Hi everyone and thank you for tuning in to the 351st episode of Awards Chatter, The Hollywood Reporters Awards Podcast.

I'm the host Scott Feinberg and my guest today is a great first-generation

American whose lifetime of public service has helped to shape television and America at large

over the last 60 plus years. He's the Zellig or Forrest Gump of American politics and

culture having been present for and often shaped key moments and developments in our history.

He served in the Army during World War II.

He was a clerk for the Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court during the beginning stages of Brown v Board of Education.

He was chairman of the Federal Communications Commission during the Kennedy Administration, at

just 34, the second youngest person ever appointed to that position, and through his work there, paved the way for PBS, which he would later chair, and indirectly for GPS, cell, cell phones, and personal computers.

Years later, he was instrumental in the creation of Sesame Street.

He was chairman of the board at the not-for-profit Think tank the Rand Corporation when Rand employee Daniel

Ellsberg released the Pentagon Papers. Barack Obama and Michelle Robinson later

to become Michelle Obama met while working at his Chicago law firm, Sidley Austin LLP.

He has played some role in every televised presidential and vice presidential debate in American

history, right through those that are about to pit Donald Trump and

Joe Biden against each other, and the list goes on. But at the end of the day he

is most closely associated with an address that he gave as FCC chair before the National

Association of Broadcasters on May 9, 1961, which is remembered to this day as the Vast

Wasteland Speech. to this day as the vast wasteland speech. The author or co-author of five books including

most recently 2008's Inside the Presidential Debates their improbable past and

promising future, he was honored in 1961 with a special Peabody

Award for being, quote, the most courageous, responsible, and energetic Federal Communications

...