HOUR ONE:
Twenty years ago this weekend, Timothy McVeigh set off a truck bomb at the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. 168 people were killed in that shocking and tragic event, and thousands of lives were changed forever. Bob visits the site and talks with Bud Welch who lost his daughter in the blast. We also hear from Amy Petty who survived the explosion and was rescued from the rubble that day. Petty worked for the Federal Employees Credit Union, which lost nearly two-thirds of its employees in the bombing.
HOUR TWO:
On April 18, 1906, an earthquake and the resulting fires nearly destroyed San Francisco. To mark the anniversary, Bob talks with Simon Winchester, author of A Crack in the Edge of the World. Winchester is a former journalist and an Oxford trained geologist. He uses both disciplines to good effect in explaining plate tectonics and fault lines and painting a picture of early 20th century California.
Then we move to the other end of the United States to talk about another book by Simon Winchester. He’s made a career of unearthing the fascinating stories of things many of us take for granted. For example, Winchester’s book about the Earth’s second largest body of water. It’s titled Atlantic: Great Sea Battles, Heroic Discoveries, Titanic Storms, and a Vast Ocean of a Million Stories.