Q&A: Robert Bernard Reich
Written on October 18th, 2007Robert Reich was secretary of labor in the Clinton administration and now teaches public policy at the University of California at Berkeley. He delivers weekly commentaries on public radio's Marketplace, and he blogs at RobertReich.blogspot.com. In his book Supercapitalism, economist Robert Reich looks at the divided mind of the consumer and citizen.
Q&A: Bjørn Lomborg, Author
Written on October 18th, 2007Aired 12/26/10 Bjørn Lomborg: Author - The Skeptical Environmentalist and Cool It One of the world's 100 most influential people - Time Magazine, 2004 14th most influential academic in the world - Foreign Policy and Prospect magazine, 2005. 'Young Global Leader' - World Economic Forum 2005 Former director - Denmark's Environmental Assessment Institute Director - Copenhagen Consensus Center Adjunct Professor - Copenhagen Business School http://www.lomborg.com/
Q&A: Charles Ferguson, Filmmaker
Written on September 29th, 2007In 1996, Charles Ferguson sold the startup company he founded to Microsoft for $133 million. He was 41, had $14 million worth of growing Microsoft stock in his pocket after paying off investors - and was thoroughly exhausted after barely sleeping the previous year. Then for the next eight years, he wrestled with the question that relatively young entrepreneurs rarely consider until they hit it big. In 2004, Ferguson told several journalist friends and some contacts in the film industry that he wanted to make a movie about the U.S. occupation. Don't do it, was the unanimous reply. Do something easy for your first film. Make it local. Plus, Ferguson said he was told, there are 10 other filmmakers pursuing this idea. So he waited. A year later, nobody was making this movie, George W. Bush had been re-elected and as Ferguson said, "There still was very little good discussion about the nature of the occupation, the nature of American policy in conducting the occupation in the media. And I thought, '... I'm going to make this movie.' " Having cash in the bank gave him the power to do just that and fulfill his childhood dream of making a movie. He financed the film's entire $2 million budget.
Q&A: Kenny Ausube, Entrepreneur, Author, Journalist and Filmmaker
Written on September 29th, 2007Kenny Ausubel is an award-winning social entrepreneur, author, journalist and filmmaker. He is the founder and co-executive directions of Bioneers, a nationally recognized nonprofit dedicated to disseminating practical and visionary solutions for restoring Earth’s imperiled ecosystems and healing our human communities. He launched the annual Bioneers Conference in 1990 with his producing partner and wife Nina Simons, Bioneers co-executive director. The Conference attracts over 3,000 people each year to the national conference in San Rafael, California, and in 2007 it will be beamed by satellite simulcast to 22 localized Bioneers conferences across the US and Canada to another 10,000 attendees.
Q&A: Rafe Esquith, Award Winning Teacher and Author
Written on September 29th, 2007Rafe Esquith is an American teacher at Hobart Boulevard Elementary School, the second-largest elementary school in the United States, located in Los Angeles, California. A graduate of UCLA, Esquith began teaching in 1981. His teaching honors include the 1992 Disney National Outstanding Teacher of the Year Award, a Sigma Beta Delta Fellowship from Johns Hopkins University, Oprah Winfrey’s $100,000 Use Your Life Award, Parents Magazine’s As You Grow Award, National Medal of Arts, and Esquith was made an honorary Member of the Order of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth. Esquith's fifth-grade students consistently score in the top 5% to 10% of the country in standardized tests. Many of Esquith's students start class at 7:00 each morning, two hours before the rest of the school's students. Most of his students come from immigrant Central American and Korean families and are learning English as a second language. They volunteer to come early, work through recess and stay as late as 5:30 pm, and also come to class during vacations and holidays. Each year the Hobart Shakespeareans, as Esquith’s students are known, perform one of the Shakespeare's plays. They have opened for the Royal Shakespeare Company, been hired by Sir Peter Hall to perform A Midsummer Night's Dream at the Ahmanson Theatre in Los Angeles and appeared at the Globe Theater in London.