When All Else Failed: Dana Sachs on the volunteers at the heart of the worst human displacement crisis in Europe since WW2

EPISODE 1386: In this KEEN ON show, Andrew talks to ALL ELSE FAILED author Dana Sachs about the the unlikely volunteers at the heart of the migrant aid crisis in Greece

Dana Sachs was born in Memphis, Tennessee, and spent her childhood there. Throughout those years, she thought Memphis was the most boring city in the world, but she changed her mind when she left for college and realized that not everyone got to grow up along the Mississippi River, tramping through Overton Park, eating peach cobbler at the Buntyn Café, and listening to B.B. King, Alex Chilton, and the Panther Burns. Obviously, it takes traveling far away to realize the things you most love about home. Since leaving Memphis, Dana has learned to love (and happily reside in) other complex and captivating cities, including San Francisco, Hanoi, Budapest, and Wilmington, North Carolina, where she lives with her husband, Todd Berliner, and their two sons. Dana began her writing career as a journalist and she has published articles, essays, and reviews in, among other publications, National Geographic, The Wall Street Journal, Mother Jones, Travel and Leisure Family, and The Boston Globe. Her first book, The House on Dream Street: Memoir of an American Woman in Vietnam (2000) was chosen as an American Booksellers Association Book Sense Pick (the precursor of the Indiebound Next List). Her first novel, If You Lived Here (2007) was also a Book Sense Pick and was chosen for inclusion in Barnes and Noble’s Discover Great New Writers Program. Her nonfiction narrative The Life We Were Given: Operation Babylift, International Adoption, and the Children of War in Vietnam (2010) resulted from a Fulbright Foundation Fellowship in Vietnam. She is the co-author, with Nguyen Nguyet Cam and Bui Hoai Mai, of Two Cakes Fit for a King: Folktales from Vietnam (2003) and co-translator of numerous Vietnamese short stories into English. With her sister, filmmaker Lynne Sachs, she made the documentary about postwar Vietnam, “Which Way is East.” In recent years, Dana became a co-founder of Humanity Now: Direct Refugee Relief, a U.S.-based nonprofit that raises money in the United States to fund grassroots aid projects aimed at helping improve the lives of the tens of thousands of displaced people living in camps, abandoned buildings, and on the streets in Greece.

Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy show. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.