Terry Gross

Director Barry Blaustein is making his directorial debut with the new documentary film “Beyond the Mat.” The movie takes a look at the personal lives of the stars of the World Wrestling Federation, men with names like “Mankind” and “Jake the Snake.” Blaustein previously was head writer and supervising producer at Saturday Night Live and he co-wrote many of Eddie Murphy’s best-loved characters like “Buckwheat,” “Velvet Jones,” “Gumby,” and “Mr. Robinson.”

Daniel Gross is a New York-based writer and columnist for Investment News and the author of “Bull Run: Wall Street, the Democrats, and the New Politics of Personal Finance” (PublicAffairs). He has worked as a reporter at the New Republic and Bloomberg Business News. Gross is the author of Forbes Greatest Business Stories of All Time (Wiley, 1996).

We talk about the Taliban with Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid. His new book is called Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil, and Fundamentalism in Central Asia (Yale University Press). In the mid 1990s, the Taliban Movement gained power in Afghanistan, a country in the wake of a civil war. The Taliban declared they wanted to restore peace and enforce traditional Islamic law. Instead, The Taliban has shown itself to be a troubling development in Islamic radicalism. It has launched a genocidal campaign against Shiite Muslims in Afghanistan. It has sanctioned acts of international terrorism.

Actor, writer, director and producer Peter Berg. He is the creator and executive producer of the new controversial ABC series Wonderland. The show is set in a mental hospital. Some call it the most accurate portrayal of the mentally ill on network television, while some mental health organizations say that the series further stigmatizes mental patients. As an actor, Peter Berg has started on the TV show Chicago Hope, and has appeared in movies like The Last seduction, Copland, and the Great White Hype.

Filmmaker Jim Jarmusch is new movie is called Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai, starring Forrest Whitaker. Jarmusch often acts as writer, director, and producer of his films. His other films include Stranger Than Paradise, Down by Law, Mystery Train, Night on Earth, and Year of the Horse.

We will talk about the psychology of sports and athletes with Doctor Michael Miletic. He is one of the few psychoanalysts currently treating active professional athletes. Miletic serves as a psychiatric consultant to the Detroit Pistons, several professional Hockey teams, and the parents group of the National Football League Players Association. Miletic himself was an athlete. He was even a member of the Canadian Olympic weight lifting team, until an injury cut his career short.

Essayist and feminist journalist Barbara Ehrenreich. For three weeks last year Ehrenreich worked for a cleaning service in Portland, Maine. She writes about her experience, and the politics of house cleaning in this month's issue of Harper's magazine. The article is called "Maid to Order: The politics of other women's work" (April 2000). She is a contributing editor of Harper's. Her articles, reviews, essays and humor have appeared in Time, The New York Times Magazine, The Nation, The Atlantic Monthly, The New Republic, and The Wall Street Journal.

On today’s archive edition of Fresh Air, we honor National Poetry month. First, we feature an interview with Former U.S. Poet Laureate Robert Hass. (Rhymes with "grass"). Hass served as Laureate from 1995-1997. He won the National Book Critics Circle award for poetry for his book "Sun Under Wood" (Ecco Press). He's written several other books of poetry including "Praise" and "Human Wishes." He also edited "The Essential Haiku: Versions of Basho, Buson & Issa." (Ecco Press).

Poet Billy Collins. His books include "Picnic, Lightning" (Univ of Pittsburgh), "The Art of Drowning" (Univ of Pittsburgh Press), and "Questions about Angels" (William Morrow & Co.), which was selected as a winner of the National Poetry Series Competition in 1990. John Updike says of Collins' poetry, "Billy Collins writes lovely poems. . .

Actor Om Puri is a star of Bombay's film industry, known as Bollywood. In his two decades of acting he's worked with every major Indian film director including Satjayit Ray. In western films he had roles in "Ghandi" and "City of Joy," and in the TV series "The Jewel in the Crown." Recently he's had starring parts in two British films "My Son the Fanatic," and the new film "East is East."