title: Michelangelo

text: Pope Leo X died in 1521 and was succeeded briefly by the austere Adrian VI, and then by his cousin Giulio Medici as Pope Clement VII. In 1524, Michelangelo received an architectural commission from the Medici pope for the Laurentian Library at San Lorenzo's Church. He designed both the interior of the library itself and its vestibule, a building utilising architectural forms with such dynamic effect that it is seen as the forerunner of Baroque architecture. It was left to assistants to interpret his plans and carry out construction. The library was not opened until 1571, and the vestibule remained incomplete until 1904.


title: Michelangelo

text: In 1527, Florentine citizens, encouraged by the sack of Rome, threw out the Medici and restored the republic. A siege of the city ensued, and Michelangelo went to the aid of his beloved Florence by working on the city's fortifications from 1528 to 1529. The city fell in 1530, and the Medici were restored to power. Michelangelo fell out of favour with the young Alessandro Medici, who had been installed as the first Duke of Florence. Fearing for his life, he fled to Rome, leaving assistants to complete the Medici chapel and the Laurentian Library. Despite Michelangelo's support of the republic and resistance to the Medici rule, he was welcomed by Pope Clement, who reinstated an allowance that he had previously granted the artist and made a new contract with him over the tomb of Pope Julius.


title: Michelangelo

text: In Rome, Michelangelo lived near the church of Santa Maria di Loreto. It was at this time that he met the poet Vittoria Colonna, marchioness of Pescara, who was to become one of his closest friends until her death in 1547.


title: Michelangelo

text: Shortly before his death in 1534, Pope Clement VII commissioned Michelangelo to paint a fresco of "The Last Judgment" on the altar wall of the Sistine Chapel. His successor, Pope Paul III, was instrumental in seeing that Michelangelo began and completed the project, which he laboured on from 1534 to October 1541. The fresco depicts the Second Coming of Christ and his Judgement of the souls. Michelangelo ignored the usual artistic conventions in portraying Jesus, showing him as a massive, muscular figure, youthful, beardless and naked. He is surrounded by saints, among whom Saint Bartholomew holds a drooping flayed skin, bearing the likeness of Michelangelo. The dead rise from their graves, to be consigned either to Heaven or to Hell.


title: Michelangelo

text: Once completed, the depiction of Christ and the Virgin Mary naked was considered sacrilegious, and Cardinal Carafa and Monsignor Sernini (Mantua's ambassador) campaigned to have the fresco removed or censored, but the Pope resisted. At the Council of Trent, shortly before Michelangelo's death in 1564, it was decided to obscure the genitals and Daniele da Volterra, an apprentice of Michelangelo, was commissioned to make the alterations. An uncensored copy of the original, by Marcello Venusti, is in the Capodimonte Museum of Naples.


title: Michelangelo

text: Michelangelo worked on a number of architectural projects at this time. They included a design for the Capitoline Hill with its trapezoid piazza displaying the ancient bronze statue of Marcus Aurelius. He designed the upper floor of the Palazzo Farnese and the interior of the Church of Santa Maria degli Angeli, in which he transformed the vaulted interior of an Ancient Roman bathhouse. Other architectural works include San Giovanni dei Fiorentini, the Sforza Chapel (Capella Sforza) in the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore and the Porta Pia.


title: Michelangelo

text: While still working on the "Last Judgment", Michelangelo received yet another commission for the Vatican. This was for the painting of two large frescos in the Cappella Paolina depicting significant events in the lives of the two most important saints of Rome, the "Conversion of Saint Paul" and the "Crucifixion of Saint Peter". Like the "Last Judgment", these two works are complex compositions containing a great number of figures. They were completed in 1550. In the same year, Giorgio Vasari published his "Vita", including a biography of Michelangelo.


title: Michelangelo

text: In 1546, Michelangelo was appointed architect of St. Peter's Basilica, Rome. The process of replacing the Constantinian basilica of the 4th century had been underway for fifty years and in 1506 foundations had been laid to the plans of Bramante. Successive architects had worked on it, but little progress had been made. Michelangelo was persuaded to take over the project. He returned to the concepts of Bramante, and developed his ideas for a centrally planned church, strengthening the structure both physically and visually. The dome, not completed until after his death, has been called by Banister Fletcher, "the greatest creation of the Renaissance".


title: Michelangelo

text: As construction was progressing on St Peter's, there was concern that Michelangelo would pass away before the dome was finished. However, once building commenced on the lower part of the dome, the supporting ring, the completion of the design was inevitable.


title: Michelangelo

text: On 7 December 2007, a red chalk sketch for the dome of St Peter's Basilica, possibly the last made by Michelangelo before his death, was discovered in the Vatican archives. It is extremely rare, since he destroyed his designs later in life. The sketch is a partial plan for one of the radial columns of the cupola drum of St Peter's.


title: Michelangelo

text: Michelangelo was a devout Catholic whose faith deepened at the end of his life. His poetry includes the following closing lines from what is known as poem 285 (written in 1554): "Neither painting nor sculpture will be able any longer to calm my soul, now turned toward that divine love that opened his arms on the cross to take us in."


title: Michelangelo

text: Michelangelo was abstemious in his personal life, and once told his apprentice, Ascanio Condivi: "However rich I may have been, I have always lived like a poor man." Michelangelo's bank accounts and numerous deeds of purchase show that his net worth was about 50,000 gold ducats, more than many princes and dukes of his time. Condivi said he was indifferent to food and drink, eating "more out of necessity than of pleasure" and that he "often slept in his clothes and ... boots." His biographer Paolo Giovio says, "His nature was so rough and uncouth that his domestic habits were incredibly squalid, and deprived posterity of any pupils who might have followed him." This, however, may not have affected him, as he was by nature a solitary and melancholy person, , a man who "withdrew himself from the company of men."


title: Michelangelo

text: It is impossible to know for certain whether Michelangelo had physical relationships (Condivi ascribed to him a "monk-like chastity"); speculation about his sexuality is rooted in his poetry. He wrote over three hundred sonnets and madrigals. The longest sequence, displaying deep romantic feeling, was written to the young Roman patrician Tommaso dei Cavalieri (), who was 23 years old when Michelangelo first met him in 1532, at the age of 57. The Florentine Benedetto Varchi fifteen years later described Cavalieri as of "incomparable beauty", with "graceful manners, so excellent an endowment and so charming a demeanour that he indeed deserved, and still deserves, the more to be loved the better he is known". In his "Lives of the Artists", Giorgio Vasari observed: "But infinitely more than any of the others he loved M. Tommaso de' Cavalieri, a Roman gentleman, for whom, being a young man and much inclined to these arts, [Michelangelo] made, to the end that he might learn to draw, many most superb drawings of divinely beautiful heads, designed in black and red chalk; and then he drew for him a Ganymede rapt to Heaven by Jove's Eagle, a Tityus with the Vulture devouring his heart, the Chariot of the Sun falling with Phaëthon into the Po, and a Bacchanal of children, which are all in themselves most rare things, and drawings the like of which have never been seen." Scholars agree that Michelangelo became infatuated with Cavalieri.


title: Michelangelo

text: The poems to Cavalieri make up the first large sequence of poems in any modern tongue addressed by one man to another; they predate by 50 years Shakespeare's sonnets to the fair youth:


title: Michelangelo

text: Cavalieri replied: "I swear to return your love. Never have I loved a man more than I love you, never have I wished for a friendship more than I wish for yours." Cavalieri remained devoted to Michelangelo until his death.


title: Michelangelo

text: In 1542, Michelangelo met Cecchino dei Bracci who died only a year later, inspiring Michelangelo to write 48 funeral epigrams. Some of the objects of Michelangelo's affections, and subjects of his poetry, took advantage of him: the model Febo di Poggio asked for money in response to a love-poem, and a second model, Gherardo Perini, shamelessly stole from him.


title: Michelangelo

text: The homoerotic nature of the poetry has been a source of discomfort to later generations. Michelangelo's grandnephew, Michelangelo Buonarroti the Younger, published the poems in 1623 with the gender of pronouns changed, and it was not until John Addington Symonds translated them into English in 1893 that the original genders were restored. In modern times some scholars insist that, despite the restoration of the pronouns, they represent "an emotionless and elegant re-imagining of Platonic dialogue, whereby erotic poetry was seen as an expression of refined sensibilities", but others read his poems at face value, as a confession of preference for young men over women.


title: Michelangelo

text: Late in life, Michelangelo nurtured a great platonic love for the poet and noble widow Vittoria Colonna, whom he met in Rome in 1536 or 1538 and who was in her late forties at the time. They wrote sonnets for each other and were in regular contact until she died. These sonnets mostly deal with the spiritual issues that occupied them. Condivi recalls Michelangelo's saying that his sole regret in life was that he did not kiss the widow's face in the same manner that he had her hand.


title: Michelangelo

text: In a letter from late 1542, Michelangelo blamed the tensions between Julius II and himself on the envy of Bramante and Raphael, saying of the latter, "all he had in art, he got from me". According to Gian Paolo Lomazzo, Michelangelo and Raphael met once: the former was alone, while the latter was accompanied by several others. Michelangelo commented that he thought he had encountered the chief of police with such an assemblage, and Raphael replied that he thought he had met an executioner, as they are wont to walk alone.


title: Michelangelo

text: The "Madonna of the Stairs" is Michelangelo's earliest known work in marble. It is carved in shallow relief, a technique often employed by the master-sculptor of the early 15th century, Donatello, and others such as Desiderio da Settignano. While the Madonna is in profile, the easiest aspect for a shallow relief, the child displays a twisting motion that was to become characteristic of Michelangelo's work. The "Taddei Tondo" of 1502 shows the Christ Child frightened by a Bullfinch, a symbol of the Crucifixion. The lively form of the child was later adapted by Raphael in the "Bridgewater Madonna". The "Madonna of Bruges" was, at the time of its creation, unlike other such statues depicting the Virgin proudly presenting her son. Here, the Christ Child, restrained by his mother's clasping hand, is about to step off into the world. The "Doni Tondo", depicting the Holy Family, has elements of all three previous works: the frieze of figures in the background has the appearance of a low-relief, while the circular shape and dynamic forms echo the Taddeo Tondo. The twisting motion present in the "Madonna of Bruges" is accentuated in the painting. The painting heralds the forms, movement and colour that Michelangelo was to employ on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.


