The Genius of Buster
A profile of silent film comedian Buster Keaton:
The story of his life seems in its twists and dives borrowed from his movies, survival demanding a pure lack of sentiment.
A profile of silent film comedian Buster Keaton:
The story of his life seems in its twists and dives borrowed from his movies, survival demanding a pure lack of sentiment.
Jana Prikryl New York Review of Books May 2011 15min Permalink
On the reverberations of a 1974 peasant massacre in El Salvador.
In the 1970s, Kelbessa Negewo was a midlevel administrator in Ethiopia’s brutal Red Terror regime. In the 1990s, he was a bellhop in an Atlanta hotel. Then someone he had tortured back home recognized him.
Andrew Rice New York Times Magazine Jun 2006 30min Permalink
Fred Wilpon, the owner of the hapless New York Mets, had more than $500 million tied up with Bernie Madoff when the Ponzi scheme was exposed. Now he may be forced to sell his beloved ballclub.
Jeffrey Toobin New Yorker May 2011 45min Permalink
The circus Roger Ailes created at Fox News made his network $900 million last year. But it may have lost him something more important: the next election.
Gabriel Sherman New York May 2011 25min Permalink
The anatomy of a scandal.
- The Economist May 2011 10min Permalink
A campaign diary of Luther Campbell’s (better known as Dr. Luke of 2 Live Crew) run for Mayor of Miami-Dade County.
Francisco Alvarado The Miami New Times May 2011 15min Permalink
A woman is killed. Her husband is accused. A famous/infamous medical examiner investigates.
What’s going on here isn’t just science. It’s something deeper, something stranger, something at the same time both terrifying and fascinating.
Dan P. Lee Philadelphia Magazine Oct 2006 25min Permalink
On the strange ethics of Stieg Larsson’s Millenium trilogy:
What matters instead is the division of the world into good and evil, a division that begins with splitting sex into positive and negative experiences, then ripples out from that in fascinating ways.
Tim Parks New York Review of Books May 2011 15min Permalink
The intertwining histories of two men who defined twentieth century European style.
Paul Johnson This Recording Jan 2011 30min Permalink
The Radiolab host on why young journalists should stop waiting for their turn and embrace the idea of horizontal loyalty:
Think about turning to people you already know, who are your friends, or friends of their friends and making something that makes sense to you together, that is as beautiful or as true as you can make it.
Robert Krulwich Berkeley School of Journalism May 2011 25min Permalink
The Facebook COO on her generation’s failures and the continuing gender gap in American business and politics.
Today, we turn to you. You are the promise for a more equal world. You are our hope. I truly believe that only when we get real equality in our governments, in our businesses, in our companies and our universities, will we start to solve this generation’s central moral problem, which is gender equality.
Sheryl Sandberg Barnard College May 2011 10min Permalink
A former ambassador to China and potential 2012 GOP candidate on the power of optimism:
Remember others. The greatest exercise for the human heart isn't jogging or aerobics or weight lifting – it's reaching down and lifting another up. Find a cause larger than yourself, then speak out and take action. Never let it be said that you were too timid or too weak to stand by your cause. Learn what it feels like to give 100 percent to others. It’ll change your life.
Jon Hunstman University of South Carolina May 2011 10min Permalink
The author comments on the medium of the graduation cliché while still advancing it:
Of course the main requirement of speeches like this is that I'm supposed to talk about your liberal arts education's meaning, to try to explain why the degree you are about to receive has actual human value instead of just a material payoff. So let's talk about the single most pervasive cliché in the commencement speech genre, which is that a liberal arts education is not so much about filling you up with knowledge as it is about "teaching you how to think". If you're like me as a student, you've never liked hearing this, and you tend to feel a bit insulted by the claim that you needed anybody to teach you how to think, since the fact that you even got admitted to a college this good seems like proof that you already know how to think.
David Foster Wallace Kenyon College May 2005 15min Permalink
Pinch-hitting for an ailing Ted Kennedy, the then-candidate honors the Kennedy’s life of service and implores graduates to wed their lives to others:
Ted Kennedy often tells a story about the fifth anniversary celebration of the Peace Corps. He was there, and he asked one of the young Americans why he had chosen to volunteer. And the man replied, ‘Because it was the first time someone asked me to do something for my country.’ I don’t know how many of you have been asked that question, but after today, you have no excuses.
