Elizabeth Swados Discusses Being the Sister of a Mentally Ill Brother.

Television executive and first time novelist, Eugene Stein. Stein's novel is "Straightjacket & Tie" (Ticknor & Fields) a coming of age story about a teenager beginning to understand his sexuality and his newly schizophrenic older brother. He is helped along by a family of wisecracking space aliens visible only to a small segment of the population, including "Jewish lefties with a family history of mental illness". Stein is a Vice President for Comedy at ABC Productions, and a graduate of the Columbia School of Journalism.

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."

Susan Silverman, on her sister comic Sarah Silverman, growing up secular Jewish and becoming a rabbi, adopting two Ethiopian boys, and how she was affected by the death of a sibling when she was very young.