The Lives They're Living

Brian Fairbanks is the author of Willie, Waylon and the Boys, How Nashville Outsiders Change Country Music Forever .  Previously, he was an investigative reporter at Gawker and The Consumerist. He's also written for The Guardian , The New York Observer , and many other publications, and is the author of Wizards: David Duke, America's Wildest Election, and The Rise of the Far Right. Kris Kristoffer...

For this bonus episode, The Lives They're Living presents a piece done in an earlier iteration of the show, a profile of Newton M. Minow. The date we're going live is significant, for on Thursday, June 27, presidential candidates Joe Biden and Donald Trump will engage in in a debate. More than any other person, Mr. Minow was responsible for the institution of the televised presidential debate. But...

"Brilliant," "enigmatic" and "elusive" are just some of the adjectives that have been used to describe Elaine May, but there is no doubt that she has been one of the most influential figures in film and comedy over her nearly seven-decade career. The. guest on this episode, Carrie Courogen , has written the first comprehensive biography of May, Miss May Does Not Exist. In her day job, Carrie leads...

Adrienne LaFrance is the executive editor of The Atlantic; her profile of the subject of this episode, " The Godfather of American Comedy, " appears in the magazine's June 2024 issue. Before joining The Atlantic in 2014, she worked as a reporter for WBUR, Hawaii Public Radio, Honolulu Weekly, and Nieman Journalism Lab. Albert Brooks is a wildly talented comedian, writer, director and actor, and if...

Steve Stoliar has been a professional writer for more than 40 year. For television, he wrote episodes of Murder She Wrote, Simon & Simon, The New WKRP in Cincinnati, and others. Before that, while a student at UCLA, he was Groucho Marx’s personal secretary and archivist and later wrote a book based on that experience, Raised Eyebrows. The book is currently being developed into a film version s...

David Bianculli has been the TV critic for NPR's Fresh Air since 1987, and is currently a professor of television studies at Rowan University in New Jersey.  His books include Teleliteracy: Taking Television Seriously , and Dangerously Funny, The Uncensored Story of the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour. Among his many other accomplishments, Mason Williams wrote and performed one of the biggest-sellin...

Laurie Gwen Shapiro is an award-winning documentary filmmaker and journalist whose writing has appeared in The New Yorker , the New York Times, New York , the Daily Beast, and many other publications. Her documentary film awards include an Independent Spirit Award for directing IFC's Keep the River on Your Right and an Emmy nomination for HBO's Finishing Heaven. Her forthcoming book is Amelia and...

Gene Seymour spent years working for big-city newspapers as a reporter and movie and jazz critic. He's the author of a young adult history, Jazz, the Great American Art.   These days, he lives in Philadelphia and contributes mightily on a remarkable range of subjects from baseball to crime novels and many steps in between to The Nation, book forums, CNN. com, The New Republic, The Washington Post,...

Michael Tisserand is a Minnesota-based writer whose books include Krazy: George Herriman, A Life in Black and White. It's the Eisner Award-winning biography of the creator of the classic comic strip Krazy Kat. Jules Feiffer was born in 1929. He's probably most famous for the comic strip he contributed weekly to The Village Voice for more than 40 years, but that's only the beginning of his accompli...