For the suffix, see holism.

Holism (from ὂλος holos, a Greek word meaning all, whole, entire, total) , is the idea that natural systems (physical, biological, chemical, social, economic, mental, linguistic, etc.) and their properties, should be viewed as wholes, not as collections of parts. This often includes the view that systems somehow function as wholes and that their functioning cannot be fully understood solely in terms of their component parts.^[1][2]

The term holism was coined in 1926 by Jan Smuts. Reductionism is sometimes seen as the opposite of holism. Reductionism in science says that a complex system can be explained by reduction to its fundamental parts. For example, the processes of biology are reducible to chemistry and the laws of chemistry are explained by physics.

Social scientist and physician Nicholas A. Christakis explains that "for the last few centuries, the Cartesian^{[disambiguation needed ]} project in science has been to break matter down into ever smaller bits, in the pursuit of understanding. And this works, to some extent...but putting things back together in order to understand them is harder, and typically comes later in the development of a scientist or in the development of science."^[3]

History[link]

The term holism was coined in 1926 by Jan Smuts, a South African statesman, in his book, Holism and Evolution.^[4] Smuts defined holism as "The tendency in nature to form wholes that are greater than the sum of the parts through creative evolution."^[4][5]

The idea has ancient roots. Examples of holism can be found throughout human history and in the most diverse socio-cultural contexts, as has been confirmed by many ethnological studies. The French Protestant missionary, Maurice Leenhardt coined the term cosmomorphism to indicate the state of perfect symbiosis with the surrounding environment which characterized the culture of the Melanesians of New Caledonia. For these people, an isolated individual is totally indeterminate, indistinct and featureless until he can find his position within the natural and social world in which he is inserted. The confines between the self and the world are annulled to the point that the material body itself is no guarantee of the sort of recognition of identity which is typical of our own culture.^[6][7]

However, the concept of holism also played a pivotal role in Spinoza's philosophy^[8][9] and more recently in that of Hegel^[10][11] and Husserl.^[12][13]

In science[link]

General scientific status[link]

In the latter half of the 20th century, holism led to systems thinking and its derivatives, like the sciences of chaos and complexity. Systems in biology, psychology, or sociology are frequently so complex that their behavior is, or appears, "new" or "emergent": it cannot be deduced from the properties of the elements alone.^[14]

Holism has thus been used as a catchword. This contributed to the resistance encountered by the scientific interpretation of holism, which insists that there are ontological reasons that prevent reductive models in principle from providing efficient algorithms for prediction of system behavior in certain classes of systems.^{[citation needed]} Holism has also been described as "a soapy term which evades necessary conflict," in accordance with its inventor's philosophy of white supremacy and exclusion of South Africans from political rights.^[15]

Scientific holism holds that the behavior of a system cannot be perfectly predicted, no matter how much data is available. Natural systems can produce surprisingly unexpected behavior, and it is suspected that behavior of such systems might be computationally irreducible, which means it would not be possible to even approximate the system state without a full simulation of all the events occurring in the system. Key properties of the higher level behavior of certain classes of systems may be mediated by rare "surprises" in the behavior of their elements due to the principle of interconnectivity, thus evading predictions except by brute force simulation. Stephen Wolfram has provided such examples with simple cellular automata, whose behavior is in most cases equally simple, but on rare occasions highly unpredictable.^[16]

Complexity theory (also called "science of complexity"), is a contemporary heir of systems thinking. It comprises both computational and holistic, relational approaches towards understanding complex adaptive systems and, especially in the latter, its methods can be seen as the polar opposite to reductive methods. General theories of complexity have been proposed, and numerous complexity institutes and departments have sprung up around the world. The Santa Fe Institute is arguably the most famous of them.

In anthropology[link]

There is an ongoing dispute as to whether anthropology is intrinsically holistic. Supporters of this concept consider anthropology holistic in two senses. First, it is concerned with all human beings across times and places, and with all dimensions of humanity (evolutionary, biophysical, sociopolitical, economic, cultural, psychological, etc.). Further, many academic programs following this approach take a "four-field" approach to anthropology that encompasses physical anthropology, archeology, linguistics, and cultural anthropology or social anthropology.^[17]

Some leading anthropologists disagree, and consider anthropological holism to be an artifact from 19th century social evolutionary thought that inappropriately imposes scientific positivism upon cultural anthropology.^[18]

The term "holism" is additionally used within social and cultural anthropology to refer to an analysis of a society as a whole which refuses to break society into component parts. One definition says: "as a methodological ideal, holism implies ... that one does not permit oneself to believe that our own established institutional boundaries (e.g. between politics, sexuality, religion, economics) necessarily may be found also in foreign societies."^[19]

In business[link]

A holistic brand (also holistic branding) is considering the entire brand or image of the company. For example a universal brand image across all countries, including everything from advertising styles to the stationery the company has made, to the company colours.