title: Michelangelo

text: The kneeling "Angel" is an early work, one of several that Michelangelo created as part of a large decorative scheme for the Arca di San Domenico in the church dedicated to that saint in Bologna. Several other artists had worked on the scheme, beginning with Nicola Pisano in the 13th century. In the late 15th century, the project was managed by Niccolò dell'Arca. An angel holding a candlestick, by Niccolò, was already in place. Although the two angels form a pair, there is a great contrast between the two works, the one depicting a delicate child with flowing hair clothed in Gothic robes with deep folds, and Michelangelo's depicting a robust and muscular youth with eagle's wings, clad in a garment of Classical style. Everything about Michelangelo's "Angel" is dynamic. Michelangelo's "Bacchus" was a commission with a specified subject, the youthful God of Wine. The sculpture has all the traditional attributes, a vine wreath, a cup of wine and a fawn, but Michelangelo ingested an air of reality into the subject, depicting him with bleary eyes, a swollen bladder and a stance that suggests he is unsteady on his feet. While the work is plainly inspired by Classical sculpture, it is innovative for its rotating movement and strongly three-dimensional quality, which encourages the viewer to look at it from every angle.


title: Michelangelo

text: In the so-called "Dying Slave", Michelangelo again utilised the figure with marked contrapposto to suggest a particular human state, in this case waking from sleep. With the "Rebellious Slave", it is one of two such earlier figures for the Tomb of Pope Julius II, now in the Louvre, that the sculptor brought to an almost finished state. These two works were to have a profound influence on later sculpture, through Rodin who studied them at the Louvre.


title: Michelangelo

text: The "Atlas Slave" is one of the later figures for Pope Julius' tomb. The works, known collectively as "The Captives", each show the figure struggling to free itself, as if from the bonds of the rock in which it is lodged. The works give a unique insight into the sculptural methods that Michelangelo employed and his way of revealing what he perceived within the rock.


title: Michelangelo

text: The Sistine Chapel ceiling was painted between 1508 and 1512. The ceiling is a flattened barrel vault supported on twelve triangular pendentives that rise from between the windows of the chapel. The commission, as envisaged by Pope Julius II, was to adorn the pendentives with figures of the twelve apostles. Michelangelo, who was reluctant to take the job, persuaded the Pope to give him a free hand in the composition. The resultant scheme of decoration awed his contemporaries and has inspired other artists ever since. The scheme is of nine panels illustrating episodes from the Book of Genesis, set in an architectonic frame. On the pendentives, Michelangelo replaced the proposed Apostles with Prophets and Sibyls who heralded the coming of the Messiah.


title: Michelangelo

text: Michelangelo began painting with the later episodes in the narrative, the pictures including locational details and groups of figures, the "Drunkenness of Noah" being the first of this group. In the later compositions, painted after the initial scaffolding had been removed, Michelangelo made the figures larger. One of the central images, "The Creation of Adam" is one of the best known and most reproduced works in the history of art. The final panel, showing the "Separation of Light from Darkness" is the broadest in style and was painted in a single day. As the model for the Creator, Michelangelo has depicted himself in the action of painting the ceiling.


title: Michelangelo

text: As supporters to the smaller scenes, Michelangelo painted twenty youths who have variously been interpreted as angels, as muses, or simply as decoration. Michelangelo referred to them as "ignudi". The figure reproduced may be seen in context in the above image of the "Separation of Light from Darkness".


title: Michelangelo

text: In the process of painting the ceiling, Michelangelo made studies for different figures, of which some, such as that for "The Libyan Sibyl" have survived, demonstrating the care taken by Michelangelo in details such as the hands and feet. The Prophet Jeremiah, contemplating the downfall of Jerusalem, is an image of the artist himself.


title: Michelangelo

text: Michelangelo's relief of the "Battle of the Centaurs", created while he was still a youth associated with the Medici Academy, is an unusually complex relief in that it shows a great number of figures involved in a vigorous struggle. Such a complex disarray of figures was rare in Florentine art, where it would usually only be found in images showing either the Massacre of the Innocents or the Torments of Hell. The relief treatment, in which some of the figures are boldly projecting, may indicate Michelangelo's familiarity with Roman sarcophagus reliefs from the collection of Lorenzo Medici, and similar marble panels created by Nicola and Giovanni Pisano, and with the figurative compositions on Ghiberti's Baptistry Doors.


title: Michelangelo

text: The composition of the "Battle of Cascina" is known in its entirety only from copies, as the original cartoon, according to Vasari, was so admired that it deteriorated and was eventually in pieces. It reflects the earlier relief in the energy and diversity of the figures, with many different postures, and many being viewed from the back, as they turn towards the approaching enemy and prepare for battle.


title: Michelangelo

text: In "The Last Judgment" it is said that Michelangelo drew inspiration from a fresco by Melozzo da Forlì in Rome's Santi Apostoli. Melozzo had depicted figures from different angles, as if they were floating in the Heaven and seen from below. Melozzo's majestic figure of Christ, with windblown cloak, demonstrates a degree of foreshortening of the figure that had also been employed by Andrea Mantegna, but was not usual in the frescos of Florentine painters. In "The Last Judgment" Michelangelo had the opportunity to depict, on an unprecedented scale, figures in the action of either rising heavenward or falling and being dragged down.


title: Michelangelo

text: In the two frescos of the Pauline Chapel, "The Crucifixion of St. Peter" and "The Conversion of Saul", Michelangelo has used the various groups of figures to convey a complex narrative. In the "Crucifixion of Peter" soldiers busy themselves about their assigned duty of digging a post hole and raising the cross while various people look on and discuss the events. A group of horrified women cluster in the foreground, while another group of Christians is led by a tall man to witness the events. In the right foreground, Michelangelo walks out of the painting with an expression of disillusionment.


title: Michelangelo

text: Michelangelo's architectural commissions included a number that were not realised, notably the façade for Brunelleschi's Church of San Lorenzo in Florence, for which Michelangelo had a wooden model constructed, but which remains to this day unfinished rough brick. At the same church, Giulio de' Medici (later Pope Clement VII) commissioned him to design the Medici Chapel and the tombs of Giuliano and Lorenzo Medici. Pope Clement also commissioned the Laurentian Library, for which Michelangelo also designed the extraordinary vestibule with columns recessed into niches, and a staircase that appears to spill out of the library like a flow of lava, according to Nikolaus Pevsner, "... revealing Mannerism in its most sublime architectural form."


title: Michelangelo

text: In 1546 Michelangelo produced the highly complex ovoid design for the pavement of the Campidoglio and began designing an upper storey for the Farnese Palace. In 1547 he took on the job of completing St Peter's Basilica, begun to a design by Bramante, and with several intermediate designs by several architects. Michelangelo returned to Bramante's design, retaining the basic form and concepts by simplifying and strengthening the design to create a more dynamic and unified whole. Although the late 16th-century engraving depicts the dome as having a hemispherical profile, the dome of Michelangelo's model is somewhat ovoid and the final product, as completed by Giacomo della Porta, is more so.


title: Michelangelo

text: In his old age, Michelangelo created a number of "Pietàs" in which he apparently reflects upon mortality. They are heralded by the "Victory", perhaps created for the tomb of Pope Julius II but left unfinished. In this group, the youthful victor overcomes an older hooded figure, with the features of Michelangelo.


title: Michelangelo

text: The "Pietà of Vittoria Colonna" is a chalk drawing of a type described as "presentation drawings", as they might be given as a gift by an artist, and were not necessarily studies towards a painted work. In this image, Mary's upraised arms and hands are indicative of her prophetic role. The frontal aspect is reminiscent of Masaccio's fresco of the Holy Trinity in the Basilica of Santa Maria Novella, Florence.


title: Michelangelo

text: In the "Florentine Pietà", Michelangelo again depicts himself, this time as the aged Nicodemus lowering the body of Jesus from the cross into the arms of Mary his mother and Mary Magdalene. Michelangelo smashed the left arm and leg of the figure of Jesus. His pupil Tiberio Calcagni repaired the arm and drilled a hole in which to fix a replacement leg which was not subsequently attached. He also worked on the figure of Mary Magdalene.


title: Michelangelo

text: The last sculpture that Michelangelo worked on (six days before his death), the "Rondanini Pietà" could never be completed because Michelangelo carved it away until there was insufficient stone. The legs and a detached arm remain from a previous stage of the work. As it remains, the sculpture has an abstract quality, in keeping with 20th-century concepts of sculpture.


title: Michelangelo

text: Michelangelo died in Rome in 1564, at the age of 88 (three weeks before his 89th birthday). His body was taken from Rome for interment at the Basilica of Santa Croce, fulfilling the maestro's last request to be buried in his beloved Florence.


title: Michelangelo

text: Michelangelo's heir Lionardo Buonarroti commissioned Giorgio Vasari to design and build the "Tomb of Michelangelo", a monumental project that cost 770 scudi, and took over 14 years to complete. Marble for the tomb was supplied by Cosimo I de' Medici, Duke of Tuscany who had also organized a state funeral to honour Michelangelo in Florence.


title: Michelangelo

text: Michelangelo, with Leonardo da Vinci and Raphael, is one of the three giants of the Florentine High Renaissance. Although their names are often cited together, Michelangelo was younger than Leonardo by 23 years, and older than Raphael by eight. Because of his reclusive nature, he had little to do with either artist and outlived both of them by more than forty years. Michelangelo took few sculpture students. He employed Francesco Granacci, who was his fellow pupil at the Medici Academy, and became one of several assistants on the Sistine Chapel ceiling. Michelangelo appears to have used assistants mainly for the more manual tasks of preparing surfaces and grinding colours. Despite this, his works were to have a great influence on painters, sculptors and architects for many generations to come.


title: Michelangelo

text: While Michelangelo's "David" is the most famous male nude of all time and now graces cities around the world, some of his other works have had perhaps even greater impact on the course of art. The twisting forms and tensions of the "Victory", the "Bruges Madonna" and the "Medici Madonna" make them the heralds of the Mannerist art. The unfinished giants for the tomb of Pope Julius II had profound effect on late-19th- and 20th-century sculptors such as Rodin and Henry Moore.


title: Michelangelo

text: Michelangelo's foyer of the Laurentian Library was one of the earliest buildings to utilise Classical forms in a plastic and expressive manner. This dynamic quality was later to find its major expression in Michelangelo's centrally planned St Peter's, with its giant order, its rippling cornice and its upward-launching pointed dome. The dome of St Peter's was to influence the building of churches for many centuries, including Sant'Andrea della Valle in Rome and St Paul's Cathedral, London, as well as the civic domes of many public buildings and the state capitals across America.


