Health & Medicine

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.

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.

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."

Heimel, who died on Sunday, was known for the humorous advice she doled out in columns for The Village Voice and Playboy. Originally broadcast in 1991.

Lauren Slater is a journalist, practicing psychologist and a patient of psychotropic drugs - drugs that alter brain chemistry to treat problems like mood disorders and anxiety. She'll talk about her personal and professional experience with these drugs.

Religion scholar Kate Bowler used to believe God had a plan for her life. Then she was diagnosed with incurable colon cancer. "I really had to rethink what trust and hope looks like," she says.

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.

Medical journalist Jeanne Lenzer warns that implanted medical devices are approved with far less scrutiny and testing than drugs. As a result, she says, some have caused harm and even death.

Vox.com drug policy reporter German Lopez details the scope of the opioid epidemic, and Bobby Allyn, a reporter at WHYY in Philadelphia, discusses the idea of safe injection sites.

Dr. Henry Jay Przybylo specializes in pediatric anesthesiology and treats about 1,000 children a year, including premature babies. His new memoir is called Counting Backwards.

Music critic Anthony DeCurtis has written a new biography of Lou Reed who was also his friend.

As someone who lives with obsessive-compulsive disorder, novelist John Green sometimes feels like his mind is spiraling uncontrollably.

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.

The National Sleep Foundation recommends an average of eight hours of sleep per night for adults, but sleep scientist Matthew Walker says that too many people are falling short of the mark.

The 24-year-old Polley has acted professionally since the age of 6. She starred in the Atom Egoyan films Exotica and The Sweet Hereafter. She's currently starring in the film My Life Without Me, based on a story by Nanci Kincaid called Pretending the Bed is a Raft. It's about a young, working single mother who learns she's going to die but keeps it a secret. The changes she makes to her life give her a new sense of liberation. Polley also will appear in the upcoming film The I Inside and a remake of the cult horror film Dawn of the Dead.