My Path to Success

During the 2005 International Achievement Summit in New York City, the Academy of Achievement invited its student delegates to the Broadway theater district for an exploration of the role of the performing arts in society. The panelists for this program were an incomparable gathering of theatrical luminaries. America's foremost playwright, Edward Albee, is the recipient of three Pulitzer Prizes, author of the classic drama Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf. Broadway's most honored composer, Stephen Sondheim first won fame as the lyricist of West Side Story and wrote music and lyrics for a series of landmark Broadway musicals including A Little Night Music and Sweeney Todd. Tony Kushner received the Pulitzer Prize for his play Angels in America. James Earl Jones has had one of the most distinguished careers in the history of American theater and film, winning acclaim for his performances in the plays of Shakespeare, Tennessee Williams and August Wilson. Sally Field and Denzel Washington are two of America's best-loved actors. Field received two Oscars for her starring performances in the films Norma Rae and Places in the Heart. Denzel Washington received two Oscars for his performances in Glory and Training Day. This historic discussion was led by the Artistic Director of New York's Public Theater, Oskar Eustis.

During the 2005 International Achievement Summit in New York City, the Academy of Achievement invited its student delegates to the Broadway theater district for an exploration of the role of the performing arts in society. The panelists for this program were an incomparable gathering of theatrical luminaries. America's foremost playwright, Edward Albee, is the recipient of three Pulitzer Prizes, author of the classic drama Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf. Broadway's most honored composer, Stephen Sondheim first won fame as the lyricist of West Side Story and wrote music and lyrics for a series of landmark Broadway musicals including A Little Night Music and Sweeney Todd. Tony Kushner received the Pulitzer Prize for his play Angels in America. James Earl Jones has had one of the most distinguished careers in the history of American theater and film, winning acclaim for his performances in the plays of Shakespeare, Tennessee Williams and August Wilson. Sally Field and Denzel Washington are two of America's best-loved actors. Field received two Oscars for her starring performances in the films Norma Rae and Places in the Heart. Denzel Washington received two Oscars for his performances in Glory and Training Day. This historic discussion was led by the Artistic Director of New York's Public Theater, Oskar Eustis.

The undisputed monarch of the blues guitar, B.B. King was born on a cotton plantation in the Mississippi Delta. As a child he learned the rudiments of his instrument from his preacher and was soon performing blues and gospel songs on street corners. In 1947 he hitchhiked to Memphis, Tennessee with $2.50 in his pocket to pursue a professional music career. Within a year he was singing on the radio and in local night clubs. In 1951 he recorded his first big hit, "Three O'Clock Blues," and began touring the country, taking his music from rural juke joints and road houses to concert halls and amphitheaters around the world. His original compositions fused elements of jazz, pop and gospel music with the classic blues. In 1970, he recorded the song that has become his calling card, "The Thrill is Gone." He has released over 50 albums to date and has received 18 Grammy Awards. Generations of rock and blues players have imitated his fluid guitar lines, with their weeping bends and stinging vibrato. Over the years he has recorded with many of these admirers, including U2 and Eric Clapton. His contributions to his country's cultural life have been recognized with the Kennedy Center Honors and the Presidential Medal of the Arts. Now in the sixth decade of his career, B.B. King still performs hudreds of times a year, roaming the globe as America's Ambassador of the Blues. This performance was recorded at the House of Blues during the 2004 International Achievement Summit in Chicago. The podcast includes excerpts from B.B. King's interview with the Academy of Achievement, recorded during the Summit.

One of the most beloved performers in the world, Julie Andrews made her Broadway debut at age 18 in The Boy Friend. Historic successes followed in the original productions of My Fair Lady and Camelot. She won the Oscar for Best Actress in her first film, playing the title role in Mary Poppins. Perhaps the greatest triumph of her career came with the leading role in The Sound of Music, one of the most popular motion pictures of all time. Her crystalline singing voice, wholesome appeal, natural elegance and sly humor made her a top box office draw around the world. In 1989, she became the first actress to receive the special Tribute Award of the British Academy for Film and Television. Over the course of her career she has also won five Golden Globe Awards, including two for World Film Favorite, and one for her performance in the film Victor/Victoria, a role she reprised for an acclaimed run on Broadway in 1995. She has enjoyed continued success in films such as The Princess Diaries. Over 30 years ago, she embarked on a second career as an author of children's books, including The Last of the Really great Whangdoodles and the popular Dumpy the Dumptruck series. She was named a Dame Commander of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II in 2000 in recognition of her extraordinary career, and her service to charities such as UNICEF and Save the Children.

Novelist, short story writer and poet, John Updike is one of America's premier men of letters. As a boy growing up on a farm in Pennsylvania, he suffered from psoriasis and a stammer, ailments that set him apart from his peers. He found solace in writing, and won a scholarship to Harvard, where he edited the Lampoon humor magazine. He sold his first poem and short story to The New Yorker shortly after graduation. He won early fame with his novel Rabbit, Run (1960), and Pulitzer Prizes for two of its sequels, Rabbit is Rich (1981) and Rabbit at Rest (1990), chronicling the life of a middle class American through the social upheavals of the 1960s and beyond. Rabbit, Run and Couples (1968) both stirred controversy with their forthright depiction of America's changing sexual mores, and established his reputation as a peerless observer of the human complexity behind the facade of ostensibly conventional lives. His fiction, poetry and essays also show a persistent interest in moral and philosophical questions, informed by a lifelong interest in Christian theology. John Updike is one of very few Americans to be honored with both the National Medal of Art and the National Medal for the Humanities. As of this writing, he has published more thn 60 books. The Early Stories, 1953-1975, published in 2004, collects the short fiction from the first two decades of his career. As large a volume as it is, it represents only a small part of his vast contribution to American literature. His latest novel, The Widows of Eastwick, appeared in the fall of 2008.

When Dr. John Sulston joined the Laboratory of Medical Biology at Cambridge in 1969, few imagined that his work on the tiny nematode worm C. elegans would lead to one of the greatest medical and biological discoveries of the age, but his observations of the genetic regulation of organ development and programmed cell death in this millimeter-long creature enabled our understanding of similar processes in the human. By sequencing the genome of the nematode, he set the stage for the sequencing of the human genome. In 1992, Sulston became the first Director of the Wellcome Trust's Sanger Centre at Cambridge, home of the British component of the International Human Genome Project. When commercial interests tried to patent segments of the human genome, Dr. Sulston took a firm stand against commercial exploitation of this research. In the face of powerful opposition, he insured free public access to knowledge that will provide the foundation of biology for centuries to come, a struggle he recounts in his book, The Common Thread: A Story of Science, Politics and the Ethics of the Human Genome. Now retired from the Directorship of the Centre, he has become a leading advocate for public responsibility in science. He was knighted for his services to science in 2001, and the following year he received the Nobel Prize, but the honor Sir John may value most is the tribute of a fellow Nobelist, who called him simply, "a scientist's scientist."

Aretha Franklin is known the world over as the Queen of Soul Music. In the 1960s, her hit recording "Respect" became an anthem of the civil rights struggle and a theme song for the dawning women's movement.

He musical career began in the New Bethel Baptist Church in Detroit, Michigan, where her father, Rev. C.L. Franklin was the pastor. Young Aretha sang and played piano, and the passion of Gospel music ha remained with her through her subsequent triumphs in secular blues, rock and pop. Franklin began recording when she was only 14. At 19, had won a solos contract with Columbia Records. Columbia tried to promote her as a conventionally smooth pop singer, but Aretha's talent was too volcanic to be contained by the old formulas. In 1966, she moved to Atlantic Records, where she recorded the stirring performances that made her world-famous. Her rendition of songs like "Think," "Chain of Fools, and "(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman" set the standard by which singing in the soul idiom will always be measured. Her breakthrough album was 1967's I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You, a Top 40 smash. She continued to deliver hit albums decade after decade, including Amazing Grace (1972) and Who's Zoomin' Who? (1985) and her 1998 effort A Rose is Still a Rose.

Since 1961, she has scored a total of 45 "Top 40" hits on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, and 20 number one hits on the R&B charts. She has recorded 14 million-selling singles, the record for a female artist. Between 1967 and 1982 she had 10 number one albums on the R&B charts, another record for a female artist.

She sang at the funeral of Dr. Martin Luther King, and at the inaugurations of Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. She has won 18 Grammy Awards and was the first woman inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Despite her international fame, she has always returned to her home town of Detroit. The legislature of Michigan has declared Aretha Franklin's voice to be one of the state's natural resources. All Americans can claim her as a national treasure.

This podcast was recorded during a performance at the 2003 International Achievement Summit in Washington, D.C. It includes a rendition of her signature song "Respect," as well as rare interview footage recorded during the Summit.

Hailed as the most influential documentary filmmaker of our times, Ken Burns has produced and directed a series of acclaimed documentaries, employing archival photographs, newsreel footage and evocative music to bring American history to life for millions of television viewers. His eleven-hour series The Civil War held the nation spellbound in 1990. His 18-hour series, Baseball, employed the history of the national pastime, from the 1840's to the present, as a mirror of larger movements in American society. Broadcast over nine evenings in 1994, it was seen by more than 45 million viewers, the largest audience for any program in the history of public television. His 19-hour, 10-part film Jazz explores the culture, politics and dreams that gave birth to jazz music. His seven-part series The War, aired on PBS in 2007, tells the story of the Second World War through the personal accounts of nearly 40 men and women from four American towns. The series explores the most intimate human dimensions of the greatest cataclysm in history and demonstrates that in extraordinary times, there are no ordinary lives.

Few figures in the history of diplomacy have had as large an impact on world history as Dr. Henry Kissinger. As National Security Advisor and Secretary of State, Dr. Kissinger is generally credited with crafting the policy of detente with the Soviet Union and effecting the historic opening to China. He was awarded the Nobel Prize, along with Le Due Tho of North Vietnam, for negotiating an end to the Vietnam War. Henry Alfred Kissinger was born in Fuerth, Germany. Fleeing the rise of the Nazis, the Kissinger family came to the United Stares in 1938. Henry Kissinger became a United States citizen in 1943 and served in the U.S. Army during World War II. From 1954 until 1969, he was a member of the faculty of Harvard University. President Richard Nixon selected Henry Kissinger as Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs in 1969. Dr. Kissinger retained this position throughout the Nixon administration, even after being appointed Secretary of State in 1973, a position he retained in the subsequent administration of President Gerald Ford. Under President Reagan he chaired the National Bipartisan Commission on Central America, and served as a member of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board from 1984 to 1990. Today, Dr. Kissinger is Chairman of Kissinger Associates, Inc., an international consulting firm. In this podcast, recorded at the 2002 International Achievement Summit in Dublin, Ireland he recalls his career in foreign policy, and contrasts the qualities of idealism and realism in international affairs. He urges the Academy's student delegates to become participants in life, not just observers.

Garth Fagan is one of America's most original and influential choreographers. Born in Jamaica, Fagan graduated from Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan, and studied in New York with many of the pioneers of 20th Century dance, including José Limón, Alvin Ailey and Martha Graham. Combining the traditions of Afro-Caribbean dance with classical ballet, modern and post-modern techniques, Fagan has developed a uniquely expressive dance vocabulary. He first won acclaim with works created for his own company, Garth Fagan Dance, established in 1970. In addition to work with his own ensemble, he has created original works for America's most distinguished modern dance companies, as well as for the Dance Theatre of Harlem and the New York City Ballet. In the 1980s he moved outside the world of pure dance into the theater, staging dances for the Kennedy Center's world premiere staging of Duke Ellington's opera, Queenie Pie, and the New York Shakespeare Festival's 1988 production of A Midsummer Night's Dream. Fagan enjoyed one of his greatest successes with the Broadway production of The Lion King, one of the most beloved theatrical productions of all time. Fagan's inspired choreography for The Lion King won the year's Drama Desk Award, Outer Circle Critics Award and the 1998 Tony Award for Best Choreography. Fagan, a recipient of Fulbright and Guggenheim Fellowships, is a Distinguished University Professor Emeritus at the State University of New York, and holds honorary doctorates from five institutions, including the Julliard School. In this podcast, recorded at the Academy of Achievement's 2001 Summit in San Antonio, Texas, he tells the Academy's student delegates about his family and childhood, his education, and his relationships with his mentors. He also explores the spiritual rewards of art, and the nature of talent.