The 100 People Who Are Changing America

WHAT HE'S CHANGING: Gossip Girl and The OC godfather Schwartz lets his teen characters drink, use drugs and sleep with each other, and they don't wind up apologizing on the couch to their parents or engaging in petty moralizing.

RATINGS GAME: Gossip Girl's numbers aren't great, but thanks to its Web presence and iTunes, it gets more notice than shows with quadruple its audience.

NEXT: The Web-only show Rockville, CA.

KEY QUOTE: "We don't preach our positions of morality. But at the end of the day, most of the characters are good people struggling to make decisions in the world."

SEE THE CHANGE: Gossip Girl's Official Site and Rockville, CA's Official Site

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Photo: Gries/Getty

WHAT HE'S CHANGING: Our understanding of what we eat. Nobody connects the dots between big agriculture, the obesity epidemic and climate change better than the author of In Defense of Food. If you care about what agribusiness is doing to our bodies and our world, you need to pay attention to his work.

FRIENDS SAY: "He's a visionary," says New York Times food writer Mark Bittman. "Anyone who is involved in food in a serious way is in his debt."

NEXT TASK: Gathering recipes for a cross-cultural compendium of how to eat healthily.

SEE THE CHANGE: Michael Pollan's Official Site

Photo: Alia Malley

WHAT HE'S CHANGING: As the head of Pixar, Lasseter helmed smashes like Toy Story, Finding Nemo and the art-house-quality WALL-E. Now also in charge of Disney Animation Studios, he'll be designing rides at the theme parks and bringing a filmmaker's (rather than an executive's) brio to the sagging company.

SIGNATURE MOVE: He wasn't afraid to take on the mouse. "Disney had got away from quality," he said. "Their currency seemed to be doing things to make a buck."

KEY QUOTE: "True emotion is what we strive for. . . . No amount of great animation will save a bad story."

SEE THE CHANGE: Pixar's Official Site

Photo: Harrison/Getty

WHAT HE'S CHANGING: By pumping new life into mothballed forms — from the kitschy spy-thriller Alias to the castaway drama Lost — Abrams relentlessly pushes boundaries and audiences. Now, for the movies this May he is tackling Star Trek — the nerd third rail.

SIGNATURE MOVE: Secrecy around Star Trek is intense: Abrams is trying to keep fans in the dark about everything from the wardrobe to the look of the Enterprise.

KEY QUOTE: "In telling stories, there are the things the audience thinks are important, and then there are the things that are actually important."

SEE THE CHANGE: Star Trek: Official Movie Site

Photo: Rodriguez/Getty

WHAT HE'S CHANGING: How democracy plays out over the Internet. Rospars, 27, got his start as a Web organizer for the Howard Dean campaign, then leveraged Obama's 13-million-member e-mail list not only for the cash, but to put activists to work in every precinct in America.

FRIENDS SAY: "A new era of politics empowered by the people exists in no small measure because of Joe's efforts," says Dean campaign manager Joe Trippi.

NEXT MOVE: He continues to shape the efforts of Organizing for America — the evolution of the Obama campaign — as it begins to call on Obama's activist army.

SEE THE CHANGE: Organizing for America and Blue State Digital

Photo: B.G. Johnson

WHAT HE'S CHANGING: With viral videos like "Jizz in My Pants," "Lazy Sunday" and "Dick in a Box," the 30-year-old Samberg is the Belushi of YouTube. Samberg's found a universe of like-minded geek adherents who think that him punching people in the face while they eat is comedy gold.

DRAWBACK: Conventional breakthroughs have eluded him (the movie Hot Rod was a dud, and he's yet to break out on SNL).

KEY QUOTE: "I like things that are immature and offbeat and bizarre. And stupid. Stupid is the highest compliment a person can pay to me."

SEE THE CHANGE: Andy Samberg's Official Site

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Photo: Merritt/FilmMagic

WHAT HE'S CHANGING: The Voice of God anchorman model. In his serious persona, he doesn't lose connection with the human toll of what he's reporting. And he gets his hands dirty, reporting from war zones and from the front lines of the climate crisis in his Planet in Peril series.

FRIENDS SAY: "Under his elegant and cool exterior, there is real passion and moral outrage," says Arianna Huffington.

KEY QUOTE: "The notion of traditional anchor is fading away, the all-knowing, all-seeing person who speaks from on high. I don't think the audiences really buy that anymore. . . . I know I don't buy it."

SEE THE CHANGE: Anderson Cooper 360° Official Site

Photo: Courtesy of CNN

WHAT HE'S CHANGING: The future of medicine. Hood is a molecular biologist, technologist and entrepreneur who helped decode the human genome. Now he's working to give physicians tools to diagnose and treat disease even before any symptoms appear.

NEXT MOVE: For doctors' offices, his team is developing a device that can read a patient's blood sample within minutes to identify proteins that are produced when the body is sick.

MARK OF INFLUENCE: He just closed a $100 million deal with the government of Luxembourg to advance his work.

Photo: Dale DeGabriele

WHAT HE'S CHANGING: Slumdog Millionaire was a worldwide smash, crushing prejudices that Western audiences wouldn't respond to a film featuring people who didn't look like them. A truly global director, Boyle brought the Mumbai ghetto to life as strikingly as he did his Scottish junkies in Trainspotting.

ENEMIES SAY: Salman Rushdie slammed Slumdog as having a "patently ridiculous conceit . . . the film beggars belief."

KEY QUOTE: "I don't want people to sit there and objectively watch the film. I want them to experience it as something that's under their skin."

Photo: Cohen/WireImage

WHAT HE'S CHANGING: Making the environment a post-partisan issue. A fierce proponent of bullet trains and solar and wind projects, he is now working to implement aggressive climate regulations and curbs on auto emissions.

ROADBLOCK: California is broke.

FRIENDS SAY: "Arnold is the undisputed world-champion green governor," says Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

KEY QUOTE: "I don't look at this as if the world is coming to an end. I see it as a great opportunity to clean up our mess."

SEE THE CHANGE: Arnold Schwarzenegger's Official Site

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Photo: Gallup/Getty