Curated playlist
Members of the American Philosophical Society
- 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.
- Charles DarwinCharles Darwin likened confessing his theory to confessing a murder. He told botanist Joseph Dalton Hooker in 1844.
- Barack ObamaObama rejected a plan to bomb a compound in Pakistan and sent Navy SEALs instead. The 2011 raid killed Osama bin Laden.
- T. S. EliotT. S. Eliot compared an evening sky to a patient on a surgical table.
- James M. McPhersonHistorian James M. McPherson helped lobby against a Disney theme park near the Manassas battlefield.
- Theodore RooseveltTheodore Roosevelt was shot in the chest, then gave a 90-minute speech. It happened in Milwaukee in October 1912.
- Nikola TeslaNikola Tesla spent his last decades claiming he had built a death beam. He said it could stop an army 200 miles away.
- Carl LinnaeusCarl Linnaeus exposed a mayor's prized seven-headed hydra as a fake. He and his student had to flee Hamburg in a hurry.
- Jimmy CarterJimmy Carter once was lowered into a crippled nuclear reactor for 90 seconds at a time. He later ran for president.
- John D. RockefellerJohn D. Rockefeller, the son of a traveling con artist, became the first billionaire in the United States.
- J. Robert OppenheimerJ. Robert Oppenheimer gripped a post to steady himself as the first nuclear bomb went off.
- Ulysses S. GrantIn 1859, Ulysses S. Grant freed an enslaved man worth at least $1,000 that he desperately needed.
- Colin PowellOn the 5th of February 2003, Colin Powell addressed the United Nations Security Council. He told the council: "there can be no doubt that Saddam Hussein has biological weapons and the capability to rapidly produce more, many more." The…
- Robert Lucas Jr.Robert Lucas's divorce deal gave his ex-wife half of any Nobel Prize awarded before October 31, 1995.
- Al GoreAl Gore won the 2000 popular vote but lost the presidency by 537 Florida votes.
- 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…
- Edward ThorndikeEdward Thorndike timed hungry cats escaping from puzzle boxes. It led to his law of effect.
- Enrico FermiEnrico Fermi won a Nobel Prize partly for new elements that were really fission products.
- 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.
- David A. BellHistorian David A. Bell argues nationalism was built, not natural. He traces it in France from 1680 to 1800.
- John Archibald WheelerJohn Archibald Wheeler spent decades calling a dying star a "gravitationally completely collapsed object."
- Eugene O'NeillPlaywright Eugene O'Neill was born in a hotel room and died in one. His last words were about that coincidence.
- Thomas EdisonThomas Edison clamped his teeth into a piano to hear it. He was deaf in one ear and barely heard from the other.
- Carl SaganCarl Sagan once asked a librarian for a book on stars and got one about movie stars.
- Joseph PriestleyJoseph Priestley isolated oxygen but never accepted what it meant.
- Joseph StiglitzJoseph Stiglitz explained why wages stay high in recessions even when workers are desperate for jobs.
- Ken BurnsKen Burns was nearly nine when neighbors handed his family six twenty-dollar bills.
- Margaret L. KingRenaissance scholar Margaret L. King became an assistant professor three years before her doctorate.
- Neil ArmstrongNeil Armstrong's astronaut application came about a week late, until a colleague slipped it into the pile.
- Robert SeamansRobert Channing Seamans Jr. sat down for his last television interview in the autumn of 2007, speaking about the guidance and navigation system that helped carry Apollo astronauts to the Moon. He did not see it aired. The episode of the…
- Noam ChomskyNoam Chomsky wrote his first article at age 10, about the fall of Barcelona.
- John von NeumannJohn von Neumann's father asked Theodore von Kármán to talk his son out of mathematics.
- 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.
- David LandesBefore he taught at Harvard, David Landes decoded Japanese messages.
- Max PlanckMax Planck called his quantum idea "an act of despair." The cautious physicist launched quantum physics reluctantly.
- 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…
- Andrew CarnegieAndrew Carnegie sat down in 1868, at the age of 33, and wrote himself a memo that read like a vow. He called the piling up of wealth one of the worst forms of idolatry. He planned to cap his income at $50,000 a year and retire from…
- Louis PasteurIn 1885, Louis Pasteur treated a boy mauled by a rabid dog despite holding no medical license.
- Carl Friedrich GaussAt nineteen, Carl Friedrich Gauss proved a 17-sided polygon could be drawn with just a compass and straightedge.
- Claude Lévi-StraussClaude Lévi-Strauss died in 2009, and for four days the world did not know.
- Paul SamuelsonPaul Samuelson said he was born as an economist at age sixteen. It happened in a 1932 Chicago lecture on Malthus.
- James TobinJames Tobin proposed a tax on currency trading to throw sand in the wheels of speculation.
- Joan RobinsonEconomist Joan Robinson coined a word in 1933 that the Supreme Court used in 2019.
- Warren BuffettWarren Buffett's yearbook photo called him a future stockbroker. He was seventeen and liked math.
- Alan GreenspanIn October 2008, Alan Greenspan told Congress his faith in free markets had a flaw.
- Angus DeatonIn 2024, Nobel economist Angus Deaton said he had changed his mind on much of mainstream economics.
- Alexander von HumboldtAlexander von Humboldt climbed Chimborazo in 1802, gasping and bleeding from his gums.