Do you have a favorite conspiracy theory? Sometimes it takes someone with the analytical mind of a great fiction writer to unravel them.
And so it was in 2013 that bestselling author Brad Meltzer published a book called History Decoded, In which he set out to find the truth behind the ten greatest conspiracy theories of all time.
In this 2013 interview Meltzer delves into several popular theories.
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#history #conspiracytheory #JFK #UFOs
About 20 years ago, the New York public library assembled a list of books on the seven deadly sins, one of which, of course, is sloth.
But if you've always been a little fuzzy about exactly what sloth is playwright essayist and satirist Wendy wasserstein to the rescue.
In this 2005 interview Wasserstein explains -- with tongue in cheek -- how to achieve your inner sloth.
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#Humor #Essays #Sevendeadlysins #
Dick Williams guided the Boston Red Sox to the pennant in 1967, the Oakland A's to three championships in the '70s and the San Diego Padres to the National League title in 1984.
Along the way, Williams earned a reputation as a hard driving manager who expected nothing but the highest performances from his teams.
In this 1990 interview Williams talks about his memoir No More Mr. Nice Guy.
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#baseball #MLB #Boston Red Sox #Oakland As
The political turbulence of the 1960s has been well documented. and one name that appears prominently in that story is Tom Hayden.One of the founders of the Students For a Democratic Society, Hayden was also a Freedom Rider in the south, fighting for civil rights, but also became one of the leading young voices against the Vietnam War.
In the historically tumultuous 1968, Hayden was among several high profile demonstrators at the notorious Democratic National Convention in Chicago. They were eventually brought to trial and became known as The Chicago Seven.
In this 1988 interview, Hayden discusses his memoir Reunion.
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#1968 #1960s #Vietnam War #Chicago Seven
Rose Resnick was a talented and successful concert pianist. She also played at clubs, and performed on the radio in the 1930s. She was also a music teacher.
She was also blind. Resnick, who was born in 1906, lost her sight from glaucoma as a child.
Over the rest of her life Resnick became a powerful advocate for the blind. She established the California League of the Handicapped, as well as other organizations for the visually imp[aired.
In this 988.interbiew Resnick talks about her life and her book Dare to Dream.
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#blind #disability #sight #vision
The modern zoo bears little resemblance to those you, or your parents, may remember. The cramped dirty cages that characterized the zoos of a prior era have now been replaced by more open settings that may mimic an animal's natural habitat.
One of the principal architects of that transformation was longtime Columbus Zoo director Jack Hanna. He took over an aging and decrepit facility and turned it into a showplace, attracting thousands of visitors.
In this 1989 interview Hanna discusses his autobiography Monkeys On The Interstate.
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#zoo #animals #wildlife #
Throughout the 1970s and 80s, the most prominent face of the Palestine Liberation Organization, or PLO, was its leader, Yasser Arafat. His was an image that many associated with terrorism and violence
In the early 1990s, the PLO put forth a new spokesperson, A well dressed and articulate woman in her 40s named Hanan Ashrawi. She became well known to American television viewers as a sharp contrast to the Arafat image.
In this1995 interview Ashrawi talks about her autobiography This Side of Peace.
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#Palestine #Palestinians #PLO #MiddleEast
Hot air balloons, or lighter-than-air craft, have been around for centuries. But it wasn't until March 1999 that humans were able to circumnavigate the entire world in a single hot air balloon flight.
The two men who did it were British balloonist Brian Jones and Bertrand Piccard, a Swiss psychiatrist and balloonist. They co-piloted a massive balloon called Breitling Orbiter 3, which launched March 1,1999 from Switzerland and landed in Egypt 19 days and 27,900 miles laer.
In this interview recorded just a few months later, Piccard and Jones talk about their history-making adventure.
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#adventure #balloon #recordbreaking #
No matter where you work, no matter what you do, no matter how long you've done it, there's a good chance you'll be fired someday. Especially in today's economy as employers don't seem to have any loyalty to employees anymore.
Sometimes the situation is so comical, the only way you can get through it is to laugh at it.
Actress and writer Annabelle Gurwitch has been fired. And she knows lots and lots of other people who have been fired. So she gathered their stories in a book called Fired!
In this 2006 interview Gurwitch talks about how she put the book togther.
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#fired #jobs #unemployed #workplace
Most authors would be very, very happy if their books sold half a million copies. Most would be thrilled if their books sold one or two million.
Dean Koontz has sold 500 million books since his first one was published in 1968.
A master of suspense thrillers, with some horror thrown in, Koontz never fails to satisfy readers. His books routinely appear on major bestseller lists.
In this 2004 interview Koontz talks about his writing, and what sprurises him, and his thriller Life Expectancy,
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#fiction #suspense #thriller #
From the age of 12, when she joined the cast of TV’s “General Hospital,” Amber Tamblyn's talent has made her a popular and award-winning actress. But she is also well known for her writing, especially her poetry.
She has actually published seven books, including the 2009 collection Bang Ditto. It was while she was on tour promoting that book that i had a chance to meet her – and to hear what really matters to her in her creative life.
In this 2009 interview, Amber Tamblyn talks about her writing -- and her father's influence.
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#poetry #childactors #soapopera #
As a top ranking career diplomat, Matlock was at the very center of the U.S.-Soviet relationship. He was there for everything from the Cuban missile crisis in 1962 to the Breakup of the Soviet Union almost 30 years later.
In this 2004 interview Matlock discusses his book Reagan And Gorbachev, and reveals the special role played by the keaders' wives.
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#Coldwar #Russia #Diplomacy #Ronaldreagan
Greg Mathis was a juvenile delinquent Growing up in rough Detroit neighborhoods Mathis fell in with the wrong crowd and was arrested several times before he was even 17.
But when he reached a critical turning point, Mathis was able to turn his life around. He got his GED, went on to get a bachelor's degree, and graduated from law school. And passed the bar.
He faced still more obstacles on his way to becoming a popular TV courtroom personality. In fact, only Judge Judy has been on the air longer.
In this 2002 interview Mathis reflects on his life, his career, and the role his mother played.
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#law #judges #Detroit #mothers
There are many reasons someone might be an atheist. For famed magician Penn Jillette, one half of the Penn & Teller magic duo, his atheism results from what he frames as a vigorous intellectual exercise.
As a youth, Jillette read his Bible, but rejected it as illogical and flawed..
In this 2011 interview about his book God, No! Jillette explains his atheism as one aspect of a multi-faceted personality.
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#atheism #atheist #religion #secular
For 22 years he was known as the "Clown Prince" of the Harlem Globetrotters. But for basketball Hall of Famer Meadowlark Lemon, there was a larger, much larger, purpose for his life.
In 1986 Lemon was ordained a Christian minister. And proud as he was of his on-court accomplishments, Meadowlark Lemon had much bigger things on his mind in this 1987 interview about his autobiography Meadowlark.
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#basketball #globetrotters
Hundreds of cookbooks are published every year, thousands have been published since the early 1980s. But few had the impact that 1982's Silver Palate Cookbook had.
Authors Sheila Lukins and Julie Rosso helped introduce Americans to Mediterranean and European cuisines never before seen in this country.
In this 2007 interview Lukins and Rosso talk about the 25th anniversary edition of their bookbook and how it has evolved.
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#cooking #cookbook #silverpalate
Some inspirational words from Lionel Richie, and a chance encounter with a group of ladies with red hats, led to the first novel by actor, comedian, and writer Damon Wayans.
In this 2010 iinterview the former SNL and "In Living Color"cast member talks about his novel Red Hats.
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Happy Valentine's Day!It's a day of romance, relationships, maybe even marriage, but most especially it's a day of love. All kinds of love.
In fact, All Kinds of Love was the title of actor writer Carl Reiner's 1993 novel. It was a delightful cast of characters deals with a variety of romantic situations, with a good deal of comedy thrown in, as we would expect no less from the man who created TV's iconic Dick Van Dyke show.
In this 1993 interviewCarl Reiner talks about his book, script writing, and Dick Van Dyke.
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#valentinesday #love #romance
For decades, Australian-born Dr. Helen Caldicott has been lobbying hard against nuclear power. And nuclear weapons, as well. She founded Physicians for Social Responsibility.
And she has been a strong advocate for environmental issues generally, and for women's rights.
In this 2006 interview Dr. Caldicott talks about her book Nuclear Power is Not The Answer.
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#nuclearpower #antinuclear #environmentalism
The NFL's New York Giants dominated the NFC in 1986, and won Super Bowl 21 over the Denver Broncos in January 1987.
But the Giants began the '87 season 0-5, and finished 6-9, missing the playoffs for the first time in four years.
A key player for the Giants at that time was defensive lineman Leonard Marshall. in this 1987 interview Marshall reflects on the Giants' stumble, and his book The End of the Line.
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#superbowl #NFL #NYGiants #1980s
Sixty years ago this week the Beatles performed in concert – notable because it was their very first concert in the U.S.On February 11, 1964 the Beatles entertained a crowd of about 8,000 at the Washington Coliseum in Washington, DC.
After that concert, as they embarked on their 1964 U.S. tour, along with them was young journalist Larry Kane. He was, in fact, the only broadcast journalist who was with the band at every stop on both the’64 and ‘65 American tours
In this 2014 interview Kane talks about his book When They Were Boys.
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#beatles #1960s #rockmusic
She wrote under the pseudonym Zane. Her short erotic stories attracted a loyal following on the Internet, inspiring her to self-publish The Sex Chronicles Before long, she had a book deal with Simon and Schuster.
In this 2004 interview about her novel Nervous, this soft spoken theologian’s daughter had a lot to say about writing, and publishing.
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#erotica #africanamerican
Over a seven-decade career Judy Collins has proven to be one of America's most popular musicians. But she isalso the author of several best selling books, she's a painter, she even directed a documentary film that was nominated for an Oscar .
And here's the thing – she says you can be as creative, too.
In this 2005 interview, Collins explains her philosophy of creativity.
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#creative #creativity #writers #artists
The Red Scare that engulfed the U.S. in the years immediately after World War II ruined many careers, and any affiliation with the Communist Party was enough to get you blacklisted.
So it was that popular novelist Howard fast found himself suddenly a pariah because of his membership in the Communist Party USA.
In this 1990 interview Fast reflects on his career, the blacklist, and why he left the Communist Party.
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#communism #1950s #blacklist
In the early 1970s many women had two books on their shelves: The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan and The Female Eunuch by Germaine Greer.
That was the then-31-year-old's first book and virtually overnight turned her into an international celebrity A leader of the feminist movement
In this 1987 interview Greer reflects on her life and career since The Female Eunuch.
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#feminism #1970s #womensmovement #sexualrevolution
How does a small town kid from Massachusetts become a major drug lord? Jung's answer is at once. Simple and terrifying.
In this 1993 interview Jung -- the subject of the book and movie Blow -- reveals his bizarre career path, and his effort to go straight.
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#drugs #cocaine #drugcartel
British born Neil Gaiman is nothing if not prolific and versatile. He's written short stories, novels, screenplays, poetry, even comic books and graphic novels.And his fiction has won an entire trophy case full of major awards.
In this 2006 interview Gaiman discusses his fiction and how it gets creaed,
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#fiction #books #writers #fantasy
In 2010, Christine O'Donnell, in her third campaign, rode the Tea Party wave to an upset victory in the Republican primary for US Senate from Delaware.
But years earlier, O'Donnell had appeared on Bill Maher's TV show and admitted that she had once dabbled in witchcraft. And before long, that was almost all that some people knew about Christina. O'Donnell, was that she had once dabbled in witchcraft. It doomed her campaign.
In this 2011 interview O'Donnell talks about her book Troublemaker and the ill-fated campaign.
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#election #conservative #withcraft
Teresa Godwin Phelps was a noted and respected law professor for several decades, at Notre Dame and American University But to the public at large, she was better known as the wife of legendary Notre Dame basketball coach Digger Phelps.
In this 1994 interview Phelps talks about her memoir The Coach’s Wife, a rumination on the joys and the frustrations of being in the shadow of such a public figure. And trying to navigate the sometimes-murky waters of college athletics.
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It was in the early 1950sThe 28 year old pharmaceutical chemist Created something That would change the very fabric of our society . His name was Carl Djerassi. He was a Bulgarian]American who led a team that came up with an oral contraceptive that became known – and is still known today – as simply The Pill . Djerassi has been dubbed “the father of The Pill.”
Djerassi reveals more about his work in this 1992 interview.
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Nichelle Nichols was cast in the role of Communications Officer Uhura on the original TV series “Star Trek” in 1966. But a routine casting decision it was not, as Nichols overnight became an icon and role model. But it took a chance meeting with A powerful and charismatic man to convince her of her own stature.
It's a story Nichols told in this 1994 interview about her memoir Beyond Uhura.
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#MLK #StarTrek #uhura
Dan Rather has been a fixture in American journalism since the early 1950s.
As a young boy, growing up in Texas Rather became enamored of heroes like Edward r. Murrow, and vowed to become a journalist himself someday.
After joining CBS News in the 1960s, Rather succeeded Walter Cronkite as anchor of the CBS Evening News in 1981, a position he held for the next 24 years.
In this 1994 interview Rather talks about the role of TV news -- and some of the conmtroversies about him.
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#televisionnews #CBS #networknews #journalism
She was considered one of America's brightest young stars almost from the moment she entered show business in the mid 1950s.
over the next few decades, Shirley MacLaine fulfilled that promise in a big way. She has won, or been nominated for, dozens of awards, including an Oscar, and Emmy, and several Golden globes.
And then in the mid-1980s, Shirley MacLaine acquired a whole new kind of fame, when she became a well-known authority on the metaphysical, and past lives and reincarnation
In this 1987 interview MacLaine explains her theories.
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When John Denver died in a plane crash in October 1997, the world lost not just a popular singer, but a songwriter whose work touched the hearts of millions.
Among the 300 or so songs that he recorded, some 200 he wrote. He had 33 gold records, and was uncommonly successful in crossing genre lines, from country to adult contemporary to the Billboard Hot 100. .
In this 1994 interview, Denver talks about his career and the challenges he faced.
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Everyone has memories of the Christmas season Some of those memories are warm and loving, others are troubled or sad But all have stories to tell. And in 1990, TV and film actress Deborah Raffin published a collection of Christmas memories from a variety of celebrities and noted personalities.
In this 1990 interview Raffin talks about her book Sharing Christmas.
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Author David Baldacci is best known for Suspenseful political thrillers. But about 20 years ago he was inspired to write a very different kind of book. It was a book inspired by his own experience on a long train trip
In this 2002 interview Baldacci reveals how The Christmas Train, a story about a writer who takes a train trip that will change his life, changed his own.
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Astrophysicist Mario Livio's book Is God a Mathematician? asks the big questions about math, and how it explains our entire universe.
Or does it? That's one of the questions.
Livio explains, in this 2009 interview.
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Just a few more days until Christmas. But if you haven't gotten the house ready yet or the dinner planned?
Who knows more about planning for a holiday celebration than Martha Stewart.?
Perhaps the most fun interview I ever had with her was in the fall of 1993, not long before Christmas that year when we talked about her book Martha Stewart's Christmas. And we also talked about her business empire. Her TV show had just premiered a few weeks earlier.
Here is that 1993 interview.
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Alex karras was a star on the field for the Detroit Lions in the 1960s. And then he tackled a new career challenge: acting. One of his most iconic roles was in 1974's "Blazing Saddles." He was, of course, Mongo.
Later karras starred in the ABC sitcom "Webster," and along the way he also joined the Monday Night Football broadcast crew. And that's kind of where he got the idea for his 1991 novel called Tuesday Night Football.
In this 1991 interview Karras reflects on his successes,
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Area 51 is such a highly classified US Air Force installatio nthat for many decades, the United States government wouldn't even acknowledge its existence.
In 2011, investigative journalist. Annie Jacobsen wrote her groundbreaking book called simply Area 51.
In this 2011 inerview Jacobsen reveals some of what she learned.
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Few people are as well qualified to write the history of rock and roll as Bruce Morrow, otherwise known to millions of radio listeners as cousin Brucie.