In ecology[link]

The Earth seen from Apollo 17.

Ecology is the leading and most important approach to holism, as it tries to include biological, chemical, physical and economic views in a given area. The complexity grows with the area, so that it is necessary to reduce the characteristic of the view in other ways, for example to a specific time of duration.

John Muir, Scots born early conservationist,^[20] wrote "When we try to pick out anything by itself we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe".

More information is to be found in the field of systems ecology, a cross-disciplinary field influenced by general systems theory.

In economics[link]

With roots in Schumpeter, the evolutionary approach might be considered the holist theory in economics. They share certain language from the biological evolutionary approach. They take into account how the innovation system evolves over time. Knowledge and know-how, know-who, know-what and know-why are part of the whole business economics. Knowledge can also be tacit, as described by Michael Polanyi. These models are open, and consider that it is hard to predict exactly the impact of a policy measure. They are also less mathematical.

In philosophy[link]

In philosophy, any doctrine that emphasizes the priority of a whole over its parts is holism. Some suggest that such a definition owes its origins to a non-holistic view of language and places it in the reductivist camp. Alternately, a 'holistic' definition of holism denies the necessity of a division between the function of separate parts and the workings of the 'whole'. It suggests that the key recognizable characteristic of a concept of holism is a sense of the fundamental truth of any particular experience. This exists in contradistinction to what is perceived as the reductivist reliance on inductive method as the key to verification of its concept of how the parts function within the whole.

In the philosophy of language this becomes the claim, called semantic holism, that the meaning of an individual word or sentence can only be understood in terms of its relations to a larger body of language, even a whole theory or a whole language. In the philosophy of mind, a mental state may be identified only in terms of its relations with others. This is often referred to as "content holism" or "holism of the mental". This notion involves the philosophies of such figures as Frege, Wittgenstein and Quine.^[21]

Epistemological and confirmation holism are mainstream ideas in contemporary philosophy. Ontological holism was espoused by David Bohm in his theory^[22] on The Implicate Order.

Hegel's holism[link]

Hegel rejected "the fundamentally atomistic conception of the object," (Stern, 38) arguing that "individual objects exist as manifestations of indivisible substance-universals, which cannot be reduced to a set of properties or attributes; he therefore holds that the object should be treated as an ontologically primary whole." (Stern, 40) In direct opposition to Kant, therefore, "Hegel insists that the unity we find in our experience of the world is not constructed by us out of a plurality of intuitions." (Stern, 40) In "his ontological scheme a concrete individual is not reducible to a plurality of sensible properties, but rather exemplifies a substance universal." (Stern, 41) His point is that it is "a mistake to treat an organic substance like blood as nothing more than a compound of unchanging chemical elements, that can be separated and united without being fundamentally altered." (Stern, 103) In Hegel's view, a substance like blood is thus "more of an organic unity and cannot be understood as just an external composition of the sort of distinct substances that were discussed at the level of chemistry." (Stern, 103) Thus in Hegel's view, blood is blood is blood and cannot be successfully reduced to what we consider are its component parts; we must view it as a whole substance entire unto itself. This is most certainly a fundamentally holistic view.^[23]

In sociology[link]

Émile Durkheim developed a concept of holism which he set as opposite to the notion that a society was nothing more than a simple collection of individuals. In more recent times, Louis Dumont ^[24] has contrasted "holism" to "individualism" as two different forms of societies. According to him, modern humans live in an individualist society, whereas ancient Greek society, for example, could be qualified as "holistic", because the individual found identity in the whole society. Thus, the individual was ready to sacrifice himself or herself for his or her community, as his or her life without the polis had no sense whatsoever.

