Bob Edwards Weekend
May 28-29, 2011
HOUR ONE
In the May 26 issue of Rolling Stone, writer Matt Taibbi minces no words: “Goldman Sachs should stand trial.” In The People vs. Goldman Sachs, Taibbi synthesizes a recent 650-page report about the Wall Street giant, which was compiled by the Senate Subcommittee on Investigations. Bob talks to Taibbi about how Goldman Sachs defrauded its clients, misled Congress about the fraud while under oath, made off with $12.4 billion in federal bailout dollars – and has avoided going to court for any of it. (Click here to read the article)
Nobody likes to be annoyed but we all seem to enjoy thinking about what annoys us. And while annoyance is one of the most widely experienced of all human emotions, it’s also one of the least studied. In their new book Annoying, NPR science correspondent Joe Palca and Science Friday’s Flora Lichtman explore the science of what bugs us, starting with fingernails on a chalkboard.
In this week’s installment of our ongoing series This I Believe, we hear the essay of Ron Woolley. He honors the memory of his father’s death by stacking rocks on the seashore. Woolley and his father did not see eye-to-eye about everything, including religion. But after he helped scatter his father’s ashes at sea, Woolley says the ocean became special for him, and the rocks he stacks have become his father’s gravestone.
HOUR TWO
Writer Justin Cronin’s 2010 book The Passage took vampire fiction to a literary high with his story of a deadly virus and the young girl who carried the secret to save the world. Named one of the best novels of the year by Time, The Washington Post, Esquire, NPR, and many others, The Passage is now out in paperback.
Bob talks with Tab Benoit, Anders Osborne and Cyril Neville about the music they make as part of the Louisiana super group Voice of the Wetlands All Stars. They also discuss the health of the protective swamps and marshes south of New Orleans a year after the Gulf oil spill. Benoit started the non-profit organization Voice of the Wetlands in 2003. The band’s new CD is titled Box of Pictures.