Gregg Easterbrook was born and raised in Buffalo, New York, but has lived with his former foreign service officer wife on most every continent. But, he says, “My favorite place on Earth is Seattle, and my wife refuses to move there.” Easterbrook, author of Sonic Boom: Globalization at Mach Speed
Q. What’s the last habit you tried to kick?
A. I’ve tried to kick spending far too much of my life watching football on TV, and it just hasn’t worked.
Q. What do you consider to be the greatest simple pleasure?
A. A glass of cold beer at the end of a long day.
Q. What do you do to clear your mind?
A. I’m an inveterate hiker. There’s a forest preserve I can reach by walking from my house. I spend a lot of time walking in the forest.
Q. What do you wish you had the nerve to do?
A. Attend swank parties. I hate parties.
Q. What is your favorite word?
A. But.
Q. Who is your favorite fictional character?
A. Milo Minderbinder from Catch-22.
Q. When you were a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?
A. A playwright.
Q. What is your favorite cocktail?
A. I’d take a glass of cabernet.
Q. If you could live in any other time, when would it be?
A. I’ve argued intellectually that the answer to that question is the current year. The arrow of history is positive — this year is better than any previous year. There are other times I’d like to visit, but there is no time before this year that I would like to be alive.
Q. Whose talent would you like to have?
A. I tried to play the piano and I was terrible at it, so any good piano player.
Q. What teacher or professor, if any, changed your life?
A. I’m a graduate of Colorado College. I had a political science professor there, Fred Sondermann. He was a contemporary and friend of Henry Kissinger — they got out of Germany at the same time and went into political affairs. If Fred Sondermann had been the National Security Adviser to Richard Nixon instead of Henry Kissinger we would have lived in a happier country.
Q. Who would you want to write your biography?
A. Jennifer Aniston — then we could spend some time together.
Q. What is the best gift you have ever received?
A. My children.
Q. Who is the one person living or dead you would most like to meet for dinner?
A. George Bernard Shaw.
To read about Easterbrook’s talk, click here.
*Photo by Aaron Salcido.
