Overheard with Evan Smith

Kim Gordon is a founding member of Sonic Youth and author of the best-selling memoir Girl in a Band. The memoir chronicles her childhood in California, her time in New York City in the ‘80s and ‘90s, and the rise of Sonic Youth. In addition to being a musician and author, Gordon is a fashion designer, actress and artist.

Salman Khan is the founder of Khan Academy, a non-profit providing online instruction to people all over the world. He began by tutoring his cousins remotely by video. The videos attracted a large YouTube following. Today, Khan Academy is an online learning platform which includes practice exercises, instructional videos, analytics and teacher tools with 15 million registered users.

Bernie Sanders is a United States Senator from Vermont who describes himself as a Socialist, serves as an Independent, and may run for president as a Democrat in 2016. Sanders is the longest-serving Congressional Independent in US history.

Hendrik Hertzberg is a Senior Editor and Staff Writer at The New Yorker. His writing for The New Yorker’s The Talk of the Town has been a finalist for the National Magazine Award for Columns and Commentary 6 times, and won the award in 2006. He’s written three books, Politics: Observations and Arguments, ¡Obamanos!: The Birth of a New Political Era, and One Million.

Alex Gibney is an Academy Award-winning documentary filmmaker. Alex’s film Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief will air on HBO on March 29th. Based on Lawrence Wright’s book by the same name, the film was one of the most talked about at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival.

David Axelrod is a political strategist and former Senior Advisor to President Obama. Axelrod ran both of President Obama’s campaigns in 2008 and 2012. He’s also worked for a number of other big names in Democratic politics - Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, Deval Patrick, and Rahm Emanuel, just to name a few. His memoir, Believer: My Forty Years in Politics, has just been published.

S. C. Gwynne is a best-selling author and journalist, whose most recent book Rebel Yell: The Violence, Passion, and Redemption of Stonewall Jackson is a finalist for the 2014 National Book Critics Circle Award. His 2010 book Empire of the Summer Moon was a New York Times best-seller and was a finalist for both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award.

William Gibson is an acclaimed science fiction novelist, essayist, and screenwriter, known for coining the term “cyberspace.” He has been called the “noir prophet” of the “cyberpunk” community. His 1984 book Neuromancer was the first to win the three top science fiction prizes -- the Hugo Award, the Nebula Award, and the Philip K. Dick Memorial Award. Throughout his writing career he has published three trilogies, including The New York Times best-selling Blue Ant series. His newest novel is The

Joyce Carol Oates is one of the most distinguished and critically-acclaimed fiction writers in America. She is a recipient of the National Medal of Humanities, the National Book Critics Circle Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award, the National Book Award, and the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in Short Fiction, and has been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize.

James Ellroy is an author known for his noir-style crime fiction, primarily set in Los Angeles. Some of his past works have been adapted into Hollywood successes including the Academy Award-winning L.A. Confidential and The Black Dahlia. His latest novel, Perfidia, is set in Los Angeles during World War II, as Japanese internment camps begin forming.