Terry Gross

Moneyball stars Brad Pitt as Billy Beane, the Oakland A's general manager who used analytics and statistics to stay competitive against other teams with much larger payrolls. Critic David Edelstein says the film, based on the 2003 Michael Lewis book, is "entertaining as a sports-underdog story."

The veteran actor has played a Nazi-hunter, a vampire, a cowboy hitchhiker and the outlaw Jesse James. In his latest film, Brad Pitt plays the manager of baseball's Oakland A's. He tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross why the part interested him and what it's like to live life in the public eye.

Dana Spiotta's third novel, Stone Arabia, is about an aging musician who never achieved the type of success he'd have liked. Rather than giving up, he chronicles an imaginary version of his life — as a successful rock star recording his career in a series of journals.

Navigating medical information is tricky, particularly when patients receive advice from doctors, family members, guidelines, the media and the Internet. In Your Medical Mind, two Harvard physicians offer advice on how patients can make the best medical choices for themselves and their families.

Bumble-ardy is a deeply imaginative tale about an orphaned pig who longs for a birthday party. Sendak, who is 83, wrote and illustrated the book while caring for his longtime partner, who died of cancer in 2007. "I did Bumble-ardy to save myself," Sendak says. "I did not want to die with him."

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Ron Suskind talks about his unflattering picture of rivalries and dysfunction within President Obama's first economic team in his book Confidence Men: Wall Street, Washington, and the Education of a President. Some of officials quoted in the book say they were misquoted or that their comments were taken out of context.

Vince Gilligan's AMC drama Breaking Bad stars Bryan Cranston as a high school chemistry teacher turned drug dealer. Gilligan says he pitched the show by telling AMC: "You take Mr. Chips and turn him into Scarface."

Gilligan's AMC show centered on a chemistry teacher who created a meth empire. In 2011, Gilligan told Fresh Air that he pitched the series by saying, "You take Mr. Chips and turn him into Scarface."

The Emmy Award-winning actor returns as drug dealer Jesse Pinkman in El Camino, a movie sequel to Breaking Bad. In 2011, Paul said his character was supposed to die in the TV show's first season.

Student-turned-drug dealer Jesse Pinkman was supposed to die in the first season of the AMC drama. But the writers decided the chemistry between high school teacher Walter White (Bryan Cranston) and Jesse (Aaron Paul) was too good to let go.