Former Major League Baseball pitcher Roger Clemens talks about his legendary career, why he’s not in the Hall of Fame and changes in baseball.
Major League pitching legend Roger Clemens got his start at Houston’s Spring Woods High School. He then attended San Jacinto Jr. College and went on to have a successful career as a University of Texas Longhorn. Clemens was the winning pitcher in the final game of the 1983 College World Series. Roger was drafted by the Boston Red Sox and one year later named Rookie of the Year. Clemens is a seven-time Cy Young Award winner and a twelve-time MLB All-Star. He earned 354 wins, 4,672 strike-outs and two World Championship rings during his MLB career with the Boston Red Sox, Toronto Blue Jays, New York Yankees and Houston Astros. Roger and his wife established the Roger Clemens Foundation in 1992.
Terrence McNally was an award-winning playwright and LGBT(Q) activist whose far-ranging career spanned six decades. He won four Tony Awards for his plays “Love! Valour! Compassion!” and “Master Class” and his musical books for “Kiss of the Spider Woman” and “Ragtime.”
He was a recipient of the Dramatists Guild Lifetime Achievement Award and the Lucille Lortel Lifetime Achievement Award, and he was a 2018 inductee of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He wrote a number of TV scripts, including “Andre’s Mother,” for which he won an Emmy Award. He received two Guggenheim Fellowships, a Rockefeller Grant, four Drama Desk Awards, two Lucille Lortel Awards, two Obie Awards and three Hull-Warriner Awards. In 1996, he was inducted into the Theater Hall of Fame. He was recognized with a Special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Theatre at the 2019 Tony Awards and was the 2019 recipient of the Broadway League’s Distinguished Lifetime Service Award.
McNally passed away in March of 2020.
Michael Curry is the Presiding Bishop and Chief Pastor of the Episcopal Church. He discusses social justice and policy.
Presiding Bishop Curry graduated with high honors from Hobart College in Geneva, NY, and received a Master of Divinity degree from Yale University Divinity School. Throughout his ministry, he has been active in issues of social justice, reconciliation, speaking out on immigration policy and marriage equality.
Presiding Bishop Curry maintains national preaching and teaching ministries, having been featured on “The Protestant Hour” and as a frequent speaker at churches, cathedrals and conferences around the country and internationally. He delivered a widely praised sermon at the royal wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle.
Grammy winner Ani DiFranco discusses her memoir “No Walls and the Recurring Dream” and the independent spirit that infuses her music.
Singer-songwriter Ani DiFranco has been known as the “Little Folksinger” but her music has embraced punk, funk, hip hop, jazz, soul, electronica and even more distant sounds. Rejecting the major label system, she became one of the first artists to create her own record label, Righteous Babe Records, in 1990. Her collaborators have included everyone from Utah Phillips to legendary R&B saxophonist Maceo Parker to Prince. She has shared stages with Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Pete Seeger, Kris Kristofferson, Greg Brown, Billy Bragg, Michael Franti, Chuck D. and many more. Her album “Binary” was released in June 2017 and her memoir “No Walls and the Recurring Dream” was released in 2019 by Viking Books.
Politico’s Anna Palmer and Jake Sherman discuss their book, “The Hill to Die On,” a look at the Capitol Hill battle for power.
Anna Palmer is a senior Washington correspondent for Politico. She covers Congress, politics and the business of Washington. Anna previously covered House leadership and lobbying as a staff writer for Roll Call. She got her start in Washington journalism as a lobbying business reporter for the industry newsletter Influence. She has also worked at Legal Times, where she covered the intersection of money and politics for the legal and lobbying industry, first as a staff writer and then as an editor.
Jake Sherman is a senior writer for Politico. He covers the House Republican majority. Since 2009, Jake has chronicled all of the major legislative battles on Capitol Hill and has also traveled the country to cover the battle for control of Congress. Before landing at Politico, Jake worked in the Washington bureaus of The Wall Street Journal, Newsweek and the Minneapolis Star Tribune.
Together, Palmer and Sherman co-authored “The Hill to Die On,” an insider’s look at divided American politics.
