At age 15, Francis Collins ’had no interest in biology, or medicine, or any of those aspects of science that dealt with this messy thing called life. It just wasn't organized, and I wanted to stick with the nice pristine sciences of chemistry and physics, where everything made sense." A few years later, this farm boy from Virginia's Shenandoah Valley discovered the emerging field of DNA research and changed his whole life direction in life. Already a graduate student with a wife and child,...

What It Takes is a podcast series featuring intimate, revealing conversations with towering figures in almost every field: music, science, sports, politics, film, technology, literature, the military and social justice. These rare interviews have been recorded over the past 25 years by The Academy of Achievement. They offer the life stories and reflections of people who have had a huge impact on the world, and insights you can apply to your own life. Subscribe to the What It Takes podcast...

Hailed as the greatest active playwright in the English-speaking world, South Africa's Athol Fugard has won international praise for creating theater of "power, glory, and majestic language." In more than 20 plays, written over six decades, he has chronicled the struggles of men and women of all races for dignity and human fulfillment. Born and raised in the Eastern Cape, he founded a multiracial theater company in the 1950s in defiance of the South African government's apartheid system. When...

Frances Arnold's techniques of "directed evolution" have revolutionized the science of chemistry by creating new organisms and enzymes for use in medicine, agriculture, manufacturing and alternative energy. She came to her profoundly original research by an equally original career path, one that led her from undergraduate studies in aerospace engineering at Princeton’Ůand an early career in alternative energy in the United States and Brazil’Ůto postdoctoral chemistry studies at Berkeley and...

For 11 consecutive seasons, 30 million Americans sat down every week to watch The Carol Burnett Show. In sketch after sketch, the star poked fun at her favorite films, punctured the pretensions of the famous, and drew forgiving humor from the embarrassments and misunderstandings that arise in every family. The most honored comic actress of our times, Carol Burnett was raised by her grandmother in a small studio apartment in Hollywood. A starring role in the Broadway musical Once Upon a...

"If somebody gave me a hundred feet of film, I made a movie out of it." When George Lucas was attending USC Film School he didn't even need a hundred feet. While still a student, he turned 32 feet of 16 millimeter film into a one-minute animated short that not only won awards at festivals nationwide, but set a new standard for animated films. He's been making motion picture history ever since, creating many of the most popular films in motion picture history, including the phenomenally...

Although he is renowned in medical circles as "the father of Viagra," the discoveries of Louis Ignarro have profound implications for all circulatory conditions, not least heart disease, the leading cause of death around the world. Nitroglycerin has been used in treating heart disease since the 1870s, but for over a century no one knew what property of the chemical causes constricted blood vessels to dilate. Ignarro determined that nitroglycerin, and other nitrates and nitrites, are...

Vocalist, composer and instrumentalist Esperanza Spalding fell in love with music as a little girl in Portland, Oregon. She first drew acclaim as a child violinist before discovering the upright bass as a teenager. Within months she was playing in local clubs, exploring pop, rock, hip-hop and especially jazz. By age 20 she was an instructor at Boston's prestigious Berklee College of Music, and was performing with singer Patti Austin and a stellar roster of jazz greats. Her 2008 album...

The events of 2014 drew the world's attention once again to the role of NATO in preserving the hard-won peace of Europe. No individual bears greater responsibility for the readiness and coordination of the world's largest military alliance than the SACEUR (Supreme Allied Commander Europe), General Philip Breedlove. As SACEUR, General Breedlove is commander of all U.S. forces in Europe as well as the joint collective security operations of NATO's 28 member nations and its 22 Partners for...

When the rest of the world was just waking up to the possibility of cell phones and the Internet, Tony Fadell was already creating the technology behind the smartphone. Author of more than 300 patents, he sold a microprocessor startup to Apple just as he was leaving college. He spent the next decade pioneering mobile technology for the leading electronics companies, but none would fully commit to marketing the devices he created. When investors passed on Fadell's idea for a pocket-sized...

This podcast features two of the visionaries of today's world of Internet commerce and social media. Reid Hoffman has been called "the most connected man in Silicon Valley," the "ˆuber-investor" who "has had a hand in creating nearly every lucrative social media startup." He was the originator of the PayPal online commerce tool and is the founder and Chairman of LinkedIn, as well as an early investor in Facebook, GroupOn and Airbnb. Joi Ito, a social media entrepreneur in his own right, is...

This podcast features two of the visionaries of today's world of Internet commerce and social media. Reid Hoffman has been called "the most connected man in Silicon Valley," the "ˆuber-investor" who "has had a hand in creating nearly every lucrative social media startup." He was the originator of the PayPal online commerce tool and is the founder and Chairman of LinkedIn, as well as an early investor in Facebook, GroupOn and Airbnb. Joi Ito, a social media entrepreneur in his own right, is...

