THE BOB EDWARDS SHOW, March 25-29, 2013
Monday, March 25, 2013: Two years ago, Kenneth Pattengale and Joey Ryan joined forces to create the band named The Milk Carton Kids. Described as “Gillian Welch and David Rawlings-meets-Simon and Garfunkel with a splash of the Everly Brothers,” Pattengale and Ryan sit with Bob to talk about their music, unusual business model (their first two albums are available for free on their web site) and intriguing name.
Tuesday, March 26, 2013: Rajiv Chandrasekaran is a senior correspondent and associate editor of The Washington Post where he has been since 1994. His two books are Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq’s Green Zone and Little America: the War Inside the War for Afghanistan. He’ll discuss the promises and perils within those two warzones and the remarkably slow progress of the F-35 fighter jet. Then, in 1948, 70,000 books were either “collected” or “stolen” from Palestinian homes by Israeli soldiers. Documentarian Benny Brunner investigates and challenges the sequence of events in his film The Great Book Robbery.
Wednesday, March 27, 2013: First-time director Wayne Blair based his film, The Sapphires, on the true story of a 1960s girl group from Australia who were unexpectedly hired to entertain U.S. troops serving in Vietnam. The Sapphires premiered at Cannes last year and at this year’s AACTA, the Australian equivalent of the Academy Awards, won 11 awards, including Best Film. Then, Bob talks with former NPR colleagues Gwen Thompkins and Sean Collins about their new public radio show called Music Inside Out. Thompkins hosts the program from New Orleans and Collins produces it in St. Louis.
Thursday, March 28, 2013: Everyone knows that the Bible is the top best-selling book in history. In part, that status is achieved through a shotgun spread of disparate versions, translations and adaptations for all walks of life – and at least two dozen retellings for children, some with superheroes. Most of those versions are not based on new scholarship, but that was the genesis of “The New New Testament: A Bible for the 21st Century Combining Traditional and Newly Discovered Texts.” Bob talks with the editor, Hal Taussig, a pastor and professor who teaches at Union Theological Seminary in New York. Then, Gene Weingarten is so good at what he does that he’s won a Pulitzer… twice. As a feature writer for the Washington Post, Weingarten muses about whatever strikes his fancy. One of his most well-known pieces was about a stunt he set up with the violin virtuoso, Joshua Bell. Weingarten stationed Bell outside of a busy metro stop to see if anyone noticed. Hardly anyone did. Weingarten talks with Bob about that and many of his other memorable stories from a new collection titled The Fiddler in the Subway.
Friday, March 29, 2013: Doyle McManus, Washington columnist for the Los Angeles Times, joins Bob to discuss the latest political news. Next, 19 years after they worked together on Muriel’s Wedding (1994), director PJ Hogan (My Best Friend’s Wedding) and actress Toni Collett are reunited for Hogan’s new film Mental. Loosely based on Hogan’s own up-bringing, Mental is about a husband who commits his wife to a mental institute and hires a hitchhiker (Collett) to care for his 5 daughters. Finally, the latest installment of our ongoing series This I Believe.