In this 2009 interview Morrow talks about the music, the culture, and the careers that he helped shape.
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Tomie dePaola turned a childhood fascination with drawing into a career in which he produced over 260 children's books.
In this 1992 interview dePaola talks about his book Jingle the Christmas Clown. And he haS some fascinating insights into what it takes to create a memorable children's book.
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Why do conservatives think the way they do and why do liberals think the way they do
In this 2011 interview conservative commentator Ann Coulter explains her theory that, unlike conservatives, liberals simply follow a mob mentality.
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Drawing on principles he learned as a lifelong Mormon, Stephen Covey in 1989 published his book the seven habits of highly effective people. And it became hug
It spawned its own little industry -- more books, tapes, videos, and public appearances. The book has sold over 20 million copies worldwide.
In this 1989 interview Step[hen Covey takes us back to where it all started.
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Born and raised in a tiny rural Arkansas town, Dale Bumpers was drawn at a very early age into public service, by his encouraging father.
His political career began in 1970, when he ran successfully for governor of Arkansas. He then flirted with the idea of running for president,but ran for Senate, and served there for the next 24 years. In this 2003 interview, Dale Bumpers talks about his inspiring life and career.
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In this 2004 interview Carmen bin Ladin reveals what goes on inside the strict Saudi culture that she and her daughters were part of.
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The late Richard Pryor was a hugely talented comedian and brilliant entertainer — but, by his own admission, a failure as a father.
In this 2006 interview, his daughter Rain Pryor talks about what life with her dad was realy like.
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It was a big story IN 1984 when it was revealed that the authoirities had broken up a high-priced Manhattan escort service run by a woman named Sydney Biddle Barrows.
The 32-year-old Barrows is a direct descendant of some of the original Mayflower settlers, inspiring thye tabloids to dub her the "Mayflower Madam."
In this 1986 interview Barrows tells her own story.
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It's been 60 years since the assassination of President John F Kennedy. Yet his death remains the subject of widespread conspiracy theories.
In this 1993 interview investigative journalist Gerald Posner tells how his book Case Closed proves that the Warren Commission got it right: Oswald did it, and acted alone.
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II was news that stunned the entire world, this week in 1978. Inspired by a charismatic leader named Jim Jones, more than 900 people, including over 300 children, had committed suicide at he People’s Temple compound in Jonestown Guyana.
In this chilling 1998 interview, one lucky young woman, Deborah Layton, was able to escape Jonestown.
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In today's shrinking world, there are very few things left that no one has ever done before. But in 1986, explorer Will Steger did something no one had done before – he led the first ever dog sled journey to the north pole without resupply
As he describes in this 1987 inerview, it's difficult when your face is frozen, you're only allowed two pounds of food a day, and you have just a short window of opportunity to reach your goal.
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For many years actress Suzanne Somers kept us laughing. A talented comedic actress, she also knew how to leverage her blonde good looks for a laugh.
But few knew about the abusive childhood she had endured. An alcoholic father made her life miserable, and she said in that memoir that laughter is what got her through.
In this 1993 interview Somers talks about the abuse she helped others get past, in her book Wednesdays Children..
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Serving in Iraq in 2004, Marine Sgt. Jeremiah Workman earned the Navy Cross for gallantry under fire, after a ferocious firefight in Fallujah in which he killed 20 enemy combatants.
But Workmen returned home with post traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD. Protecting his mental health proved to be as big a challenge as protecting his men in Fallujah was
In this 2009 interview, Workman discusses his memoir Shadow Of The Sword.
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In the early 1980s a young woman named Desiree sat her mother down and asked her to finally tell her about her real father. The story that Luc y de Barbin told her daughter was the story of how she met Elvis Presley, fell in love with him, and had an affair. Elvis, she explained, was Desiree's father.
In this 1987 interview, mother and daughter recount that incredible story.
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For years, one of the most dominant men's college basketball teams was the Indiana Hoosiers, coached by the legendary Bobby knight.
In this 2002 interview, Knight reflects on his career, and the 1986 book that shaped his public reputation.
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Author Stephenie Meyer's 'Twilight' Insights
In this 2007 interview Stephenie Meyer talks aboiut the third book in the Twilight series, Eclipse
And as you'll hear, Meyer was still getting accustomed to the fact she had become more popular, book-sales-wise, than J.K. Rowling.
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Why 'South Beach Diet' Dr. Arthur Agatston Is Concerned
Millions have adopted the South Beach Diet since it first appeared 20 years ago.
Butt in this 2011 interview, Dr. Arthur Agatston was still worried about how well the American people were doing.
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Ghosts, Zombies, and Vampires -- Why We Love 'Em
What is it about the thrill of fear that we enjoy?
In this 1991 interview Prof. Walter Kendrick explains why, over the last couple of centuries, our taste in entertainment had taken a dark turn.
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In 2008 when Peggielene Bartel'ss uncle passed away, she was notified that she had been chosen as the new king of the town of Otuam in her native Ghana. Sudden;y her quiet life ina suburb of Washington, DC was turned upside down.
In this 2012 interview she told her story in a book called King Peggy
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October is, of course, Breast Cancer Awareness month. But a book that was written several years ago reminds us of how little we actually know about the human breast.
In this 2012, interview acclaimed author and journalist Florence Williams talks about her book Breasts. A Natural And Unnatural History. And you're going to be startled by how much we don't know about the human breast.
Perhaps no one in modern North American sports history was as successful at building a dynasty as the legendary Red Auerbach.
A brilliant strategist on the court, Auerbach was just as brilliant in the front office as he built a franchise that not only attracted and kept the top talent in the league, but also attracted and kept millions of fans all over the world. In this 1991 interview Auerbach tlkas about his book MBA: Management by Auerbach.
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Ariel Sharon And The Burden of Leadership
Israel and Hamas are at war. It's the latest chapter in a long history of cconflict and struggle for the Jewish state One who participated in many of those struggles and conflicts was Ariel Sharon.
He was there in 1948 at the formation of the Israeli army,and rose steadily in the ranks in the years that followed. He was Israel's prime minister from 2001 to 2006.
In this 1989 interview Sharon talks about his autobiography, Warrior.
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From the White House to the Teenage House: Liz Carpenter’s Unplanned Parenthood
When her brother died in 1993, his three unruly teenagers came to live with Liz Carpenter, retired after a storied career that included serving as Lady Bird Johnson's press secretary.
And just like that, she found herself, at age 73, a mother once again.
In this 1994 interview Carpenter describes the unique challenges she faced. But she also had some wise and insightful thoughts about those GenX people she was raising, and their peers.
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Leslie Nielsen: The Doctor of Comedy Who Made "Airplane!" Fly
“Airplane” literally changed the entire course of Leslie Nielsen's career, propelling him into comedy. The television series “Police Squad” was followed by the movie “Naked Gun” and its sequels.
In this 1993 interview Nielsen talks about his book Leslie Nielsen's The Naked Truth.
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Sister Souljah's Tale of Urban Life
From her earliest days growing up in New York City and later in New Jersey, Sister Souljah was an activist. Surrounded by the poverty and despair of an urban neighborhood, Sister Souljah made it her mission to try to change things.
In this 1999 interview she talks about her first novel, a book called The Coldest Winter Ever.
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From Drummer to Author: Jacob Slichter's Rock & Roll Journey
If you really want to know what it's like to be a rock star, just ask one. But you are not likely to get a more honest answer then you will from Jacob Slichter, drummer for the band Semisonic. In this 2004 interview Slichter offers a frank – some would say brutally honest – assessment of the music industry.
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Were Adam and Eve real?
In this 1988 interview, renowned evolutionary biologist and author Richard Dawkins discusses evolution, creationism, and the concept of the "Blind Watchmaker."
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Sidney Sheldon's Secrets to Writing Page-Turning Novels
On just about any list of the best selling novelists of all time you'll find the name Sidney Sheldon.
In this 1988 interview I tried to draw out his secrets of writing. And I got some fascinating insights.
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A Bill CLinton Accuser's Story
Kathleen Willey was a White House volunteer in the Clinton administration in its first year, 1993. And it was in November of that year that Willey says Bill Clinton sexually assaulted her in the Oval Office.
Clinton denied her allegations. And Willey’s detractors, including Linda Tripp, questioned her veracity.
But Willey claims, in this 2997 interview, that she was subjected to threats and intimidation from the Clintons and their supporters.
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The USS Cole Attack: Commander Kirk Lippold's Perspective
It didn't start with September 11th.
Almost a year before al Qaeda terrorists flew planes into buildings, suicide bombers affiliated with al Qaeda attacked the destroyer USS Cole as it was refueling in Yemen. Seventeen American sailors died in the attack.
The commanding officer of the Cole was Kirk Lippold, who tells the story of the attack in this 2012 interview.
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Wilma Mankiller's journey into leadership in the Cherokee nation was not planned. She started as an advocate for rural development within her community, gradually rising through the ranks of Cherokee leadership.
In the 1980s she was the first woman elected to Principal Chief.
Her story, as she recountss in this 1993 interview, was not only one of personal resilience but also a testament to the strength of Native American communities.
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Derek Taylor: Behind the Beatles' Legacy
Derek Taylor was a working journalist when he met the Beatles, literally in te right place at the rright time as the band was on the cusp of fame in England. Manager Brian Epstein brought Taylor aboard as the Beatles' press agent.
Taylor's story, as he recounts in this 1987 interview, reminds us that the Beatles were not just a band; they were a cultural phenomenon that continues to shape the world of music.
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From Jed Clampett to Abraham Lincoln: The Extraordinary Journey of Buddy Ebsen
Buddy Ebsen, best known for his iconic role as Jed Clampett in"The Beverly Hillbillies," had a remarkable career in Hollywood.
As he told in this 1994 interview, Ebsen worked with some of Hollywood's iconic figures like Shirley Temple and Louis B. Mayer. And even sopeople like Al Capone. He also reveals the three questions everyone always had for him.
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Help for the caregiver, from a former First Lady
Both Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter devoted themselves to volunteer activities after leaving the White House. And Rosalynn took up the cause of supporting America's caregivers, Who devoted their lives to helping the sick or elderly.
In this 1994 interview the former First Lady talks about her book Helping Yourself Help Others.
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Richard Nixon's youngest brother
When Edward Nixon was born in 1931, his older brother Richard was already 17. And Ed, along with middle son Don, looked up to their studious and serious big brother.
After Richard Nixon's death in 1994, his brothers Don and Ed felt an urgency to write the story they felt needed to be told about the family. But with Don Nixon in failing health himself, the task fell to Ed.
In this 2009 interview, Ed Nixon talks about his book The Nixons: A Family Portrait.
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A conversation with Ronald Reagan;s eldest daughter
Born in 1941, Maureen Reagan was the eldest child of Ronald Reagan and his first wife, actress Jane Wyman.
By her late teens, Maureen was becoming active in politics. She later played roles in her father's presidential campaigns, and ran for Congress herself. p>In this 1989 interview, just a few months after Ronald Reagan left office, Maureen discusses her book called First Father, First Daughter.
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Canadian-born actor Hume Cronyn had a decades-long career in the theater, movies, television and radio. Not to mention a 52-year marriage to actress Jessica Tandy In this 1991 interview the then-80-year-old Cronyn talks about his his life, his career, and what made his marriage succeed.
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Are there laws that rule what happens to our money?
In this 2003 interview longtime personal finance expert Suze Orman warns of the consequences of failing to understand -- and obey -- tha nagural laws of money.
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In the immediate aftermath of the September 11th attack New York Times reporter Dean Murphy wanted to go beyond just simple eyewitness accounts and to assemble an entire oral history of that day.
Murphy painstakingly organized an oral history which was published one year after the attack.
In this fall 2002 interview Murphy talks about his research for the ook.
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Millions of readers around the world have enjoyed a series of novels about a fictional amateur bounty hunter from New Jersey named Stephanie Plum.
Author Janet Evanovich launched the series in 1994, and in this interview from that year she tells how Stephanie got her start.
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During his ten seaons in the NFL, with the Cardinals, Saints, and Bills, offensive guard Conrad Dobler's opponents often referred to him as a "dirty" player for his unsportsmanlike play.
So when Dobler wrote his memoir, what do you think he called it? Its title is They Call Me Dirty.
In this 1988 interview he tells why.
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One of the most successful, and influential, futurists of our time was Alvin Toffler. is 1970 book Future Shock, and his 1980 bestseller The Third Wave, set millions of readers on a new path of thinking.
As you listen to this 1990 interview try to remember where you were and what you were doing in 1990. Then judge for yourself if Toffler's forecast was accurate.
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Jorge Ramos has anchored the news on Univision since 1987.
But as he explains in this 2002 interview, Ramos never felt completely at home in either the U.S. or his native Mexico.
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Behavioral economist Dan Ariely says we all do it. Thing is, we almost all do it just a little, not enough to ruin our self-image of being a good, honest person.
In this 2012 interview Ariely explains the science behind our misbehaviors.
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Darlene Love was one of the most popular and most in-demand backup singers of the 1960s, working with some of the biggest stars, but her path to a solo career was littered with obstacles.
In this 1998 interview Love recounts her experience and what she had to do to make it all come together./
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There is a reason that even economists call their profession "the dismal science/" But in the hands of satirist and journalist, P.J. O'Rourke, economics takes on a whole new brilliance.
In this 1998 interview O'Rourke dissects economics, to expose what really goes on in the ongoing struggle between capitalism and socialism.
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Flashdance,Top Gun, and Fatal Attraction were just a few of those made under the supervision of studio executive Dawn Steel.
Her name was appropriate, too, because a woman in the man's world of Hollywood filmmaking had to be made of steel.
In this 1993 interview Steel reflects on her successes, failures, and improbable career path.
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British TV host David Frost may be best remembered for his 1977 series of interviews with former President Richard M. Nixon, who just three years earlier had resigned the presidency in disgrace after the Watergate scandal.
In this 2007 inerview Frost offers some behind the scenes glimpses of how the interviews came about, and what happened when the cameras stopped ruling.
Get Frost/Nixon by David Frost
You may also enjoy my interviews with G. Gordon Liddy and Ben Bradlee
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#richardnixon #davidfrost #frostnixon #watergate
For a dozen years the pioneering radio sports broadcaster Red Barber called in every Friday to NPR's Morning Edition show, for an unscripted 4 minute talk with host Bob Edwards.
After Barber's death in 1992 Edwards wrote a memoir of those memorable conversations, a book he called Fridays With Red.
In this 1993 interview Edwards recaptures the magic of their radio friendship.
Get Fridays with Red by Bob Edwards
You may also enjoy my interviews with Garrison Keillor and Wolfman Jack
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Photo by Jared and Corin
#nationalradioday #radio #npr #redbarber
A decades-long tradition continues this summer, with the 35th annual Black Family Reunion this month. The event was started in 1989 by Dorothy Height, the longtime president of the National Council of Negro Women. And from the reunions grew the Black Family Reunion Cookbook.
But as you'll hear in this 1993 interview with Dorothy Height, the cookbook was more than just a collection of recipes. It was an oral history of the African-American family.
You may also enjoy my interviews with Alex Haley and Maya Angelou
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Photo by Adrian Hood
#blackfamilyreunion #food #africanamericandood
One of those caught up in this maelstrom of the turbulent '60s was the young Cathy Wilkerson. She joined the radical Weather Underground, and helped them turn her father's New York City townhouse into a bomb factory.
An explosion there that killed 3 people also made Wilkerson a fugitive, eluding the FBI for 10 yeas.
In this 2997 interview Wilkerson talks about her life as a radical, a fugitive, and later a teacher.
Get Flying Close To The Sun by Cathy Wilkerson
You may also enjoy my interviews with Bobby Seale and William Kunstler
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Photo by Thomas Good
#196-s #radicals #WeatherUnderground
Author Salman Rushdie's 1988 novelThe Satanic Verses, that earned him not accolades, but I death sentence, pronounced by Iran's Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini Rushdie spent the next several years essentially in hiding, but gradually re-emerged in public, and by 2002 was again going on author tours.
