Terry Gross

Two million patients get bacterial infections from health-care workers each year. Nearly 100,000 of them die as a result. Dr. Richard Shannon argues that those infections — and deaths — are preventable.

James Hansen, a leading NASA climate scientist, says the Bush administration has tried to silence his warnings about global warming. Writer and scientist Mark Bowen wrote a book on the affair: Censoring Science: Inside the Political Attack on Dr. James Hansen and the Truth of Global Warming.

In Paul Thomas Anderson's new film There Will Be Blood, the young actor Paul Dano plays a rural preacher at odds with the oilman (Daniel Day-Lewis) at the center of the story. Dano previously appeared in Little Miss Sunshine, playing the teen who was an elective mute.

Columnist Bob Sullivan covers Internet scams and consumer fraud for MSNBC.com, where he writes a column called The Red Tape Chronicles. His new book is about the hidden fees found in many phone, cable, credit card and other bills.

Investigative reporter David Cay Johnston explores in his new book how in recent years, government subsidies and new regulations have quietly funneled money from the poor and the middle class to the rich and politically connected.

Denzel Washington directs and stars in the new film The Great Debaters, inspired by the true story of Wiley College's winning debate team of the early 1930s. The film also stars Forest Whitaker.

Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid, a regular guest on Fresh Air, returns to discuss developments in Pakistan, where former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto died after an attack at a political rally that also killed at least 20 others. Bhutto recently had returned to Pakistan from an eight-year exile to challenge President Pervez Musharraf for the country's leadership. Ahmed Rashid covers Pakistani politics and culture for various Western publications; he has written extensively about the rise of Islamic fundamentalism in the country.

The book On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen has become a reference tool for many cooks. Now author Harold McGee has revised and updated the book. It's an exposition of food and cooking techniques, delving into technology and history. McGee diagrams the stages of making mayonnaise under a microscope, explains why peppers are hot, and why seafood gets mushy if you cook it improperly. McGee is a world-renowned authority on the chemistry of cooking.

We remember reporter Jack Newfield. He died at age 66 in New York. He was known as a muckraker and columnist. He wrote books on Robert F. Kennedy, Rudolph Giuliani and Don King. He wrote for The Village Voice, The Daily News, The New York Post and the New York Sun. In the 1960s, he was drawn to the civil rights movement. He traveled with Kennedy during the 1968 presidential campaign and was present at his assassination

Record producer Joel Dorn worked with Roberta Flack, Bette Midler, Max Roach, Herbie Mann, the Allman Brothers and many more. He worked as an in-house producer at Atlantic Records before going out on his own, and in the late 1980s he repackaged back catalogs for the major record labels. He founded or co-founded several independent labels. He died Monday at age 65, of a heart attack. Fresh Air remembers him with this archival interview from April of 1991.