13 people you should search for on YouTube
These guys will increase your understanding of the world and help you appreciate life and live it to the fullest. Look them up on YouTube and watch as many clips as you can find (hundreds). You'll come out of it a different and better person. Then watch 'Zeitgeist: Moving Forward'. It'll blow you away.
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Christopher Eric Hitchens (born April 13, 1949) was a British-American author, journalist, and literary critic. He was a columnist at Vanity Fair, The Atlantic, The Nation, Slate, and Free Inquiry.
Hitchens is known for his atheism and anti-theism and was a firm believer in the Enlightenment values of secularism, humanism, and reason. Hitchens became a United States citizen on his 58th birthday, April 13, 2007.One of the Four Horsemen with Richard Dawkins, Dan Dennett and Sam Harris. He will be missed.- Sam Harris was born on 9 April 1967 in the USA.American philosopher and neuroscientist.
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Jon Stewart was born Jonathan Stuart Leibowitz in New York City, New York, to Marian (Laskin), a teacher, and Donald Leibowitz, a physics professor. His family is Ashkenazi Jewish (from Austria, Ukraine, Poland, and Belarus). Stewart moved to Lawrenceville, New Jersey during his childhood. He graduated from the College Of William And Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, in 1984. He made his breakthrough on The Larry Sanders Show (1992), where he had a role playing himself, the oft-timed "Guest Host" of "The Larry Sanders Show". He became as much a part of the show's fabric as some of the regular performers.
In the 2000s, Stewart emerged as a bonafide television personality with his ascension to host of The Daily Show (1996)/Comedy Central, taking over for Craig Kilborn in 1999. Audiences have embraced his sarcastic, sardonic and incisive sense of humor, covering politics and other news stories.
Stewart and his wife, Tracey, have two children.- Writer
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Born in Georgia but raised in Houston since the age of 7, this self-described "Prince of Darkness" was compelled to use the comedy stage as his philosophic soapbox. At 13, he would sneak out of his suburban house to hustle his way onto open-mike night rosters. In two brief decades, Hicks worked his way up the sweat-stained comedy ladder to national exposure on The Tonight Show, Late Show with David Letterman and an HBO cable special. Rolling Stone named him the "hot stand-up" of 1993. He was the hit of the 1990 and 1991 Just for Laughs comedy festivals in Montreal. Dead at 32, the enigmatic Hicks was admired, reviled and misunderstood. - The Montreal Gazette, March 28, 1994- Actor
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George Denis Patrick Carlin was born and raised in Manhattan, New York City, to Mary (Bearey), a secretary, and Patrick John Carlin, an advertising manager for The Sun; they had met while working in marketing. His father was from Donegal, Ireland, and his mother was Irish-American. His parents divorced when he was two months old, and he was raised by his mother. The long hours the mother worked left the young George by himself for long hours every day, providing him (in his own words), the time he needed to think about various subjects, listen to radio, and practice his impersonations, that where acclaimed by his mother and coworkers since an early age. Carlin started out as a conventional comedian and had achieved a fair degree of success as a Bill Cosby style raconteur in nightclubs and on TV until the late 1960s, when he radically overhauled his persona. His routines became more insightful, introducing more serious subjects. As he aged, he became more cynic and bitter, unintentionally changing his stage persona again in a radical way throughout the '90s. This new George Carlin, usually referred to as the late George Carlin, is one of the most acclaimed and enjoyed by the public and critics. Carlin's forte is Lenny Bruce-style social and political commentary, spiced with nihilistic observations about people and religion peppered with black humor. He is also noted for his masterful knowledge and use of the English language. Carlin's notorious "Seven Dirty Words" comedy routine was part of a radio censorship case that made its way to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1978.- Writer
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Penn Jillette was born on 5 March 1955 in Greenfield, Massachusetts, USA. He is a writer and producer, known for Penn & Teller Get Killed (1989), Penn & Teller: Bullshit! (2003) and Hackers (1995). He has been married to Emily Zolten Jillette since 23 November 2004. They have two children.- Writer
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Astronomer, educator and author Carl Sagan was perhaps the world's greatest popularizer of science, reaching millions of people through newspapers, magazines and television broadcasts. He is well-known for his work on the PBS series Cosmos (1980), the Emmy Award and Peabody Award-winning show that became the most watched series in public-television history. This was seen by more than 500 million people in 60 countries. The accompanying book, "Cosmos" (1980), was on the New York Times bestseller list for 70 weeks and was the best-selling science book ever published in English.
Carl Edward Sagan was born November 9, 1934, in Brooklyn, New York. Having taught at Cornell University since 1968, Sagan received a bachelor's degree (1955) and a master's degree (1956), both in physics, and a doctorate in astronomy and astrophysics (1960), all from the University of Chicago. He taught at Harvard University in the early 1960s before coming to Cornell, where he became a full professor in 1971. Sagan played a leading role in NASA's Mariner, Viking, Voyager and Galileo expeditions to other planets. He received NASA Medals for Exceptional Scientific Achievement and twice for Distinguished Public Service and the NASA Apollo Achievement Award. His research focused on topics such as the greenhouse effect on Venus; windblown dust as an explanation for the seasonal changes on Mars; organic aerosols on Titan, Saturn's moon; the long-term environmental consequences of nuclear war; and the origin of life on Earth. A pioneer in the field of exobiology, he continued to teach graduate and undergraduate students in courses in astronomy and space sciences and in critical thinking at Cornell.
The breadth of his interests were made evident in October 1994, at a Cornell-sponsored symposium in honor of Sagan's 60th birthday. The two-day event featured speakers in areas of planetary exploration, life in the cosmos, science education, public policy and government regulation of science and the environment -- all fields in which Sagan had worked or had a strong interest. Sagan was the recipient of numerous awards in addition to his NASA recognition. He received 22 honorary degrees from American colleges and universities for his contributions to science, literature, education and the preservation of the environment and many awards for his work on the long-term consequences of nuclear war and reversing the nuclear arms race. Among his other awards were: the John F. Kennedy Astronautics Award of the American Astronautical Society; the Explorers Club 75th Anniversary Award; the Konstantin Tsiolkovsky Medal of the Soviet Cosmonauts Federation and the Masursky Award of the American Astronomical Society. He also was the recipient of the Public Welfare Medal, the highest award of the National Academy of Sciences, "for distinguished contributions in the application of science to the public welfare".
Sagan was elected chairman of the Division of Planetary Sciences of the American Astronomical Society, president of the Planetology Section of the American Geophysical Union and chairman of the Astronomy Section of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. For 12 years, he was editor of Icarus, the leading professional journal devoted to planetary research. He was co-founder of the Planetary Society, a 100,000-member organization and the largest space-interest group in the world. The society supports major research programs in the radio search for extraterrestrial intelligence, the investigation of near-Earth asteroids and, with the French and Russian space agencies, the development and testing of balloon and mobile robotic exploration of Mars. Sagan also was Distinguished Visiting Scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California and was contributing editor of Parade magazine, where he published many articles about science and about the disease that he battled for the last two years of his life.
On December 20, 1996, Carl Sagan died at age 62 of pneumonia at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, Washington. He was buried at Lakeview Cemetery in Ithaca, Tompkins County, New York.- Writer
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Richard Feynman is one of the twentieth century's greatest physicists. He worked on the atomic bomb project and won the Nobel Prize for his work in quantum electrodynamics. He was one of the chief investigators in the Challenger Shuttle disaster.- Actor
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Writer, actor, comedian, doer of good works, excellent good friend to the famous and not, Fry lives in his London SW1 flat and his Norfolk house when not traveling. Famous for his public declaration of celibacy in the "Tatler" back in the 1980s, Emma Thompson has characterised her friend as "90 percent gay, 10 percent other."
Stephen Fry was born in Hampstead, London, to Marianne Eve (Newman) and Alan Fry, a physicist and inventor. His maternal grandparents were Hungarian Jewish immigrants, while his father's family was of English background. He grew up in Norfolk and attended Uppingham School and Stout's Hill. After his notorious three months in Pucklechurch prison for credit card fraud, he attended Queens College, Cambridge in 1979, finishing with a 2:1 in English in 1981/2. While at Cambridge, he was a member of the Cherubs drinking club, and Footlights with Thompson, Tony Slattery, Martin Bergman, and Hugh Laurie (to whom he was introduced by E.T.). His prolific writing partnership with Laurie began in 1981 with resulting Footlights revues for (among others) Mayweek, Edinburgh Festival, and a three month tour of Australia. In 1984, Fry was engaged to do the rewrite of the Noel Gay musical "Me and My Girl," which made him a millionaire before the age of 30. It also earned him a nomination for a Tony award in 1987. (Sidenote: It was upon SF's suggestion that Emma Thompson landed a leading role in the London cast of this show.) Throughout the 1980s, Fry did a huge amount of television and radio work, as well as writing for newspapers (e.g. a weekly column in the "Daily Telegraph") and magazines (e.g. articles for "Arena"). He is probably best known for his television roles in Blackadder II (1986) and Jeeves and Wooster (1990).
His support of the Terence Higgins Trust through events such as the first "Hysteria" benefit, as well as numerous other charity efforts, are probably those works of which he is most proud. Fry's acting career has not been limited to films and television. He had successful runs in Alan Bennett's "Forty Years On," Simon Gray's "The Common Pursuit" with John Sessions, Rik Mayall, John Gordon Sinclair, and others. Michael Frayn's "Look Look" and Gray's "Cell Mates" were less successful for both Fry and their playwrights, the latter not helped by his walking out of the play after only a couple of weeks. Fry has published four novels as well as a collection of his radio and journalistic miscellanea. He has recorded audiotapes of his novels (an unabridged version of "The Liar" was released in 1995), as well as many other works for both adults and children.- Actor
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Richard Dawkins was born on 26 March 1941 in Nairobi, Kenya. He is an actor and writer, known for Doctor Who (2005), Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed (2008) and Intersect (2020). He has been married to Lalla Ward since September 1992. He was previously married to Marian Dawkins and Eve Barham.Evolutionary biologist, best known for writing 'The Selfish Gene' and 'The God Delusion'.- A.C. Grayling was born on 3 April 1949 in Luanshya, Zambia.English philosopher, best known for writing 'The Good Book', 'The Meaning of Things' and 'Among the Dead Cities'.
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Daniel C. Dennett was born on 28 March 1942 in Boston, Massachusetts, USA. He was a director, known for Psi, The Human Robot (2015) and Victim of the Brain (1988). He was married to Susan Bell. He died on 19 April 2024 in Portland, Oregon, USA.American philosopher and cognitive scientist, best known for writing 'Darwin's Dangerous Idea', 'Freedom Evolves' and 'Breaking the Spell'.- Actor
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Author / sportswriter / radio commentator / TV pundit Keith Olbermann's first book, "The Major League Coaches", was published when he was 14. He began his career as a play-by-play announcer for WHTR while he was still in high school. Beginning college at age 16, he graduated with a Bachelors of Science degree in communications arts from Cornell University at age 20.
He began his career at UPI, and then RKO Radio and New York's WNEW until CNN found him in 1981. In 1984, he became a sports anchor in Boston at WCVB-TV, then went to Los Angeles for KTLA-TV and KCBS-TV. While in California, he received 11 Golden Mike Awards for Best Sportscaster and Best Sportscast, and was voted Sportscaster of the Year three times.
In 1992, he was part of the team that launched ESPN Radio, and then began what was to become his "signature" post at ESPN SportsCenter. He and Dan Patrick worked together until 1997. Keith then went to MSNBC, where he hosted "The Big Show with Keith Olbermann" and "White House in Crisis". However, he despised doing 24-hour-a-day coverage of the Monica Lewinsky scandal involving President Bill Clinton, and his contract was bought out by Fox to become anchor and executive producer of "The Keith Olbermann Evening News" on Fox Sports Net on Sunday nights. He was also host of Fox's Saturday pregame baseball studio show.
In 2001, he left Fox for "other opportunities", and kept a low profile at ABC Radio. The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, on New York's World Trade Center affected him profoundly, saying that they "sobered me up" -- he knew five people who died in attacks. He won an 'Edward R. Murrow' Award for reporting from the site for 40 days for his ABC Radio show.
After September 11, and while contributing to Salon.com, he published a profound, "Mea Culpa", to ESPN and fellow workers and addressed the burned bridges in his career. He attributed most of his "outbursts" to feelings of "insecurity" and "fear of being blamed". What September 11 also taught him was "If you're 44 years old and you're not smarter than you were when you were at 35 years old or 25 years old, just stay in your room".
He is an avid baseball historian and has a collection of at least 35,000 baseball cards. He's received numerous distinguished awards in radio and television broadcasting, including the 1995 Cable Ace Award for Best Sportscaster, 11 Golden Mike Awards for excellence in television and radio, and four Sports Emmy Awards.
He has written for dozens of publications, including The New York Times, USA Today, Newsweek, Time, Sports Illustrated and Playboy, and authored a book with his "tag-team partner", Dan Patrick, entitled "The Big Show: A Tribute to ESPN's SportsCenter". He has his own political commentary show, Countdown w/ Keith Olbermann (2003), on MSNBC--one of the highest-rated shows on that network--and hosted that network's coverage of the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens, Greece.