Curated playlist
Soviet emigrants to the United States
- Bill WeisbandWhy did the U.S. never charge Bill Weisband with spying? A spy trial would have exposed its codebreaking methods.
- Mila KunisMila Kunis was seven years old when she started school in Los Angeles without knowing a word of English. She has described how fast it all happened. "We arrived in New York on a Wednesday and by Friday morning my brother and I were at…
- Milla JovovichMilla Jovovich once invented and mastered an alien language of more than 400 words, all for a single film role. She is an American actress, singer and former model, born in Kyiv and raised in Los Angeles. In 2006 the music channel VH1…
- Ayn RandWhen Ayn Rand died in New York City on the 6th of March 1982, her funeral included a six-foot floral arrangement shaped like a dollar sign. The tribute suited a woman who had turned self-interest into a moral code. She was born Alisa…
- Sergey BrinSergey Brin, co-founder of Google, helped build a search tool that grew faster than its makers expected. His partner Larry Page later recalled the moment the project began to feel real: "Pretty soon, we had 10,000 searches a day. And we…
- Aleksandr SolzhenitsynAleksandr Solzhenitsyn watched Moscow's victory fireworks from a prison cell. He was a decorated Red Army captain.
- Isaac AsimovIsaac Asimov coined the word "robotics" in a 1941 story, thinking it was just a natural term.
- George GamowGeorge Gamow added Hans Bethe's name to a physics paper as a prank. Bethe had not written a word of it.
- Yul BrynnerA few days after Yul Brynner died, a thirty-second warning from him appeared on all the major American television networks and in other countries. The Russian and American actor looked straight into the camera. He said: "Now that I'm gone,…
- Theodosius DobzhanskyTheodosius Dobzhansky went from collecting butterflies in Kiev to writing a landmark book on evolution.