November 2009
Monday, November 2, 2009
In 1913, Leo Frank, a Jewish factory supervisor from “up North,” was lynched for the murder of 13-year-old Mary Phagan, a child laborer who worked in Frank’s pencil factory. The case remains one of the most complex and compelling in American history. It’s a true murder mystery but framed by the South’s complicated history of bigotry, xenophobia and class prejudice. Ben Loeterman wrote and directed a new PBS documentary that reexamines the story. The People V. Leo Frank airs November 2 at 10PM. Then, Bob talks with the top-selling rock duo of all time, Daryl Hall & John Oates. After more than 40 years of recording together, the Philadelphia musicians have enough songs to fill up a four-CD, 74-crack collection, 28 of them Top 40 hits. The new box set is called, “Do What You Want, Be What You Are: The Music of Daryl Hall and John Oates.”
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
Becoming Human is a three-part special featured as part of PBS’s NOVA science television program. The new series describes the latest research about how humans evolved and how we can better understand our human ancestors. Rick Potts is the Director of the Smithsonian Institution’s Human Origins Program which opens in March 2010 at the National Museum of Natural History, and Graham Townsley is the producer and director of the PBS series. Then, although Israeli singer-songwriter Yasmin Levy’s father passed away when she was an infant, his life’s work lives on through his daughter’s music. Yitzhak Levy was a composer and musicologist who specialized in the preservation of Ladino Sephardic music. Ladino is an ancient and endangered form of Spanish originally spoken by Spanish Jews in the middle ages, and today is spoken by fewer than 200,000 people. Levy’s album “Mano Suave” is her first released in the U.S.
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
Bob asks Susan Davis, lead reporter for the Wall Street Journal’s Washington Wire, about the results of Tuesday’s off-year elections in New Jersey, New York, Virginia, and Maine. Then, 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.
Thursday, November 5, 2009
For nine years, Dr. Julie Holland worked the night shift in the emergency room at Bellevue, the legendary psychiatric hospital in New York City. As the attending physician, Holland was the one-woman front line in charge of assessing and treating some of the city’s most troubled citizens: a naked man found barking like a dog in Times Square, a schizophrenic who begged for an injection of club soda to quiet his voices, a subway conductor who couldn’t get over seeing a woman pushed into the path of his train. Weekends at Bellevue is the title of Dr. Holland’s new book about her life inside and outside of the hospital. Then, entertainment critic David Kipen tells Bob what’s new in theaters.
Friday, November 6, 2009
David Broder of The Washington Post joins Bob to talk politics. Next, “The Men Who Stare At Goats” starring George Clooney, Jeff Bridges and Kevin Spacey is out in theaters today. The movie is based on the book written by British journalist Jon Ronson. It’s a wickedly funny tour of the hush-hush fringes of military intelligence — from experiments in mind control, to the ability to kill a goat by just staring at it. We replay Bob’s 2005 interview with Ronson about his book. Then, 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.
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
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, writer Barbara Kingsolver is one of America’s most beloved and respected novelist. 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.
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
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. Then, the swing-klezmer-gypsy jazz band with the kitchen-sink approach, Squirrel Nut Zippers has just 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.