IN: David Michael Letterman (born April 12, 1947) is an American television host, comedian, writer, and producer. He hosted a late night television talk show for 33 years, beginning with the February 1, 1982, debut of Late Night with David Letterman on NBC, and ending with the May 20, 2015, broadcast of Late Show with David Letterman on CBS. In total, Letterman hosted 6,028 episodes of Late Night and Late Show, surpassing friend and mentor Johnny Carson as the longest-serving late night talk show host in American television history. In 1996 Letterman was ranked 45th on TV Guide's 50 Greatest TV Stars of All Time.

In the months following the end of Late Show Letterman has been seen occasionally at sports events such as the Indianapolis 500, during which he submitted to an interview with a local publication. He made a surprise appearance on stage in San Antonio, Texas when he was invited up for an extended segment during Steve Martin and Martin Short's A Very Stupid Conversation show saying "I retired, and...I have no regrets," Letterman told the crowd after walking on stage. "I was happy. I'll make actual friends. I was complacent. I was satisfied. I was content, and then a couple of days ago Donald Trump said he was running for president. I have made the biggest mistake of my life, ladies and gentlemen" and then delivering a Top Ten List roasting Donald Trump's presidential campaign followed by an on-stage conversation with Martin and Short. Cell phone recordings of the appearance were posted on YouTube by audience members and were widely reported in the media.  In 2016, Letterman joined the climate change documentary show Years of Living Dangerously as one of the show's celebrity correspondents. In season two's premiere episode, Letterman traveled to India to investigate the country's efforts to expand its inadequate energy grid, power its booming economy and bring electricity for the first time to 300 million citizens. He also interviewed Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and traveled to rural villages where power is a scarce luxury and explored the United States role in India's energy future.  In 2017, Letterman and Alec Baldwin co-hosted The Essentials on Turner Classic Movies. Letterman and Baldwin introduced seven films for the series.  Letterman has announced that in 2018 he will be hosting a six-episode series of hour-long programs on Netflix consisting of long-form interviews and field segments. The show will be entitled My Next Guest Needs No Introduction with David Letterman, with the first episode released on January 12, 2018, featuring Barack Obama.
QUESTION: What did he do after he left the late show ?
IN: Ryuichi Sakamoto (Ban Ben  Long Yi , Sakamoto Ryuichi, born January 17, 1952) (Japanese pronunciation: [sakamoto rjW:itci]) is a Japanese musician, singer, composer, record producer, activist, writer, actor and dancer, based in Tokyo and New York. He began his career while at university in the 1970s, as a session musician, producer, and arranger.

Sakamoto's production credits represent a prolific career in this role. In 1983, he produced Mari Iijima's debut album Rose, the same year that the Yellow Magic Orchestra was disbanded. Sakamoto subsequently worked with artists such as Thomas Dolby; Aztec Camera, on the Dreamland (1993) album; and Imai Miki, co-producing her 1994 album A Place In The Sun.  Roddy Frame, who worked with Sakamoto as a member of Aztec Camera, explained in a 1993 interview preceding the release of Dreamland that he had had to wait a lengthy period of time before he was able to work with Sakamoto, who wrote two soundtracks, a solo album and the music for the opening ceremony at the Barcelona Olympics, prior to working with Frame over four weeks in a New York studio. Frame said that he was impressed by the work of YMO and the Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence soundtrack, explaining: "That's where you realise that the atmosphere around his compositions is actually in the writing - it's got nothing to do with synthesisers." Frame's decision to ask Sakamoto was finalized after he saw his performance at the Japan Festival that was held in London, United Kingdom. Of his experience recording with Sakamoto, Frame said:  He's got this reputation as a boffin, a professor of music who sits in front of a computer screen. But he's more intuitive than that, and he's always trying to corrupt what he knows. Halfway through the day in the studio, he will stop and play some hip hop or some house for 10 minutes, and then go back to what he was doing. He's always trying to trip himself up like that, and to discover new things. Just before we worked together he'd been out in Borneo, I think, with a DAT machine, looking for new sounds.
QUESTION: Where else does he look for new sounds?
IN: John Michael Stipe (born January 4, 1960) is an American musician and singer-songwriter. He is best known as the lead singer and main lyricist of the alternative rock band R.E.M. from their formation in 1980 until their dissolution in 2011. Possessing a distinctive voice, Stipe is noted for the "mumbling" style of his early career as well as for his social and political activism. He was in charge of R.E.M.'s visual aspect, often selecting album artwork and directing many of the band's music videos.

In 1983, Stipe met fellow musician Natalie Merchant of the band 10,000 Maniacs; the two started a friendship, and eventually became "lovers" for a period of time.  With the success of the albums Out of Time (1991) and Automatic for the People (1992), R.E.M. became mainstream music stars. Around 1992, rumors that Stipe had contracted HIV began to circulate. He responded with:  Not that I can tell. I wore a hat that said "White House Stop AIDS". I'm skinny. I've always been skinny, except in 1985 when I looked like Marlon Brando, the last time I shaved my head. I was really sick then. Eating potatoes. I think AIDS hysteria would obviously and naturally extend to people who are media figures and anybody of indecipherable or unpronounced sexuality. Anybody who looks gaunt, for whatever reason. Anybody who is associated, for whatever reason - whether it's a hat, or the way I carry myself - as being queer-friendly.  In 1994, with questions remaining, Stipe described himself as "an equal opportunity lech", and said he did not define himself as gay, straight, or bisexual, but that he was attracted to, and had relationships with, both men and women. In 1995, he appeared on the cover of Out magazine. Stipe described himself as a "queer artist" in Time in 2001 and revealed that he had been in a relationship with "an amazing man" for three years at that point. Stipe reiterated this in a 2004 interview with Butt magazine. When asked if he ever declares himself as gay, Stipe stated, "I don't. I think there's a line drawn between gay and queer, and for me, queer describes something that's more inclusive of the grey areas."  In 1999, author Douglas A. Martin published a novel, Outline of My Lover, in which the narrator has a six-year romantic relationship with the unnamed lead singer of a successful Athens, Georgia-based, rock band; the book was widely speculated, and later confirmed by its author, to have been a roman a clef based on a real relationship between Martin and Stipe. The two had previously collaborated on two books, both in 1998: The Haiku Year (for which the two had both contributed haiku) and Martin's book of poetry Servicing the Salamander (for which Stipe took the cover photograph).
QUESTION:
Are there any other interesting aspects about this article?