The Bob Edwards Show, August 13-17, 2012
Monday, August 13, 2012: Writer Uzodinma Iweala follows up his critically acclaimed novel Beasts of No Nation with a nonfiction account of the AIDS crisis in Nigeria titled Our Kind of People: A Continent’s Challenge, A Country’s Hope. He interviewed scores of people whose lives have been touched by the disease. Then, writer and illustrator Daniel Pinkwater ends today’s show by recommending a few of his favorites from children’s book illustrator Calef Brown.
Tuesday, August 14, 2012: Iranian graphic novelist and director Marjane Satrapi rose to fame following the release of her 2007 autobiographical film Persepolis. Persepolis won the Jury Prize at Cannes and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Animated Feature that year. Satrapi’s new film is Chicken With Plums, a French-language film about love, music and life. It opens this weekend. Then, after yesterday’s glowing recommendation from Daniel Pinkwater, Bob talks with children’s book illustrator and writer Calef Brown. Brown’s work looks a little like bebop jazz sounds: bold and colorful, with a logic all of its own. This New York Times best-selling illustrator’s most recent book is Pirateria: The Wonderful Plunderful Pirate Emporium.
Wednesday, August 15, 2012: Today is the 100th anniversary of Julia Childs’ birth and her grandnephew, Alex Prud’homme, joins Bob to mark the occasion. Prud’homme completed his aunt’s bestselling memoir, My Life in France, after her death in 2001. Then, Bob speaks with Chuck Klosterman about his second novel, now out in paperback. In The Visible Man, Klosterman explores the titillation of peeping into private lives.
Thursday, August 16, 2012: Today we remember humorist David Rakoff. He was a public radio favorite who embraced his pessimism and whose sardonic wit made life’s everyday indignities funny. He died last week at age 47. Then, Bob talks sports with John Feinstein, Washington Post columnist and co-host of SiriusXM’s “Beyond the Brink” (Mad Dog Radio, channel 86).
Friday, August 17, 2012: Doyle McManus, Washington columnist for the Los Angeles Times, joins Bob to discuss the latest political news. Next, documentary filmmaker Anthony Baxter. When the Scottish government sidestepped laws and sold land in a protected wilderness area to celebrity real estate mogul Donald Trump, Baxter started filming. He followed Trump as he worked to build a high-end golf course and resort on the delicate sand dunes. Baxter’s award-winning film You’ve Been Trumped opens today in L.A. Then, in this week’s installment of our ongoing series This I Believe, we hear the essay of Bob Barret. Each of us has private hopes and desires, thoughts and feelings. Sometimes, our public personalities are a close match to our private selves. Other times, they are in conflict. When he was 48 years old, Barret made the difficult choice to tell his family that he is gay. He worried about hurting his family, but he decided that he had to be honest about his true self.