Gordon S. Murray, Daniel C. Goldie: The Investment Answer

In January 2011, Ron Lieber posted “Gordon Murray, Former Investment Banker, Dies at 60” on a blog for The New York Times. Gordon Murray, the investment banker whose conversion to passive investing was the subject of my Your Money column last Nov. 26, died on Saturday at his home in Burlingame, Calif. He was 60 years old and had suffered from glioblastoma, an aggressive form of brain cancer. I first met Gordon when a close friend of his, a financial planner named Dan Goldie, got in touch with me to tell Mr. Murray’s story. Mr. Murray had spent decades at the highest levels of Wall Street, including Goldman Sachs, selling bonds. Many of his clients were managers of active mutual funds or other investors who seek to outperform various market indexes.

“It was six months ago that I was told I had six months to live. One of the good things about having one of these malignant glioblastomas is that you do get some time to get closure, to plan and to spend so much great time with your family and friends.”

- Gordon S. Murray, author of the book: The Investment Answer

A Banker's Final Financial Advice

“When I entered the business, illegal and unethical were the same. Now there’s a huge difference. Wall Street got much more skilled about crossing the line of illegality.”

- Gordon S. Murray, author of the book: The Investment Answer

In January 2011, Elizabeth MacBride wrote “Reflecting On A Talk With Gordon Murray, Investors’ Advocate and Publishing Phenom” for Forbes Magazine. Gordon Murray died on Saturday in his Burlingame home after a two-year battle with brain cancer. His passing came after years of advocacy of sensible investing, culminating in a book that has become a publishing phenomenon. The 60-year-old began writing, The Investment Answer in earnest this summer after he was given six months to live, in the wake of a scan that revealed his glioblastoma had advanced. He was prodded along with help from his friend and financial advisor, Dan Goldie, 47, who helped organize the project and write the book. See: Two DFA advisors win big book contract after ‘Dying banker’ article in NYTimes.

“You go through an initial period of sadness, but then you realize, ‘Okay, I can't do anything about it, so let's just make the most of what we have.’ I could have a great, quality six months, or I could take the risk with the chemo, the radiation, and all these other drugs they throw in you, but it might actually make things worse.”

- Gordon S. Murray, author of the book: The Investment Answer

“I basically wanted to do this for him because he's wanted to write this book for so long and he never did it, so this was my gift to him.”

- Daniel C. Goldie, author of the book: The Investment Answer

Apple CEO Steve Jobs Going on Medical Leave from The Takeaway: Early Edition by feedback@thetakeaway.org (Public Radio International and WNYC Radio)

For the second time in the company’s history, Apple CEO Steve Jobs is going on medical leave. A year and a half ago, Jobs underwent a liver transplant, and recovered from pancreatic cancer in 2004. The company's most recent earnings report will also be released today. Both announcements come at a time when Apple is facing some of its toughest competition from smaller tech challengers as well as fellow titans like Google. Thus far Steve Jobs has been synonymous with Apple — an often essential part of the brand. What is the possible future of Apple without Steve Jobs? We talk about the legacy of Steve Jobs and the future of the world's most valued technology company with Ken Auletta, author of the Annals of Communications column for The New Yorker Magazine and author of “Googled: The End of the World as We Know It.” We also talk with Steven Levy, journalist for Wired magazine. The podcast will be posted on this WNYC webpage, shortly.

The US and China: Neither Friends Nor Rivals from The Takeaway: Early Edition by feedback@thetakeaway.org (Public Radio International and WNYC Radio)

As Washington prepares for a visit from Chinese President Hu Jintao this week, we take a look at what lies ahead in the shifting relationship between superpowers. Should we fear the "waking dragon"? We're joined by Gideon Rachman, chief foreign-affairs commentator for the Financial Times and author of "Zero-Sum Future: American Power in an Age of Anxiety," and Simon Tay, was an Asia Society 2009 Bernard Schwartz Fellow and is Chairman of the Singapore Institute of International Affairs. He is also the author of "Asia Alone: The Dangerous Post-Crisis Divide from America." Listen to the podcast.

Alone Together from WNYC's Brian Lehrer Show by listenerservices@wnyc.org (WNYC, New York Public Radio)

MIT professor Sherry Turkle discusses her new book Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other, in which she examines how technology is diminishing our face-to-face contact and why that matters. The podcast will be available shortly, on this webpage.

