Parenting & Families

MIT professor Sherry Turkle was 27 when she learned that her estranged father had conducted psychological experiments on her when she was a child. She looks back on her childhood in a new memoir.

The sleight-of-hand master explores themes of identity, honesty and the emotional cost of keeping secrets in the memoir, AMORALMAN. DelGaudio's one-man show In & Of Itself is now available on Hulu.

O'Brien reflects on writing, mortality and his experiences in Vietnam in the new documentary, The War and Peace of Tim O'Brien.

The COVID-19 pandemic has left many American families without child care and in-person schooling. Those new household burdens have largely landed on the shoulders of women, says Journalist Claire Cain Miller. She has been working from home, reporting on how the pandemic has affected the lives of mothers, in a New York Times series called "The Primal Scream."

Historian Russell Shorto, delved into his own family and his grandfather who was a mob boss in the industrial town of Johnstown, Pa. Shorto says his grandfather's involvement with the Johnstown mob initially began as an offshoot of Prohibition, which opened doors for Italian Americans facing employment discrimination.

At the onset of the pandemic, the Wilco frontman began filming The Tweedy Show, an at-home Instagram series with his wife and sons. His also has a new memoir, How to Write One Song, and a new album.

Kate Winslet began her film career at the age of 17 in the film 'Heavenly Creatures'. She then co-starred in the blockbuster 'Titanic.' Now she stars in the same-sex love story set in the mid 1800's. She talks about how things have changed in her life, and for women in Hollywood since she started her career.

Kirsten Johnson's new Netflix documentary, Dick Johnson Is Dead, tells the story of moving her dad out of his home in Seattle and into her apartment in New York. It also enacts her father's death from imagined accidents, like getting hit in the head by a falling air conditioner or tripping on a crack in the sidewalk.

Johnson has worked as a cinematographer for over 50 documentaries, and has directed seven movies, including Cameraperson and the short film The Above. She says her father laughed when she pitched the idea to him.

Pollock worked in a paper mill and meatpacking plant for 32 years before becoming a writer. Netflix's film version of his novel, The Devil All the Time, drops Sept. 16. Originally broadcast in 2011.

Mike Birbiglia explores his ambivalence about parenthood in the new book, The New One: Painfully True Stories from a Reluctant Dad. Stein collaborated on the memoir, contributing her side of the story through poems, published under the name J. Hope Stein.

In a career spanning four decades, Dickey authored seven books and reported from more than 40 countries, often covering war, conflict and espionage. He died July 16. Originally broadcast in 1998.

Mary Trump's father, Fred Trump Jr., was Donald Trump's older brother and the black sheep of the family. After Fred Jr.'s death in 1981, Mary Trump's grandfather changed his will to exclude Mary and her brother. She writes about her family's tangled history in the new memoir, Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man.

Colin Jost's new memoir, A Very Punchable Face, describes his experiences growing up in a middle-class household on Staten Island. "Part of writing this book was being excited to talk about parts of my life and weird episodes in my life that I thought that would be entertaining for people," he says. Or, he adds, for people to "just get another chance to laugh at me."

Blogger Kristen Howerton talks about how raising two white biological daughters and two black adopted sons helped her understand white privilege. Her new memoir is Rage Against the Minivan.

Dew, who died May 22, wrote intimately about family relationships in both fiction and nonfiction. She spoke to Terry Gross in 1994 about The Family Heart, her memoir about learning her son was gay.

Growing up in Aledo, Ill., the singer-songwriter longed to live somewhere "more romantic." Then she moved away: "Now, when I go back, I see the beauty in it," she says. Originally broadcast in 2017.

COVID-19 has transformed home life — turning kitchen tables into home offices and classrooms and putting a spotlight on the countless household tasks typically performed by women. Brigid Schulte says the pandemic has laid bare the "grotesque inequality" that exists within many families. Schulte is the director of the Better Life Lab, a work-life, gender equity and social policy program at the New America think tank.

For much of his life, humorist John Moe has dealt with clinical depression that's triggered by stress. Now, faced with the COVID-19 crisis, he says, "my depression wants to flare up."