Terry Gross

From The Alloy Orchestra, composer and keyboardist Caleb Sampson. The band has gained a reputation for composing and performing exciting, percussive silent film scores. Their repertoire includes scores for "Metropolis," "Nosferatu," "Lonesome," and their newest, for the Russian classic "Man with a Movie Camera." The film has a "sneak preview" at the Telluride Film Festival in early September, and it premieres at the Pordenone Silent Film Festival in Italy in October. They have two CD's.

Veteran television announcer Bill Wendell retires this week after 37 years at NBC. Wendell is currently the announcer for "Late Night with David Letterman." He's famous for adding the long "A" in his introduction "Here's...Daaay-vid Letterman" Wendell also emceed several games shows and was the Tonight Show announcer in 1956 and 1957.

Senior curator of the motion picture collection at the George Eastman House, Paolo Cherchi UsaiI. He is also Associate Professor of Film Studies at the University of Rochester. He is an expert on silent films, and is co-director and co-founder of the Pordenone Silent Film Festival. He has worked with Alloy Orchestra on several film projects. And he restored the print of "Lonesome." He's the author of numerous articles and studies of silent film.

Novelist Lynne Sharon Schwartz. Her new novel is The Fatigue Artist, (Scribner) about a 40 year old woman who comes down with chronic fatigue syndrome. One reviewer calls it "witty and hopeful and fierce." Schwartz is also the author of Disturbances in the Field, and Leaving Brooklyn.

Monologist, actor and writer Spalding Gray. He's written and performed several monologues including, "Monster in a Box" about all the distractions that prevented him from completing his novel, Impossible Vacation, and Swimming to Cambodia about filming a movie in Cambodia. Now Gray has a new monologue and book about his eye problems, and his adventures in the mainstream and alternative health care industries. It's called Gray's Anatomy. (Vintage Books).

Film director Larry Clark. He's making his directing debut with the new film "Kids." The film has generated controversy for its "throwaway brutality," and its graphic portrayal of a group of antisocial teenagers in Manhattan, where sex is easy and deadly and drugs are common place. Clark has photographed the gritty side of teenage life for two books, Tulsa, and Teenage Life. The film's screenwriter is a 21 year old skateboarder Clark met while hanging out with a group of them in Manhattan's Washington Square Park.

Illustrator and comic-book artist Peter Kuper. His work has appeared in Time, Newsweek, The New Yorker, The Village Voice, and his "Eye of the Beholder" was the first comic strip to regularly appear in The New York Times. He is also co-founder and co-editor of World War 3 an illustrated political comics magazine. He's illustrated a number of books. Most recently, Give it Up! And Other Short Stories by Franz Kafka, (NBM Publishers)

"I was, to say the least, probably the most incorrigible child you can think of," Haggard told Fresh Air in 1995. The country icon died Wednesday morning in California. It was his 79th birthday.

Edmund White has written about American gay culture for over two decades. White, who himself is gay, discusses the loss of a lover to Aids. White says he has tested positive for HIV. His essays chronicle the gay rights movement from the 1969 Stonewall riots to the present. His newest book, Skinned Alive was published last month by Knopf. White's next book is due out in November titled Our Paris: Sketches from Memory.