Bob Edwards Weekend – July 3-4, 2010
HOUR ONE
In the UK it was published as Alex’s Adventures in Numberland. The US version has a cleverly improved title, Here’s Looking at Euclid. Whatever the title, Alex Bellos has managed to write a best-selling book all about math. Bellos traveled around the world interviewing people whose lives are connected to math. His ambition is to prove to a wider audience — starting with Bob — that “the world of math is a remarkable place.”
In this week’s installment of our ongoing series This I Believe, Bob talks with curator Dan Gediman about the essay of Will Durant. He was a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and philosopher who spent nearly 50 years writing his 11-volume work The History of Civilization. Many of his later works were written in collaboration with his wife, Ariel. Durant received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1977.
HOUR TWO
We continue our series of music interviews recorded at this year’s Jazz Fest, this week with “The Soul Queen of New Orleans.” Bob talks with Irma Thomas in her Upper Ninth Ward home about her five decades in the music business, about the destruction caused by Hurricane Katrina and about winning her first Grammy for her CD After the Rain.