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Curated playlist

20th-century American Buddhists

  • Jack KerouacJack Kerouac typed On the Road on a 120-foot roll of taped tracing paper. He finished the final draft in 20 days.
  • Tina TurnerTina Turner crossed a Texas freeway on foot on the 1st of July 1976 with 36 cents and a Mobil credit card in her pocket. She had slipped out of a hotel suite in Dallas after a fight, while her husband slept. Her destination was a nearby…
  • John CageJohn Cage once had a pianist play nothing for four minutes and thirty-three seconds. Audience noise became the music.
  • Angelina JolieAngelina Jolie has appeared in films that grossed more than $6.9 billion worldwide, and Hollywood has named her its highest-paid actress several times. As a teenager, though, she took at-home courses on embalming because she hoped to…
  • Steve JobsSteve Jobs died on the 5th of October 2011, and he had arranged one last gesture for the people who came to remember him. At the memorial held at Stanford University, every guest received a small brown box as a farewell gift from him.…
  • Tiger WoodsTiger Woods won the 1997 Masters by twelve strokes, and the margin was only the beginning of what made that week strange. On the 13th of April 1997 he finished 18 under par with a total of 270, leaving runner-up Tom Kite far behind. Woods…
  • Henry Steel OlcottHenry Steel Olcott was the first well-known American of European ancestry to formally convert to Buddhism.
  • Gillian AndersonGillian Anderson was arrested on her graduation night. She had broken into her own high school in Grand Rapids, Michigan, hoping to glue the locks of its doors shut. Her classmates had voted her "class clown," "most bizarre girl" and "most…
  • Belinda CarlisleBelinda Carlisle spent the third day of a London hotel stay in 2005 pacing a room thick with cigarette smoke. She had been awake and using cocaine for most of three days. She looked in a mirror and later said she saw no light and no soul…
  • Alan WattsAlan Watts resigned as an Episcopal priest in August 1950. He later became a leading voice of Zen in America.

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