Dan Gediman, General Lucius Clay and This I Believe

Each week Bob is joined by Dan Gediman, the Executive Director of This I Believe, Inc. to discuss one of the original essays from the 1950s radio series. This week’s featured essay is by General Lucius D. Clay. During World War II, he was Director of Materiel for the Army and then Deputy Director for War Mobilization and Reconversion. After the war, Clay was U.S. Military Governor of Germany and he ordered and organized the massive air-lift to feed people in Soviet-blockaded Berlin. In his 1950s essay, Clay says that he believes freedom is a privilege given by God, and one that must be carefully guarded by all citizens. And he calls upon Americans to make this country one that provides equal opportunities for all. Click here to read a transcript and to hear the audio of General Lucius D. Clay’s “This I Believe” essay. 

Crude

By Cristy Meiners, producer

I was a little like director Joe Berlinger when I was first approached with doing the documentary Crude for the show: I knew it was a good topic, but I had so many other things on my plate at the time that I initially refused the interview.  But, the publicist persisted (which, I have to say, rarely works), I looked again, and realized that no matter what else I was working on, I HAD to fit Joe in for an interview.  While yes, Crude is a film for festivals and the theater, this is no idle entertainment, however engaging.  It is, most basically, a remarkable piece of investigative journalism, with a crew who turned their attention to both sides of a 16 year legal battle that will continue to rage for possibly another 10.  The case, called by many the “Amazon Chernobyl,” is between 30,000 Ecuadorians and the U.S. oil company Chevron. The plaintiffs claim that Texaco, which merged with Chevron in 2001, spent 30 years polluting an area about the size of the Rhode Island in the Amazon rainforest, otherwise known as the “Earth’s Lung.”  They allege that because of this pollution the area has seen an increase in birth defects, cancer, leukemia, and other health problems.

Joe Berlinger (who also directed and produced Metallica: Some Kind of Monster and Brother’s Keeper) interviewed not just the plaintiffs and their supporters (including Trudie Styler, global humanitarian and wife of musician Sting) but also members of Chevron’s legal team, their senior scientific advisor, and other Chevron-friendly voices.  Of course, it’s not easy to like or trust these people, since they seem to have BIG OIL stamped across their foreheads, and the evidence Berlinger digs up against them is not only often damning, it also shows just how crude a case like this can get.

Click here to go to the film’s website.

Then click on “now playing” to find out where you can see Crude.

Click here to learn more about Chevron’s official view of the lawsuit.

To learn more about the other side of the suit, click here.

And note the clever name of the website. 

Laura Miller's Book List

Here’s the list of books discussed by Salon.com book critic Laura Miller, starting with the one she suggested would make a good book club selection: 

Michelle Huneven: Blame

A S Byatt: The Children’s Book

Jonathan Lethem: Chronic City

Lev Grossman: The Magicians: A Novel

THE BOB EDWARDS SHOW – November 9-13, 2009

Monday, November 9, 2009

 In her new book, The Year of the Flood, Margaret Atwood has created a dystopian world that can be read as a commentary on religion, politics, science and the environment.  Atwood has authored 15 books of poetry but she’s best-known for her novels including The Handmaid’s Tale, The Blind Assassin, and Oryx and Crake.  Then, Peter Yarrow, one third of the iconic folk troupe, Peter, Paul & Mary, has turned from singing to picture books.  First, there was the illustrated version of the classic song “Puff, the Magic Dragon,” and now he continues the idea with “Day is Done.” In addition to children’s books, Yarrow devotes lots of his time to a non-profit called Operation Respect.

Tuesday, November 10, 2009  

Writer Barbara Kingsolver is one of America’s most beloved and respected novelists.   She won the National Book Prize of South Africa in 1998 for The Poisonwood Bible and in 2000, President Bill Clinton awarded Kingsolver the National Humanities Medal.  Her new book, The Lacuna, is Kingsolver’s first novel in 9 years.  Then, another 9 year hiatus: the swing-klezmer-gypsy jazz band with the kitchen-sink approach, Squirrel Nut Zippers has released their first live album.  “Lost At Sea” was recorded last year in Brooklyn’s Southpaw club, and features hits like Put a Lid On It, Blue Angel, and Hell.  Squirrel Nut Zippers is best known for their 1996 platinum album Hot.

