The Bob Edwards Show, December 24-28, 2012
Monday, December 24, 2012: It’s Christmas Eve and your last chance to make a good impression on Santa. So we present you with Bob’s classic interview with etiquette expert Judith Martin about her book Miss Manners’ Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behavior. Next, a look at faith. Bob talks with Karen Armstrong, author of the blockbuster A History of God and one of the world’s most highly regarded scholars on comparative religion. Then, the fabulously witty Marshall Chapman reflects on Christmas in a special commentary.
Tuesday, December 25, 2012: Starting today we highlight Bob’s best interviews of the year and we start with blues guitarist and singer Buddy Guy. His father bought him his first guitar, a “worn-in instrument with two strings,” for $4.35. Since then, Buddy Guy says life “ain’t never been the same.” Bob talks to Guy about his music and journey from Lettsworth, Louisiana. Guy’s book is titled When I Left Home: My Story.
Wednesday, December 26, 2012: We continue with the Best of 2012, moving from music to sports. For nearly fifty years, Frank Deford has been dissecting the sporting world and interviewing some of the most famous and important athletes and coaches around. He has covered just about every sport, in every medium, and he wrote about it all in his memoir, Over Time: My Life as a Sportswriter. Then another of Bob’s old friends, John Feinstein, talks about golf, basketball, football and tennis – all of which he covered in this year’s One on One: Behind the Scenes with the Greats in the Game. Feinstein is famously the author of A Season on the Brink, the bestselling sports book of all time.
Thursday, December 27, 2012: It’s more of the Best of 2012 and today we focus on notable lives. First is Bob’s interview with Penny Marshall. She was the first female director to make a movie grossing over $100 million but she calls her successful Hollywood career a “happy accident.” Marshall wrote her memoir this year, talking about playing the tough-talking tomboy in the sitcom “Laverne and Shirley” and telling funny stories about her famous friends. It’s called My Mother Was Nuts. Then, Rodriguez. He is an American folk singer discovered in Detroit in the late 1960s. His music received praise from critics but sales bombed and he dropped off the scene mysteriously, only to unknowingly become the voice of justice in apartheid South Africa. Filmmaker Malik Bendjelloul captured the story in this year’s documentary Searching for Sugar Man, which is the subject of lots of Oscar buzz.
Friday, December 28, 2012: Our week-long celebration of the Best of 2012 concludes today with our regular news analyst, LA Times columnist Doyle McManus, looking back at the year that was. Next, we bring back Clay Johnson, one of the architects of Barack Obama’s wildly successful online campaign. This year Johnson wrote an analysis of our media culture and found that we not only suffer from information overload, but we have also lost the ability to filter all the data we ingest every day. He laid out the problem and offered solutions in his book The Information Diet: a Case for Conscious Consumption. And lastly, this year’s final installment of our ongoing series This I Believe.