Health & Medicine

Screenwriter Will Reiser coped with his cancer diagnosis by thinking up ideas for cancer comedy movies with his best friend, actor Seth Rogen. Rogen and actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt now star in a film based on Reiser's life. Both Gordon-Levitt and Reiser join Fresh Air for a conversation about the film.

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."

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."

Singer-songwriter Nick Lowe joins Fresh Air's Terry Gross for an in-studio interview and performance featuring several songs from his 13th solo album, The Old Magic.

What if the rapture actually occurred? That's the plot of Tom Perrotta's new novel Te Leftovers, which examines the aftermath of an unexplained rapture like even in which millions of people around the globe inexplicably disappear into thin air.

Nearly 30 years ago, Hugh Herr lost both of his legs in a climbing accident at age 17. Today, he runs the Biomechatronics group at the MIT Media Lab and designs better prosthetic limbs for other amputees.

Romano recently picked up a Peabody Award for his TNT show Men of a Certain Age, which co-stars Scott Bakula and Andre Braugher. Romano explains why he returned to TV after taking a few years off when his hit sitcom Everybody Loves Raymond ended in 2005.

In his new book, The Compass of Pleasure, neuroscientist David Linden maps out the brain's relationship with pleasure and addiction. From junk food to sex to gambling, Linden explains that addictions are actually rooted in the brain's inability to feel pleasure.

Dr. David Ansell's experiences treating patients at Chicago's public hospital for 17 years turned him into a strong advocate for national health care reform. He details what it was like to work with Chicago's uninsured patient population in a new memoir and social history.

The movie Beginners stars Ewan McGregor as a young man who learns that his 75-year-old father, played by Christopher Plummer, is gay. The movie is based on filmmaker Mike Mills' own life. Mills explains what happened when his own dad came out.

Rachel DeWoskin's novel follows a gutsy 16-year-old girl navigating her way at a new performing arts high school. The book is a distinctive addition to the already packed library of coming-of-age stories.

The veteran journalist's new novel takes place in an old-school print newsroom, not unlike the one where he worked. Hamill, a longtime columnist, reflects on changes in the news industry, and explains how columnists of his day differed from today's media bloggers.

Anesthesiologist Emery Brown explains what physicians know — and what they don't know — about the effects of anesthesia. Unlocking its mysteries, he says, will help scientists better understand consciousness and sleep — and could lead to better treatments for pain, sleep disorders and depression.

Oncologist Siddhartha Mukherjee chronicles how our understanding of cancer has evolved in his new book The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer.

This interview was originally broadcast on Nov. 17, 2010. Siddhartha Mukherjee recently received the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction for 'The Emperor of all Maladies.'

Combat photographer Joao Silva is at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, where he's recovering after losing his legs in an explosion in October. Greg Marinovich is a Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer who was shot four times while covering conflicts. Silva and Marinovich talk about life as war photographers with Fresh Air's Terry Gross.

During the 1898-1904 pox epidemic, public health officials and policemen forced thousands of Americans to be vaccinated against their will. Historian Michael Willrich examines that epidemic's far-reaching implications for individual civil liberties in Pox: An American History.

Fresh Air's critic-at-large John Powers was raised to dislike Elizabeth Taylor. But he soon fell for her charms. He remembers the legendary actress who was a siren on-screen -- and a committed supporter of HIV/AIDS research.

Are doctors rationing health care? Health policy analyst Gregg Bloche says doctors routinely compromise the principles of the Hippocratic Oath when they decided which expensive tests and treatments they can and can't provide, in order to please lawmakers, lawyers and insurance companies.

Neurologist V.S. Ramachandran, a pioneer in the field of visual perception, explains how his simple experiments in behavioral neurology have changed the lives of patients suffering from a variety of neurological symptoms in The Tell-Tale Brain.