Terry Gross

In How to Read a French Fry: And Other Stories of Intriguing Kitchen Science, Russ Parsons answers alll sorts of food science questions, including why meat browns, why sauces emulsify and how frying is different from roasting.

Food writer Ruth Reichl famously went undercover to review restaurants for The New York Times. In a series of interviews on Fresh Air, she discusses her formative food experiences, her restaurant reviews and her tenure at Gourmet magazine.

Americans consume more bananas than apples and oranges combined. Dan Koeppel, author of Banana: The Fate of the Fruit That Changed the World, gives us a primer on the expansive history -- and the threatened future -- of the seedless, sexless fruit.

Would you eat a steak grown in a laboratory? Science writer Michael Specter examines the progress scientists have made in developing test-tube meat. "Depending on what your definition of any sort of life is, this is as fundamental as any animal is," he says.

Two years after opening his award-winning Chicago restaurant Alinea, chef Grant Achatz was diagnosed with tongue cancer. He describes losing and regaining his taste in Life, on the Line. "My palate developed just as a newborn," Achatz says. "i don't recommend it, but I think it made me a better chef."

Director Brad Bird decided to cast comedian Patton oswalt as the film's leading rat after watching him perform a stand-up routine about a steak restaurant. He says Oswald, a serious foodie himself, was "perfect for Remy."

Leiber, the lyricist behind "Jailhouse Rock," "Yakety Yak" and "Stand By Me," died Monday. He was 78. Fresh Air remembers the songwriter with excerpts from a 1991 interview with Leiber and his songwriting partner Mike Stoller.

Greg Mottola's sci-fi comedy, now out on DVD, stars Simon Pegg and Nick Frost as two guys who hit the highway after Comic-Con -- and pick up an ET on the side of the road. The character-driven laughs depend on your buying into a main character who's entirely computer-generated.

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.

A new Christian movement that seeks to take dominion over politics, business and culture in preparation for the end times and Jesus' return is becoming more of a presence in American politics. Rachel Tabachnick, who researches the religious right, explains its beliefs and influences.