THE BOB EDWARDS SHOW HIGHLIGHTS – April 19-23, 2010
Monday, April 19, 2010
Bob talks with Bob O’Neil, Director of the Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression, about the Center’s annual “Muzzle” Awards—a dishonor given out to those who committed the most egregious or ridiculous affronts to free expression in the past year. Then, Gabriel Thompson spent a year working alongside day laborers across the U.S. for his book Working In The Shadows: A Year Of Doing The Jobs (Most) Americans Won’t Do. His personal narratives about lettuce harvesting and processing chicken parts have themes of social activism, advocating immigration reform, stricter labor laws, a higher minimum wage, and unionizing.
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
The 18th century was an era of philosophical, astronomical, poetical and physical exploration. Startling works of originality from Keats, Coleridge and Shelley are well known but the same Romantic wellsprings of wonder, hope and, “the vivid but questing belief in a future for the globe,” inspired remarkable scientific advances. Richard Holmes tells these twin stories in the New York Times Best Book of the Year, The Age of Wonder.
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
Why do we still root for Superman? He is stronger than any of us. He didn’t earn his powers. He always wins and is a more than a little sanctimonious. In his new book Our Hero: Superman on Earth ProfessorTom DeHaven argues Superman continues to win our devotion because he exemplifies the classic American immigrant success story. Then, Jamie Dailey and Darrin Vincent had already gained acclaim in the bluegrass world long before teaming up to record their first album as a duo. In 2008 they released their debut album, Dailey & Vincent, which was named album of the year, one of seven awards the group took home in an unprecedented feat at the International Bluegrass Music Awards Show. Now the duo has just released their new CD titled Dailey & Vincent Sing The Statler Brothers.
Thursday, April 22, 2010
40 years ago the first Earth Day celebration brought nearly 10% of the American population out into the streets and parks across the country and launched a global phenomenon. Bob speaks with Director Robert Stone, producer and director of the new documentary film Earth Days, airing on PBS nationally, and one of the people featured in the film Denis Hayes, the organizer who pulled off that first Earth Day. Then, director Anne Henderson’s documentary Battle of Wills is a historical mystery about the legitimacy of a portrait that it’s owners claim to be the only picture of William Shakespeare painted during his lifetime.
Friday, April 23, 2010
David Broder of The Washington Post joins Bob to talk politics. Next, on April 24, 1915, the Ottomans arrested approximately 250 Armenian intellectuals and community leaders, marking what many scholars call the start of the Armenian Genocide. Ninety-five years later, the g-word is still taboo in Turkey and as recently as two years ago, a journalist was fatally shot in Istanbul for talking about it. Taner Akcam is a Turkish scholar at the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Clark University and author of A Shameful Act: The Armenian Genocide and the Question of Turkish Responsibility. Rouben Adalian is the Director of the Armenian National Institute. They’ll discuss the archival evidence of what happened, a recent conference they hosted of Turkish and Armenian historians, and how the two nations might be able to move forward. Then, in this week’s installment of our ongoing series This I Believe, Bob talks with curator Dan Gediman about the essay of writer, director and actor Peter Ustinov. He had a career spanning 60 years on stage and screen. He won two Academy Awards for best supporting actor, as well as three Emmy Awards and a Grammy Award for best children’s recording. Ustinov also served as a goodwill ambassador for UNICEF for many years.