Kidspiration.tv

Doodles and squiggles aren’t wasting time at all – in fact they can kick start creativity and imagination. Most of all, doing them can be lots of fun! It was by drawing cartoons that Norwegian artist Oistein Kristiansen got started on his path. One day, his dad saw him drawing and remarked on how good the illustration was. Oistein was thrilled with the praise and knew he wanted to dedicate his time to doing what he loved the most. In his early days, Oistein would draw caricature cartoons of people on the street. With hard work, he began working as a cartoonist for newspapers and magazines, including Vogue, Elle and Mad Magazine. Oistein later began a career in television, where he hosted his own show, and he has recently become a YouTube star. Not only does Oistein draw cartoons, but he is also very crafty, constructing creatures out of cardboard boxes and fashioning animals of any objects that he can get his hands on. His advice to kids is to just start making things with their hands, and, once they start, their creativity will be unlocked.

 Following his passion and doing something he loves has become an occupation for Paul A. Young. He first trained as a chef, and became a patissier (a pastry chef) for celebrity chef Marco Pierre White; creating beautiful desserts, cakes and patisserie. With a childhood love of chocolate as his inspiration, Paul opened his first chocolate shop in 2006 in London. A Master Chocolatier is a bit like a mad scientist, although in this case the crazy experiments are for developing new flavours, textures and patterns. Paul’s award winning chocolates include all sorts of intriguing flavours, from Marmite truffles, port and stilton truffles, dark sea-salted rochers, hazelnut pralines, passion fruit and raspberry ganaches and sea salted caramels. Delicious! If you’re wondering how he comes up with new ideas, Paul says he’s always open to them, and even has a book that he writes everything down in. He then plays around in the kitchen, spending time where all he does is mix up ingredients and see what comes out!

Do you like to cook or bake? Or maybe watch your mom or dad while they’re getting dinner ready? Have you ever thought that baking cakes or cooking might be a good way to earn a living? There are world-famous schools, like Le Cordon Bleu in Paris and London, where you can learn how to make a chocolate soufflé or other delicious foods. There are also schools where you can learn to make a great pizza. Going to a chef school or college is one way to become a restaurant chef. But Jamie Thickett didn’t do that. He started out washing pots in a restaurant in Scarborough, in northern England. From there, he worked at various other restaurant positions, moving up the ladder and learning how to cook, until he was hired as a head chef. That job led him to London, where he was named head chef for Dehesa, one of Salt Yard Group’s restaurants, and later head chef for Opera Tavern. Today, he is the head chef for Veneta, a new restaurant inspired by the food and recipes of Venice, Italy. But what is the job of a head chef? He or she doesn’t do the day-to-day cooking at the restaurant’s stoves. Instead the head chef is responsible for hiring the cooking staff, creating new recipes and developing the menu, supervising the various cooks, and making sure the kitchen runs smoothly. They have to work long hours — well into the night, and often on the weekends and holidays.

Imagine you get the chance to go on a Grand Adventure … walking across the Arctic to the North Pole, or walking to the South Pole, or maybe climbing to the very top of Mount Everest. Which adventure would you choose? If you’re Adrian Hayes, you pick all three, and then do all three in world record time. Mr. Hayes has held the Three Poles Challenge world speed record, after he walked to the North Pole, and the South Pole, and climbed Mount Everest—in nineteen months and three days. It’s called the Three Poles Challenge because explorers try to reach the two farthest-apart points on earth, and the very highest point. Mr. Hayes tried out lots of different jobs on the way to becoming an adventurer. He worked as a bricklayer, a farmer, and a builder’s worker. He sang and played guitar in a rock band. He was a paramedic with the Special Air Services before going to the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst. As a British officer in the Brigade of Gurkhas, he served in Hong Kong and Brunei, and later, with the Royal Army of Oman. And he learned to speak Arabic and Nepali. After leaving military service and working as a sales director, Mr. Hayes began his climbing and trekking adventures. He followed up the Three Poles Challenge by crossing 1,600 kilometers of the Arabian Desert, on foot and on camel. This area is called the Empty Quarter and it’s the largest “sea” of sand in the world. In 2014, he and his team reached the top of K-2, the world’s second tallest mountain. K-2 “was my biggest challenge,” he says, because it is “way steeper” than nearby peaks, and its weather conditions are much worse. Climbing is his favorite adventure, he adds, because you’re in a different world. You have to stay really focused and think only of your next move. Mr. Hayes is the first Briton and only the third person in the world to reach the summit of the two highest mountains and to trek to both the North and South poles. His advice for kids who wonder what adventures they might have? “Write down your goals for the year,” a few months at a time. Figure out what your skills are. And if you’re not sure, ask your teachers or parents!

