Terry Gross

Robert Lopez and Jeff Marx are the songwriting team behind the 2004 Tony award-winning Broadway musical Avenue Q (which won Best Musical, Best Original Score, Best Book of a Musical). Their subversive show features people and puppets and is about a group of aimless 30-somethings with low expectations and active libidos. It includes such songs as It Sucks to be Me, Everyone's a Little Bit Racist, If You Were Gay, and I Wish I could Go Back to College.

His colorful, chaotic, bold, vibrant and often comic paintings of New York City feature the spectrum of life from prostitutes, thieves and gamblers to tourists, shoppers and moms and dads. When he was 20, nearly 50 years ago, Grooms moved to New York City from Nashville, and his visceral reaction to the city has informed his paintings since. There's a new book of his work (the first major book on Grooms in 20 years), Red Grooms.

The new online exhibition at The American Museum of the Moving Image is called "The Living Room Candidate: Presidential Campaign Commercials 1952-2004". Schwartz is the chief curator of film at the museum. He'll talk about the history of political commercials from their inception in 1952 to the present.

Jackson is the director of Annenberg Political Fact Check, a project that aims to reduce deception and confusion in U.S. politics. Jackson will talk about present-day political ads. Jackson reported on Washington and national politics for The Associated Press, The Wall Street Journal and CNN. He is the author of Honest Graft: Big Money and the American Political Process.

His new book is Picture This: Debby Harry and Blondie. Rock photographed many musicians before they were famous. The British-born photographer took pictures of Lou Reed, Brian Eno and Ziggy Stardust (aka David Bowie) when he was just a cult figure in London. His book Blood and Glitter is about the Glam Rock era.

The Democratic senator from West Virginia has served in Congress for 51 years, 45 of them as a senator. Byrd is ranking minority member of the Senate Appropriations Committee and has twice been president pro tempore of the Senate. He is also a former majority leader. Byrd is author of a new book called Losing America: Confronting a Reckless and Arrogant Presidency. Byrd is a vocal opponent of the Iraq war and has criticized the most of the Bush Administration's post-Sept. 11 policies. He is also author of a four-volume history of the Senate.

Time magazine calls Gehry the world's most famous architect. Gehry just designed an outdoor music pavilion for Chicago's new Millennium Park, a former rail yard that's been transformed into a destination for the arts. He designed the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles and the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao.

Listeners may know him as the neighbor on CBS's The King of Queens. He is also a regular on Late Night with Conan O'Brien. Oswalt has had the distinction of being booed off the stage by both liberal and conservative audiences. His debut comedy CD is Feelin' Kinda Patton.

The son of the late President Ronald Reagan has been invited to speak at the Democratic convention next week. He and his mother have become outspoken proponents of stem cell research. Reagan has edited the book, If You Had Five Minutes with the President.

His new book, I, Fatty tells the story of vaudeville and early film actor Fatty Arbuckle. In the early 1900s, he was more popular than Charlie Chaplin and became the first screen actor to make $1 million a year. But in 1921, Arbuckle was accused of the rape and murder of a young actress. Many have called the crime, Arbuckle's presumed guilt, the subsequent trial, and his eventual acquittal Hollywood's first celebrity scandal. Stahl is also the author of the best selling memoir Permanent Midnight, which was adapted into a film by the same name.