Satire

Silverman won the Emmy for best writing for a variety special for her HBO special We Are Miracles. In 2005, she spoke with Fresh Air about her movie Jesus Is Magic.

Bill Maher, host of HBO's Real Time With Bill Maher, has a new book, New Rules: Polite Musings of a Timid Observer. It's a compilation of satiric segments from the show, in which he takes aim at everything from cell phones and fast food to politics.

Colbert is the senior correspondent on Comedy Central's The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Colbert started his comic career with Second City in Chicago. He wrote and performed sketches on The Dana Carvey Show. He is also the voice of Ace for Saturday Night Lives's animated shorts Ace & Gary: The Ambiguously Gay Duo. This interview was originally broadcast on Jan. 24, 2005.

Lewis Black is a playwright, stand-up comic, actor, and a commentator on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. He's been described as having the mouth of a shock-jock and the heart of a liberal. His new book is entitled Nothing's Sacred.

Wagner hangs out with the rich and famous, and then writes satirical novels based on Los Angeles life. His new book is The Chrysanthemum Palace. The three main characters are actors who are the children of wealthy, successful parents. Wagner is known for his dark wit and nasty portrayals of show business elite.

The weekly HBO program Real Time with Bill Maher begins its new season Feb. 18. Previously, Bill Maher created and hosted the late night political round-table show Politically Incorrect.

Comic and journalist Stephen Colbert is the fake senior correspondent on Comedy Central's The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. We talk with Colbert about his reports, from "Rathergate" to "This Week in God."

Team America: World Police is a new spoof of action adventure films starring puppets. It's the work of Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the creators of the animated TV show South Park. David Edelstein offers a review of Team America.

Matt Stone is co-executive producer and co-creator (along with Trey Parker) of the popular satirical animated series South Park. Stone and Parker recently collaborated on Team America, an action film satire featuring a cast of puppets in which a rising Broadway star infiltrates a terrorist network.

Stewart hosts The Daily Show on Comedy Central. The show has won an Emmy, the coveted Peabody Award, and most recently, the Television Critics Association award. He has a new book, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart Presents America (The Book): A Citizen's Guide to Democracy Inaction.

Maher hosts the HBO show Real Time with Bill Maher, which just began a new season. Like his previous show, Politically Incorrect, he features a roundtable of guests who make jokes and talk politics. The show is broadcast Friday nights at 11 p.m. Maher is also the author of When You Ride Alone, You Ride with Bin Laden.

He was the Weekend Update anchor on Saturday Night Live from 1998 to 2000, and was known for his satirical coverage of the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal. He's now starring in Comedy Central's Tough Crowd with Colin Quinn. It airs on Comedy Central (Monday through Thursday, 11:30 p.m. EST).

Film critic David Edelstein looks at Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, starring Will Ferrell as a '70s local news man in San Diego.

McKay directed the new movie Anchorman, starring Will Ferrell, about a news anchor from the 1970s and his wacky adventures when a female anchor joins the staff. McKay was the head writer for Saturday Night Live from 1997 to 2001. During that time, he made a number of short film segments. Anchorman is his first feature-length work. McKay was one of the founding members of the Upright Citizens Brigade comedy troupe. He's an alum of the Second City Improv in Chicago and also had many bit parts on SNL.

Sedaris is the author of the bestselling collections Barrel Fever, Naked and Me Talk Pretty One Day. His new collection is Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim. Sedaris essays appear regularly in Esquire, GQ and The New Yorker. His radio pieces can be heard on This American Life. In 2001 he became the third recipient of the Thurber Prize for American Humor.

Hendra was the editor in chief of Spy magazine and an original editor of National Lampoon. He also played Ian Faith in the mockumentary, This is Spinal Tap. He has written an unlikely new memoir about his lifelong friendship with a Benedictine monk he was brought to when he was 14 years old, after getting caught in an affair with a married woman. Hendra writes in his new memoir Father Joe: "His was the wisdom I craved though it was never what I expected; his judgment alone I feared though never once did he pass judgment on me."

O'Rourke started out writing comedy in the 1970s for The National Lampoon. Later he was a commentator-reporter for Rolling Stone. Now he is a correspondent for Atlantic Monthly. His new book is Peace Kills: America's Fun New Imperialism. O'Rourke is also the author of Eat the Rich, Parliament of Whores and All the Trouble in the World.

Pieter-Dirk Uys (pronounced "Peter Dirk Ace") is known for politically charged performances, touching on AIDS and apartheid. He's described himself as a "middle-aged, fat, bald Afrikaner Jewish drag queen from Cape Town." Writing in The New Yorker, Calvin Trillin called Uys South Africa's leading satirist. He's just won an Obie Award for his one-man show Foreign AIDS, performed at the La MaMa Theater in Manhattan last year. Uys' present show is Elections and Erections, now in London at the Soho Theater.

She wrote the screenplay for the new movie Mean Girls. It's based on the book, Queen Bees and Wannabes, by Rosalind Wiseman. Fey also co-stars in the film, along with Lindsay Lohan, Tim Meadows, Amy Poehler and Ana Gasteyer. Fey is co-head writer and writing supervisor for Saturday Night Live. She is the show's first female head writer. She also co-hosts SNL's Weekend Update. She and the writing staff won an Emmy Award for their work in 2002. Before SNL, Fey wrote and performed for the famed Second City in Chicago.

In December he was part of a USO tour performing for troops in Iraq, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan and Kuwait. The tour lasted eight days, and he returned Christmas Day. He'll talk about the tour and do some of his routine from it. Franken's books include Lies and the Lying Liars who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right and Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot. Franken is an alumnus of Saturday Night Live, where his most memorable character was the simpering self-help sap Stuart Smalley.