New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand talks policy and her bid for the U.S. presidency.
Senator Kirsten Gillibrand has served as the junior U.S. senator from New York since 2009. A magna cum laude graduate of Dartmouth College in 1988, Gillibrand went on to receive her law degree from the UCLA School of Law in 1991 and served as a law clerk on the Second Circuit Court of Appeals. After working as an attorney in New York City for more than a decade, Senator Gillibrand served as Special Counsel to United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Andrew Cuomo during the Clinton Administration. She then worked as an attorney in Upstate New York before serving as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from 2007 to 2009.
On March 17, 2019, Senator Gillibrand declared her candidacy for the Democratic nomination for President of the United States.
Filmmaker Ed Zwick discusses his celebrated Hollywood career and his film, “Trial by Fire,” starring Laura Dern.
Ed Zwick is an award-winning film and television director and producer. He co-created the television series “thirtysomething” and together with Marshall Herskovitz produced “My So-Called Life” and “Once and Again.” He also executive produced the series “Nashville.” Zwick began his feature film career directing “About Last Night.” He went on to direct the Academy Award-winning films “Glory” and “Legends of the Fall.” Zwick also directed the films “Courage Under Fire,” “The Siege,” “The Last Samurai,” “Blood Diamond,” “Defiance,” “Love & Other Drugs” and “Pawn Sacrifice.” Zwick and Herskovitz also produced the Academy Award-nominated film “I Am Sam,” as well as “Traffic” – winner of two Golden Globe Awards and four Academy Awards. Zwick also directed “Jack Reacher: Never Go Back,” starring Tom Cruise. Zwick has been honored with three Emmy Awards, the Humanitas Prize, the Writer’s Guild of America Award, two Peabody Awards, a Director’s Guild of America Award and the Franklin J. Schaffner Alumni Award from the American Film Institute. He received an Academy Award as a producer of 1999’s Best Picture “Shakespeare in Love.”
Journalist Jose Antonio Vargas discusses immigration and his memoir, “Dear America: Notes of an Undocumented Citizen.”
Jose Antonio Vargas is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, Emmy-nominated filmmaker and a leading voice for the human rights of immigrants. He is the founder of Define American, the nation’s leading non-profit media and culture organization that fights injustice and anti-immigrant hate through the power of storytelling. His memoir, “Dear America: Notes of an Undocumented Citizen,” was published by HarperCollins in 2018.
Susan Page discusses her book, “The Matriarch,” about former First Lady Barbara Bush, one of the most storied women in American political history.
Susan Page is the Washington Bureau Chief of USA Today, where she writes about politics and the White House. Susan has covered six White House administrations and ten presidential elections. She has interviewed the past nine presidents from Richard Nixon through Donald Trump—and reported from six continents and dozens of foreign countries. She has appeared as an analyst on “PBS NewsHour,” CBS’ “Face the Nation,” “Fox News Sunday,” NBC’s “Meet the Press,” ABC’s “This Week with George Stephanopoulos,” CNN’s “State of the Union,” “CBS This Morning” and other TV and radio programs. Page’s book, “The Matriarch,” is a vivid, immersive biography of former First Lady Barbara Bush, one of the most storied women in American political history.
Silicon Valley investor Roger McNamee mentored Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg in the early days of the company. Still a large shareholder, he now thinks Facebook is destroying our democracy. The author of “Zucked” discusses the existential threat he believes the social network poses to society.
Roger McNamee has been a Silicon Valley investor for 35 years. He co-founded successful funds in venture, crossover and private equity. His most recent fund, Elevation, included U2’s Bono as a co-founder. He holds a B.A. from Yale University and an M.B.A. from the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College. Roger plays bass and guitar in the bands Moonalice and Doobie Decibel System. He is the author of “Zucked: Waking Up to the Facebook Catastrophe,” as well as “The New Normal” and “The Moonalice Legend: Posters and Words, Volumes 1-9.” He has served as a technical advisor for seasons two through five of HBO’s “Silicon Valley” series and was also responsible for raising the money that created the Wikimedia Foundation.
