Terry Gross

In 1963, when she was only 16, Lesley Gore recorded one of the greatest songs in rock and roll history, It's My Party, and I'll Cry If I Want To. Gore has stayed in the business since the 60s, and she's currently appearing at the New York City club, Rainbow and Stars. Rhino records released a two record retrospective of her greatest hits in 1991.

He plays David Fisher, the gay brother who co-runs a funeral home on the HBO hit Six Feet Under. Its is first TV role. Hall comes to TV from the stage. Hes currently starring as Billy Flynn, an oily attorney in the Broadway revival of Chicago. Recently, he was on Broadway as the emcee in Cabaret. Prior to that role, he was in a number of off-Broadway productions.

Actress Cynthia Nixon is one of the stars of HBO's Sex and the City. She plays Miranda Hobbes, a corporate lawyer who is also a new mother in the current season of the show. Nixon recently starred in the Broadway production of the classic 1930 Clare Boothe Luce play, The Women. She also appeared at the age of 18 in the broadway plays Hurlyburly, and The Real Thing. She's a founding member of the Drama Dept., an Off-Broadway theater company. Her film roles inclue, Amadeus, Prince of the City, The Pelican Brief, and The Out-of-Towners.

Screenwriter Mike White wrote and starred in the independent film Chuck & Buck and earlier wrote for the TV shows Dawson's Creek and Freaks and Geeks.

He is one of few western reporters to interview Osama bin Laden, which he did in 1998. Hes collaborated on the new book, The Cell: Inside the 9/11 Plot, and Why the FBI and CIA Failed to Stop It. (Hyperion). In the book they retrace the movements of al-Qaeda leading up to the September 11th attacks.

Guitarist, singer, songwriter Wayne Kramer. In the late 1960s he founded the MC5, a Detroit band considered to be the prototype for punk rock. By 1972 the band had burned out. In between then and now, Kramer did time in jail for drugs, teamed up with Don and David Was to found the group Was (Not Was), and began a solo career. His new solo album is Adult World.

He died August 14th at the age of 78. The cause was cancer of the liver. The Corcoran Gallery in Washington DC recently ran the first major retrospective of Rivers work, covering five decades of his output (it ends August 19th). Rivers has been called the father of Pop Art, and is considered one of the most important artists in the figurative tradition. He was part of a loosely knit association of poets and painters who were young, poor and ambitious in New York in the 50's.

He won a Pulitzer Prize for his novel Empire Falls which was also a national bestseller. His subject matter is working-class unpretentious people, but as one reviewer writes he transforms 'every day people and seemingly ordinary events - into the quintessential'. He's written five novels in all, including Mohawk, The Risk Pool, and Nobodys Fool (which was made into a film starring Paul Newman). His latest book is a collection of stories, The Whores Child and Other Stories.

Sun Studios founder Sam Phillips. He is revered as one of the leading catalysts in post WW II American music. As a record producer in the 1950s and 60s his recordings launched the careers of Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins, and Jerry Lee Lewis and thats just to name a few.