The Bob Edwards Show, July 22-26, 2013
Monday, July 22, 2013: Bob talks with commentator and SiriusXM host Michelangelo Signorile about the launch of SiriusXM’s new progressive talk channel driven by veteran activists. Signorile is an author and longtime advocate for gay rights who is a proponent of the controversial practice of “outing.” Starting July 22nd he will host a daily afternoon call-in show on SiriusXM Progress, channel 127. Then, in 2010, Bob spoke with singer-songwriter Meg Hutchinson about her album The Living Side. On the album is a song called “Gatekeeper” about Sergeant Kevin Briggs of the California Highway Patrol. For years, Briggs has worked on the Golden Gate Bridge, talking hundreds of people out of jumping to their deaths. Bob talks with both Meg and Kevin about the song and Kevin’s work.
Tuesday, July 23, 2013: It was 40 years ago this year that readers first met the fearless adventurer, marine engineer, and government agent Dirk Pitt in author Clive Cussler’s The Mediterranean Caper. A copy writer by day, Cussler started writing at night to keep himself company while his wife worked a nightshift. This best-selling author’s most recent book is Zero Hour, the 9th installment of his “Numa Files” series. Then, in the late 1950s and early 60s, Nat King Cole released three ground-breaking Spanish language albums and became instantly beloved by many Latin Americans for helping to bring their language and beats to an American audience. Now his daughter is following in his footsteps with Natalie Cole en Espanol. Cole felt inspired to make this album not only because of her father’s connection with the music but also because her life-saving kidney donor was Latino. Natalie Cole speaks with Bob about the experience of undergoing a kidney transplant and her special relationship with the donor’s family, as well as her family’s long commitment to bilingual music.
Wednesday, July 24, 2013: Rafe Esquith has taught at Hobart Elementary School in Los Angeles for more than 25 years and is the only teacher to have been awarded the president’s National Medal of the Arts. Almost all of his students live below the poverty line and are from immigrant families, with none speaking English as a first language. However, his fifth-grade students consistently score in the top 5 to 10-percent of the country in standardized tests. Esquith’s latest book is titled Real Talk for Real Teachers: Advice for Teachers from Rookies to Veterans: “No Retreat, No Surrender!” Then, Michael Cera is known to film and television audiences as a lovable, if overly awkward young man. In the new film, Crystal Fairy, Cera plays against type as an American visitor to Chile whose main interest is sampling the local offerings in the drug world. Bob talks with Cera and director Sebastian Silva about the film, and its unlikely path to existence.
Thursday, July 25, 2013: Ten years ago, Richard Rubin set out to interview every last living World War I veteran. There were only a few dozen left, aged 101 to 113. The result is a unique tribute to the men who shared their memories and heart-wrenching stories. Rubin’s book is titled, The Last of the Doughboys: The Forgotten Generation and Their Forgotten World War. Then, Steve Winick and Nancy Groce slink into the studio and cast a sideways glance at our venerated host, toting recordings about “friends and enemies” from the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress.
Friday, July 26, 2013: Doyle McManus, Washington columnist for the Los Angeles Times joins Bob to discuss the latest political news. Next, after the government of Indonesia was overtaken by a military regime in 1965, more than one million people were executed by gangsters and paramilitary forces. Many of those killers are still alive today and in the documentary film, The Act of Killing, they describe and reenact their gruesome mass-murders with pride. Josh Oppenheimer is the filmmaker who captured the incredible footage. Now too risky for him to return, he says, “Indonesia is a country where the military is still overwhelmingly powerful; where the government and big Western corporations use thugs to enforce oppressive labor conditions or to seize people’s land or to break strikes; and where there’s still political censorship.” Finally, the latest installment of our ongoing series This I Believe.