Curated playlist
20th-century American educators
- Lyndon B. JohnsonLyndon B. Johnson took the presidential oath from a woman, a first for any American president.
- Aaron CoplandComposer Aaron Copland planned one year of study in Paris with Nadia Boulanger but stayed three.
- John A. GarratyHistorian John A. Garraty let his subject's grandson argue back in the footnotes.
- Katherine JohnsonKatherine Johnson was the mathematician an astronaut asked for by name. NASA was using electronic computers for the first time to calculate John Glenn's orbit of the Earth. Officials turned to Johnson to verify the machine's numbers,…
- Edmund WilsonCritic Edmund Wilson mailed strangers a postcard listing over two dozen things he would not do.
- Pope Leo XIVBefore the 2025 conclave, the future Pope Leo XIV, Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost, explained his chances to a friend by text message. "I'm an American, I can't be elected," he wrote. He was elected anyway. This documentary follows a path…
- Harold BloomHarold Bloom argued that every poet struggles to escape the shadow of earlier poets.
- Christa McAuliffeChrista McAuliffe had a short, blunt answer when a talk-show host asked her about her coming mission. Appearing on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, she said: "If you're offered a seat on a rocket ship, don't ask what seat. Just get…
- André WinkReviewers called André Wink's history of Islam in India monumental and seriously flawed.
- Thomas P. StaffordApollo 10's lunar module spun out of control after Thomas Stafford flew it within nine miles of the Moon.