On The Media

Norman lear the veteran writer and producer behind such hit TV shows as All in the Family and The Jeffersons, died last week at the age of 101. Back in 2015, Anna Sale, host of the podcast Death, Sex and Money interviewed Lear at his luxury apartment in Manhattan. He told Anna he wanted to make sure his kids would never be "desperate for a dollar" — but what "desperate" meant has fluctuated along the way. "I guess now it’s 60 billion," he deadpanned, adding, "That’s a joke."  Lear's own childhood had a degree of desperation: When Lear was nine, his father, Herman, was sent to jail for selling fake bonds. Lear's mother scrambled to make ends meet. "My mother tried to warn him," he said. "But nobody ever told Herman anything." When his father returned from prison three years later, tensions remained high. "I used to sit at the kitchen table and I would score their arguments," he says of his parents. "I would give her points for this, him points for that, as a way of coping with it." Lear has been married three