Award-winning author of Plastic: A Toxic Love Story, in which she explores one of the most transformative inventions of the 20th century, Freinkel writes about the intersection of science, culture, and the environment, and the issues that arise from humans’ seemingly ceaseless effort to control the natural world.
Journalism/Media
Robert Levine
The Internet was going to move us into the “information economy” – but information is worth less than ever. In Free Ride: How Digital Parasites are Destroying the Culture Business and How the Culture Business Can Fight Back, acclaimed journalist and former Exec. Editor of Billboard, Levine, lays out how the media business can save itself (in spite of itself).
Liza Donnelly
Author and staff cartoonist for The New Yorker, Liza Donnelly’s personal journey to success in a field dominated by men fuels her passion to expose cultural stereotypes, working with international cartoonists as editor of World Ink, a site dedicated to political cartoons from around the world.
Tom Clynes
Acclaimed journalist, photographer and author of Wild Planet, Tom Clynes, longtime Contributing Editor at National Geographic Adventure brings audiences along on assignment to the ends of the Earth, telling the stories of individuals who managed to shape once-ordinary lives into extraordinary, world-changing adventures, and how each of us can do the same.
David Zweig
A writer, scholar, musician, and documentarian, Zweig’s work delves into the connections between our culture and our experiential reality. His acclaimed novel, Swimming Inside the Sun, spawned the groundbreaking theory “Fiction Depersonalization Syndrome,” which addresses our increasing isolation, despite our being more technologically-connected than ever.
Michael A. Cohen
Author of Live From the Campaign Trail: The Greatest Presidential Campaign Speeches of the 20th Century and How They Shaped Modern America, Cohen, a Senior Fellow at the American Security Program, writes and lectures on wide-ranging political and national security issues, including the war in Afghanistan, the ongoing militarization of American foreign policy.
William Lobdell
Award-winning former LA Times journalist, and author of the memoir Losing My Religion: How I Lost My Faith Reporting on Religion in America, Lobdell shares his spiritual journey investigating and reconciling the many oft-conflicting facets of faith in America, which took him from evangelical Christian to reluctant atheist.
Joan Garry
Former Executive Director of GLAAD (Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation), Garry is widely recognized as one of the most vocal, passionate and effective civil rights leaders in America. She is a featured blogger at The Huffington Post, and frequently contributes commentary to major news publications and TV networks.
Joe Drape
Award-winning New York Times journalist and author of the bestseller Our Boys: A Perfect Season on the Plains with the Smith Center Redmen, Drape paints an inspiring portrait of a small town in Kansas that actually believes it takes a village to raise a child, and how its long-undefeated football team (79 games in a row) has embodied this ideal.
William C. Rhoden
Award-winning New York Times columnist, bestselling author of Forty Million Dollar Slaves: The Rise, Fall and Redemption of the Black Athlete, and frequent guest on ESPN’s “The Sports Reporters,” Rhoden uses the metaphors of sports to address crucial issues and conflicts in contemporary American society.
Valerie Boyd
Award-winning author of the acclaimed biography Wrapped in Rainbows: The Life of Zora Neale Hurston, and the forthcoming Spirits in the Dark: The Untold Story of Black Women in Hollywood — a groundbreaking study tracing the history of black women in film and TV from the 1920s to the present.
Brandon Friedman
Author of the acclaimed memoir, The War I Always Wanted, Friedman is currently Director of New Media at the Department of Veterans Affairs. He served from ’07-’09 as Vice Chairman of VoteVets.org and as editor of the blog VetVoice, and has worked extensively across all media platforms to communicate progressive defense and foreign policy strategies