Thirty-six years ago, Kailash Satyarthi quit his job. He was an electrical engineer in India and had a family but he knew that millions of kids in his country were too poor to go to school. Instead those children had to work many hours a day in terrible places where they were often hurt or even killed. And many kids earned no money at all because their parents sold them to factory owners or farm managers. Around the world, the numbers are pretty terrible. Some 168 million children go to work each day instead of going to school, and 80 million of them work in very dangerous conditions, making clothes, electronics, even chocolate. Mr. Satyarthi decided to do something about that, even though he was just one person out of 1.2 billion Indians. He started Bachpan Bachao Andolan, the Save the Childhood Movement. Today he has helped rescue some 86,000 children from slave labor and is a world leader for children’s rights—to go to school and to live in peace. In 2014, Mr. Satyarthi won the Nobel Peace Prize, and shared the honor with a Pakistani girl, seventeen-year-old Malala Yousafzai. The Nobel committee recognized “their struggle against the suppression of children and young people and for the right of all children to education.” Because of Mr. Satyarthi’s campaigns, including the Global March Against Child Labour, new guidelines on child labour have been adopted by the International Labour Organization. And 172 countries have signed the agreement to help their own children. When people travel to India and Pakistan, they often buy one of the beautiful rugs the countries are famous for. But many of those rugs are made by little kids, so twenty-two years ago, Mr. Satyarthi started GoodWeave International. The organization labels, monitors, and certifies that rugs with its label have been by people old enough to do grown-up work. As the Nobel Prize committee says, Mr. Satyarthi has shown “great personal courage … focusing on the grave exploitation of children for financial gain.”

If you’ve ever tried to sew something, maybe for a school activity or a craft project, you know it's not easy to cut the cloth correctly, then wrestle it through the sewing machine in good order. And sewing your entire project by hand takes loads of time and patience. Stephen Hitchcock doesn’t mind the extra work. He’s a bespoke tailor, whose shop is on Savile Row, the London street where generations of tailors have cut and created clothing by hand. A bespoke tailor makes each jacket, suit, or trousers for the buyer himself—measuring, cutting the pieces of cloth, and sewing the garment to fit that man. Mr. Hitchcock was born into the business. His father, John Hitchcock, was a cutter and tailor for fifty-two years for Anderson & Sheppard, Savile Row tailors since 1906. Stephen started as an apprentice at Anderson & Sheppard, working for five years to learn to put together all the parts of a jacket, until he was invited to learn cutting with his father and Alan Pitt, another experienced tailor. Four years later, in 1999, he opened his own shop, moving back to Savile Row in 2009. If you want to order, or “commission,” a suit from Mr. Hitchcock, he will personally take your measurements, cut paper patterns to use for the garment’s various pieces, then cut the cloth itself. His suits are “soft tailored,” which means there is little or no extra padding or stiff inner material to give the garment a specific shape. He sees all the orders through himself, and as each suit takes many hours of work, he only makes three suits a week, about 150 commissions a year. In contrast, large clothing manufacturers can make up to 1,300 suits a day in their factories! Mr. Hitchcock doesn’t follow trends in his custom work. No skinny lapels or really tight trousers will appear on his cutting board. “I am not a fan,” he told an online interviewer. “People will look back … [and] they will say, ‘what was I wearing!” “

