Curated playlist
National Humanities Medal recipients
- Steven SpielbergSteven Spielberg walked into Universal Studios without a pass, and the guard waved him in.
- Elton JohnElton John sang "Candle in the Wind 1997" live only once, at Princess Diana's funeral. He wrote it days before.
- Ken BurnsKen Burns was nearly nine when neighbors handed his family six twenty-dollar bills.
- Don HenleyDon Henley told interviewer Charlie Rose in March 2001 that "rock bands work best as a benevolent dictatorship." He knew the arrangement from the inside. Henley is a drummer, singer and songwriter, and a founding member of the Eagles. In…
- Gabor BorittGabor Boritt, a Hungarian-born American historian, reached New York with exactly one dollar in his pocket. He judged it the dirtiest city he had ever seen. He was a teenager, a refugee, and far from anyone who knew him. Behind him lay a…
- James M. BuchananEconomist James M. Buchanan argued that politicians act from self-interest like everyone else.
- E. L. DoctorowE. L. Doctorow won the National Book Critics Circle Award three times. He mixed real and invented people.
- Hoover InstitutionIn June 1919, Herbert Hoover sent Stanford a $50,000 telegram to start collecting war documents.
- Amartya SenAmartya Sen carries a name that was chosen for him by a Nobel laureate. Rabindranath Tagore, the first Asian to win a Nobel Prize, gave the newborn the name অমর্ত্য. The boy was born on the 3rd of November 1933 in Santiniketan, Bengal,…
- Shelby FooteShelby Foote wrote every page by hand with a nib pen, then typed up a clean copy. He thought of himself first as a novelist. Yet he is remembered for a three-volume history of the American Civil War. He expected that history to take nine…
- Quincy JonesQuincy Jones taped a sign to the entrance of a recording studio in 1985, and it read "Check Your Ego at the Door." Behind that door waited most of the major American recording artists of the day. Jones needed every one of them to work as…
- Victor Davis HansonAfter earning a Stanford PhD, Victor Davis Hanson went home and farmed. He grew orchards and vineyards for four years.
- John Lewis GaddisGeorge F. Kennan trusted historian John Lewis Gaddis with his papers, and the biography won a Pulitzer Prize.
- Charles RosenPianist Charles Rosen wrote his first book because a record sleeve note embarrassed him. It won a National Book Award.