Longreads Pick
“[Reagan] just stood up and he looked around the room, almost like he was doing a headcount, and he said, ‘I wanted to thank you for bringing E.T. to the White House. We really enjoyed your movie,’ and then he looked around the room and said, ‘And there are a number of people in this room who know that everything on that screen is absolutely true.’ And he said it without smiling! But he said that and everybody laughed, by the way. The whole room laughed because he presented it like a joke, but he wasn’t smiling as he said it.”
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Published: Jun 7, 2011
Length: 28 minutes (7,030 words)
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The Fresh Air Interview: Church of Scientology, Fact-Checked
GROSS: There was a meeting that you refer to in your article about Scientology, where people from the New Yorker staff met with representatives from Scientology. What was this meeting about?
Mr. WRIGHT: That was one of the most amazing days of my life. I had been out to Los Angeles to interview Tommy Davis over the Memorial Day weekend. And when he finally did come to meet with me, he said that he had decided not to talk to me.
But I asked him if he would agree at least to, you know, to respond to our fact-checking queries about the church. And he agreed to that. And over a period of time, we sent them 971 fact-checking queries, which alarmed them.
Terry Gross, NPR Fresh Air
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Interview with The New Yorker’s Lawrence Wright on his Paul Haggis vs. Scientology story. “GROSS: There was a meeting that you refer to in your article about Scientology, where people from the New Yorker staff met with representatives from Scientology. What was this meeting about? Mr. WRIGHT: That was one of the most amazing days of my life. I had been out to Los Angeles to interview Tommy Davis over the Memorial Day weekend. And when he finally did come to meet with me, he said that he had decided not to talk to me. But I asked him if he would agree at least to, you know, to respond to our fact-checking queries about the church. And he agreed to that. And over a period of time, we sent them 971 fact-checking queries, which alarmed them.”
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Published: Feb 9, 2011
Length: 11 minutes (2,947 words)
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Longreads Pick
“I’ve been relieved of so much pressure in the last year and a half,” Cobain says with discernible relief in his voice. “I’m still kind of mesmerized by it.” He ticks off the reasons for his content: “Pulling this [Nirvana] record off. My family. My child. Meeting William Burroughs and doing a record with him. Just little things that no one would recognize or care about. And it has a lot to do with this band. If it wasn’t for this band, those things never would have happened. I’m really thankful, and every month I come to more optimistic conclusions.”
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Published: Jan 27, 1994
Length: 25 minutes (6,264 words)
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Playboy Interview: Bill Gates (1994)
PLAYBOY: What else is Microsoft involved in? We’ve heard about software that can control washing machines, for instance.
GATES: [Laughs] The washing machine example is extreme, but people do sometimes kid us that we see an opportunity to sell our software in broad areas. We are involved in a new generation of fax machines that we think will be better and easier to use. And a generation of screen phones [a standard phone with a minicomputer] in which the typically cryptic buttons are replaced with a graphics interface. We’re also working on software that runs in printers. We’ve worked with people on car navigation systems. And in the home environment, something you can carry in your pocket called the Wallet PC.
By David Rensin, Playboy
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Longreads Pick
PLAYBOY: Does your net worth of multi-billions, despite the fact that it’s mostly in stock and the value varies daily, boggle your mind? GATES: It’s a ridiculous number. But remember, 95 percent of it I’m just going to give away. [Smiles] Don’t tell people to write me letters. I’m saving that for when I’m in my 50s. It’s a lot to give away and it’s going to take time. PLAYBOY: Where will you donate it? GATES: To charitable things, scientific things. I don’t believe in burdening any children I might have with that. They’ll have enough. They’ll be comfortable.
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Published: Jul 1, 1994
Length: 55 minutes (13,960 words)
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Longreads Pick
I have a job to do. If I were constantly worried about death, I couldn’t function. After a while, if your life is more or less constantly in peril, you come to a point where you accept the possibility philosophically. I must face the fact, as all others in positions of leadership must do, that America today is an extremely sick nation, and that something could well happen to me at any time. I feel, though, that my cause is so right, so moral, that if I should lose my life, in some way it would aid the cause. #MLK
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Published: Jan 1, 1965
Length: 65 minutes (16,271 words)
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The Fresh Air Interview: Joan Rivers
“Some man, 60 years old, that couldn’t take the business and went and killed himself. How do you deal with that? How do you deal with that when you’ve got a 16-year-old daughter who gets the call? Huh? And I’ll tell you how you deal with that. You go through it, and you make jokes about it, and you continue with it, and you move forward. That’s how you do it, or that’s how I do it. Everyone handles things differently. How do you make jokes about how to deal with bankruptcy? How do you deal with your fired from Fox when your numbers were still good, and you can’t get a job for a year and a half? You do it. And I do it by making jokes.”
By Terry Gross, NPR (June 2010)
(via NPRFreshAir)
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Longreads Pick
“Some man, 60 years old, that couldn’t take the business and went and killed himself. How do you deal with that? How do you deal with that when you’ve got a 16-year-old daughter who gets the call? Huh? And I’ll tell you how you deal with that. You go through it, and you make jokes about it, and you continue with it, and you move forward. That’s how you do it, or that’s how I do it. Everyone handles things differently. How do you make jokes about how to deal with bankruptcy? How do you deal with your fired from Fox when your numbers were still good, and you can’t get a job for a year and a half? You do it. And I do it by making jokes.”
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Published: Jun 9, 2010
Length: 28 minutes (7,120 words)
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