In this 2002 interview Rushdie reflects on his exile, his literature, and his sense of humor.
Get Step Across This Line: by Salman Rushdie
You may also enjoy my interviews with Jodi Picoult and Art Spiegelman
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#satanicverses #iran #fatwa
Tracy Austin won the US Open women's singles title in 1979 at age 16, making her the youngest ever to win that title.
But by age 21, her career was all but ended by a series of injuries. That led to speculationand rumor about what was really going on with Tracy Austin.
In this 1992 interview she sets out to put those rumors to rest, and tell her story in her own words.
Get Beyond Center Court by Tracy Austin
You may also enjoy my interviews with Andrea Jaeger and Mary Lou Retton
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Photo by Robbie Mendelson
#tennis #wimbledon #usopen
Paul Robeson Jr was the grandson of a slave, and son of a prominent and controversial African American actor, singer, and activist.Formerly trained as an electrical engineer, Robeson soon followed in the footsteps of his famous father, becoming an activist in his own right.
In this 2007 interview Robeson challenges us to think differently about everything, regardless of our race, class, or background.
Get A Black Way of Seeing by Paul Robeson Jr
You may also enjoy my interviews with Barack Obama amnd Andrew Young
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#race #ethnicity #culture
In the late 1980s, just a few years into the start of the stand up explosion, a young writer producer named Betsy Borns put together a book about stand up comedians and how they work.
In this 1987 interview Borns examines the challenges and rewards faced by comics like Jerry Seinfeld, Richard Lewis, Judy Tenuta, and Jay Leno.
Get Comic Lives by Betsy Borns
You may also enjoy my interviews with Jim Gaffigan and Gilbert Gottfried
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Photo by
#coemdina #standup #jayleno #jerryseinfeld #stevenwright
In 1991 then-Senaor John Danforth of Missouri helped shepherd Clarence Thomas's Supreme Court nomination through the Senate, watching as political oponents tried to derail the nomination.
Inthis 1994 interview Danforth retells the story, and how close Thomas came to losing the fight.
Get Resurrection by John Danforth
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#clarerncehtomas #anitalhill #scotus
Lynn Redgrave was born into a prominent show business family in 1943, so it was perhaps her destiny to become a successful, award-winning and acclaimed actress.
But as an adult she struggled with bulimia.
In this 1991 interview she tells how the a popular weight loss program saved her.
Get This is Living by Lynn Redgrave
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Photo by John Mathew Smith
#georgygirl #lynnredgrave #weightwatchers
as the co-founder of Mattel Toys Ruth Handler was the key figure in bringing Barbie to market.
She told her story, and Mattel's, in a 1994 book. This 1994 interview is about that book and Ruth Handler's amazing story.
Get Dream Doll by Ruth Handler
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#barbie #ruthhandler #mattel
Steve Garvey, the charismatic All-Star first baseman for the Los Angeles Dodgers in the 1970s and '80s.
But he was anything but a superstar off the field, according to his ex-wife Cyndy Garvey.
In this 1989 interview Cyndy tells her side of the story of their rocky relationship.
Get The Secret Life of Cyndy Garvey
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Photo by Cal Montney, LA Times
#baseball #dodgers #1970s #divorce #infidelity
Asuralian author Thomas Keneally has written dozens of books in his career, spanning from the 1960s. His most famous work is his prize-winning 1982 book called Schindler's Ark. It was later renamed Schindler's List, and that's what the movie was based on.
In this 1995 interview Keneally talks about another of his books, and its connection to Schindler.
Get A River Town by Thomas Keneally
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#Australia #historicalfiction #ancestry
Helen Gurley Brown built her reputation from the 1960s on the idea of being youthful and sexy and vibrant.
But in this 1993 interview, brown reflects on how it feels to be getting older. And she doesn’t like it.
Get The Late Show by Helen Gurley Brown
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Photo by Kingkongphoto
#cosmo #cosmopolitan #aging
The world lost a music treasure today, July 21, with the passing of 96-year-old Tony Bennett. He was a superstar since 1951.
In this 1998 interview Bennett reflects on his success, on the origins of his signature song, and what inspires him.
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Photo by John Mathew Smith
#tonybennett #senfrancisco
A former Army intelligence officer named David Morehouse wrote a book about his experience as what he called a “psychic warrior.” Morehouse explained how he was recruited for a super top secret defense program called Operation Stargate.
In this 1996 interview Morehouse describes the program, his role in it, and what happened when he wanted out.
Get Psychic Warriorby David Morehouse
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#psychicwarrior #psyops #military #intelligence
In the 1970s Phyllis Schlafly launched an anti-feminist crusade that would make her a household name -- lauded by many, revered by some, but hated and smeared by many others.
In ths 2003 interview Schlafly looks back on her decades-long battle with feminism and her influence in the conservative movement.
Get Feminist Fantasies by Phyllis schlafly
You may also enjoy my interviews with Naomi Wolf and Gloria Steinem
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#phyllisschlafly #feminism #ERA #eagleforum
In the mid-1950s no one on Broadway was hotter than the team of Adler and Ross. Composer Richard Adler and lyricist Jerry Ross produced back to back Broadway hits TPe Pajama Game and Damn Yankees, featuring songs that would remain popular for decades.
But Ross died suddenly in 1955, taking Adler's career in new and unexpected directions.
Adler looks back on his up-and-down career in this 1990 interview.
Get You Gotta Have Heart by Richard Adler
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#broadway #adlerandross #damnyankees #composers
Roz Chast has been a fixture among New Yorker cartoonists for many years. In 2007. She collaborated with comedian Steve Martin on a children's book.
In this 2007 interview, Chast explains how their partnership worked. And why the book is as much for the parents as it is for the children.
Get The Alphabet from A to Y With Bonus Letter Z by Roz Chast and Steve Martin
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Photo by Larry D. Moore
#RozChast #SteveMartin #cartooning #NewYorker
Alan Shepard was one of the original Mercury 7 astronauts. A few years later, Shepard became the oldest man ever to walk on the surface of the moon.
In this 1994 interview, Shepard looks back on those Apollo years, to tell the inside story of how America put men on the moon and returned them home safely by the end of the decade.
You may also enjoy my interviews with Jim Lovell and Buzz Aldrin
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#astronauts #moonlanding #Apollo #1960s #NASA
Writer Paul Dickson spent several years researching the special slang of baseball, and how many of those words eventually made it into our everyday language.
In this 1989 interview, Dickson talks about the origins of some of those terms, words like “bullpen,” “fan,” and the phrase “out of left field.”
Get The Dickson Baseball Dictionary by Paul Dickson
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#baseball #MLB #slang #wordorigins
For more than 40 years, Stuart has been dispensing advice on cooking and decorating and entertaining guests. Best-selling books, a magazine, and a television show have helped push her to the forefront.
In this 1994 interview we talk about her book Martha Stewart's Menus For Entertaining.
Get Martha Stewart's Menus for Entertaining
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Photo by Gage Skidmore
His name was Andrew Grove. He fled the Hungarian revolution in 1956 to come to the US. In 1968, he joined the newly formed company called Intel, and eventually became its third CEO.
In this 2001 interview Grove talks about his autobiography, a book he called Swimming Across.
Get Swimming Across: by Andrew Grove
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Photo by World Economic Forum
Journalist. Simon Winchester was British by birth, but became an American, and was fascinated by things that most Americans either take for granted or don't even know in the first place.
He ended up writing a book about inventors, innovators and explorers who built this country. In this 2013 interview, Winchester goes into detail about his book The Men Who United the States.
Get The Men Who United the States by Simon Winchester
You may also enjoy my interviews with historiansRichard Shenkman and Doris Kearns Goodwin
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Photo by Wes Washington
As a 24-year-old housewife in 1951, Lillian Vernon started as small mail order business from her kitchen table, to bring in a few extra bucks. The business grew into the Lillian Vernon Corporation.,
In this 1996 interview Lillian Vernon reveals some of her secrets to success, and offers encouragement to other enterpeneurs, particularly women.
Get An Eye for Winners by Lillian Vernon
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Photo by Annie Watt
CeCe Winans made her mark early on, as a member of the Wimans Family singing group. While still a teenager, she signed on with the PTL Club TV show run by Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker.
Alongside BeBe, and later as a solo artist. CeCe Winans racked up 15 Grammy awards, 31 GMA Dove awards, and countless other accolades.
In this 1999 interview CeCe Winans reflects on her upbringing and the evolution of her career -- and her faith.
Get On A Positive Note by CeCe winans
You may also enjoy my interviews with Jim Bakker and Cissy Houston
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Photo by Pastorflex
Long before Sesame Street, Mister Rogers, or even Captain Kangaroo, there was Howdy Doody. Its creator was a young radio broadcaster nicknamed Buffalo Bob Smith.
In this nostalgic and engaging 1990 interview, Smith tells the story of Howdy. And dispels a few myths.
Get Howdy And Me by Buffalo Bob Smith
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Happy Pride! A vintage conversation today with a major figure inLGBTQ lierature.
E. Lynn Harris quit his job as a computer salesman in 1990 to begin a full-time writing career. His first novel, Invisible Life, won widespread acclaim. His second book was Just As I Am, and that was when I firstmet and interviewed him.
In this 1995 interview Harris faces the struggles a gay black author os up against, and how he got past them.
Get Just As I Am by E Lynn Harris
Get E Lynn Harris's memoir What Becomes of the Brokenhearted
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#Pride #LGTBQ #fiction
The architect of a controversial conservative organization.
Project Veritas was started by then-26-year-old James O'Keefe in 2010. His secretly recorded and heavily edited videos were embraced by many conservatives eager to expose what they saw as liberal or leftist misdeeds.
In this2013 interview O'Keefe defends Prokect Veritas's methods and results. But don't infer from the nature of my questions in this interview that I endorsed Project Veritas or its methods.
Get Breakthrough by James O'Keefe
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James O'Keefe Photo by Gage Skidmore p
Happy Juneteenth.
In 1994, historian and writer Louise Meriwether wrote a novel based on the true story of one slave's sourage and ingenuity in the Civil War.
In this 1994 interview, Meriwether brings to life the story of Robert Smalls, detailing how she put flesh and blood on the dry bones of forgotten history.
Get Fragments of the Ark by Louise Meriwether
You may also enjoy my interviews with ynching survivor James Cameron and hisorian Doris Kearns Goodwin
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#Juneteenth #CivilWar #RobertSmalls
A popular TV personality's Fathers Day card to his dad.
Tim Russert hosted NBC's Meet The Press for 17 years, but never forgot where he came from.
In this 2004 interview, Russert offers a son's grateful praise for his father,m "Big Russ," a World War II veteran who worked two jobs to support his family. Russert shows how Big Russ built him into the successful man he became.
Get Big Russ and Me by Tim Russert
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She heard Trump's "you're fired" twice.
Omarosa was one of the contestants on Season 1 of "The Apprentice," the reality show hosted by Donald Trump. Later, she worked for Trump in the WhiteHouse.
In this 2008 interview, Omarosa offers her advice to women who want to get ahead in business. Her counsel: know when to be a b***h.
Get The Bitch Switch by Omarosa
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Medgar Evers's widow carries on the fight.
60 years ago tonight a white supremacist and KKK leader gun down a civil rights leader named Medgar Evers outside his own home, leaving his wife Myrlie a widow at age 30.
In this 1999 interview, Myrlie Evers Williams explains why her husband's senseless death didn't beak her, and how she has made the most of her God-given strengths.
Get Watch Me Fly by Myrlie Evers Williams
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His courage helped end homophobic FBI hiring.
During a 20-year FBI career, Frank Buttino became one of the agency's most trusted agents. But he had a secret – he was gay. And eventually that cost him his job.
In this 199 3. Interview Buttino discusses his life as a closeted gay man in the FBI, and how his coming out opened the door for many others..
Get A Special Agent by Frank Buttino
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"Sex And The City" is 25.
It was this week in 1998 that HBO viewers were introduced to Carrie Bradshaw and her friends, in the series Sex And The City. It's creator, journalist Candace Bushnell.
Bushnell had a lifelong ambition to be a novelist. In this 2003 interview, she talks about her first published novel.
Get Trading Up by Candace Bushnell
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The Olympic champion who was an eyewitness to an American tragedy.
Rafer Johnson won the gold medal in the decathlon at the 1960 Olympic games. He later had a very successful career as an actor. And in the 1960s, he became politically active.
He was in the kitchen at the ambassador hotel that night in June, 1968 when Robert f. Kennedy was assassinated. As you'll hear in this 19 98 interview..
Get The Best that I Can Be: An by Rafer Johnson
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An iconic Congresswoman's memoir.
Pat Schroeder wa the first woman elected to Congress fromColorado, in 1972. She served 24 years in the House, becoming one of its most influential members.
In this 1998 interview, Schroeder reflects with humor and perceptiveness on her years in Congress -- and how a tearful exit from the 1988 presidential race helped define her political career.
Get 24 Years of Housework...and the Place Is Still a Mess by Pat Schroeder
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The plot twist that turned an actor into a novelist.
Ron McLarty had a decades-long successful career as a character actor, on Broadway and on television.
But this 2005 interview was not about his acting, it was about his first published novel. And how he got there, with the help of people including Stephen King..
Get The Memory of Running by Ron McLarty
You may also enjoy my interviews with two other actors who became novelists: Fannie Flagg and Stephen Collins
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The lasting impact of the Vietnam war in America.
Former Vietnam war correspondent. Laura Palmer was so moved by memorabilia that family members and friends leave at the Vietnam veterans memorial in Washington. She wrote a book about it.
In this 1988 interview about her book shrapnel in the Heart, Laura Palmer talks about the years long effects of the war on those left behind.
Get Shrapnel in The Heart by Laura Palmer
You may also enjoy my interviews with former Army nuirse Winnit Smith and with Admiral Elmo Zumwalt
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He saved his life by cutting off his own arm.
Aron Ralston was an experienced rock climber in 2003, when a bizarre accident left him literally trapped between a rock and a hard place in a remote canyon in Utah.
In this 2005 interview, Ralston describes his 6-day ordeal, his near death, and what has changed about his life since then.
Get Between a Rock and a Hard Place by Aron Ralston
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How an FBI profiler profiles.
The FBI today routinely profiles sexual predators. One of their first sex crimes profilers was Roy Hazelwood.
In this 1999 interview, Hazelwood talks about some of the most notorious cases he worked on during his long career with the FBI.
Get The Evil That Men Do by Roy Hazelwood
You may also enjoy my interviews with profiler Pat Brown and Ted Bundy's last lawyer Polly Nelson
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Beyond Catwoman and Santa Baby.
During a career that spanned more than six decades, Eartha Kitt established herself as a premier singer, actress, even a voiceover artist in her later years.
In this 2001 interview, Kitt discusses her secrets of staying youthful and vibrant.
Get Rejuvenate!: (It's Never Too Late) by Eartha Kitt
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The real life prosecutor who inspired a hit TV series.
Linda Fairstein helped establish the first sex crimes unit in the Manhattan district attorney's office in the 1980s. Her work inspired "Llaw & Order SVU.".
I in this 1996 interview, we talk about Linda Fairsein's first crime novel, a mystery introducing the character of Manhattan sex crimes prosecutor Alexandra Cooper.
Get Final Jeopardy by Lindqa Fairstein
You may also enjoy my interviews with Jeffery Deaver and Patricia Cornwell
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What is your world like, when you can't see your world?
Poet and professor Stephen Kuusisto was born blind 68 years ago. Today he is a leading advocate for the visually disabled.
In this 1998 interview, we discuss Kuusisto's
autobiography, a book called Planet of The Blind, and what life without vision is like.
Get Planet of the Blind by Stephen Kuusisto
Get Body, Remember by Kenny Fries
Get Staring Back by Kenny Fries
You may also enjoy my reently-posted interviews with Jimmy Buffett and Louia Anderson
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A defense attorney's take on the trial of the century.
Attorney Gerry Spence practice law for six decades, and as a prosecutor and defense attorney he never lost a criminal case.
He was a courtroom spectator in the 1995 OJ Simpson murder trial. And in this 1997 interview, Spence explains why he thinks the case came out the way it did.
