Orleans songwriter, pianist and singer Allen Toussaint. He has worked with artists like Paul Simon, Ringo Starr, and Elvis Costello. This year, Toussaint recorded "The Ultimate Session" with the New Orleans group Crescent City Gold, and "Rhythm Country and Blues," which received a Grammy Nomination. We replay our 1988 interview with him.

Mike Hudson is a contributing editor for "Southern Exposure," a public policy magazine. He recently wrote a series of stories on the "poverty industry" -- how pawn shops, finance companies, and rent-to-own stores charge high interest rates, sometimes as high as 35%, to people who can almost never pay them back.