Steven J. Ross is Professor of History at the University of Southern California. Ross has written extensively in the areas of film and social history. He is the author of Movies and American Society and Workers On the Edge: Work, Leisure, and Politics in Industrializing Cincinnati, 1788-1890. His book, Working-Class Hollywood: Silent Film and the Shaping of Class in America was named by the Los Angeles Times as one of the Best Books of 1998. Ross' book, Hollywood Left and Right: How Movie Stars Shaped American Politics, received the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' Film Scholars Award-the academic equivalent of an Oscar.

Mike Farrell, best known for his eight years on M*A*S*H and five seasons on Providence, is also a writer, director and producer. Beyond his work in the entertainment industry, Farrell has traveled the world for the last 30 years as part of prominent international human rights and peace delegations. He helped establish the California Committee of Human Rights Watch, and his opposition to the war in Iraq resulted in his co-founding Artists United to Win Without War. He is currently involved in an international effort in support of a worldwide moratorium on the death penalty. Farrell is the author of two books: Just Call Me Mike: A Journey to Actor and Activist, and Of Mule and Man.

Roger L. Simon, local author of ten novels and and seven screenplays, including the prize-winning Moses Wine detective series and Enemies: A Love Story, for which he was nominated for an Academy Award. Simon served on the faculty of the American Film Institute, Sundance Institute, and was president of the West Coast branch of PEN. In 2009, he published his first non-fiction book - Blacklisting Myself: Memoir of a Hollywood Apostate in the Age of Terror. It was republished in 2011 as Turning Right at Hollywood and Vine: The Perils of Coming Out Conservative in Hollywood.

Ella Taylor is a free-lance film critic, book reviewer and feature writer. She is the author of Prime Time Families: Television Culture in Post-War America and was a regular contributor to KPCC-Los Angeles' weekly film-review show FilmWeek. Taylor taught media studies at the University of Washington in Seattle, and is now based in Los Angeles.

Alan Alda has earned international recognition as an actor, writer and director. In 2005, he had the distinction of being nominated for an Oscar, a Tony, and an Emmy - and making the New York Times bestseller list - all in the same year. For eleven years he was the inimitable Hawkeye Pierce on the M*A*S*H TV series. On film, he appeared in Martin Scorsese's "The Aviator," for which he received a nomination for an Academy Award. On television, he won his sixth Emmy for the final season of "The West Wing," playing Arnold Vinick, the Republican candidate for President. He is the author, most recently of, Things I Overheard While Talking to Myself. His previous book was the New York Times bestseller Never Have Your Dog Stuffed.