Jun 27, 2020

For decades, she ran HBO Documentary Films, producing over a thousand and winning more prime-time Emmies than any other person, clearly reflecting her love of the form. “No! I hate documentaries. I didn’t like documentaries at all. I wanted to do things that people watched; I wanted to get patted on the back; I wanted...

Jun 20, 2020

This singer, songwriter, and author didn’t have an easy start. “I had a chaotic childhood, to put it mildly, an abnormal childhood.” Then she discovered Laura Ingalls Wilder. Little Therapist on the Prairie? Nope. A guide to an orderly life. Or so it seemed to a kid. The result: an impressively accomplished adult.

Jun 13, 2020

She is an admired actor (West Wing), but it’s her playwriting (Fires in the Mirror), drawing on the techniques of documentary film, that first caught my attention. Just starting as a writer, she met a woman at a party. “And she said I’m going to give you three questions you can ask  people. Well, they changed the...

Jun 6, 2020

An esteemed historian (This Republic of Suffering) and president emeritus of Harvard, she suggests that the widespread misuse of “disinterested” to mean “uninterested” rather than "objective" reflects a broad undervaluing of objectivity, open-mindedness, and intellectual honesty. Seldom has so bleak an insight...