The Bob Edwards Show, October 8-12, 2012
Monday, October 8, 2012: All this week, we’re celebrating our 8th anniversary by bringing back some of Bob’s best conversations. We kick off our celebrations with Bob’s conversation with Jim Lehrer and his former co-host Robert MacNeil. MacNeil began the nightly news report in 1975 with Lehrer as the Washington correspondent. It evolved into the NewsHour with both men hosting until MacNeil retired in 1995. Jim Lehrer retired last year after 36 years. Then, Bob talks to public radio treasure and host of “A Prairie Home Companion” Garrison Keillor.
Tuesday, October 9, 2012: Our 8th anniversary celebration continues. This time we replay Bob’s interview with singer-songwriter Jimmy Buffett. Like a pied piper, but with a guitar, Buffett leads his Coral Reefer Band and his legion of fans known as Parrot Heads. Bob visits with Buffett in the state of mind called Margaritaville to talk about the song with the same title, his many commercial enterprises, the SiriusXM satellite radio channel and about his connection to New Orleans and the Gulf Coast.
Wednesday, October 10, 2012: To mark our anniversary, we dip into the archive to bring back Bob’s interview with Dame Helen Mirren, known as “the Queen” thanks to her Oscar winning role playing Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II. Mirren’s autobiography In the Frame: My Life in Words and Pictures chronicles her remarkable career on the stage and in film. Then, Bob talks with director Kenneth Branagh and actor Michael Caine about their film “Sleuth.” It’s a remake of the 1972 thriller in which Caine played the younger of the only two characters in the movie opposite Sir Laurence Olivier.
Thursday, October 11, 2012: We celebrate our 8th anniversary by replaying some of Bob’s favorite music interviews. First, actor, comedian, writer and musician Steve Martin talks with Bob about his second album Rare Bird Alert, a follow-up to 2009’s Grammy-winning The Crow. Martin is joined on the album by his backing band The Steep Canyon Rangers, with special guests The Dixie Chicks and Paul McCartney singing a couple of Martin’s original tunes. Then, Bob talks to country outlaw Merle Haggard about his 45 years in the music business and how he hasn’t let himself become a prisoner of success. From doing a 180 on his most famous song, “Okie from Muskogee,” to walking out on Ed Sullivan, to admitting he dyes his hair and wears dentures, Haggard’s life is about refusing to submit. At the2006 Grammy’s, Haggard received the Recording Academy’s Lifetime Achievement Award
Friday, October 12, 2012: Today we conclude our show’s 8th anniversary celebration. We start with Doyle McManus, Washington columnist for the Los Angeles Times. Doyle joins Bob to discuss the latest political news. Next, Yo Yo Ma is perhaps the world’s most famous classical musician. Bob talks with him about his celebrity, his favorite parts of the classical repertoire, and why he’s expanded into world music in recent years. Then, in this week’s installment of our ongoing series This I Believe, we hear the essay of Scott Saalman. As children, our blueprints for love come from our parents. We watch how they show their love to us and each other, and those experiences shape our expectations of marriage. As a child, Saalman watched his parents’ kiss goodbye as his father left for work every day. He was a swing shift worker at a factory, and so the kiss happened at different times, depending on his work assignment. But it always happened. Saalman still holds that clockwork show of devotion as an ideal of love.