How Steve Martin Became Funny

In a Smithsonian article, Steve Martin describes the evolution of his act before his breakthrough performance on The Tonight Show. For someone like myself, for whom Steve Martin defined teenage notions of comedy, this is a fascinating narrative of what it takes to become an overnight success.

Walter Kirn on Multitasking

Kirn in the Atlantic Monthly about how multitasking is shrinking your brain, making you prematurely old, trying to kill you, and also not nearly as effective as you think.

"Would it be possible someday—through drugs, maybe, or esoteric Buddhism, or some profound, postapocalyptic languor—to stop coming up with ideas of what we are and then laboring to live up to them?"