Get O.J. the Last Word by Gerry Spence
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Stories inspired by her mother made her a best-selling author.
Amy Tan's 1989 novel The Joy Luck Club was based largely on the wisdom her mother and her contemporaries had brought to America from China.
In this 1990 interview, Tan reflects on her mother's life, their relationship, and the incredible well of consciousness she tapped into for her book.
Get The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan
You may also enjoy my interviews with and Julie Nixon Eisenhower and Betty DeGeneres
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She has the Buns of Steel.
Since the 1990s Tamilee Webb has been one of America's most prominent and most popular fitness experts.
In this 1995 interview, Webb explains why physical fitness goes way beyond moving your arms and legs, and involves using your mind, as well
Get Step Up Fitness Workout by Tamilee Webb
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A silent movie star speaks out.
Douglas Fairbanks Jr made his movie debut 100 years ago this month, in a silent movie called Stephen Steps out. Even long after the silent movie era had ended, Fairbanks was a major motion picture star.
In this 1988 interview, Fairbanks talks about his career, his family, and the future motion pictures.
Get The Salad Days by Douglas Fairbanks Jr
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Behind the closed doors of Buckingham Palace.
Since 1981, British journalist and author Andrew Morton has been covering the royal family.
Tomorrow, May 6, is coronation day for King Charles III. In this 1991 interview, Andrew Morton describes what private life inside Buckingham Palace is like.
Get Inside Buckingham Palace by Andrew Morton
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The greatest female athlete of all time.
That's how sSports Illustrated For Women described Jackie Joyner-Kersee, a record holder in the heptathlon and long jump, and winner of several Olympic gold medals.
In this 1997 interview, Joyner-Kersee talks about her career, her asthma, and her late mother.
Get A Kind of Grace by A Kind of Grace
You may also enjoy my interviews with Olympians Carl Lewis and Mary Lou Retton
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Yabba dabba doo! True stories from the Flintstones.
Animator- director Joseph Barbera was half of the Hanna-Barbera cartoon team, which created some of America's most famous cartoon characters.
In this 1994 interview, Barbera reveals the origins of cartoons like the Flintstones - and the spin-off series that never got made because it was too ahead of its time.
Get My Life in Toons by Joseph Barbera
You may also enjoy my interviews with Chuck Jones and Mel Banc
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Dead Man Walking made her, and her cause, famous.
Roman Catholic Sister Helen Prejean started her prison ministry in 1981. In 1993 she published her book Dead Man Walking, which has since been made into a movie and even an opera.
In this 1993 interview, we learn what motivates, angers, and saddens Sister Helen.
You may also enjoy my interviews with William Kunstler and Polly Nelson
For more vintage interviews with celebrities, leaders, and influencers,
subscribe to Now I've Heard Everything on Spotify, Apple Podcasts. or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Why can't the GOP attract young voters?
Margaret Hoover was born into a political family, but didn't get into political activism herself until her mid 20s.
In this interview from 2011, we talk about why the GOP needs to attract young conservatives. Have the problems she talks about here gotten any better for the Republicans?
You may also enjoy my interviews with Dan Bongino and Newt Gingrich
For more vintage interviews with celebrities, leaders, and influencers,
subscribe to Now I've Heard Everything on Spotify, Apple Podcasts. or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Wait, what? Rambo was named for a...?
Today is author David Morrell's 80th birthday. He is best known for creating the Rambo character with his 1972 book First Blood.
In this 1990 interview we talk about Rambo -- his origins, his psyche -- and the latest David Morrell book.
Get First Blood
You may also enjoy my interviews with Jeffery Deaver and Tom Clancy
For more vintage interviews with celebrities, leaders, and influencers,
subscribe to Now I've Heard Everything on Spotify, Apple Podcasts. or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Come look for your lost shaker of salt with Jimmy Buffett.
His 1977 song “Margaritaville” is a pop music icon, and established Buffett's career.
In this 1989 interview, we talk about the song, the way of life itt depicts, the people he's met and the stoiries they've told hm -- and why he loves Alabama.
" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferer">Get Tales From Margaritaville
Get The Jimmy Buffett Collection
You may also enjoy my interviews with Glen Campbell and Sonny Bono
For more vintage interviews with celebrities, leaders, and influencers,
subscribe to Now I've Heard Everything on Spotify, Apple Podcasts. or wherever you listen to podcasts.
They said she was too old and ugly.l She sued.
In 1981. Christine Craft was working as a television news anchor for a station in Kansas City, Missouri. Six months into her two-year contract, she was demoted from the anchor desk, because of the findings of a focus group.
As she tells in this 1988 interview, she then sued the station.
Get Too Old, Too Ugly, and Not Deferential to Men
You may also enjoy my interviews with Helen Thomas and Joan Lunden
For more vintage interviews with celebrities, leaders, and influencers,
subscribe to Now I've Heard Everything on Spotify, Apple Podcasts. or wherever you listen to podcasts.
what impression are you making when you put words on a page?
Since 2006 Mignon Fogarty -- known to fans of her podcast as Grammar Girl -- has been guiding us through the complicated, arcane, and often fascinating world of language, usage, and grammar/.
In this 2999 interview we talked about her book The Grammar Devotional, a daily primer on proper language. Why does it matter what you say and how you say it, as long as people know what you meant? Why do even well-educated people commig grammar gaffes? And what is your personal pet peeve
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For more vintage interviews with celebrities, leaders, and influencers,
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Tthe war correspondent who has dodged a lifetime of bullets.
Peter Arnett became a major television personality during the Persian Gulf war in 1991, with his reporting from Iraq for CNN. Arnett won the Pulitzer prize for his reporting from Vietnam for the associated press. He spent decads covering wars.
In this 1994 interview Arnett talks about his memoir, Live From The Battlefield.
You may also enjoy my interviews with veteran journalists Sam Donaldson and David Brinkley
For more vintage interviews with celebrities, leaders, and influencers,
subscribe to Now I've Heard Everything on Spotify, Apple Podcasts. or wherever you listen to podcasts.
The beer that redefined American beer.
Not many entrepreneurs are able to turn a hobby into a multi-million dollar business, but one who did it was a guy named Pete Slosberg. In 1986 he and a partner set up Pete’s Brewing Company, and created a craft beer they called Pete’s Wicked Ale.
In this interview we talk about his entrepreneurial experience -- and his legal fight with Anheuser-Busch.
Get Pete Slosberg's book here.
You may also enjoy my interviews with former Maker\s Mark CEO Bill Samuels and cookie entrepeneur Wally "Famous" Amos
For more vintage interviews with celebrities, leaders, and influencers,
subscribe to Now I've Heard Everything on Spotify, Apple Podcasts. or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Profiles of a Hollywood All-Star team.
Peter Bogdanovich did a little bit of everything in Hollywood. He was a writer, an actor, a film historian, a director -- I think he even got coffee sometimes. He directed The Last Picture Show, Paper Moon, What's Up Doc, and a host of others.
And along the way he met a number of Hollywood legends, the people he calls the original movie stars. People like John Wayne, Orson Welles, Cary Grant, and Jimmy Stewart.
This is my 2004 interview with Peter Bogdanovich about his book Who the Hell's in I.
You may also enjoy my interviews with directors Robert Evans and Barry Levinson
For more vintage interviews with celebrities, leaders, and influencers,
subscribe to Now I've Heard Everything on Spotify, Apple Podcasts. or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Did you D.A.R.E. to stay away from drugs?
Former LAPD Deputy Chief Glenn Levant was one of the dounders of tue Drug Abuse Resistance Education, or D.A.R.E. program launched in 1983.
In this interview from 1998, Levant talks to parents whose kids will be faced with peer pressure to try sometrhing dangerous or illegal. But did D.A.R.E. work? Levant shares a startling statistic.
For more vintage interviews with celebrities, leaders, and influencers,
subscribe to Now I've Heard Everything on Spotify, Apple Podcasts. or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Why do animals think and behave and react in the ways they do?
Animal behaviorist Temple Grandin has spent a lifetime finding answers. And for her, the journey has been a personal one, as well.
Grandin is autistic, and has found that animal behavior is not unlike that of some people with autism.
I first met her in 2005, when she published her book Animals in Translation.
As UConn and San Diego State battle it out tonight for the NCAA men's basketball title, today we are revisiting an interview I did a few years ago with the coach of a team that won one of the most thrilling NCAA victories ever.
Jim valvano was coach at North Carolina State when the team won the 1983 title in a thrilling game.
But by the end of the 1980s, valvano was out as NC State coach.
I met him in early 1991, when he wrote a book about his coaching experience.
About 100 years ago, an advertising executive had an idea. A book club, that would send members new books every month.
If that sounds like a familiar idea, you've just heard the story of the Book Of The Month club.
Ernest Hemingway was among the first authors the club featured. Later, BOMC helped launch the careers of writers like Margaret Mitchell and Nelson DeMille.
The editor in chief of the book of the month club is a powerful executive, and from 1988 to 1994, that position was held by British-born
Brigitte Weeks.
She brought a deep experience in publishing to the position.
Tomorrow is Major League baseball's opening day, the first day of the 2023 season.
On the first day of a 162 game schedule, every team is in first place. Any team can win the world series. And a batter can hit /400, and a picture can have a no-hitter.
The world is full of possibilities .
On the Opening Day roster for the St. Louis Cardinals in 1946 was a rookie catcher named Joe Garageola.
That year Joe played in his first, and only, World Series. He was a major leaguer for nine seasons, playing for the Cardinals, the Pirates, the Cubs, and the Giants.
But after his retirement from the game, Joe Garagiola found another career in which he had much greater success.
Do you ever watch the Food Network? If so, you know who Ina Garten is.
But long before she became the channel's most popular host, Garten worked in the White House, in the Office of Management and Budget.
That is, until the opportunity to buy a small rspecialty food store in New York's Hamptons opened up. She kept the store's name, Barefoot Contessa, and grew it very successfully.
When I met Ina Garten in 1999, she had finally been persuaded to write a cookbook, which turned out to be far, far more popular than even her publisher had hoped.
Today, March 24th 2023, would have been comedian Louie Anderson's 70th birthday.
I first met Louie in 1989, when he published a book of letters to his alcoholic father, a book called Dear Dad. We talked again about that book a couple of years later, and then in 1993 I interviewed him again, for his book called Goodbye Jumbo, Hello Cruel World.
Louie struggled with his weight, and his self-image, for decades. Of course, he turned his weight problem into a source of comedy that made him immensely popular.
But it was in writing both those books that Louie Anderson really started to figure out who he was, and what he really wanted.
So I've decided today to offer you highlights of both interviews , starting with our conversation about Dear Dad. S
In 1993, the term "woke" had not been invented yet. But a prominent law professor nominated for a high position in the US government Saw her nomination done in by what we would now know as "anti-woke" sentiment.
Her name was Lani Guinier. President Bill Clinton nominated her to be assistant attorney general for civil rights.
That's, of course, when closer scrutiny of her past writings began. And, she says, that's when the misrepresentations of her writings began.
Guinier was a strong advocate of voting rights, and a strong believer that all minority voices should be heard in a democracy.
A 41-year tradition continues this weekend in Jackson, Mississippi, with the annual St. Patrick's Day parade, featuring the sweet potato queens.
It all started when Jill Connor Browne and a few of her friends formed the Queens.
And in the years since then, it has become an honored tradition -- and has spawned several bestselling books.
I first met Jill Conner Browne in 2001, after publication of her second book, God Save The Sweet Potato Queens.
In recent months you could argue that Florida has become the de facto ground zero for book banning in schools.
Hundreds of titles, ranging from the extreme to the innocuous, have been deemed unsatisfactory for students in Florida public schools.
Recently, the school board in Martin county, Florida banned 20 books by best-selling author Jodi Picoult.
Her books are best sellers because she directly and maturely treats subjects such as race, gender, sexuality, even abortion rights in weaving, dramatic stories.
I've interviewed Jody Pico several times, including in 2004, when we talked about one of the books that has now been banned in Martin county, a book called my sister's keeper.
Holly Near was just 8 years old when she first performed in public. And in a career that has now spanned over 50 yearse, Near has established herself as a folk music legend.
Actually, she calls herself a troubadour.
And she's a talented actress, appearing in episodes of The Mod Squad, All in The Family, and The Partridge family, as well as on Broadway in the musical "Hair."
Near is also a member of the LGBTQ community, at a strong supporter of gay rights for many decades.
I met her in 1990, when she published an autobiography called Fire in The Rain, Singer in The Storm.
Ask any serious fan of science fiction who the three most influential authors of the genre of the 20th century were. They will likely say Arthur c. Clarke, Robert Heinlein, and Isaac Asimov.
In a career that spanned more than half a century, Asimov wrote or edited over 500 books. And even though he was primarily known for his science fiction, Asimov also wrote mysteries and fantasy and non-fiction.
And besides all that, he was a professor at Boston University.0
I met him in 1988, when he published a book called Prelude to Foundation, the latest in that popular series.
The U.S. space program was launched, so to speak, in 1959, when the first seven Mercury astronauts were named.
These pioneers laid the groundwork for the Gemini, Apollo, and space shuttle missions that would follow in coming years and decades.
Among those seven was a 36-year-old test pilot named Wally Schirra.
Over the next few years he would become a household name, along with those like John Glenn, Scott Carpenter, and Alan Shepard.
Finally, in 1988, Schirra wrote his autobiography. And that's when I had a chance to meet him
In the early 1960s you would have been hard pressed to find an entertainer who was hotter, more popular, and more in demand than singer and actress and Margaret.
The young star, born in Sweden as Ann Margaret Olsen, captivated everyone's attention. With her combination of Scandinavian beauty, a youthful s*******, at a sort of undercurrent of danger, it's easy to see why Ann-Margret quickly became so popular.
Many said she appeared to be a female Elvis. And, by 1964, she was starring alongside the real Elvis Presley in the movie Viva Las vegas- and famously having an affair with the king.
But her star didn't fade. Well into the 60s, '70s, '80s, and beyond, and Margaret has remained a popular favorite.
In 1994 she was prompted to write her autobiography. And that's what I had a chance to meet her.
In the summer of 1992, then US senator Al Gore from Tennessee was thrust into a much more visible public role, when Bill Clinton selected him as his running mate on the Democratic ticket.
That was also about the time Gore published his first book about the environment, a volume called Earth in the balance
And that's how I met Al Gore, just a few weeks before he was nominated to be vice president.
The day I interviewed him if he had any indication that he was about to be nominated to be on the Clinton ticket, he did a really good job of hiding it.
After a long and unexpected break due to illness, Now I’ve Heard Everything resumes its 3-times-a-week schedule starting Monday March 6.
Perhaps no one personified the folk music trend of the 1960s like Peter, Paul and Mary.
With a repertoire that included not only their own songs but covers of songs by Pete Seeger and Bob Dylan, Peter Paul and Mary became superstars.
One of their most enduring hits was the wildly popular, to this day, Puff the Magic Dragon.
But it wasn't until 2007 that the story of Puff the Magic Dragon was turned into an illustrated children's book. That was the effort of Peter Yarrow, the co-writer of the song. And the book turned into a huge, huge commercial success.
That year is when I first met Peter yarrow, and we talked about his book about puff. A couple of years later we had another interview when he came out with another similar book based on their song. Day is Done.
Once upon a Time three staffers for a United States Senator decided to put on a little Christmas show, just a little thing with song parodies and skits, just for entertainment.
They're little show was a hit and they endd up putting on that show for a few other small private groups.
Before long, a few other Hill staffers join them and they're little events. Became bigger events more organized events with bigger audiences
The year was 1981 and that's how the capital steps was formed. And over the next four decades. The capital steps became the nation's premier political satire group.
Two of those founding members, Bill Strauss and Elaina Newport wrote a book in 1992 called fools on the Hill and that's when I had a chance to meet them.
For over five decades actor Michael York has been a fixture in Britain and in the US, in film and on television.
Beginning in the late 1960s, York starred in a number of huge hit movies, including Romeo and Juliet, Cabaret, and Logan's Run. Younger fans may even remember him best from his role in the Austin Powers series.