Finn interviews Peter Gabriel, musician and humanitarian, at Bush Studios, London. When Peter Gabriel was young, his mother taught him how to play the piano. By fourteen, he had his first musical gig, and was on the way to making “noises for a living,” he says. “On a good day, people pay me!” In 1967, he and several of his schoolmates founded the rock band Genesis. Mr. Gabriel sang lead vocals and played the flute, often wearing costumes on stage. Then in 1975, he surprised everyone by leaving Genesis to start a very successful solo music career. His interest in all kinds of music would lead him to singers, songwriters, and musicians far from the United Kingdom. So he and his friends decided to start a music festival featuring musicians from everywhere. Their first WOMAD Festival — World Music, Art and Dance — was held in 1982. Today, WOMAD festivals have been held in over thirty countries. Mr. Gabriel’s interest in world cultures and communities didn’t stop with a music and arts festival. He was talking one day with Richard Branson about how the oldest members of a community are often the ones who guide the group and help resolve disputes. This led to a question. Could the wise older members of our “global village” work with conflicts and major problems? They took their idea to several of those world leaders, including Nelson Mandela. Mr. Mandela brought together other leaders. In 2007, The Elders was born. Today the ten-member group includes honorary Elders Bishop Desmond Tutu and former U.S. President Jimmy Carter. Musicians often make online videos and use technology to promote their work. Mr. Gabriel started WITNESS, an organization that trains human rights activists how to use video and other internet technology to expose human rights abuses. In 2006, he was given the Man of Peace award by the Nobel Peace Laureates for this, and his other human rights, work. But Mr. Gabriel’s humanitarian interests don’t stop with his fellow human beings. During a visit to the Language Research Center in Atlanta, Georgia, he was accompanied musically by Kanzi, a bonobo, at his own keyboard. Kanzi, and his sister Panbanisha, learned to communicate in English, using symbols on a language keyboard. Kanzi now lives in the Iowa Primate Learning Sanctuary. What was it like to work with a great ape on keyboards? It was “almost like meeting your ancestors and playing music with them!”

Luca interviews Mike LaCorte, private detective Did you know that, right now, the world’s top detective works in London? But it’s not James Bond, Sherlock, or anyone from MI5. That top detective is Mike LaCorte. He was named Investigator of the Year, in September, by the World Association of Detectives. Now a company director of Conflict International, Mr. LaCorte has been a private investigator for twenty years. Private detectives or investigators do research and run investigations for individuals or businesses that need information. Mr. LaCorte speaks Spanish and Italian and has a background in business and finance. His work today includes investigation and surveillance, background checks, and undercover operations, as well as other fact-finding inquiries. Conflict International’s main office is in London, with branches in New York City and Marbella, Spain. His company’s surveillance work is often done in teams but he likes to remain in personal contact with a client while the investigation is going on. Then, after all the evidence is collected, the Conflict International legal team prepares it for any future court presentations. What are Mr. LaCorte’s tips for following someone without being detected? Make minimal eye contact and never make exactly the same moves as your subject does. Disguises probably aren’t necessary and definitely, no false noses!

Hope interviews Matthew Barzun, United States Ambassador to the United Kingdom, at Winfield House, London If you were the United States’ or United Kingdom’s ambassador to another country, what do you think your job would be? “I am the president’s personal representative in the U.K.,” says Matthew Barzun, U.S. Ambassador to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. An ambassador is a diplomat who works on many international issues, including treaties, trade, and technology, while representing his or her government. Ambassador Barzun lives in London at Winfield House with his wife and three children, and their dog, Lincoln. And while there have been many official meetings, dinners, and important receptions held there, he also hosts parties where his visitors can listen to popular singers and entertainers and even wear jeans! Mr. Barzun has been U.S. Ambassador to Sweden where he started an outreach program to meet with people in their own towns. As ambassador to the U.K., he’s set up the Young Leaders UK program, which connects young U.K. citizens with American officials and visitors. Ambassador Barzun was one of the first employees of CNET Networks (now CNET), an American media website that posts information on all things tech and electronic; he’s also advised and worked for other internet companies. And he is an enthusiastic collector of vinyl records which he often plays for his Winfield House guests. Before taking his new post, Mr. Barzun asked President Barack Obama what advice he would give his ambassador. “Well, Matthew, listen …” the president said. And listening is what the ambassador encourages all of us to do. Even if a conversation, in person or online, is awkward or angry, listening and trying to understand the other person’s argument is often the best way to a diplomatic breakthrough! Hope interviews Matthew Barzun, United States Ambassador to the United Kingdom, at Winfield House, London

