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Free online lectures: Explore a world of ideas

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All Speakers

  • Upton Bell is a former football executive and currently radio commentator. He is the son of Bert Bell, founder of the National Football League.
  • James Bradley is a writer of historical books. He was inspired as a boy when he read an article by former President Harry Truman recommending that young people read historical biographies. His father, John Bradley, helped raise an American flag on the Japanese island of Iwo Jima in WWII and had shot a Japanese soldier dead. James Bradley graduated with a degree in East Asian history from the University of Wisconsin at Madison. For the next 20 years, he worked in the corporate communications industry in the US, Japan, England, and South Africa. He is working on a fourth book about Franklin Delano Roosevelt and China.
  • A native of Berkeley Heights, NJ, Peter Sagal attended Harvard University and subsequently squandered that education while working as a literary manager for a regional theater, a movie publicist, a stage director, an actor, an extra in a Michael Jackson video, a travel writer, an essayist, a ghost writer for a former adult film impresario, and a staff writer for a motorcycle magazine. He is the author of numerous plays that have been performed in large and small theaters around the country and abroad, including Long Wharf Theater, Actors Theater of Louisville, Seattle Repertory, and Florida Stage. He has also written a number of screenplays, including *Savage*, a cheesy vehicle for obscure French kickboxer Olivier Gruner, and *Cuba Mine*, an original screenplay that became, without his knowledge, the basis for *Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights*. Among Sagal's honors are a DramaLogue award for directing, grants from the Jerome and McKnight Foundations and a residency grant at the Camargo Foundation in Cassis, France. He has been commissioned to write new plays by the Seattle Repertory Theater and the Wind Dancer Theater and has been invited to work on his plays at Sundance, the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center, and the New Harmony Project. In 1997, Peter joined the panel of a new news quiz show on NPR, that made its debut on-air in January of 1998. In May of that year, he became the host of the show. Since then, *Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me!* has become one of the most popular shows on public radio, heard by two and half million listeners a week, on 450 public radio stations nationwide, and via a popular podcast. With *Wait Wait*, Peter has traveled around the country, playing to sold-out theaters from Seattle to Miami, and many points in between, such as, for example, Akron. He's asked Salman Rushdie about PEZ dispensers, Tom Hanks about Hollywood bad boys, Sen. John McCain about drive-through topless joints, and inquired as to Madeleine Albright's weightlifting accomplishments. The show made history in 2007 when, in May, Stephen Breyer became the first sitting Supreme Court Justice to appear on a quiz show, and then, in July, in front of ten thousand fans at Chicago's Millennium Park, Peter conducted the first interview with US Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald since his conviction of White House Aide Scooter Libby. In 2008, *Wait Wait* celebrated its tenth anniversary on the air, and was the recipient of a Peabody Award for excellence in broadcasting. In October 2007, Harper Collins published Peter's first book, *The Book of Vice: Naughty Things and How to Do Them*, a series of essays about bad behavior. It will be released in paperback in October 2008. Peter also wrote the introduction and contributed much of the material to the *Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me!* quiz book. Peter is an avid long distance runner and a founding member of the OCD Runners Club. He has completed four marathons, including the 2007 Boston Marathon, and was profiled in *Runner's World*. In October, 2007, he ran his third consecutive Chicago Marathon, running as the honorary team captain for the Healthy Schools Campaign. Peter lives near Chicago with his wife, Beth Albrecht Sagal, and their three daughters.
  • Bert Chen is an associate of Georgia Urology, P.A. He is a diplomate of the American Board of Urology and a member of the American Urological Association. A native of Atlanta, Chen obtained his undergraduate degree from Yale University. He earned his medical degree at Medical College of Georgia, where he was elected to Alpha Omega Alpha, the national medical school honor society. He completed his general surgery internship and urology residency at the University of Michigan. He has published and presented research in the field of urologic oncology, including prostate cancer and surgical techniques. He has experience in laparoscopy and minimally invasive techniques for the treatment of benign and malignant urologic disease. Hospital affiliations include Dekalb Medical Center, Rockdale Medical Center, and Newton Medical Center. His areas of interests in addition to general urology include stone disease, female urology, and urologic oncology.