In 1992. Michael York published an autobiography, and that's when I had the chance to talk with him.
Ever since there have been movies in America -- that's over a hundred years now -- people have been putting together their lists of their favorite movies. Their favorite classic movies.
Some 30 years ago Bob Dorian, the longtime host on American Movie Classics (now known simply as AMC) assembled a list of the greatest "classic" movies.
Now these weren necessarily 't classic" in the sense that we typically think of classic movies, but they were movies that were timeless and important in their own way.
I had a chance to talk with Bob Dorian in 1990 when that book came out. So here now from 1990. Let's talk some old movies with Bob Dorian
Last week the United States Supreme Court overturned the nearly 50-year-old Roe vs Wade decision, which afforded women the constitutional right to an abortion.
That was a court battle fought, and one, by a young Texas attorney. In fact, Sarah Weddington was only 27 when she argued the case before the high Court on behalf of her client, the pseudonymous Jane Roe..
When 20 years later, Sarah Weddington was still gravely concerned about the future of the ruling that she won.
And now, we see that her concerns were well founded.
And Sarah Weddington, as it turns out, had a persnal interest in the outcome of Roe vs. Wade.
Who knew that a little boy born to a lower middle-class family in England, who grew up with asthma and put up with teasing from his classmates, and like to smoke by the time he was aged 10, would grow up to become one of the world's greatest rock singers?
That's kind of the short version of the life of Eric Burdon, who in 1962 joined a quartet that soon became known as the animals. Burdon was their lead singer.
As a leading member of the British invasion, the animals produced a number of hits.
In 2002, Eric Burdon wrote an autobiography, a book called. Please Don't let me be misunderstood. And that's when I have a chance to talk with him by phone. So here now, from 2002, Eric burdon.
They say beauty is in the eye of the beholder but in modern western society the beholders are usually men and the men make the rules of that social construct that we call beauty.
That's the essence. Kind of boil down into my own words of Naomi Wolf's blockbuster breakthrough 1991 book The Beauty Myth.
The Beauty Myth created some big waves when it was published. In fact, later the New York times even said it was one of the 70 most influential books of the entire century.
But it has also generated a lot of controversy for Naomi Wolf.
A third-rate burglary” at Washington’s Watergate hotel and office complex in the summer of 1972 launched a scandal that ultimately brought down the presidency of Richard M. Nixon.
At the very center of that burglary, and ensuing Scandal, was G. Gordon Liddy, a former FBI agent who headed the the infamous White House “Plumbers” unit.
After serving prison time for his role in Watergate, Liddy wrote a book called “Will,” which became a bestseller for years to come.
In 1991 Liddy updated his book, adding ne information that had been revealed in a book by two journalists,Len Colodny and Robert Gettlin, called “Silent Coup.”
Fifty years ago this week, a botched burglary at the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee in Washington, DC touched off a criminal conspiracy that eventually brought down the president of the United States, Richard M. Nixon.
It's the scandal that to this day is simply known by the name of the office complex where the burglary occurred: Watergate.
All this week on Now I've Heard Everything we're featuring interviews I've done with figures connected to Watergate. Our last episode featured former Washington Post editor Ben Bradley. On Friday, my conversation with the mastermind of the burglary, G. Gordon Liddy.
One of Nixon's loyalists at the center of everything was his White House counsel, a young lawyer named John Dean.
The Watergate burglary was 50 years ago this week.
Iconic renowned Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee played a central role in covering Watergate.
He took over at the Post in 1965, in the thick of Vietnam, the civil Rights movement and a changing journalism landscape.
And although Watergate may be the thing he is best remembered for now, it was not the only major story he was involved in.
I met Ben Bradlee in 1995, when he wrote his autobiography, a book called A Good Life.
Father's Day is coming up in about a week, and today. I wanted to share with you an interview I did a few years ago about a Hollywood father-son story.
For the better part of four decades, one of America's favorite actors was Jack Lemmon.
He made some 60 movies. He was nominated for eight Academy Awards, and won the Oscar twice,for Mr. Roberts, and for Save The Tiger.
Younger audiences may remember him best for his roles in the comedies Grumpy, Old Men and Grumpier Old Men.
And starting in the 1970s, Jack Lemmon's son Chris also established himself as a performer. The younger lemon is a talented actor, screenwriter, and musician.
And in 2006, he published a book, a tribute to his dad, called A Twist of Lemmon.
She is one of the most visible faces in television news. For 15 years she has co-hosted MSNBC's Morning Joe program.
But before that, Mika Brzezinski ;s future in television news was anything but certain. In fact, she wasn't sure she had a future.
Through a little bit of luck, a lot of hard work, and a persistence that just wouldn't give up, Brzezinski earned her way back into TV news, and eventually the Morning Joe co-host slot.
I met her in 2010 when she wrote a memoir that was also a motivational book for women called All Things at Once.
It was an electrifying finish to the 2006, Kentucky Derby, as the undefeated 3-year-old Barbaro won the race by the largest margin of victory in over six decades.
The jockey who guided Barbaro to victory that day was one of the world's best, the 38-year-old veteran Edgar Prado.
But two weeks later tragedy struck. In the opening seconds of the Preakness, Barbaro went down with a catastrophic leg injury.
Barbaro struggled for months, before finally having to be put down.
Two years later, Prado wrote a love story, a book called M Guy Barbaro. That's when I met him and his co-author, sports writer John Eisenberg.
Can the guy who just barely graduated from high school become one of the world's 100 most influential people?
Well, it doesn't very often, to be sure. But that is the short version of the story of Dr. J. Craig Venter, who led the first draft sequence of the human genome some 20 years ago,
Venter founded the company Celera Genomics, which found itself in a very publicized race with the international Human Genome Project to produce that map.
And by summer 2000, Venter was a VIP guest at a White House announcement featuring President Clinton, British prime minister Tony Blair, and a host of other high-level dignitaries.
Venter was widely hailed around the world as a leading figure in the scientific community .
In 2007, Venter wrote his autobiography, a book called A Life Decoded. And that's what I met him.
We're kicking off the start of LGBTQ Pride Month with a conversation with one of the leading literary figures in the gay rights movement of the late 20th century.
Armistead Maupin started writing stories in 1974 that were published in a small newspaper in the San Francisco area. Those serialized stories were known as tales of the City.
Finally, in 1978, Maupin published the first Tales of The City book, the 1st of several in the series.
Drawing on his own experience as a gay man, Mupin’s books feature a broad community of diverse characters and backgrounds.
Importantly, Armistead Maupin was one of the first writers to directly address the AIDS crisis.
I first met him in 1987, but the conversation you're about to hear is from 13 years later, when we talked about his novel The Night Listener.
Memorial Day is the day America honors the men and women who have sacrificed their lives in military service.
But not all of those lives were lost on the battlefield.
U.S. Air Force fighter pilot Michael Donnelly flew 44 combat missions during the Persian Gulf war, Operation Desert Storm, in the early 1990s.
But in 1996, Donnelly was medically discharged from the Air Force, after being diagnosed with ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig's disease.
His subsequent fight with the U.S. government to get medical treatment proved to be the most difficult battle he had ever fought.
In 1998, Donnelly and his sister Denise co-wrote Falcon’s Cry: A Desert Storm Memoir.
One of the world's most iconic auto races, the Indianapolis 500, will be run this Sunday.
In the 111-year history of the Indy 500 only a handful of drivers have won the race three times or more
And only two drivers have won the race in three different decades.
One of them Bobby, Unser, who's part of the storied Unser auto racing family. He won the Indy 500 in 1968, 1975, and 1981.
He and his brother Al are the only set of brothers ever to win the Indy 500.
I met Bobby Unser in the spring of 2003, when he wrote a motivational book called Winners Are Driven.
Catherine Crier had a remarkable legal career. By age 30, she had become the youngest elected judge ever in the state of Texas.
But the number of years and Crier became a journalist and television personality, eventually hosting her own show on Court TV.
And along the way, she developed some strong opinions about the profession that she began her career in, the law.
Her 2002 book The Case Against Lawyers became a New York Times bestseller. And that's when I first met her.
Given Apple's dominance in the high-tech world, it's hard to imagine that it was once a company that had cash flow problems, poor quality products, a bloated workforce, and a total lack of strategy.
But that's essentially the kind of company that Gill Amelio said he took over as CEO in early 1996.
By his own telling, Amelio cut costs, slashed staff, and tried to put the company back on a strategic course.
But less than a year and a half later, in summer of 1997, Apple was still struggling and Amelio was forced out.
The following spring he wrote a book about his 500 days at Apple, called On the Firing Line. And that's when I met him.
She began singing professionally in the 1970s, as a solo artist and together with her older sister Barbara Mandrell and younger sibling Irlene Mandrell.
She's proven to be an enduring and popular country musician.
I met her in the summer of 1993, when she was promoting a series of books she had written for children, commemorating a dozen or so major holidays.
May is Mental Health Awareness Month. Tomorrow, May 19, is Mental Health Action Day.
So today on Now I've Heard Everything, a 1994 conversation with a woman whose own mental health crisis became a bestselling book, then a major potion picture.
In 1967, at the age of 18, Susanna Kaysen's family had her hospitalized for treatment of depression. She was told she would be there for two weeks. She was actually there for 18 months, after being diagnosed with borderline personality disorder..
Years later Kaysen drew on her experience to write her memoir Girl, Interrupted. I met her the following year.
Newt Gingrich was first elected to Congress from George's sixth district in 1978. By the end of the 1980s, he had risen to a position of leadership in the House GOP.
In 19 for Gingrich was a leader in the Republican wave that took over the house, and Gingrich became the first Republican house speaker in 40 years.
But by 1997 infighting in the party put Gingrich on the defensive.
Gingrich himself help fan the flames of discontent when, in late 1997, he almost single-handedly shut down the federal government. It was a squabble over a continuing resolution to keep the government funded. And Gingrich was upset because he had apparently been snubbed on a flight on Air Force One.
In 1998 Gingrich wrote a book he called Lessons Learned The Hard Way.
You know the name Jenny Craig. It's a popular weight loss, weight management and nutrition company with hundreds of locations all over the world.
It's named, of course, for its founder Jenny Craig. At the age of 51 she and her husband Sid co-founded what is today known as Jenny Craig Inc. They started with locations in Australia, and established a U.S. presence in 1985.
I met Jenny Craig in 1992, when she was promoting one of her books about weight loss and lifestyle management.
Have you ever had an incident in your life that suddenly propelled you in a whole new direction?
That happened to Pat Brown. After a close personal run-in with a suspected criminal Brown embarkrf on a whole new career path, even though many people said she was too old, and would never fit into a man's world .
Brown became a criminal profiler. And a very good one -- you may have seen her on TV, on CNN, MSNBC, The Discovery Channel, and elsewhere .
I met her in 2010, when she wrote a book about her experience, called The Profiler. And what you're about to learn, about Pat Brown and about profiling, you will find fascinating .
As a young man, Jeffery Deaver was a journalist. Then he was a lawyer for a while. But then his first love, writing, took over, and Deaver became a mystery and suspense writer.
And he was very good at it, but his real smash-through success came in 1997, with his novel about a quadriplegic police detective named Lincoln Rhyme.
Since then, Deaver has written 15 Lincoln Rhyme books, and is one of the world's most acclaimed suspense authors.
I had known Jeffery Deaver years before the series began, and we talked about his first Lincoln Rhyme book, The Bone Collector, when it was published.
It's mother's Day weekend. So today on Now I've Heard Everything a conversation with a woman whose mother was, and is, one of the world's most famous women, the great Lucille Ball.
I met Lucie Arnaz in 1997 when she was on tour promoting a CD-ROM project she had created called "Lucy and Desi: The Scrapbook.
She was also promoting a companion project, a kind of do-it-yourself family, scrapbook and album, and she was encouraging other sons and daughters to create family memories.
Now, you'll probably chuckle a bit when you hear us discussing such "cutting edge" technologies as the CD-ROM, but in 1997, they really were.
In the 1980s, the presidency of Ronald Reagan was facing two distinct foreign policy challenges.
Members of Hezbollah had taken several Americans hostage in Beirut, Lebanon.
And in Central America, a rebel group known as the Contras was trying to overthrow the socialist Sandinista government in Nicaragua.
To free the hostages, the Reagan administration underook a secret plan to sell military missiles to Iran, in hopes that the Iranian government would persuade Hezbollah to release the hostages.
In Nicaragua, meanwhile, the U.S. was funding, arming, and training the Contras. That is, until Congress abruptly cut off the entire funding.
That's when someone had the idea to take the money that Iran was paying secretly for those missiles and hand it secretly to the Contras. The plan became known later as the Iran-Contra affair.
Edie Adams was a very popular movie and television star in the 1950s, known widely for her comic impersonations of sexy singers, and her own wonderful singing voice.
But eventually she became even more widely known for being the wife of legendary television comic Ernie Kovacs. The two of them were a hugely popular comic duo.
But their story had a tragic end. In early 1962, Kovacs was killed in an auto accident. He was the only occupant of the car, and it was never known precisely what happened to cause the accident.
I met Edie Adams in 1990, when she finally wrote the book that publishers had been after her to write ever since Ernie kovacs's death.
Many people think we're on the verge of another Cold war, a cyber war, in which skilled hackers will break into systems abroad and wreak havoc with them.
But back in the 1980s, such a concept was still such a noveltythat intelligence agencies and police didn't pay much attention to it.
That is, until 1986, when an astronomer at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory made a startling discovery.
Cliff Stoll was a systems administrator at the lab, and noticed an unusual pattern of usage in the lab’s computer network.
In a groundbreaking game of cyber cat and mouse, stole eventually traced the activity back to a KGB recruit in Germany named Markus Hess.
Stoll told the amazing story in his 1989 bestseller The Cuckoo's Egg. I spoke with him about that book, and again a year later when they paperback version came out.
At the very height of the Cold War, in the late 1950s and early ‘60s, one of the most vilified man in the world – at least in the U.S. – was Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev,
For 11 years the USSR was led by this brash, arrogant, often angry man.
You may have heard that he wants. Famously said the Soviet Union would “bury” the United States. That, however, was a mistranslation, and it was not something Khrushchev ever actually said.
Khrushchev's second son, Sergei, was in his 20s, watching closely as his father guided the USSR. Sergei eventually became a highly educated, and well-respected, engineer in the Soviet Union.
But finally, in 1991 -- the same year the Soviet Union crumbled apart -- Sergei Khrushchev emigrated to the United States, and became a naturalized US citizen in 1999.
Gloria Gaynor began her professional music career in the early 1960s, when she was barely out of her teens. She was recording by the time she was 22, and had a couple of albums by the time she was 30.
But her songs and albums didn't really have great success- until 1978, when she went into the studio and recorded a song that became a defining moment in pop music.
"I Will Survive" became a smash Hit, and inspired millions.
But, of course, Gloria Gaynor's life was more than just one hit song. In her 1997 autobiography, also called. I Will survive, Gaynor told her life's story, with all of its ups and downs.
Let me take you back four and a half decades, and tell you about one of the most popular books of the late 1970s, a family saga said in Australia, called The Thorn Birds.
But if you happened to miss the book, The Thorn Birds was also a hugely popular TV miniseries in the early 1980s .
The author of The Thorn Birds was Australian-n-born Colleen McCullough.
Just 4 years after the TV miniseries, I first met Colleen McCullough when she wrote a novella called The Ladies of MIasslonghi.
And I was as enthralled as I'm sure you're about to be by Colleen McCullough's Witt and Good humor.
We got sad news last week but comedian Gilbert Gottfried had succumbed after a long battle with muscular dystrophy.
Funny and controversial, by turns relatable and outrageous, Gilbert Gottfried built a fan base of millions.
In 2012 while he was on a whirlwind book tour, I had a few minutes with Gilbert.
And I found him to be exactly the kind of guy you would hope that he would be- the kind you'd love to sit down and have a few beers with.
We all know what dolphins look like, right?
Well maybe we don't know what all dolphins look like. Have you ever heard of Pink dolphins? Shape-shifting, human-like pink dolphins?
