On attempting to quit people and stay home.

“When I first received this Nobel Prize for Literature, I got to wondering exactly how my songs related to literature. I wanted to reflect on it and see where the connection was. I’m going to try to articulate that to you. And most likely it will go in a roundabout way, but I hope what I say will be worthwhile and purposeful.”

The late governor’s most enduring speech.

On simplicity, self-reliance and refusing to cooperate with “the apparatus of secrecy” that surrounds online surveillance.

Creators, gatekeepers, and the future of the comedy business.

A transcript of Oswalt’s keynote at last week’s Just For Laughs conference.

Delivered at the Austin Convention Center on March 15, 2012.

In the beginning, every musician has their genesis moment. For you, it might have been the Sex Pistols, or Madonna, or Public Enemy. It's whatever initially inspires you to action. Mine was 1956, Elvis on the Ed Sullivan Show. It was the evening I realized a white man could make magic, that you did not have to be constrained by your upbringing, by the way you looked, or by the social context that oppressed you. You could call upon your own powers of imagination, and you could create a transformative self.

Mikhail Khodorkovsky, oil magnate and once the richest man in Russia, delivers a speech from prison, where he has lived since 2003.

Atul Gawande’s recent commencement address at Stanford’s School of Medicine graduation. “Each of you is now an expert. Congratulations. So why—in your heart of hearts—do you not quite feel that way?”