Matthew Goodman

I think a lot about the story Carl Reiner told: he’d have been a sewing machine repairman if not for a free WPA drama class. That led to other theater work, to Sid Caesar, to Mel Brooks, and all the rest. All because of one free class paid for by a government that felt the arts were worth teaching.

I thought “Zo-terrified” is how NYC billionaires are feeling this morning!

To those threatening to leave NYC in the wake of Zohran’s victory, I say the same thing I said to those who fled the city after 9/11:

This speech by Cuomo sounds like the last angry hissing of a snake before it dies.

Which somehow makes it worse!

Oh my god, I literally JUST SAID THAT to my wife!

I’ve long felt that the story of Local 338 is one of the most fascinating and important not just in the story of American labor but of American food as well!

www.jstor.org/stable/27569...

The Gambler and the Ballplayer (1950) Seventy-five years after the biggest scandal in basketball history, here we are again.

A terrific essay by @michaelweinreb.com on the 1950 basketball bookmaking scandal — more relevant than ever after last week’s arrests. “The culture of betting is now so omnipresent in sports,” Weinreb writes, “that it sometimes feels like the central reason why sports exist.” Worth a read!

For all the Lebowski heads out there, like me:

Kathe Mazur did a wonderful job with it!

Tribute to Toni Cade Bambara, Trastevere, Rome

Prosecutors Fail to Secure Indictment Against Man Who Threw Sandwich at Federal Agent

used to be you could get an indictment against a ham sandwich. now you can't even indict a guy who throws a ham sandwich. folks, www.nytimes.com/2025/08/27/u...

Lithograph from New York Sun, 1835, showing winged humanoid figures in a fantastic landscape. There are unicorn goats, giraffe-like creatures, pterodactyls, a river, a tall waterfall, and high rock faces with caverns

It’s a mystery why we still ask whether we’re alone in the universe, isn’t it, when you consider that this question was definitively answered by the New York Sun exactly 190 years ago? For this was the day we learned there were man-bats and bipedal beavers living on the moon

Love the subtle “Big Lebowski” reference by @kenjennings.bsky.social on Jeopardy tonight! Not into the whole brevity thing, indeed.

Assault with a deli weapon.

Brattleboro, Vermont

“Nobody’s seen anything like it — even though they’ve done it twice before”

A “Palestine exception” to free speech means that there is no free speech

I’m thrilled to announce that my book PARIS UNDERCOVER has been selected for the long list for the 2025 American Library in Paris Book Award. It’s an honor to be included in this wonderful lineup of books and authors!

RIP Dave (“The Cobra”) Parker, right fielder non pareil and the baddest mf ever to play the game

I get how New Yorkers talking about the city all the time is annoying, but I gotta say that non-New Yorkers talking about the city is way more annoying

Cuomo and his supporters ran one of the most genuinely racist anti-Muslim campaigns I’ve ever seen, and no one in the Democratic establishment says a word. From now on I think all politicians need to “prove” that they aren’t anti-Muslim. How come we never get that litmus test?

Cuomo and his supporters ran one of the most genuinely racist anti-Muslim campaigns I’ve ever seen, and no one in the Democratic establishment says a word. From now on I think all politicians need to “prove” that they aren’t anti-Muslim. How come we never get that litmus test?

We’ll be there with you when you take down Malliotakis and go to Congress

i think cuomo did well considering he couldn’t campaign while the sun was up

Zohran Kwame Mamdani on X: "CYCO Books is an institution that we must save. Founded in 1938, the Central Yiddish Cultural Organization is singular in the the knowledge it imparts, the history it belongs to, and NYC would be all the poorer without it. Let’s keep it alive: https://t.co/f9gxIK7XLl" / X CYCO Books is an institution that we must save. Founded in 1938, the Central Yiddish Cultural Organization is singular in the the knowledge it imparts, the history it belongs to, and NYC would be all the poorer without it. Let’s keep it alive: https://t.co/f9gxIK7XLl

Founded in 1938, CYCO is a legendary institution in the Yiddish world, an invaluable storehouse of Yiddish culture and history. This is Zohran Mamdani’s 2022 tweet asking folks to help support it.

But sure, he’s an “anti-Semite”

The National Archives research facility in College Park, MD, is a national treasure, offering interested members of the general public an unparalleled direct look at the workings of the federal government.

This decision is deeply anti-democratic and anti-intellectual — in a word, fascistic.

Welcome to America circa 2025: two members of the US House of Representatives being denied their constitutional rights by a smirking guy in a Froot Loops shirt

What is common knowledge in your field but shocks outsiders?

Nonfiction authors, not their publishers, have to pay for the rights to the photographs and other graphics contained in their books, as well as for the indexing.

Protest sign: “We’re going to need a bigger The Hague”

“We’re going to need a bigger The Hague”