3/29/20 - Robert M Pirsig

Robert Maynard Pirsig (/ˈpɜːrsɪɡ/; September 6, 1928 – April 24, 2017) was an American writer and philosopher. He was the author of the philosophical novels Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values (1974) and Lila: An Inquiry into Morals (1991).[1]

Check out some amazing quotes from Zen and the Arts of Motorcycle Mainetenance

3/30/20- Dr. Maya angelou

Maya Angelou was born as Marguerite Johnson on April 4th, 1928, in St. Louis, Missouri and raised in St. Louis and Stamps, Arkansas. Maya Angelou became one of the most renowned and influential voices of our time. With over 50 honorary doctorate degrees Dr. Maya Angelou became a celebrated poet, memoirist, educator, dramatist, producer, actress, historian, filmmaker, and civil rights activist. In the late 1950’s Maya Angelou joined the Harlem Writer’s Guild. With the guidance of her friend, the novelist James Baldwin, she began work on the book that would become I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. Published in 1970, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings received international acclaim made the bestseller list. The book was also banned in many schools during that time as Maya Angelou’s honesty about having been sexually abused opened a subject matter that had long been taboo in the culture. Later, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings would become a course adoption at college campuses around the world. With more than 30 bestselling titles, Maya Angelou has written 36 books.

Check out Dr. Angelou reading her poem Still I Rise

3/31/20 - Billie Eilish

Billie Eilish Pirate Baird O'Connell (/ˈaɪlɪʃ/ EYE-lish;[1] born December 18, 2001) is an American singer and songwriter. She first gained media attention in 2016 when she uploaded the song "Ocean Eyes" to SoundCloud, and it was subsequently released by Interscope Records subsidiary Darkroom. The song was written and produced by her brother Finneas, with whom she collaborates on music and live shows. Her debut EP, Don't Smile at Me (2017), reached the top 15 in the US, UK, Canada, and Australia. Eilish's debut studio album, When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? (2019), debuted atop the Billboard 200 and became the best-performing album of 2019 in the US. Her accolades include five Grammy Awards, two American Music Awards, two Guinness World Records, three MTV Video Music Awards, and one Brit Award. She is the youngest person and second person ever to win the four main Grammy categories – Best New Artist, Record of the Year, Song of the Year and Album of the Year – in the same year. In 2019, TIME placed her on their inaugural Time 100 NEXT list.[3]

Check out Billie’s live performance at the 2020 Grammy’s

4/1/20 - Maria Khoreva

“Before Maria Khoreva danced her first performance as a member of the Mariinsky Ballet, she was already a superstar, with devoted Instagram fans following her life as a pupil in the Vaganova Academy (follow her @marachok). Her talent was already obvious—as were her exceptionally long lines, elegant technique and charisma—and when she joined the company's corps de ballet last summer, it was apparent that her artistry was also far beyond her 18 years.

Khoreva didn't last long in the corps: in November artistic director Yuri Fateev promoted her to first soloist, the Mariinsky's second-highest rank. Not even one year into Khoreva's professional career, her repertoire already includes the title role in Paquita, the lead in Balanchine's "Diamonds" and Terpsichore in his Apollo, plus Medora in Le Corsaire, which she is performing this week during the Mariinsky's annual tour to the Kennedy Center. Between performances in Washington, D.C., we spoke to Khoreva via Skype about her life in ballet, overcoming injuries and keeping in touch with 300,000 friends on Instagram.” - Claudia Bauer Pointe Magazine

Check out an article about the stunning Khoreva and see her dance the Pas De Deux from Le Corsaire

4/2/20 - Greta Thunberg

In August 2018, Greta Thunberg started a school strike for the climate outside the Swedish Parliament that has since spread all over the world and now involves over 100,000 schoolchildren. The movement is now called Fridays For Future. 

Thunberg has spoken at climate rallies in Stockholm, Helsinki, Brussels and London. In December 2018 she attended the United Nations COP24 in Katowice, Poland, where she addressed the Secretary-General and made a plenary speech that went viral and was shared many million times around the globe. In January 2019, she was invited to the World Economic Forum in Davos where her speeches again made a worldwide impact.

Thunberg tries to live a low-carbon life. Therefore she is vegan, and she doesn't fly. In 2019, TIME magazine named her Person of the Year as well as one of the world's 100 most influential people.

