A Life in the Neighborhood
Bob Bates — The brown wooden door opens and Mister Rogers enters, looking directly into the camera. Stepping over to the closet, he slips out of his jacket, hangs it [...]
Film and Television
Celebrating the Viking Past
Jeff Berger — Two popular television series have recently appeared to reignite the public’s interest in the history of the Vikings. One is the History Channel’s [...]
Inequality of Disclosure: The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
Tony Platt — In 2010, Rebecca Skloot was a little known science journalist on the faculty at the University of Memphis when her first book The Immortal Life of [...]
Bring Back the Buckaroo: Or “Shane, Shane, Come Back!”
Charles Cottle — When I was young there were heroes. They were on TV, in the comic books, and at the movies. It was the 1950’s, the heyday of the cowboy western. [...]
Making Science Fiction Sentient
Charles Ogg — The editors of Wise Guys invited me to write an article on science fiction (sf) and an online magazine I am planning to start called Sentient Fiction. [...]
What’s So Funny About Disability?
Ron Berger — In 2008 the action-comedy Tropic Thunder, written, produced, and directed by Ben Stiller, brought forth condemnation from more than a dozen disability [...]
The Unlearned Lesson of the Savings and Loan Debacle
Ron Berger — In Michael Moore’s new film Where To Invade Next, he visits other countries to bring back good ideas to the United States. In one scene, he interviews a [...]
The Bernard Madoff Ponzi Scheme
Ron Berger — Last month ABC aired Madoff, a four-part television miniseries starring Richard Dreyfus in the leading role as Bernard Madoff, former chairman of the [...]
Reflections on The Big Short
Ron Berger — The Academy Award nominated film The Big Short is an entertaining dramatization of Michael Lewis’s book The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine. Most [...]
