E. Benjamin Skinner (or just “Ben”, as he insisted), is a 32 year-old author, journalist, and crusader against modern-day slavery. Raised Quaker in Madison, Wisconsin, Skinner also spent some of his early childhood in northern Nigeria, where his father served as a British colonial administrator. Today, when he’s not traveling he calls Brooklyn home. He sat down with Zócalo before his lecture on the evening of September 16th, 2008 at the Museum of Contemporary Art on Grand Avenue in downtown Los Angeles, and we grilled him with some of our patented questions. His mother, Meg Skinner, was in the audience that night.

Q: What’s your favorite word?
A: Suzerain. I’m pretty sure it means hegemonic.

Q: What inspires you?
A: The idea that a divine spark animates every man.

Q: When are you most creative?
A: After I see a really good movie or when I hear a beautiful piece of music.

Q: How would you describe yourself in five words or less?
A: Extraordinarily blessed. Open to fate.

Q: What is your greatest extravagance?
A: A pint of chocolate peanut butter ice cream.

Q: If you could take only one more journey in your life, where would you go?
A: Home, to Madison to see my father, who’s 87 and had a stroke.

Q: What profession would you like to practice in your next life?
A: In my next life I’d like to be a doctor. Hopefully then I’d be better at math.

Q: What is your fondest childhood memory?
A: Being carried on my father’s back in a Gerry Carrier when we were living in Nigeria.

Q: Who would you say is your favorite Beatle and why?
A: George Harrison, because he had a message and he wanted to convey it.

Q: What is your most prized material possession?
A: An early photograph of my father at Cambridge–just a reminder of responsibility that gets passed on. I have it on my wall for that reason.

Q: What is the most unusual time, place, or situation that you came up with a brilliant idea? What was the idea?
A: When I was getting horrendously ill with malaria, I came up with the first line of “A Crime So Monstrous,” which was:

For our purposes, let’s say that the center of the moral universe is in Room S-3800 of the UN Secretariat, Manhattan. From here, you are some five hours from being able to negotiate the sale, in broad daylight, of a healthy boy or girl.

The idea was to hit people in the solar plexus.

*Photo by Aaron Salcido.