The Sunday Read: 'Letters of Recommendation'

The Daily

The New York Times

Daily News, News

4.4 • 102.8K Ratings

🗓️ 17 May 2020

⏱️ 26 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Our worlds have contracted; once expansive, our orbits are now measured by rooms and street blocks. But there are still ways to travel. Today, escape to the worlds contained in three letters — one about the summer of 1910, another describing an upended misconception and a third about how superstitions can offer release. We hope they can offer you some meaning — or at least a distraction. This story was recorded by Audm. To hear more audio stories from publishers like The New York Times, download Audm for iPhone or Android.

Transcript

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0:25.6	Hi, I'm Sam Anderson and I am a staff writer for The New York Times Magazine, which normally
0:42.7	means I spend many weeks or many months doing deep reporting on subjects and writing
0:48.1	about everything from the fragile ankles of Michelangelo's David to profiles of basketball
0:56.4	stars like Russell Westbrook or more recently a profile of Weird Al Yankovic that you may
1:02.5	remember from a few weeks ago.
1:06.3	But I've also helped to develop this column that appears every week in the magazine,
1:12.7	which is called Letter of Recommendation.
1:17.3	I always get credit for inventing Letter of Recommendation, but I really have to give
1:21.5	the credit to my wife, Sarah, who came up with it one day when I was going on and on and
1:27.5	on about how wonderful I found the guitar solos of Lindsay Buckingham, the songwriter
1:35.5	and guitarist for Fleetwood Mac.
1:45.6	I just wouldn't stop and she, I think in like self-defense, said, hey, why don't you have
1:51.5	a column where you can just pour out your deep happy love of various things in the world
1:59.5	and then you wouldn't have to say them out loud to me ever.
2:03.3	And right then, I remember thinking, yeah, I could call it Letter of Recommendation and
	...

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