The last two decades before the interview became something a subject could publish themselves.
10 people · 219 answers
Financier; co-founder of Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co.
Recorded · Academy of Achievement · 1991
One person that is my role model is my father. ... He’s a man who taught me something very important. And that was — give back to society what you’ve taken out.
Dog musher; four-time winner of the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race
Recorded · Academy of Achievement · 1991
One of my favorite lessons is best summed up in the words of an old Athabascan Indian who told me, “There are many hard things in life, but there is only one sad thing, and that is giving…
Playwright; two Pulitzer Prizes for Drama
Recorded · The Paris Review, Issue 153, Winter 1999 · 1999
I think he was expecting someone with a more strident tone and antagonistic demeanor.
Baseball centre fielder; twice National League Most Valuable Player
Recorded · Academy of Achievement · 1996
My father said to me, “You need a piece of paper to go into a door sometimes.” I didn’t understand about résumés, but when you write a résumé you have to put down things that people want to…
Originally asked
The Creative Independent, to working artists, its interview series
A repeated Creative Independent tension, asked as inspiration, muse, discipline, ritual, or the requirement to show up.
You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.
United States Air Force test pilot; first pilot confirmed to have exceeded the speed of sound
Recorded · Academy of Achievement · 1991
Yes. Because in the end, experience is what counts. The more experience you have, the better you are.
Palaeontologist and evolutionary biologist; essayist
Recorded · Academy of Achievement · 1991
I think it’s very different in what I do. Edison’s work was so much tinkering and trying it out and empirical testing. So much of my work is writing.
Cardiothoracic surgeon; founder of the Texas Heart Institute
Recorded · Academy of Achievement · 1991
I think so. I really do. With your own effort, you can improve yourself, but people find they can’t improve beyond a certain point.
Physicist; Nobel laureate in physics for the invention of the maser and laser
Recorded · Academy of Achievement · 1991
People tell me that I work hard. I never feel that I do particularly, because it’s fun. I always say, “Well, I’ve never worked hard in my life.” I’m busy, but most of what I do is enjoyable.
Palaeoanthropologist; discovered the Lucy skeleton in Ethiopia
Recorded · Academy of Achievement · 1991
I agree with him, essentially, 100 percent. One has to devote oneself to a particular pursuit. To be successful at anything, you have to make a total commitment to it.
Originally asked
The Paris Review, to novelists and poets, The Art of Fiction
A durable Art of Fiction question asked through named literary influences and artistic models.
You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.
Historian and biographer; twice winner of the Pulitzer Prize
Recorded · Academy of Achievement · 1995
We had the classics, published by Scribners, all the great stories by Robert Louis Stevenson and the rest which were illustrated by the great N.C. Wyeth.
Filmmaker; creator of Star Wars and founder of Lucasfilm
Recorded · Academy of Achievement · 1999
I liked all the normal kinds of adventure books, Kidnapped, Treasure Island, Huck Finn sorts of things. I loved Swiss Family Robinson and that whole period of South Sea adventure movies.
Poet, memoirist and civil rights activist
Recorded · Academy of Achievement · 1997
The music of the “I Have a Dream” speech is a replication of the music which comes out of the mouths of the African American preacher.
Filmmaker and deep-sea explorer
Recorded · Academy of Achievement · 1999
The films that influenced me were so disparate that there’s almost no pattern. Stanley Kubrick was an influence because I loved 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Novelist; author of The Joy Luck Club
Recorded · Academy of Achievement · 1996
I remember one teacher in particular. I was in a school in the third grade and they were thinking of skipping me, putting me in a higher grade.
Chemist; winner of the 1954 Nobel Prize in Chemistry and the 1962 Nobel Peace Prize
Recorded · Academy of Achievement · 1990
One was Roscoe Gilkey Dickinson. He had got his doctorate in physical chemistry — x-ray crystallography — in 1920. He was the first person to get a Ph.D.
Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard, Edmund Hillary, George H. W. Bush, Jimmy Carter, Joyce Carol Oates, Mario Molina, Richard Feynman, Rosa Parks, Steve Jobs, Warren Buffett