Not to mention Alma Werfel.
His intro to that song contains a line I have been using (with attribution) for decades:
"It is a sobering thought, for example, that when Mozart was my age, he had been dead for two years."

"My heart entreats
To hear those savage beats.
So go put on your cleats
And come and trample me."

The last interview I read with Lehrer was with the Washington Post in '08…the only thing he said on the record was that he was voting for Obama.

In a 1967 version he played on TV in Europe (available on DVD and I think Youtube) he changed the reference to "Cassius Clay and Mrs. Wallace." Not sure who would be the white person today, since racism isn't as proudly overt as it was back then…they've gotten better at speaking in code. Maybe "David Duke and Beyonce."

Lehrer is my dream guest for Gilbert Gottfried's podcast.

In the (highly entertaining) liner notes Lehrer wrote for the box set of his records, around 2000, he said when the kids who had watched The Electric Company arrived in college and discovered he was the one who had written Silent E, they treated him like he was the one who had written Silent Night.

I now like him even more.

Pretty amazing. Here's a question: Pete puts a second beer in front of Horace when he says the line, but when he walk away and the camera cuts to just Horace, there's only one beer. Maybe that was a continuity error, but maybe it means Pete's line was a figment of Horace's imagination, saying aloud what Horace was…

Game 1 of the 1919 World Series
Babe Ruth's called shot in the '32 Series against the Cubs
Eddie Gaedel pinch-hitting.

Someone who has seen the film, please tell me it's better than this trailer implies, because this looks ungodly boring.

One of my favorite (of many) Bill Veeck stories is that he would move the outfield fences in or out, depending on who his team was playing that day and whether they had more power hitters than he did. The league promptly adopted a rule saying teams have to set the fence distances on opening day and keep them there all…

One of the best books you'll ever read — on early baseball, America, you name it — is Lawrence Ritter's "The Glory of Their Times."

Since even professional baseball fields in those days were little more than glorified pastures, the grass would grow so long in the outfield that players would hide balls out there. If a hit got lost in the grass, the outfielder would just pick up the nearest planted ball and throw it in.
Also in those days, players…

Am I missing an in-joke about "Hamilton," saying he was our 7th president? I always thought that was Andrew Jackson.

That's the one. Time the music to coincide with the puffs of smoke as the bullets hit the kid and his body twitching on the ground. Comedy gold.

Exactly. Why can't Tarantino write the script of Steve Avery's actual life? Here we are: entertain us.

How dare real-life, semi-educated people from the middle of nowhere not talk as colorfully as we want them to. This show is such a downer because of that.

Come on, Steve and Brendan — be more entertaining on the phone!

The calls might be edited to remove exchanges like that and keep things moving.

Can't wait for the article on some guy setting the Laquan McDonald shooting video to the theme from the Benny Hill Show. Good job, Internet.