Bob Edwards Weekend, September 15-16, 2012
HOUR ONE:
Los Angeles Times columnist Doyle McManus joins Bob to talk about the latest political news.
A hundred years ago, US newspapers employed around two thousand editorial cartoonists. Now, there are fewer than 40 full-time staff cartoonists – and their numbers are still declining. Bob talks with Pulitzer prize-winning cartoonists Ann Telnaes (Washington Post) and Matt Wuerker (Politico) about the state of political cartoons and their importance in an election year.
In this week’s installment of our ongoing series This I Believe, we hear the essay of Amelia Baxter-Stoltzfus. As children grow into adults, they try on different roles for themselves, looking for the person they will become. Sometimes parents and siblings find this process jarring, wondering what happened to the person they used to know. Baxter-Stoltzfus used semi-permanent hair dye to create a slightly different personality for just a little while – “the kind that lets you be whoever you want without letting go of how you got there.”
HOUR TWO:
Kristina Rizga is an education writer and her latest article for Mother Jones Magazine is called “Everything You’ve Heard About Failing Schools Is Wrong.” After spending a year in one of the nation’s most diverse public schools, Rizga says attendance at San Francisco’s Mission High is up, dropout rates are falling and college acceptance is “through the roof.” Yet, based on standardized test results, Mission was labeled a “low performing school.”
Matt Bondurant turned no further than the lives of his grandfather and two granduncles for the topic of his 2009 historical novel The Wettest County in the World. They were moonshiners in southwestern Virginia during the 1920s and 30s who fought the law while working with corrupt officials to produce and move their product. Now adapted for the big screen as Lawless, the film tells the story of the Bondurant family’s criminal ways during Prohibition. Bondurant’s newest novel is titled The Night Swimmer.
Bob Edwards Weekend airs on Sirius XM Public Radio (XM 121, Sirius 205) Saturdays from 8-10 AM EST.
Visit Bob Edwards Weekend on PRI’s website to find local stations that air the program.