Terry Gross

Actor Christopher Reeve. A 1995 horseback riding accident left him paralyzed from the neck down. Recently, with intensive physical therapy, Reeve announced that he has regained motion and feeling in his fingers and in other parts of his body. This is incredible news to scientists, who assumed he would never move again. Reeve was totally paralyzed for five years. Then, one morning two years ago, he found he could move one finger. Reeve is still dependent on a wheelchair and respirator. He's just written a book, Nothing Is Impossible: Reflections on a New Life.

His new film Pipe Dream opens in New York this week. Donovan has also co-starred in The Opposite of Sex, Insomnia, and many films with the independent director, Hal Hartley.

Film director and choreographer Stanley Donen. He and Gene Kelly co-directed and co-choreographed Singin' in the Rain. There's a new 50th anniversary DVD edition of Singing in the Rain. Donen also directed On the Town, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, Funny Girl and more. He collaborated with Gene Kelly as dance director on such films as Cover Girl and Anchors Away.

Classical pianist and conductor Murray Perahia has a new CD: Chopin Etudes: Opus 10, Opus 26. He also explored the music of J.S. Bach in recent recordings, including Bach's Keyboard Concertos vol. 1 which he recorded and conducted with the St. Martin in the Fields ensemble. And he recorded the Goldberg Variations and Bach's complete English Suites. In 1994 Perahia suffered a thumb injury that left him unable to play regularly for a year. He took up his first conducting post as principal guest conductor of the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields.

Journalist Keith Bradsher is the former Detroit bureau chief of The New York Times and the author of the book, High and Mighty: SUVs — The World's Most Dangerous Vehicle and How They Got that Way. Bradsher finds that sport utility vehicles are dangerous not only for their occupants but for those who share the road with them. He finds that they block the road and vision for smaller vehicles, are more prone to roll over and get poor gas mileage. Bradsher is currently Hong Kong bureau chief for The New York Times.

Novelist Rohinton Mistry was born in Bombay and now lives in Canada. His new novel is Family Matters. The book is set in 1990s Bombay and is about an elderly professor with Parkinson's disease who is forced to move into the crowded apartment of his daughter and her family. Mistry is also the author of A Fine Balance and Such a Long Journey which were both short-listed for the Booker Prize.

Charles Tripp is senior lecturer in the Department of Political Studies, at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London. He's the author of A History of Iraq.

Novelist Jeffrey Eugenides is the author of the novel The Virgin Suicides which was made into a movie. His new novel, Middlesex, is about a contemporary hermaphrodite. Eugenides' fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, The Yale Review and Best American Short Stories. He currently lives in Berlin, Germany.

Poet Sharon Olds. Her new collection of poems is The Unswept Room. She has a number of previous collections, including Satan Says and The Dead and the Living. Olds was the New York State Poet Laureate from 1998 to 2000. She teaches poetry workshops in the Graduate Creative Writing Program at New York University.

Phil Patton, author of Bug: The Strange Mutations of the World's Most Famous Automobile. It's a cultural history of the Volkswagen Beetle, the most produced and best-known car of all time. Patton writes for The New York Times, Esquire, Wired and ID. He also wrote Dreamland: Travels inside the Secret World of Roswell and Area 51.