Aired 08/26/08 CRAIG VENTER is a remarkable and entrepreneurial scientist. As such, he asks huge questions, takes on huge challenges, and has achieved huge successes. Growing up in California, VENTER was an unremarkable student, with little interest in his schoolwork and even less motivation to complete his education. But the Vietnam War draft led to being a Navy medic, which piqued his interest in science and medicine, and jump-started his education. He received advanced degrees and established himself as a gifted and outspoken scientist. At the National Institutes of Health he introduced novel techniques for rapid gene discovery, and his own research institute in 1995 sequenced the first genome of a living species in history, the bacterium. This success led to the dauntingly more ambitious goal of the entire human genome—billions of letters of genetic code that would test the limits of both human and computation abilities. He announced he'd do it more quickly and for far less money than the government sponsored Human Genome Project's prediction for completion—a goal he fulfilled in 2001. http://www.jcvi.org/

Aired 08/19/08 GERALD CELENTE accurately forecast the Iraqi War quagmire, the last two recessions, the Dot-Com meltdown, and the 1987 world stock market crash. As far back as 1993 he predicted that a new Crusades would be raging at the dawn of the new millennium. GERALD CELENTE's latest trends alert just released looks back from the year 2012. The streets are teeming with the homeless, helpless and jobless. Major cities look like Calcutta. Neither Big Brother's surveillance, corporate security squads, or angry vigilantes can stop the pandemic crime wave. Even gated communities provide no sure sanctuary; the rich have become the targets of choice for kidnappers, gangs and organized criminals. Food is plentiful if you can afford it, but dangerous to eat unless you grow your own or get it from reliable sources. After years of drought and mismanagement, water shortages have reached crisis levels in much of the world.

Aired 08/12/08 Hunter Lovins is the founder and President of Natural Capitalism, Inc. and Natural Capitalism Solutions, a non-profit in Eldorado Springs, Colorado. A professor at Presidio School of Management's MBA in Sustainable Management program, she has co-authored several books including NATURAL CAPITALISM: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution and 2006 CLIMATE PROTECTION MANUAL FOR CITIES. Trained as a sociologist and lawyer, Hunter co-founded the California Conservation Project (Tree People), and Rocky Mountain Institute, which she led for 20 years. Named millennium Hero for the Planet by Time Magazine, she received the Right Livelihood Award, and the Leadership in Business Award.

Aired 08/05/08 Currently editor of The Washington Post's Outlook section and formerly the Post's Los Angeles bureau chief, John Pomfret lived and worked in China off-and-on for a decade - as a student, an AP reporter and the Post's chief in Beijing - and was eyewitness to the '89 Tiananmen Square protests. He has been a foreign correspondent for 15 years, covering big wars and small in Afghanistan, Bosnia, Congo, Sri Lanka, Iraq, southwestern Turkey and northeastern Iran. In 2003, Pomfret was awarded the Osborne Elliot Award for the best coverage of Asia by the Asia Society.

Aired 07/29/08 Emily asks big questions, questions big answers, and makes us laugh. Emily Levine's website calls her a “speaker, comedian, epiphany provider.” She was formerly a successful television writer. During a stint at Disney, she became more and more interested in Chaos Theory and the Dynamics of Change but found no studio executives willing and/or able to discuss these issues. As is true for so many sitcom writers, Levine was invited to speak at a couple of think tanks: for USC's Institute for the Study of Women and Men, she spoke on "Beyond Either/Or". Reading up on physics theory for a physicists' think tank in La Jolla, Levine discovered the quantum logic of And-And. Levine realized she didn't have to make an Either/Or choice - she could be smart and funny. Entertaining and enlightening. She could be a comedian and a philosopher. I first met Emily Levine in the early 80s. We both worked out regularly as part of an anarchic and frighteningly creative improv group. We included some of the mad pioneers of the form and performed in public maybe three times in five years. It was there I learned the first rule of successful improvisation - “yes/and.” You stop the creative flow when you say no to what's thrown at you. You keep it moving when you say “yes” “and” run with it. This rule holds true for most improvs in life. From “yes/and” to “and/and” and beyond… http://www.emilylevinesuniverse.com