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Retired U.S. Navy flight surgeon and NASA astronaut Captain Jerry Linenger talks about the awe and peril of space travel. He spent five months on the Russian Space station Mir and wrote about the account in his book, Off the Planet: Surviving Five Perilous Months Aboard the Space Station Mir." He described the Mir as "six school buses all hooked together." During his time there, he says, he and fellow crew members had numerous brushes with death, lacked adequate supplies and battled constant system failures. Linenger's new book is Letters from Mir: An Astronaut's Letters to His Son.

In the past ten years, one third of the executions in the United States have been carried out in the state of Texas. Since 1924, executions in Texas have taken place in the Walls Unit in Huntsville. The Warden of that prison, Jim Willett, narrates a documentary titled Witness to an Execution. It includes first hand accounts from the men and women who participate in and witness executions as part of their jobs. Guards, chaplains and reporters talk about their work -- detailing what occurs in the minutes before, during and after the execution. The prison employees say they do the job because the vast majority of citizens want it done. Most are affected by the work. Some reach the breaking point and find they can no longer work in the system.

The New York Times and its Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Judith Miller have presented twin accounts of Miller's role in the Valerie Plame CIA leak case. The articles provide details of Miller's testimony -- and open up new questions about the paper's oversight.

Comedian and actor Will Ferrell talks about his new film Stranger Than Fiction. Ferrell plays an accountant who finds that his life has a voiceover that only he can hear. It turns out he's the subject of a novel, and that the writer plans to kill him. Ferrell became famous as a cast member on Saturday Night Live from 1995 to 2002, and has gone on to star in movies such as Old School, Elf and Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby.

Slate magazine editor Jacob Weisberg has a few things to say about the presidency of George W. Bush. He's assembled his thoughts in a book called The Bush Tragedy, which Time magazine political columnist Joe Klein calls a "scorching, powerful and entirely plausible account" of an administration whose "epic collapse" Klein has lately been writing about.

Attorney General Ashley Moody warned Floridians to be alert for scams as the federal government begins sending out money as part of a $2.3 trillion...

The modern Bible is the product of translations and interpretations that span centuries. But a true understanding of its meaning should take into account its origins in Jewish culture, according to biblical scholar Marc Zvi Brettler, author of How to Read the Bible.

U.S. and U.N. officials agree -- Iraq's 12,000-page weapons declaration comes up short. Secretary of State Colin Powell goes so far as to say Iraq is in material breach of a Security Council resolution. And a former U.N. biological weapons inspector explains some of the holes in Iraq's account. NPR's Vicky O'Hara reports, and hear from former weapons inspector Raymond Zilinskas.

KENNETH KAMLER, MD is a surgeon who also climbs mountains. He was team doctor on three expeditions to the top of Mount Everest, including the disastrous 1996 trip. Kamler is both storyteller and advisor in his book, Doctor on Everest: Emergency Medicine at the Top of the World A Personal Account including the 1996 Disaster. Blackened limbs due to severe frostbite were the least of his troubles: I-V fluids are frozen solid, and abrasions cannot heal at such high altitudes. Kamlers day job is Director of the Hand Treatment Center in Hyde Park, New York, where he is a microsurgeon. Hes done research on telemedicine for NASA and Yale Medical School.

Journalist Jack Newfield's close work with Robert F. Kennedy during the last year of his life informs Newfield's 1969 book, RFK: A Memoir, which offers a first-hand account of the assassinated politician and attempts to separate the man from myth.