Terry Gross

David Sedaris is the author of the best-selling collections Barrel Fever, Naked and Me Talk Pretty One Day. His essays appear regularly in print in The New Yorker, Esquire and GQ and can be heard on the radio on This American Life. We rebroadcast a June 15,2004, interview with Sedaris.

Actress Cheryl Hines plays Larry David's wife in the HBO hit comedy Curb Your Enthusiasm. She used to be a member of The Groundlings, a Los Angeles-based comedy group that spawned many stars. Hines says her time with the group helped prepare her for her HBO show, which is almost wholly improvised.

The complete 45-episode series of the TV show Pee-Wee's Playhouse is now out on DVD. Comedian and actor Paul Reubens originally created the Pee-Wee character at the Los Angeles improv group, The Groundlings. An HBO special followed. In 1985, Reubens made the feature film Pee-Wee's Big Adventure. Pee-Wee's Playhouse went on the air in 1986. It ran on CBS for 5 years, garnering 22 Emmys. In 1991, Reubens was arrested for indecent exposure at a Sarasota, Fla., theater.

Former standup comic Tom Kenny is the voice of SpongeBob SquarePants, the star of his own cartoon show on Nickelodeon as well as a recent feature film. SpongeBob lives under the sea in the city of Bikini Bottom where he works as a fry cook at a greasy spoon called the Krusty Krab. He is incurably optimistic and naive. The show premiered in July 1999 and now is a huge hit with children as well as adults, spawning a merchandizing bonanza. Kenny is in the feature film, The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie, and is also on its enhanced soundtrack. (Original airdate: 11/16/04).

Nick Venet produced more than 300 albums during his career, collecting numerous Grammy nominations and awards along the way. Venet was also Bobby Darin's producer and friend, and co-produced a Darin box set (on Rhino). We rebroadcast a March 19, 1996, interview with Venet, who died in 1998.

In the new film Beyond the Sea, two-time Academy Award winner Kevin Spacey portrays Bobby Darin, a singer, songwriter and Oscar nominee. Spacey also produced and directed the film, and he sings Darin's songs in it — and in a nightclub act. Spacey plays in Las Vegas on Dec. 26 and Dec. 27.

The multi-talented Mos Def plays a police officer in the new indie film The Woodsman, also starring Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick, about a pedophile who moves into a suburban neighborhood. He also has a new rap album, The New Danger. Mos Def has appeared in the films Bamboozled, Monster's Ball, and Brown Sugar. He made his Broadway debut with the play Topdog/Underdog, and has also won an Obie Award. Mos Def will be in the upcoming films A Confederacy of Dunces and A Hitchhiker s Guide to the Galaxy.

The new book Living With Jazz: A Reader, is the first collection of Dan Morgenstern's writing, including liner notes, record and concert reviews, critical essays and other writings. Morgenstern has been on the jazz scene for more than 40 years, from his earliest days as an editor of the jazz magazine Down Beat. Since 1976, he has been the director of the Institute of Jazz Studies at Rutgers University in Newark, N.J. The institute is billed as the largest collection of jazz-related materials anywhere. Morgenstern has won four Grammy Awardss for liner notes.

New York Times reporter Dexter Filkins recently accompanied the Marines of Bravo Company of the 1st Battalion, 8th Marines for eight days in November as they took over Fallujah.

We celebrate his career as he ends his 33-year stint on TV. The last episode of the PBS series Now with Bill Moyers airs Friday, Dec. 17 at 8:30 p.m. We look back with a trio of interviews recorded over the last decade. His other shows include Healing and the Mind, Joseph Campbell and The Power of Myth, and Creativity. Moyers won two Emmys for his work as well as a Peabody Award.