Curated playlist
American lecturers
- Mark TwainMark Twain predicted he would die with Halley's Comet, and he did. He died the day after it passed closest to the Sun.
- Herman MelvilleHerman Melville's death notice misspelled his great novel as "Mobie Dick."
- T. S. EliotT. S. Eliot compared an evening sky to a patient on a surgical table.
- Elizabeth Cady StantonElizabeth Cady Stanton's father once told her he wished she were a boy. She spent decades answering him.
- Arthur MillerArthur Miller wrote Death of a Salesman in less than six weeks. He finished the first act in less than a day.
- W. H. AudenW. H. Auden died hours after reading his poems aloud in a Vienna hotel.
- Ralph Waldo EmersonRalph Waldo Emerson put a plain question to Henry David Thoreau in the fall of 1837. "Do you keep a journal?" he asked. The question became a lifelong inspiration for Thoreau. Emerson had his own answer to it. His journal was eventually…
- Frederick DouglassFrederick Douglass never knew his birthday, so he picked February 14. His mother had called him her Little Valentine.
- William JamesWilliam James argued we do not run from a bear because we are afraid. We are afraid because we run.
- Rudolf CarnapRudolf Carnap argued that most deep philosophical questions were meaningless.