GWYNETH GETS REAL

"You know, it never ceases to amaze me how difficult life is...how it is just endless suffering, even when something of the magnitude of September 11 doesn’t occur." So says Gwyneth Paltrow, the film world’s Golden Girl. And if it seems as if Paltrow shouldn’t have a care in the world, think again. True, her life has been blessed (not many actresses win an Oscar at 26 and can boast of celebrity parents -- Blythe Danner and Bruce Paltrow -- who have been happily married for years). But like many other celebrities revered for their beauty, Paltrow feels a strong need to prove her talent is more than make up deep. She’s doing so by starring in her most unlikely role yet – a fat girl in the Farrelly brothers’ new film Shallow Hal, about an obese woman (Paltrow in a fat suit) who nonetheless attracts the adoration of Hal, who has been hypnotized so he can only see her "inner" beauty.

Talk’s Vanessa Grigoriadis reveals that there is indeed much more than meets the eye with Paltrow, a disciplined and complex woman who does ashtanga yoga every morning at 4 a.m. while on shoots, keeps a strict macrobiotic diet, and describes her spiritual life as "half WASP, half Jew, with a little Hindu thrown in." She is fiercely protective of the environment and would like to see Ralph Nader become president. But privacy is perhaps Paltrow’s greatest passion. "You are never going to see me walking down a red carpet holding anyone’s hand again, unless it’s my grandma’s or my brother’s," says the star. "I could be married and have three kids, and I still won’t talk about [my personal life]."

PORTRAIT OF THE TERRORIST AS A YOUNG MAN

What influences transformed the shy son of a multibillionaire industrialist into a deadly fanatic? Talk reporter Jason Burke trekked through Osama bin Laden’s shadowy past – from his early twenties, spent in the tony suburbs of Peshawar, to his military exploits in the arid plains of Afghanistan -- to gain insight into the making of the world’s most wanted man.

What he discovers is bin Laden’s knack for developing strategic relationships with individuals and organizations that have aided him throughout his career. Among other things, bin Laden was known for his exceptionally loyal following. Bin Laden’s Arab fighters "were fanatical," remembers a soldier who fought alongside him for years against the Soviets in Afghanistan. "They used to beg to go on operations. If they came back alive they used to weep and say they must have committed some sin so Allah would not take them into heaven." He was also renowned for his strategic investments (he often handed comrades thousands of dollars to help them get married, for example) and his asceticism. According to an old friend, bin Laden always slept on a hard bed or the floor, because "he does not like comfort. He sees it as somehow wrong." Burke reveals a portrait of an introverted man who, ashamed of what he perceived as his dissipated, corrupt family, renounced his family fortune and found his calling in Islamic zealotry.

THE LAST DAY OF WINDOWS ON THE WORLD

It was the crown jewel of New York dining – the highest -grossing restaurant in America, with views that Hillary Clinton once described as "halfway to heaven." By 4:30 a.m. as September 11 dawned, Windows employees all over the five boroughs of New York were waking up and preparing for what promised to be a hectic day atop the World Trade Center. Talk reporter Lisa DePaulo provides us with a wrenching, minute by minute, personal account of the last hours of the Windows workers and diners—most doomed, though a handful saved by the vagaries of timing and sheer good luck. All told, at least 206 people were in the restaurant, 79 of them Windows employees, when American Airlines flight 11 slammed into the north tower that morning, sealing the fate of everybody above the 90^th floor.

TWILIGHT OF THE GOTTIS

"Normal in this family is terrifying." So said John Gotti to his son as he languished in prison in Marion, Illinois in 1998. Unsurprising words from a man who likes to paraphrase a passage from Machiavelli, "Fear is a stronger emotion over love." Government recordings obtained by Talk reporters Jerry Capeci and Gene Mustain while they covered the Gotti beat at the New York Daily News reveal a grandiose mafia don who was obsessed with his media image, the failing of his own family, and the downfall of the Gambino business. Before he lay near death from cancer in a prison hospital in Springfield, Missouri, Gotti, delighted in receiving hundreds of adoring letters from fans each month. His fans, he thinks, are right to worship him. "You’ll never see another guy like me if you live to be 5,000," he bragged to his brother and daughter Victoria.

A HOME AT THE END OF THE WORLD

Photographer Jason Florio was in Afghanistan just six days before the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks. His remarkable photographs of the northeastern reaches of the country, which was the 10 percent of Afghanistan that the Northern Alliance controls, reveal one of the most remote places on earth. Florio was stunned by the hospitality of this region’s proud, defiant inhabitants—whose faces he has captured on film, but whose fate he may never know, now that the U.S. bombing campaign is underway.

REQUIEM FOR A HEAVYWEIGHT

Father Mychal Judge—killed on September 11 while giving last rites to a fireman—was one of the first recorded and now most recognized victims of the attacks. The flurry of accompanying media coverage described him primarily as a committed Roman Catholic chaplain for the New York fire department. But those who knew Father Judge first hand tell Talk’s Jesse Green about their feisty and beloved friend, a "Franciscan Phil Donahue" who loved fashion and Woodstock and continually gave to others—in particular, to the gay community.

A dedicated priest, Judge was also a deeply complex man. A recovering alcoholic and homosexual (though celibate), few among the throngs of Father Judge’s admirers knew (or cared to admit) the contradiction between his sexual orientation and his vocation. He marched in one of the City’s St. Patrick’s Day parades under the banner of gay Irish group Lavender and Green (to boos from the crowd), and endured a particularly tempestuous relationship with New York cardinal John O’Connor (even after the cardinal died, Father Judge frequently wagged his finger at O’Connor’s tomb in St. Patrick’s Cathedral). But through it all, Mychal Judge remained deeply accessible and dearly loved by firemen and parishioners alike. Throughout his life, he defied his surname. "He was the least judgmental priest I’ve ever met," recalls a friend.