Health & Medicine

Vox reporter Sarah Kliff spent over a year reading thousands of ER bills and investigating the reasons behind the costs, including hidden fees, overpriced supplies and out-of-network doctors.

Mary Pipher's new book, Women Rowing North, chronicles the positive aspects of transitioning from middle age to old age: "At this life stage, women start granting themselves the power of no."

Neuroscientist Judith Grisel studies how addictive drugs work on the brain and why they're so hard to give up - whether they're illicit drugs like heroin and cocaine, or prescription drugs like opiates and certain anti anxiety and insomnia medications. She is also a recovering addict -- 30 years sober.

Sigrid Nunez's National Book Award-winning novel is narrated by a woman grieving the suicide of her longtime friend and former writing professor, whom she slept with once.

Transplant surgeon Joshua Mezrich has written a new book that is part history of transplant medicine, and other part memoir.

Almost 10 years ago, journalist Hillary Frank was pregnant and planning to give birth without medication or surgery — but things didn't go according to her plan.

Growing up in Swaziland, Richard E. Grant was always fascinated by acting. As a kid, he made theaters out of shoeboxes and populated them with figurines that he'd cut from magazines. Eventually he moved on to real stages, first in school plays and then with an amateur theater club.

As a criminal justice reporter for the Houston Chronicle, Keri Blakinger has a special interest in covering the conditions of prisoners — in part because she spent nearly two years locked up in county and state correctional facilities herself.

Hudson lived a double life as a Hollywood heartthrob and a closeted gay man. Biographer Mark Griffin says Hudson's death from AIDS in 1985 was a turning point in public awareness of the epidemic.

Five years ago, author and artist Jonathan Santlofer was at home with his wife, food writer Joy Santlofer, when Joy began feeling feverish. Joy, who had undergone outpatient surgery the day before for a torn meniscus in her knee, called her doctor's office and was told to come for her scheduled appointment four days later. That appointment never happened.

For trauma surgeon Joseph Sakran, gun violence is a very personal issue. He has treated hundreds of gun wound victims, comforted anxious loved ones and told mothers and fathers that their children would not be coming home.

But Sakran's empathy for his patients and their families extends beyond the hospital. Sakran knows the pain of gun violence because he is a survivor of it; when he was 17, he took a bullet to the throat after a high school football game.

New York Times Magazine journalist Robert Draper talks about why Republicans love to attack Rep. Nancy Pelosi, the challenges she faces within her own party and her bid to be speaker of the House.

Immunologist Daniel Davis says scientists are harnessing the power of the immune system to create new medications to fight cancer, auto-immune conditions and other diseases.

Religion scholar Elaine Pagels lost her young son to terminal illness and her husband a year later in an accident. Her new book combines memoir and biblical scholarship to reflect on loss and faith.

When author and illustrator Jarrett J. Krosoczka was in the fourth grade, his grandparents called him into the living room. "I remember thinking: Oh maybe we're going to go on another family vacation," he says. (The last time they called a family meeting he learned they were going to Disney World.)

Set in New York City in the 1970s, The Deuce centers on the intersection of sex work, pornography, organized crime, the police, politicians and feminists. Gyllenhaal didn't have a problem with the role, but she did have strong feelings about how the power dynamics of sex should be portrayed.

When Linda Kay Klein was 13, she joined an evangelical church that prized sexual "purity" and taught that men and boys were sexually weak.

After writing biographies of Charles Dickens and Mary Wollstonecraft, Tomalin turned to memoir. Her new work tells of her conflicting desires to have children and to lead a meaningful working life.

Author Beth Macy's book, 'Dopesick,' takes an intimate look at cops, judges, drug dealers, young heroin users and their long-suffering parents, doctors and health activists struggling to fight the opioid epidemic.

In his autobiography, Siren Song, Stein writes about how he started out in the music business as a teen before going on to sign groundbreaking artists like Talking Heads, Madonna, Ice-T and k.d. lang.