HOUR ONE
Drawing on her heritage, journalistic experience and lack of loyalty to any one media brand or format, Molly Bingham is setting out to change the way we think about media forever. She explains it all to Bob, including her new project “The Global Council for Media Transformation” which she will introduce at next week’s Clinton Global Initiative hosted by former President Bill Clinton.
As a city councilman, Cory Booker moved into a tent pitched in front of one of Newark’s most notorious housing projects, Brick Towers. He was trying to draw attention to an open-air drug market thriving there. Booker is now the Mayor of Newark and he’s the subject of a new five-part documentary series on the Sundance Channel called Brick City. Bob talks with the Mayor about trying to reinvent a city saddled with a half-century history of violence, corruption and poverty —— and now with movie cameras on him nearly around the clock.
In this week’s installment of our ongoing series This I Believe, Bob talks with executive director Dan Gediman about the essay from Will Thomas. He was born in Kansas City and worked as a newspaper writer, editor and prizefighter. Thomas eventually settled in Vermont with his wife and three children. His book, “The Seeking,” details the family’s integration to the all-white community of Westford.
HOUR TWO
James Wood is a literary critic and staff writer for The New Yorker and a professor of English and American literature at Harvard University. In his book How Fiction Works, Wood examines the alchemy of fiction, questioning why some literary devices work, while others fall out of fashion. In 2008, the magazine Intelligent Life named Wood as one of the world’s top 30 critics.
Director Jane Campion’s new film Bright Star tells the story of the final three years of English Romantic poet John Keats’ life. Keats had a secret love affair with his neighbor Fanny Brawne which, in keeping with the Romantic Age’s sensibilities, ended tragically. Campion directed 1993’s The Piano, winning an Oscar for Best Screenplay, and she was the second woman in Oscar history to secure a nomination for Best Director.