Scholars such as David Bohm ^[25] and M. I. Sanduk ^[26] consider the society through the Plasma Physics. From physics point of view, the interaction of individuals within a group may lead a continuous model. Therefore for M. I. Sanduk “The nature of fluidity of plasma (ionized gas) arises from the interaction of its free interactive charges, so the society may behave as a fluid owing to the free interactive individuals. This fluid model may explain many social phenomena like social instability, diffusion, flow, viscosity...So the society behaves as a sort of intellectual fluid”.

In psychology of perception[link]

A major holist movement in the early twentieth century was gestalt psychology. The claim was that perception is not an aggregation of atomic sense data but a field, in which there is a figure and a ground. Background has holistic effects on the perceived figure. Gestalt psychologists included Wolfgang Koehler, Max Wertheimer, Kurt Koffka. Koehler claimed the perceptual fields corresponded to electrical fields in the brain. Karl Lashley did experiments with gold foil pieces inserted in monkey brains purporting to show that such fields did not exist. However, many of the perceptual illusions and visual phenomena exhibited by the gestaltists were taken over (often without credit) by later perceptual psychologists. Gestalt psychology had influence on Fritz Perls' gestalt therapy, although some old-line gestaltists opposed the association with counter-cultural and New Age trends later associated with gestalt therapy. Gestalt theory was also influential on phenomenology. Aron Gurwitsch wrote on the role of the field of consciousness in gestalt theory in relation to phenomenology. Maurice Merleau-Ponty made much use of holistic psychologists such as work of Kurt Goldstein in his "Phenomenology of Perception."

In teleological psychology[link]

Alfred Adler believed that the individual (an integrated whole expressed through a self-consistent unity of thinking, feeling, and action, moving toward an unconscious, fictional final goal), must be understood within the larger wholes of society, from the groups to which he belongs (starting with his face-to-face relationships), to the larger whole of mankind. The recognition of our social embeddedness and the need for developing an interest in the welfare of others, as well as a respect for nature, is at the heart of Adler's philosophy of living and principles of psychotherapy.

Edgar Morin, the French philosopher and sociobiologist, can be considered a holist based on the transdisciplinary nature of his work.

Mel Levine, M.D., author of A Mind at a Time,^[27] and co-founder (with Charles R. Schwab) of the not-for-profit organization All Kinds of Minds, can be considered a holist based on his view of the 'whole child' as a product of many systems and his work supporting the educational needs of children through the management of a child's educational profile as a whole rather than isolated weaknesses in that profile.

In theological anthropology[link]

In theological anthropology, which belongs to theology and not to anthropology, holism is the belief that the nature of humans consists of an ultimately divisible^{[citation needed]} union of components such as body, soul and spirit.

In theology[link]

Holistic concepts are strongly represented within the thoughts expressed within Logos (per Heraclitus), Panentheism and Pantheism.

In neurology[link]

A lively debate has run since the end of the 19th century regarding the functional organization of the brain. The holistic tradition (e.g., Pierre Marie) maintained that the brain was a homogeneous organ with no specific subparts whereas the localizationists (e.g., Paul Broca) argued that the brain was organized in functionally distinct cortical areas which were each specialized to process a given type of information or implement specific mental operations. The controversy was epitomized with the existence of a language area in the brain, nowadays known as the Broca's area.^[28] Although Broca's view has gained acceptance, the issue isn't settled insofar as the brain as a whole is a highly connected organ at every level from the individual neuron to the hemispheres.

Applications[link]

Architecture[link]

Architecture is often argued by design academics and those practicing in design to be a holistic enterprise.^[29] Used in this context, holism tends to imply an all-inclusive design perspective. This trait is considered exclusive to architecture, distinct from other professions involved in design projects.

Education reform[link]

The Taxonomy of Educational Objectives identifies many levels of cognitive functioning, which can be used to create a more holistic education. In authentic assessment, rather than using computers to score multiple choice tests, a standards based assessment uses trained scorers to score open-response items using holistic scoring methods.^[30] In projects such as the North Carolina Writing Project, scorers are instructed not to count errors, or count numbers of points or supporting statements. The scorer is instead instructed to judge holistically whether "as a whole" is it more a "2" or a "3". Critics question whether such a process can be as objective as computer scoring, and the degree to which such scoring methods can result in different scores from different scorers.