  • Harriet McDougal was married to fantasy writer Robert Jordan. She is a a former Ace Books editorial director and a current editor with Tor Books.
  • Robert Olen Butler has published 11 novels, including *A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain*, which won the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for fiction. Since 1995, he has written feature-length screenplays and two teleplays. He is the Francis Eppes Distinguished Professor holding the Michael Shaara Chair in Creative Writing at Florida State University. He lives in Capps, Florida, which has a population of one.
  • Robert M. Craig is a professor in the Architecture Program at Georgia Tech. He has taught there since 1973. He specializes in 19th and early 20th century architecture and offers courses surveying American, modern, and medieval architecture, as well as seminars on Frank Lloyd Wright, on Atlanta architecture, and on the architecture of the Arts and Crafts Movement. He has presented over 100 scholarly papers at academic conferences and has lectured in Australia, China, Europe, and the US. His photographs of buildings have illustrated articles and books, which he and others have authored. He completed his PhD in the history of architecture and urban development at Cornell University in 1973.
  • April Speed gained a fellowship at Anderson Cancer Center. She graduated with a medical degree and completed her residency at Morehouse School of Medicine.
  • Brandon Sanderson began writing in earnest, taking a job as the night desk clerk at a hotel because they allowed him to write while at work. During this era, he went to school full-time during the day, worked nights to pay for his schooling, and wrote as much as he could. He says it made for a rather dismal social life, but he finished seven novels during his undergraduate years. He submitted many manuscripts for publication and accumulated quite a pile of rejection letters. In spite of this, he continued to be a dedicated writer. In 2004 after graduating with his master's degree in creative writing from Brigham Young University, he was asked to teach the class he had taken as an undergraduate student from Dave Farland. In spite of his busy schedule, he continues to teach this one section of creative writing focused on science fiction and fantasy, because he enjoys helping aspiring writers. In December of 2007 Brandon was chosen by Harriet Rigney to complete *A Memory of Light*, book twelve in Robert Jordan's *Wheel of Time* series. Brandon is now hard at work on this epic project.
  • Professor Benjamin Carp focuses particularly on urban politics, society, and culture in eighteenth-century America. His books include _Defiance of the Patriots: The Boston Tea Party and the Making of America_, which won the triennial Society of the Cincinnati Cox Book Prize in 2013; and _Rebels Rising: Cities and the American Revolution_. He has also written articles for Colonial Williamsburg, the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post. His desire to pursue a Ph.D. in history began with an article by Alfred F. Young on George Robert Twelves Hewes. Since then, he has written scholarly articles about firefighters and the American Revolution, nationalism during the Revolution and the Civil War, leadership in the work of Edmund S. Morgan, and Quaker merchants in Charleston. He received the Leverhulme Research Fellowship (2005), the Charlotte W. Newcombe Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship (2003) and the Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship in Humanistic Studies (1998). Prior to joining Brooklyn College and the Graduate Center, he taught at the University of Edinburgh and Tufts University.
  • Amy Stein (b. 1970) is a photographer and teacher based in New York City. Her work explores our evolving isolation from community, culture and the environment. She has been exhibited nationally and internationally and her work is featured in many private and public collections such as the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Museum of Contemporary Photography, the Nevada Museum of Art, SMoCA and the West Collection.
  • Julia Wallace was named editor of the *Atlanta Journal-Constitution* in July 2002, after serving as managing editor for 18 months. During her tenure, ajc.com has grown into one of the most popular newspaper websites in the country, logging more than a billion page views annually since 2007. She has improved the content of the newspaper, focusing on unique local content, including watchdog reporting and great storytelling. She was named editor of the year by *Editor & Publisher * magazine in 2004. The paper was awarded Pulitzer prizes in 2006 and 2007. She been inducted into the Medill School Of Journalism Hall of Achievement and received the Alumni Merit Award from Northwestern University in 2006.