Tom and Dick Smothers came to CBS in 1967 not really intending to lead or support a revolution. They just got caught up in it — and they happened to have a network program "The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour", with some 30 million viewers, on which they criticized the war in Vietnam, celebrated rock 'n' roll music and satirized politics and politicians.
Willie Lincoln was only 11 when he died in February 1862 of typhoid fever. The Lincolns' third son was said to be their favorite, and after Willie was interred in a borrowed mausoleum in Oak Hill Cemetery in Georgetown, his father, Abraham Lincoln, returned to that cemetery several times. Newspapers reported that the president visited the crypt to open his son's coffin and hold his body. It's that image, of Lincoln cradling the corpse of his beloved son in a Pietà pose, that inspires George Saunders' first novel, called Lincoln in the Bardo.
President Trump has vowed to repeal the Affordable Care Act, but Sarah Kliff of Vox.com says it's "an overreach" to say that Republicans have a plan for what comes next
In August 1966, a student and former Marine ascended to the top of the tower that housed the University of Texas' main library and began shooting at people below. He killed 14 people on the campus and wounded 31 more. Hours earlier, Charles Whitman had killed his wife and mother in their homes. He was eventually shot to death by police. A 15th victim died in 2001, from injuries sustained in the attack. Now the new documentary Tower re-creates that 96-minute-long massacre in an original way, using archival film and new interviews with an animated portrayal of the events.
There are two things viewers should know right from the start about Legion, which premieres Wednesday night on FX. One is that it doesn't look, or feel, like a drama based on a comic book — it's more like a next-generation version of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, as filtered through H.P. Lovecraft or Edgar Allan Poe.
Sheelah Kolhatkar discusses the investigation of billionaire hedge-fund trader Steven A. Cohen. She says the ways Wall Street elites accumulate wealth often negatively affect the rest of the country.
Mukherjee, who died Saturday in Manhattan, grew up in India, Switzerland and England. Her work explores the thoughts and experiences of immigrants from many countries. Originally broadcast in 2002.
Lancaster, Ohio, the home of the Fortune 500 company Anchor Hocking, was once a bustling center of industry and employment. At its peak following World War II, Lancaster's hometown company was the world's largest maker of glassware and employed more than 5,000 town residents. Though Anchor Hocking remains in Lancaster today, it is a shell of its former self, and the once thriving town is beset by underemployment and drug abuse. Lancaster native Brian Alexander chronicles the rise and fall of his hometown in his new book, Glass House.
Sarah Posner, a reporter with The Nation's Investigative Fund, talks about how the Steve Bannon-Jeff Sessions-Mike Pence nexus is influencing President Trump's policies.
The British actor, who died last week, became famous in the U.S. in the '70s for his starring role in the BBC series I, Claudius, and later appeared in the film Alien. Originally broadcast in 1989.
Jay Bakker is the son of televangelists Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker. In 1989 his father, Jimmy, was convicted of defrauding his followers at the Praise The Lord ministry, and sent to prison. Then his parents divorced. Bakker was 13 years old at the time. In his new memoir, Son of a Preacher Man: My Search for Grace in the Shadows, (Harper), he writes of returning to faith after a long period of alcoholism and disillusionment. Jay Bakker now heads his own ministry, Revolution, in Atlanta, ministering to skateboarders, punk rockers, and hippies, and other neglected kids.
Legal expert Jeffrey Rosen says of the Supreme Court nominee: "If he thought that individual liberty was threatened by presidential or congressional overreaching, then he would step in."
Iranian director Asghar Farhadi's latest film is one of the five nominees for this year's foreign-language Academy Award. Critic David Edelstein says The Salesman is tense and powerful.
Utopian communities don't fare much better in fiction than they do in real life. As the plot usually unfolds, a brave new world loses its luster fast when the failings of its founder are exposed, or when the community itself begins to morph into a cult. Think of Lauren Groff's Arcadia or Carolyn Parkhurst's Harmony, two recent novels that have imagined alternative communities and their inevitable crack-up.
Humans have had to face death and mortality since since the beginning of time, but our experience of the dying process has changed dramatically in recent history.
Moore, who died Wed. at the age of 80, played a single professional woman on the 1970s show named after her, aand became beloved for her portrayal of a housewife on The Dick Van Dyke Show. TV critic David Bianculli has an appreciation
George Crile is a veteran producer for CBS's 60 Minutes and 60 Minutes II. He's the author of the new book, Charlie Wilson's War: The Extraordinary Story of the Largest Covert Operation in History. It's about the CIA's secret war in Afghanistan in the 1970s and 1980s, and its support of the Afghan Mujahideen against the Soviet Union. Ammunitions and weapons were smuggled across the border and at one point over 300,000 fundamentalist Afghan warriors carried weapons provided by the CIA.
Moore, who died Wed. at the age of 80, played a single professional woman on the 1970s show named after her, and became beloved for her role on The Dick Van Dyke Show. Originally broadcast in 1995
Rock historian missed the "Prefab Four" the first time they came along. Listening now, he finds that the Monkees' best songs have held up, mostly because they used top-notch songwriting talent.
Charlie Wilson is a retired congressman and the subject of the book Charlie Wilson's War. It's about the secret CIA operation arming the Afghan Mujahideen against the Soviet Union. Wilson left office in 1996 after 24 years in office. He is now a lobbyist and one of his main clients is Pakistan.