title: Michelangelo

text: Artists who were directly influenced by Michelangelo include Raphael, whose monumental treatment of the figure in the "School of Athens" and "The Expulsion of Heliodorus from the Temple" owes much to Michelangelo, and whose fresco of "Isaiah" in Sant'Agostino closely imitates the older master's prophets. Other artists, such as Pontormo, drew on the writhing forms of the "Last Judgment" and the frescoes of the Capella Paolina.


title: Michelangelo

text: The Sistine Chapel ceiling was a work of unprecedented grandeur, both for its architectonic forms, to be imitated by many Baroque ceiling painters, and also for the wealth of its inventiveness in the study of figures. Vasari wrote:


title: The Big Short (film)

text: The Big Short is a 2015 American biographical comedy-drama film directed by Adam McKay. Written by McKay and Charles Randolph, it is based on the 2010 book "The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine" by Michael Lewis showing how the financial crisis of 2007–2008 was triggered by the United States housing bubble. The film stars Christian Bale, Steve Carell, Ryan Gosling and Brad Pitt, with John Magaro, Finn Wittrock, Hamish Linklater, Rafe Spall, Jeremy Strong, and Marisa Tomei in supporting roles.


title: The Big Short (film)

text: The film is noted for the unconventional techniques it employs to explain financial instruments. Among others, it features cameo appearances by actress Margot Robbie, chef Anthony Bourdain, singer-songwriter Selena Gomez, and economist Richard Thaler, who break the fourth wall to explain concepts such as subprime mortgages and synthetic collateralized debt obligations. Several of the film's characters directly address the audience, most frequently Gosling's, who serves as the narrator.


title: The Big Short (film)

text: "The Big Short" began a limited release in the United States on December 11, 2015, followed by a wide release on December 23 by Paramount Pictures. A critical and commercial success, the film grossed $133 million on $50 million budget and received acclaim for the performances of the cast (particularly that of Bale), McKay's direction, editing, and the screenplay. The film won the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay in addition to nominations for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Supporting Actor (Bale), and Best Film Editing.


title: The Big Short (film)

text: The film consists of three separate but concurrent stories, loosely connected by their actions in the years leading up to the 2007 housing market crash.


title: The Big Short (film)

text: In 2005, eccentric hedge fund manager Michael Burry discovers that the United States housing market, based on high-risk subprime loans, is extremely unstable. Anticipating the market's collapse in the second quarter of 2007, as interest rates would rise from adjustable-rate mortgages, he proposes to create a credit default swap market, allowing him to bet against, or short, market-based mortgage-backed securities, for profit.


title: The Big Short (film)

text: His long-term bet, exceeding $1 billion, is accepted by major investment and commercial banks but requires paying substantial monthly premiums. This sparks his main client, Lawrence Fields, to accuse him of "wasting" capital while many clients demand that he reverse and sell, but Burry refuses. Under pressure, he eventually restricts withdrawals, angering investors, and Fields sues Burry. Eventually, the market collapses and his fund's value increases by 489% with an overall profit (even allowing for the massive premiums) of over $2.69 billion, with Fields receiving $489 million alone.


title: The Big Short (film)

text: Jared Vennett (based on Greg Lippmann), the executive in charge of global asset-backed securities trading at Deutsche Bank, is one of the first to understand Burry's analysis, learning from one of the bankers who sold Burry an early credit default swap. Using his quant to verify that Burry is most likely correct, he decides to enter the market, earning a fee from selling the swaps to firms who will profit when the underlying bonds fail. A misplaced phone call alerts FrontPoint Partners hedge fund manager Mark Baum (based on Steve Eisman), who is motivated to buy swaps from Vennett due to his low regard for banks' ethics and business models. Vennett explains that the packaging of subprime loans into collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) rated at AAA ratings will guarantee their eventual collapse.


title: The Big Short (film)

text: Conducting a field investigation in South Florida, the FrontPoint team discovers that mortgage brokers are profiting by selling their mortgage deals to Wall Street banks, who pay higher margins for the riskier mortgages, creating the bubble. This knowledge prompts the FrontPoint team to buy swaps from Vennett.


title: The Big Short (film)

text: In early 2007, as these loans begin to default, CDO prices somehow rise and ratings agencies refuse to downgrade the bond ratings. Baum discovers conflicts of interest and dishonesty amongst the credit rating agencies from an acquaintance at Standard & Poor's. Vennett invites the team to the American Securitization Forum in Las Vegas, where Baum learns from a CDO manager that the market for insuring mortgage bonds, including "synthetic CDOs" which are bets in favor of the faulty mortgage bonds, is significantly larger than the market for the mortgage loans themselves, leading a horrified Baum to realize the entire world economy is set to collapse.


title: The Big Short (film)

text: As the subprime bonds continue to fall, Baum learns that Morgan Stanley, under whose umbrella FrontPoint operates, had also taken short positions against mortgage derivatives. However, in order to offset the risk and the monthly premiums, it had bought higher-rated mortgage derivatives. Now that these are also collapsing in value, Morgan Stanley is facing severe liquidity problems. Despite pressure from his staff to sell their position before Morgan Stanley collapses, Baum refuses to sell until the economy is on the verge of collapsing, making over $1 billion in their swaps. Even so, Baum laments that the banks, as well as the government, will not admit what caused the economy to collapse, but will instead blame "immigrants and poor people".


title: The Big Short (film)

text: Young investors Charlie Geller and Jamie Shipley run a small firm called Brownfield Capital (based on the firm Cornwall Capital). They accidentally discover a marketing presentation by Vennett on a coffee table in the lobby of a large investment bank (the characters address the audience stating that in reality they had heard about Vennett's plan through word of mouth from friends and family), convincing them to invest in swaps, as it fits their strategy of buying cheap insurance with big potential payouts. Below the capital threshold for an ISDA Master Agreement required to enter into trades like Burry's and Baum's, they enlist the aid of Ben Rickert, a retired securities trader who was based in Singapore. When the bond values and CDOs rise despite defaults, Geller suspects the banks of committing fraud. The trio also visit the American Securitization Forum, where they learn that the SEC has no regulations to monitor mortgage-backed security activity. They successfully make even more profit than Burry and Baum by shorting the higher-rated AA mortgage securities, as they were considered highly stable and carried a much higher payout ratio.


title: The Big Short (film)

text: Later, as default numbers rise, the value of the CDOs and mortgage bonds does not change, and they realize the banks and the ratings agencies are maintaining the value of their CDOs in order to sell and short them before the inevitable crash. Horrified, they try to tip off the press about the upcoming disaster and the rampant fraud, but a writer from "The Wall Street Journal" exposes his own personal conflict of interest and will not listen in order to not endanger his relationships at the Wall Street investment banks. As the market starts collapsing, Ben, on vacation in England, sells their swaps. Ultimately, they turn their $30 million investment into $80 million, but their faith in the system is broken when Ben tells them of the severe consequences for the general public.


title: The Big Short (film)

text: Jared Vennett receives a bonus of $47 million for all of his swap sales. Mark Baum becomes more gracious from the financial fallout, and his staff continue to operate their fund. Charlie Geller and Jamie Shipley go their separate ways after unsuccessfully trying to sue the ratings agencies, with Charlie moving to Charlotte to start a family, and Jamie still running the fund. Ben Rickert returns to his peaceful retirement. Michael Burry closes his fund after public backlash and multiple IRS audits, now only investing in water securities.


title: The Big Short (film)

text: The personnel of the banks responsible for the crisis escape any consequences for their actions, with the single exception of one trader. It is noted that as of 2015, banks are selling CDOs again under a new label: "Bespoke Tranche Opportunity".


title: The Big Short (film)

text: Tracy Letts appears as Lawrence Fields, an investor in Burry's hedge fund, a fictional composite of Joel Greenblatt and others who had invested with Burry but came to disagree with his strategy. Byron Mann appeared as Mr. Chau, a CDO specialist whom Baum interviews in Las Vegas, and Melissa Leo as Georgia Hale, an employee of Standard and Poor's who admits to giving inaccurate ratings for bonds. Adepero Oduye portrays Kathy Tao, an employee of Morgan Stanley, who oversees Baum's fund.


title: The Big Short (film)

text: In minor roles, Karen Gillan appears as Evie, an employee of the SEC and Jamie's brother's ex-girlfriend, whom he meets with in Las Vegas. Max Greenfield and Billy Magnussen appear as mortgage brokers taking advantage of people looking for homes. Jae Suh Park features as Burry's wife, and Margot Robbie, Anthony Bourdain, Richard Thaler and Selena Gomez make cameo appearances as themselves in non-sequiturs to explain different financial aspects of the film. The real Michael Burry made a cameo in the film as a Scion employee. At the beginning of the scene in which the fictional Burry's investors confront him at his office, he is briefly shown standing near the front door, talking on the phone.


title: The Big Short (film)

text: In 2013, Paramount acquired the rights to the 2010 non-fiction book "The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine" by Michael Lewis, to develop it into a film, which Brad Pitt's Plan B Entertainment would produce. On March 24, 2014, Adam McKay was hired to write and direct a film about the housing and economic bubble. Screenwriter Charles Randolph, who co-wrote the film with McKay, said one of the first challenges was finding the right tone for the film. He told "Creative Screenwriting", "In general it was trying to find the right tone that was slightly funnier than your average Miloš Forman comedy, which is all grounded character-based but not so satirical where you got "Wag the Dog." Somewhere between there was what I was shooting for. Once I got the tone down, then I went through the plot. The market's movements provided you with an underlying plot. You make your short deal, then the bank is trying to squeeze you out, and then it all breaks loose. So that was pretty easy, and it provided character arcs against that." Two years after Randolph wrote his draft, McKay, as director, rewrote Randolph's screenplay. It was McKay's idea to include the celebrity cameos in the film to explain the financial concepts.


title: The Big Short (film)

text: On January 13, 2015, "Variety" reported that Brad Pitt, Christian Bale, and Ryan Gosling were set to star in the film, with Pitt producing the film along with Dede Gardner and Jeremy Kleiner. Plan B Entertainment would finance, with Paramount handling the distribution rights. Before this, Pitt had already starred in the adaptation of the author's "Moneyball", for which he was nominated for an Oscar. On January 14, it was announced that Steve Carell would also star. On April 21, 2015, more cast was revealed by "Deadline", including Melissa Leo, Marisa Tomei, Tracy Letts, Hamish Linklater, John Magaro, Byron Mann, Rafe Spall, Jeremy Strong, and Finn Wittrock. Charles Randolph wrote the initial draft. Max Greenfield joined the ensemble cast of the film on April 23, 2015. Karen Gillan tweeted about her involvement in the film on May 8, 2015. Jeffry Griffin, who plays Vennett's assistant Chris, was originally only planned to appear as an extra, and was cast to a speaking role after a production assistant picked him out of a crowd.