Today: Tiger Mother from BBC Podcast - Best of Today

The award for controversial book of the year so far for concerned parents has to be Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother. The author is a Chinese American academic at Yale and it plots her "tough mothering" style of parenting. Evan spoke to the writer Amy Chua to explain her thinking. Listen to the podcast.

King's New York Connection: MLK Jr's Friendship With Stanley Levison from News from WNYC New York Public Radio by listenerservices@wnyc.org (WNYC Radio)

One of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s most important political advisors, Stanley Levison, has remained largely hidden from public view — even 40 years after King’s death. A white Jewish lawyer from New York, Levison probably would have wanted it that way: his interest in the civil rights movement was largely selfless, and associations from his past meant that it was in the best interest of the civil rights movement to pretend that he wasn’t involved. King and Levison met sometime in 1956. King was just coming off of the successful bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama, an episode that made him a sudden star in some circles. One of King’s biographers, David Garrow, said the civil rights leader would come to New York frequently to raise money — and likely stopped in at some fundraisers where Levison was present. It was during the run-up to the 1963 March on Washington that a piece of Levison’s past resurfaced and complicated his involvement. Jones, who has just published a book about the march, “Behind the Dream: The Making of the Speech that Transformed the Nation,” recalled that King and other civil rights leaders gathered at the White House in the summer of that year.

Sarah Vowell: The Wordy Shipmates

U.S. President Ronald Reagan

In January 1989, U.S. President Ronald Reagan issued his “Farewell Address to the Nation” from the Oval Office. And that's about all I have to say tonight. Except for one thing. The past few days when I've been at that window upstairs, I've thought a bit of the "shining city upon a hill." The phrase comes from John Winthrop, who wrote it to describe the America he imagined. What he imagined was important because he was an early Pilgrim, an early freedom man. He journeyed here on what today we'd call a little wooden boat; and like the other Pilgrims, he was looking for a home that would be free. I've spoken of the shining city all my political life, but I don't know if I ever quite communicated what I saw when I said it. But in my mind it was a tall proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, wind-swept, God-blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace, a city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity, and if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors and the doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here. That's how I saw it, and see it still.

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“John Cotton is forty-six years old. He is the most respected, famous, and beloved Puritan minister in England. Getting him to bless the send-off of these relatively unimportant castaways would be like scoring Nelson Mandela to deliver the commencement address at the neighbor kid's eighth-grade graduation. In fact, once the colonists arrive in Massachusetts they will name their settlement Boston, in honor of Cotton's hometown.”

- Sarah Vowell, author of the book: The Wordy Shipmates

In November 2008, Virginia Heffernan wrote “Mayflower Power” for The New York Times. Sarah Vowell is a problem. She’s a problem like Sarah Palin, Cyndi Lauper and Kathy Griffin. She’s annoying. Or, really, she’s double-annoying, because she styles herself as annoying — provocative-annoying — and if you become annoyed by her you seem to be conceding the point. She’s gotten to you. Vowell, who constantly emphasizes how nerdy (meaning impressive) she finds her own interest in the Puritans, introduces figures like John Winthrop and Roger Williams as if no one’s ever heard of them. She delivers a farrago of free-floating pedantry — “the kind of smart-alecky diatribe for which I’ve gotten paid for 20 years” — having evidently made it her job to enlighten slacker Gen-Xers with a remedial history of our own nation. It’s not right. Vowell’s whole alt-­everything vibe is just dated enough to be cringey. And then there’s her Great Plains accent: can something so wholesome-soundin’ be real? And her politics. Perfectly early-millennium coastal (green, be good, Obama, etc.). Can she really take pleasure in plumping for an autofill ideology that’s so widely shared?

Sound Medicine 01-16-11 from Sound Medicine

This week: advice for exercising while sick; Dartmouth research on end-of-life care; why self-diagnosis on the Internet is a bad idea; and an interview with the co-author of the book Breakthrough, the history of the discovery of medical insulin. Also, why you should research health concerns when preparing to travel overseas. Listen to the podcast.

Visual Biography Explores Love And Radium from NPR: Science Friday Podcast

The story of Marie and Pierre Curie is one of love, scientific partnership and one of the most important discoveries of the 20th century. Artist and author Lauren Redniss discusses her new book, Radioactive, an illustrated biography of the pair and a look at their complicated legacy. Listen to podcast.

