Curated playlist
Place of birth missing (living people)
- Brian T. DelaneyBrian T. Delaney is an American actor whose credits include voicing Scarecrow on Batman Unlimited and the male Sole Survivor in Fallout 4. Those two credits sit atop a far longer resume spanning animated films, television series, and video…
- Christopher Kelly (historian)Christopher Kelly, a British-Australian classicist and historian born in London and raised in Sydney, has spent his career asking a question that most people never think to ask: what actually held the later Roman Empire together, and what…
- Tarnya CooperTarnya Cooper has spent her career bringing Tudor faces back to life. As Chief Curator and eventually Curatorial Director at the National Portrait Gallery in London, she oversaw some of the most technically ambitious investigations into…
- Travis WillinghamTravis Willingham grew up in Dallas with a brother named Carson and a private school education that ended after sixth grade, when his family moved him to J.L. Long Middle School. He became interested in acting in fifth grade. By the time…
- Jeff PerrenJeff Perren wrote four pages of rules. That modest document, drafted for a batch of Elastikon toy soldiers, helped set in motion one of the most consequential chains of events in hobby gaming history. Who was the man behind those pages,…
- RaekwonRaekwon was accidentally shot four times in a crossfire, and he later called it an "important eye opener." That near-death moment pushed Corey Woods, born on the 12th of January 1970 in Brownsville, Brooklyn, toward the microphone. What…
- Ed StarkEd Stark is a game designer whose name appears on some of the most recognized titles in tabletop role-playing history. He began at West End Games writing for lines like TORG and the Star Wars roleplaying game. From there he helped shape…
- Walter Everett (musicologist)Walter Everett is a music theorist at the University of Michigan whose career has been built on a single, stubborn question: what actually happens, note by note, in popular music? That question led him to a two-volume study of the Beatles…
- Retha WarnickeRetha Warnicke believes that Anne Boleyn was not born in 1501, as most historians long assumed, but in the summer of 1507. That single revision, the difference of a few years, sits at the heart of one of the most contested…
- Bryan BurkBryan Burk served as producer on Star Wars: The Force Awakens in 2015. That credit belongs alongside two Mission: Impossible films, the Star Trek reboot series, and television including Lost, Fringe, and Westworld. Burk built all of that…
- Eric Goldberg (game designer)Eric Goldberg is an American game designer who built much of his career inside the tabletop role-playing game industry. Long before it became a satirical classic, Paranoia started as a home-grown design that Dan Gelber ran for his own…
- Tom ShoneTom Shone spent five years as the Sunday Times film critic, from 1994 to 1999, sitting in darkened cinemas and wrestling with questions that most critics of his era were happy to dismiss. What made the summer blockbuster tick? Was it art,…
- Stephen Glover (screenwriter)Stephen Antuan Glover, born on the 18th of June 1988, once recorded rap vocals meant to sound like someone else. The character was Alfred Miles, an aspiring rapper who performs as Paper Boi on the FX series Atlanta, played on screen by…
- James Graham-CampbellJames Graham-Campbell's 1995 catalogue documented Viking-Age gold and silver found across Scotland, covering a span from AD 850 to 1100. That book was one of five major publications he produced across a long career devoted to what the…
- Russo brothersThe Russo brothers directed Avengers: Endgame on a budget paid in part by student loans and credit cards. That credit card film came first. Before the billion-dollar box office receipts, before the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Anthony and…
- Chris Perkins (game designer)Christopher Perkins was born on the 29th of February 1968, which means his birthday falls on the calendar only once every four years. That quirk of timing fits a career defined by patience and long games. For 28 years, Perkins shaped the…
- ND StevensonND Stevenson was born on the 31st of December 1991, in Columbia, South Carolina, into a family he would later describe as "very religious." That upbringing shaped almost everything that followed, sometimes by giving him a framework to work…
- J. D. DillardJ. D. Dillard grew up as a Navy brat, the son of a Naval flight officer. His father, Bruce Dillard, was the second African-American ever selected to fly for the Blue Angels. Born on the 26th of December 1987, Dillard spent his early years…
- The Duffer BrothersMatt Duffer and Ross Duffer, identical twins credited together as the Duffer Brothers, were born on the 15th of February 1984. They work on every project as a single pair, never apart. That partnership eventually produced the horror film…
- Naomi ZackNaomi Zack was born in 1944 in Brooklyn, New York, to a Jewish mother and a father who was Black and Native American. That combination of identities placed her at the intersection of multiple worlds from the very start of her life. How…
- Claudia GrayClaudia Gray is not a real name. It is a mask worn by Amy Vincent, an American writer who has built one of the more quietly remarkable careers in contemporary fiction by moving between worlds that almost never overlap. She writes science…