Terry Gross

Singer, songwriter and producer T-Bone Burnett says his approach to making music is simple: "Just listen until it sounds right."
Burnett has been getting it right for a long time, and his latest project is the critically acclaimed film Crazy Heart, for which he wrote several songs for the main character — a broken-down musician played by Jeff Bridges. Bridges is not a trained singer.

Jonathan Cohn traveled the country in search of ordinary Americans who had been affected by America's health care crisis. The stories he found — of heart attack victims becoming casualties of overcrowded emergency rooms and diabetes patients going blind because they can't afford treatment — earned him the Harry Chapin Media Award for coverage of poverty-related issues, as well as praise from both journalism and health care professionals. They also became the core of his book Sick: The Untold Story of America's Health Care Crisis — and the People Who Pay the Price.

T. Christian Miller doesn't shy away from trouble. He has reported on conflicts in Kosovo, Israel and Iraq, among others, and the Web site he founded, ProPublica, is dedicated to covering stories with "moral force" — providing in-depth coverage of environmental, defense, and human rights issues. One story Miller has been following closely, in a series of articles titled "Disposable Army," is the fate of employees who worked for private military contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan.