Terry Gross

Professor of Politics with an expertise on the Arab World, Mamoun Fandy. He teaches at the Near-East South Asia Center for Strategic Studies at the National Defense University. He written for the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and regularly for The Christian Science Monitor. His latest book is Saudi Arabia and the Politics of Dissent.

Our new U.S. Poet Laureate Billy Collins. His new collection of poems is Sailing Alone Around the Room (Random House). His other collections include Picnic, Lightning (Univ of Pittsburgh), The Art of Drowning (Univ of Pittsburgh Press), and Questions about Angels (William Morrow & Co). John Updike says of Collins' poetry, "Billy Collins writes lovely poems...

Executive director of the USA division of the French medical relief organization Doctors without Borders, Nicolas De Torrente. During August, he was in the Northern Territory of Afghanistan checking on the work of the organization. To do their work, Doctors without Borders had to negotiate with the Taliban. After the attacks, the organization had to evacuate all foreign workers out of the country, leaving their Afhani staff behind. De Torrente was flying to JFK airport on Sept. 11, and his plane was one of the last international planes to land in the U.S.