Jodie interviews Dany Cotton, London firefighter and new interim Fire Commissioner, at Greenwich Fire Station. If someone says you can’t do something, do you say OK and quit? Or does being told “no” make you want to work even harder to do what everyone says you can’t? In 1987, when Dany Cotton was 18, she saw a newspaper advertisement for the London Fire Brigade. The Brigade wanted to recruit women and minority Londoners to become firefighters. Could a girl be a fireman? “Everyone thought I wouldn’t be able to do it,” she told Prospect.org, “and that it was not a job for a woman, but this just spurred me on.” That year, there were about 6,000 male London firefighters and 30 women. Learning to do the job wasn’t easy. Some of her fellow firefighters were suspicious or nasty or both. Several men at her first post transferred out and her supervisor said he didn’t think she should be there. Then three months into the job, she was on a team of firefighters who responded to a terrible train crash. Nineteen-year-old Dany did her job and won the respect of her fellows. Her firefighting skills were recognized in 1998 when she was the first woman to become a Station Officer. In 2002, she was named Public Servant of the Year; in 2004 she was the first woman to be awarded the Queen’s Fire Service Medal. And in 2012, she became an Assistant Commissioner. This year, the London Fire Brigade is 150 years old. In January, Ms. Cotton will become the interim London Fire Commissioner, the first woman in the Brigade’s history to have the position. She still wants to make sure anyone who is told “no, you can’t do that,” has a chance to try, even though some people still think women shouldn’t be firefighters. But when firefighters arrive at an emergency, she says, nobody asks who they are or where they come from. They are the ones running in where everyone else is running away. Jodie interviews Dany Cotton, London Fire Brigade firefighter and new interim London Fire Commissioner, at Greenwich Fire Station.

Hope interviews Rachel Armstrong, Professor of Experimental Architecture at Newcastle University, at the Barbican Gardens, London. What if you could paint your bedroom with a color that could “eat” the carbon dioxide you breathe out every night? What if instead of using gas or oil heat to make your mother’s tea, you could “fire up” a device that used living things to boil the water? Dr. Rachel Armstrong, a medical doctor who has a PhD in architecture, is working on these sorts of “what-if” technologies. “Our homes are not just part of our well-being, but a resource,” she told the Toronto Star newspaper. “Imagine [that] your house could feed you and clean your water.” If we could create tiny organisms that can grow, create heat, and trap sunlight, we could use them in our homes and buildings. Today she’s developing protocells, chemical agents that act like living cells and that could be used to build new structures and restore old ones we want to save. Her Future Venice project proposes using protocells to rescue the Italian coastal city, built centuries ago on wooden beams, anchored deep in the lagoon. Many of those ancient supports are rotting away— her proposal is to cover the underwater supports with limestone and grow an artificial reef. And save Venice from sinking into the Adriatic Sea forever. But Dr. Armstrong is also looking way, way ahead. Working with the Icarus Interstellar, she is devising a new kind of environmental design for a starship research platform, to be put in orbit around the Earth within 100 years! What does she think is most important for kids who want to design starships and decide what the world will be like 100 years from now? Don’t worry about the right or wrong way to learn or to do things, she stresses. Our imaginations are the most valuable tool we have for designing the future. “Nurture your creativity,” she says, “and find something that matters!”

Mira interview Economist Editor-in-Chief Zanny Minton Beddoes at the London offices of The Economist Last year, a 172-year-old tradition ended. There weren’t fireworks or parades or any days off from school. But it was a memorable occasion. In February, 2015, Zanny Minton Beddoes became Editor-in-Chief of The Economist, a weekly publication that covers economics, world trade, immigration, and other major international issues. Zanny Minton Beddoes is The Economist’s first female editor-in-chief, the first since the magazine began publishing in 1843. And while many famous newspapers and magazines have women reporters and editors, very few have a woman in charge of the whole publication. Ms. Minton Beddoes is an expert on financial issues. She has degrees from Oxford and Harvard universities, and has written many articles about the world economy and global finance. She’s been working for The Economist since 1994, and has been a frequent television and radio guest on several United States networks. Before she became Editor-in-Chief, she was Business Affairs editor, in charge of covering business, finance, and science stories. She plans to guide her newspaper (even though it’s printed as a magazine, The Economist has always called itself a newspaper) and its 1.6 million subscribers through today’s many publishing challenges—print editions, digital editions, mobile apps, social media, and whatever will be new and important five years from now. And yes, you can follow her on Twitter!

Jaydon interviews Craig Allen, video game developer, in Los Angeles, California Craig Allen loved to play video games as a kid. But he had to go to an arcade, an area in a mall or a special store where visitors could play all sorts of console games, including pinball and air hockey. That arcade experience turned out to be useful because after graduating from college, he was hired by the Walt Disney Company to develop video games based on Disney characters and movies. He worked on games that came out when the movies Aladdin, Toy Story, and Hercules were in theaters. He also helped create original games for Disney like Nightmare Ned and Mickey Mania. Then he moved from Mickey to the Muppets. He went to work for Jim Henson Interactive, where he developed games based on “Sesame Street,” “The Muppets,” and “Bear in the Big Blue House.” He and his team designed a program for puppeteers to make animated digital puppets in real time. This computer program won several important prizes! By 2002, Mr. Allen was ready to start creating his own video games. He and his partners founded Spark Unlimited. Their games include Call of Duty, Turning Point: Fall of Liberty, Lost Planet 3, and Legendary. He is now working as a consultant to show companies how to use game design in their businesses, to help both employers and their employees to communicate, give and receive feedback, and reward achievements. Today, gamers don’t have to go to video arcades. Instead the arcade is in our pockets, on our phones. But video games still provide a safe place to play, Mr. Allen said during a You Tube discussion, where players can experiment, solve puzzles, and learn to make choices they will see again, out in the real world. Jaydon interviews Craig Allen, video game developer, in Los Angeles, California