Renowned naturalist Sy Montgomery had heard of pink dolphins, deep in the Amazon River basin in Brazil. So she went to check them out.
What resulted was her 2000 book The Journey of the Pink Dolphins. That's when she and I had one of our many conversations over the years.
A few days ago Ketanji Brown Jackson made history as she was confirmed as the first black female supreme Court Justice.
But 75 years ago today another African American made history, in a way that may have been nearly as significant.
On April 15th. 1947 Jackie Robinson took the field as a member of the Brooklyn Dodgers, the first black man to play in the Major leagues.
And Jackie Robinson was no token. He was voted Rrookie of the Year that year and was the National League's Most Valuable Player two years later.
By his side during his historic baseball career was his wife, his college sweetheart, Rachel
Do you remember the 1970s TV show Charlie's Angels? And do you remember one of the stars,Farrah Fawcett and her magnificent iconic hairstyle?
If you do then you know the work of stylist Jose Eber.
During the '70s and '80s, Eber established himself as one of the premier hair stylist to the stars.
And today he is known for his luxury salons as well as a line of hair care products.
I met him in 1990 when he published his second book called Beyond Hair.
For 11 seasons on the TV series 7th Heaven, Stephen Collins played The Rev. Eric Camden, a Protestant minister who headed a family of seven.
But Collins had a long and impressive acting resume before that, including TV shows and movies. He was in the first Star Trek movie in 1979.
But when I met him in 1994, it was to talk about a novel he had written, a thriller called Eye Contact.
And given the legal troubles Collins faced a decade later the subject matter now sounds a little problematic. More on that later.
Male comedians have been dressing as women for comic effect for decades. Think Milton Berle. Think Flip Wilson. Or Saturday Night Live sketches with Will Farrell or John Goodman.
But perhaps no one has taken it to the level that Tyler Perry did, with his character. Madea. And that is just one reason. Among many, the Tyler Perry is one of the most successful and influential filmmakers of our time.
Tyler Perry is a busy man, so in 2006, the only way I could get an interview with him was by telephone. It was not long after his second Madea movie had come out, and the book he was promoting was called Don't Make a Black Woman Take Off Her Earrings.
For 21 years, from the mid-1950s to the mid '70s, mayor Richard j. Daly ran the city of Chicago. And I mean he ran the city.
One member of Daley’s cabinet was a woman named Jane Byrne, who was Chicago’s Commissioner of Consumer Sales.
Not long after Mayor Daley’s death in 1976 Byrne left her city job, and ran for mayor herself in 1979. And against the odds, Byrne won. She became not only Chicago's first female mayor, but the first woman to be elected mayor of any major U.S. city.
But 4 years later, when she ran for reelection, the tide that had swept her into office swept her back out again.
Back around 1988 or '89, you could hardly go anywhere without seeing a little book written by a former Unitarian minister called All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten.
Readers all over the world were struck by the simplicity and elegance and wisdom of that little book.
That man was Robert Fulghum, and his book stayed on the New York Times bestseller list for two years.
Here's how he summed up the book when he and I first talked about it in 1988:
A year later, we met again, to talk about his sequel, a book called It Was On Fire When I Lay Down On It.
Where has everybody's manners gone? Doesn't anybody have good manners anymore ?
For over 40 years, syndicated columnist Judith Martin -- better known as Miss Manners -- has been helping people navigate the often confusing Waters of good manners .
In her polite but firm way, Martin answers readers questions about what constitutes good manners and good etiquette in today's world.
In 1990, Martin wrote a book called Miss Manners Guide For The Turn of Tthe Millennium. And that was when I had one of many conversations that I've had with her over the years.
Today is March 30th, and it was 41 years ago today that a young man tried to kill President Ronald Reagan.
And one of the most controversial things that happened that day happened to a man with a long and distinguished military and public service career, general. Alexander Haig.
Haig was a graduate of West point m. He served in Korea, served in Vietnam, earned the silver Star and the purple heart. And by 1973 was the youngest four-star general ever in the US army.
In 1973, Haig became President Richard Nixon's, Chief of staff just as the Watergate scandal was turning up to full boil.
In fact, many say that Haig was instrumental in persuading Nixon to resign the presidency in 1974.
I'm not sure Frank Warren understood what he was unleashing in January, 2005, when he initiated his PostSecret project .
What started as something of a social experiment, encouraging people to send him their innermost secrets on a postcard, turned into something way beyond that.
It wasn't long before Frank, a mild-mannered man from suburban Washington, DC started receiving thousands of postcards, from all over the world .
In 2005 he published the first book. A collection of those postcards, called simply PostSecret. That's when I first met him.
Human sexuality has been widely studied, researched, and written about over the years, most notably, perhaps, by Alfred Kinsey and Masters and Johnson .
In the 1970s and '80s, there was a trilogy of books about sexuality by another researcher that drew widespread praise and criticism. It was called The Hite Report, by researcher Shere Hite.
Much of the controversy centered on the fact that Hite was a feminist who drew upon political and philosophical viewpoints into her work.
In 1988 she completed her trilogy with a volume called Women And Love. And that's when I first met her, during a whirlwind book tour that included some controversial stops, including TV's Phil Donahue show.
It was around this time in 1961 that a group of five young men formed a singing group called The Elgins. They were good, so good that Berry Gordy signed them to a contract at Motown. Trouble was, there was already a group called The Elgins, so Gordy asked them to find a new name.
That's when they became The Temptations. Their leader and founder was baritone Otis Williams.
And over the next five decades, the temptations establish themselves as one of the most popular and most enduring soul music acts.
In 1988, Williams wrote a book that was part memoir, part story of The Temptations. And that's when I had the chance to meet him .
Barry Levinson is an Oscar-winning film director and screenwriter. But it also turns out he's a pretty good novelist.
The man famous for such films as Diner, Rain Man, and Good Morning, Vietnam wrote a novel in 2003 called Sixty-Six.
Like his Baltimore-based movies, Sixty-Six was the storyof young men dealing with momentous changes in their lives and in the society around them.
Some think this is the beginning of another Cold war. Or worse. Russia's invasion of Ukraine has changed the course of world events.
Not since the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991 have Americans paid such close attention to Russia .
I was thinking recently that this called to mind and interview I did in 1995, with a Russian woman named Luba Brezhneva.
If her last name sounds familiar, it should. Heruncle, Leonid Brezhnev, was Soviet premiere for 18 years after the ouster of his predecessor. Nikita Khrushchev.
Luba was just barely out of her teens when her uncle took over the USSR, and in many ways her story is simply that of a young woman finding her way in the world. Luba Brezhneva was in a unique position. And it wasn't always a pleasant position.
Many authors, maybe even most authors, labor in obscurity for months or years before finally hitting it big with a bestseller .
But Patricia Cornwell hit it big with her very first book, Post Mortem in 1990. And in the three decades since then, she has sold over 100 million books.
Her wildly popular mysteries feature a medical examiner named Dr. Kay Scarpetta. Cornwell based the character loosely on a real life medical examiner for whom she worked briefly in the 1980s.
I first interviewed Patricia Cornwell when Post Mortem was published. The interview you're about to hear is our second interview, a year later, when her second book, Body of Evidence was published.
In the early 1960s, one of America's most popular teenagers was an actor who wasn't even a teenager .
Dwayne Hickman played the clean cut, girl. Crazy, likable lead in the TV sitcom The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis.
After the series ended, Hickman appeared in several beach movies alongside such figures as Frankie Avalon and Annette Funiciello.
Later, he became a television executive, working with CBS on many iconic TV series
In 1994 Hickman wrote a memoir, and that's when I have the chance to meet him.
A young British boys fascination with science, and with metals and chemistry in particular, led to him becoming one of the world's foremost neurologists.
And the author of best-selling books about science.
His name was Oliver Sacks. He's the author of books such as The Man Who mistook His Wife For a Hat, and The Island of The Color Blind. But he is perhaps best known for his 1973 book Awakenings, which became a major movie in 1990 starring Robert de Niro and Robin Williams.
In 2001, his book Uncle Tungsten told of how, as a youngster, he first became interested in science.
SHave you ever done a job so well that your boss is punished you for it?
That's what former Navy SEAL team 6 Commander Richard Marcinko said happened to him.
Marcinko joined the Navy in the late 1950s, and became a part of the underwater demolitions unit. After a tour in Vietnam, Marcinko became a Navy SEAL.
After the 1979 hostage rescued attempt, Marcinko was chosen to form, and be the first commander of, the elite SEAL team. Team Six.
After three years in that role, Marcinko was given a new assignment: form a unit to test the Navy's vulnerability to terrorism.
The roots of the modern feminist movement can be traced directly back to a single book published nearly 60 years ago.
It was called The Feminine Mystique. Its author was a young would-be journalist named Betty Friedan. It is widely regarded as the spark that lit the fire of the feminist movement.
But that was only the beginning for Betty Friedan. Three years later, she co-founded the National Organization for Women, and was its first president.
She also helped establish the National Womens Political Caucus. And she founded what was then known as the National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws, known today simply as NARAL.
In 2000, Friedan wrote a memoir called Life So Far.
Tomorrow, March 5th, is the 40th anniversary of the untimely deaf of comedian. John Belushi.
Belushi was one of the original cast members of Saturday Night Live when it premiered in 1975, and he was the star movies like Animal House and The Blues Brothers.
But John Belushi also had a substance abuse problem, and on March 5th, 1982, he died in a Los Angeles hotel room. A woman named Cathy Smith was accused of administering a fatal speedball to Belushi.
And suddenly, at the age of 31, his high school sweetheart Judy was left a widow.
A few years later, Judith Belushi wrote a memoir of her experience. And that's when I met her.
While there have been thousands of books written about the Holocaust, and Nazi Germany, and the horrors of the concentration camps, few have been as powerful in the telling as Art Spiegelman's Maus.
Originally a serialized comic strip, Spiegelman published Maus in book form in 1986, with volume 1, and in 1991 with volume two.
And despite its unusual format -- it is nonfiction -- It is the story of the Holocaust as told to Art Spiegelman by his father, a Polish Jew who survived the a concentration camps.
While it has been labeled history, biography, autobiography, and more, spiegelman himself doesn't quite know how to categorize it.
I first met Art Spiegelman in 1991, upon publication of the second volume of the Maus story.
In the mid 20th century, brothers George and ira Gershwin produced many of the songs that have lived in America's heart for decades.
With George's melodies and Ira's lyrics, tunes like "Someone to Watch Over Me," "Embraceable You," and "Let's Call the Whole Thing Off" have endured for decades.
In 1977, a young cabaret singer named Michael Feinstein went to work as Ira Gershwin's personal archivist.
For the next six years, until Gershwin's death, feinstein worked closely with him, gathering insight, inspiration, and some great stories about Gershwin and his contemporaries like Cole Porter, Irving Berlin, and Irving Caesar, among others.
In 1995 feinstein wrote a memoir, called Nice Work if You Can Gt It. And that's when I met him.
The thing about food is that it's not just fuel for a metabolic process of the human body. It's a social construct, bringing family or friends together in a way few other experiences can. Can.
And that's what's at the heart of the writings of Nigell Lawson, the well-known British-born food writer and TV chef.
In fact, when I met her in 2004, the book she had just published was called Feast.
And a conversation with Nigella Lawson is all "feast" and no "famine."
Benjamin O. Davis Jr. played a key role in World War II.
Not only were his combat accomplishments extraordinary, but his leadership helped shape the United States Air Force for decades to come.
Davis was the leader of the famed Tuskegee Airmen.
As commander of the 99th Fighter Squadron and 332nd Fighter Group in Europe, Davis demonstrated that African-American pilots were just as skilled as their white counterparts.
Benjamin O. Davis flew sixty missions in the war.
For more than half a century, Frank Deford wrote for Sports Illustrated magazine and for 37 of those years he was also heard regularly on NPR, and seen on HBO's Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel.
Six times, Deford was voted national sports writer of the year by the National Sportscasters and Sports Writers Association.
But after all those years it took him until 2012 to finally write his memoir, a book. He called Over Time.
I had met Frank a couple of times before that, but it was nice to see him again to talk about his book as we sat and chatted in a Washington DC hotel lobby.
As many others of his generation were, former Colorado, senator Gary Hart was inspired to get into politics by John f. Kennedy, and Robert f. Kennedy, and their contemporaries in the 1960s.
By 1972, hard had established himself as a rising star in the Democratic party, and ran George McGovern's unsuccessful campaign for president.
Two years later, heart ran for US Senate from Colorado and one. He was reelected in 1980. But he had his sights set on higher office.
He ran for president in 1984, narrowly losing the nomination to Walter Mondale. And he ran again in 1988, until his candidacy was done in by allegations of sexual misconduct.
I had the chance to interview Gary Hart several times during the 1980s and '90s, including the interview you're about to hear. Heart had just written another book reflecting on his years as someone who tried to be a political reformer .
Joyce Lynn elders was the eldest child of Arkansas sharecroppers, born in 1933. Through a series of remarkable happenstance, she ended up going to medical school and becoming a pediatrician.
When Bill Clinton was governor of Arkansas, he appointed her to be director of the Arkansas Department of Health. And when he became president in January 1993, Mr. Clinton chose Dr. Elders to be the U.S. Surgeon General. She was the first African American to serve in that position.
But almost from the beginning, Dr. Elders's bluntness and forthright way of speaking. Got her into hot water. She was anything but politically correct .
And by the end of 1994, the president was forced to ask her for her resignation.
It's Valentine's Day. And we could have done the usual mushy, romantic stuff, but instead I wanted to go more tongue in cheek .
Back in 1994 I interviewed the popular self-help author Karen Salmansohn. She had just written a book called how to make your man behave in 21 days or less using the secrets of professional dog trainers.
Really, how much more romantic can you get?
But you know, as much as I hate to admit it, behind every incisive piece of humor. There is a nugget of truth. As I think you'll find out right now.
It's super bowl weekend, and as we prepare to watch the Rams and Bengals in super bowl 56, let me take you back to super bowl 22 in January 1988 between the Washington Redskins and the Denver broncos.
The quarterback for the Redskins that evening was 32-year-old. Doug Williams.
And by halftime, Williams had made NFL history. In the second quarter alone, he passed for $340 yards and four touchdowns. The Redskins ended up as super bowl champions, and Williams was the game's MVP.
He was the first black quarterback to start and win a super bowl.
A couple of years later, he wrote an autobiography called Quarterblack.
And even though this interview is 30 years old, it still seems very relevant today, especially in light of the Brian Flores lawsuit against the NFL.
Back to back major movie roles in 1969 and 1970 made the young Ali MacGraw one of the world's most popular actresses.
Her portrayal of Jennifer Cavallari in 1970s "Love Story" remains a film classic to this day.
As the years went by, Ali MacGraw starred in more major movies. She married actor. Steve McQueen. Later she was married to director Robert Evans.
Finally, in 1991, McGraw wrote her autobiography. That's when I met her and we had a Frank conversation about her career and her personal life.
He wants famously said that his writing was so crisp and tight because he simply left out the parts that people usually skip over.
During a writing career that spanned more than seven decades, Elmore "Dutch" Leonard produced scores of novels that established his reputation as one of America's foremost and most popular storytellers of the second half of the 20th century.
I first met Elmore Leonard in 1986, and interviewed him every year or two for the next 20 years.
In 1990 we had a conversation about his newest novel, the interview you're about to hear. The book we're talking about: Get Shorty, which later became a hugely popular movie.
As the 2022 Winter Olympics get underway today in China, we are reminded that these games can produce heroes and great triumphs, but also soul crushing defeats which can bring out either the best or the worst in a competitor.
Wisconsin native Dan Jansen was one of the world's best speed skaters when he went to the Winter Olympics in 1988. He carried the expectations of millions of Americans on his shoulders. But as the games got underway, Jensen got devastating news from back home -- his sister Jane was dying of leukemia.
He was informed of her death just before competing in the 500-meter event, the one he was expected to win. But he fell in that race, and fell again in the 1,000-meter race, and came home with no medals.
