PODCAST
Overcoming Adversity
by Academy of Achievement
The Academy of Achievement presents a selection of extraordinary men and women who have defied expectations, broken boundaries, and made history around the world. Their words and their example are an inspiration to us all.
Episodes
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Athol Fugard
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…
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William H. McRaven (SD)
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...
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Reid Hoffman & Joi Ito - Part 1
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 "Uber-investor" who "has had a hand in creating nearly every lucrative social media startup." He was the originator of...
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Reid Hoffman & Joi Ito - Part 2
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 "Uber-investor" who "has had a hand in creating nearly every lucrative social media startup." He was the originator of...
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Kiri Te Kanawa Interview & Live Performance Highlights
Kiri Te Kanawa created a sensation in 1971, when she made her debut as the Countess in Mozart's Le Nozze di Figaro at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. Audiences were captivated by the lyric splendor of her voice and the exquisite tenderness of her interpretation. Soon she was a leading star…
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Wole Soyinka
The poet and playwright Wole Soyinka is a towering figure in world literature. He has won international acclaim for his verse, as well as for novels such as The Interpreters. His work in the theater ranges from the early comedy The Lion and the Jewel to the poetic tragedy Death and the King's...
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Khaled Hosseini
Khaled Hosseini's novel, The Kite Runner, has become an international publishing phenomenon and a modern classic. This tale of childhood innocence betrayed, set against three tragic decades in the history of Afghanistan, gave readers around the world an insight into the human truth behind the...
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Frank McCourt (2008 Symposium)
"F. Scott Fitzgerald said there are no second acts in American lives. I think I've proved him wrong. And all because I refused to settle for a one-act existence, the 30 years I taught English in various New York City high schools." Frank McCourt was already retired when he published his first…
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Ken Griffin
Today, Ken Griffin is the Chairman, President and CEO of Citadel Investment Group, the Chicago-based hedge fund that has grown into a global investment giant with offices in New York, London, Hong Kong and Tokyo, handling more than $20 billion in investment capital. A teenage computer whiz from...
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Naomi Judd
Naomi Judd won renown as half of the mother-daughter singing team, The Judds, the most popular female singing duo in country music history. But her rise in the world was not an easy one. Before graduating from high school, the unmarried Naomi was already pregnant with the first of her two...
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Sally Field
In her greatest roles, Sally Field has personified the strong-willed, independent woman of the American heartland, earning Oscars for her performances as a courageous union organizer in Norma Rae and as a Depression-era widow struggling to keep the family farm in Places in the Heart. Although she...
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Ben Carson 2007
"There is no such thing as an average human being. If you have a normal brain, you are superior. There's almost nothing that you can't do." When Benjamin Carson was in fifth grade, he was considered the "dummy" of his class. His classmates and teachers took it for granted that Ben would take an...
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Hilary Swank
Today, television audiences are used to seeing Hilary Swank resplendently gowned, gliding over a red carpet at glittering Hollywood soirees, but her early years were anything but glamorous. She spent much of her childhood living in a trailer park near Lake Samish in Bellingham, Washington. Hilary...
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N. Scott Momaday
The American literary world offers no greater award than the Pulitzer Prize. In 1969 the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction went to House Made of Dawn, a first novel from an unknown author. This was unusual enough; even more surprisingly, to some observers, the winner was a Kiowa Indian who had grown up...
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Toni Morrison
In novels such as the modern classic, Beloved, Toni Morrison has fused history and legend, realism and fantasy, to craft an epic saga of African American life. Although her work is steeped in local history and folklore, the fundamental human values of her art have captured the hearts of readers...
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Salman bin Hamad Al-Khalifa
The Crown Prince of Bahrain, Shaikh Salman bin Hamad Al-Khalifa, is a passionate advocate for education in his country. In 1999, he founded the Crown Prince International Scholarship to give the most dedicated Bahraini high school graduates the opportunity to study at top international...
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John Irving
Readers around the world have embraced the vivid characters who tumble through the intricately imagined tales of John Irving. He published his first novel when he was 26, and won the National Book Award for The World According to Garp in 1980. Since then, every one of his novels has been an...
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Norman Mailer
The most publicly engaged and controversial American writer of the last half-century, Norman Mailer won American literature's most distinguished honors for both fiction and non-fiction, although much of his best work deliberately tested the limits of these traditional categories. His experiences…
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Ehud Barak and George Mitchell - Part 1
As a member of Israel's most elite commando force, Ehud Barak crossed borders in disguise and rescued hostages from hijacked airplanes. As a rising officer, he commanded a tank battalion in the fiercest battles of the 1973 Yom Kippur War. He retired from the military after 36 years as Chief of...
