Short essays on what the wisest people who ever lived keep telling us — companion notes to our films, and a daily look at the news through the eyes of the wise.
The build-log of the show itself: every invitation, every reply, and every milestone on the way to the first recorded conversation — written as it happens, with the uncertainty left in.
We sent Gary Player the 1991 photograph of him standing beside my father on a Johannesburg fairway — and his office replied the next morning. The story of this project's first invitation.
Read the essay →The moment a date lands on the calendar, the full story lands here.
The internet's biggest story of the day, held up against what people at the end of long lives say actually matters. Sometimes the principles were applied. Sometimes they weren't. Either way, there's a lesson.
Jean Smart, 75, won her fifth Emmy in five seasons on Monday night and told the standing crowd exactly why they were on their feet. Sally Field, 79, became the oldest winner in her category an hour earlier. Let's see what wisdom says about gray hair, crowns, and the "if" in the middle of the verse.
Read the essay →Celine Dion sang 25 songs in Paris on Saturday — her first full concert in 2,379 days, with a disease that attacks the throat. Let's see what wisdom says about health, a shaking hand, and doing the thing while you still can.
Read the essay →A ferry carrying 243 people went down overnight in the Java Sea. At the port in Banjarmasin, hundreds of families are reading names off a wall — the manifest, and the rescue list. Let's see what wisdom says about not-knowing, and about why hope belongs to the living.
Read the essay →Dolly Parton died Tuesday at eighty. Her father never learned to read, so she spent thirty years mailing free books to children — more than 300 million of them. Let's see what wisdom says about giving, and about living a life that's actually yours.
Read the essay →Behind each of our compilation films: who said it, where it came from, and what the wise have always said about it.
Who said it, where it came from, and what the wise have always said about it — arriving with each film.