Check out Greta as TIME Magazine’s Person of the Year

4/3/20 - Neil Degrasse Tyson

Tyson is the fifth head since 1935 of the world-renowned Hayden Planetarium in New York City and the first occupant of its Frederick P. Rose Directorship. He is also a research associate of the Department of Astrophysics at the American Museum of Natural History.

Check out a Radiolab episode where deGrasse Tyson explains the Coepernican Principal

4/4/20 - Leonard Cohen

Leonard Cohen (September 21, 1934 – November 7, 2016) was a Canadian singer, songwriter, poet, and novelist. Cohen was inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame, the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame, and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. He was invested as a Companion of the Order of Canada, the nation's highest civilian honour. In 2011, Cohen received one of the Prince of Asturias Awards for literature and the ninth Glenn Gould Prize. Cohen pursued a career as a poet and novelist during the 1950s and early 1960s; he did not launch a music career until 1967, at the age of 33.

Check out artist Jeff Buckley playing what is likely his most famous song - Hallelujah

4/5/20 - Pina bausch

Pina Bausch was born 1940 in Solingen and died 2009 in Wuppertal. She received her dance training at the Folkwang School in Essen under Kurt Jooss, where she achieved technical excellence. Soon after the director of Wuppertal's theatres, Arno Wüstenhöfer, engaged her as choreographer, from autumn 1973, she renamed the ensemble the Tanztheater Wuppertal. Under this name, although controversial at the beginning, the company gradually achieved international recognition. Its combination of poetic and everyday elements influenced the international development of dance decisively. Awarded some of the greatest prizes and honours world-wide, Pina Bausch is one of the most significant choreographers of our time.

Check out an excerpt of Bausch’s exquisite Vollmond

4/6/20 - tom waits

Thomas Alan Waits (born December 7, 1949) is an American singer, songwriter, musician, composer, and actor. His lyrics often focus on the underbelly of society and are delivered in his trademark deep, gravelly voice. He worked primarily in jazz during the 1970s, but his music since the 1980s has reflected greater influence from blues, rock, vaudeville, and experimental genres. Born in a "Red and White" cab in Valparaiso, Indiana (David Letterman Show Interview, Feb. 21, 1983) and raised in a middle-class family in Pomona, California, Waits was inspired by the work of Bob Dylan and the Beat Generation. He began singing on the San Diego folk music circuit as a teenager, relocating to Los Angeles in 1972, where he worked as a songwriter before signing a recording contract with Asylum Records. Despite a lack of mainstream success, Waits has influenced many musicians and gained an international cult following. In 2011, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In 2015, he was ranked at No. 55 on Rolling Stone's "100 Greatest Songwriters of All Time". Several biographies have also been written about him.

Check out Tom Waits’ song Dead and Lovely

4/7/20 - Takashi murakami

Known for his brightly colored and maniacally cheerful works, Takashi Murakami's astronomical rise to fame in the contemporary art world has been met with equal parts celebration and criticism. Murakami merges Japanese pop culture referents with the country's rich artistic legacy, effectively obliterating any distinction between commodity and high art. He is compared to Andy Warhol for his art-as-business approach, as well as for his large factories of workers who produce, market, and sell his art. His critics have derided him as a sell-out, and as playing into the art market's increasing demands for easily consumable and exotic art from Japan. But for Murakami, this is a compliment and precisely what he intends. His work draws inspiration from the Japanese subculture of otaku, which is replete with strange perversions of cuteness and innocence, as well as incredible violence. Through this, Murakami crafts a subtle critique of Japan's contemporary culture as well as the West's intruding influence upon it.

