The 82-year-old historian and rabbi has been at the center of events that shape American Jewish life for more than 50 years. He is the former president of the American Jewish Congress, and helped to found the movement called Peace Now in Israel. His 1959 book, The Zionist Idea, is considered a classic. Last year he wrote his memoir A Jew in America: My Life and a People's Struggle for Identity. His new book is The Fate of Zionism: A Secular Future for Israel and Palestine.
Goemaere is head of Doctors Without Borders ( Medecins Sans Frontieres) in South Africa and a leading AIDS activist for South Africa's Treatment Action Campaign. He was recently featured on a Frontline report, "AIDS Treatment for Africa: The South African Struggle," that appeared on PBS.
Kushner adapted his epic Tony-award winning play Angels in America into a screenplay for HBO (broadcast this month in two three-hour parts). The play is set in New York in the mid-1980s during the midst of the AIDS epidemic. The HBO film is directed by Mike Nichols and stars Al Pacino, Meryl Streep and Emma Thompson. Kushner also has a new semi-autobiographical musical Caroline, or Change at the Public Theater in New York.
Throughout his life he struggled with a weight problem. Last year he underwent gastric bypass surgery, an operation that reduces the size of the stomach and helps the patient lose weight. Roker lost 100 pounds. He talks about his operation and his new cookbook Al Roker's Hassle-Free Holiday Cookbook.
He's starring in the new film The Cat in the Hat with Mike Myers, and in the upcoming film The Cooler with William H. Macy. Baldwin's other films include State and Main, Glengarry Glen Ross and The Hunt for Red October. He's appeared on Broadway in A Streetcar Named Desire and Loot. He is also serves on the boards of People for the American Way and the Carol M. Baldwin Breast Cancer Research Fund, named for his mother.
He is senior counsel for the Natural Resources Defense Council in Washington, D.C. Kennedy thinks Bush will be considered the worst environmental president in history and is concerned that Bush will dismantle 30 years of pro-environmental legislation.
She is senior policy analyst for energy and environment at The Heritage Foundation. Coon researches and writes about energy and environmental policy, such as oil drilling in Alaska and the recent blackouts in California. The Heritage Foundation is a conservative think tank based in Washington, D.C.
His new book is Skylark: The Life and Times of Johnny Mercer. Furia documents the life of the legendary lyricist whose songs include Moon River, Come Rain or Come Shine and Skylark. From the 1930s to the 1950s, Mercer dominated the popular song charts. Furia is a professor of creative writing at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington. He's also written biographies of Irving Berlin and Ira Gershwin. The interview continues throughout the entire show.
Corrigan reviews several reprints of books by female detective fiction writers, including Anna Katherine Green's That Affair Next Door: And, Lost Man's Lane, Metta Fuller Victor's The Dead Letter & The Figure Eight, (both from Duke University Press) and re-issues from The Feminist Press, Skyscraper by Faith Baldwin, In a Lonely Place by Dorothy B. Hughes and The Girls in 3-B by Valerie Taylor.
Her new book is Jung: A Biography. Bair chronicles the life and work of the influential Swiss psychologist, Carl Jung. Bair won the National Book Award for her biography of Samuel Beckett, and she's also written books about the lives of Anais Nin and Simone de Beauvoir.
John Linnell and John Flansburgh, of They Might Be Giants, have just published a children's book (with companion CD) titled Bed, Bed, Bed. Linnell and Flansburgh have known each other since childhood. They started They Might Be Giants in Brooklyn, where they still have a phone machine called Dial-a-Song. You can call up every day and hear a new, original tune. TMBG has released numerous albums, including Factory Showroom, Mink Car and a children's record entitled No! Their best-of CD is Dial-a-Song: 20 Years of They Might Be Giants.
Rock historian Ed Ward talks about the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band, a crazy, influential ensemble that reached its apex of popularity in swinging '60s London.
We catch up with him about the latest news from Iraq. He's in the United States for just one day, and then he goes back to Baghdad. Burns has won several Pulitzer Prizes for his overseas war reports.