Medicine[link]

In primary care the term "holistic," has been used to describe approaches that take into account social considerations and other intuitive judgements.^[15] The term holism, and so called approaches, appear in psychosomatic medicine in the 1970s, when they were considered one possible way to conceptualize psychosomatic phenomena. Instead of charting one-way causal links from psyche to soma, or vice-versa, it aimed at a systemic model, where multiple biological, psychological and social factors were seen as interlinked.^[31]

Other, alternative approaches in the 1970s were psychosomatic and somatopsychic approaches, which concentrated on causal links only from psyche to soma, or from soma to psyche, respectively.^[31] At present it is commonplace in psychosomatic medicine to state that psyche and soma cannot really be separated for practical or theoretical purposes.^{[citation needed]} A disturbance on any level - somatic, psychic, or social - will radiate to all the other levels, too. In this sense, psychosomatic thinking is similar to the biopsychosocial model of medicine.^{[citation needed]}

Alternative medicine practitioners adopt a holistic approach to healing.

See also[link]

Notes[link]

References[link]

• Ludwig von Bertalanffy,1971 General System Theory. Foundations Development Applications. Allen Lane (1968)
• Bohm, D. (1980) Wholeness and the Implicate Order. London: Routledge. ISBN 0-7100-0971-2
• Leenhardt, M. 1947 Do Kamo. La personne et le mythe dans le monde mélanésien. Gallimard. Paris.
• Lipowski, Z.J.: "Psychosomatic medicine in seventies". Am. J. Psych. 134:3:233-244
• Jan C. Smuts, 1926 Holism and Evolution MacMillan, Compass/Viking Press 1961 reprint: ISBN 0-598-63750-8, Greenwood Press 1973 reprint: ISBN 0-8371-6556-3, Sierra Sunrise 1999 (mildly edited): ISBN 1-887263-14-4

Further reading[link]

• Dusek, Val, The Holistic Inspirations of Physics: An Underground History of Electromagnetic Theory Rutgers University Press, Brunswick NJ, 1999.
• Fodor, Jerry, and Ernst Lepore, Holism: A Shopper's Guide Wiley. New York. 1992
• Hayek, F.A. von. The Counter-revolution of Science. Studies on the abuse of reason. Free Press. New York. 1957.
• Mandelbaum, M. Societal Facts in Gardner 1959.
• Phillips, D.C. Holistic Thought in Social Science. Stanford University Press. Stanford. 1976.
• Dreyfus, H.L. Holism and Hermeneutics in The Review of Metaphysics. 34. pp. 3–23.
• James, S. The Content of Social Explanation. Cambridge University Press. Cambridge, 1984.
• Harrington, A. Reenchanted Science: Holism in German Culture from Wilhelm II to Hitler. Princeton University Press. 1996.
• Lopez, F. Il pensiero olistico di Ippocrate, vol. I-IIA, Ed. Pubblisfera, Cosenza Italy 2004-2008.
• Robert Stern, Hegel, Kant and the Structure of the Object, London: Routledge Chapman Hall, 1990
• Sen, R. K., Aesthetic Enjoyment: Its Background in Philosophy and Medicine, Calcutta: University of Calcutta, 1966

External links[link]

Look up holism in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

• Brief explanation of Koestler's derivation of "holon"
• Holism in nature – and coevolution in ecosystems
• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy article: "Holism and Nonseparability in Physics"
• James Schombert of University of Oregon Physics Dept on quantum holism
• Theory of sociological holism from "World of Wholeness"

Larry King
King in September 2010
Born	Lawrence Harvey Zeiger (1933-11-19) November 19, 1933 (age 78) Brooklyn, New York City, U.S.
Occupation	Television/Radio personality
Years active	1957–present
Religion	Judaism
Spouse	Freda Miller (1952-1953; annulled) Annette Kaye (1961; divorced) Alene Akins (1961-1963; divorced) Mickey Stuphin (1963-1967; divorced) Alene Akins (1967-1972; divorced) Sharon Lepore (1976-1983; divorced) Julie Alexander (1989-1992; divorced) Shawn Southwick (1997–present)

Larry King (born November 19, 1933) is an American television and radio host whose work has been recognized with awards including two Peabodys and ten Cable ACE Awards. He began as a local Florida journalist and radio interviewer in the 1950s and 1960s and became prominent as an all-night national radio broadcaster starting in 1978. From 1985-2010, he hosted the nightly interview TV program Larry King Live on CNN.

