Terry Gross

John Sifton serves as Afghanistan researcher with Human Rights Watch. His articles have appeared in The New York Times Magazine and the International Herald Tribune. Since 2001, he has made nine trips to Afghanistan. Sifton is also an attorney.

Rock, pop, jazz and Bart Simpson. We talk with writer and cartoonist Matt Groening. Before The Simpsons, Futurama and Life in Hell, he was a rock critic. Now he's edited an anthology collecting 2003's best music writing.

He's the Bowman and Gordon Gray professor of religious studies at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. His new book, Lost Christianities: The Battle for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew, chronicles the second and third centuries before Christianity as we know it came to be. Ehrman has also edited a collection of the early non-canonical texts from the first centuries after Christ called Lost Scriptures: Books That Did Not Make it Into The New Testament.

The two brothers have become practically the brand name for bad taste. Their movies Dumb and Dumber, Kingpin, There's Something About Mary and Shallow Hall, plumbed new depths of tastelessness. But their fans love the films, and despite their gross-out humor, the Farrellys seem to create characters that audiences care about. Their new film Stuck on You is about two brothers who are Siamese twins. It stars Matt Damon and Greg Kinnear. It's supposedly their most autobiographical film.

Journalist Vernon Loeb covers the military for The Washington Post. He just returned from five weeks in Iraq. He discusses the situation there and the capture of Saddam Hussein.

Pop icon Tom Jones first gained fame with the 1960s hits "It's Not Unusual," "What's New Pussycat?" and "Delilah." In the last 40 years, he has released more than 30 hit singles and several gold and multi-platinum records. In his heyday, he was famous for live performances and the frenzy he caused among his female fans — many threw their underwear onstage and rushed the stage. Jones' name today connotes hipness and romance. His newest release, Reloaded: Greatest Hits, is made up of 19 new and re-mastered tunes.

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.