Parenting & Families

Writers, directors and actors Jay and Mark Duplass first became known for making fast, cheap indie films. Their success led to bigger films and to making the HBO series Togetherness which starred Mark. Now they have a new memoir about making films and the advantages and limitations of being close-knit brothers and artistic collaborators.

British singer-songwriter Tracey Thorn writes music that chronicles themes in women's lives that aren't often addressed in pop lyrics. Take, for instance, the single "Babies," off her new solo album Record. The song is meant to be a humorous ode to birth control, but there's also a deeper feeling to it.

Journalist Alex Wagner was 12 years old when a line cook in a diner asked her if she was adopted. Wagner was taken aback — her father's family came generations ago from Luxembourg, and her mother came to the U.S. from what was then Burma.

Gregory Pardlo's new memoir, Air Traffic, chronicles his complicated relationship with his father, a labor organizer who lost his job following the air traffic controllers' 1981 strike.

The Academy Award-winning filmmaker, who died on April 13, spoke to Fresh Air in 1994 about growing up in the former Czechoslovakia, first under the Gestapo, then under communist rule.

Henry plays Alfred, aka the rapper "Paper Boi," on the FX series Atlanta. As his character becomes more successful, Henry says, he's getting "a little further away from the essence of who [he] is."

Stevens, who played Matthew Crawley on Downton Abbey, now plays a young man who's grown up thinking he has schizophrenia on Legion, an FX drama that's a spin-off of the Marvel Comics X-Men series.

Four years ago, Eels founder Mark Oliver Everett decided to take a break. After 25 years of making music, he says, "I got to the point where if you do any one thing too much in your life, it catches up to you and makes it clear that you need to do something else."

Growing up with a Mexican father and an American mother, author Luis Alberto Urrea often felt like there was a border wall running through his family's San Diego apartment.

Writer Maggie O'Farrell has survived some terrifying episodes. She's had a machete pressed to her throat during a robbery, once contracted amoebic dysentery while traveling and nearly bled out while giving birth to her first child.

New York Times reporter John Leland followed six people above the age of 85 for one year. That series changed his understanding of old age — and inspired his book, Happiness is a Choice You Make.

Film critic John Powers reviews About Schmidt starring Jack Nicholson.

Vanity Fair editor-at-large Cullen Murphy grew up the son of a cartoonist. His father, John Cullen Murphy, drew the popular Prince Valiant strip, which Murphy eventually wrote for 14 years.

Growing up as a first-generation Chinese-American in Northern California, novelist Amy Tan found herself pulled by two different notions of fate: Her mother was guided by beliefs in curses and luck, while her father, a Baptist minister, was guided by Christian faith.