My father was in the military, so I was in Okinawa.

I had left the music business and became a conflict journalist. The conflict journalism started for me in the Gulf and the oil spill. When Skynyrd needed a new bass player, they knew me from the Black Crowes.

If the Pacific took Nauru, it'd wash away one of the strangest and most troubled places on Earth.

In a lot of ways, Nauru is something like a canary in a coal mine: It's a tiny place with more than its share of troubles, most of them the kind that might have been prevented.

My mother didn't set out to surround us with white students or colleagues. My mother just sought a quality education. People have these expectations of who they think you should be. And I say it's because they don't really understand Malcolm X - or his wife.

I initially wanted to be a teacher, and then I was going to become an engineer and build bridges and highways, but pretty soon I went into the business world. I never did get to be a teacher except in a different way.

I'm the oldest of four children, and when I was young, I used to get the blackboard out and make my brothers and sisters sit in front of me while I taught class. They all thought I wanted to be a teacher, but I didn't. I was impersonating my teachers.

I was 17 the first time I set foot in a classroom, but 10 years later, I would graduate from Cambridge with a Ph.D. 'Educated' is the story of how I came by my education. It is also the story of how I lost my family.