Terry Gross

Jazz trumpeter Lester Bowie. Bowie is considered one of the most original trumpeters in jazz, and a master of horn effects. Bowie started out playing with Saint Louis R&B bands. In 1969, he helped found the Art Ensemble of Chicago as an outlet for more eclectic and avant-garde jazz. Bowie also heads his own band, Lester Bowie's Brass Fantasy. They have a new album, called "Serious Fun."

Actor and director Alan Arkin. Arkin began his career with Chicago's Second City improv group.

Psychiatrist Irvin D. Yalom. Yalom is one of the world's leading psychotherapists, and his theories have been adopted by most of this country's clinics and hospitals. Yalom has written several books on psychotherapy, aimed both at experts and the layman. Yalom's new book is called "Love's Executioner & Other Tales of Psychotherapy." It's a collection of ten stories, each featuring one of Yalom's patients, that illustrate the individual difficulties and common threads of psychotherapy.

Veteran arms negotiator and diplomat Paul Nitze. Nitze has spent nearly 50 years at the highest levels of this country's foreign policy, and advised every President from F. D. R. to George Bush. He helped form the Marshall Plan after World War Two, dealt with the Berlin War and Cuban Missile crises, and engaged in the famous "walk in the woods," during the U-S/Soviet INF treaty negotiations. Nitze has just written a memoir of his public life, called "From Hiroshima to Glasnost."

John Malpede and Kevin Williams of the Los Angeles Poverty Department, a performance group comprised primarily of homeless and formerly homeless people. The LAPD tries to show the reality of life on the streets. John Malpede is a former performance artist and founder of LAPD (in 1985). He now serves as the group's director and a legal advocate for the homeless. Kevin Wiliams is LAPD's assistant director and former resident of Skid Row.

Writer John Updike. Updike is known as the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of some thirty novels and short stories, including the "Rabbit" novels. His latest effort is not a work of fiction, but a book on art. It's a collection of 23 essays called "Just Looking" that offers Updike's personal reactions to some of the world's masterpieces. He also comments on some of the recent "megashows" such as Renoir at Boston's Museum of Fine Arts and Andrew Wyeth's "Helga" paintings.

Songwriters Hugh Martin and Ralph Blane. They wrote the songs for the 1944 Judy Garland film classic, "Meet Me in St. Louis," including "The Trolley Song" and "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas." A musical based on the film is opening on Broadway this week.

Writer Marita Golden. Her new novel, "Long Distance Life," examines half a century in the life of a black middle-class family in the other Washington, D.C., the one not filled with shiny buildings and corridors of power. Previously, Golden published a widely acclaimed memoir, "Migrations of the Heart."

Explorer and environmentalist Jean-Michel Cousteau. The son of famed oceanographer Jacques Cousteau, Jean-Michel has spent much of his life aboard their ship, "Calypso," traveling the world and learning about its wonders and peoples. Jean-Michel is now director of expeditions for the Cousteau Society, and he led the Society's recent voyage to Papua New Guinea. His logbook from that expedition has just been published, and the trip will also be featured as the first episode of a new T-V series, "Cousteau's Rediscovery of the World."

Columnist Mike Royko. For 26 years, Royko has written a daily column on happenings in his native Chicago and throughout the world, and he's just released his 6th collection of his writings. Along the way, Royko has earned the Pulitzer, the Mencken, and Pyle Award. His column is now carried in more than 500 papers. Royko also wrote "Boss," a best-selling portrait of Chicago mayor Richard Daley.