Bob Edwards Weekend Highlights – November 20-21, 2010
HOUR ONE
Eliot Spitzer was New York’s powerful Attorney General, known as “The Sherriff of Wall Street.” Then in 2006, Spitzer was overwhelmingly elected as the Governor of New York. The Democrat was on his way to political super-stardom and maybe someday the White House. But it turns out he had the secret habit of employing very high-priced escorts. Spitzer was known to the prostitution ring as “Client 9” and that’s the title of Alex Gibney’s latest documentary. Gibney joins Bob to discuss the rise and fall of Eliot Spitzer.
In this week’s installment of our ongoing series This I Believe, we hear the essay of James Johnson. He has been a professor at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts for the past 35 years. But he grew up in the “Sportsman’s Paradise” of Louisiana, where he spent many hours duck hunting with his father. Johnson says the lessons he learned in the duckblind made him the person he is today.
HOUR TWO
Historian Simon Winchester has made a career unearthing the fascinating stories of things many of us take for granted, most notably writing about creation of Oxford English Dictionary in The Professor and the Madman. Winchester’s latest book is a biography of Earth’s second largest body of water. It’s titled Atlantic: Great Sea Battles, Heroic Discoveries, Titanic Storms, and a Vast Ocean of a Million Stories.
Sirius XM Symphony Hall host Martin Goldsmith reviews two new biopics about the life of legendary musician John Lennon, released for what would have been Lennon’s 70th year. In theaters now, Nowhere Boy follows young John Lennon’s life in Liverpool, while Masterpiece Contemporary’s new film Lennon Naked, airing Sunday, November 21st on PBS, looks at Lennon’s final years with The Beatles. Goldsmith is the author of The Beatles Come to America.