I help out with a positive news podcast at my high school and we're looking to interview people that have made a positive impact! We've currently interviewed people like Austen Allred and TurboVote.<p>You can find the podcast here, https://anchor.fm/somethinggoodhappened<p>Please give interview suggestions!
Leonard Susskind, a theoritical physicist at Stanford.<p>He has open, free video lectures that cover an entire 4 year cirruculum of a physics degree in his personal website called Theoritical Minimum.
My high school physics teacher. She taught me the importance of being a good human being. And that being kind and empathetic to others is the best thing a person can do. That honesty and integrity are more important than winning. And she also taught me elementary physics.
Richard Stallman: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stallman" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stallman</a>
Bill Murray.<p>Netflix has a new release about him, named "The Bill Murray Stories: Life Lessons Learned From a Mythical Man."<p>Highly recommended.
Will MacAskill[1] for his contributions to launching the effective altruism movement, which has gone on to inspire many other people to take a much more rigorous and active perspective on doing good.<p>[1] - Many others were involved, but I know the most about his contributions.
John Carmack. First, by making one of the most memorable game of my childhood. Second, by inspiring me and a few of my friends via Masters of Doom [1], with his tweets, videos, by being a Craftsman, the embodiment of a great programmer. Masters of Doom helped one of my colleagues to ignite his passion for coding again, after a long exposure to mind-numbing corporate work.<p>[1] <a href="https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masters_of_Doom" rel="nofollow">https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masters_of_Doom</a>
Prabhu Ramachandran [1], author of Mayavi [2]<p>The amount of high quality work he does, all the while being positive, cheerful and friendly is a trait to imbibe and admire.<p>I am privileged to have him as a mentor, friend, philosopher and guide.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.aero.iitb.ac.in/~prabhu/" rel="nofollow">https://www.aero.iitb.ac.in/~prabhu/</a><p>[2] <a href="https://github.com/enthought/mayavi" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/enthought/mayavi</a>
I'm going to change it a little to the people I've met that have had a sizable impact on the world.<p>I've <i>met</i> Sam Altman briefly last year. His involvement with YC the past several years and co-founding OpenAI have directly and indirectly touched thousands of jobs.<p>I've also <i>met</i> Michael Seibel. His involvement with YC the past several years has directly and indirectly touched thousands of jobs. His co-founding of Junstin.tv allowed it to exist, it is now evolved into twitch.tv which has allowed some creators and gamers to actually earn a living streaming and has created tons of micro-communities for video games and table top fans to both play and watch.<p>Aside from them, I don't really know (nor have I met) anyone else that I feel has directly and indirectly had as much of an impact on society as those two although...<p>I have very casually known, but never met, Kate Bornstein since our mutual participation in the Save Caprica campaign. She's certainly been a bastion of hope for many LGBT persons. She's semi-active on various social media. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kate_Bornstein" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kate_Bornstein</a>
Jon Kabat-Zinn<p><a href="https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jon_Kabat-Zinn" rel="nofollow">https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jon_Kabat-Zinn</a>
Kent Beck and Andrei Alexandrescu.<p>Andrei is quite amazing to me...<p>Clearly capable of writing code that is wonderful... and incomprehensible to mortal man.... but wonderfully focused on not doing that.<p>On making it comprehensible, and producing facilities that are friendly and nice and doing so with a kindly attitude.<p>Kent, in addition to the stuff he has done on the TDD front... <a href="https://www.infoq.com/presentations/self-image/" rel="nofollow">https://www.infoq.com/presentations/self-image/</a>
Would love to hear your definition "impact". On a personal level? On a business level? On a global level even? I think it is really difficult to define what impact even means. Sometimes impact is realized even long after someone has died, think F. Scott Fitzgerald (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Gatsby#Legacy_and_modern_analysis" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Gatsby#Legacy_and_mo...</a>)
Mikkel Vestergaard Frandsen - His company saved the lives of about 10 million people (my wild ass guess) with approximately one million water purifiers and something like 1 billion mosquito nets distributed in Africa. (See <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vestergaard_Frandsen" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vestergaard_Frandsen</a>)
Steve Gleason, former NFL player & ALS survivor & Congressional Gold Medal recipient: <a href="http://www.nfl.com/videos/nfl-360/0ap3000001010997/Steve-Gleason-I-feel-like-I-ve-conquered-ALS" rel="nofollow">http://www.nfl.com/videos/nfl-360/0ap3000001010997/Steve-Gle...</a>
Milton Friedman.
Remarkable economist and very bright person. A noblr prize winner. Defender of the free market.
What is remarkable about him is the simple way to argue bringing natural human behavior and historical examples.
Alon Geva: He has really practical and straightforward questions for spiritual awakening: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/user/awakeningrightnow" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/user/awakeningrightnow</a>
Kevin Adler of Miracle Messages. They reunite long lost homeless people with their families. I'm sure Kevin would be happy to do your podcast.<p><a href="https://miraclemessages.org/" rel="nofollow">https://miraclemessages.org/</a>
Christopher Hitchens. His impact on me is so powerful that for the last 4 years I have my ringtone and sms alert tone set to him saying "There are no final solutions. There is no absolute truth"
The urban landscape is changing from auto-centric to human-centric (pedestrian areas, bike-lanes, light-rail). Jan Gehl and Janette Sadik-Khan are two prominent examples, but there are many others.
Dr. Michael Greger. [1]<p>[1] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Greger" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Greger</a>