Curated playlist
Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
- Martin ScorseseMartin Scorsese's love of movies began because asthma kept him out of games.
- Woody AllenWoody Allen failed a film production course at New York University, then went on to direct Annie Hall.
- James M. McPhersonHistorian James M. McPherson helped lobby against a Disney theme park near the Manassas battlefield.
- Martin Luther King Jr.Martin Luther King Jr. died at the age of 39, yet his autopsy showed the heart of a 60 year old, according to his biographer Taylor Branch. Branch attributed the damage to stress. The causes were many. King was jailed repeatedly, attacked…
- Quentin TarantinoQuentin Tarantino turned down Speed and Men in Black to write Pulp Fiction in Amsterdam.
- George LucasGeorge Lucas turned down a higher directing fee for Star Wars. He asked for toy and merchandise rights instead.
- Meryl StreepDino De Laurentiis insulted Meryl Streep in Italian, not knowing she spoke it. She answered him in Italian too.
- Emi NakamuraEmi Nakamura found that many recorded price changes were just temporary sales.
- Thomas JeffersonThomas Jefferson died on July 4, 1826, the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.
- Duke EllingtonDuke Ellington wrote his first piece while working as a soda jerk, before he could read music.
- Jean-Paul SartreJean-Paul Sartre asked to be dropped as a Nobel nominee, then won anyway. His 1964 letter went unread.
- Karl BarthKarl Barth mailed the Barmen Declaration to Adolf Hitler. The Swiss theologian wrote nearly all of it.
- Robert Lucas Jr.Robert Lucas's divorce deal gave his ex-wife half of any Nobel Prize awarded before October 31, 1995.
- Amy FinkelsteinOregon held a Medicaid lottery in 2008, and economist Amy Finkelstein turned it into an experiment.
- Alexander HamiltonAlexander Hamilton was still a teenager in 1771 when the owner of Beekman and Cruger, an import-export firm on the island of Saint Croix, sailed away and left him running the place for five months. The young man had been born out of…
- Paul SimonPaul Simon, the American singer-songwriter and guitarist, nearly gave one of his best-known songs the wrong name. While writing music for the film The Graduate, he toyed with calling a new song "Mrs. Roosevelt." Art Garfunkel passed the…
- Paul McCartneyPaul McCartney traded a trumpet for a guitar and wrote his first song on it. His father had given him the trumpet.
- Clint EastwoodPresident Reagan quoted Clint Eastwood's line "Go ahead, make my day" to Congress.
- James Prescott JouleJames Joule used a falling weight to spin a paddle wheel in water. The rising temperature showed work turning into heat.
- Saul BellowSaul Bellow learned he had entered the U.S. illegally as a child when he tried to enlist. He became a citizen in 1941.
- Woodrow WilsonWoodrow Wilson ordered his own supporters to vote against his League of Nations treaty.
- John CageJohn Cage once had a pianist play nothing for four minutes and thirty-three seconds. Audience noise became the music.
- Terrence MalickAfter Days of Heaven, director Terrence Malick moved to Paris and stayed out of public view for roughly two decades.
- Elizabeth WarrenElizabeth Warren began her bankruptcy research thinking most filers were gaming the system. She found abuse was rare.
- Roger SessionsComposer Roger Sessions won a Pulitzer Prize for a whole career, then another for one concerto.
- Francis Ford CoppolaMarlon Brando won the Godfather role only after a screen test and a reduced fee.
- Bob IgerBob Iger began on television sets earning $150 a week and later ran Disney twice.
- Leonhard EulerLeonhard Euler kept producing math after going almost totally blind. In 1775 he wrote about one paper a week.
- Ingmar BergmanAt nine, Ingmar Bergman traded his tin soldiers for a magic lantern. He soon staged Strindberg puppet plays.
- Joseph PriestleyJoseph Priestley isolated oxygen but never accepted what it meant.
- Kathleen Kennedy (producer)Assistant Kathleen Kennedy was supposed to take notes but set her pencil down to pitch ideas.
- Ken BurnsKen Burns was nearly nine when neighbors handed his family six twenty-dollar bills.
- Kenneth PomeranzWhy did industrialization happen in Europe and not in China? Historian Kenneth Pomeranz answered in a 2000 book.
- BonoBono, the lead singer of U2, took his name from the sign of a hearing aid shop in Dublin. The shop was called Bonavox, and it stood just off O'Connell Street, the city's principal thoroughfare. The word comes from the Latin for good voice.…
- Akira KurosawaRashomon won Venice's Golden Lion in 1951 after its own studio entered it reluctantly.
- Thomas CarlyleA housemaid burned the only draft of Thomas Carlyle's first French Revolution volume. He rewrote it from nothing.
- John Stuart MillJohn Stuart Mill was reading Greek at age three. His father was deliberately raising a genius.
- George AkerlofGeorge Akerlof showed why good used cars can vanish from a market.
- Abraham ReesAbraham Rees finished a 45-volume cyclopaedia, then said he was more grateful to have published his sermons.
- Daniel Day-LewisDaniel Day-Lewis collapsed sobbing during a 1989 Hamlet, in the scene where the ghost of Hamlet's father appears.
- Samuel BeckettSamuel Beckett once drove a young André the Giant to school. The future wrestler was a boy in rural France then.
- Esther DufloEsther Duflo was 46 when she became the youngest Nobel economics winner ever. She shared it in 2019.
- Paul KrugmanPaul Krugman turned to economics because psychohistory was fiction. Asimov's novels inspired him.
- Walter CronkiteWalter Cronkite took off his glasses and told America President Kennedy had died.
- Marc Isambard BrunelWithin 15 weeks of its opening, one million people had walked through the Thames Tunnel, the first tunnel ever built under a river. Its builder was Sir Marc Isambard Brunel, a French-British engineer best known for the work he did in…
- Marquis de LafayetteThe Marquis de Lafayette lies buried in Picpus Cemetery in Paris, beneath soil carried across the Atlantic from Bunker Hill in Massachusetts. He gathered that earth himself, intending it for his grave. Americans call him simply Lafayette.…
- 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…
- Carl Friedrich GaussAt nineteen, Carl Friedrich Gauss proved a 17-sided polygon could be drawn with just a compass and straightedge.
- Jacob GrimmJacob Grimm and his brother expected their dictionary to take roughly ten years. It was finished in 1961.
- Janet YellenJanet Yellen is the only person to have led the Fed, the White House economic advisers and the Treasury.