Olivia interviews Ellie Laks, founder of the Gentle Barn, at the Gentle Barn, Santa Clarita, California Do you have a pet at home or maybe a favorite animal in your neighborhood? What if your house or apartment was home to over 170 animals, including cows, horses, pigs, sheep, chickens, llamas, emus, cats, dogs, and birds? Ellie Laks and her family have a six-acre farm in California where they take care of abused or injured animals, including cows Sage and Oliver, Hero the horse, and several turkeys who will never become Thanksgiving dinner! She started the Gentle Barn in 1999, so she could care for the animals herself. The Gentle Barn moved to Santa Clarita, California, in 2003 and where she, her husband Jay, and their three children live. They now have a second Gentle Barn, in Knoxville, Tennessee. The Gentle Barn staff also works with many inner-city, at-risk, and special needs children each year. Being able to touch and interact with animals can help children who have been abused or have special needs. Buddha, their first rescued cow, is often used for therapy sessions with quadriplegic children — the kids learn that big animals can be very gentle! “Whether animal or human,” Ms. Laks says, “at The Gentle Barn anyone can leave their painful pasts behind and enjoy being alive.”

Do you spend lots and lots of hours texting on your phone or playing video games? Sitting for long periods of time may be as bad for your body as smoking cigarettes, says Dr. David Agus. Dr. Agus has a lot to share about health and wellness and how our bodies work. He’s an oncologist, a doctor who treats people with cancer. Dr. Agus is also a professor of medicine and engineering at the University of Southern California and has helped develop new drugs and diagnostic tools. As an oncologist, he studies how the environment and the way we live — like eating junk food and getting very little exercise — can contribute to the growth of different cancers. Collecting data on how our bodies act and react will give him and other researchers important information needed for new treatments, and practical ways for us to live healthy, cancer-free lives.

Luca interviews Piers Gough, architect, and Professor of Architecture at the Royal Academy Schools Piers Gough designs buildings, but not those very tall, all-glass rectangles you see in big cities like London and New York. One of his buildings is bigger at the top than it is at the bottom. Another is sprinkled with colored bricks, like bits of blue, green, red, and yellow candy pieces. Mr. Gough is an architect, a person who designs and supervises the construction of buildings — inside and outside — from a small house to a giant skyscraper. Mr. Gough and three friends-fellow students started their own architectural firm in 1975. Originally called Campbell Zogolovitch Wilkinson and Gough, today it’s CZWG, and is based in London. Their many projects include the Canada Water Library (the building that’s bigger at the top), the Fulham Island Tutti-Fruiti building (the one with the colored bricks), and Alfred Court (a triangular, wavy-shaped apartment building with a pale green roof). Creating a new building from start to finish is a long project, he says. Sometimes it can take five years before what began as a drawing is ready for the doors to open. Imagine spending five years on just one school project! Mr. Gough credits his teachers for supporting his interest in art and architecture. “I had a great art teacher who strongly encouraged me to be an architect,” he said in an interview with the Royal Academy of Arts. “In my education art was a very important balance alongside the maths and science.” Mr. Gough is now a CBE, Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, and a Professor of Architecture at the Royal Academy Schools, London. But he’s still wearing his bold plaid suits and hasn’t trimmed his halo of curly hair. And his firm will keep making colorful buildings whose shapes make the most of the spaces they’re in. Luca interviews Piers Gough, architect, and Professor of Architecture at the Royal Academy Schools.

