Excerpt: More than a third of the Earth’s population — about 2.8 billion people — cannot see the Milky Way from where they live due to artificial light pollution.
The secret phone recordings of Henry Kissinger, a ‘habitual liar’
Excerpt: Some consider Henry Kissinger a master statesman who advanced American interests by deftly navigating complex international affairs. Others argue that his achievements were exaggerated, preferring to highlight his violations of international law and his complicity in war crimes. Tom Wells’ The Kissinger Tapes: Inside His Secretly Recorded Phone Conversations will not resolve this debate, because those who view him as savvy and adept will find ways to construe these transcripts as evidence for their position. Reading them reveals Kissinger’s skills as a power broker who strategically maneuvers his way through the political system to achieve his goals. But there is plenty of ammunition here for those of us who view him as a villain.
The book is a collection of selections from more than 15,000 of Kissinger’s secretly recorded telephone conversations from his time as President Richard Nixon’s national security adviser (1969–1974) and secretary of state (1973–1974). Kissinger intended the recordings for his private use (including in writing his memoirs) and, if necessary, for potential leverage over his domestic political rivals.
Reviewing collections of transcripts is tricky. There is no core argument or systematic evidence to evaluate. The purpose of the project is to present the subject in his own words. The value lies in a better understanding of the subject and the context in which he acted. Since Kissinger did not intend his transcripts to be public, the collection is a window both into him as a person and into the operations of the U.S. national security state. Four themes stand out.
The first is the sheer prevalence of systematic deception. For Kissinger, lies weren’t a strategic tool limited to selective uses in international statecraft. They appear to have been part of his personal makeup. Wells notes that he was “a habitual and easy liar.” Throughout the transcripts, he deceives his foreign counterparts, his colleagues, and the media.
During the clandestine bombings of Cambodia in 1969 and Laos in 1970, for example, Kissinger and Nixon implemented a false-reporting system to hide the strikes from both the State Department and the public. Kissinger claimed to Secretary of State William P. Rogers that he was unaware of the Pentagon Papers, the classified government study, leaked in 1971, that revealed the U.S. government had systematically deceived the public about the Vietnam War; in fact, he knew of the study from the outset. Kissinger repeatedly denied knowledge of wiretaps on officials and journalists, but the FBI later noted that he instituted much of the surveillance himself. He lied to obtain strategic advantage; he lied to shift blame; he lied to protect his reputation and status.
Excerpt: Glass made headlines in 1998 when he was fired by the New Republic for inventing characters, scenes, and entire articles for that magazine and several others. The tale of his downfall became a Hollywood film called Shattered Glass, which is largely accurate but still contains fabricated scenes about a fabricator. Glass’s notoriety peaked in 2003 when the film was released and he published The Fabulist, a fictionalized account of his saga that was widely panned. (“Thuddingly broad characterizations of persons and events,” wrote Chris Lehmann in The Washington Post.)
When I looked into Glass after I got to Duke, I found he hadn’t said much publicly since then. He had moved to Los Angeles and become a legal assistant for a personal-injury firm. In 2013, he was briefly in the headlines again because he was seeking admission to the California bar, which opposed his application. Lawyers didn’t like the idea of a liar in their midst.
It took me a couple of years, but I eventually connected with Glass and he agreed to come to Duke and talk with students in my ethics class in the spring of 2016. I first met him for breakfast at a coffee shop near campus, where he insisted on paying for his oatmeal just as he had paid for his flight and hotel. He said he did not want to profit from his lies in any way. I had seen old photos of the twentysomething Glass and was surprised how he looked in his late 40s: a high forehead, thin dark hair, and taller than I expected. (Maybe I thought fabulists were short people?)
I had assigned my ethics students to watch the film, and then surprised them by bringing him to class. “I’d like you to meet Stephen Glass,” I said as we walked in. For an hour he answered their questions about his motivations for lying, the impact of the movie, and his efforts to redeem himself.
He told the students about restitution payments he’d recently made to the magazines that had published his articles. He had repaid $200,000, which he said was the money he had earned from salaries and article fees, plus interest. “I should have done it earlier,” he told the class. “I took that money and wrote lies.” (He was under no obligation to pay them back, but the California Supreme Court had opined that he should.)
Glass didn’t win over the crowd. The students later said they were impressed to meet him and glad to hear about the payments, but they felt he came off as introspective and a little meek. When I asked them in a survey if they would consider hiring him as a political fact-checker, most said they would not.
That day he told me about his wife, Julie Hilden, who had early onset Alzheimer’s disease. He didn’t mention that he was engaged in a new lie, one that he would later describe as “the biggest lie of all.”
Why I let my 9-year-old ride the subway alone
Excerpt: No, I did not give him a cell phone. Didn’t want to lose it. And no, I didn’t trail him, like a mommy private eye. I trusted him to figure out that he should take the Lexington Avenue subway down, and the 34th Street crosstown bus home. If he couldn’t do that, I trusted him to ask a stranger. And then I even trusted that stranger not to think, “Gee, I was about to catch my train home, but now I think I’ll abduct this adorable child instead.”
Long story short: My son got home, ecstatic with independence.
Famous Brady Bunch house awarded Los Angeles landmark status
Excerpt: The Los Angeles city council voted unanimously on Wednesday to designate the Brady Bunch house in the San Fernando Valley as a historic-cultural monument.
The vote grants landmark protection to the house on Dilling Avenue that was used for exterior shots of the TV sitcom that ran from 1969 to 1974.
Interior scenes were shot on a soundstage, with sets that bore no resemblance to the property that become a photo-op magnet for Brady Bunch fans.
Me again: Sure looks like a one-story house to me, but the kids lived “upstairs”? Here’s the unraveling of that mystery.
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3/6/2026
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