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Ehud Barak and George Mitchell - Part 2
As a member of Israel's most elite commando force, Ehud Barak crossed borders in disguise and rescued hostages from hijacked airplanes. As a rising officer, he commanded a tank battalion in the fiercest battles of the 1973 Yom Kippur War. He retired from the military after 36 years as Chief of...
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Gao Xingjian
The Chinese-born author Gao Xingjian received the 2000 Nobel Prize in Literature, for work "of universal validity, bitter insights and linguistic ingenuity, which has opened new paths for the Chinese novel and drama." His achievement was all the more remarkable given the obstacles he was forced…
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Olivia de Havilland
An illustrious star of Hollywood's Golden Age, Olivia de Havilland made her screen debut at 19 and soon became the screen's favorite romantic heroine, starring in a popular series of adventure films with leading man Errol Flynn, including such favorites as Captain Blood, The Adventures of Robin...
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Ernest J. Gaines
Ernest Gaines was born and raised on the same plantation where his ancestors once labored as slaves. For nearly a century, they had remained in the same corner of rural Louisiana, living in the same cabins as their forebears, worshipping in the same church, and working for the same family that…
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Lauryn Hill - Part 1
Lauryn Hill is an internationally acclaimed singer, songwriter and record producer. Born and raised in South Orange, New Jersey, she was only 13 when she joined the innovative hip-hop group the Fugees. Academically accomplished as well as musically gifted, she took time off from her musical…
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Lauryn Hill - Part 2
Lauryn Hill is an internationally acclaimed singer, songwriter and record producer. Born and raised in South Orange, New Jersey, she was only 13 when she joined the innovative hip-hop group the Fugees. Academically accomplished as well as musically gifted, she took time off from her musical…
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Archbishop Desmond Tutu 2007
When Desmond Tutu became General Secretary of the South African Council of Churches, he used his pulpit to decry the apartheid system of racial segregation. The South African government revoked his passport to prevent him from traveling, but Bishop Tutu refused to be silenced. International...
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Frank McCourt (1999 Symposium)
Frank McCourt was already retired when he published his first book at age 66. Angela's Ashes, a memoir of his impoverished boyhood in Limerick, Ireland, shot to the top of the best-seller lists and remained there for over a year. Angela's Ashes won McCourt the National Book Critics Circle Award…
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Coretta Scott King (1999 Symposium)
Young Coretta Scott's gift for music and enthusiasm for education led her far beyond the segregated world of her childhood, but when she met the young Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the two resolved to return to the Deep South together and pursue the cause of justice in her own home state of…
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David Breashears
David Breashears is an award-winning filmmaker, author, adventurer, and world-class mountaineer. Since 1978, he has combined his skills in climbing and filmmaking to complete more than 40 film projects. In 1983, Breashears transmitted the first live television pictures from the summit of Mount...
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John Hope Franklin
John Hope Franklin (1915 - 2009) was a distinguished American historian. Author of more than dozen books, he is best known for his definitive history of the African American experience, From Slavery to Freedom. He was born in Rentiesville, Oklahoma, the son of an attorney and a schoolteacher. He...
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Willie Brown
When Willie Brown was growing up in the 1940s, the African-Americans of rural East Texas lived in poverty. The daily humiliations of segregation were enforced by the constant threat of violence. In the summer of 1951, a 17 year-old Willie Brown left the world he knew and boarded a train for San...
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Heather Whitestone
The 1995 Miss America, Heather Whitestone lost her hearing, at 18 months of age. Doctors told her mother that a normal life for Heather was impossible. As a child, she learned to read lips and use a hearing aid. She spent six months re-learning to pronounce her own name. Assisted by special...
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Rosa Parks
Rosa Parks, the "mother of the civil rights movement" was one of the most important citizens of the 20th century. Mrs. Parks was a seamstress in Montgomery, Alabama when, in December of 1955, she refused to give up her seat on a city bus to a white passenger. The bus driver had her arrested. She...
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Art Buchwald
Art Buchwald (October 20, 1925 - January 17, 2007) was one of America's most popular humorists who "spoofed the tangled web of national politics and the muddle of modern life" as a syndicated columnist for The Washington Post. Buchwald was once described as a "Will Rogers with chutzpah." He was...
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Dominick Dunne
Dominick John Dunne (1925 - 2009) was an American writer and investigative journalist, whose subjects frequently hinged on the ways in which high society interacts with the judicial system. He was a movie producer in Hollywood and was also known for his frequent appearances on television.
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Dr. Antonia Novello
When President George H.W. Bush tapped Dr. Antonia Novello to be Surgeon General, she could hardly believe her ears. She was both the first woman and the first Latin American ever to serve as the nation's number one public health officer. She had come a long way from the little town of Fajardo,...
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Naomi and Wynonna Judd
Wynonna Judd and her mother Naomi are one of the most popular singing duets in country music history, which have sold more than 20 million records. Naomi married her childhood sweetheart and gave birth to Wynonna during her high school graduation week. The marriage didn't last and Naomi moved to...
