Terry Gross

Jazz singer Sylvia Syms passed away yesterday at the age of 74. She had a heart attack just as she finished a performance at the Algonquin Hotel. Syms was known as the quintessential saloon singer, and foremost among her admirers was Frank Sinatra, who produced and conducted a 1982 album of standards called "Syms By Sinatra." Her one hit was "I could Have Danced All Night," from the 1956 musical "My Fair Lady." Her nightclub career spanned 51 years.

Pollster David W. Moore is the Director of the Survey Center at the University of New Hampshire, where he also teaches political science. His polling results have been picked up by all the T-V networks and most of the major newspapers and newsmagazines in the country. He's written a new book about the history of polling, called "The Superpollsters: How The Measure and Manipulate Public Opinion." (Four Walls Eight Windows Press)

Monologuist, actor and writer Spalding Gray. His latest monologue "Monster in a Box" is about all the distractions that prevented him from completing his novel, "Impossible Vacation." Now the monologue has been made into a film of the same name. It's also out in book form, and on top of that, "Impossible Vacation" has just been published. (The book "Monster in a Box" is published by Vintage Press, the book "Impossible Vacation" is published by Knopf, and the film "Monster in a Box" is distributed by Fine Line Features.)

Natasha Richardson has starred in the films "The Comfort of Strangers," "The Handmaids Tale" and "Patty Hearst." Now she plays Sybil in the new film "The Favor, The Watch and the Very Big Fish," an offbeat romantic comedy about a group of idiosyncratic characters living in Paris. (Trimark Pictures)

Documentary filmmaker Marcel Ophuls. He is best known for his 1970 work "The Sorrow and the Pity," about the conduct of the French people during the Holocaust. He also made the film "Hotel Terminus: The Life and Times of Klaus Barbie." His latest work is about life behind the iron curtain and the changes underway in Europe since the fall of the Berlin wall.

A look at social policy in light of the Los Angeles -- and national -- turmoil with sociologist Christopher Jencks. Does welfare work? Did Johnson's Great Society fail, as the Bush administration now posits? Or is it the fault of the massive cutbacks of the Reagan-Bush era? Jenck's new book is called "Rethinking Social Policy: Race, Poverty and The Underclass." (Harvard University Press) (Interview by Marty Moss-Coane)

Writer Jess Mowry. His novel, "Way Past Cool," is about an Oakland gang. He works with inner city youths in Oakland, California. Mowry used to be in a gang himself. In 1988, he bought a used typewriter for 10 dollars and started writing. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, Inc.) (Interview by Marty Moss-Coane)

Writer Gail Sheehy became famous for her bestselling book Passages, in which she described the changing phases of an adult life. Now she's focussed on one phase of a woman's life that no one wants to talk about -- menopause -- in her new book, "The Silent Passage." (Random House) (Interview by Marty Moss-Coane)

B.D. Wong won a Tony award for his performance in the title role of "M. Butterfly." He played a man posing as a woman. Now, he's taking on another challenge: in the new one-man musical "Herringbone," which opened last week at the American Music Theater Festival in Philadelphia, he plays eleven characters, including a eight-year-old boy, his parents, his grandmother, his dance teacher, and a tap-dancing midget nicknamed Lou the Frog. (Interview by Marty Moss-Coane)

Bob Simon is the CBS News correspondent who was taken prisoner during the gulf war and held for six weeks. He's just written a book about the experience called "Forty Days." (Putnam) In it, he describes the indignity and loss of control he felt as a captive. (Interview by Marty Moss-Coane)