Next Week’s Shows

Monday, September 29, 2008

Bob talks politics with David Broder of The Washington Post . Then, Alex Gibney is the director of Taxi to the Dark Side which won a Peabody Award and this year’s Oscar for Best Documentary. The film examines the fine line between interrogation and torture and tells the story of an innocent Afghan taxi driver who died after five days in US custody. Gibney originally spoke with Bob in January about the movie. On Monday , Taxi to the Dark Side makes its television premiere on HBO. Alex Gibney returns to tell us what’s changed in US interrogation policy since he made his film.

Tuesday, September 30, 2008

In the early 1970s, a young writer named Paul Theroux traveled by train through Europe and Asia. The resulting book, The Great Railway Bazaar , launched Theroux’s career and set a high standard for the modern travelogue. Theroux talks with Bob about why, more than 30 years — and more than 30 books — later, Theroux has made the trip again, searching for differences and similarities, both in himself and the many countries he visits. His book is Ghost Train to the Eastern Star .

Wednesday , October 1, 2008

This year marks the Oxford English Dictionary ‘s 80th anniversary and to celebrate, Bob speaks with chief editors John Simpson and Jesse Sheidlower to discuss the etymologies of a few of the 291,500 entries in the world’s most comprehensive collection of the English language. Then, in celebration of the OED’s 80th anniversary, Bob talks with Ammon Shea, whose new book Reading the OED chronicles his year of experiences reading the Oxford English Dictionary from A to Z and what he discovered about the English language.

Thursday, October 2, 2008

Anarchist and author Crispin Sartwell is one of the world’s premiere scholars and philosophers on anarchy and its political theory. His latest book entitled Against the State: An Introduction to Anarchist Political Theory introduces the reader to what is an anarchist and what they believe. Bob will sit down with Sartwell to talk about his book as well as how he became an anarchist. Then, Tim Reid and Tom Dreesen made up the first–and last– black and white comedy team in America. They’re the subjects of a new book, called Tim and Tom , about their ill-fated and often painful attempt to foster tolerance in the 60s and 70s. Bob gets them to tell their story.

Friday, October 3, 200

Bob talks with Rebecca Roberts of POTUS ’08 about the latest news from the campaign trail. Director Marc Abraham‘s latest film Flash of Genius tells the true-life tale of inventor Robert Kearns’ (Greg Kinnear) legal battle with automotive giants Ford and Chrysler over his rights to his invention of intermittent windshield wiper. Bob talks with Abraham and Kinnear.