Wednesday, November 11, 2009 

We visit the Army’s billion-dollar National Training Center and meet some of the people who help prepare our troops for combat in Iraq and Afghanistan.  Covering more than a thousand square miles of California’s Mojave Desert, Ft. Irwin and the NTC includes realistic mock villages populated by role playing Iraqi nationals and military wives who aim to give the soldiers a taste of what’s to come overseas.  We also witness a group of Army reservists training in a “trauma lane.”  Amid IED blasts and sniper fire, the untested medics have to deal with role players pretending to be the enemy, frightened villagers demanding their attention and actual amputees who act like they just lost their legs in the explosion.  Their commander, Sergeant First Class Bertran Schultz, describes the action and gives a blow by blow account of what his men are getting right and wrong.

Thursday, November 12, 2009  

Before Sonia Sotomayor and Hillary Clinton, there was Helen Gahagan Douglas, a pioneer of American politics. Douglas was the first Democratic woman elected to Congress and she ran for the US Senate in 1950 against Richard Nixon. Nixon called her “pink right down to her underwear.” Douglas retaliated with the nickname “Tricky Dick” after Nixon’s vicious smear tactics assured her defeat.  Journalist Sally Denton has written the first biography of Douglas. It’s called The Pink Lady: The Many Lives Of Helen Gahagan Douglas.  Then, from the loveable bartender known to the world as “Woody Boyd” in the television series Cheers, to the off-color publisher of Hustler Magazine, Larry Flynt, Woody Harrelson has proven to be a highly diverse actor for more than twenty years.  In his most recent film, Harrelson is teamed with actor Ben Foster as members of the Army’s Casualty Notification service – representatives of the military who must deliver the sad news of fallen soldiers to the families.  Harrelson, Foster and writer-director Oren Moverman discuss the film, “The Messenger,” and their experiences making movies.

Friday, November 13, 2009  

David Broder of The Washington Post joins Bob to talk politics.  Next, Tom Russell is a visual artist, an author and an accomplished musician.  He’s also a songwriter whose tunes have been covered by the likes of Johnny Cash, Guy Clark and Ramblin’ Jack Elliott.  But Russell isn’t just an artist: he holds a masters degree in  Criminology, he taught in Nigeria during a civil war, and while working as a cab driver in Queens, a chance encounter with Robert Hunter of the Grateful Dead kick-started his return to the music business. Tom Russell joins Bob to discuss his experiences and to play some tunes from the new album “Blood and Candle Smoke.”  Then, in this week’s installment of our ongoing series This I Believe, Bob talks with executive director Dan Gediman about the essay from Barry Bingham, Sr. He was the long-time owner, editor and publisher of The Courier-Journal and The Louisville Times. His family’s leadership of the newspapers as well as radio and TV properties in Kentucky led to numerous journalism awards including multiple Pulitzer Prizes.

This Weekend

Bob Edwards Weekend Highlights – November 7-8, 2009

HOUR ONE

Paul D. Miller, aka DJ Spooky That Subliminal Kid, is a conceptual artist, spoken word artist, writer and musician whose work has appeared in the Whitney Biennial, the Andy Warhol Museum and the Village Voice.  His video, “Rebirth of a Nation,” ran at the Lincoln Center Festival and the Acropolis in Athens, Greece.  Last year he traveled to Antarctica for a new, large-scale multimedia performance piece.  Miller discusses those projects, including his book titled Sound Unbound, and his most recent album, “The Secret Song,” which he describes as “meditation on hip-hop and electronic music’s relationship to philosophy, economics and the science of sound.”

In this week’s installment of our ongoing series This I Believe, Bob talks with executive director Dan Gediman about the essay from General Lucius D. Clay.  During World War II, Gen. Clay was Director of Material for the Army and then Deputy Director for War Mobilization and Reconversion. After the war he was U.S. Military Governor of Germany. Clay ordered and organized the massive air-lift to feed people in Soviet-blockaded Berlin.

HOUR TWO

 For three years, director Joe Berlinger gathered the footage for his new documentary Crude.  In the classic battle between the haves and the have-nots, Crude examines both sides of the legal case known as the “Amazon Chernobyl.”  30,000 residents of the jungles of Ecuador claimed that the American oil giant Chevron contaminated an area roughly the size of Rhode Island, resulting in high levels of cancer, birth defects, and other health problems.  Crude was an official selection at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival.

Salon.com book critic Laura Miller shares her favorite new books for fall.

Jonathan Lethem describes his new novel this way: “It’s set on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, it’s strongly influenced by Saul Bellow, Philip K. Dick, Charles G. Finney and Hitchcock’s “Vertigo,” and it concerns a circle of friends including a faded child-star actor, a cultural critic, a hack ghost-writer of autobiographies, and a city official.  And it’s long and strange.” Chronic City is Lethem’s seventh novel.  His previous novels include the best-sellers, Fortress of Solitude and Motherless Brooklyn.