The winners of this year’s $500,000 no-strings-attached awards include the New Yorker’s Peter Hessler, “Radiolab” host and producer Jab Abumrad, and cellist Alisa Weilerstein, who nearly deleted the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation’s initial notification e-mail: “I got what I thought was a random email. I thought it was spam. It said, ‘I’ve been trying to get in touch with you, can you please call me back.’ And I replied, ‘Well, I don’t know who you are.’” Not a Nigerian prince in need of help with a wire transfer, for once. [WSJ]
