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Actor, director and screenwriter Billy Bob Thornton. The 1996 film Sling Blade which he wrote, directed and starred in put him on the map and earned him an Academy Award for Best Adapted screenplay. He was nominated for an Academy Award for his role in the 1998 film A Simple Plan. Last year he directed the film All the Pretty Horses. This past year, he starred in the Coen Brothers' The Man Who Wasn't There, Bandits with Bruce Willis and Monster's Ball. Before he got into acting, he was interested in a music career. Last fall he released Private Radio, a new CD on which he sings his own songs. This interview was originally broadcast Jan. 9, 2002.

Catholic priests are at the center of the current child sex abuse scandal, but the realm of possible predators extends to anyone with access to children. Health professionals say early conversations with kids about sexuality may actually be the best protection. NPR's Brenda Wilson reports.

Her sister's hospitalization for depression sent Virginia Gonzales Torres on a mission to reform her country's mental health system. Some 25 years later, she's founded a series of group homes and set the standard for how developing countries can treat the mentally ill. NPR's Joanne Silberner reports.

When former President Clinton declared a national monument in Utah six years ago, many politicians and residents said he was abusing presidential power. Now some of those same critics are asking President Bush to take further steps to protect Western land. NPR's Howard Berkes reports on Morning Edition.

Advertising great Mary Wells Lawrence. Her career spans the 1960s to the 1980s, and she created many memorable campaigns. She is responsible for the Alka-Selzer "Plop Plop Fizz Fizz," and the slogan, "I Love New York." Her new book is called A Big Life (in Advertising) (Knopf). She is a member of the Advertising Hall of Fame and the Copywriters Hall of Fame.

Modern dance icon Merce Cunningham is now the published artist. His book of sketches, Other Animals: Drawing and Journals, shows Cunningham at his most whimsical. The combined effect of the essays, drawings and photos of some of his best-known dance numbers reveal much about both his creative spirit and how he approaches choreography.

The owner of Windows on the World, which drew diners to the top of the World Trade Center, is set to open a new restaurant in Times Square. Many former Windows employees will work at Noche, but others are bitter that they weren't hired, NPR's Madeleine Brand reports.

Writer Alec Wilkinson is the author of new memoir, My Mentor: A Young Man's Friendship with William Maxwell (Houghton Mifflin) about his relationship with writer and editor William Maxwell. Maxwell was fiction editor for the New Yorker from 1936-1976 and worked with such authors as J.D. Salinger, John Cheever, John Updike, Eudora Welty and scores of others. Maxwell was the author of a number of novels, including Time Will Darken It, and So Long, See You Tomorrow, as well as several short story collections. He died at the age of 91 in August 2000. Wilkinson is a staff writer for the New Yorker, and has been there since 1980. He's the author of several books including, Midnights, Moonshine, and Big Sugar. We'll listen to a rebroadcast of a 1995 interview with Maxwell (3/29/95), and to an interview with Alec Wilkinson shortly after Maxwell's death (8/4/2000).

If Cole Porter and George Gershwin provided a soundtrack for the city, then Hoagy Carmichael was the voice of America's heartland. A new Carmichael biography and song collection — both called Stardust Melody — lead a resurgence of interest in the prolific songwriter's work. Sing along Wednesday on All Things Considered

An expert in climate change research, Paul Mayewski led the National Science Foundation's Greenland Ice Sheet Project 2. The project extracted ice cores chronicling 100,000 years of climate history. Mayewski, with co-author Frank White, writes about their expeditions in the new book, The Ice Chronicles: The Quest to Understand Global Climate Change (University Press of New England). Mayewski is also co-director of the Institute of Quaternary and Climate Studies at the University of Maine.