Terry Gross

Chris Nowinski has made a crusade of fighting head injuries in football. The Harvard-educated former pro wrestler had to leave the ring after suffering multiple concussions. He now educates others — including the NFL — on what head injuries can do to players' brains years later.

Sargent Shriver, the founding director of the Peace Corps and the architect of President Johnson's War on Poverty, died on Tuesday. He was 95. Shriver spoke to Terry Gross in 1995 about his role in the War on Poverty.

In this week's New Yorker, Atul Gawande asks whether it's possible to lower medical costs by giving the neediest patients better care. Gawande says that primary care physicians who target the chronically ill are the new leaders in health care reform.