The Bob Edwards Show, April 1-5, 2013
Monday, April 1, 2013: Financial gurus like Suze Orman and Jim Cramer have no shortage of advice — and products — for their followers. In her new book Pound Foolish, journalist and former financial columnist Helaine Olen calls out some of the biggest names in the business to expose the myths, contradictions and outright lies pedaled by the personal finance industry. Then, in honor of April Fool’s Day and to celebrate Alfred E. Newman’s 12th birthday (again!), MAD magazine’s editor-in-chief John Ficarra talks with Bob about Newman’s place in pop culture, MADs efforts to corrupt the minds of young children, and his nearly 30 years with the magazine.
Tuesday, April 2, 2013: Former crime reporter Brad Parks took a buyout from the Newark (NJ) Star-Ledger in 2008 to become a full time crime fiction author. His reporting informs his novels, and his latest, The Good Cop, deals with “the iron pipeline” – or I-95 – and how illegal guns end up on the streets of cities like Newark, where it’s incredibly difficult to legally obtain a gun. Then, writer James Conaway’s new novel, Nose, takes readers deep into the cloistered wine world of California’s Napa Valley. Conoway is the author of The Big Easy, the nonfiction bestseller Napa: The Story of an American Eden, and others.
Wednesday, April 3, 2013: New York Times reporter Michael Moss won the Pulitzer Prize for his 2010 investigation into the dangers of contaminated meat. Now in a new book, Moss examines how food companies use food science and technology to hook consumers on the foods that are worst for us. He writes about the food laboratories where scientists calculate the “bliss point” of sugary drinks and the “mouth feel” of fat. The book is titled, Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us.
Thursday, April 4, 2013: During her time as Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton logged nearly a million miles hopscotching across the globe. For 300,000 of those miles, Kim Ghattas was along for the ride. She’s a reporter for the BBC and has now written an inside account of Clinton’s time as Secretary of State titled The Secretary: A Journey with Hillary Clinton from Beirut to the Heart of American Power.
Friday, April 5, 2013: Doyle McManus, Washington columnist for the Los Angeles Times, joins Bob to discuss the latest political news. Next, while exploring a remote cave in Eastern Europe in 1993, spelunker Christopher Nicola made an unusual discovery: a chamber that contained clear evidence that 20th-century people had once lived there. For more than a decade Nicola searched for an explanation and finally found one — 30 members of two families had escaped to the cave at the beginning of World War II, just as Hitler’s army was invading Poland. A new documentary titled No Place on Earth tells the story of the Stermer and the Wexler families who lived in the cave for 511 days. Bob speaks with filmmaker Janet Tobias and family member Sonya Dodyk who was just a little girl when she lived in the cave with her family. In 2010, Dodyk and four other survivors returned to the site with their grandchildren. Finally, the latest installment of our ongoing series This I Believe.