The Bob Edwards Show, January 21-25, 2013
Monday, January 21, 2013: In honor of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s birthday we bring back Bob’s conversation with Clarence Jones. Jones served as Dr. King’s attorney and advisor for eight years and helped craft some of King’s most beloved speeches. Then, in 1944 when he was just fifteen years old, Martin Luther King, Jr wrote a speech called “The Negro and the Constitution.” Its existence was known, but no one had compared that early piece of writing to the famous “I Have a Dream” speech until recently. A freshman at Wake Forest University, William Murphy, discovered during his class assignment that that speech was likely the basis for King’s Dream speech delivered on August 28, 1963. John Llewellyn is an Associate Professor of Communication at Wake Forest University who taught that freshman class. He talks about the revelation and its significance to the Civil Rights Movement.
Tuesday, January 22, 2013: From 1942 until 1949, Oak Ridge, Tennessee did not exist on any map. It was a secret city, built and operated by the United States Army as one of the sites of the Manhattan Project. And although at its peak 75,000 people lived there, most had no idea what they were working on until the day the bomb was dropped. There are still plenty of Manhattan Project alumni living in Oak Ridge, and Bob spoke with several of them during a visit. Colleen Black started working as a leak detector when she was just 18-years-old; Bill Wilcox, now the city’s historian, worked as chemist; and Richard Lord arrived 10 days after graduating with an electrical engineering degree.
Wednesday, January 23, 2013: The chief economist for Google says that the field of statistics is turning into a “sexy” discipline. In his new book, Naked Statistics: Stripping the Dread from the Data, Dartmouth professor Charles Wheelen explains how and why that’s changing – and why we all should care about the amount of data growing every year. Then, Ashok Rajamani talks to Bob about his memoir The Day My Brain Exploded: A True Story.
Thursday, January 24, 2013: Pulitzer-Prize winning author Jared Diamond talks to Bob about his 48 years in Papua New Guinea, his interest in tribal culture, and his latest book The World Until Yesterday: What Can We Learn From Traditional Societies? Then, Bob talks sports with veteran sports columnist John Feinstein.
Friday, January 25, 2013: Doyle McManus, Washington columnist for the Los Angeles Times, joins Bob to discuss the latest political news. Then, travel writer Pico Iyer crosses the globe in this very personal exploration of his similarities and life-time connection with writer Graham Greene. Iyer’s book is titled The Man Within My Head and it’s now available in paperback. Finally, the latest installment of our ongoing series This I Believe.