In 1992, he again came home empty-handed. Many people tacked the name the heartbreak kid on him.
But in 1994, at the Lillehammer Olympics, in his final race, the 1,000-meter, Jansen won his first and only medal, a gold medal.
Imagine a small group of high school students needing armed United States military just to get into school.
In September 1957 9. African American students, the first to enroll at Central high School in Little Rock, Arkansas, were accompanied by armed national guard members
They became known as the Little Rock Nine.
Among them was 15-year-old Melba Patillo, later Melba Patillo Beals. Somehow, she and the rest of a little rock nine escaped any kind of serious physical harm.
I first met her in 1994, when she wrote a memoir of her experience called warriors. Don't cry.
After a U.S. Army soldier named Casey Sheehan was killed in action in Iraq in 2004 his mother, Cindy Sheehan became one of the loudest anti-war voices in America .
What made her different from others, though, was that Cindy Sheehan was not content to simply join protest rallies or write letters. She set up a makeshift camp outside President George w. Bush's, Texas ranch.
Her protest drew international attention, but made her many enemies as well as allies.
In 2006, Cindy Sheehan wrote a memoir called Peace Mom. I met her during one of her visits to Washington DC.
Who is God?
Who is the all-knowing, all-powerful deity who, despite having different names, is at the heart of every major religion?
A former Roman Catholic nun who has become one of the world's most renowned religious scholars, Karen Armstrong in 1994, wrote a book called A History of God.
This was the first of many conversations I had with her over the next few years.
He's not a psychic nor a fortune teller. The Amazing Kreskin is a mentalist, perhaps the best known mentalist in the world.
But is he for real ?
After years of hearing people conjecture about his skills, Kreskin in 1996 wrote a book called How To Be a Fake Kreskin.
Listen to this interview and then you decide: fake, or real?
At most news organizations, the White House beat is a coveted plum assignment.
But it's a difficult, stressful, and highly competitive job. Most correspondence last only a few years at best.
One exception was UPI correspondent Helen Thomas. She covered the White House for over 50 years, and covered 10 presidents from Kennedy to Obama.
I met her in 1999 when, at the age of 79, she wrote a memoir called Front Row At The White House
Where did modern humankind come from?
Scientists,, scholars, and experts have been trying to find the answer for generations.
One of the most prominent among them was Kenyan-born Richard Leakey.
His parents, Louis and Mary Leakey, we're also renowned paleoanthropologists whose work centered on finding the origins of modern humans.
In 1977, Richard Leakey co-authored at groundbreaking book called Origins. But by 1992, he had Unearthed new material the prompted him to write a sequel, called Origins Reconsidered.
How and where do race, gender, class, art, and capitalism come together?
That question was at the heart of some 30 books written by author bell hooks.
That was actually the pen name that Gloria Jean Watkins adopted for herself.
But being a black female activist and feminist also often made her a target.
In her 1999 book Remembered Rapture hooks recalled some of her challenges as a writer and activist and that's when I have the chance to meet her for the first of our several conversations.
Dexter Scott King was only 7 years old in 1968 when his father Martin Luther King Jr was assassinated.
But his memories of his late father remain sharp and crisp.
And those deeply personal recollections sometimes contrast with the public views of Martin Luther King Jr.
In 2003 at the age of 42, Dexter Scott King wrote a book called Growing Up King, and that's when I had a chance to meet him and talk with him.
When you think of America's great present-day chefs and restaurateurs, there are only a handful of names that immediately come to mind.
And one of them is Wolfgang Puck.
While he may be best known for his acclaimed Spago restaurant, Puck has also written a number of cookbooks, he's a TV and he's the official caterer for the Academy Awards.
I met him a little over thirty years ago, in the fall of 1991, when he was on tour for his cookbook adventures in the Kitchen.
And get ready. You're going to be very ungry in just a few minutes.
He earned a medical degree from Harvard, but instead of pursuing a career in medicine, Michael Crichton became a writer.
And as a reader, I'm really glad he did.
I had read some of Michael Crichton's books, and enjoyed the movie "The Andromeda Strain," that was based on one of them, but I had never interviewed him, until November 1990 when "Jurassic Park" was published.
"Jurassic Park:" the movie was released in 1993, starring Sam Neill, Laura Dern, and Jeff Goldblum.
So here now, from 1990, Michael Crichton.
Surrogate parenting has become commonplace in America and other countries. It has helped countless numbers of couples become parents.
But it took until the late 1980s for an American Court to rule on the legal validity of surrogate motherhood.
It came in the case of an infant girl dubbed Baby M.
A woman named Mary Beth Whitehead gave birth to baby M, after her eggs were fertilized by a man named Bill Stern. He and his wife Elizabeth for unable to have a child of their own.
The trouble arose when Whitehead, after giving birth, decided she wanted to keep the baby.
A protracted court battle ensued, and ultimately the Sterns won custody of the baby.
You know we sometimes get so caught up in the minutiae of everyday life. Trying to protect our own little turf on this little planet that we lose sight of the big picture. I mean the really big picture.
In the 1970s and '80s astronomer. Carl Sagan led the way in showing us the big picture with his book and TV show. Cosmos and then in 1994 his follow-up book called pale Blue.
The interview you're about to hear was actually the second interview I had with Carl Sagan in the early '90s and I found it hard to be in the same room with him and and not be swept up in his enthusiastic and voracious quest for more knowledge.
And as I was preparing the interview for use on this podcast, I thought how absolutely thrilled Carl Sagan would be today to learn about the James Webb telescope.
Songs recorded by Judy Collins have become some of America's most enduring favorites.
With a debut album in 1961 at a debut concert about a year later and then a number one single shortly after Judy Collins became a fixture in American music, particularly the folk music genre.
But with a musical upbringing that included everything from classical to country to folk to pop. Judy Collins resisted labels
She in fact learned to trust her heart. That's why she called her 1987 autobiography. Trust Your Heart and that's when I had the chance to meet her.
Back in the fall of 1993, when I had scheduled an interview with actor. William shatner, it was fascinating to watch the generational divide in the office where I worked.
When he walked in, the oldest among us could be heard saying Captain Kirk is here!
The next oldest we're saying TJ hooker is here!
And the youngest, at that point in the early '90s, we're saying the guy from rescue 911 is here!
William Shatner has undoubtedly been one of the most durable actors of our time, appealing across generations and across genres.
It was on a cold Christmas Eve night many years ago in New York that a stray cat found a new, loving home.
His rescuer was I then crusty 60 year old curmudgeon, an author and TV and radio critic named Cleveland Amory.
Well, Amory named his new furry white companion PPolar Bear. And in 1987, when Amory wrote a book called The Cat Who Came For Christmas, Polar Bear became a celebrity.
This was my first interview with Cleveland Amory, but it was not the last. We talked several times over the next few years.
What would you do if a big corporation took over the company you built, then told you you had no more right to use your own name to sell the product you invented?
Welcome to Wally Amos’s world.
The founder of Famous Amos Cookies eventually lost the company. And then he lost the right to use his own name to sell cookies.
But the Florida native with the irrepressible sense of humor and enthusiasm turn the situation around. Eventually.
He wrote about it in a 1994 book that he called Man With No Name.
Do you believe in angels?
Does each of us have a guardian angel? What do angels really look like? Can they perform miracles?
Some thirty years ago a Washington DC-based author and psychic medium named Sophy Burnham wrote a book that became a major bestseller.
It was called A Book of Angels.
And that's when Sophie and I had the first of our several conversations over the next few years.
And if you don't believe in angels now, perhaps you will a few minutes from now.
Have you counted your blessings today?
If you haven't, maybe you should. It might be good for your health.
So says TV journalist. Deborah Norville.
In 2007, the anchor of inside edition wrote a book about gratitude, thankfulness, and how that can actually change. Not just your attitude, but you're very health.
I have the chance to speak with her for a few minutes about that book.
The national football League is over 100 years old, and in that time, football fans have enjoyed some breathtaking games, spectacular plays, some of the most colorful athletes we've ever known, and more than a few moments of spectator sport agony.
In 1994, The NFL participated in publishing a huge coffee table book reflecting on the first 75 years of the league. And to write the forward to that book, they chose legendary Chicago bears, middle linebacker Dick Butkus.
Now I grew up in the Chicago area, so I knew the name Dick butkus very well -- and his reputation. An opponent once said that when he was tackling you, Dick Butkus was aiming not to put you in the hospital but the cemetery.
But when I met him to talk about that book, I found him to be a very warm and personable guy with lots of fun stories.
Ms. Is turning 50
It was in December 1971 that a staff writer for the New Yorker named Gloria Steinem created what would become, the following summer, Ms. Magazine.
The December debut was actually an insert in the New Yorker, and it instantly catapulted stynom to the forefront of the feminist movement.
Fast forward to 1992. Gloria Steinem wrote a book called The Revolution Within, and that's when she and I sat down for one of our several conversations over the years.
So here now, from 1992, gloria Steinem.
I don't know about you but every Christmas season one of the movies I have to watch is it's a Wonderful Life.
The story of George Bailey, the small town building and loan manager who's given the chance to see what the world would be like without him is a Christmas classic.
Almost 30 years ago now two guys came out with a book of trivia about the movie. One of them was Jimmy Hawkins, who played Tommy in the movie. The other was actor. Paul Petersen.
Now you may wonder what Paul Petersen has to do with. It's a Wonderful LLfe. Well. Paul Petersen was one of the stars of the '60s sitcom The Donna Reed show -- and of course Donna Reed was Jimmy Stewart's co-star in. It's a Wonderful Life.
For a generation, a handcrafted Longaberger basket is something of a home decor showpiece.
Dave Longaberger founded the company in 1973, and by 1975 had hired his daughter Tammy to work there. When Dave died in 1999, Tami took over as president and CEO.
In 2001, a book that Dave Longaberger had written was finally published, and Tammy went on tour to promote it. That's when I met her.
At the time, the Longaberger company was at its peak, with thousands of employees making all kinds of home decor products,
They even built a company headquarters building in Ohio that looks like a giant Longaberger Basket.
On a quiet Sunday in early December, millions of Americans went about their usual routines.
Folks went to church. Children played out in the yard. Teenagers went to moves. Families went to dinner. People listen to football games on the radio.
And then everything changed.
On the radio came the horrible news that the U.S. military base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii had been attacked by forces from Japan
And just like that, America was plunged into World War II.
Back in 1991 as the nation was preparing to mark the 50th anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack, I took the opportunity to ask anyone I interviewed that year who was old enough to remember, where they were and what they were doing on that day.
Fprty years ago this weekend a U.S. Army general who was stationed at a NATO facility in Italy was kidnapped by a Marxist terrorist group known as the Red Brigades.
General James Dozier spent the next 42 days in captivity, before a dramatic rescue.
And, as you're about to hear in this interview, Dozier's rescue by Italian special forces actually help break the back of the Red Brigades.
I met General Dozier and his wife Judy several years later. They wrote a book about that harrowing episode.
Does this song help put you in the Christmas spirit?
That song was written by Mel Torme. He was born and raised in Chicago. He first sang in public and at age 4, wrote his first song at age 13, and was an actor in a radio show by his teens.
From the 1940s through the 1990s, Mel Torme established himself as one of America's favorite and most popular singers, songwriters, and the Rangers.
He acquired a nickname: The Velvet Fog. In 1988, when he wrote his autobiography, he actually called o. Ot Wasn't All Velvet. And that's what I met him.
The New York Times once labeled William Kunstler "America's most controversial lawyer."
What earned him that distinction was his defense of the so-called "Chicago Seven," a group of young radicals who tried to disrupt the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago.
But the Chicago Seven were hardly Kunstler's most controversial clients. He also represented clients ranging from Jack Ruby to U.S. Marine and Russian spy Clayton Lonetree, to the man known as The Blind Sheikh, the man behind the World Trade Center bombing in 1993.
I met William Kunstler in 1994, when he wrote his autobiography, a book titled My Life As a Radical Lawyer.
Chuck Norris doesn't drink coffee in the morning, he has a mug of nails.
Chuck Norris can dribble a bowling ball.
ChuckNorris doesn't read books. He stares them down until he gets the information he wants.
But a book is how I first met Chuck Norris 32 years ago, in early 1988. He had just written an autobiography and was on tour to promote it.
And it was one of the many times in my interviewing career that I wished I could have had a couple of hours, instead of just 15 minutes, with a subject.
On this Thanksgiving Eve, we'll be talking a little turkey. And gravy, and mashed potatoes, and lots of other delicious stuff from the cookbook written by actress and cookbook author Jill St. John.
In a long and successful acting career St. John was popular in movies and on television.
She was in Diamonds Are Forever as Tiffany Case, the first American Bond girl.
Later. though, she established herself as a chef and food writer in print and on TV.
I met her a few days before Thanksgiving in 1987, when we had a nice conversation about all kinds of food, and how she came to write a cookbook. And her acting career.
Perhaps no one other than maybe Martha Stewart has helped more Americans gain the confidence they need to do things around the house then Bob Vila has
His popular home fixer upper show on PBS, this Old House, premiered in 1979, and for years afterward top millions of us how to do simple projects ourselves. And sometimes not so simple projects.
I met him in 1986, when he published a reference book and guide for us do-it-yourselfers. And we talked all about hammers, saws, plumbing, and wiring.
If you know Danica McKellar only as Winnie Cooper on TV's The Wonder Years, from the 1980s, what she has done since the show ended may surprise you.
After The Wonder Years ended in the early 90s, Danica McKellar went to UCLA and got a degree in math.
She now writes books about mathematics, and advocates for education.
In 2007 she wrote a book for Middle school-age girls, called Math Doesn't Suck.
I had a few minutes with her after an event at a bookstore outside Washington DC.
In the world of men's magazines, Hugh Hefner was king of the hill for years, as publisher of Playboy magazine.
But in 1965, a then-35-year-old laundromat manager, painter, and photographer named Bob Guccione launched a magazine to challenge the Playboy empire.
He called it Penthouse. And by the early 1980s Penthouse had made Guccione one of America's richest businessmen.
But Penthouse, Playboy, and Larry Flynt's Hustler had also by then become the targets of conservative and religious groups, eager to see the magazines banished.
I met Bob Guccione in 1986, at the height of his battles with people like Attorney General Ed Meese, and Rev. Donald Wildmon and Rev, Jerry Falwell’s “Moral Majority.”
In 1976 a British business woman started a small business to sell skin and hair care products.
But she also wanted it to reflect her ethics and values, including human rights, animal rights, and the environment.
Anita Roddick called her business The Body Shop.
Today The Body Shop has over 3,000 stores in 65 countries. But it is still loyal to Anita Roddick's ethics and values.
In 2001 Roddick wrote a book called Business As Unusual, a look back at the sometimes-turbulent ‘90s for The Body Shop.
America's schools are in crisis right now.
After COVID took its toll, and forced remote learning on millions of kids, school boards all over the country are now dealing with loud, sometimes ferocious, debates over everything from mask mandates to gender pronouns to critical race theory.
But debate over education is nothing new.
A generation ago, a Chicago educator with unusual methods was both widely praised and roundly criticized.
Yet it was hard to argue with the success that Marva Collins had with the students who attended her private inner city elementary school.
The United States marks Veterans Day tomorrow. And very recently, we lost one of the most revered veterans of modern times.
The son of Jamaican immigrants, Colin Powell was a lifelong soldier.
He joined the ROTC while in college in the 1950s, then served two tours of Duty in Vietnam in the 1960s. In 1979 he was promoted to Brigadier General, and by 1989, he was Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
When George W Bush was elected in 2000, he named Powell his Secretary of State. a post Powell held for Mr. Bush’s first term.
I met Colin Powell in 1996, when he was promoting his autobiography, a book called My American Journey.
The men's NCAA college basketball season opens tomorrow. And it will be the final season for one of the game's winningest and most successful coaches ever.
Mike Krzyzewski, also known as Coach K, has been head coach at Duke University since 1980. He announced last June that he would be retiring after this season.
Under his leadership, the Blue Devils have made it to the Final Four 12 times, and have won five national championships, second only to John Wooden's ten.
