Showing results for "the transformations" in Entertainment & Celebrities

You may know him as an NFL All-Pro or as an elite magician who made the finals of America’s Got Talent. But Jon Dorenbos says that what he does is not who he is. Who he is is someone forced, at the most tender of ages, to coach himself into turning tragedy to triumph. One morning in August 1992, when Jon was 12 years old and living a seemingly idyllic childhood in suburban Seattle, he woke up for baseball camp. His dad waved good-bye. Later that day, Jon heard the news: His father had murdered his mother in the family’s three-car garage.

Author Remi Adeleke takes listeners back to stories from his childhood as Nigerian royalty to losing his father early in life and being financially stripped of everything by the Nigerian government. He delves into being raised by a single mother in the Bronx and doesn’t shy away from the illegal activities that threatened to derail his future. Having gone through times of intense struggle, pressure, and failure, Adeleke shares his inspiring story of overcoming the odds, even when it didn’t make sense; and ultimately experiencing true personal transformation.

Bob Dylan is the prince of self-reinvention and deflection. Whether it's the folkies of Greenwich Village, the student movement of the 1960s and 1970s, born-again Christians, the Chabad Lubavitch community, or English department postmodernists, specific intellectual and sociopolitical groups have repeatedly claimed Bob Dylan as their spokesperson. But in the words of filmmaker Todd Haynes, "The minute you try to grab hold of Dylan, he's no longer where he was."

What happens when you realize you’ve had the career of your dreams, but you don’t have the life of your dreams? This was the stark reality facing Sheri Salata when she left her 20-year stint at The Oprah Winfrey Show, Harpo Studios, and the OWN network. She had dedicated decades to her dream job, and loved (almost) every minute of it, but had left the rest of her life gathering dust on the shelf. After years of telling other people’s makeover stories, Sheri decided to “produce” her own life transformation.

Everyone knows that Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis was married to two of the 20th century’s most powerful men: John F. Kennedy and Aristotle Onassis. Lesser known are the five incredible years between those marriages, when she was on her own. Jackie tells that story - the story of a woman who was globally famous, and yet utterly enigmatic.

In the late 1970s, Jerry Wennstrom was a rising star in the New York art world when he decided that the ultimate creative leap was to destroy his large body of art, give away all of his possessions, and spend the next 10 years wandering, seeking, and listening. "It was a powerful, holy experience that left me shaken and empty, but exhilarated," says Jerry of the destruction of his art.

When he died suddenly at the age of 26, Otis Redding (1941-1967) had already become the conscience of a new kind of music. Sure, Berry Gordy might have built the first black-owned music empire at Motown, but Redding was doing something as historic: mainstreaming black music within the whitest bastions of the post-Confederate south. As a result, the Redding story - still largely untold - is one of great conquest but, sadly, grand tragedy.

John Tesh has achieved more in life than he ever dreamed possible. But the road to success has been anything but easy - and those challenges have become the secret to his success. Through his story, we can learn how to be relentless, how to achieve what we didn't think was possible, and how to handle our inevitable discouragements.