Check out a short video of Murakami’s incredible work at the MCA in Chicago

4/8/20 - Frida Kahlo

With her deeply personal and symbolic work, Mexican artist Frida Kahlo has become one of the most famous artists of the 20th century. For much of her career, she was often overlooked as simply the wife of Diego Rivera, but the appreciation of her paintings has only grown from the 1970s onward. Fiercely proud of her Mexican identity, she often incorporated pre-Colombian symbols in her paintings and is known for her colorful Mexican dress. Kahlo, who suffered health issues throughout her life due to a bus accident in her youth, saw her flourishing career cut short due to her untimely death at 47. Her legacy continues to live on and she remains an icon of many feminist and political movements

Check out some of Kahlo’s beautiful work

4/9/20 - Pablo Neruda

Ricardo Eliécer Neftalí Reyes Basoalto (12 July 1904 – 23 September 1973), better known by his pen name and, later, legal name Pablo Neruda (/nəˈruːdə/;[1] Spanish: [ˈpaβlo neˈɾuða]), was a Nobel Prize winning Chilean poet-diplomat and politician. Neruda became known as a poet when he was 13 years old, and wrote in a variety of styles, including surrealist poems, historical epics, overtly political manifestos, a prose autobiography, and passionate love poems such as the ones in his collection Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair (1924). He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1971.

Check out a short TEDed video about Neruda

4/9/20 - John Glenn

John Herschel Glenn Jr. (July 18, 1921 – December 8, 2016) was a United States Marine Corps aviator, engineer, astronaut, businessman, and politician. He was the first American to orbit the Earth, circling it three times in 1962. Following his retirement from NASA, he served from 1974 to 1999 as a Democratic United States senator from Ohio, and, in 1998, flew into space again at age 77. Glenn resigned from NASA in January 1964. A member of the Democratic Party, Glenn was first elected to the Senate in 1974 and served for 24 years, until January 1999. In 1998, while still a sitting senator, Glenn flew on Space Shuttle Discovery's STS-95 mission, making him, at age 77, the oldest person to fly in space and the only person to fly in both the Mercury and the Space Shuttle programs. Glenn, both the oldest and the last surviving member of the Mercury Seven, died at the age of 95 in 2016. He is survived by his wife Annie Glenn, an advocate for people with disabilities and communication disorders.

Check out a short interview about John Glenn

4/10/20 - Louis Kahn

Louis Kahn, in full Louis Isadore Kahn, also called Louis I. Kahn, (born February 20, 1901, Osel, Estonia, Russian Empire [now Saaremaa, Estonia]—died March 17, 1974, New York, New York, U.S.), American architect whose buildings, characterized by powerful, massive forms, made him one of the most discussed architects to emerge after World War II. Kahn designed private residences and worker housing in the 1930s and ’40s. He became a professor of architecture at Yale University in 1947. Kahn created a style that was monumental and monolithic; his heavy buildings for the most part do not hide their weight, their materials, or the way they are assembled. Famous for his meticulously built works, his provocative proposals that remained unbuilt, and his teaching, Kahn was one of the most influential architects of the twentieth century. He was awarded the AIA Gold Medal and the RIBA Gold Medal. At the time of his death he was considered by some as "America's foremost living architect."[3]

Check out some of Kahn’s incredible buildings

4/11/20 - Abeer Al Otaiba

Philanthropy plays a significant role in Abeer’s life. She supports charities that improve the lives of women and children around the world, such as Children’s National Medical Center, Hope for Henry, and the Association for the Development & Enhancement of Women.

This October, Abeer is launching a new designer line called SemSem that features well-made clothing for stylish mothers and their daughters. SemSem will support a different charitable organization each season, focusing on charities that empower women and children.

Check out Abeer’s designs for SemSem

4/12/20 - Iris Van Herpen

Iris van Herpen is a Dutch fashion designer who is widely recognized as one of fashion’s most talented and forward-thinking creators who continuously pushes the boundaries of fashion design. Since her first show in 2007 van Herpen has been preoccupied with inventing new forms and methods of sartorial expression by combining the most traditional and the most radical materials and garment construction methods into her unique aesthetic vision. Van Herpen’s distinct aesthetic viewpoint made her dress many progressive musicians and actresses such as Björk, for whose video's and tours van Herpen has created several dresses, Cate Blanchett, Tilda Swinton, Cara Delvingne, Daphne Guinness, Miley Cyrus, Gwendoline Christie, Fan Bing Bing, Lady Gaga, Naomi Campbell, Solange Knowles, Natalia Vodianova and Grimes. Her special projects included dressing the actress Scarlett Johannson in the film “Lucy” and dressing Beyoncé for her “Mine” video. As a former ballet practicer herself, van Herpen also created costumes for the Paris Opera and the New York City Ballet, collaborating with the choreographer Benjamin Millepied and the Sasha Waltz dance company in Berlin.

