Dick Cavett

In relative youth, we assume we'll remember everything. Someone should urge the young to think otherwise.

It's lamented that the youth get their news from Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. It's lamentable that they get more from them than from the news.

Obviously those who burn to be professional jesters mean that they want to be successful comedians. And those are always an elite, microscopic portion of the population. But oh, how they try.

Do freshman philosophy classes nowadays debate updated versions of the age-old questions? Like, how could a merciful God allow AIDS, childhood cancers, tsunamis and Dick Cheney?

Does anything show the complexity of the miraculous brain more than that weird curiosity, the sleep-protection dream?

Anyone working in the media can tell you that there seems to be an always-ready-to-explode segment of the populace for whom offense is a fate worse than anything imaginable. You'd think offense is one of the most calamitous things that could happen to a human being; right up there with the loss of a limb, or just missing a parking space.

I have never been converted to or even had much interest in spiritualism, occultism, Swedenborgianism or any particular religion. And I never, except occasionally for a laugh, visit the quacks who call themselves psychics.

When I was a kid in Nebraska, a cantankerous farmer, known for plinking with his '22 at passing cars in which he perceived enemies, ingeniously rigged up a shotgun in his house, trained on the inside of his front door so as to widely distribute any intruder.

Show people tend to treat their finances like their dentistry. They assume the people who handle it know what they are doing.

Show people tend to treat their finances like their dentistry. They assume the man handling it knows what he is doing.

It's fun for me to go on other folks' talk shows. When you've endured the ups and downs and tensions and pitfalls of hosting, being a guest is a piece of angel food.

There were several things a Yale freshman was supposed to be able to do. You had to demonstrate in the Olympic-size Yale pool that you could swim 50 yards or be inducted into swimming class.