Barack Obama Wesleyan University May 2008 15min Permalink
The doctor and New Yorker writer on embracing the shortcomings of expertise:
The truth is that the volume and complexity of the knowledge that we need to master has grown exponentially beyond our capacity as individuals. Worse, the fear is that the knowledge has grown beyond our capacity as a society.
Atul Gawande Stanford School of Medicine Jun 2010 10min Permalink
Speaking to a group that started their college lives in September, 2001, the host of The Daily Show embraces how difficult the real world is:
I want to address is the idea that somehow this new generation is not as prepared for the sacrifice and the tenacity that will be needed in the difficult times ahead. I have not found this generation to be cynical or apathetic or selfish. They are as strong and as decent as any people that I have met. And I will say this, on my way down here I stopped at Bethesda Naval, and when you talk to the young kids that are there that have just been back from Iraq and Afghanistan, you don’t have the worry about the future that you hear from so many that are not a part of this generation but judging it from above.
Jon Stewart William and Mary May 2004 Permalink
Former Washington Post opinion page editor Greenfield on not being overwhelmed by the past in the search for a “better truth”:
History helps guard against moral smugness too, or it should, anyway. For you are obliged, if you are honest, to acknowledge at least some reflection or resonance of the fallen ones in your own nature. Such humility is a conspicuously missing aspect of our contemporary culture, however. What might be a becoming spell of moral introspection, tends instead to become an orgy of bashing and blaming. I observe that now, as always in this country, when people speak of a terrible, all embracing decline in ethical standards, they are invariably speaking of the decline in their next door neighbor's standards, not their own.
Meg Greenfield Williams College Jun 1987 10min Permalink
The Washington University philosophy professor devotes 4,697 words to the importance of using one’s education to better communicate with loved ones:
I want to talk to you about talking, that commonest of all our intended activities, for talking is our public link with one another; it is a need; it is an art; it is the chief instrument of all instruction; it is the most personal aspect of our private life. To those who have sponsored our appearance in the world, the first memorable moment to follow our inaugural bawl is the birth of our first word. It is that noise, a sound that is no longer a simple signal, like the greedy squalling of a gull, but a declaration of the incipient presence of mind, that delivers us into the human realm.
WIlliam Gass Washington University Jun 1979 20min Permalink
The comedian speaks to his alma mater about the importance of taking risks, and his own rocky path from college to the late-night stage:
What else can you expect in the real world? Let me tell you. As you leave these gates and re-enter society, one thing is certain. Everyone out there is going to hate you. Never tell anyone in a roadside diner that you went to Harvard. In those situations, the correct response to, “Where did you go to school?” is “School? I never had much in the way of book learnin’ and such.” And then get in your BMW and get the hell out of there. Go.
Conan O'Brien Harvard University May 2000 10min Permalink
A profile of Arnold Schwarzenegger written during his first year in office as Governor of California:
"You know, the thing I love about Mexican women is how furry their pussies are."
Connie Bruck New Yorker Jun 2004 1h5min Permalink
The downfall of a Goldman Sachs director:
"Now from, for the last three or four, I mean four or five years, I've given him a million bucks a year, right?" says Rajaratnam. "Yeah, yeah," says Gupta, who doesn't appear taken aback at all by Rajaratnam's next remark: "After taxes. Offshore. Cash."
Suzanna Andrews Businessweek May 2011 Permalink
TM The only other time I saw you was in Bleecker Bob’s in the ‘70s. You walked in eating pizza and wearing aviator glasses and Bleecker Bob showed you an Ian Dury picture sleeve and you said, “I don’t listen to music by people I don’t wanna fuck.” PS (laughter) Yeah, that was me.
Patti Smith, Thurston Moore BOMB Magazine Nov 1996 20min Permalink
You get steeped in this stuff as a kid, even if some part of you was always skeptical, it's hard to lose the residual sense that everything unfolding in the world—from natural disasters to commerce and geopolitics—signals some approaching doomsday.
Maud Newton The Awl May 2011 15min Permalink
A bridge, a preventable leap, and the politics of barriers for “suicide hotspots.”
Matthieu Aikins The Coast Jan 2008 25min Permalink