Last year, I talked with critics Alan Sepinwall and Matt Zoller Seitz about “TV: The Book,” in which they ranked the greatest TV shows of all time. Deservedly, “Breaking Bad” was near the top, and now Alan has published “Breaking Bad 101: The Complete Critical Companion.” It’s full of the episode recaps he wrote during […]
Here’s my conversation with Kathryn Miles, author of “Quakeland: On The Road To America’s Next Devastating Earthquake.” I asked her if we’ve gotten any better at predicting earthquakes, which American cities are most at risk, and whether our infrastructure can handle a big quake. We also discussed the skepticism of midwesterners who remember the panic […]
Long before there was a Funny Bone or a Helium Comedy Club or the Comedy Store or the Comic Strip or Yuk Yuk’s, there was a place in Hell’s Kitchen in New York called The Improv. It was started by Budd Friedman, who I met a couple of years ago when I was in LA […]
A couple of years ago, I read Caitlin Doughty’s book, “Smoke Gets In Your Eyes,” in which she’d graduated from college with a degree in medieval history and took a job at a crematory, which led to all sorts of odd encounters and bodies of every shape and size. That led her to become a […]
Almost a quarter-century ago, I spotted two brothers named Tom and David Gardner on AOL (when it was pretty much the only way for most of us to do anything online). They were the guys behind The Motley Fool, and their mission was to teach people how to become informed investors. This was at a […]
With the death of Hugh Hefner this week at age 91, I called upon Patty Farmer to discuss his legacy because she worked with him on her books, “Playboy Laughs: The Comedy, Comedians, and Cartoons of Playboy” and “Playboy Swings: How Hugh Hefner and Playboy Changed the Face of Music.” Among the topics we discussed: […]