"If somebody gave me a hundred feet of film, I made a movie out of it." When George Lucas was attending USC Film School he didn't even need a hundred feet. While still a student, he turned 32 feet of 16 millimeter film into a one-minute animated short that not only won awards at festivals nationwide, but set a new standard for animated films. He's been making motion picture history ever since, creating many of the most popular films in motion picture history, including the phenomenally...

Thomas Keller grew up in the restaurant business in Palm Beach, Florida, working his way up from dishwasher to cook. As a teenager, he fell in love with the art of French cooking, and learned his craft working in restaurants up and down the East Coast before moving to France to complete his training. In 1987, he opened his first restaurant in New York City, but the Wall Street crash of that year hit his business hard and he headed west. In 1994, he set his heart on a converted laundry...

On May 1, 2011, President Obama and his national security team gathered in the White House Situation Room to watch a commando raid taking place half a world away. As the mission unfolded, the President was in continuous video contact with the senior military officer directing the operation from a base in Afghanistan, Admiral William McRaven. To this task, Admiral McRaven brought three decades of experience in special operations. The first officer to graduate from the Special Operations and...

At age 15, Francis Collins ’had no interest in biology, or medicine, or any of those aspects of science that dealt with this messy thing called life. It just wasn't organized, and I wanted to stick with the nice pristine sciences of chemistry and physics, where everything made sense." A few years later, this farm boy from Virginia's Shenandoah Valley discovered the emerging field of DNA research and changed his whole life direction in life. Already a graduate student with a wife and child,...

The most successful and admired female songwriter in the history of pop music, Carole King proves that one woman alone at the piano can be more powerful than a four-piece rock band or a 30-piece orchestra. She grew up in Brooklyn, New York, where her mother was a teacher and her father a firefighter. She learned to play the piano at age four and formed her first band in high school. At age 18, she scored her first Number One hit record - the first of 118 pop hits on the Billboard charts,...

Audra McDonald is unparalleled in the breadth and versatility of her artistry as both singer and actress. With a record-setting six Tony Awards, two Grammy Awards, and a long list of other accolades to her name, she is among today's most highly regarded performers. Blessed with a luminous soprano voice and an incomparable gift for dramatic truth-telling, she is equally at home on Broadway and opera stages as in roles on film and television. In addition to her theatrical work, she maintains a...

In a breathtakingly short time, songwriter Christina Perri has earned a reputation for combining infectious, memorable melodies with uncompromising descriptions of difficult emotions. Arriving in Los Angeles on her 21st birthday with one suitcase and a guitar, she struggled to find an audience, then shot to stardom in the summer of 2010, when her song 'Jar of Hearts' was played on an episode of the television show, 'So You Think You Can Dance.' Overnight, the song hit the Top 10 on iTunes and...

Aretha Franklin is known the world over as the Queen of Soul Music. In the 1960s, her hit recording "Respect" became an anthem of the civil rights struggle and a theme song for the dawning women's movement. He musical career began in the New Bethel Baptist Church in Detroit, Michigan, where her father, Rev. C.L. Franklin was the pastor. Young Aretha sang and played piano, and the passion of Gospel music ha remained with her through her subsequent triumphs in secular blues, rock and...

This autumn, Natasha Trethewey took up her duties as United States Poet Laureate, the 19th poet to serve since Congress created the position in 1985. Also known as the Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress, the Laureate is responsible for all the public poetry programs of the Library, as well as an annual lecture and reading. With her appointment as Poet Laureate, Trethewey crowns a career steeped in the complexities of American history. The marriage of her white,...

The paleoanthropologist Lee Rogers Berger has supervised archeological expeditions across South Africa, in Zimbabwe, and on the islands of the Micronesian archipelago. In 1997, he received the first National Geographic Society Prize for Research and Exploration for his studies of human evolution. He is best known for his 2008 discovery of Australopithecus sediba, a previously unknown species of hominid. His nine-year-old son Matthew found the first fragments of sediba in a cave outside...

The paleoanthropologist Lee Rogers Berger has supervised archeological expeditions across South Africa, in Zimbabwe, and on the islands of the Micronesian archipelago. In 1997, he received the first National Geographic Society Prize for Research and Exploration for his studies of human evolution. He is best known for his 2008 discovery of Australopithecus sediba, a previously unknown species of hominid. His nine-year-old son Matthew found the first fragments of sediba in a cave outside...

One of the most distinguished musical artists of our time, the singer Jessye Norman was born in Augusta, Georgia. As a ten-year-old child, she was spellbound by a recording of the great contralto Marian Anderson. Inspired by Anderson's recordings and autobiography, she resolved to become a classical singer herself. At age 16, she won a full scholarship to study voice at Howard University. After graduate music studies at Peabody Conservatory, she went to Europe, where she was soon discovered...