Terry Gross

He is the author of Wild Grass: Three Stories of Change in Modern China. In the book, he chronicles the stories of three ordinary Chinese citizens who fought government oppression. They each fought locally but brought about national change. Johnson says economic reforms have created a space for dissent in Chinese culture. Johnson is the Berlin bureau chief for The Wall Street Journal. In 2001, he won the Pulitzer Prize for his reporting on the Falun Gong.

Sellers is one of the top jockeys in his profession. His winnings top $100 million. He's ridden two Breeder's Cup winners, and has ridden in 14 Kentucky Derbies. Shane Sellers appears in the upcoming HBO Undercover documentary Jockey. The film delves into aspects of jockey's lives that are not widely known. Jockeys endure a punishing regime of sweating and purging to make weight minimums, and many work without contracts and health insurance.

Sokolove is a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine. His new book, The Ticket Out: Darryl Strawberry and the Boys of Crenshaw, is about the former baseball star whose drug addiction ended his career and the high school team he played for in South Central Los Angeles. Sokolove calls it the greatest assemblage of talent in the history of high school baseball.

He made his first film, Night of the Living Dead, on a shoestring budget on the weekends. The film, about a cadre of flesh-eating zombies, became a cult classic and a copy is now in the archives of the New York Museum of Modern Art. Romero's subsequent successes included Dawn of the Dead, Day of the Dead, Creepshow and Monkey Shines. Four of his movies have been reissued on video. There's a new remake of Dawn of the Dead (This interview was originally broadcast on July 18, 1988).

Band members John Linnell and John Flansburgh have known each other since childhood, and they started They Might Be Giants in Brooklyn. TMBG has released numerous albums, including Bar None, Factory Showroom and a children's record entitled No! Their best-of CD is titled Dial-a-Song: 20 Years of They Might Be Giants. They have a new EP called Indestructible Object. The band is currently on tour. (Rebroadcast from Nov. 23, 2003.)

Cott is a professor of history at Harvard University. She testified before Vermont's judiciary committee. Vermont became the first state in the country to make civil unions legal for gay and lesbian couples. Cott is the author of Public Vows: A History of Marriage and the Nation (Harvard University).

Witte is Jonas Robitscher professor of law and ethics, and director of the law and religion program at Emory University in Atlanta. He is the author of From Sacrament to Contract: Marriage, Religion, and Law in the Western Tradition.

He is the author of the memoir, Blue Blood that begins with his first days on the street as a cop in the New York Police Department and goes back three generations. His great-grandfather was an "officer of dubious integrity" during the Tammany-era NYPD. Conlon also wrote the "Cop Diary" columns in The New Yorker and is a graduate of Harvard. One reviewer writes, "No one has written a book that grabs readers by the scruff of the neck and tells them what the life of a cop is really like as well as Edward Conlon."

Kyle Smith is book and music review editor at People Magazine. He's making his debut as a novelist with the new book Love Monkey. It's about a 32-year-old New Yorker who dares to be "average" and whose credo is to "think and act like a 13-year-old boy at all times." Smith is also a Yale graduate and a Gulf War veteran.

Cole is an authority on modern Islamic movements. He is professor of modern Middle East and South Asia history at the University of Michigan. His most recent book is Sacred Space and Holy War: The Politics, Culture and History of Shi`ite Islam. The book collects some of his work on the history of the Shiite branch of Islam in modern Iraq, Iran and the Persian Gulf region.