Gregg Easterbrook was born and raised in Buffalo, New York, but has lived with his former foreign service officer wife on most every continent. But, he says, “My favorite place on Earth is Seattle, and my wife refuses to move there.” Easterbrook, author of Sonic Boom: Globalization at Mach Speed
Jaron Lanier is a computer scientist, composer, visual artist, and author. He is credited with coining the term “Virtual Reality,” and was a founding contributing editor of Wired. The Encyclopaedia Britannica (but certainly not Wikipedia) includes him in its list of history’s 300 or so greatest inventors. Below, the author of You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto, tells us more about himself.
Ruth Reichl, the former editor of Gourmet magazine, grew up when, she says, “America wasn’t very proud of its food. It was a hot dog and hamburger time.” Reichl took to cooking at a very young age, continuing to make large meals for friends until after graduate school, when a friend suggested she write a cook book. “If you went to a publisher today and said I want to write a cookbook, they’d say, where did you learn to cook, who’s testing your recipes,” she said. “In 1971, they said, hey, that’s a quaint idea, and they gave me a contract. After that people thought I was a food writer.” Read on to learn more about Reichl.
Evan Kleiman initially chose cooking over talking. “I was a very shy kid,” she said. “I learned you could still be in the room and serve people, but you didn’t have to actually talk if you made the food.” Before becoming known for doing both — as host of KCRW’s Good Food and owner and chef of Angeli Caffe — Kleiman baked cookies to sell at her high school and put herself through college catering. Read more about Kleiman below.
In 2009, Zócalo put some 124 guests through the In The Green Room interview — our signature set of questions that get behind our speakers’ work and reveal something a little more personal. We thought it only fair to submit ourselves for the same treatment. Read on to find out about the people behind the microphones and the computers, and have a wonderful holiday and New Year.
Orson Welles was born on May 6, 1915, and directed his most acclaimed film, Citizen Kane, at age 26. Years later, after a couple disastrous movies and a sojourn in Europe, he would reunite with one of its stars, Joseph Cotton, in The Third Man. Welles' character, Harry Lime, is the missing center of the movie until he appears, finally, and explains his motives for entering a less-than-savory line of work....
