THE BOB EDWARDS SHOW HIGHLIGHTS – March 14-18, 2011
Monday, March 14, 2011: Dr. Izzeldin Abuelaish watched three of his daughters die, killed recklessly by Israeli tank shells. After his family’s unbelievable tragedy, Dr. Abuelaish broadcast a message live on Israeli television: he spoke emotionally about what such a loss meant but then he asked not for revenge but for reconciliation. I Shall Not Hate is a recounting of Abuelaish’s life, starting with his childhood in the refugee camps of Gaza. He says he hopes to honor the memory of his three daughters with something more productive than violence and destruction.
Tuesday, March 15, 2011: Bob talks with Jake Shimabukuro about his music and his chosen instrument. The native Hawaiian has been called “the Jimi Hendrix of the ukulele” and Shimabukuro’s latest CD is titled Peace Love Ukelele.
Wednesday, March 16, 2011: In 2005, astronomer Mike Brown outraged school children and arm-chair star gazers alike by demoting Pluto from a real planet to a newly categorized “dwarf” planet. He explains why in his book How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming. Time magazine named Brown one of the 100 People Who Shape Our World. Then, the hundredth anniversary of Gustav Holst’s The Planets is coming up and the band One Ring Zero revisits the solar system with an album celebrating all things celestial; even Pluto is included. Front man Michael Hearst talks with Bob about the new-ish CD, Planets.
Thursday, March 17, 2011: Last year, Goldman Sachs paid more than sixteen billion dollars in compensation, and Morgan Stanley about fifteen billion dollars, even though neither firm produced anything of tangible value. Paul Woolley is a British financier and economist who founded the Woolley Center for the Study of Capital Market Dysfunctionality at the London School of Economics. Woolley questions why finance is one of the most highly paid industries when it is “just a utility, like sewage or gas.” The Woolley Center studies the benefits that financial markets and institutions bring to the economy. Then, Thomas McCarthy is an actor who’s appeared in HBO’s The Wire, and the film, Good Night, and Good Luck. He’s also the writer and director behind The Station Agent and now, Win Win, a film about a struggling attorney who’s taken on too much responsibility, including the care of an estranged teenage boy. McCarthy introduces actor Alex Shaffer in this latest film, which also features Paul Giamatti and Amy Ryan.
Friday, March 18, 2011: Daniel Drezner is a professor of international politics at Tufts. A very serious thinker, he has just written Theories of International Politics and Zombies. Then, in this week’s installment of our ongoing series This I Believe, we hear the essay of David Adinaro. As a teenager, Adinaro felt a called to practice emergency medicine. He’s now an emergency physician and chief of adult emergency medicine at St. Joseph’s Regional Medical Center in Paterson New Jersey. He tries to establish a personal connection with patients, to carve out time for compassion in a busy schedule.