The Bob Edwards Show, March 31 – April 4, 2014
Monday, March 31, 2014: Bob talks to former NBA player Len Elmore about the business of college sports, and how it’s changed since he was a student. Elmore graduated from the University of Maryland in l974, where he was a three-time all-conference player, then spent a decade in the NBA. After his basketball career ended, he went to Harvard Law School and worked as a prosecutor. Elmore says college players are bigger, stronger and train so much harder than he did. He thinks the whole system of college sports is out of balance, with players earning millions of dollars for the coaches and schools, while their athletic scholarships don’t even cover the full cost of education. Then, it is not new news that Americans take less vacation and work more hours than any other country. But what is all of this work doing to us? Washington Post reporter Brigid Schulte’s new book, Overwhelmed: Work, Love, and Play When No One Has the Time, looks at the facts behind our culture of busyness.
Tuesday, April 1, 2014: On this April Fool’s Day, we feature two of the sharpest minds to ever perform in comedy. First, Marc Maron toiled for years without finding wide appreciation before starting the “WTF” podcast in 2009. Since then, he’s amassed a legion of devoted fans, kickstarted his comedy career, and nabbed TV and book deals. He speaks with Bob about his career and the book Attempting Normal, out in paperback next week. Then, we’ll pay tribute to a brilliant comedic mind who died young, but not before influencing a generation of comics including Marc Maron. American: The Bill Hicks Story is a film about the biting and expansive work of the Texas-born comic, made by documentarians Matt Harlock and Paul Thomas. The film is now available on DVD.
Wednesday, April 2, 2014: Errol Morris spent 33 hours with Donald Rumsfeld to make his new film, The Unknown Known. But unlike The Fog of War, his previous documentary about a former Secretary of Defense, the star of this film is unapologetic. Morris says that the movie he made with Rumsfeld is vastly different fromThe Fog of War: “It is a character study of a very different kind of character: it is about a mind that appears to be open but may in fact be locked up like a safe.”
Thursday, April 3, 2014: As fans gather to watch the NCAA basketball championships and obsess over their brackets, Bob Edwards takes a look at the treatment of athletes in big-time college sports and the impact of big-money sports programs on higher education. Bob’s investigation features SiriusXM’s own Dave Zirin and includes the voices of Len Elmore and other former players; college officials like University of West Virginia president Gordon Gee, who had a controversial tenure at Ohio State; and journalists who have covered college sports, including John Feinstein. It’s an hour-long look behind the hoopla, called Dropping the Ball: The Shady Side of Big-Time College Sports.
Friday, April 4, 2014: Doyle McManus, Washington columnist for the Los Angeles Times, joins Bob to discuss the latest political news. Then, two-time Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee – for his work with The Byrds and Crosby, Stills & Nash – David Crosby releases his first solo album in over 20 years. Producer Glyn Johns callsCroz the “best solo record Crosby has made, without a doubt.”
Bob,
I understand that as part of your April 3 show, you will be hosting Prof. Jay Smith and Mary Willingham of the University of North Carolina. I hope you will listen to their claims respectfully but also treat them with appropriate journalistic integrity. Many of their claims about student-athletes at the University of North Carolina have been called into question. For example, Ms. Willingham initially claimed that 70% of a 183-athlete sample was unable to read at a high school level, but the university has disputed that figure and Ms. Willingham has been unwilling to release any substantiating data. In addition, Ms. Willingham initially claimed that a plagiarized, 148-word paper on Rosa Parks earned an A-. She has subsequently disclosed that the paper did not earn an A-, was not the final assessment in the class, was more than eight years old, and was composed on her home computer in her presence. She has not disclosed what grade the paper earned, how it was treated in the overall assessment, or even if it was submitted at all.
Other ethical concerns about both guests have been raised in many places. A current athletics tutor at UNC has raised concerns here: http://coachingthemind.blogspot.com/. The University of North Carolina also disputes the research of both guests. I hope you will be mindful of the significant disagreement regarding the factuality of these guests' claims as you interview them for your program.