Gary Zukav

Gary Zukav (born October 17, 1942) is an American spiritual teacher and the author of four consecutive New York Times Best Sellers. Beginning in 1998, he appeared more than 30 times on The Oprah Winfrey Show to discuss transformation in human consciousness concepts presented in his book The Seat of the Soul. His first book, The Dancing Wu Li Masters (1979), won a U.S. National Book Award.

Life

Gary Zukav was born in Port Arthur, Texas, and spent his early childhood in San Antonio and Houston. His family moved to Pittsburg, Kansas, while he was in fourth grade and he graduated from Pittsburg Senior High School as valedictorian in 1960. During that time he became an Eagle Scout, Governor of Kansas Boy's State, President of the Student Council, and Kansas State Debate championship team member twice. His father, Morris Louis Zukav, owned a jewelry store and his mother, Lorene Zukav, was a housewife who raised him and his younger sister.

Oprah Winfrey

Oprah Gail Winfrey, born January 29, 1954, is an American media proprietor, talk show host, actress, producer, and philanthropist. She is best known for her talk show The Oprah Winfrey Show, which was the highest-rated program of its kind in history and was nationally syndicated from 1986 to 2011. Dubbed the "Queen of All Media", she has been ranked the richest African-American of the 20th century, the greatest black philanthropist in American history, and is now North America's first and only multi-billionaire Black. Several assessments regard her as the most influential woman in the world. In 2013, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama and honorary doctorate degrees from Duke and Harvard.

Winfrey was born into poverty in rural Mississippi to a teenage single mother and later raised in an inner-city Milwaukee neighborhood. She has stated that she was molested during her childhood and early teens and became pregnant at 14; her son died in infancy. Sent to live with the man she calls her father, a barber in Tennessee, Winfrey landed a job in radio while still in high school and began co-anchoring the local evening news at the age of 19. Her emotional ad-lib delivery eventually got her transferred to the daytime-talk-show arena, and after boosting a third-rated local Chicago talk show to first place, she launched her own production company and became internationally syndicated.

Oprah Winfrey Network

Oprah Winfrey Network may refer to:

OWN

OWN may refer to:

See also

The Oprah Winfrey Show

The Oprah Winfrey Show, often referred to simply as Oprah, is an American syndicated tabloid talk show that aired nationally for 25 seasons from September 8, 1986 to May 25, 2011 in Chicago, Illinois. Produced and hosted by its namesake, Oprah Winfrey, it remains the highest-rated talk show in American television history.

The show has been highly influential, and many of its topics have penetrated into the American pop-cultural consciousness. Winfrey has used the show as an educational platform, featuring book clubs, interviews, self-improvement segments, and philanthropic forays into world events. The show does not attempt to profit off the products it endorses; it has had no licensing agreement with retailers when products were promoted, nor has the show made any money from endorsing books for its book club.

Oprah is one of the longest-running daytime television tabloid talk shows in history. The show received 47 Daytime Emmy Awards before Winfrey chose to stop submitting it for consideration in 2000.