Terry Gross

Colbert is the senior correspondent on Comedy Central's The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Colbert started his comic career with Second City in Chicago. He wrote and performed sketches on The Dana Carvey Show. He is also the voice of Ace for Saturday Night Lives's animated shorts Ace & Gary: The Ambiguously Gay Duo. This interview was originally broadcast on Jan. 24, 2005.

Author Saul Bellow died April 5 at the age of 89. His short stories and novels garnered him three National Book Awards, a Pulitzer Prize, a Presidential Award and a Nobel Prize. His books include The Adventures of Augie March, Henderson the Rain King, Herzog and Humbolt's Gift. (Originally aired Oct. 4, 1989.)

Lewis Black is a playwright, stand-up comic, actor, and a commentator on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. He's been described as having the mouth of a shock-jock and the heart of a liberal. His new book is entitled Nothing's Sacred.

Writer Frank Conroy died April 6, at 69. He had colon cancer. He was the longtime director of the prestigious Iowa Writers Workshop. His 1967 memoir, Stop-Time, became a classic. In 1993, he published his first and only novel, Body & Soul. His other books were a collection of short stories, Midair, and his last book, the nonfiction Time and Tide: A Walk Through Nantucket. Conroy also worked as a jazz pianist in Greenwich Village and Nantucket for many years. (Originally aired Sept. 29, 1993)

We talk with Brad Bird, who wrote and directed the Academy Award-winning film The Incredibles, about a suburban family with superpowers. The mix of average characters and extraordinary abilities has turned the animated characters into celebrities.

Poet Laureate Ted Kooser's American Life In Poetry is a free weekly column providing a brief poem and description as a way to bring verse to the masses. Monday, Kooser won a Pulitzer Prize.

Robert Sullivan is the author of the book Rats: Observations on the History & Habitat of the City's Most Unwanted Inhabitants (now out in paperback). It's about what he learned when he set out to observe the life of New York's rats. This interview was originally broadcast on April 5, 2004.

Edward Conlon's memoir, Blue Blood (now out in paperback) begins with his first days on the street as a cop and goes back three generations. His great-grandfather was a an "officer of dubious integrity" during the Tammany-era NYPD. Conlon also wrote the Cop Diary columns in The New Yorker, and is a graduate of Harvard. This interview was originally broadcast on April 14, 2004.

Flynt Leverett is a senior fellow at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution. As Syria is prodded to withdraw its troops — and influence — from neighboring Lebanon, the region faces potentially drastic changes.