#243: The Frankenstein Mortgage from NPR: Planet Money Podcast

The 30-year, fixed-rate mortgage -- the bedrock of American home ownership -- is a weird loan. In an ordinary market, you'd have to pay a really high interest rate to get a 30-year fixed, if you could get it at all. Only the intervention of the government -- and the creation of Fannie Mae -- turned the loan into America's plain-vanilla mortgage. On today's Planet Money, Bethany McLean and Joe Nocera (authors of All the Devils Are Here, a book on the financial crisis) walk us through the 30-year-fixed and the history of Fannie and Freddie. And they talk about where we go from here. Listen to the podcast.

New America Now - Jan. 14, 2011 from New America Now Radio Podcast

Welcome our new host! Shirin Sadeghi! This week: Haiti, one year later; Yves Point du Jour on what's happening now + Isabel Allende's new book, "Island Beneath the Sea" takes place in Haiti + Mahnaz Badihian on the suicide of the Shaw of Iran's youngest son, Ali Reza Pahlavi + In Monique Truong's "Bitter in the Mouth," her protagonist has a tasty problem + Richard Rodriguez and Sandip Roy consider the shooting in Arizona. Listen to the podcast.

Please Explain: Salt from Please Explain from WNYC New York Public Radio Podcast

Salt is found on most dining tables and in most kitchens--but this ubiquitous household item has a long and curious history. It's a flavor enhancer, an ice melter, has been used as a currency, and has shaped civilization. Mark Kurlansky, author of ?Salt: A World History, and Dr. Sonia Angell, Director, Cardiovascular Disease Prevention and Control, New York City Health Department, explain what salt is, where it comes from, and discusses its influence on history and on our health. Listen to the podcast here.

Marian Anderson from WNYC's Soundcheck by listenerservices@wnyc.org (WNYC, New York Public Radio)

2009 marked the 70th anniversary of Marian Anderson's historic performance on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. Today, we look at her legacy -- as a civil rights figure and as a singer -- with African American opera star Denyce Graves and Raymond Arsenault, author of the book The Sound of Freedom. The podcast will be posted on this WNYC webpage, shortly.

Visual Biography Explores Love And Radium from NPR Podcast Talk of the Nation

The story of Marie and Pierre Curie is one of love, scientific partnership and one of the most important discoveries of the 20th century. Artist and author Lauren Redniss discusses her new book, Radioactive, an illustrated biography of the pair and a look at their complicated legacy. Listen to the podcast of this show, here.

George DeMartino on economic ethics from The Economist: Finance and economics

The author of "The Economist's Oath" on the need for ethical debate within the economics profession and why some will ardently disagree. Listen to that Economist podcast here.

Author Quinlan on Superpowers, `New Globalization’: Audio from Bloomberg - All Podcasts

The author, Joseph P. Quinlan, recently sat with Bloomberg. Listen to the show.

[01.14.11] Reader’s Corner from New Horizons in Education by Boise State Public Radio

Episode: January 14th, 2011: Guest: Dan Wetzel: National sports columnist and co-author of “Death to the BCS: The Definitive Case Against the Bowl Championship Series”. Listen to the podcast.

Inside 'The Startup Game' from KQED's Forum Podcast

We talk with Silicon Valley venture capitalist William Draper about his new book, "The Startup Game." One of the West Coast's first venture capitalists, Draper was an early investor in such iconic companies as Hotmail and Skype, among many others. Listen to the podcast.

The Anti-Vaccine Movement from WNYC's Leonard Lopate Show by listenerservices@wnyc.org (WNYC, New York Public Radio)

Dr. Paul A. Offit, Chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases and Director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and a founding advisory board member of the Autism Science Foundation, discusses the debate over vaccines and why the link between autism and vaccines has been discredited. His book Deadly Choices: How the Anti-Vaccine Movement Threatens Us All explains the origins of the anti-vaccine movement and how it has affected public health. Listen to the podcast.

That's Crazy from WNYC's Brian Lehrer Show by listenerservices@wnyc.org (WNYC, New York Public Radio)

The mental health of the Tucson shooter has become central to the conversation about the deadly incident in Arizona last weekend. Slate.com senior editor Dahlia Lithwick looks at how mental health becomes political and the history of the insanity defense. Plus: Seth Mnookin, author of the new book The Panic Virus: A True Story of Medicine, Science, and Fear; Money U continues with a conversation about debt collection; and Nassau County’s money problems.