Curated playlist

American agnostics

Albert EinsteinAlbert Einstein once spent his days examining patents for gravel sorters.
H. P. LovecraftH. P. Lovecraft died in 1937 virtually unknown to readers. His monsters later became global touchstones.
John SteinbeckJohn Steinbeck once stole bacon from a produce market to survive. He later won the 1962 Nobel Prize in Literature.
Kurt VonnegutKurt Vonnegut survived the bombing of Dresden by hiding in an underground meat locker.
Leonardo DiCaprioLeonardo DiCaprio owes his first name to a kick. His pregnant mother felt the baby move while she stood before a Leonardo da Vinci painting in the Uffizi museum in Florence, Italy. That child grew up to be an American actor and film…
J. Robert OppenheimerJ. Robert Oppenheimer gripped a post to steady himself as the first nuclear bomb went off.
Enrico FermiEnrico Fermi won a Nobel Prize partly for new elements that were really fission products.
Miles DavisMiles Davis called jazz dead near the end of his life. He had spent five decades helping define it.
Tom WaitsTom Waits accepted his place in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2011 with a joke at his own expense. “They say that I have no hits and I'm difficult to work with. And they say that like it's a bad thing!” The man who inducted him, Neil…
Susan B. AnthonySusan B. Anthony voted in 1872, waited, and was arrested days later. She then refused to pay her $100 fine.
Eugene O'NeillPlaywright Eugene O'Neill was born in a hotel room and died in one. His last words were about that coincidence.
Aaron CoplandComposer Aaron Copland planned one year of study in Paris with Nadia Boulanger but stayed three.
Arthur MillerArthur Miller wrote Death of a Salesman in less than six weeks. He finished the first act in less than a day.
Carl SaganCarl Sagan once asked a librarian for a book on stars and got one about movie stars.
Stan LeeStan Lee used a pen name because comic books embarrassed him. He wanted his real name saved for a novel he never wrote.
Daniel CraigIn 2021, the English actor Daniel Craig was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. It sits at 7007 Hollywood Boulevard, an address that winks at the code number 007. Two days later his final film as that famous spy opened in the…
Milton FriedmanMilton Friedman argued the Federal Reserve let the money supply shrink by one-third between 1929 and 1933.
Carrie FisherCarrie Fisher once asked to be reported as drowned in moonlight, strangled by her own bra.
Vladimir NabokovNovelist Vladimir Nabokov also named butterfly species, and later genetic research backed his theory.
Alexander Graham BellAlexander Graham Bell was honored after his death in an unusual way. When his funeral ended, for one minute at 6:25 p.m. Eastern Time, every telephone on the continent of North America was silenced. The man being remembered is credited…
Jim JonesJim Jones was an American preacher who founded the Peoples Temple. On the 18th of November 1978, 912 people died at his jungle commune in Jonestown, Guyana. Among them were 304 children. Jones called the event "revolutionary suicide," a…
Billie EilishBillie Eilish was 18 years old when she left the 62nd Annual Grammy Awards in 2020 holding all four of the ceremony's general field prizes. Only one person had done that before her, and no woman had. Not long before, she had been a…
Emma StoneEmma Stone, born Emily Jean Stone, once built a PowerPoint presentation for an audience of her parents. Its title was "Project Hollywood," and its purpose was to persuade them to let a teenager from Arizona pursue acting in California. The…
Joseph HellerJoseph Heller's novel Catch-22 was first called Catch-18. It was renamed to avoid confusion with Mila 18.
Warren BuffettWarren Buffett's yearbook photo called him a future stockbroker. He was seventeen and liked math.
Edward TellerEdward Teller stood and watched the Trinity test while nearly everyone else lay face-down.
Ben AffleckBen Affleck directed Argo, and for it he collected the Golden Globe, the Directors Guild Award and the BAFTA for Best Director without ever being nominated for the Academy Award for Best Director. No director had done that before him. The…
George R. R. MartinA chess craze helped save George R. R. Martin's writing career. Bobby Fischer's 1972 win got him a tournament job.
W. E. B. Du BoisW. E. B. Du Bois died in Ghana the day before the March on Washington. He was 95 and had renounced his U.S. citizenship.
Ambrose BierceAmbrose Bierce's last known letter said he was leaving for an unknown destination. He then vanished at age 71.
Billy Bob ThorntonBilly Bob Thornton was working as a waiter at an industry event in Los Angeles when he found himself serving the film director Billy Wilder. Thornton struck up a conversation with him. Wilder's advice was simple: think about becoming a…
Diane KeatonDiane Keaton was born Diane Hall, but she gave up that surname before her career took off, because another actress was already registered under it. She chose her mother's maiden name instead. The new name would be credited in films across…
Ray KurzweilRay Kurzweil's team built a machine that read printed pages aloud for blind people. It was unveiled in January 1976.
Wilhelm ReichIn 1956, a United States court ordered six tons of Wilhelm Reich's books and papers burned.
Edwin HubbleEdwin Hubble studied law at Oxford because of a promise to his dying father. He still became an astronomer.
Neil deGrasse TysonNeil deGrasse Tyson was nine years old when he visited the sky theater of the Hayden Planetarium in New York. He grew up to be an American astrophysicist, author and science communicator, born on the 5th of October 1958. Looking back, he…
Florence WelchFlorence Welch, the English singer and songwriter, chose the name of her band while the clock was running out. About an hour before her first gig, she still had no name to announce. Her best idea was Florence Robot Is A Machine, which she…
James Holmes (mass murderer)James Eagan Holmes, an American born in 1987, made a phone call to a mental health crisis hotline in the moments before he carried out the 2012 Aurora theater shooting. By his own account, he hoped someone might talk him out of it at the…
Pedro PascalPedro Pascal was nine months old when his family fled Chile, after six months of sheltering inside the Venezuelan embassy in Santiago. Both of his parents had been listed as enemies of the state by the regime of General Augusto Pinochet.…