Early life[link]

King was born Lawrence Harvey Zeiger in Brooklyn, New York City, to an Austrian immigrant Edward Zeiger, a restaurant owner and defense plant worker, and his wife Jennie Gitlitz, a garment worker, who emigrated from Belarus.^[1][2][3] King grew up in a religiously observant Jewish home,^[4] but in adulthood became an agnostic.^[5]

King's father died at 44 of heart disease,^[6] and his mother had to go on welfare to support her two sons. His father's death greatly affected King, and he lost interest in school. After graduating from high school, he worked to help support his mother. From an early age, however, he had wanted to go into radio.^[7] King is a fan of the Los Angeles Dodgers.

Career[link]

Miami radio and television[link]

A CBS staff announcer, whom King met by chance, told him to go to Florida, a growing media market where openings still existed for inexperienced broadcasters. King rode a train to Miami. After initial setbacks, King persisted and got his first job in radio. The manager of a small station, WAHR (now WMBM) in Miami Beach, hired him to clean up and perform miscellaneous tasks.^[8] When one of their announcers quit, they put King on the air. His first broadcast was on May 1, 1957, when he worked as the disc jockey from 9 a.m. to noon.^[9] He also did two afternoon newscasts and a sportscast. He was paid $55 a week. He acquired the name Larry King when the general manager Marshall Simmonds said that Zeiger was too ethnic and difficult to remember, so Larry chose the surname King, which he got from an ad in The Miami Herald for King's Wholesale Liquor, minutes before air.^[10] He started interviewing on a midmorning show for WIOD, at Pumpernik's Restaurant in Miami Beach.^[11] He would interview anyone who walked in. His first interview was with a waiter at the restaurant.^[12] Two days later, singer Bobby Darin, in Miami for a concert later that day, walked into Pumpernik's as a result of coming across King's show on his radio; Darin became King's first celebrity interview guest.^[13]

His Miami radio show launched him to local stardom. A few years later, in May 1960, he hosted Miami Undercover, airing Sunday nights at 11:30 p.m. on WPST-TV Channel 10 (now WPLG).^[14] On the show, he moderated debates on important issues of the time. King credits his success on local TV to the assistance of another showbiz legend, comedian Jackie Gleason, whose national TV variety show was being filmed in Miami Beach during this period. "That show really took off because Gleason came to Miami," King said in a 1996 interview he gave when inducted into the Broadcasters' Hall of Fame. "He did that show and stayed all night with me. We stayed till five in the morning. He didn't like the set, so we broke into the general manager's office and changed the set. Gleason changed the set, he changed the lighting, and he became like a mentor of mine."^[15] Jackie Gleason was instrumental in getting Larry a hard-to-get on air interview with Frank Sinatra during this time.

During this period, WIOD gave King further exposure as a color commentator for the Miami Dolphins of the National Football League, during their 1970 season and most of their 1971 season.^[16] However, he was dismissed by both WIOD and television station WTVJ as a late-night radio host and sports commentator as of December 20, 1971, when he was arrested after being accused of grand larceny by a former business partner.^[17] Other staffers covered the Dolphins' games into their 24–3 loss to Dallas in Super Bowl VI. King also lost his weekly column at the Miami Beach Sun newspaper. The charges were dropped on March 10, 1972, and King spent the next several years in reviving his career, including a stint as the color announcer in Louisiana for the Shreveport Steamer of the World Football League in 1974–75 on KWKH. Eventually, King was rehired by WIOD in Miami. For several years during the 1970s in South Florida, he hosted a sports talk-show called "Sports-a-la-King" that featured guests and callers.

