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!"
David Lynch Foundation
By 2006, six public schools in the U.S. had been awarded $25,000 by the David Lynch Foundation. "NEA Today" described the DLF as an organization "which provides funding for students in grades 4 to 12 to learn Transcendental Meditation" and reported that DLF had "helped approximately 500 students and 50 teachers learn how to meditate and "about 1,500 more" were scheduled to learn in the fall. In October the Foundation withdrew a $175,000 pledge to a San Rafael, California, high school after the anti-separation Pacific Justice Institute threatened to sue for violating the First Amendment's Establishment Clause. That year Lynch assigned all of his proceeds from the sale of his book "Catching the Big Fish" to the DLF and the Foundation sponsored a presentation on the benefits of TM in education at the Harvard Club of Boston.