title: The Big Short (film)

text: Principal photography on the film began on March 18, 2015, in New Orleans, Louisiana. On March 25, filming was taking place on General de Gaulle Boulevard in the Algiers section of New Orleans. On May 8, Gillan confirmed she was shooting her scenes. On May 20, 2015, filming took place on a short stretch of Mercer Street, between Prince Street and Spring Street, in Manhattan, New York City. On May 22, the production crew recreated the offices of failed investment firm Lehman Brothers in the lobby of the New York State Department of Financial Services in Manhattan. An assistant counsel for the Department of Financial Services played one of the extras in the scene.


title: The Big Short (film)

text: On September 22, 2015, Paramount set the film for a limited release on December 11, 2015, and a wide release on December 23, 2015. The film was released on DVD and Blu-ray on March 15, 2016.


title: The Big Short (film)

text: "The Big Short" grossed $70.3 million in the United States and Canada and $63.2 million in other countries for a worldwide total of $133.4 million, against a production budget of $50 million.


title: The Big Short (film)

text: The film was released in eight theaters in Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco and Chicago on December 11, 2015 and earned $705,527 (an average of $88,191 per theater). It set the record for the best ever per-screen gross for a film opening in eight locations, breaking the previous record held by "Memoirs of a Geisha" ($85,313 per theater), and was the third biggest theater average of 2015 behind the four screen debuts of "Steve Jobs" ($130,000) and "The Revenant" ($118,640).


title: The Big Short (film)

text: The film had its wide release on Wednesday December 23, 2015 and grossed $2.3 million on its first day. In its opening weekend it grossed $10.5 million, finishing 6th at the box office.


title: The Big Short (film)

text: On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 89% based on 331 reviews, with an average rating of 7.80/10. The site's critical consensus reads, ""The Big Short" approaches a serious, complicated subject with an impressive attention to detail – and manages to deliver a well-acted, scathingly funny indictment of its real-life villains in the bargain." On Metacritic, the film has a score of 81 out of 100 based on 45 reviews, indicating "universal acclaim". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A−" on an A+ to F scale.


title: The Big Short (film)

text: IGN gave the film a score of 8.6/10, praising its "energetic direction" and making "a complicated tale palpable for the layperson even as it triggers outrage at the fatcats who helped cause it".


title: The Big Short (film)

text: "The New York Times" "UpShot" series stated "The Big Short" offered the "strongest film explanation of the global financial crisis". The series also stated that it "wouldn't necessarily have been able to cash in as successfully as the characters in "The Big Short". The success of this film is due to the work of the actors who played the characters.”


title: The Big Short (film)

text: David McCandless's visual blog "Information is Beautiful" deduced that, while taking creative licence into account, the film was 91.4% accurate when compared to real-life events, calling it a "shockingly truthful film" with "very little dramatization or fakery".


title: The Big Short (film)

text: Movie critics with backgrounds in finance also commented on the film. Many agreed with the public that "The Big Short" was entertaining and engaging, but also terrifying. Glenn Kenny reported that the film accurately got the message across that even though the lives of the characters were not interconnected, their stories were.


title: The Big Short (film)

text: While the general plot of the film is the same as the book, many of the character names have been changed. For example, Steve Eisman has become "Mark Baum" and Greg Lippmann has become "Jared Vennett". Some biographical information has also been slightly modified.


title: The Big Short (film)

text: Eisman has said that he respects Carell's portrayal but that it was not 100 percent true to his real character. Speaking to "The Globe and Mail", Eisman said, "Eliminate my sense of humour and make me angry all the time, and that's [Carell's] portrayal. It's accurate enough, but it's not really me."


title: The Big Short (film)

text: The film, along with "The Wolf of Wall Street", had a brief resurgence in the wake of the January 2021 GameStop short squeeze as the events shown in the films provided reference points for what was happening with the GameStop and related stocks.


title: The Big Short (film)

text: Adam McKay and Charles Randolph won the Academy Award, BAFTA Award, and Writers Guild of America Award for Best Adapted Screenplay. They also won an Empire Award for the Best Screenplay. Christian Bale won the Critics' Choice Movie Award for Best Actor in a Comedy and the Satellite Award for Best Supporting Actor (Motion Picture). Hank Corwin won the American Cinema Editors Award for Best Edited Feature Film (Comedy or Musical) and Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award for Best Editing.


title: The Big Short (film)

text: The film earned the Critics' Choice Movie Award for Best Comedy and was named one of the Top 10 Films of the Year at the American Film Institute Awards 2015. Dede Gardner, Jeremy Kleiner, and Brad Pitt won the Producers Guild of America Award for Best Theatrical Motion Picture. The cast also won the National Board of Review Award for Best Ensemble.


title: Joseph Gordon-Levitt

text: Joseph Leonard Gordon-Levitt (; born February 17, 1981) is an American actor. He has received various accolades, including nominations for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy for his leading performances in "500 Days of Summer" (2009) and "50/50" (2011). He is the founder of the online media platform HitRecord whose projects such as "HitRecord on TV" (2014–15) and "Create Together" (2020) won him two Primetime Emmy Awards in the category of Outstanding Interactive Program.


title: Joseph Gordon-Levitt

text: Born in Los Angeles to a Jewish family, Gordon-Levitt began his acting career as a child, appearing in the films "A River Runs Through It" (1992), "Holy Matrimony" (1994), and "Angels in the Outfield" (1994), which earned him a Young Artist Award and a Saturn Award nomination. He played the role of Tommy Solomon in the TV series "3rd Rock from the Sun" (1996–2001) for which he received three nominations at the Screen Actors Guild Awards. He had a supporting role in "10 Things I Hate About You" (1999) and voiced Jim Hawkins in the Disney animated "Treasure Planet" (2002) before taking a break from acting to study at Columbia University, but dropped out in 2004 to resume his acting career.


title: Joseph Gordon-Levitt

text: Since returning to acting, Gordon-Levitt has starred in "Manic" (2001), "Mysterious Skin" (2004), "Brick" (2005), "The Lookout" (2007), "The Brothers Bloom" (2008), "Miracle at St. Anna" (2008), "" (2009), "Inception" (2010), "Hesher" (2010), "Premium Rush" (2012), "The Dark Knight Rises" (2012), "Looper" (2012), and "Lincoln" (2012). He portrayed Philippe Petit in the Robert Zemeckis-directed film "The Walk" (2015) and whistleblower Edward Snowden in the Oliver Stone film "Snowden" (2016). In 2020, he starred in the legal drama "The Trial of the Chicago 7", for which he won the Critics' Choice Movie Award for Best Acting Ensemble and the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture.


title: Joseph Gordon-Levitt

text: In 2013, he wrote and directed "Don Jon", a comedy-drama film that was released to positive reviews and earned him an Independent Spirit Award nomination for Best First Screenplay. He previously directed and edited two short films, both of which were released in 2010: "Morgan M. Morgansen's Date with Destiny" and "". In 2021, he wrote, directed and starred in a comedy drama series "Mr. Corman" on Apple TV+. In 2022, he voiced Jiminy Cricket in Disney's live-action remake of "Pinocchio". He lives in Wellington with his wife and two children.


title: Joseph Gordon-Levitt

text: Joseph Leonard Gordon-Levitt was born on February 17, 1981, in Los Angeles, California, and was raised in the Sherman Oaks neighborhood. He is Ashkenazi Jewish, from a family that is "not strictly religious" and his parents were among the founders of the Progressive Jewish Alliance. Gordon-Levitt's father, Dennis Levitt, was once the news director for the Pacifica Radio station, KPFK-FM. His mother, Jane Gordon, ran for the United States Congress in California during the 1970s for the Peace and Freedom Party; she met Dennis Levitt while she was working as the program guide editor for KPFK-FM. Gordon-Levitt's maternal grandfather, Michael Gordon (1909–1993), was a Hollywood film director. Gordon-Levitt had an older brother, Dan, a photographer and fire spinner who died in 2010 at the age of 36. Gordon-Levitt attended Van Nuys High School and graduated in 1999.


title: Joseph Gordon-Levitt

text: Gordon-Levitt joined a musical theater group at the age of four and played the Scarecrow in a production of "The Wizard of Oz". Subsequently, he was approached by an agent and began appearing on television and in commercials for Sunny Jim peanut butter, Cocoa Puffs, Pop-Tarts, and Kinney Shoes.


title: Joseph Gordon-Levitt

text: At age six he starred in several made-for-television films. In 1991, he played both David Collins and Daniel Collins in the "Dark Shadows" television series and appeared in the movie "A River Runs Through It" . In the same year, he made an appearance as a boy who witnesses a murder in an episode of Quantum Leap. During 1992–93, he played in "The Powers That Be", a sitcom starring John Forsythe as a clever young boy named Pierce Van Horne. Also in 1992, he portrayed Gregory Kingsley in the made-for-TV film "Switching Parents", based on Kingsley's real life case of "divorcing" his parents. In 1994, he starred in the Disney film "Angels in the Outfield" as an orphan who sees angels. In 1996, he got the role of Tommy Solomon on the sitcom "3rd Rock from the Sun". The series ran for six seasons. The "San Francisco Chronicle" noted that Gordon-Levitt was a "Jewish kid playing an extraterrestrial pretending to be a Jewish kid". During the 1990s, he was frequently featured in teenage magazines. He also made an appearance on "That '70s Show" in 1998 as Buddy, a gay teenager who assumes his friend (main character Eric Forman) is gay as well, in the episode "Eric's Buddy".


title: Joseph Gordon-Levitt

text: Gordon-Levitt had a supporting role in 1998's "", the 1999 film "10 Things I Hate About You", a modern-day adaptation of Shakespeare's "The Taming of the Shrew", and voiced Jim Hawkins in "Treasure Planet" (2002), a Disney adaptation of the novel "Treasure Island". In 2000, he began attending Columbia University. He studied history, literature, and French poetry. He became an avid Francophile and a French speaker. He also dated actress Julia Stiles and the two lived in John Jay Hall. He said that moving to New York City from his hometown forced him to grow as a person. He dropped out in 2004 to concentrate on acting again.