National radio[link]

Interviewing Vladimir Putin

In 1978, he went national, inheriting the nightly talk show slot on the Mutual Broadcasting System, broadcast coast-to-coast, that had been "Long John" Nebel's until his death, and had been pioneered by Herb Jepko.^[18] One reason King got the Mutual job is that he had once been an announcer at WGMA-AM in Hollywood, Florida, which was then owned by C. Edward Little. Little went on to become president of Mutual and was the one who hired King when Nebel died. King's Mutual show developed a devoted audience.^{[citation needed]}

It was broadcast live Monday through Friday from midnight to 5:30 a.m. Eastern Time. King would interview a guest for the first 90 minutes, with callers asking questions that continued the interview for another 90 minutes. At 3 a.m., he would allow callers to discuss any topic they pleased with him, until the end of the program, when he expressed his own political opinions. That segment was called "Open Phone America". Some of the regular callers used the pseudonyms "The Portland Laugher", "The Miami Derelict", "The Todd Cruz Caller", "The Scandal Scooper", "Mr. Radio" and "The Water Is Warm Caller". "Mr. Radio" made over 200 calls to King during Open Phone America. The show was successful, starting with relatively few affiliates and eventually growing to more than 500. It ran until 1994.^{[citation needed]}

For its final year, the show was moved to afternoons, but, because most talk radio stations at the time had an established policy of local origination in the time-slot (3 to 6 p.m. Eastern Time) that Mutual offered the show, a very low percentage of King's overnight affiliates agreed to carry his daytime show and it was unable to generate the same audience size.^{[citation needed]} The afternoon show was eventually given to David Brenner and radio affiliates were given the option of carrying the audio of King's new CNN evening television program. The Westwood One radio simulcast of the CNN show continued until December 31, 2009.

CNN[link]

He started his Larry King Live CNN show in June 1985, hosting a broad range of guests from controversial figures of UFO conspiracy theories and alleged psychics,^[19] to prominent politicians and leading figures in the entertainment industry, often doing their first or only interview on breaking news stories on his show.

King during a recording of his Larry King Live program at the Pentagon in Arlington, VA in 2006

Unlike many interviewers, King has a direct, non-confrontational approach. His reputation for asking easy, open-ended questions has made him attractive to important figures who want to state their position while avoiding being challenged on contentious topics.^[20] His interview style is characteristically frank, but with occasional bursts of irreverence and humor. His approach attracts some guests who would not otherwise appear. King, who is known for his general lack of pre-interview preparation, once bragged that he never read the books of authors before they made their appearances on his program.

In a show dedicated to the surviving Beatles, King asked George Harrison's widow about the song "Something", which was written about George Harrison's first wife. He seemed surprised when she did not know very much about the song.

Throughout his career King has interviewed many of the leading figures of his time. CNN claimed during his final episode that he had performed 60,000 interviews in his career.

King also wrote a regular newspaper column in USA Today for almost 20 years, from shortly after that newspaper's origin in 1982 until September 2001.^[21] The column consisted of short "plugs, superlatives and dropped names" but was dropped when the newspaper redesigned its "Life" section.^[22] The column was resurrected in blog form in November 2008^[23] and on Twitter in April 2009.^[24]

Departure[link]

On June 29, 2010, King announced that after 25 years, he would be stepping down from his nightly job hosting Larry King Live. However, he stated that he would remain with CNN to host occasional specials.^[25] The announcement came in the wake of speculation that CNN had approached Piers Morgan, the British television personality and journalist, as King's primetime replacement,^[26] which was confirmed in September.^[27][28]

The final edition of Larry King Live aired on December 16, 2010.^[29] The show concluded with his last thoughts and a thank you to his audience for watching and supporting him over the years.^[30]

On February 17, 2012 CNN announced that he would no longer host specials.^[31]

Other ventures[link]

King was the moderator of the 6th KAZENERGY Eurasian Forum in Astana, Kazakhstan, an annual forum for Kazakhstan's energy sector occurring in October 2011.^[32][33][34]

Charitable works[link]

As a result of heart attacks, he established the Larry King Cardiac Foundation, an organization to which David Letterman, through his American Foundation for Courtesy and Grooming, has also contributed. King gave $1 million to George Washington University's School of Media and Public Affairs for scholarships to students from disadvantaged backgrounds.^{[citation needed]} King serves as a member of the Board of Directors on the Police Athletic League of New York City, a nonprofit youth development agency serving inner-city children and teenagers.^{[citation needed]}

On September 3, 2005, following Hurricane Katrina, King aired "How You Can Help", a three-hour special designed to provide a forum and information clearinghouse for viewers to understand and join nationwide and global relief efforts. On January 18, 2010, in the wake the 2010 Haiti earthquake, King aired "Haiti: How You Can Help", a special two-hour edition designed to show viewers how to take action and be a part of the global outreach. Following the Deepwater Horizon explosion, King aired "Disaster in the Gulf: How You Can Help", a special two-hour edition designed to show viewers how to take action in the clean-up efforts on the Gulf Coast.