Check out Iris’ youtube channel to see some of her mindblowing runway shows

4/13/20 - Katherine Johnson

Katherine Johnson (August 26, 1918 – February 24, 2020) was an American mathematician whose calculations of orbital mechanics as a NASA employee were critical to the success of the first and subsequent U.S. crewed spaceflights.[1] During her 35-year career at NASA and its predecessor, she earned a reputation for mastering complex manual calculations and helped pioneer the use of computers to perform the tasks. The space agency noted her "historical role as one of the first African-American women to work as a NASA scientist".[2] Johnson's work included calculating trajectories, launch windows, and emergency return paths for Project Mercury spaceflights, including those for astronauts Alan Shepard, the first American in space, and John Glenn, the first American in orbit, and rendezvous paths for the Apollo Lunar Module and command module on flights to the Moon. Her calculations were also essential to the beginning of the Space Shuttle program, and she worked on plans for a mission to Mars. In 2015, President Barack Obama awarded Johnson the Presidential Medal of Freedom. In 2016, she was presented the Silver Snoopy Award by NASA astronaut Leland D. Melvin and a NASA Group Achievement Award. She was portrayed by Taraji P. Henson as a lead character in the 2016 film Hidden Figures. In 2019, Johnson was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal.

Check out a New York times article on Johnson shortly after she passed

4/14/20 - Mindy Kaling

Mindy Kaling is an actor, writer, producer, and director. She currently stars in the Hulu original comedy series “The Mindy Project,” which she also writes and executive produces. Before “The Mindy Project,” Mindy was best known for her work on the critically acclaimed, Emmy Award-winning NBC show “The Office.” In addition to directing, producing, and portraying celebrity-obsessed Kelly Kapoor, Mindy wrote 18 episodes of the series, including the Emmy nominated episode “Niagra.” In 2011, Mindy penned the comedic memoir Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me (And Other Concerns), which continues to be featured on New York Times’ and USA Today’s best-seller lists. Mindy’s second memoir Why Not Me? was released in September 2015 and launched at #1 on the New York Times’ best-seller list. In 2005, Mindy made her film debut as the object of Paul Rudd’s unwanted affections in Judd Apatow’s THE 40 YEAR OLD VIRGIN. Most recently, Mindy lent her voice to the character Disgust in the Oscar-winning Pixar animated film INSIDE OUT alongside Amy Poehler and Bill Hader, and was seen in THE NIGHT BEFORE alongside Seth Rogen and Joseph Gordon-Levitt. She will next begin production on OCEAN’S 8 alongside Sandra Bullock, Cate Blanchett and Anne Hathaway. Mindy was named one of Time magazine’s 100 most influential people in the world in 2012. In 2014, she was named one of Glamour’s women of the year.

Check out a short interview with Mindy

4/15/20 - WHoopi Goldberg

Caryn Elaine Johnson (born November 13, 1955),[1][2][3] known professionally as Whoopi Goldberg (/ˈwʊpi/), is an American actor,[4] comedian, author, and television personality. A recipient of many awards and honors, she is one of the few entertainers to have won an Emmy Award, a Grammy Award, an Academy Award, and a Tony Award. Goldberg's breakthrough came in 1985 for her role as Celie, a mistreated woman in the Deep South, in Steven Spielberg's period drama film The Color Purple, for which she was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress and won her first Golden Globe Award. For her performance in the romantic fantasy film Ghost (1990) as an eccentric psychic, Goldberg won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, making her the second black woman to win an Academy Award for acting,[5] and a second Golden Globe, her first for Best Supporting Actress. In 1992, Goldberg starred in the comedy Sister Act, earning a third Golden Globe nomination, her first for Best Actress – Motion Picture Comedy or Musical. She reprised the role in Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit (1993), making her the highest-paid actress at the time. A theatre performer and producer, Goldberg has performed in Broadway productions, one of which produced a comedy album that earned her a Grammy Award. She has also won a Tony Award as a producer of the musical Thoroughly Modern Millie. In television, Goldberg is known for her role as Guinan on Star Trek: The Next Generation and for co-hosting and moderating the talk show The View since 2007, for which she won a Daytime Emmy Award.

Check out a short interview with Whoopi