Have you ever wanted to bring home the tiny cat you saw hiding in a neighbor’s bushes? Or a dog, all alone, on a busy street? Rescuing and caring for animals who have no one to help them is an important job, especially in a big city like London. Caroline Yates is the head of the Mayhew Animal Home, a rescue and rehoming shelter that’s 130 years old. She and her team take care of about 125 cats and kittens, as well as 25-30 dogs. Once a cat or dog comes to live at Mayhew, it can stay until it’s adopted. “The Mayhew is committed to giving every animal a second chance,” Ms. Yates told politics.co.uk, “… in order to get every animal back on their feet, no matter how long it takes." Today, Ms. Yates and the Mayhew Animal Home are also helping lost and abandoned animals in Russia, Georgia, Afghanistan, Nepal, and India. Around the world, hundreds of thousands of animals are waiting for homes – so remember, if you are thinking about bringing a new pet home, check your local shelter or rescue. You may find your new best friend!

Would you be brave enough to cut into someone’s head and work on their brain? Henry Marsh is a courageous doctor and skillful surgeon who has saved thousands of lives by doing this very difficult work. For years, he has taken out people’s brain tumors and fixed life-threatening problems. He was one of the first surgeons to operate while the patient was awake and able to answer questions. That helps the doctor to do his or her best during the operation. The American public television network made The English Surgeon, a documentary about Mr. Marsh and his work. Last year, he wrote a best-selling book, Do No Harm, about his life’s work as a brain surgeon.

Enda Walsh has been writing plays for over twenty years. He was born in Ireland, and grew up with a dad who liked to role-play and a mom who was an actor. He didn’t want to write plays at first. He thought he might be in a band, or make movies. Instead he went to Cork in 1993 and started working with a theatre company. Since then, he’s written seventeen theatre plays, two radio plays, three screenplays, the script for a musical and one for an opera! Most of his plays and scripts are adult stories, about very serious adult topics. But he’s also written a theatre play of Roald Dahl’s The Twits and has been working on a movie version of Island of the Aunts (also called Monster Mission), by Eva Ibbotson. For Mr. Walsh, storytelling is part of his nature. “Irish people tell stories,” he said in an interview with the City University of New York television station. “That’s it!”

Would you like a job where you got paid to eat? What if that job meant eating in Thai and Uzbek and Iranian and Salvadoran and Korean restaurants – all in one night? That’s what Jonathan Gold does. He’s a journalist who writes about food and restaurants for the Los Angeles Times newspaper. As the paper’s food critic, Mr. Gold eats meals in restaurants and then tells readers what he thinks of the food and the restaurant itself. Often, he’ll go to a restaurant three to five different times before he decides what he wants to say in his column. What he says about a restaurant and the meals he ate can be very important to that business and to his enthusiastic readers. It’s not an easy job – he usually goes to six or seven places in one night and sometimes, he brings his two kids with him to taste-test. His “territory” is enormous because the greater Los Angeles area includes about 34,000 square miles or almost 88,000 square kilometers! That’s room for a lot of restaurants, and because there are so many, he can review about 300 to 500 different eating places a year. Mr. Gold is really interested in the area’s many immigrant communities and the different ways they prepare food. He’s not just eating at the fancy posh places but also at the small diners, food stands, and tiny rooms where people are cooking their native dishes and creating new variations of traditional meals. “You want these guys to succeed,” he says in City of Gold, a 2015 documentary about his work. He’s happy to make readers as aware of the small one-family restaurants as those fancy and expensive ones. Lots of people across the United States read his food columns. In 2007, he was the first food critic to win the Pulitzer Prize, a prestigious American journalism award. And in City of Gold, people will get to see him as he “discovers the world, one meal at a time.” Mason interviews Jonathan Gold, food critic for the Los Angeles Times, at Guelaguetza Restaurant in Los Angeles.

Did you ever want to be like your dad when you grow up? Maybe have a job like his or learn his trade? Sam Dent has done just that. She’s a horse master and works for her father, Steve Dent, in their family business in Hertfordshire, England, which trains horses and then works with them on movie and television production sets. Sam has been riding horses and competing internationally since she was three years old. Now twenty-three, she and older brother Will train the horses to perform, and the actors how to ride and handle the animals. The actors in War Horse, including Benedict Cumberbatch, Tom Hiddleston, and Patrick Kennedy “weren’t the best when they turned up,” she told The Telegraph newspaper, “but they all took to it.” Still as Dent Horse Master, training and caring for the Dent horses is Sam’s most important job. It’s hard to say no to what movie directors want, she says, because they “don’t always like it. But ultimately we’re the ones in charge of the horses.”

