The Bob Edwards Show, April 9-13, 2012
Monday, April 9, 2012: In the field of critical-creativity, author Jonah Lehrer is a superstar. His latest book Imagine: How Creativity Works reveals the importance of “embracing the rut, thinking like a child, daydreaming productively, and adopting an outsider’s perspective” when approaching new tasks and difficult problems. Bob talks to Lehrer about his book and the future of creative science. Then, Bob speaks with alternative-country singer-songwriter Todd Snider about the changing face of Nashville and about the music from his latest album, Agnostic Hymns & Stoner Fables.
Tuesday, April 10, 2012: Long before the adventures of Thelma and Louise, Marie and Hortense Mancini bucked every social convention of seventeenth-century Europe. Strategically married off by their uncle, Cardinal Mazarin, in the court of Louis XIV at Versailles, the Mancini Sisters abandoned their wifely positions, took to the road, and used the post coach service to travel across Europe. They gambled, dressed and passed as men, and soon became a sensation for their scandalous behavior. Elizabeth C. Goldsmith writes a vibrant biography of these two free spirits —feminists before the term existed— who refused to be constrained by the morals, mores, and hypocrisies of their age. Then, writer Megan Mayhew Bergman moved with her husband to Vermont to help run the family veterinary clinic in 2009. A stand-out from the writing programs at Duke, Bennington, and Breadloaf, Bergman has used her years in Vermont to write a beautiful collection of short stories titled Birds of a Lesser Paradise.
Wednesday, April 11, 2012: Today’s music studios are chock full of high-end audio equipment, and the rooms are specially engineered for the best acoustics. But for nearly 30 years, some of our most iconic recordings came out of a humble military surplus Quonset Hut set up on Nashville’s Music Row. Bob talks to musician Chuck Mead, who has just released an album of classic country songs that he recorded in the original Quonset Hut, which has been restored as a studio. Also joining us is music journalist and filmmaker Craig Havighurst, who produced a companion documentary about the Quonset Hut. Their new CD/DVD package is called Back at the Quonset Hut. Then, when David Finland was 21 years old, his mother Glen tried to teach him to use the Metro in Washington, DC. If her autistic son could learn the train system, then she figured he could get a job and if he could get a job, then he could move out, and if he could move out, then maybe her marriage to David’s father could get the jumpstart it needed. Glen Finland shares their bittersweet and humorous stories in Next Stop: a Memoir of Family.
Thursday, April 12, 2012: Ray Bonner has been a staff writer at The New Yorker and a prize-winning investigative reporter for the New York Times. He’s taught and practiced law and served as both a prosecutor and a defense attorney and he has just written Anatomy of Injustice: A Murder Case Gone Wrong, about the wrongful capital conviction of Edward Elmore. Then, Bob talks to Marion Jacobson, an ethnomusicologist and accordionist, about her book Squeeze This! A Cultural History of the Accordion in America. It’s the first history of the piano accordion to trace the evolution of the instrument from its invention in 19th century Vienna to its inclusion in nearly every style of American music today – from polka, Cajun and klezmer to Tejano, classical and rock n’ roll.
Friday, April 13, 2012: Doyle McManus, Washington columnist for the Los Angeles Times joins Bob to discuss the latest political news. Next, on April 15th, 1912, the “unsinkable” Titanic, the world’s most luxurious ocean liner, shocked the world by sinking on its maiden voyage from England to New York City. Historian and best-selling author of Unsinkable: The Full Story of the RMS Titanic Daniel Allen Butler looks back on the 100 year anniversary of this disaster. Then, in this week’s installment of our ongoing series This I Believe, we hear the essay of Sabrina Dubik. Children are told not to talk to strangers as a way to keep them safe. But adults who keep quiet around strangers aren’t safer — they’re more isolated. Dubik is a college student and a part- time waitress who used to chit chat with customers, but nothing more. But when an elderly man became a regular, their conversations deepened, and they became friends. Dubik says the experience taught her that life can be much more enjoyable if she engages in friendly conversations with strangers.