Terry Gross

Physician and author Kenneth Iserson, M.D. Iserson wanted to promote organ and tissue donation. So he wrote a book about what happens to dead bodies. It's called "Death to Dust" (Galen Press). Iserson believes that death is the pornography of our culture. He says that after-death activities are shrouded in secrecy. His book explores the mundane--burial choices and advance directives--and the arcane--head shrinking, cannibalism and cryonic preservation.

Ted Hawkins is a singer, a songwriter, and a guitarist who for almost 30 years was a street musician in L.A. His music isn't the blues though he's qualified to sing them: he grew up in poverty in Mississippi, his mother was a prostitute, he never knew his father. As a teenager, Hawkins spent time in jail. His first two marriages ended quickly: one was annulled, his second wife died two months into the marriage.

Writer, feminist, organizer, and the founder of Ms. Magazine, Gloria Steinem. She has a new book of essays, "Moving Beyond Words, (Simon & Schuster). In one of the essays she wonders -- what if Freud were female? -- and imagines what life would be like if one of the most "enduring, influential, and fiercely defended thinkers" in Western civilization were Dr. Phyllis Freud. In her new book Steinem also reflects on turning 60.

A remembrance of writer John Preston who died of AIDS. We play an excerpt from a 1992 interview.

Floyd Cochran used to be a recruiter and public relations man for the racist, anti-Semitic Aryan Nations, based in Idaho. About two years ago, Cochran left the group and denounced it and its racist views. Now he travels the country speaking out against white supremacy movements, and the philosophy of hatred.

Singer, songwriter, guitar player, Dan Penn. Penn has written soul music classics--"Do Right Woman," "Cry Like a Baby," "Sweet Inspiration," "I'm Your Puppet," for example. His compositions have been made famous by the likes of Aretha Franklin, James Carr, Percy Sledge, Solomon Burke and Otis Redding. Penn left his tiny hometown of Vernon, Alabama when he was sixteen. . . a white kid, singing like Ray Charles and in love with black music.

Rock musician Marshall Crenshaw. According to The New York Times, many critics have ranked Crenshaw"among the finest rock artists of the last dozen years." Now he has written a book. It's a reference guide to Rock 'n' Roll in the movies ("Hollywood Rock" HarperPerennial). According to his longtime bass player Graham Maby, Crenshaw has an encyclopedic knowledge of rock music. And he knows about the rock and roll movie genre from first-hand experience. He played Buddy Holly in the 1987 movie "La Bamba" about musician Ritchie Valens.

Alison Des Forges. She's a professor at the State University of New York at Buffalo, where her specialty concerns the central African countries of Rwanda and Burundi. She's also the Co-Chair of the International Commission on Human Rights Abuse in Rwanda, and a consultant to Human Rights Watch Africa on Rwanda and Burundi. Rwanda has descended into civil strife since April 6th, when the Rwanda and the Burundi presidents were both killed in a plane crash.

Writer Michael Ignatieff, who has investigated six of the world's trouble spots for a BBC television series, and a companion book: "Blood & Belonging: Journeys into the New Nationalism" (Farrar, Straus & Giroux). A Canadian of Russian ancestry who lives in England, Ignatieff's book raises the question of why nationalism, which once unified countries like Germany and Italy, today pulls countries apart.

Journalist and mystery writer Jon Katz. Katz is a media critic, . formerly for Rolling Stone and now for New York Magazine. First in Katz's "Death by Station Wagon" (Bantam) and now in his newly released "The Family Stalker" (Doubleday), soft boiled detective hero Kit Deleeuw cruises the streets of a fictional suburban community on crime-solving forays in his Volvo station wagon. Deleeuw lost his Wall Street job in the 80's.