On August 30, 2010, King served as the host of Chabad's 30th annual "To Life" telethon, in Los Angeles.

Controversial positions[link]

On September 10, 1990, while on The Joan Rivers Show, Rivers asked King which contestant in the Miss America pageant was "the ugliest". King responded, "Miss Pennsylvania. She was one of the 10 finalists and she did a great ventriloquist bit [...] The dummy was prettier."^[35] King was a judge for the September 8, 1990 pageant. King later sent Miss Pennsylvania, Marla Wynne, a dozen long-stemmed roses and a telegram apologizing for saying she was the ugliest contestant in the pageant that year.^[36]

In 1997, King was one of 34 celebrities to sign an open letter to then-German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, published as a newspaper advertisement in the International Herald Tribune, which protested the treatment of Scientologists in Germany, comparing it to the Nazis' oppression of Jews in the 1930s.^[37] Other signatories included Dustin Hoffman and Goldie Hawn.^[37]

Personal life[link]

King has been married eight times, to seven different women.^[38] He married high-school sweetheart Freda Miller in 1951 at age 18.^[39] The union ended the following year at the behest of their parents, who reportedly had the marriage annulled.^[39] King was later briefly married to Annette Kaye^[39] who gave birth to his son, Larry Jr., in November 1961. King did not meet Larry Jr. until the son was in his thirties.^[40] Larry Jr. and his wife, Shannon, have three children.^[38]

In 1961, King married his third wife, Alene Akins, a Playboy bunny at one of the magazine's eponymous nightclubs. The couple had son Andy in 1962, and divorced the following year.^[39] In 1963, King married his fourth wife, Mary Francis "Mickey" Stuphin, who divorced King.^[39] He remarried Akins, with whom he had a second child, Chaia, in 1969.^[39] The couple divorced a second time in 1972.^[39] In 1997, Dove Books published a book written by King and Chaia, Daddy Day, Daughter Day. Aimed at young children, it tells each of their accounts of his divorce from Akins.

On September 25, 1976, King married his fifth wife, math teacher and production assistant Sharon Lepore. The couple divorced in 1983.^[41]

King met businesswoman Julie Alexander in summer 1989, and proposed to her on the couple's first date, on August 1, 1989.^[42] Alexander became King's sixth wife on October 7, 1989, when the two were married in Washington, D.C.^[43] The couple lived in different cities, however, with Alexander in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and King in Washington, D.C., where he worked. The couple separated in 1990 and divorced in 1992.^[43] He became engaged to actress Deanna Lund in 1995, after five weeks of dating, but they never married.^[44]

He married his seventh wife, Shawn Southwick, born in 1959^[45][46] as Shawn Oro Engemann,^[45] a former singer and TV host,^[47] in King's Los Angeles, California, hospital room three days before King underwent heart surgery to clear a clogged blood vessel.^[46] The couple have two children: Chance, born March 1999,^{[citation needed]} and Cannon, born May 2000.^{[citation needed]} He is stepfather to Danny Southwick.^{[citation needed]} On King and Southwick's 10th anniversary in September 2007, Southwick boasted she was "the only [wife] to have lasted into the two digits".^[47] On April 14, 2010, both Larry and Shawn King filed for divorce.^[46][48] but have since stopped the proceedings, claiming "We love our children, we love each other, we love being a family. That is all that matters to us".^[49]

On February 24, 1987, King suffered a major heart attack and then had quintuple-bypass surgery.^{[citation needed]} Since then, King has written two books about living with heart disease. Mr. King, You're Having a Heart Attack: How a Heart Attack and Bypass Surgery Changed My Life (1989, ISBN 0-440-50039-7) was written with New York's Newsday science editor B. D. Colen. Taking On Heart Disease: Famous Personalities Recall How They Triumphed over the Nation's #1 Killer and How You Can, Too (2004, ISBN 1-57954-820-2) features the experience of various celebrities with cardiovascular disease including Peggy Fleming and Regis Philbin.

