Overheard With Evan Smith On Klru-tv

Colin Jost is co-anchor of SNL’s “Weekend Update,” alongside Michael Che. This is Colin’s third season in the anchor chair. He was previously co-head writer and a staff writer at SNL. Colin has won three Writers Guild Awards, a Peabody Award and has been nominated for multiple Emmy Awards for his SNL writing. He writes occasionally for The New Yorker.

Tom Hayden is an anti-war activist and author. Best known for speaking out against the Vietnam War, Hayden has been an activist for more than 50 years. He served 18 years in the California legislature. Today he is a member of the editorial board and a columnist at The Nation and is Director of the Peace and Justice Resource Center in Culver City, California. He’s written more than 20 books and was once married to Jane Fonda.

Bryan Cranston is a highly acclaimed actor best known for playing Walter White on AMC’s Breaking Bad. He won back-to-back Primetime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series for that role. Before winning he’d been nominated for three Emmys and two Golden Globes. Recent film credits include Trumbo, Argo, and the new HBO film All the Way, in which he plays President Lyndon Johnson. Cranston played Johnson in All the Way on Broadway and earned a Tony Award for the role.

Kara Swisher is the Executive Editor of Recode, Host of the Recode Decode podcast and Executive Producer of the Code Conference, which brings together technology influencers and CEOs. Swisher has been covering technology and digital issues since 1997 when she was a reporter in the Wall Street Journal’s San Francisco bureau.

Jeffrey Goldberg is a national correspondent for The Atlantic. He won the National Magazine Award for Reporting in 2003 for his reporting on terrorism. His 2006 book "Prisoners: A Muslim and a Jew Across the Middle East Divide" was hailed as one of the best books of that year. Goldberg's most recent Atlantic cover story was “The Obama Doctrine”.

Henry Louis Gates Jr. is the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor at Harvard University, as well as Director of the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research. Dr. Gates is also an author, cultural critic, and filmmaker. He's produced numerous series for PBS including Looking for Lincoln, Many Rivers to Cross: The History of the African American People, and Finding Your Roots, many of which he also hosts. His next documentary series, Black America Since MLK: And Still I Rise will a

Anthony Foxx is the 17th U.S. Secretary of Transportation. Prior to joining the U.S. Department of Transportation Secretary Foxx was Mayor of Charlotte, North Carolina from 2009-2013. He also served as Charlotte City Council Member At-Large for two terms. While he was mayor, Charlotte extended the city’s light rail system, expanded the airport, made highway improvements, and started a streetcar project.

Ken Burns is an acclaimed historical documentary filmmaker. His films have won 13 Emmys and two Oscar nominations and he’s been honored by the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences with a Lifetime Achievement Award. His films and series, most of which appear on PBS, include The Civil War, The Dust Bowl, and Baseball. His next film, Jackie Robinson, will air on PBS on April 11 and 12 of 2016.

Ethan Hawke is an Academy Award-nominated actor and screenwriter. He’s also an author of three novels, including his most recent Rules for a Knight, which The New Yorker called “a hybrid parenting guide and self-help book.” Hawke was nominated for Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role last year for his performance in Boyhood. In his newest film, “Born to be Blue,” he plays legendary jazz musician Chet Baker.

In a special episode of Overheard, Evan sits down with President Barack Obama for a discussion about civic engagement in the 21st Century. The interview is an excerpt of the Keynote Conversation at the SXSW Interactive Conference in Austin, Texas on March 11, 2016.

Jon Meacham is a Pulitzer Prize-winning, best-selling, presidential historian. He won the Pulitzer for biography in 2009 with his book American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House. Meacham is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of American Lion, Franklin and Winston, and Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power. Meacham’s most recent book is Destiny and Power: The American Odyssey of George Herbert Walker Bush.

Martin O’Malley is a 2016 candidate for President. He was the 61st Governor of Maryland, the chair of the Democratic Governors Association and is the former Mayor of Baltimore. We interviewed him in 2015 and for the first time in 2012, just days after President Obama was re-elected.

Margaret Atwood is an award-winning author of more than 40 volumes of poetry, children’s literature, fiction, and nonfiction. She’s best known for her novels, including The Edible Woman, The Handmaid’s Tale, and The Blind Assassin, which won the Booker Prize in 2000. Her newest novel, The Heart Goes Last, was published in September.

Wendell Pierce is an actor, producer, and author, best known for playing Detective Bunk Moreland on HBO’s “The Wire.” A New Orleans native, he starred as Antoine Batiste in Treme, the HBO series about the city after Hurricane Katrina. Pierce is a three-time NAACP Image Award Nominee for best actor in a television drama and won the 2008 Image Award for best actor in a television movie. His memoir The Wind in the Reeds: A Storm, A Play, and the City That Would Not Be Broken was recently published.

Ambassador Ron Kirk served as the 16th U.S. Trade Representative and served in President Obama’s Cabinet. He negotiated trade agreements with Colombia, Panama, and South Korea, and Russia’s entry into the World Trade Organization. Kirk was the first African-American Mayor of Dallas from 1995-2001, and was appointed Texas Secretary of State by Governor Ann Richards.

Mary Lynn Rajskub is a comedian and actress, best known for playing Chloe on Fox’s super‐popular series 24. She has also appeared on 2 Broke Girls, Californication, Arrested Development, Mr. Show, and as a regular panelist on Chelsea Lately. Rajskub has also been seen in movies, including Safety Not Guaranteed and The Kings of Summer.

Thomas Mallon is a novelist and critic who has written 9 novels and 7 works of non-fiction. His 2012 novel Watergate was a finalist for the PEN /​ Faulkner Award. He frequently contributes to The New Yorker, The New York Times Book Review, and The Atlantic. His newest novel, Finale: A Novel of the Reagan Years was published in September.

Robert Reich is a leading expert on work and the economy. He served in 3 U.S. administrations, including as Secretary of Labor under Bill Clinton and on President Obama’s economic transition advisory board. In 2008 TIME magazine named him one of the 10 most successful cabinet secretaries of the past century.

A dozen years ago, Andy Roddick was the number one men’s tennis player in the world — the last American male to hold that title, and the last to win a Grand Slam singles event. Today he’s a TV sports commentator, and a philanthropist whose namesake foundation is celebrating its fifteenth anniversary.

Taylor Branch is a Pulitzer Prize-winning author, historian, and public speaker, best known for his Civil Rights era trilogy America in the King Years. His other titles include The Clinton Tapes: Wrestling History with the President, and The Cartel: Inside the Rise and Imminent Fall of the NCAA.