Patrick Vaughan

Vaughan gained an early lesson in the power of positive thinking as a Little League catcher taking pitches from teammate Patrick Lencioni who in later years became a best-selling author in Silicon Valley.

KCSC was a cable station, allowing it a creative air play while serving as a midpoint for then-obscure bands such as the Smashing Pumpkins and Nirvana traveling between Seattle and San Francisco.

KCSC staff member Amy Finnerty (host of the show after Vaughan) has been credited with successfully pushing Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit" video on MTV executives, helping to spark the popular grunge music era of the 1990s.

The paper examined the complex social-political aspects that led to the rise of Polish Solidarity in the late 1970s-and the specific role of national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski assisting underground movements behind the Iron Curtain and helping to deter a potential Soviet military invasion of Poland in the autumn of 1980.

[12] Jan Nowak-Jeziorański, the former director of Radio Free Europe, praised the article in a speech in New York City before former U.S. ambassadors to Poland marking the ten year anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Nowak-Jeziorański argued Vaughan's article moved beyond the popular media narratives and effectively described the more nuanced elements in Eastern Europe that served to undermine the Soviet empire and help bring a peaceful end the Cold War in 1989.

You have done a truly remarkable job in ‘decoding’ my strategic intent and in analyzing the tactics that I pursued in order to attain my fundamental objectives.” He continued “I do not know the full scope of your ongoing research and your current PhD dissertation.

“One of the most illuminating chapters written by Patrick Vaughan deals with the relationship between Brzezinski and Pope John Paul II,” wrote Vladimir Tismaneanu in a review of the book in London's International Affairs, “The two men shared a deep love for Polish history, consistent distrust of communist double-talk, and a vibrant sense of moral duty in favour of oppressed individuals.”[15] Vaughan received a Fulbright academic grant to Poland and later accepted a professorship at Jagiellonian University in Krakow.