Bob Edwards Weekend Highlights – September 3-4, 2011
HOUR ONE:
John Madden was nominated for an Academy Award for directing Shakespeare in Love. For his latest film, he directs an all-star cast that includes Helen Mirren, Tom Wilkinson, and Sam Worthington. The Debt is based on the 2007 Israeli film of the same name and the story follows three secret agents who revisit an old mission.
We remember folklorist, author and investigative historian Stetson Kennedy. In the 1940s, Kennedy infiltrated the Ku Klux Klan, funneling information about the group to the FBI and the writers of the Superman radio program. The result was a four-episode series in which Superman took on the Klan. Details of Klan rituals, code words and secret handshakes were written into the Superman scripts. Kennedy went on to write a number of books dealing with human rights. Stetson Kennedy died last weekend at the age of 94.
In this week’s installment of our series This I Believe, we hear the essay of Jeff Nixa. Everybody told him not to buy a house in a bad neighborhood but he moved in anyway. The new neighbors welcomed his family, broke bread together, shared stories and became friends. In his “bad” neighborhood, Nixa says he found a real community, full of diversity and energy.
HOUR TWO:
New Yorker executive editor Dorothy Wickenden didn’t have to look far for the subject of her book Nothing Daunted: The Unexpected Education of Two Society Girls in the West. In it, she charts the tale of her grandmother Dorothy Woodruff, who, along with her best friend Rosamond Underwood, traveled from the society world of Auburn, New York, to the disappearing frontier in northwestern Colorado to teach school.
English musician Dave Stewart says he’s more of a collaborator than a producer, even though that’s his title on numerous albums. After a romantic split with Annie Lennox, the two formed the Eurythmics and since then, he created Nelson Mandela’s 46664 Project, and worked with Mick Jagger, Bono, George Harrison, Bob Dylan, Tom Petty, Eric Clapton and many more. His most recent album (and first solo project since 1995) is The Blackbird Diaries and features duets with Stevie Nicks, Martina McBride, and Colbie Caillat.