title: Joseph Gordon-Levitt

text: Gordon-Levitt has said that he made a conscious decision to "be in good movies" after returning to acting. His films include 2001's drama "Manic" which was set in a mental institution, "Mysterious Skin" (2004) in which he played a gay prostitute and child sexual abuse victim, and "Brick" (2005), a modern-day film noir set at a high school. In "Brick" he had the lead role of Brendan Frye, a teen who becomes involved in an underground drug ring while investigating a murder. "Brick" received positive reviews, with "The Minnesota Daily"s critic commenting that Gordon-Levitt played the character "beautifully", saying the performance was "true to (the) film's style", "unfeeling but not disenchanted", and "sexy in the most ambiguous way." Another review describes the performance as "astounding". He starred opposite Steve Sandvoss as a young judgmental missionary in "Latter Days" (2003), a film that centers on a sexually repressed Mormon missionary (Sandvoss) who falls for his gay neighbor. He also had roles in "Havoc" and "Shadowboxer".


title: Joseph Gordon-Levitt

text: His next role was in 2007's "The Lookout" in which he played Chris Pratt, a janitor involved in a bank heist. In reviewing the film, "The Philadelphia Inquirer" described Gordon-Levitt as a "surprisingly formidable, and formidably surprising, leading man", while "New York" magazine stated that he is a "major tabula rasa actor ... a minimalist", and his character is effective because he "doesn't seize the space ... by what he takes away from the character." The "San Francisco Chronicle" specified that he "embodies, more than performs, a character's inner life." His 2008 and 2009 films include "Stop-Loss", directed by Kimberly Peirce and revolving around American soldiers returning from the Iraq War, and "Killshot" in which he played a hoodlum partnered with a hired killer played by Mickey Rourke.


title: Joseph Gordon-Levitt

text: Gordon-Levitt played a lead role opposite to friend Zooey Deschanel in "500 Days of Summer", a well-received 2009 release about the deconstruction of a relationship. His performance, described as "the real key" to what makes the film work, credits him with using "his usual spell in subtle gradations." "Variety"s Todd McCarthy praised his performance, saying he "expressively alternates between enthusiasm and forlorn disappointment in the manner Jack Lemmon could". Peter Travers of "Rolling Stone" said the movie "hits you like a blast of pure romantic oxygen" and credited both lead actors for playing "it for real, with a grasp of subtlety and feeling that goes beyond the call of breezy duty." He was subsequently nominated for a Golden Globe Award.


title: Joseph Gordon-Levitt

text: He later played villain Cobra Commander in "". On November 21, 2009, he hosted "Saturday Night Live". In 2010, he replaced James Franco and starred alongside Leonardo DiCaprio in Christopher Nolan's science fiction thriller "Inception", which received favorable reviews.


title: Joseph Gordon-Levitt

text: In 2011, Gordon-Levitt began filming Christopher Nolan's "The Dark Knight Rises" in which he played John Blake, a police officer who emerges as a key ally of Batman. In "Premium Rush", he played the starring role of a fixie-riding, brash bicycle messenger; he portrayed the younger version of Bruce Willis' character, in a shared role for the time-travel thriller "Looper"; and the supporting role of Robert Todd Lincoln in Steven Spielberg's biopic "Lincoln". All three movies were released in 2012.


title: Joseph Gordon-Levitt

text: Gordon-Levitt played a new character, Johnny, in the sequel "" (2014), described by the filmmakers as "a cocky gambler who disguises a darker mission to destroy his most foul enemy at his best game". In October 2013, it was reported that he was one of the frontrunners to play Scott Lang / Ant-Man II for Marvel Studios' superhero film "Ant-Man" which eventually went to Paul Rudd.


title: Joseph Gordon-Levitt

text: In 2015, Gordon-Levitt starred as Philippe Petit in the biographical drama "The Walk", directed by Academy Award-winning director Robert Zemeckis. Gordon-Levitt then played National Security Agency surveillance leaker Edward Snowden in "Snowden", directed by Oliver Stone. The film was released in North America on September 16, 2016, and also starred Shailene Woodley, Melissa Leo, Zachary Quinto, Tom Wilkinson, and Nicolas Cage.


title: Joseph Gordon-Levitt

text: In 2017, Gordon-Levitt had a voice cameo in "". In 2019, Gordon-Levitt starred in "7500" directed by Patrick Vollrath, which had its world premiere at the Locarno Film Festival on August 9, 2019. It was released on June 19, 2020, by Amazon Studios. That same year, Gordon-Levitt had a voice cameo in "Knives Out".


title: Joseph Gordon-Levitt

text: Gordon-Levitt starred in "Project Power", directed by Ariel Schulman and Henry Joost, opposite Jamie Foxx and Dominique Fishback; it was released on August 14, 2020, by Netflix. He next played lawyer Richard Schultz in the drama film "The Trial of the Chicago 7". The movie was written and directed by Aaron Sorkin; its release date was September 25, 2020. In March 2021, it was announced that Levitt would voice Jiminy Cricket in Robert Zemeckis' live-action film adaptation of "Pinocchio". In 2022, he starred as Travis Kalanick, former CEO of Uber, in Showtime's anthology series "Super Pumped", based on the bestselling book "" by Mike Isaac.


title: Joseph Gordon-Levitt

text: Gordon-Levitt's first film as director, the 24-minute-long "Sparks" was an adaptation of a short story by Elmore Leonard starring Carla Gugino and Eric Stoltz. "Sparks" was selected for the 2009 Sundance Film Festival to be shown as part of a new program for short films. In 2010, he directed another short film, "Morgan and Destiny's Eleventeenth Date: The Zeppelin Zoo". It premiered at two houses during the South by Southwest festival in Austin.


title: Joseph Gordon-Levitt

text: In 2013, Gordon-Levitt wrote, directed, and starred in his screenwriting and directorial debut, "Don Jon". The film also stars Scarlett Johansson, Julianne Moore, and Tony Danza and it premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2013. Following the premiere, the film was acquired by Relativity Media and Gordon-Levitt stated: "I always intended this to be a movie for a mass popular audience. Everyone told me it was a long shot ... I couldn't possibly be more grateful."


title: Joseph Gordon-Levitt

text: In September 2019, it was announced Gordon-Levitt would write, direct, star, and executive produce "Mr. Corman", a comedy-drama series produced by A24 for Apple TV+.


title: Joseph Gordon-Levitt

text: Gordon-Levitt created the platform in 2010 after a period of stagnation in his acting career. "I wanted to be creative, and no one was letting me [so I said] OK, I have to figure out something to do on my own." The company has $6.4 million in venture capital.


title: Joseph Gordon-Levitt

text: On 6 November 2020, Gordon-Levitt released "Hong Kong Never Sleeps", a collaborative short film paying homage to Hong Kong created on hitRECord, on his Facebook page. It features photos and videos he collected from Hong Kongers since August 2020, which some themed around the Hong Kong protests starting in 2019, and voice by actors he recruited in October 2020.


title: Joseph Gordon-Levitt

text: On October 4, 2010, Gordon-Levitt's older brother, Daniel Gordon-Levitt, was found dead in Hollywood, California, at the age of 36. According to the Los Angeles County Coroner's Office, Daniel’s cause of death was "ketamine intoxication, with the injury occurring by intake of overdose". Joseph Gordon-Levitt has publicly disputed the claim that his brother's death was caused by a drug overdose.


title: Joseph Gordon-Levitt

text: In October 2013, Gordon-Levitt identified himself as a feminist, giving credit to his mother: "My mom brought me up to be a feminist. She was active in the movement in the 1960s and 1970s. The Hollywood movie industry has come a long way since its past. It certainly has a bad history of sexism, but it ain't all the way yet."


title: Joseph Gordon-Levitt

text: In December 2014, Gordon-Levitt married Tasha McCauley, the founder and CEO of technology company Fellow Robots. Their first child, a son, was born in August 2015. Their second son was born in June 2017. He and McCauley do not want to reveal any details of their children to the media, including their first names. He has been living with his family in Wellington since October 2020, after moving his new TV production to New Zealand in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.


title: Joseph Gordon-Levitt

text: Gordon-Levitt has expressed support for the effective altruism movement. In 2017, he spoke at the Effective Altruism Global conference in San Francisco.


title: Tilda Swinton

text: Katherine Matilda Swinton (born 5 November 1960) is a British actress. Known for her roles in independent films and blockbusters, she has received various accolades, including an Academy Award and a British Academy Film Award, in addition to nominations for three Golden Globe Awards and five Screen Actors Guild Awards. In 2020, "The New York Times" ranked her as one of the greatest actors of the 21st century.


title: Tilda Swinton

text: Swinton began her career by appearing in the experimental films "Caravaggio" (1986), "The Last of England" (1988), "War Requiem" (1989), and "The Garden" (1990). Swinton won the Volpi Cup for Best Actress at the Venice Film Festival for her portrayal of Isabella of France in "Edward II" (1991). She next starred in Sally Potter's "Orlando" (1992), for which she was nominated for the European Film Award for Best Actress. She was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for her performance in "The Deep End" (2001). That followed with appearances in "Vanilla Sky" (2001) and "Adaptation" (2002). For the film "Young Adam" (2003), Swinton won the British Academy Scotland Award for Best Actress.


title: Tilda Swinton

text: Swinton's performance in "Michael Clayton" (2007) won her the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress and the BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role. Prior to this, she appeared in the film "Constantine" (2005), and subsequently had roles in "Julia" (2008) and "I Am Love" (2009). She gained acclaim for her performance in Lynne Ramsay's


title: Tilda Swinton

text: psychological thriller "We Need to Talk About Kevin" (2011) for which she received a nomination for the BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role. Swinton gained wider recognition for her portrayals as the White Witch in "The Chronicles of Narnia" series (2005–2010) and the Ancient One in the Marvel Cinematic Universe franchise. She is also known for her performances in the Wes Anderson films "Moonrise Kingdom" (2012), "The Grand Budapest Hotel" (2014) and "The French Dispatch" (2021).


title: Tilda Swinton

text: Swinton was awarded the Richard Harris Award by the British Independent Film Awards in recognition of her contributions to the British film industry. In 2013, she was given a special tribute by the Museum of Modern Art. In 2020, Swinton was awarded the British Film Institute Fellowship for her "daringly eclectic and striking talents as a performer and filmmaker and recognises her great contribution to film culture, independent film exhibition and philanthropy."