Learning how to fix things is an important part of growing up and becoming independent. And learning how to fix things, especially things most people don’t want to touch, can turn into a good career. Just ask Charlie Mullins. Mr. Mullins grew up in a rough part of London. After leaving school when he was 15, he went to work, following the advice from a childhood mentor. He finished a four-year apprenticeship in plumbing, then bought an old van and some old tools. He was ready to fix broken toilets, sinks, showers—anything his skills and hard work could get running again. He started Pimlico Plumbers in 1979. Because he didn’t like seeing rusty old trucks and plumbers in grease-stained clothes, he decided his plumbers would drive bright blue vans and wear clean uniforms. Today Pimlico has over 200 workers, 160 trucks, and is London’s largest independent plumbing and service company. But Mr. Mullins hasn’t forgotten how he got his start. Pimlico employs its own apprentices and participates in the Just the Job work placement program of the Prince’s Trust. “My early experiences as an apprentice shaped my life and success,” he said in a startups.co.uk interview. Now he’s helping young people learn how to pick up a wrench and get that leaky loo back in business.

Suppose you found a really beautiful old painting, but there were dirty fingerprints all over the canvas, and a rather large tear. You wouldn’t run for the dish soap and a bucket of water to fix it. Instead, you’d need to find an art restorer, someone who knows just how to clean and mend paintings without damaging them further. Simon Gillespie has been fixing old, and new, paintings for over 30 years. He has his own restoration business, Simon Gillespie Studio, on Bond Street in London, where he and six team members work on paintings that may be covered with old varnish, dust, dirt, along with previous attempts to “fix” cracks and chips. Even modern paintings can be damaged or torn and need restoration. Finding the right solvent to take off old varnish can sometimes take up to 40 different tries with various formulas, but once the dirt, gunk, and varnish are gone, restoring a picture to its original condition also means sitting very close to the canvas and working on one very small bit or section of the painting at a time. Bit by bit, the restorer moves across the painting, mending tears and daubing on new paint where the old has chipped off or been cleaned before. His team uses modern pigments to touch up problem areas and fill the holes, devoting “hours of patient work with a tiny, fine pointed brush made from Russian sable to retouching the damage,” as he told Bond Street Magazine. Mr. Gillespie decided to become a restorer when he visited a restoration studio in Mexico City. After two apprenticeships, studying chemistry, and learning as much art history as he could, he was ready to start his business. Today he does restorations for galleries, auction houses, and private collectors. But after working on tiny patches of a painting for hours at a time, what does he do when he has free time? “Outside of work, I enjoy climbing mountains,” he says, “the higher, the better!” in this episode, Hope interviews Simon Gillespie, art restorer.

If you’ve ever shared your pictures on your phone or know someone who has, you probably know about Instagram, the social-network where members post pictures and videos. Marne Levine is the Chief Operating Officer (COO) of Instagram – that means she’s responsible for the company’s business operations, like marketing, development, communications, and recruiting. She’s also worked for Facebook and was part of the Obama and Clinton administrations’ economic teams. And, of course, Marne is on Instagram and has some pretty amazing photos from her work and travels around the world – you can follow her @marnelevine! In this Episode, Olivia interviews Marne Levine at Instagram headquarters in Menlo Park, California.

Did you know that some 22 billion times a day, someone sees the Facebook Like button?! That little button is just one small element of Facebook, but those elements really matter, says Margaret Gould Stewart. She’s Vice President of Product Design at Facebook, meaning she uses visual design to help people get the most out of the giant social networking site. Margaret has also worked at Google and You Tube, and at Facebook, her team is designing for a worldwide audience, a big and complicated job when you consider how many different people in the world with use Facebook. Through good visual design, she helps make Facebook accessible to absolutely everyone, including people who may have a hard time even connecting to the Internet. One fascinating part of coming up with new elements for this huge global audience, she says, is finding out that people use the designs in exciting ways that she, and other designers, never expected! In this Episode, Mason interviews Margaret Gould Stewart at Facebook headquarters in Menlo Park, California.

Do you ever make drawings on your homework? Or doodles on little pieces of paper? So did Liz Pichon when she was a kid, and today, she’s a famous author. Liz Pichon writes the Tom Gates books — the ones with the crazy covers and cool stories — that have sold more than a million copies. To put that into perspective, if you piled up all the copies people have already bought of Liz’s books, the stack would be taller than a 25-story skyscraper! Liz has also also written and illustrated My Big Brother Boris, My Little Sister Doris, and Beautiful Bananas. Her books have won four big awards so far, and been translated into 37 languages. In this Episode, Finn interviews Liz at a London book shop!

