Curated playlist
United States Air Force airmen
- Marvin GayeMotown boss Berry Gordy refused to release Marvin Gaye's What's Going On.
- Jack NicholsonJack Nicholson improvised one line in the 1980 horror film The Shining, and it was not in the script.
- Hunter S. ThompsonHunter S. Thompson's Gonzo style began as a Kentucky Derby deadline scramble. He mailed pages ripped from his notebook.
- Sam ElliottSam Elliott is the actor who voices Smokey Bear, a mascot who happens to share his birthday, the 9th of August 1944. Elliott took on that role in 2008, and the match feels almost too neat to be true. His voice is deep and sonorous, and it…
- Cormac McCarthyCormac McCarthy bought a portable Olivetti Lettera 32 at a Knoxville pawn shop for $50, shortly before a trip to Europe in the early 1960s. Over the next five decades he typed about five million words on it. He kept it running by blowing…
- John WilliamsSteven Spielberg laughed at John Williams's two-note Jaws theme, thinking it was a joke.
- Larry LieberLarry Lieber could not say where he found the word uru, the name of the mystical metal from which Thor's hammer Mjolnir is made. It first appeared in the debut of Marvel's thunder god, in Journey into Mystery #83, cover-dated August 1962.…
- William BoninWilliam George Bonin was an American serial killer, and the prosecution against him once called him "the most arch-evil person who ever existed." Between 1968 and 1980 he attacked boys and young men in southern California, and briefly in…
- Morgan FreemanIn January 2010, Morgan Freeman became the voice that opened the CBS Evening News, replacing Walter Cronkite in that spot. The network said it wanted consistency across the introductions to its regular news broadcasts and special reports.…
- Willie NelsonWillie Nelson plays a classical guitar with a hole worn through its face. Decades of strumming with a pick have scoured a wide sweep of wood away beside the sound hole. Classical guitars are made for fingers, so this one has no pickguard…
- Randy KraftAmong the things investigators found after Randy Kraft's arrest was a ring binder. Inside it was a hand-written list of 61 terms and phrases, neatly printed. Some entries were a single word. One read Dog. Another read Deodorant. A third…
- Whitey BulgerOn the 22nd of June 2011, agents in Santa Monica, California, used a ruse to lure an 81-year-old man out of his apartment. They arrested him without incident. He was James Joseph "Whitey" Bulger Jr., who had once led the Winter Hill Gang,…