Jill Sobule is a Denver-born singer, songwriter, guitarist and gypsy. Over five albums and a decade of recording, her hit songs included I Kissed a Girl and Supermodel. Jill inducted Neil Diamond into the Songwriter’s Hall of Fame. She’s performed with Neil Young, Billy Bragg and Warren Zevon and has been a political troubador for NPR stations across America. She’s an American original.

Rick Smolan, is a New York Times #1 best-selling author with more than five million copies of his books in print. He and his partner, Jennifer Erwitt, are the principals of Against All Odds Productions, based in New York City. A former Time, Life, and National Geographic photographer, Smolan is best known as the co-creator of the Day in the Life book series. His global photography projects, which feature the work of hundreds of the world’s leading photographers and combine creative storytelling with state-of-the-art technology, are regularly featured on the covers of prestigious publications around the globe including Fortune, Time, and GEO.

His latest book, The Good Fight: America’s Ongoing Struggle for Justice, is a powerful reminder of how much progress America has made over the past 100 years against hatred, bigotry, racism, misogyny, homophobia and injustice and what's at risk right now. Smolan has spoken at EG, TED, The Davos World Economic Forum, The Ford Foundation, The Wired Health Conference, TEDMED, Techonomy, DLD in Munich, IdeaCity in Canada, INK in India and TEDXBeaconStreet in Boston. His EG talk “Natasha’s Story: An American Homecoming” has been watched by more than a million people. America 24/7, a New York Times bestseller, enabled thousands of Americans to create a national family album during one ordinary week, and was featured as one of Oprah Winfrey’s “Favorite Things.” In the fall of 2012 Smolan and Erwitt released The Human Face of Big Data focusing on humanity's new ability to collect, analyze, triangulate and visualize vast amounts of data in real time. The project, sponsored by EMC, Cisco and SAP resulted in a large format book, an iPad app which won a 2013 WEBBY award, and an award-winning PBS TV special. The book was delivered to 10,000 key influencers in 50 countries courtesy of FedEx. In 2014 the Oscar Winning Producers of “The Kings Speech” released Tracks based on Smolan National Geographic cover story about 27-year-old Robyn Davidson’s 1,700 mile nine-month solo camel trek across the treacherous Australian Outback. In the movie Robyn Davidson was portrayed by Mia Wasikowska (“Stoker”, “The Kids are Alright”, “Alice in Wonderland”). Smolan was portrayed by Adam Driver, (Kylo Ren in Star Wars).

Fortune magazine describes Smolan’s company, Against All Odds as “One of the 25 Coolest Companies in America.”

Sandy Smolan is a former TIME, LIFE, and National Geographic photographer best known as the co-creator of the “Day in the Life” book series. He and his partner, Jennifer Erwitt, are the principals of Against All Odds Productions, based in Sausalito, California. Fortune magazine describes Against All Odds as “One of the 25 Coolest Companies in America.” Their global photography projects combine creative storytelling with state-of-the-art technology. Many of their books have appeared on the New York Times best-seller lists and have been featured on the covers of Fortune, Time, Newsweek, and US News & World Report. Their books include America at Home, UK at Home, Blue Planet Run, America 24/7, One Digital Day, 24 Hours in Cyberspace, Passage to Vietnam, The Power to Heal, Medicine's Great Journey and From Alice to Ocean. Smolan and Erwitt live with their two children, in Northern California.

Josh Simpson’s vision in glass spans the mysteries of the ocean to the farthest reaches of space. His work has evolved as he experimented and made stupid mistakes. In 1976 he began the “Infinity Project” — to leave his small planet sculptures around the Earth, an unsigned gift for future generations.

A pioneer in computer graphics and digital arts, David Salesin now leads Adobe’s Creative Technologies Lab, where he is an Adobe Fellow. He is also a professor at University of Washington, where he received the Distinguished Teaching Award. Earlier in his career, he worked at Lucasfilm and Pixar, where he contributed computer animation for the Academy Award-winning short film, “Tin Toy,” and the feature-length film, “Young Sherlock Holmes.” He holds 20 patents and is the recipient of the ACM SIGGRAPH Computer Graphics Achievement Award, among other honors.