Sir Ken Robinson would like you to know that even if you think you aren’t good at anything, you still have talents – and probably lots of them. “We’re all born with immense, natural, creative abilities,” he said in an interview with National Public Radio. But somewhere during our days in school, we learn that being ‘creative’ only means being good at things like art or music or writing poetry, even though many adults – from scientists and historians, to cooks and construction workers – are creating and exploring new ideas every day. Discovering what you like to do and then figuring out how to learn to do it well means you will be able to create your own life – and recreate it when you want to change. Taking chances and experimenting may mean goofing up or making mistakes, he says, because if you’re not willing to be wrong, you won’t come up with anything new or original. A quiet kid who spent years recovering from polio, a dangerous disease that left him wearing leg braces, Sir Ken spent most of his time reading and watching from the sidelines. Then when he was a teenager, despite being terrified, he agreed to be part of a family musical production. To his surprise, he discovered that he liked being on a stage, talking and acting. He found that his talent is communicating and working with people, which he’s done as a writer, researcher, adviser, and teacher. Today, he works with schools, government organizations in the United States and Great Britain, and many private and public organizations that want to improve education and promote the arts. What’s most important for kids to know as they go through school? Explore your own talents, find what you’re good at, he says, and know that you can and will create your own life, by yourself. Respect where you come from but don’t be locked into that one place. And be prepared – but not afraid – to be wrong! In this episode, Mason interviews education expert Sir Ken Robinson at the Bob Baker Marionette Theatre in Los Angeles.

Imagine it’s 1986 and you have to do a school report on lions. You may have seen one in a zoo or watched a TV nature show, but you’ll probably have to go to a library and look for an encyclopedia with a story on lions. Maybe you can also photocopy a picture for your report. Now imagine your report is due this Friday. Your assignment will be a lot easier than thirty years ago, thanks to Jimmy Wales. Today, you’ll get on the Internet, search for “lions,” and instantly find thousands of entries. At or near the top of the list will be the Wikipedia page on lions, with pictures and links to all sorts of other lion-related information, all for free. Mr. Wales was an American financial trader, but he wanted to set up an Internet encyclopedia that would be free for everyone. He and his colleagues couldn’t write all the entries themselves, so after a few attempts, Mr. Wales decided to make Wikipedia “open source” —where the readers write, edit, and add more information to the entries themselves, supervised by the Wikipedia staff. Wikipedia launched in January, 2001. Today it is the world’s largest encyclopedia, with over 38 million articles in 250 different languages. It’s part of the Wikimedia Foundation, along with fifteen other Wiki websites. The Foundation is non-profit which means Mr. Wales hasn’t become a billionaire. He’s just the biggest information guy in the world!

When Jane Goodall was a young woman, she moved from England to Africa, to study the chimpanzees of Tanzania. She studied chimps by living with them and came to know them as individual creatures. Her methods changed the way scientists now observe other creatures’ behavior. One of Dr. Goodall’s most important discoveries was that other animals make and use tools, just like humans do. She watched the chimps take pieces of grass and poke them in ant holes. When the ants climbed on the stalk, the chimps pulled the grass out and had a snack of ants! In 1986, after years of research, Dr. Goodall left Tanzania to begin working to save chimpanzees, traveling about 300 days every year to visit schoolchildren and speak to groups around the world. She is a passionate advocate for all animals and emphasizes the interconnectedness of all life, while working with many different charities and animal-welfare groups. She founded the Jane Goodall Institute which supports the continuing research in Tanzania and the effort to protect chimpanzees and their habitats. And she started a global organization for young people called Roots and Shoots, encouraging young people to get involved in changing the world for the better.

Would you want to live for a thousand years? Or forever? Aubrey de Grey is a gerontologist, a scientist who studies the ways people grow old and why this happens. He is working on how to keep people’s bodies healthy and running right, so they can live for maybe hundreds of years. Most scientists don’t think it’s possible to stop people from getting old. But Dr. de Grey says that even if we can’t do this today, we should keep studying and learning. In the future, we may be able to live healthy for years and years. And years! When he’s not studying aging, Dr. de Grey loves to go punting and is quite good at it himself. A punt is a flat-bottomed boat which the punter pushes along the canal or river with a long pole. In this Episode, Aubrey invites Bradley on a punting trip in Cambridge, England, home of Cambridge University, one of the oldest and most important universities in the world, and also one of the world’s best spots for punting!