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FAME
Week of November 17, 2004Few forces exert as much sway over popular culture as the power of celebrity. This week The Infinite Mind looks at the art and science of Fame. Where does it come from, this burning need to be known?
This week's host Dr. Peter Kramer speaks with those chasing fame, those who have achieved celebrity, and scientists who study it. They include: Howard Bloom, a Visiting Scholar at New York University, founder of the International Paleopsychology Project, and the author of "Global Brain: the Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century." Bloom has been called "the next Stephen Hawking" by Gear Magazine and "the Darwin, Einstein, Isaac Newton, and Sigmund Freud of the 21st Century" by Britain's Channel4 TV. His work with performers from Paul Simon to Kiss to The Talking Heads is part of his "20-year-long urban anthropology expedition to penetrate society's myth-making machinery, the inner sanctums of politics and the media." Simon Cowell the creator and unabashedly cynical judge on TV's mega-talent show, American Idol discusses the desire for fame, and developmental and psychological factors that he believes lead people to chase stardom; Sam Solovey, a contestant on the reality television series, The Apprentice, in which young people compete for a job with Donald Trump . . . and fame. Solovey was "fired" by Donald Trump for sleeping on the job, and says he wasn't interested in fame before he appeared on the show, but now he "craves it." comedian Lily Tomlin talks about fame, what it is . . . and isn't, and how she first found celebrity; singer songwriter Teddy Thompson, the son of folk rock duo Linda and Richard Thompson, talks about his search for celebrity and performs a song about the yearning for the spotlight; and psychologist Dr. Gene Ondrusek, who helped chose the first round of contestants on the original reality TV show, Survivor, discusses the price of fame and its addictive-like qualities.
Plus, commentator John Hockenberry, with his biggest production number yet for The Infinite Mind, examines his own celebrity by way of "Biography," 'Behind the Music," and "True Hollywood Story."