Terry Gross

Before The Onion, Weekend Update and The Daily Show, Sahl's shtick satirized the news of the day. It's the 50th anniversary of the comedian's first appearance at the "Hungry I" nightclub in San Francisco. Before Sahl, tuxedo-clad borscht belt comedians made tame jokes about your mother in law. After Sahl came the dark, satirical wit of comedians like Lenny Bruce, Woody Allen and Bill Cosby.

His first novel, recently published, is Old School. Wolff is best known for his memoir This Boy's Life and short stories, including The Barracks Thief.

John Sifton serves as Afghanistan researcher with Human Rights Watch. His articles have appeared in The New York Times Magazine and the International Herald Tribune. Since 2001, he has made nine trips to Afghanistan. Sifton is also an attorney.

He wrote the novel House of Sand And Fog. It's now a movie starring Ben Kingsley and Jennifer Connelly. The critically acclaimed book was a runaway bestseller after being chosen for Oprah's book club. Dubus is the author of two previous books, and he teaches writing at Tufts University and Emerson College. He is the son of the celebrated writer Andre Dubus.

He's the Bowman and Gordon Gray professor of religious studies at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. His new book, Lost Christianities: The Battle for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew, chronicles the second and third centuries before Christianity as we know it came to be. Ehrman has also edited a collection of the early non-canonical texts from the first centuries after Christ called Lost Scriptures: Books That Did Not Make it Into The New Testament.

The two brothers have become practically the brand name for bad taste. Their movies Dumb and Dumber, Kingpin, There's Something About Mary and Shallow Hall, plumbed new depths of tastelessness. But their fans love the films, and despite their gross-out humor, the Farrellys seem to create characters that audiences care about. Their new film Stuck on You is about two brothers who are Siamese twins. It stars Matt Damon and Greg Kinnear. It's supposedly their most autobiographical film.

Journalist Vernon Loeb covers the military for The Washington Post. He just returned from five weeks in Iraq. He discusses the situation there and the capture of Saddam Hussein.

He was the "Weekend Update" anchor on Saturday Night Live from 1998 to 2000, and was known for his satirical coverage of the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal. He's now starring in Comedy Central's Tough Crowd with Colin Quinn. He appears in the documentary, Comedian, about Jerry Seinfeld, out now on DVD and VHS.