Terry Gross

Journalist Michael Dobbs is a staff writer for The Washington Post. When the tsunami hit South Asia last week, Dobbs and his brother Geoffrey were swimming near the small island Taprobane off the southernmost tip of Sri Lanka.

Miriam Toews has written her third book, A Complicated Kindness. One reviewer called it "a kind of Catcher in the Rye for Mennonite girls."

We have the second part of an interview with renowned food writer Harold McGee (the first part was broadcast on Dec. 23). McGee's book, On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen, has been revised and updated. The book is an exposition of food and cooking techniques, technology and history.

We look at the business of making movie blockbusters with Dade Hayes, special reports editor at Variety, and Jonathon Bing, Variety's deputy managing editor. The two co-authored the new book Open Wide: How Hollywood Box Office Became a National Obsession.

We speak to labor economist Jared Bernstein, senior economist at the Living Standards Program at the Economic Policy Institute, about how working families are faring in the current U.S. economy. Bernstein co-authored the forthcoming report The State of Working America 2004-05.

Bandleader and clarinetist Artie Shaw died Dec. 29 at the age of 94, apparently of natural causes. In the 1930s and '40s, Shaw's band ranked with the Goodman, Dorsey and Miller bands in popularity. But he largely rejected pop tunes and stuck with music by composers like Porter, Gershwin and Berlin. We remember Shaw.

Filmmaker Robert Stone's new documentary tells the story of the Symbionese Liberation Army, the radical group that kidnapped heiress Patty Hearst in 1974. We speak with Stone and with reporter Tim Findley, who covered the kidnapping for the Hearst newspaper The San Francisco Chronicle.

We rebroadcast a tribute to the great vocalist and composer Thomas "Fats" Waller from May 19, 2004. Guitarist and singer Marty Grosz and cornet player Randy Reinhart join us for a special in-studio performance in honor of Waller's 100th birthday. Waller wrote many hit songs, appeared in films in the 1930s and '40s, and wrote Broadway musicals.

Actor Jerry Orbach, best known for his long-running role as Lennie Briscoe on TV's Law and Order, died Tuesday at age 69. Orbach also enjoyed a successful Broadway career, winning a Tony for his role in Promises, Promises, and appeared in films such as Crimes and Misdemeanors and Dirty Dancing. We listen to a Nov. 21, 1989, interview with Orbach.

Writer Susan Sontag died Wednesday at age 71 of leukemia. We listen back to two interviews with her: a 1989 conversation about her book AIDS and Its Metaphors; and 1993 interview conducted shortly after Sontag returned from Sarajevo, where she directed a performance of Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot in Serbo-Croatian.