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Mona Van Duyn
One of America's most respected and honored poets, Mona Van Duyn (1921 - 2004) served as Poet Laureate of the United States from 1992 to 1993. Born and raised in rural Iowa, she was drawn to literature at an early age, but her parents were unsympathetic to her literary ambitions. At Iowa State...
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Judith Leiber
Judith Leiber is the world's foremost designer of elegant ladies' handbags. Born Judith Peto in Budapest, Hungary, she trained as a handbag maker in a traditional European guild system, learning every aspect of her craft from tanning the skins, to designing the frames and clasps, to painstakingly...
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Thomas Sutherland
In 1985, Thomas Sutherland was serving as Dean of Agriculture at the American University in Beirut, Lebanon. Four months into his term, he was pulled from his car at gunpoint and taken from the life he knew into a six-and-a-half-year hell of chains, beatings, isolation, cold, darkness and…
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Robert Earl Holding
The American businessman Robert Earl Holding is the longtime owner of Sinclair Oil, the Grand America and Westgate Hotel and Little America Hotels, and two ski resorts: Sun Valley, Idaho and Snowbasin in Ogden, Utah. Born in Salt Lake City, he was a child of the Depression who saw his family's...
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Edward Teller (1992 Symposium)
As one of the great pioneers of modern physics, and as a strenuous advocate for America's national security, Edward Teller (1908-2003) made his mark on our times in a way that few could equal. A mathematical prodigy from Budapest, Hungary, the young Teller played a major role in the development…
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Herschel Walker
Herschel Walker was born in Augusta, Georgia and grew up outside of Wrightsville, Georgia. For the first eleven years of his life, Herschel Walker showed little interest in sports; he preferred reading books and writing poetry. At age 12, however, he began a crash exercise program. Over the next...
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Gordon Gund
Gordon Gund is businessman and professional sports owner. He is the CEO of Gund Investment Corporation. He is the former co-owner of the San Jose Sharks (National Hockey League) and former principal owner of the Cleveland Cavaliers (National Basketball Association) and is currently a minority…
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Lou Holtz
Louis Leo "Lou" Holtz is a retired football coach, and active sportscaster, author, and motivational speaker in the United States. He served as the head football coach at The College of William & Mary (1969-1971), North Carolina State University (1972-1975), the University of Arkansas…
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Maya Angelou
As a child, Maya Angelou was traumatized by abuse. For five years, she was silent, but in time, she found her voice, and that voice has been heard around the world. A single mother at age 16, she embarked on a remarkable career as an actress and entertainer, as a journalist, educator and civil...
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Betty Ford
Elizabeth Ann Bloomer Warren Ford (1918 - 2011), better known as Betty Ford, was First Lady of the United States from 1974 to 1977. Her husband, Gerald R. Ford, was the 37th President of the United States. As First Lady, Mrs. Ford was active in social policy and shattered precedents as a...
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Laszlo Tauber
Dr. Laszlo N. Tauber (February 18, 1915 - July 28, 2002) was a Hungarian-born surgeon who saved other Jews in the Budapest ghetto during World War II, then made a real estate fortune in Washington, D.C. and became a major philanthropist to medical research and Jewish causes. Dr. Tauber was the...
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Amalya Kearse
When Amalya Lyle Kearse was appointed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, she was the first woman and only the second African American (after Thurgood Marshall) to serve on the court. Kearse was born in Vauxhall, New Jersey, where her father was a postmaster and her…
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Captain Gerald Coffee
In 1966, while flying a combat mission from the aircraft carrier USS Kitty Hawk, U.S. Navy Captain Gerald Coffee was shot down over North Vietnam. Although he parachuted safely, he was captured immediately. For the next seven years, he was held as a POW in communist prisons, including the…
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ABOUT THIS SHOW
The Academy of Achievement presents a selection of extraordinary men and women who have defied expectations, broken boundaries, and made history around the world. Their words and their example are an inspiration to us all.
HOSTED BY
Academy of Achievement
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How many episodes does Overcoming Adversity have?
Overcoming Adversity currently has 59 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is Overcoming Adversity about?
The Academy of Achievement presents a selection of extraordinary men and women who have defied expectations, broken boundaries, and made history around the world. Their words and their example are an inspiration to us all.
How often does Overcoming Adversity release new episodes?
Overcoming Adversity has 59 episodes. Check the episode list to see recent publication dates and frequency.
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You can listen to Overcoming Adversity on PodParley by clicking any episode. We provide an embedded audio player for direct listening, and you can also subscribe via your preferred podcast app using the RSS feed.
Who hosts Overcoming Adversity?
Overcoming Adversity is created and hosted by Academy of Achievement.
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