Monday, October 20, 2008
Bob talks politics with David Broder of The Washington Post. Then, a visit with former Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach. He’s the man who represented the federal government during the stand-off with Alabama governor George Wallace who tried to prevent black students from entering the University of Alabama in 1963. Katzenbach was a behind-the-scenes player in many of the seminal events of the 1960s– the Civil Rights movement, the Bay of Pigs fiasco, the Cold War and the Vietnam War. He talks with Bob about his new memoir Some of It was Fun: Working with RFK and LBJ.
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Steven Rosenfeld has been tracking accusations of voter fraud and manipulation going into this year’s Presidential election. He’s the co-author of What Happened in Ohio: A Documentary Record of Theft and Fraud in the 2004 Election and most recently, of Count My Vote: A Citizen’s Guide to Voting. Rosenfeld talks with Bob about how voter registrations are being challenged, how some states have illegally purged voter lists, and other tactics that have been used to alter the outcome of this year’s election. Then, Bob talks with Oscar-winning screenwriter Charlie Kaufman who makes his directorial debut with Synecdoche, New York, starring Philip Seymour Hoffman as a troubled theater director. Kaufman’s off-beat, absurdist tone was displayed in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Adaptation. In this new film, Kaufman takes an even darker look at sanity and relationships.
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
Bob talks with Laura Waters Hinson, director of the documentary, As We Forgive. The movie tells the stories of survivors of Rwandan genocide as they prepare to face the men who slaughtered their families and test whether reconciliation can really work. Then, Halima Bashir was born into the Zaghawa tribe in the desert region of Sudan known as Darfur. She became her village’s first medical doctor at the age of 24 just as violence was breaking out against African tribes like her own. Soon she was treating victims of horrendous crimes, many of her patients were children. After Bashir told United Nations officials about the attacks in her village, she was herself beaten, gang-raped, and tortured. Bashir is now living under asylum in England and is making her first visit to the United States to talk about her memoir. It’s called Tears of the Desert: A Memoir of Survival in Darfur.
Thursday, October 23, 2008
Bob talks with Rebecca Roberts of XM’s POTUS ’08 about the presidential race. Then, James Cromwell was a run-of-the-mill character actor until the movie Babe or, as Cromwell puts it, until “my pig came in.” Now he’s a well-known movie star, currently portraying George Herbert Walker Bush in the new Oliver Stone movie W. Next, Jeff Campbell runs a non-profit organization called Hungry for Music which provides musical instruments to disadvantaged children across the country. He funds much of this charitable work with proceeds from the CDs of baseball music he puts together. Campbell has just released another disc in the series he calls Diamond Cuts. This is the 10th installment titled Extra Innings.
Friday, October 24, 2008
Jim Davis who started out writing and drawing a comic strip called “Gnorm Gnat” which soon ended up being about a beloved, fictional orange cat. Garfield made his first appearance 30 years ago and is now the most widely syndicated comic strip in the world–translated into 45 languages and delighting more than 200 million readers. Jim Davis has kept the Garfield operation in his home state of Indiana, where Paws, Inc., employs about 50 people who are mostly life-long employees.
Listening to your Tuesday interview with Charlie Kaufman, I was intrigued by the definition of “synecdoche,” a word I had never heard. I tried looking it up in the dictionary and found the following words:
Schenectady, NY – a city in E. New York state, on the Mohawk river.
Senectitude – the last stage of life, old age. From the Latin, senect – old age.
Mr. Kaufman is beyond clever. I am eager to see the movie.