title: Tilda Swinton

text: Katherine Matilda Swinton was born on 5 November 1960 in London, the daughter of Judith Balfour (née Killen; 1929–2012) and Sir John Swinton (1925–2018), the Laird of Kimmerghame House. She has three brothers. Her father was a retired major-general in the British Army, and was Lord Lieutenant of Berwickshire from 1989 to 2000. Her mother was Australian. Her paternal great-grandfather was a Scottish politician and herald, George Swinton, and her maternal great-great-grandfather was the Scottish botanist John Hutton Balfour. The Swinton family is an ancient Anglo-Scots family that can trace its lineage to the Middle Ages. Swinton considers herself "first and foremost" a Scot.


title: Tilda Swinton

text: Swinton attended three independent schools: Queen's Gate School in London, the West Heath Girls' School, and also Fettes College for a brief period. West Heath was a boarding school, where she was a classmate and friend of Lady Diana Spencer, the future Princess of Wales. As an adult, Swinton has spoken out against boarding schools, stating that West Heath was "a very lonely and isolating environment" and that she thinks boarding schools "are a very cruel setting in which to grow up and I don't feel children benefit from that type of education. Children need their parents and the love parents can provide." Swinton spent two years as a volunteer in South Africa and Kenya before University.


title: Tilda Swinton

text: In 1983, Swinton graduated from New Hall at the University of Cambridge with a degree in social and political sciences. While at Cambridge, she joined the Communist Party; she later joined the Scottish Socialist Party. It was in college that Swinton began performing on stage.


title: Tilda Swinton

text: Swinton joined the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1984, appearing in "Measure for Measure". She also worked with the Traverse Theatre in Edinburgh, starring in "Mann ist Mann" by Manfred Karge in 1987. On television, she appeared as Julia in the 1986 mini-series "Zastrozzi: A Romance" based on the Gothic novel by Percy Bysshe Shelley. Her first film was "Caravaggio" in 1986, directed by Derek Jarman. In 1987, Swinton starred along Bill Paterson in Peter Wollen's "Friendship's Death", she played a female extraterrestrial robot on a peace mission to Earth. In 1988, Swinton was a member of the jury at the 38th Berlin International Film Festival.


title: Tilda Swinton

text: Swinton went on to star in several Jarman films, including "The Last of England" (1987), "War Requiem" (1989) opposite Laurence Olivier, and "Edward II" (1991), for which she won the Volpi Cup for Best Actress at the 1991 Venice Film Festival. She performed in the performance art piece "Volcano Saga" by Joan Jonas in 1989. The 28-minute video art piece is based on a 13th-century Icelandic Laxdæla Saga, and it tells a mythological story of a young woman whose dreams tell of the future.


title: Tilda Swinton

text: Swinton played the title role in "Orlando" (1992), Sally Potter's film version of the novel by Virginia Woolf. The part allowed Swinton to explore matters of gender presentation onscreen, which reflected her lifelong interest in androgynous style. Swinton later reflected on the role in an interview accompanied by a striking photo shoot. "People talk about androgyny in all sorts of dull ways," said Swinton, noting that the recent rerelease of "Orlando" had her thinking again about its pliancy. She referred to 1920s playful, androgynous French artist Claude Cahun: "Cahun looked at the limitlessness of an androgynous gesture, which I've always been interested in."


title: Tilda Swinton

text: In 1993, she was a member of the jury at the 18th Moscow International Film Festival. In 1995, with producer Joanna Scanlan, Swinton developed a performance/installation live art piece in the Serpentine Gallery, London, where she was on display to the public for a week, asleep or apparently so, in a glass case, as a piece of performance art. The piece is sometimes incorrectly credited to Cornelia Parker, whom Swinton invited to collaborate for the installation in London. The performance, titled "The Maybe", was repeated in 1996 at the Museo Barracco in Rome and in 2013 at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. In 1996, she appeared in the music video for Orbital's "The Box".


title: Tilda Swinton

text: Recent years have seen Swinton move toward mainstream projects, including the leading role in the American film "The Deep End" (2001), in which she played the mother of a gay son she suspects of killing his boyfriend. For this performance, she was nominated for a Golden Globe Award. She appeared as a supporting character in the films "The Beach" (2000), featuring Leonardo DiCaprio, "Vanilla Sky" (2001), and as the archangel Gabriel in "Constantine". Swinton appeared in the British films "The Statement" (2003) and "Young Adam" (2003). For her performance in the latter film, she received the British Academy Scotland Award for Best Actress.


title: Tilda Swinton

text: Swinton has collaborated with the fashion designers Viktor & Rolf; she was the focus of their "One Woman Show" 2003, in which they made all the models look like copies of Swinton, and she read a poem (of her own) that included the line "There is only one you. Only one". In 2005, Swinton performed as the White Witch Jadis, in the film version of "", and as Audrey Cobb in the Mike Mills film adaptation of the novel "Thumbsucker". Swinton later had cameos in "Narnia"'s sequels "" and "". In August 2006, she opened the new Screen Academy Scotland production centre in Edinburgh. In 2007, Swinton's performance as Karen Crowder in "Michael Clayton" earned her both a British Academy Film Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role as well as the for Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress at the 2008 80th Academy Awards, the film's sole win from the latter association.


title: Tilda Swinton

text: In July 2008, Swinton founded the film festival Ballerina Ballroom Cinema of Dreams. The event took place in a ballroom in Nairn on Scotland's Moray Firth in August. Swinton next appeared in the 2008 Coen Brothers film "Burn After Reading". She was cast in the role of Elizabeth Abbott in "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button", alongside Cate Blanchett and Brad Pitt. She collaborated with artist Patrick Wolf on his 2009 album "The Bachelor", contributing four spoken word pieces. Also in 2009, she and Mark Cousins embarked on a project where they mounted a 33.5-tonne portable cinema on a large truck, hauling it manually through the Scottish Highlands, creating a travelling independent film festival. The project was featured prominently in a documentary titled "Cinema Is Everywhere". The festival was repeated in 2011.


title: Tilda Swinton

text: She had a starring role as the eponymous character in Erick Zonca's "Julia", which premiered at the 2008 Berlin International Film Festival and saw a U.S. release in May 2009. She starred in the film adaptation of the novel "We Need to Talk About Kevin", released in October 2011. She portrayed the mother of the title character, a teenage boy who commits a high school massacre. In 2012, she was cast in Jim Jarmusch's "Only Lovers Left Alive". The film premiered at the Cannes Film Festival on 23 May 2013, and was released in the U.S. in the first half of 2014. She played Mason in the 2014 sci-fi film "Snowpiercer". Also in 2012, Swinton appeared in Doug Aitken's "SONG 1", an outdoor video installation created for the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C. In November of the same year, she and Sandro Kopp made cameo appearances in episode 6 of the BBC comedy "Getting On".


title: Tilda Swinton

text: She co-founded Drumduan Upper School in Findhorn, Scotland in 2013 with Ian Sutherland McCook. Swinton and McCook both had children who attended the Moray Steiner School, whose students graduate at age 14. They founded Drumduan partly to allow their children to continue their Steiner educations with neither grading nor tests. Swinton resigned as a director of Drumduan in April 2019.


title: Tilda Swinton

text: In February 2013, she played the part of David Bowie's wife in the promotional video for his song "The Stars (Are Out Tonight)", directed by Floria Sigismondi. In 2013, she was named as one of the 50 best-dressed over 50 by "The Guardian". In 2015, she starred in Luca Guadagnino's thriller "A Bigger Splash", opposite Dakota Johnson, Matthias Schoenaerts and Ralph Fiennes. Also in 2015, she played Dianne, Amy Schumer's character's editor on S'Nuff Magazine, in "Trainwreck".


title: Tilda Swinton

text: Swinton portrayed the Ancient One in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, appearing in the 2016 film "Doctor Strange" and the 2019 film "". Swinton starred in Luca Guadagnino's 2018 remake of the horror film "Suspiria". She played several roles, and was credited as Lutz Ebersdorf. She was ranked one of the best dressed women in 2018 by fashion website Net-a-Porter. In 2021, Swinton starred as newspaper writer J.K.L. Berensen in the Wes Anderson anthology film "The French Dispatch", and as Jessica Holland in Apichatpong Weerasethakul's first English-language film, "Memoria".


title: Tilda Swinton

text: Although born in London and having attended various schools in England, Swinton describes her nationality as Scottish, citing her childhood, growing up in Scotland and Scottish aristocratic family background. In 1997, Swinton gave birth to twins, Honor and Xavier Swinton Byrne, with her then-partner John Byrne, a Scottish artist and playwright. She has lived in Scotland for over two decades, currently in Nairn, overlooking the Moray Firth in the Highland region of Scotland, with her children and partner Sandro Kopp, a German painter, with whom she has been in a relationship since 2004.


title: Tilda Swinton

text: Swinton signed a petition in support of director Roman Polanski, who had been detained while traveling to a film festival in relation to his 1977 sexual abuse charges, which the petition argued would undermine the tradition of film festivals as a place for works to be shown "freely and safely", and that arresting filmmakers traveling to neutral countries could open the door "for actions of which no-one can know the effects." In 2018, Swinton stated her support for Scottish independence.


title: Tilda Swinton

text: In a 2021 interview with "Vogue", Swinton mentioned that she identifies as queer. She was quoted as saying, "I'm very clear that queer is actually, for me anyway, to do with sensibility. I always felt I was queer – I was just looking for my queer circus, and I found it. And having found it, it's my world." She further stated that her collaborations with several creative visionaries helped her to find a sense of familiar belonging. In a 2022 profile by "The Guardian", she stated, "It just so happened I'd also been a queer kid – not in terms of my sexual life, just odd."


title: Tilda Swinton

text: In January 2022, Swinton revealed she is recovering from long COVID, with symptoms including having trouble getting out of bed, a bad cough, vertigo, and memory issues; she is also considering quitting acting to "retrain as a palliative carer", informed both by the trauma of living through the AIDS epidemic in the UK – Swinton mentions feeling a similarity between her experiences and those of the characters in Russell T Davies' 2021 TV drama miniseries "It's a Sin" – and "witnessing the loving support her parents received from professional carers at the end of their lives, and the impact it had on her."


title: Tilda Swinton

text: Swinton has amassed a prolific list of credits, including over sixty film roles and a dozen television appearances.


title: Tilda Swinton

text: Throughout her career, Swinton has also received several accolades, including the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, the British Academy Scotland Award for Best Actress, the British Academy Film Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role, the European Film Award for Best Actress, the National Board of Review Award for Best Actress, two Saturn Awards for Best Supporting Actress, and the Volpi Cup for Best Actress, in addition to nominations for five Critics' Choice Awards, three Golden Globe Awards and five Screen Actors Guild Awards.


