Bob Edwards Weekend Highlights – January 16-17, 2010
HOUR ONE
Close to a million people are expected to attend the North American International Auto Show which just opened in Detroit. In addition to the more than 700 new models on display, attendees will see an industry transformed. Since last year’s show, General Motors and Chrysler have gone in and out of bankruptcy; Chrysler is now run by Fiat; and Toyota announced its first loss in almost 60 years. Paul Ingrassia spent 31 years with The Wall Street Journal, eight of those as the Detroit Bureau Chief. He won a Pulitzer Prize for coverage of GM and has written a number of books about the auto industry. His newest is called Crash Course: The American Automobile Industry’s Road from Glory to Disaster.
According to anthropologist Catherine Lutz, Americans spend an average of 18 and a half hours a week in their cars. Lutz is the author of Carjacked: The Culture of the Automobile & Its Effect on Our Lives. The book pairs statistics with stories to explore what Americans’ love affair with the car gets us and what it costs us.
In this week’s installment of our ongoing series This I Believe, Bob talks with curator Dan Gediman about the essay of actress Phyllis Kirk. She starred with Vincent Price in the horror film House of Wax, and with Peter Lawford in The Thin Man television series. She later worked in public relations at CBS. Throughout her career, Kirk was active in various social and civil liberties causes.
HOUR TWO
Pop artist James Rosenquist arrived in New York City as a young art student of great promise in 1955. Over his 50 year career, Rosenquist surpassed his early expectations to become one of the most important pop artists of his generation. Painting Below Zero: Notes on a Life in Art is his own account of the highs and lows of his remarkable career.
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Hermain Khan is a first generation Pakistani-American and Ana Cisneros is an Ecuadorian-American. When they were 17-year-old high school students, Khan and Cisneros competed in the nation’s oldest, most prestigious science competition – The Intel Science Talent Search. Now they’re featured in a new documentary called Whiz Kids directed by Tom Shepard. The film is a coming-of-age story framed by the competition.
People forget that electric cars have high environmental costs. The tail pipe of that electric car is at the power plant, which all too often is run by coal.
We need to develop an infrastructure (along the interstate system makes the most sense) that offers CNG — compressed natural gas — for private and fleet vehicles.
The United States has enough domestic natural gas supplies to last for more than 100 years, and technology is making it environmentally safer to extract this gas. This would also help reduce our dependence on foreign oil.