Benjamin Joseph Manaly "B. J." Novak (born July 31, 1979) is an American actor, stand-up comedian, screenwriter, and director. He is best known for being a writer and co-executive producer for and playing the role of Ryan Howard on The Office, as well as appearing in Inglourious Basterds.

Novak was born and raised in Newton, Massachusetts, the son of Linda (née Manaly) and William Novak, who has ghostwritten memoirs for Nancy Reagan, Lee Iacocca, and others. Novak's family is Jewish; his father co-edited The Big Book of Jewish Humor, and his parents also established a Jewish matchmaking service. Novak has two younger brothers, Jesse, a composer, and Lev, an undergraduate student at Tufts University. He attended Newton South High School with future Office costar John Krasinski, and they graduated in 1997. Novak attended Harvard University, where he worked for the Harvard Lampoon and majored in English and Spanish literature after writing a thesis on Hollywood responses to Shakespeare. In addition to the Lampoon, he occasionally staged and performed in a variety show called The B.J. Show with fellow Harvard student B. J. Averell. Novak wrote his honors thesis on the films of Shakespeare's Hamlet.

Billy Joe "B. J." Thomas (born August 7, 1942, Hugo, Oklahoma) is an American popular singer known for his chart-topping hits in the 1960s and 1970s—appearing on the pop, adult contemporary, country and Hot 100 charts.

Thomas was raised in and around Houston, Texas, graduating from Lamar Consolidated High School in Rosenberg. Before his solo career, Thomas sang in a church choir as a teenager then joined the musical group The Triumphs. During his senior year he made friends with Roy Head of Roy Head and The Traits. The Traits and the Triumphs held several Battle of the Bands events in the early 1960s featuring Head and Thomas.

In 1966, B. J. Thomas and The Triumphs released the album, I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry (Pacemaker Records). The album featured a hit cover of the Hank Williams song, "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry". It sold over one million copies, and was awarded a gold disc. In the same year, Thomas released a solo album of the same name (Scepter Records).

Thomas achieved mainstream success again in 1968, with the single "Hooked on a Feeling", which featured the sound of an electric sitar, first released on the album On My Way (Scepter Records). "Hooked on a Feeling" became Thomas's second million-selling record. The 1969 film Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid featured Thomas performing the Burt Bacharach/Hal David song "Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head", which won the Academy Award for best original song that year, became the number one song on the Billboard Hot 100 in January 1970. Sales of this disc also exceeded one million copies, with Thomas being awarded his third gold record. The song was also released on an album of the same name. Other hits of the 1970s were "Everybody's Out of Town", "I Just Can't Help Believing" (Billboard No. 9 in 1970, covered by Elvis Presley), "No Love At All", "Mighty Clouds of Joy", and "Rock and Roll Lullaby".

David Michael Letterman (born April 12, 1947) is an American television host and comedian. He hosts the late night television talk show, Late Show with David Letterman, broadcast on CBS. Letterman has been a fixture on late night television since the 1982 debut of Late Night with David Letterman on NBC. Letterman recently surpassed friend and mentor Johnny Carson for having the longest late-night hosting career in the United States of America.

Letterman is also a television and film producer. His company Worldwide Pants produces his show as well as its network follow-up The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson. Worldwide Pants has also produced several prime-time comedies, the most successful of which was Everybody Loves Raymond, currently in syndication.

In 1996, David Letterman was ranked #45 on TV Guide's 50 Greatest TV Stars of All Time.

Letterman was born in Indianapolis, Indiana. His father, Harry Joseph Letterman (April 1915 – February 1973), was a florist of British descent; his mother Dorothy Letterman (née Hofert, now Dorothy Mengering), a Presbyterian church secretary of German descent, is an occasional figure on the show, usually at holidays and birthdays.

Vera Mindy Chokalingam (born June 24, 1979), better known as Mindy Kaling, is an American actress, comedian, writer and producer who plays Kelly Kapoor on the NBC sitcom The Office. Kaling is also a co-executive producer and writer of several of the show's episodes.

Kaling was born Vera Chokalingam in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to a Tamil father and Bengali mother from India. Her father, Avu, is an architect, and her mother, Swati, is an obstetrician/gynecologist.

She explains that she has been known as Mindy ever since her mother was pregnant with her when her parents were living in Nigeria. They were already planning to move to the U.S. and wanted a "cute American name" for their daughter, and liked the name Mindy from the TV show Mork & Mindy. The name Vera is the name of the "incarnation of a Hindu goddess."

She graduated from Buckingham Browne & Nichols, a private school in Cambridge in 1997. The following year, she entered Dartmouth College, where she was a member of the improvisational comedy troupe "The Dog Day Players" and the a cappella group "The Rockapellas", and the creator of the comic strip "Badly Drawn Girl" in The Dartmouth (the college's daily newspaper), as well as writing for the Dartmouth Jack-O-Lantern (the college's humor magazine). She graduated in 2001.

Bob Rivers is a well-known American rock and roll radio on air personality in the Pacific Northwest as well as a prolific producer of parody songs, most famous for his Christmas song parodies.

Rivers' most recent radio program, The Bob Rivers Show with Bob, Spike and Joe, is broadcast on Seattle oldies station KJR-FM after a previous iteration was aired on another local Seattle radio station KZOK-FM, ending in 2010.

Previously, between late 1989 and August 2000, the show aired on Seattle, Washington Active Rock radio station KISW-FM under the title Bob Rivers Twisted Radio. The Bob Rivers Show was also simulcast on Portland, Oregon "1980s Rock Hits" radio station KVMX (now KXJM) "Mix 107.5" from 20 March 2006 until 5 October 2006, when the station dropped the morning show and switched to a Rhythmic Adult Contemporary format under the new branding "Movin' 107.5".

Bob Rivers spent almost 6 years at WAAF in Worcester, Massachusetts (in the Boston market), as part of their successful Bob and Zip morning show with fellow on air personality Peter "Zip" Zipfel.