THE BOB EDWARDS SHOW HIGHLIGHTS – April 18-22, 2011
Monday, April 18, 2011: Journalist Martin Davidson has done the taboo: he investigated the ugly truth about his own family. It wasn’t until well into adulthood that Davidson was compelled to resolve certain unanswered questions about his heritage. The result is the memoir, The Perfect Nazi: Uncovering My Grandfather’s Secret Past. Then, Bob talks with Brian Setzer about his four decades in the music business, the hits in the 1980s with The Stray Cats, his 18-piece “orchestra” and his latest CD, Setzer Goes Instru-mental. The eleven tracks feature Brian Setzer on guitar and banjo playing a mix of original compositions and covers like Blue Moon of Kentucky, Be-Bop-A-Lula and Earl’s Breakdown.
Tuesday, April 19, 2011: It wasn’t until he had spent twenty years as a professional soldier that Andrew Bacevich began to question the truths he had accumulated about U.S. foreign policy. Bacevich is a retired colonel and now a professor of history and international relations at Boston University. He is the rare military intellectual who is listened to by both the right and the left. His book, Washington Rules: America’s Path to Permanent War, is a critical rethink of American foreign policy. It’s now out in paperback. Then, for 15 years, Dr. Danielle Ofri has been an attending physician at New York City’s Bellevue Hospital Center, America’s oldest public hospital, where often her patients’ only commonality is their need for health. In her book Medicine in Translation: Journeys with My Patients, Ofri shares the stories of the hundreds of immigrants, documented and undocumented, who have ended up in her care. Her book is now out in paperback.
Wednesday, April 20, 2011: Maya Soetoro-Ng was inspired to write her first children’s book, Ladder to the Moon, by her daughter’s questions about her mother, cultural anthropologist Ann Dunham. Soetoro-Ng is the half-sister of President Barack Obama and a writer and educator. Then, Queen of Bluegrass Alison Krauss reunites with her band Union Station after a seven year exploration of other projects, the most notable of which was her collaboration with rocker Robert Plant. Kraus and Union Station, comprising of Barry Bales, Jerry Douglas, Ron Block, and Dan Tyminski, named their new album Paper Airplane after a tune written especially for Krauss by Nashville songwriter Robert Lee Castleman.
Thursday, April 21, 2011: Renegade filmmaker Morgan Spurlock joins Bob in studio to talk about his latest feature targeting the advertising industry, Pom Wonderful Presents: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold. His previous documentaries are Supersize Me, Where in the World Is Osama Bin Laden, and Freakonomics. And, yes, Pom Wonderful did actually sponsor this new film. Then, Bob talks with Judith Shulevitz about her book The Sabbath World: Glimpses of a Different Order of Time. Shulevitz’s book is an exploration of the Sabbath in American history as well as a personal meditation on sacred time in our accelerating lives. Her book is now out in paperback.
Friday, April 22, 2011: Doyle McManus, Washington columnist for the Los Angeles Times joins Bob to talk about politics and other news. Then, by age 15, Bill Hicks already knew he would spend his life as a standup comedian. Less than twenty years later, he would pass away of cancer, but in the interim Bill Hicks made his name as one of the boldest and most original comics of all time. Known as a “comedian’s comedian,” no topic was too close or too weighty for Hicks to tackle: his own family, America, religion and eventually consciousness itself. Paul Thomas and Matt Harlock honor Hicks in their film, American: The Bill Hicks Story. Then, in this week’s installment of our ongoing series This I Believe, we hear the essay of Connie Spittler. Many people celebrate Earth Day every year, but the Earth itself measures time differently than we do. There’s a slow pace, a vastness of time, in the natural world that’s difficult for us to comprehend. Spittler finds solace in that impossibly long time span, when she gazes on the Catalinas Mountains in Tucson. Seasons change, good times and bad times come and go, and still the mountains remain, blushing pink in the sunset of every day.