She's a most unlikely combination: a frequent guest on The O'Reilly Factor, and voted World's Sexiest Geek by WIRED Magazine readers, Marina holds two degrees in Philology from Nizhny Novgorod University. And she's an internet sensation: her video etymology lessons are collected on her HotForWords YouTube channel, which is one of the most popular video blogs in the world. Voted the Sexiest Geek of the Year by Wired.com, Marina Orlova, or HotForWords, as she is known, is the 21st most watched channel of all time on YouTube with 267 MILLION video views, adding 3.5 million views each week! That's ahead of National Geographic, Showtime and the BBC!Called the Sexiest Philologist in the World by New Yorker Magazine, Marina's popularity extends beyond the Internet. She's a regular on Fox's O'Reilly Factor as the show's word specialist, she has a weekly segment on G4 TV's Attack of the Show, she just wrote a book called Hot for Words that was published by HarperCollins, she was just named the latest Go Daddy girl and she was part of the Best Online Campaign of 2009... and all of this was accomplished while teaching people the origins of words!

Peter was best known for his coverage of international feature stories on science and the environment until he began conceiving of and producing “thinking peoples’ photography books” beginning in 1994 with his wife and co-author Faith D’Aluisio. Besides being published in National Geographic, his photos have appeared in just about every other magazine you read and then throw away. He has received several World Press and Picture of the Year awards and has co-authored seven award-winning books, most recently, What I Eat: Around the World in 80 Diets, with Faith D’Aluisio.

Faith, a former television news producer, is the editor and lead writer, editor, photo assistant, stylist, and IT wizard for the award-winning Material World Books series, an imprint of Ten Speed Press/Crown Books/Random House. Together they received the James Beard Foundation Award in 1999 for Best Book: Reference and Writing on Food, for Man Eating Bugs: The Art and Science of Eating Insects. In 2005 the James Beard Foundation awarded their book Hungry Planet: What the World Eats Best Book of the Year and Best Book: Reference and Writing on Food.

In 2011 their most recent book What I Eat: Around the World in 80 Diets was awarded an IACP award.

Menzel and D’Aluisio are the co-creators of several other award-winning books — including Material World: A Global Family Portrait; and Robo sapiens: Evolution of a New Species. They are currently working on a book about death and death rituals around the world, which they hope to finish before they die.

Besides photographing and writing, the couple lecture, have numerous exhibits, lead workshops, and work hard not to twitter or tattle or tear each other’s hearts out.

They have worked in more than 80 countries without getting arrested; live in Napa, California, love wine and have no DUI's; and they are the parents of four adult sons: Josh, Jack, Adam and Evan — all of whom are taller, younger, smarter, better looking, and make more money than their parents.

Eric Mead is one of the most original variety artists working today. He has appeared in numerous films and television shows — notably in his turn telling the world’s dirtiest joke with a deck of cards in The Aristocrats. In addition to taking his solo performances around the world, Mead is highly regarded as a consultant and collaborator in his field, and has written a number of critically acclaimed books on conjuring.

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Called “America’s Most Wired Composer” by the LA Times, Tod Machover is celebrated for extending music’s cutting edge. At the MIT Media Lab, he has developed Hyperinstruments for Yo-Yo Ma, created a Brain Opera, and launched the technologies behind Guitar Hero. Tod’s opera-in-progress, “Death and the Powers,” explores legacy and immortality through musical robotics. Tod Machover — Composer and Inventor — is a professor at the MIT Media Lab. Tod has designed Hyperinstruments for world-class virtuosi, kids, and the disabled. Known for his hi-tech operas, he is currently working on “Death and the Powers.”

Emily graduated cum laude from Harvard, intent on pursuing a career as an Oracle. Unable to find a good Oracle agent, she settled for a career as a stand-up comedian, headlining in comedy clubs and making television appearances on shows such as David Letterman's Late Night. The LA Times called her “a stand-out as a stand-up.” Newsweek called her “one of the new queens of comedy.” Her mother called her every week. Later, as a television writer and producer, Emily worked on shows such as Designing Women, Love and War and Dangerous Minds. She created and produced pilots for new situation comedies for CBS, NBC, ABC and HBO. 

In the 90’s, Emily’s career began to suffer as an undiagnosed tumor in her pituitary gland began to wreak havoc. Lacking an explanation for the weird array of symptoms, including brain fog, osteoarthritis, and a curious lack of interest in consumer-driven activity, she could only believe she was going crazy. The relief that accompanied the eventual diagnosis in 2007 – the fact that there was an actual real reason for her decline – led Emily to fall in love with fact-based reality, aka science. Her soon-to-be-released movie, “Emily @ the Edge of Chaos,” details this journey, using humor, animations, and guest stars to inspire the country with that same love of fact-based reality.

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