Well, the dust is still settling. Cameron Johnson, as most of you now know, came within a whisker of winning, but the top prize on Oprah’s Big Give went to Stephen Paletta instead.

There’s been quite a flurry of messages on the ABC bulletin boards, with people writing in and complaining that by any measure or standard, Cameron really should have won. We have to agree. But television is television, and its own rules apply. Stephen may have been the most politically-correct choice for the judges to make.

C’est la tie-vie.

Meanwhile, following his appearance on the Oprah show yesterday—where he announced that he is taking his $100,000 winnings from the show (along with the $100,000 winnings chipped in by his co-finalist Brandi Milloy) and teaming up with billionaire Richard Branson to work on turning that $200,000 into millions to benefit families in Africa—Cameron showed up for a one-hour live simulcast interview today hosted by none other than my Go-Giver coauthor Bob Burg and our partner Thom Scott.

You can hear the entire interview, including Cameron’s answers to questions emailed in ahead of time from listeners, by clicking here. (You can even download it as an MP3 and listen to it on your iPod.)

It’s worth the hour.

Yesterday, Cameron Johnson was the guest on CNN’s “Issue #1,” their hot new midday program on finance. Since we’re only three days away from the grand season finale of “Oprah’s Big Give,” in which Cameron is one of three finalists vying for the title of Biggest Giver, I thought I’d share this short interview as a prelude to Super-Suspense Sunday.

The dude packs an awful lot of Cameron Sense into three and a half minutes.

The final episode of “Oprah’s Big Give” airs this Sunday on ABC at 8:00 p.m.

I think words too often get a bum rap.

People often say of some especially intense experience, “Words cannot describe how I felt.” Sure they can. It’s a question of who’s using them.

The fourth gospel-writer claims that words were here before we were: “In the beginning was the Word.” Genesis confirms the sequence: God says “Light — be!” and then light is. The words come first, then the phenomenon. Words, in other words, or not mere reporters after the fact, but central players in the drama.

“We tried to talk it over,” says George Benson, “but the words got in the way.” I don’t think so. I think it’s more like this: “We tried to talk it over, but we got in the way.”

I wrote an article on “The Physics of Giving” for a holistic journal called EdgeLife, and I just received the link to the online version today: to read the full article, click here.

The article explains:

• why the world we live in is a lot more like Aslan’s Country (from C.S. Lewis’s Narnia books) than we ever realized;

• why economics is called “the dismal science” and why human relationships are governed by an opposite set of rules;

• how quantum physics helps to explain the Five Laws of Stratospheric Success featured in The Go-Giver;

• and how all this relates to law that you won’t find explained in the book: The Law of Left Field.

Now this was a fun article to write!

Each year, the Paperboard Packaging Council holds a prestigious competition that searches out the finest in packaging design. This year, among the tens of thousands of paperboard packages introduced in the North American marketplace, a few hundred entries made first cut. Judges from design magazines, top universities and the packaging industry spent a week scrutinizing every one of them, awarding each a certain number of points.

An entry earning a total of 18 to 23 points was given an Excellence Award; fifty-one entrants qualified. A total of 24 to 30 points earned a Gold Award; there were twenty-three in that category, including Lexus, Lord & Taylor, Apple and the Britney Spears “Believe” cosmetic line. The entry with the highest number of total points earns the President’s Award. In this highest category, there was only one. . .

Who turned out to be our friend, Scott Ohlgren, with his company’s uniq design for his Brain Toniq.

Our buddy Scott beat Apple and Lexus.

Way to go, dude.

(To read the full report about the Paperboard Packaging Council awards and why they chose Scott’s company’s design, you can view the PDF here.

A Deadly Misunderstanding: A Congressman’s Quest to Bridge the Muslim-Christian Divide, which I wrote last year with former congressman Mark Siljander, is due for release in June (on my birthday, as it happens!)—and we’re starting to see some early reviews (excerpts below).

You can also see some excellent videos of Mark talking about different aspects of the book—and read the entire Introduction—on the book’s official web site.

A February 1 review from the Library Journal (you have to scroll wayyyyy down) says:

“[Siljander’s] accounts of amazing interviews with heads of state and leaders like Muhammad Abdelaziz of the Sahrawri peoples and Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama, are very revealing. . . Finally, Siljander declares that love and relationships are more important than political strength and posturing. An understanding of the principles in this important book could help heal the rift between Islam and the West. Recommended for all libraries.”

To which a February 27 review from Publishers Weekly adds:

“In this memoir, Siljander recounts his ‘paradigm crash’ after discovering that much of what he’d been taught about his faith was nowhere in the Bible, and that the Christian and Muslim religious texts are surprisingly compatible when studied in their original languages. He has since made it his life’s mission to find common ground between Christian and Muslim worlds, meeting with a dizzying list of political and religious leaders in the process. . . .

“Siljander is deft at providing balance when discussing controversial subjects, and careful to show support from academics. Though his theological argument is based almost exclusively on the study of Muslim and Christian scriptures, in the current atmosphere it’s hard to argue with his dictum for what’s needed: ‘Making friends with the people you thought you hated. It’s that radical, that simple and that necessary.’”