Keith Humphreys

A long time reader of RBC whom I greatly respect gave me a pleasant surprise recently by saying that although he loves all the wonky content, my Christmas post on gratitude was the one he liked the most. I thus re-post it here, having just done my letters of thanks again this year. One of […]

I am on holiday break this week, so I re-run a prior yuletide film recommendation that should please the whole family. Merry Christmas everyone! “You’ll shoot your eye out, kid” Some mediocre films earn a reputation as American Classics entirely because the producers and marketers (or the critics and other members of the chattering classes) […]

If the holiday season is giving you some family time, you and your kids can together enjoy a rollicking tale of derring do set in Merry Olde England: 1938′s The Adventures of Robin Hood. Famous as the film that made swashbuckling Errol Flynn a household name, it’s also historically important as Warner Brothers’ first foray […]

Hollywood studios were in a rut in the late 1950s and early 1960s, struggling to cope with the rise of television, the loss of control of movie theaters after the Paramount case, and a widening cultural chasm between modern audience tastes and studio traditions. In desperation, the studio chiefs opened up filmmaking to a wave […]

Alejandro Hope, whom I rely on for consistently intelligent and nuanced drug and crime policy analysis, has conducted a series of interviews about marijuana legalization at El Daily (An English language site focused on Mexico). So this a great chance to wonk out with four perspectives on legalization: Keith Humphreys, on not making it a […]

Even though I have been a professor for decades, my favorite teaching story comes from my wife, who was in the business for only a few years. She taught writing at a community college, mostly to working class people, recent immigrants and second language students looking to develop their career and/or life. For homework one […]

I like to recommend films for kids every now and then, and I want to get back to that this week. Accordingly, allow me to point you to a charming 2010 Oscar-nominated French animated film originally titled Une Vie de Chat that was subsequently re-voiced using English language actors as A Cat in Paris. The […]

Recently, two dueling groups of public health experts wrote open letters to the World Health Organization regarding e-cigarettes. The first group saw e-cigarettes as a potentially valuable public health tool, the second group was much more skeptical. At the Stanford Health Policy Forum, we invited signatories from each side to debate e-cigarettes and the result […]

Edward Dmytryk was a talented filmmaker whose career and life were severely damaged during Hollywood’s red scare. As one of the Hollywood Ten, he refused to testify to the House of Un-American Activities Committee and was sentenced to jail. He fled to England, where he made some high quality films including prior RBC recommendation Obsession. […]

One of the features of modern society that both amazes and disturbs me is how people who have already proved themselves incompetent in some domain get trotted out as respected experts. Many of the military and diplomatic whizzes who helped blunder the U.S. into Iraq were subsequently invited onto TV shows to discuss whether the […]