This page brings together a handful of my interviews with remarkable people — writers, philosophers, scientists, architects, educators and social innovators of various kinds. Some of the dialogues have been published in magazine and book form, others broadcast on public radio, and a handful conducted on stage in front of a live audience.
Interviews
In this interview, which appears in the July 2012 issue of The Sun magazine, the renowned psychologist James Hillman discusses the nature of soul, character and calling. He says our calling in life is inborn and that it's our mission in life to realize its imperatives. He calls it the "acorn theory" — the notion that our lives are formed by a particular image, just as the oak's destiny is contained in the tiny acorn. [Also available in a Spanish translation by Enrique Eskenazi, and an Italian translation by Rinaldo Lampis.]
No one has done more to put social entrepreneurship on the map than Bill Drayton, the CEO and founder of Ashoka and the man widely credited with having coined the term in the early 1980s. In this interview — conducted in Oslo, Norway, in March 2012 — he reflects on the movement he started and how it's evolving. "The biggest problem we have is that people don’t yet see the change that’s going on," he says. "Once people understand that we are moving from a world of repetition to a world of change, then the role of the social entrepreneur becomes obvious."
A dialogue with renowned translator, scholar, and poet Stephen Mitchell about his translations of the Tao Te Ching and The Second Book of the Tao, his perspectives on writing, and the rich tradition of wisdom literature that informs his work. (This interview was held in March 2009 in front of a live audience as part of Santa Barbara City College's "Mind & Supermind" lecture series.)
In this interview, Mexican-American writer and cultural critic Richard Rodriguez looks at the dilemmas of diversity and cultural identity in the U.S. He says "it's no surprise that at the same time that American universities have engaged in a serious commitment to diversity, they have been thought-prisons. We are not talking about diversity in any real way. We are talking about brown, black, white versions of the same political ideology." The interview appears in the 2009 edition of Little, Brown Reader, edited by Marcia Stubbs, Sylvan Barnet and William E. Cain., among other books, and first appeared in The Sun magazine.
A conversation with prize-winning author and naturalist Terry Tempest Williams about the meaning of home, community, and our changing relationship to the land. "I think our lack of intimacy with the land has initiated a lack of intimacy with each other," Williams says. Published in A Voice in the Wilderness: Conversations with Terry Tempest Williams, edited by Michael Austin (Utah State University Press, 2006)
In this interview, renowned Australian biologist and founder of permaculture talks about his revolutionary approach to food production and ecological design. "The ethics are simple," he says: "care of the earth, care of people, and reinvestment in those ends." Adapted from a radio interview, this conversation was published in Green Living, Summer 2005. It's also available in a Chinese translation by Huck Lin.