title: Tilda Swinton

text: In 2020, Swinton was awarded the British Film Institute Fellowship for her "daringly eclectic and striking talents as a performer and filmmaker and recognises her great contribution to film culture, independent film exhibition and philanthropy." Also in 2020, "The New York Times" ranked her thirteenth on its list of "The Greatest Actors of the 21st Century".


title: Tilda Swinton

text: In November 2022, she was presented with the 2022 FIAF Award "for her work on the preservation and promotion of archive film, film history and women's role in it".


title: Stanford University

text: Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is considered among the most prestigious universities in the world.


title: Stanford University

text: Stanford was founded in 1885 by Leland and Jane Stanford in memory of their only child, Leland Stanford Jr., who had died of typhoid fever at age 15 the previous year. Leland Stanford was a U.S. senator and former governor of California who made his fortune as a railroad tycoon. The school admitted its first students on October 1, 1891, as a coeducational and non-denominational institution. Stanford University struggled financially after the death of Leland Stanford in 1893 and again after much of the campus was damaged by the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. Following World War II, provost of Stanford Frederick Terman inspired and supported faculty and graduates' entrepreneurialism to build a self-sufficient local industry, which would later be known as the Silicon Valley.


title: Stanford University

text: The university is organized around seven schools on the same campus: three schools consisting of 40 academic departments at the undergraduate level as well as four professional schools that focus on graduate programs in law, medicine, education, and business. The university also houses the public policy think tank, the Hoover Institution. Students compete in 36 varsity sports, and the university is one of two private institutions in the Division I FBS Pac-12 Conference. As of May 26, 2022, Stanford has won 131 NCAA team championships, more than any other university, and was awarded the NACDA Directors' Cup for 25 consecutive years, beginning in 1994–1995. In addition, by 2021, Stanford students and alumni had won at least 296 Olympic medals including 150 gold and 79 silver medals.


title: Stanford University

text: As of April 2021, 85 Nobel laureates, 29 Turing Award laureates, and 8 Fields Medalists have been affiliated with Stanford as students, alumni, faculty, or staff. In addition, Stanford is particularly noted for its entrepreneurship and is one of the most successful universities in attracting funding for start-ups. Stanford alumni have founded numerous companies, which combined produce more than $2.7 trillion in annual revenue and have created 5.4 million jobs as of 2011, roughly equivalent to the seventh largest economy in the world (). Stanford is the alma mater of U.S. President Herbert Hoover, 74 living billionaires, and 17 astronauts. In academia, its alumni include the current presidents of Yale and MIT and the provosts of Harvard and Princeton. It is also one of the leading producers of Fulbright Scholars, Marshall Scholars, Rhodes Scholars, and members of the United States Congress.


title: Stanford University

text: Stanford University was founded in 1885 by Leland and Jane Stanford, dedicated to the memory of Leland Stanford Jr, their only child. The institution opened in 1891 on Stanford's previous Palo Alto farm.


title: Stanford University

text: Jane and Leland Stanford modeled their university after the great eastern universities, most specifically Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. Stanford was referred to as the "Cornell of the West" in 1891 due to a majority of its faculty being former Cornell affiliates (professors, alumni, or both), including its first president, David Starr Jordan, and second president, John Casper Branner. Both Cornell and Stanford were among the first to make higher education accessible, non-sectarian, and open to women as well as men. Cornell is credited as one of the first American universities to adopt that radical departure from traditional education, and Stanford became an early adopter as well.


title: Stanford University

text: From an architectural point of view, the Stanfords, particularly Jane, wanted their university to look different from the eastern ones, which had often sought to emulate the style of English university buildings. They specified in the founding grant that the buildings should "be like the old adobe houses of the early Spanish days; they will be one-storied; they will have deep window seats and open fireplaces, and the roofs will be covered with the familiar dark red tiles". This guides the campus buildings to this day. The Stanfords also hired renowned landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, who previously designed the Cornell campus, to design the Stanford campus.


title: Stanford University

text: When Leland Stanford died in 1893, the continued existence of the university was in jeopardy due to a federal lawsuit against his estate, but Jane Stanford insisted the university remain in operation throughout the financial crisis. The university suffered major damage from the 1906 San Francisco earthquake; most of the damage was repaired, but a new library and gymnasium were demolished, and some original features of Memorial Church and the Quad were never restored.


title: Stanford University

text: During the early 20th century, the university added four professional graduate schools. Stanford University School of Medicine was established in 1908 when the university acquired Cooper Medical College in San Francisco; it moved to the Stanford campus in 1959. The university's law department, established as an undergraduate curriculum in 1893, was transitioned into a professional law school starting in 1908 and received accreditation from the American Bar Association in 1923. The Stanford Graduate School of Education grew out of the Department of the History and Art of Education, one of the original 21 departments at Stanford, and became a professional graduate school in 1917. The Stanford Graduate School of Business was founded in 1925 at the urging of then-trustee Herbert Hoover. In 1919, The Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace was started by Herbert Hoover to preserve artifacts related to World War I. The SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory (originally named the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center), established in 1962, performs research in particle physics.


title: Stanford University

text: In the 1940s and 1950s, an engineering professor and later provost Frederick Terman encouraged Stanford engineering graduates to invent products and start their own companies. During the 1950s, he established Stanford Industrial Park, a high-tech commercial campus on university land. Also in the 1950s William Shockley, co-inventor of the silicon transistor, recipient of the 1956 Nobel Prize for Physics, and later professor of physics at Stanford, moved to the Palo Alto area and founded a company, Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory. The next year eight of his employees resigned and formed a competing company, Fairchild Semiconductor. The presence of so many high-tech and semiconductor firms helped to establish Stanford and the mid-Peninsula as a hotbed of innovation, eventually named Silicon Valley after the key ingredient in transistors. Shockley and Terman are often described, separately or jointly, as the "fathers of Silicon Valley".


title: Stanford University

text: Stanford in the 1960s rose from a regional university to one of the most prestigious in the United States, "when it appeared on lists of the "top ten" universities in America... This swift rise to performance [was] understood at the time as related directly to the university's defense contracts..."


title: Stanford University

text: In the following decades, however, controversies would damage the reputation of the school. The 1971 Stanford prison experiment was criticized as unethical, and the misuse of government funds from 1981 resulted in severe penalties to the school's research funding and the resignation of Stanford President Donald Kennedy in 1992.


title: Stanford University

text: Most of Stanford is on an campus, one of the largest in the United States. It is on the San Francisco Peninsula, in the northwest part of the Santa Clara Valley (Silicon Valley) approximately southeast of San Francisco and approximately northwest of San Jose. $4.5 billion was received by Stanford in 2006 and spent more than $2.1 billion in 2 counties named Santa Clara, and San Mateo. In 2008, 60% of this land remained undeveloped.


title: Stanford University

text: Stanford's main campus includes a census-designated place within unincorporated Santa Clara County, although some of the university land (such as the Stanford Shopping Center and the Stanford Research Park) is within the city limits of Palo Alto. The campus also includes much land in unincorporated San Mateo County (including the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and the Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve), as well as in the city limits of Menlo Park (Stanford Hills neighborhood), Woodside, and Portola Valley.


title: Stanford University

text: The central campus includes a seasonal lake (Lake Lagunita, actually an irrigation reservoir), home to the vulnerable California tiger salamander. As of 2012 Lake Lagunita was often dry and the university had no plans to artificially fill it. Two other reservoirs, Searsville Lake on San Francisquito Creek and Felt Lake, are on more remote sections of the founding grant.


title: Stanford University

text: The central academic campus is adjacent to Palo Alto, bounded by El Camino Real, Stanford Avenue, Jane Stanford Way, and Sand Hill Road. The United States Postal Service has assigned it two ZIP Codes: 94305 for campus mail and 94309 for P.O. box mail. It lies within area code 650.


title: Stanford University

text: Many Stanford faculty members live in the "Faculty Ghetto," within walking or biking distance of campus. The Faculty Ghetto is composed of land owned by Stanford. Similar to a condominium, the houses can be bought and sold but the land under the houses is rented on a 99-year lease. Houses in the "Ghetto" appreciate and depreciate, but not as rapidly as overall Silicon Valley values. For faculty housing there are some changes that come from the date February 1, 2022.


title: Stanford University

text: Some of the land is managed to provide revenue for the university such as the Stanford Shopping Center and the Stanford Research Park. Stanford land is also leased for a token rent by the Palo Alto Unified School District for several schools including Palo Alto High School and Gunn High School. El Camino Park, the oldest Palo Alto city park (established 1914), is also on Stanford land.


title: Stanford University

text: Stanford also has the Stanford Golf Course and Stanford Red Barn Equestrian Center used by Stanford athletics though the golf course can also be used by the general public.


title: Stanford University

text: Contemporary campus landmarks include the Main Quad and Memorial Church, the Cantor Center for Visual Arts and the Bing Concert Hall, the Stanford Mausoleum with the nearby Angel of Grief, Hoover Tower, the Rodin Sculpture Garden, the Papua New Guinea Sculpture Garden, the Arizona Cactus Garden, the Stanford University Arboretum, Green Library and the Dish. Frank Lloyd Wright's 1937 Hanna–Honeycomb House and the 1919 Lou Henry Hoover House are both listed on the National Register of Historic Places. White Memorial Fountain (also known as "The Claw") between the Stanford Bookstore and the Old Union is a popular place to meet and to engage in the Stanford custom of "fountain hopping"; it was installed in 1964 and designed by Aristides Demetrios after a national competition as a memorial for two brothers in the class of 1949, William N. White and John B. White II, one of whom died before graduating and one shortly after in 1952.


title: Stanford University

text: Stanford is a private, non-profit university administered as a corporate trust governed by a privately appointed board of trustees with a maximum membership of 38. Trustees serve five-year terms (not more than two consecutive terms) and meet five times annually. A new trustee is chosen by the current trustees by ballot. The Stanford trustees also oversee the Stanford Research Park, the Stanford Shopping Center, the Cantor Center for Visual Arts, Stanford University Medical Center, and many associated medical facilities (including the Lucile Packard Children's Hospital).


title: Stanford University

text: The board appoints a president to serve as the chief executive officer of the university, to prescribe the duties of professors and course of study, to manage financial and business affairs, and to appoint nine vice presidents. The 11th and current president of Stanford University is Marc Trevor Tessier-Lavigne, a Canadian-born neuroscientist. The provost is the chief academic and budget officer, to whom the deans of each of the seven schools report. Persis Drell became the 13th provost in February 2017.


