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"Let me be honest with you," Risser says. "I was born with a political spoon in my mouth. When I was born I think my dad was district attorney. He was state senator for 12 years. As a kid, I used to help him campaign. I had great love for my dad. I knew I was going to follow in his footsteps."

Risser was first elected in 1956. He says he remembers when the Legislature was made up entirely of white men.

"There were no females, there were no minorities or diversity. In fact, they didn't even have a woman's john on the legislative floor," he says. "Now it's much more diversified, which is good."

Other changes, he finds, are not so good.

"The Legislature is more polarized than I've ever seen it. There are more straight party-line votes than there have ever been. I can remember when the rurals would fight the urbans or the eastern part of the state would fight the western part or the north would fight south. But now it isn't that way," he says. "Now it's Democrats versus Republicans."

Nevertheless, he has no inclination to call it quits. "It's the most frustrating job in the world, but it keeps the adrenalin going and it gets you up in the morning. You learn something new every day," he says. "You see different people every day."

And that seems to keep him feeling younger than 85 — whatever 85 means. Risser says it's just a number, that there are many different kinds of ages: your mental age, your physical age — though most 85-year-olds are not riding 2,000 miles a year on their bikes as he does. And he's kept the confidence of his fellow Senate Democrats to the point that they've elected him Senate president when they've had the majority.

But Risser acknowledges there is one respect in which he's an old-timer.

"I don't have Facebook pages, I don't tweet, I don't know how to text. I'm learning to use my iPhone a little bit, but I don't feel confident even to use email," he says. "I'm from the old school, and I still write things down."

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Murphy: "There was a feeling in South Boston that people were unfairly labeled as racist if they were opposed to busing, and it was really this anger that a judge — a federal judge — was telling them that, 'Your children will be bused out of the neighborhood across town to a neighborhood that's higher in crime with schools that [have been] found are inferior.'

"So there was this feeling of being put-upon, and so while [Whitey's brother] Billy Bulger became one of the most outspoken political opponents of busing, Whitey was working behind the scenes ... And what we found from talking to some of his former associates is that one of the things he did was drive over to Brookline — to President John F. Kennedy's birthplace — and firebomb his birthplace. Part of the motivation was Ted Kennedy at the time was a very outspoken proponent of the need to desegregate the schools. He was very outspoken about it. And Whitey went over, and he wrote in chalk on the sidewalk, spray-painted on the sidewalk, 'Bus Teddy.' "

On the Debra Davis killing and investigation

Murphy: "It's very strange how this whole thing played out. You have this notorious gangster. He's dating this woman. She vanishes without a trace. And they did put a report in the FBI national computer database listing her as a missing person, and then mysteriously, suddenly there's an update to that report that she's no longer missing. She's been spotted somewhere in Texas, which is a complete lie. So [Davis' mother] knows someone in the FBI went into that database and altered that report."

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Gretta Harley arrived in Seattle in 1990, when grunge was redefining the city. Bands like Nirvana, Pearl Jam and Soundgarden were turning Seattle into the epicenter of the music world. Harley was a punk rock guitarist searching for her tribe, and in Seattle's thriving music scene, she found it.

"I lived in a house with a bunch of other musicians," Harley says. "And The Screaming Trees lived across the street, Gus Huffer lived around the corner, and Gorilla lived around the corner." While living in close proximity to so many popular Northwestern bands, Harley soon co-founded her own. She and Tess. Lotta formed Maxi Badd, which later became the Danger Gens. Almost 25 years on, Harley is still in music. She teaches and she performs as half of the duo "We Are Golden" with singer Sarah Rudinoff.

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Has there ever been an age that was so grudging about suspending its disbelief? The groundlings at the Globe Theatre didn't giggle when Shakespeare had a clock chime in Julius Caesar. The Victorians didn't take Dickens to task for having the characters in A Tale of Two Cities ride the Dover mail coach 10 years before it was established. But Shakespeare and Dickens weren't writing in the age of the Internet, when every historical detail is scrutinized for chronological correctness, and when no "Gotcha!" remains unposted for long. Photographers using flashbulbs in 1919 in J. Edgar? Transatlantic twin-engine jets in Argo? Really — it totally took me out of the movie!

In a climate of insistent authenticity, there's nothing harder to get right than a period's vocabulary. The past speaks a foreign language that even those who grew up with it can't recover. The producers of Mad Men take pride in fitting out their characters with the correct ties and timepieces. But as the Boston Globe's Ben Zimmer observed, they can't seem to keep anachronisms out of the scripts. Were we already saying "keep a low profile" in 1963? Actually, no — it didn't catch on until 1969, but who can remember these things?

Other writers don't even seem to make an effort to get the dialogue right. Spotting linguistic anachronisms in Julian Fellowes' Downton Abbey is as easy as shooting grouse in a barrel. "I couldn't care less," Lord Grantham says. Thomas complains that "our lot always gets shafted." Cousin Matthew announces he has been on a steep learning curve, a phrase that would have gotten a blank reception even in the Sterling Cooper boardroom.

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I'm Just Sayin': There Are Anachronisms In 'Downton'