In July 2009, King appeared on The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien, where he told host O'Brien about his wishes to be cryonically preserved upon death,^[50] as he had revealed in his book My Remarkable Journey.^[51] In December 2011, preceding a CNN Special on the topic, the Kings had a special dinner with friends Conan O'Brien, Tyra Banks, Shaquille O'Neal, Seth MacFarlane, Jack Dorsey, Quincy Jones and Russell Brand where his intent to do so was reiterated, among other topics that were discussed.^[52]

On February 12, 2010, Larry King revealed that he had undergone surgery five weeks earlier to place stents in his coronary artery to remove plaque from his heart. During the segment on Larry King Live which discussed Bill Clinton's similar procedure, King said he was "feeling great" and had been in hospital for just one day.^{[citation needed]}

Awards[link]

King has received many broadcasting awards. He won the Peabody Award for Excellence in broadcasting for both his radio (1982) and television (1992) shows. He has also won 10 CableACE awards for Best Interviewer and for Best Talk Show Series.

In 1989, King was inducted into the National Radio Hall of Fame,^{[citation needed]} and in 1996 to the Broadcasters' Hall of Fame.^[7] In 2002, the industry magazine Talkers named King both the fourth-greatest radio talk show host of all time and the top television talk show host of all time.^[53]

in June 1998, King received an Honorary Degree from Brooklyn College, City University of New York, for his life achievements.

King was given the Golden Mike Award for Lifetime Achievement in January 2009, by the Radio & Television News Association of Southern California.

King is an honorary member of the Rotary Club of Beverly Hills. He is also a recipient of the President's Award honoring his impact on media from the Los Angeles Press Club in 2006.

King is the first recipient of the Arizona State University Hugh Downs Award for Communication Excellence,^[54] presented April 11, 2007, via satellite by Downs himself.^[55] Downs sported red suspenders for the event and turned the tables on King by asking "very tough questions" about King's best, worst and most influential interviews during King's 50 years in broadcasting.^{[citation needed]}

References[link]

External links[link]

Find more about Larry King on Wikipedia's sister projects:
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• CNN profile
• Larry King Cardiac Foundation - Foundation to fund treatments cardiac patients with little or no insurance
• Clark lawsuit
• Larry King at the Internet Movie Database
• Larry King Live - Transcripts of all interviews since 2000
• Larry King interviewed by Gianluca D'Agostino
• Larry King Archive of American Television video interview

Wangari Maathai
Wangari Maathai in 2006
Born	Wangari Muta (1940-04-01)1 April 1940 Ihithe village, Tetu division, Nyeri District, Kenya
Died	25 September 2011(2011-09-25) (aged 71) Nairobi, Kenya
Ethnicity	Kikuyu
Citizenship	Kenyan
Education	B.S. biology M.S. biological sciences Ph.D. veterinary anatomy
Alma mater	Mount St. Scholastica College University of Pittsburgh University College of Nairobi
Occupation	Environmentalist, Political activist
Known for	Green Belt Movement
Awards	Nobel Peace Prize

Wangari Muta Maathai (1 April 1940 – 25 September 2011) was a Kenyan environmental and political activist. She was educated in the United States at Mount St. Scholastica and the University of Pittsburgh, as well as the University of Nairobi in Kenya. In the 1970s, Maathai founded the Green Belt Movement, an environmental non-governmental organization focused on the planting of trees, environmental conservation, and women's rights. In 1986, she was awarded the Right Livelihood Award, and in 2004, she became the first African woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize for "her contribution to sustainable development, democracy and peace." Maathai was an elected member of Parliament and served as assistant minister for Environment and Natural Resources in the government of President Mwai Kibaki between January 2003 and November 2005. Furthermore she was an Honorary Councillor of the World Future Council. In 2011, Maathai died of complications from ovarian cancer.

Early life and education 1940–1971[link]

On 1 April 1940, Maathai was born in the village of Ihithe, Nyeri District, in the central highlands of the colony of Kenya. Her family was Kikuyu, the most populous ethnic group in Kenya, and had lived in the area for several generations.^[1] Around 1943, Maathai's family relocated to a white-owned farm in the Rift Valley, near the town of Nakuru, where her father had found work.^[2] Late in 1947, she returned to Ihithe with her mother, as two of her brothers were attending primary school in the village, and there was no schooling available on the farm where her father worked. Her father remained at the farm.^[3] Shortly afterward, at the age of eight, she joined her brothers at Ihithe Primary School.^[4]