Randy Pausch
Pausch delivered his "Last Lecture", titled "Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams", at CMU on September 18, 2007. He gave an abridged version of his speech on "The Oprah Winfrey Show" in October 2007. The talk was modeled after an ongoing series of lectures where top academics are asked to think deeply about what matters to them, and then give a hypothetical "final talk", with a topic such as "what wisdom would you try to impart to the world if you knew it was your last chance?" Before speaking, Pausch received a long standing ovation from a large crowd of over 400 colleagues and students. When he motioned them to sit down, saying, "Make me earn it", someone in the audience shouted back, "You did!"
Marc Ian Barasch
The Jungian psychoanalyst Claire Douglas, reviewing Barasch's book "Healing Dreams" in the "Washington Post," cites "a poetic intensity" and "trail-blazing contributions to dream research." Barasch's bestselling study of spontaneous remission, "Remarkable Recovery" (with researcher Caryle Hirshberg) was the subject of a "Newsweek" article and garnered wide attention in the medical world. Israeli oncologist Dr. Moshe Frenkel of M.D. Anderson Hospital acknowledged the book as an impetus for a multi-institutional study of spontaneous remission and advocated its call for a Remarkable Recovery Registry. Barasch has participated in several international medical roundtables drawing upon this work, as well as his work championing a rigorous role for spirituality in the medical system. Barasch's "Field Notes on the Compassionate Life"  a work of literary nonfiction blending scientific findings on altruism and empathy with psychology, spirituality, and a first-person exploration of human potential, attracted the support of figures like South African Nobel Prize winner Archbishop Desmond Tutu. Following its publication in 2005, Barasch lectured extensively around the U.S. calling for compassion and empathy to be "central organizing principles for civic life." He has advocated the practice of compassion as the connecting thread of the faith traditions, which he first articulated in a 2006 keynote address at the influential Episcopal Servant Leadership retreat in Asheville, N.C. He is also credited with helping to incept and catalyze the "Compassionate Cities" movement. The book was re-published in 2009 in paperback as "The Compassionate Life".