Terry Gross

British musician Jarvis Cocker founded the band Pulp at age 15; he made international headlines in 1996, when he stormed the stage in protest at a Michael Jackson concert at the BRIT awards in London. Lately he's been reunited with his father, who left the family when he was a child, denounced American Idol-style TV talent shows, and released a solo album, called simply Jarvis.

Emmy Award winner Brian Cox's latest show is the HBO series Deadwood (whose third season is now out on DVD), but he's been featured in more than a hundred films and TV shows over the past 40 years.

His films include Match Point, Rushmore, and both The Bourne Identity and its sequel The Bourne Supremacy. He won his Emmy as Reichsmarschall Hermann Wilhelm Goering in TNT original movie Nuremberg.

This interview first aired on June 26, 2006.

Guitarist and vocalist Jack White and drummer Meg White, of the White Stripes, have just released their sixth LP, called Icky Thump.

The two have tried to keep their relationship a mystery, claiming at various times to be brother and sister or husband and wife. (The truth, confirmed by numerous sources, is that they're a divorced couple. )

Jeff Goodell's book Big Coal: The Dirty Secret Behind America's Energy Future, now out in paperback, argues that the U.S. is more dependent than ever on coal. Goodell is a contributing editor at Rolling Stone magazine; he's also the author of Our Story: 77 Hours That Tested Our Friendship and Our Faith, based on the account of nine miners trapped underground.

Food and wine columnist Russ Parsons wrote How to Pick a Peach. He searches for top-quality fruits and vegetables and lists the reasons why supermarket produce is not always the best.

Journalist Laura Rozen discusses the philosophical split within the Bush administration on how to curb nuclear proliferation in Iran. Rozen reports on national security and foreign policy as a senior correspondent for The American Prospect and as a contributor to The Washington Monthly, the National Journal and other publications. She also writes a political blog, War and Piece.

Washington Post correspondent Thomas Ricks — author of the bestseller Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq — talks about his latest trip to that country and the latest strategies the Pentagon is employing there. Ricks, a Pulitzer Prize winner and former Wall Street Journal staffer, is also author of Making the Corps and A Soldier's Duty.

Former Navy petty officer Stephen Benjamin, trained as an Arabic translator, was headed to Iraq when he was dismissed from the Navy under the military's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy. Benjamin is gay; his supervisors knew he was gay, and most of his peers also knew, and he says he was always accepted as a member of the team. Two other gay Arabic translators were also dismissed.

Louise Arbour, the U.N.'s High Commissioner for Human Rights and onetime chief prosecutor in the Yugoslav and Rwandan tribunals, discusses U.S. policy on detainees in the fight against terrorism.

Former FBI agent Eric O'Neill and film director/screenwriter Billy Ray collaborated on the film Breach, based on the true story of FBI operative Robert Hanssen, who was found guilty of treason, and the FBI agent (O'Neill) who was assigned to Hanssen to draw him out of deep cover. The film is now out on DVD. Billy Ray also wrote and directed the critically acclaimed film Shattered Glass. This interview first aired on Jan. 31, 2007.