title: Stanford University

text: As of 2018, the university was organized into seven academic schools. The schools of Humanities and Sciences (27 departments), Engineering (nine departments), and Earth, Energy & Environmental Sciences (four departments) have both graduate and undergraduate programs while the Schools of Law, Medicine, Education, and Business, have graduate programs only. A new School of Sustainability will supersede the School of Earth, Energy, & Environmental Sciences in September 2022. The powers and authority of the faculty are vested in the Academic Council, which is made up of tenure and non-tenure line faculty, research faculty, senior fellows in some policy centers and institutes, the president of the university, and some other academic administrators. But most matters are handled by the Faculty Senate, made up of 54 elected representatives of the faculty for the year 2021–22.


title: Stanford University

text: The Associated Students of Stanford University (ASSU) is the student government for Stanford and all registered students are members. Its elected leadership consists of the Undergraduate Senate elected by the undergraduate students, the Graduate Student Council elected by the graduate students, and the President and Vice President elected as a ticket by the entire student body.


title: Stanford University

text: Stanford is the beneficiary of a special clause in the California Constitution, which explicitly exempts Stanford property from taxation so long as the property is used for educational purposes.


title: Stanford University

text: The university's endowment, managed by the Stanford Management Company, was valued at $36.3 billion as of August 31, 2022. Payouts from the Stanford endowment covered approximately 21% of university expenses in the 2022 fiscal year. In the 2018 NACUBO-TIAA survey of colleges and universities in the United States and Canada, only Harvard University, the University of Texas System, and Yale University had larger endowments than Stanford.


title: Stanford University

text: In 2006, President John L. Hennessy launched a five-year campaign called the Stanford Challenge, which reached its $4.3 billion fundraising goal in 2009, two years ahead of time, but continued fundraising for the duration of the campaign. It concluded on December 31, 2011, having raised $6.23 billion and breaking the previous campaign fundraising record of $3.88 billion held by Yale. Specifically, the campaign raised $253.7 million for undergraduate financial aid, as well as $2.33 billion for its initiative in "Seeking Solutions" to global problems, $1.61 billion for "Educating Leaders" by improving K-12 education, and $2.11 billion for "Foundation of Excellence" aimed at providing academic support for Stanford students and faculty. Funds supported 366 new fellowships for graduate students, 139 new endowed chairs for faculty, and 38 new or renovated buildings. The new funding also enabled the construction of a facility for stem cell research; a new campus for the business school; an expansion of the law school; a new Engineering Quad; a new art and art history building; an on-campus concert hall; the new Cantor Arts Center; and a planned expansion of the medical school, among other things. In 2012, the university raised $1.035 billion, becoming the first school to raise more than a billion dollars in a year.


title: Stanford University

text: In April 2022, Stanford University announced a $75 million donation, in support of a multidisciplinary neurodegenerative brain disease research initiative at the university's Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute. The donation came from Nike co-founder Phil Knight and his wife Penny; hence The Phil and Penny Knight Initiative for Brain Resilience will explore cognitive declines from diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's.


title: Stanford University

text: Stanford is considered by "US News" to be 'most selective', with an acceptance rate of 4%. Half of the applicants accepted to Stanford have an SAT score between 1440 and 1570 or an ACT score of 32 and 35. Admissions officials consider a student's GPA to be an important academic factor, with emphasis on an applicant's high school class rank and letters of recommendation. In terms of non-academic materials as of 2019, Stanford ranks extracurricular activities, talent/ability and character/personal qualities as 'very important' in making first-time, first-year admission decisions, while ranking the interview, whether the applicant is a first-generation university applicant, legacy preferences, volunteer work and work experience as 'considered'.


title: Stanford University

text: Stanford follows a quarter system with the autumn quarter usually beginning in late September and the spring quarter ending in mid-June. The full-time, four-year undergraduate program has arts and sciences focus with high graduate student coexistence. Stanford is accredited by the Western Association of Schools and Colleges.


title: Stanford University

text: Stanford's admission process is need-blind for U.S. citizens and permanent residents; while it is not need-blind for international students, 64% are on need-based aid, with an average aid package of $31,411. In 2012–13, the university awarded $126 million in need-based financial aid to 3,485 students, with an average aid package of $40,460. Eighty percent of students receive some form of financial aid. Stanford has a no-loan policy. For undergraduates admitted starting in 2015, Stanford waives tuition, room, and board for most families with incomes below $65,000, and most families with incomes below $125,000 are not required to pay tuition; those with incomes up to $150,000 may have tuition significantly reduced. Seventeen percent of students receive Pell Grants, a common measure of low-income students at a college. In 2022, Stanford started its first dual-enrollment computer science program for high school students from low-income communities as a pilot project which then inspired the founding of the Qualia Global Scholars Program. Stanford plans to expand the program to include courses in Structured Liberal Education and writing.


title: Stanford University

text: The Cantonese language had classes at Stanford until 2020, when the remaining Cantonese instructor was laid off.


title: Stanford University

text: Stanford is classified among "R1: Doctoral Universities – Very high research activity." The university's research expenditure in fiscal year 2021 was $1.69 billion and total sponsored projects was 7,900+. As of 2016 the Office of the Vice Provost and Dean of Research oversaw eighteen independent laboratories, centers, and institutes. Dr. Kathryn Ann Moler is the key person for leading those research centers for choosing problems, faculty members, and students. Funding is also provided for undergraduate and graduate students by those labs, centers, and institutes for collaborative research.


title: Stanford University

text: Other Stanford-affiliated institutions include the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory (originally the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center), the Stanford Research Institute (an independent institution which originated at the university), the Hoover Institution (a conservative think tank) and the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design (a multidisciplinary design school in cooperation with the Hasso Plattner Institute of University of Potsdam that integrates product design, engineering, and business management education).


title: Stanford University

text: Stanford is home to the Martin Luther King Jr. Research and Education Institute which grew out of and still contains the Martin Luther King Jr. Papers Project, a collaboration with the King Center to publish the King papers held by the King Center. It also runs the John S. Knight Fellowship for Professional Journalists and the Center for Ocean Solutions, which brings together marine science and policy to address challenges facing the ocean. It focuses mainly 5 points, such as climate change, overfishing, coastal development, pollution and plastics.


title: Stanford University

text: Together with UC Berkeley and UC San Francisco, Stanford is part of the Biohub, a new medical science research center founded in 2016 by a $600 million commitment from Facebook CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg and pediatrician Priscilla Chan. This medical research center is working for designing advanced-level health care units.


title: Stanford University

text: As of 2014, Stanford University Libraries (SUL) has 24 libraries in total. The Hoover Institution Library and Archives is a research center based on history of 20th century. Stanford University Libraries (SUL) held a collection of more than 9.3 million volumes, nearly 300,000 rare or special books, 1.5 million e-books, 2.5 million audiovisual materials, 77,000 serials, nearly 6 million microform holdings, thousands of other digital resources. and 516,620 journal, 526,414 images, 11,000 software collection, 1,00,000 videos etc. . Stanford University Press (SUP) Funded in 1892. Books are written about a variety of topics and published 130 books per year and Based on innovative research, currently printed more than 3,000 books. It also has fifteen subject areas.


title: Stanford University

text: The main library in the SU library system is the Green Library, which also contains various meeting and conference rooms, study spaces, and reading rooms. Lathrop Library (previously Meyer Library, demolished in 2015), holds various student-accessible media resources and houses one of the largest East Asia collections with 540,000 volumes.


title: Stanford University

text: Stanford is home to the Cantor Center for Visual Arts, a museum with 24 galleries, sculpture gardens, terraces, and a courtyard first established in 1891 by Jane and Leland Stanford as a memorial to their only child. The center's collection of works by Rodin is among the largest in the world. The Thomas Welton Stanford Gallery, which was built in 1917, serves as a teaching resource for the Department of Art & Art History as well as an exhibition venue. In 2014, Stanford opened the Anderson Collection, a new museum focused on postwar American art and founded by the donation of 121 works by food service moguls Mary and Harry Anderson. There are outdoor art installations throughout the campus, primarily sculptures, but some murals as well. The Papua New Guinea Sculpture Garden near Roble Hall features includes wood carvings and "totem poles."


title: Stanford University

text: The Stanford music department sponsors many ensembles including five choirs, the Stanford Symphony Orchestra, Stanford Taiko, and the Stanford Wind Ensemble. Extracurricular activities include theater groups such as Ram's Head Theatrical Society, the Stanford Improvisors, the Stanford Shakespeare Company, and the Stanford Savoyards, a group dedicated to performing the works of Gilbert and Sullivan. Stanford is also host to ten "a cappella" groups, including the Mendicants (Stanford's first), Counterpoint (the first all-female group on the West Coast), the Harmonics, the Stanford Fleet Street Singers, Talisman, Everyday People, and Raagapella.


title: Stanford University

text: In the same year "The New York Times" dubbed Harvard as the "Stanford of the East". In that article titled "To Young Minds of Today, Harvard Is the Stanford of the East" "The New York Times" concluded that "Stanford University has become America's 'it' school, by measures that Harvard once dominated." In 2019, Stanford University took 1st place on Reuters' list of the "World's Most Innovative Universities" for the fifth consecutive year. In 2022, "Washington Monthly" ranked Stanford at 1st position in their annual list of top universities in USA. In a 2022 survey by "The Princeton Review", Stanford was ranked 1st among the top ten "dream colleges" of America, and was considered to be the ultimate "dream college" of both students and parents. Stanford Graduate School of Business was ranked 1st in the list of America's best business schools by "Bloomberg" for 2022-23.


title: Stanford University

text: From polls of college applicants done by The Princeton Review, every year from 2013 to 2020 the most commonly named "dream college" for students was Stanford; separately, parents, too, most frequently named Stanford their ultimate "dream college."


title: Stanford University

text: Globally Stanford is also ranked among the top universities in the world (see infoboxes above). The "Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU)" ranked Stanford second in the world (after Harvard) most years from 2003 to 2020. "Times Higher Education" recognizes Stanford as one of the world's "six super brands" on its "World Reputation Rankings", along with Berkeley, Cambridge, Harvard, MIT, and Oxford.


title: Stanford University

text: Stanford is one of the most successful universities in creating companies and licensing its inventions to existing companies, and it is often considered a model for technology transfer. Stanford's Office of Technology Licensing is responsible for commercializing university research, intellectual property, and university-developed projects.


title: Stanford University

text: The university is described as having a strong venture culture in which students are encouraged, and often funded, to launch their own companies.