Terry Gross

In The Center Cannot Hold, lawyer and psychiatry professor Elyn R. Saks chronicles her own struggle with schizophrenia. The battle began with early symptoms at age 8 and has continued throughout her life; she had her first full-blown episodes during her terms at Oxford and Yale. Saks, who has for years controlled her condition with daily medication and therapy, is an expert in the field of mental-health law, and teaches at the University of Southern California.

It's been a busy congressional season — contentious hearings with Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez in the hot seat, revisions to the nation's domestic-eavesdropping laws, major ethics-reform moves and, of course, debate about what to do about Iraq. Journalist Carl Hulse, who reports on Congress for The New York Times, reviews the legislative session.

Khaled Hosseini's second novel, A Thousand Splendid Suns, currently sits atop the New York Times best-seller list; his fiction debut, The Kite Runner, has been on the list for two years.

Hosseini, like his Kite Runner protagonist, left Afghanistan when he was boy, when his family fled before the Soviet invasion, and didn't return for decades. His father was a diplomat, and the family was granted political asylum in America.

Fellow novelist Isabel Allende calls The Kite Runner "one of those unforgettable stories that stays with you for years."

Jeffrey Eugenides' Pulitizer Prize-winning novel Middlesex has been on the bestseller list since its publication; it's now available in paperback.

Eugenides is also the author of The Virgin Suicides, which was adapted into a feature film.

This interview first aired on Sept. 24, 2002.

Singer Pegi Young has just released a self-titled debut album after many years of singing backup for her husband, Neil Young. Pegi wrote many of the songs on the album, too. Her main focus in life, however, has been the creation of the Bridge School for special-needs children like her son Ben, who was born with cerebral palsy. Now, with her kids grown (the Youngs also have a daughter named Amber), she's found time to get into the studio to record her own music.

Mark Olsen and Will Scheffer created the HBO series Big Love, now in its second season. It's about a man (Bill Paxton) and his three wives (Chloe Sevigny, Jeanne Tripplehorn and Ginnifer Goodwin). They've broken from the Mormon church and still practice polygamy — a tradition disavowed by mainline Mormons. Olsen and Scheffer are credited as writers and producers on the series. This year, they won a Writer's Guild Award for their work.

Climatologist Kerry Emanuel, professor at MIT's Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences, was named one of the world's 100 most influential people last year by Time magazine — in part because of a study he published, a month before Hurricane Katrina, that looked at thousands of hurricanes over several decades and found that the average power of the storms had doubled.

Paul Rudd, who co-starred in Knocked Up and The 40 Year Old Virgin, produced and stars in the new independent film The Ten — a series of irreverent vignettes that reinterpret the Ten Commandments for a modern audience.

Rudd also stars in the upcoming movie I Could Never Be Your Woman, with Michelle Pfeiffer. His other films include Clueless, Anchorman and The Cider House Rules, and he's been seen on TV's Friends and Reno 911!.

Actress Liv Ullman, longtime muse of filmmaker Ingmar Bergman, talks about working with the legendary director, who died today at the age of 89. Bergman made more than 50 films, including The Seventh Seal, Cries and Whispers, and Fanny and Alexander. (Rebroadcast of 5/11/1993)

Forbes magazine writer Robyn Meredith talks about the economic realities behind her new book: The Elephant and the Dragon: The Rise of India and China and What It Means for All of Us. Previously, Meredith wrote for The New York Times and USA Today.