Terry Gross

Louisiana state Rep. Noble Ellington is the national chairman of ALEC, a membership-only group that brings together state legislators, interest groups and corporate representatives to draft model bills. He responds to a series of pieces about the organization recently published in The Nation.

Project Nim is the new documentary about a chimpanzee raised in a human household as part of an experiment to see if chimps could learn language. Director James Marsh and two of the people who cared for Nim talk with Terry Gross about the controversial study.

Constantly having access to our cellphones is changing the way we interact with the world, says technology writer Brian X. Chen. In a new book, he explains how being "always on" will affect law enforcement, the medical community and higher education.

Neuroscientist Dean Buonomano explains why our brains make mistakes when we try to remember long lists of information or add large numbers in our heads. Humans live "in a time and place we didn't evolve to live in," he says.

New York Times financial reporter Louise Story explains how guidelines issued by the Justice Department in 2008 have allowed prosecutors to take a softer approach to corporate crimes. To this day, no high-level executive has been charged in a case related to the 2008 financial crisis.

The physician and anthropologist has spent 30 years treating patients in Haiti. In Haiti After The Earthquake, he details what it was like on the ground in the days after the 2010 quake — and why the country is still struggling to recover.

Sally H. Jacobs' new biography, The Other Barack, follows the troubled life of Barack Obama Sr. — from Kenya to Hawaii and back. Jacobs believes that if Obama Sr. had played a larger role in his son's life, Obama probably wouldn't have become president.

On the FX series Louie, comedian Louis C.K. plays a divorced father of two — in other words, a guy just like the real Louis C.K. The series is a sequel of sorts to his first show, Lucky Louie, in which he played a married father of two — which he was at the time.

This interview was originally broadcast on July 7, 2010. A new season of Louie premiered on June 23 at 10:30 PM on FX.

Jose Antonio Vargas, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter, recently revealed he has been living in the U.S. illegally since he was 12. "This country is not going to deport 11 million undocumented immigrants," he says. "What are we supposed to do with them?"