College students

Growing up in rural Idaho, Tara Westover had no birth certificate, never saw a doctor and didn't go to school. Her parents were religious fundamentalists who stockpiled food, mistrusted the government and believed in strict gender roles for their seven children.

Author David Mendelsohn says having his 81-year-old father in the college seminar he was teaching on Homer's Odyssey led to an unexpected bonding.

Perrotta's most recent novel was inspired by the upheaval he experienced when his kids grew up and moved out of the house. Originally broadcast July 31, 2017.

It's a time-honored tradition for novelists to draw material from their own lives, and author Tom Perrotta is no exception. His 2004 book, Little Children, sprang from his experience as the parent of young kids. Three years later, he published The Abstinence Teacher, which was inspired, in part, by the junior-high and high-school sports his children played at the time.

Critic David Edelstein reviews a film that may sound a lot like a campus-bound version of Glee, but has more to it than that label might suggest.

In Drake Doremus' drama Like Crazy, a young couple is forced to separate when one of them violates the terms of her student visa. Movie critic David Edelstein says the movie is painful and compelling -- and reminds him of Richard Linklater's Before Sunrise.

The winner of the inaugural Queer Palm at Cannes, Gregg Araki's Kaboom is a freewheeling apocalyptic comedy centered around a sexually curious college freshman. Critic David Edelstein says the exhilarating movie is "part Blake Edwards, part David Lynch."

Maureen Corrigan reviews Lorrie Moore's most recent novel.

4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, a new film by Romanian director Cristian Mungiu, follows two women trying to arrange an illegal abortion in the repressive days of Nicolae Ceausescu's dictatorship.

Matt Bennett is the founder of Christian Union, an organization of evangelicals at Ivy League schools whose goal is to reach those who will go on to become part of America's academic elite. The group operates ministry centers at Brown, Cornell and Princeton universities. Bennett, a graduate of Cornell, founded the organization in 2002. Rachel Blair is a student at Princeton and is a member of Christian Union.