Terry Gross

By the end of The 40 Year Old Virgin, the title character had lost his virginity — and actor Steve Carell had become a star.

The actor, who was a correspondent on Comedy Central's The Daily Show for several years, has gone on to films including Little Miss Sunshine and Evan Almighty, and next summer he'll star as hapless secret agent Maxwell Smart in a Hollywood adaptation of the vintage TV series Get Smart. And of course he's got a central role on NBC's The Office.

In July 2003, newspaper columnist Robert Novak published the name of undercover CIA operative Valerie Plame — shortly after Plame's husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson, wrote an op-ed piece contradicting President Bush's contention that Saddam Hussein had tried to procure yellowcake uranium from the West African nation of Niger.

Ben Karlin, former executive producer of both The Colbert Report and The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, is also an alumnus of the satirical newsweekly The Onion. He left the Comedy Central shows in December 2006 to focus on his family. This interview originally aired on April 4, 2006.

Rob Corddry left his Daily Show correspondent gig in 2006 to star in his own short-lived sitcom, The Winner.

He's also had roles in recent movie comedies, including The Heartbreak Kid, Failure to Launch and Blades of Glory.

He is also a regular performer on Late Night with Conan O'Brien.

This interview was originally broadcast on March 8, 2007.

We rebroadcast our conversation from earlier this month with one of fake news' most indelible personalities: Colbert Report host Stephen Colbert.

This interview originally aired Oct. 9, 2007.

Comedian Larry Wilmore frequently contributes to The Daily Show as the "Senior Black Correspondent."

A writer, television producer, and stand-up comic, Wilmore wrote for In Living Color and The Fresh Prince of Bel Air and was a consulting producer on NBC's The Office.

This interview originally aired on June 5, 2007.

Novelist Junot Diaz's first novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao explores the complexities of living in two cultures at once. Set in both the United States and in the Dominican Republic, the novel follows the story of Oscar Wao in prose that frequently mixes Spanish and English in the same sentence.

In the book Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain, neurologist Oliver Sacks explores the relationship between music and the mind.

Through a series of case studies ranging from songs stuck in one's mind to a newfound passion for concert piano after being struck by lightning, the professor of Neurology at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and the NYU School of Medicine examines the complexity of human beings and the role music plays in our lives.

As host of the NPR news quiz Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me, Peter Sagal spends a lot of time reading the newspaper.

Lately, though, he's also spent many an hour going to strip joints, a swingers club, a porn-movie set and casinos — among other dens of what some call iniquity.

All research, of course, for his new project, The Book of Vice. He wanted to get a perspective on the indulgences of others, and report back to the rest of us.