Curated playlist
Yale University alumni
- Richard PoirierLiterary critic Richard Poirier signed a 1968 pledge to refuse federal taxes. It was a protest against the Vietnam War.
- Jon ParelesJon Pareles played the Harkness Tower carillon while still a Yale student. He also DJed and wrote for campus papers.
- Raymond L. GarthoffRaymond Garthoff rejected the 1976 Team B claim that Soviet doctrine saw nuclear war as winnable.
- Kenneth PomeranzWhy did industrialization happen in Europe and not in China? Historian Kenneth Pomeranz answered in a 2000 book.
- Stephen Holmes (political scientist)Stephen Holmes argues that liberty depends on taxes. Rights need government enforcement to mean anything.
- Jennifer ConnellyJennifer Connelly was eleven years old when she walked into an audition for the director Sergio Leone and tried to pass as a ballerina. She had never taken a ballet lesson. She simply imitated what she imagined a dancer would do. Leone was…
- Lewis GordonPhilosopher Lewis Gordon argues that racists are not irrational but hyper-rational.
- Paul KrugmanPaul Krugman turned to economics because psychohistory was fiction. Asimov's novels inspired him.
- James FrancoFor five weeks, James Franco spent twelve hours a day in a gully built as a film set, and he left it only to use the lavatory. Between takes he read books, including academic textbooks, just to keep busy. The American actor and filmmaker…
- Warren Sturgis McCullochA reading machine for blind people looked like part of the brain to one researcher. Warren McCulloch built it in 1947.
- Shawn LevyShawn Levy once played a morgue worker on Stranger Things. He later helped run the show as executive producer.
- Daniel YerginDaniel Yergin started his energy research firm with a two-dollar file cabinet.
- Eli WhitneyEli Whitney's cotton gin made him famous but left him near bankruptcy. Lawsuits over the 1793 patent drained him.
- Maurice PodoloffMaurice Podoloff suspended 32 players for life over a point-shaving scandal. He was the NBA's first commissioner.
- Scott BessentScott Bessent won Senate confirmation as United States secretary of the treasury on the 27th of January 2025, by a vote of 68-29. On that same day, a man carrying several Molotov cocktails and a knife, who intended to murder him, was…
- Richard Taylor (Confederate general)Richard Taylor became a Confederate lieutenant general without ever attending a military academy.
- Stephen GreenblattStephen Greenblatt was stunned when universities sought experts in "New Historicism," a phrase he coined.
- Jodie FosterJodie Foster was a teenager when she acted as a French interpreter at a press conference during the Cannes Film Festival. The film was Taxi Driver, which won the Palme d'Or that year, and the journalists in the room came away impressed. By…
- Joel MokyrEconomist Joel Mokyr won half of the 2025 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. He argues ideas drive growth.
- Grace HopperGrace Hopper hung a clock on her office wall that ran counterclockwise. She wanted code in plain English.