I met Coach K 21 years ago, when he wrote a book on leadership called Leading with the Heart.
Who knew Russians had such a great sense of humor?
Well, few Americans thought so, until the 1980s, when the young Russian-born Yakov Smirnoff burst onto the scene.
When he arrived here in 1977 from Ukraine, Smirnoff actually spoke no English.
But quickly he was able to turn his foreigner’s naivete into a very successful comedy act.
In 1987, with Smirnoff's popularity nearing its peak -- and just before a visit to the U.S. by Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev -- Smirnoff went on a book tour to promote a hilarious book he call America on Six Rubles A Day.
Any list of the greatest operatic singers of modern times will include, somewhere near the top, the name Beverly Sills.
The statuesque soprano was an audience favorite for decades. Time Magazine once dubbed her :America's Queen of Opera."
By the late ‘60s the singer whose nickname was Bubbles had also become a very popular TV talk show guests.
But she also struggled with personal crises.
Her daughter Muffy was deaf and suffered from multiple sclerosis. Her son Bucky, born two years later, was severely mentally disabled.
Thirty years ago today, November 1, 1991, off the New England coast the six-man crew of the sword fishing boat the Andrea Gail were fighting, and losing, their battle with what has come to be known as The Perfect Storm.
A close friend of those six was fellow swordfishing boat captain Linda Greenlaw.
If you've seen the 2000 movie The Perfect Storm, Greenlaw was played by actress Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio.
Greenlaw eventually wrote three books of her own, including a 2004 called All Fishermen Are Liars.
Back in the 1960s, he had a very successful career writing screenplays for comedies. William Peter Blatty's credits include movies like A Shot In The Dark, the second movie in the Pink Panther series, and The Man From The Diner's Club, starring Danny Kaye.
But of course, Blatty's most famous and popular work, the one for which he is best remembered today, was his 1971 novel that at first, no one wanted to publish.
It was called The Exorcist. And it has become a classic.
In 2013 I had the chance to spend a few minutes with this very warm, funny, and personable author.
How would it make you feel if you woke up one day and realized your father was a traitor to his country?
Unfortunately that was more than just a rhetorical question for Laura Walker, whose father, John Walker Jr., is considered one of the most notorious and dangerous spies in American history.
By the time he was caught in the mid-1980s John Walker Jr. had been spying for the Soviet Union for over 20 years, even bringing his son Michael into the "Walker family spy ring," as it became known.
And he tried to recruit his daughter Laura into his spy ring as well, after she joined the military, but it was only after she tipped off authorities that her father and brother were caught.
It was an HBO Young Comedians special in late summer 1985 that launched a young comedian to national fame. Sam Kinison became wildly popular almost overnight.
And for the next several years was one of America's favorite stand-up comedians.
Tragically Sam Kinison's life ended abruptly in April 1992 in a horrible car crash in California. His brother Bill Kinison was in the car behind him and witness the accident.
Two years later Bill Kinison wrote a book about his little brother call Brother Sam. That's why I had a chance to meet him/
In recent years it's Donald Trump's extramarital Affairs that have captured all the media attention. But thirty years ago, there was someone else who was all over the headlines, for her claims of an extramarital affair with a then-presidential candidate.
In January 1992 Gennifer flowers came forward with her story of a long-time affair with then Arkansas governor Bill Clinton, who was running for president.
But as she explained in a 1995 book, flowers may never have brought her allegations public, if not for media articles the out of her, including a story in the supermarket tabloid the star.
I met her in 1995 when she was doing a book tour. So here now, from 1995, Gennifer flowers.
For over half a century Robert Byrd served the people of West Virginia in Congress, first in the House of Representatives, then in the United States Senate. He was, in fact, the longest serving US senator ever, until Michigan's John Dingell surpassed him.
And if you think West Virginia's current Senator Joe manchin hasoutsize influence, he's nothing compared to what Byrd had.
The one and only time I had a chance to meet Senator Byrd was n 2004. It was just a couple of months before the presidential election, in which George W Bush was running for re-election against Democrat John Kerry..
Byrd had written a book obviously intended to help carries effort, in which Byrd scathingly criticized President Bush for the Iraq War.
As the 1960s Drew to a close, New York had a unique Trifecta of sports victories.
In January of 1969, the New York Jets won Super Bowl 3.
After an incredible summer with baseball, the Miracle Mets won the 1969 World Series.
And then the 1969 - 70 New York Knicks tore up the MBA, including an 18-game winning streak, and won the league championship in the spring of 1970.
One of the key players on that Knicks team was Walt Frazier, nicknamed Clyde. In fact he is often considered one of the greatest NBA players of all time.
After a childhood he once described as "chaotiz" and "abusive," and a pituitary tumor that made him grow 10 inches in high school. Tony Robbins moved out on his own at age 17. He didn't go to college, and it may have looked like he was destined for a life of disappointment and despair.
But an epiphany when he was in his early 20s turned his life around, and Robbins eventually became one of the country's best-known and most in-demand motivational speakers.
I first met him in 1986, as his career was taking off, and then again five years later when he wrote his book Awaken the Giant Within.
She may be best known by most people for her novel The Color Purple, which won the 1982 Pulitzer Prize for fiction, and which later became a hugely popular movie.
But Alice Walker has also written dozens of other books, both fiction and nonfiction, including many collections of poetry.
I met and interviewed her several times over the years, including in tghe spring of 2003 when she published a book of poetry called Absolute Trust in the Goodness of The Earth.
Our conversation took place just hours before the Us and other nations launched the attacks that initiated the Iraq war. And that was weighing heavily on her mind.
The people of Scotland and Ireland have a centuries-old tradition of song, poem, and story.
In the early 1960s a young poet, Storyteller, and songwriter emerged, and uickly captured the imagination of millions.
His name is Donovan Leitch, but he has always been known professionally as simply Donovan.
His more than 200 songs included ,amu mpw-classic ‘60s tunes.
But in 1970, still only in his mid-twenties, Donovan walked away from it. And he explained why, in a 2007 book that he called "The Autobiography of Donovan."
Al Franken has had several careers. He was one of the original writers and cast members of Saturday Night Live in the mid-1970s. In fact, he was with the show for 15 years.
Later he became a liberal commentator, with his own radio show.
Then there was a short-lived NBC sitcom called Lateline.
And then, in 2008, he ran for the United States Senate from Minnesota. And he won. Six years later, he was re-elected.
But he was forced to resign his senate seat in early 2018, after allegations of sexual misconduct.
This is a somber anniversary in the Middle East.
40 years ago today, October 6th, 1981, the long time
president of Egypt, Anwar Sadat, was assassinated during a military parade.
His killers were extremists who were outraged by his 1979 peace agreement with Israel, for which he shared the Nobel Peace Prize.
Many other people who were on the parade reviewing stand that day or either killed or injured in the gunfire.
Also on the reviewing stand that day was President Sadat's wife, Egypt's First Lady Jehan Sadat..
Just about everyone recognizes that music. It means for the next few minutes, you're going to be entertained by longtime favorites Like Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, or the Roadrunner. Helping create all of those iconic characters, and many more, was it brilliant animator Chuck Jones.
Starting in 1933, Jones and his colleagues at Warner Brothers came up with hundreds of cartoons, including some of the classics everyone remembers.
In 1989, Chuck Jones finally wrote his memoir, a heavily illustrated book called Chuck Amick. And that's when I had the chance to meet him.
It was on this date 66 years ago that one of the most popular, most durable, and most iconic situation comedies in television history was born.
Taking place mostly in a tiny two room apartment in Brooklyn, The Honeymooners set new standards for television comedy.
Captained by the comic genius of Jackie Gleason, the show also featured the versatile Art Carney, Joyce Randolph, and, of course, as Ralph Kramden long-suffering wife Alice, Audrey Meadows.
A classically beautiful actress who purposely downplayed her looks for the role, Meadows also proved to be a formidable counterpoint to the Ralph Kramden character.
It's September 29th. And on September 29th, 1954, a young baseball player made a name for himself with a defensive play that to this day remains one of the greatest ever.
It was the first game of the 1954 world series, between the New York Giants and the Cleveland Indians. Playing center field for the Giants that day at the Polo Grounds was the young Willie Mays.
In the eighth inning of a tie game, Vic Wertz of the Indians came to the plate. He lofted a Fly ball to deep center field, and maze made a heroic run for it. With his back to home plate, Mays reached up and caught the ball over his shoulder.
The play was so amazing that to this day, it is usually simply referred to as The Catch.
In 1935, a young actor, screenwriter, and dancer had an idea.
He started a weekly amateur night competition at the Apollo Theater in Harlem, in New York City. And before long, Ralph Cooper and his amateur night at the Apollo became a major influence in Black Entertainment.
Over the next five decades, Cooper's amateur night made hundreds of previously unknown performers into Stars.
I met Ralph Cooper in 1991, when he wrote A Memoir of his many years at th Apollo.
Remember those ads in the back of magazines and comic books back in the day, promising to show you how to do tricks that will Amaze your family and friends?
Well, fast forward to the 1990s, when magicians Penn & Teller starteealing a few of the old magician's tricks. And then, in 1992, they actually wrote a book of their own, called Penn & teller's how to play with your food.
And that's when I had the chance to meet the talking half of teuo, Penn Jillette.
And something happened during this interview that has never happened before, and has never happened since. Was it something Penn Jillette put together, as a practical joke?
If you were a regular viewer of NBC's popular soap opera Days of Our Lives in the 1970s and 80s, you know instantly who I'm talking about when I simply say Doug and Julie.
Actress Susan Seaforth joined the cast in 1968, followed by Bill Hayes two years later. And 4 years after that, their on-screen romance turned into reality, when they married in real life.
And while Bill and Susan Hayes have lived happily ever after, unfortunately the same was not true for Doug and Julie. Oh yes, they suffered the usual soap opera tribulations, but then in the mid-1980s, MBC decided to take it soap operas - including Days of Our Lives - in a new, much younger Direction.
Doug and Julie - I mean, Bill and Susan Hayes - were fired.
In the mid-1980s one of President Ronald Reagan's favorite speechwriters was the talented wordsmith Peggy Noonan.
She crafted some of Reagan's most impressive speeches, including teone he delivered on the 40th anniversary of the D-Day invasion, as well as his televised message to the nation after the Challenger disaster in 1986.
And then, working with the presidential campaign of Vice President George HW Bush, Noonan came up with even more phrases that have stuck in our memories.
Along the way, Noonan became an accomplished speaker in her own right, and in 1998, wrote a book to help others facing the prospect of speaking in public.
In the 1970s and 1980s, perhaps no one was more popular on Christian television than Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker.
Founders of the PTL club, and later the Heritage USA Christian theme park, the Bakkers also espoused a Theology of prosperity. God wanted you to do well financially, they told us.
But in the 1980s it came out that the Bakers were prospering a little bit too much off of the donations their viewers had set in. And after Jim Bakker was accused of sexually assaulting Church secretary Jessica Hahn, prosecutors moved to charge him with fraud.
Bakker was convicted, and in 1989 was sentenced to 45 years in prison.
Recently the 20-year war in Afghanistan came to an end. Have his given all of us time to reflect on those two decades.
We also remember the 23 hundred or so US servicemen and women who died in Afghanistan.
One of them, in particular, drew public attention. Then-27 year-old Army Ranger, and former NFL star, Pat Tillman was killed in 2004.
But that tragedy was compounded when the Pentagon apparently attempted to cover up the circumstances of his death.
Fifty years ago this week, NBC TV introduced America to four young men who would change the way music and television interact.
Looking to capitalize on the humongous an ongoing success of th Beatles and so many other groups,NBC assembled a team of four actors who also happened to have musical talent: Mike Nesmith, Davy Jones, Peter Tork, and, of course, Micky Dolenz who, years before, actually started in a short-lived series called Circus Boy.
After The Monkees premiered something strange happened. It wasn't clear whether this was a TV show about musicians or musicians doing a TV show ,, or something in between.It was a strange and new hybrid that actually frightened some people in the entertainment industry.
On that terrible day 20 years ago, September 11th, 2001, countless Heroes emerged.
Some wore police, fire, or military uniforms.
Some will be forever anonymous.
But many were just ordinary Americans. Like Todd Beamer, a passenger aboard United Airlines flight 93.
Their plane was already in the air that morning when the other planes went into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
And as the passengers learned what was happening, terrorists took over there playing. And soon, a group of passengers formed a bold and audacious plan to take over the plane and support the terrorist plot to slam that playing into the US Capitol or the White House.
The NFL regular season kicks off tomorrow night, September 9th, at the Dallas Cowboys take on the Super Bowl champion Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
Now, for 29 Seasons, those cowboys were coached by one of the most successful coaches in NFL history: Tom Landry. He was, in fact, the first head coach of the expansion Dallas franchise, in 1960.
He racked up 20 consecutive winning seasons with the Cowboys. Under whose leadership the Cowboys won two Super Bowls, five NFC championships, and 13 divisional titles.
But a string of losing seasons in the late 1980s made of done him in. One day after the new team owner, Jerry Jones, took over, Landry was unceremoniously fired.
Hope you had a happy Labor Day Weekend 2021.
Labor Day, of course, is the day set aside to honor the contributions of America's labor force.
Most presidential administrations understand the need for a an advocate for at Workforce in the federal government. The position of labor secretary is therefore critical.
At one of the most influential secretaries of Labor in recent memory is Robert Reich, who served as President Bill Clinton's first labor secretary from 1993 until just before Inauguration Day 1997.
Got plans for Labor Day weekend? There's a good chance you will be taking part in a cookout, to end the summer.
In fact, you may be the one in charge of grilling.
So how do you know if you're doing it right?
Back in 2009, acclaimed TV chef Emeril Lagasse Rock his talents to grilling, with a book called Emeril at The Grill.
There's a pretty fair chance that even if you only own a few books, one of them is probably a James Patterson novel.
He's written 28 books in the popular series featuring detective Alex Coss. And that's just one of the series of books has James Patterson writes.
He writes series novels. He writes stand-alone mystery thrillers. He rites books for young readers. He writes children's books. And he's written several non-fiction books.
Patterson has sold over 300 million books worldwide. That's also made him one of America's richest authors. Several of his books have been made into movies.
Jennifer Granholm was elected Michigan's first female governor in 2002, and re-elected, to a second term, four years later.
Her work to re-establish Michigan's recession damaged, Rust Belt economy caught the attention of leaders of the democratic party on the national level.
Last December, then president-elect Joe Biden named her his energy secretary.
In 2011, a few months after leaving the governor's office, Granholm and her husband Dan Mulhern wrote a book together.
When he was still in his teens in the 1960s, Roy Firestone got an up-close look at Major League Baseball, as a spring training bat boy for the Baltimore Orioles in Florida.
But instead of following that career path and becoming a bat boy the rest of his life, Roy Firestone cut into television. Starting in Miami, then moving to Los Angeles, Firestone established himself as a skilled Sports commentator and interviewer.
In 1980 he joined ESPN, posting their so-called “Up Close.”
I met him in 1993, what he wrote a book called up close and in your
Nien Cheng was born into a well-to-do Chinese family in 1915. Her family was able to give her a college education, including post-graduate work at the London School of economics. That's where she met her future husband.
But the time she spent in Great Britain may have been a time bomb of sorts.
In 1966, at the age of 51, Nien Cheng, by then a widow, was arrested and accused by the Chinese Communist government of being a Britiah spy.
For nearly seven years Nien Cheng was imprisoned and sometimes tortured.
After her eventual release, she came to the United States.
One of the most bankable female movie stars of the last 50 years is also one of the most influential figures in Hollywood.
And she got her big break when she was barely old enough o have a legal drink, 1 quickly becoming one of the most popular stars of the Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In show.
It seems like everything she has touched has turned to Gold – or, should we say, Goldie. By age 25 she already had an Academy Award, for her role in "Cactus Flower."
Then came a long and reliable series of hit movies.
In 2005, Goldie Hawn took some time out from her acting to right a book about her life, although she's careful not to call it an autobiography.
Today, August 20th, is National radio day. Every year on this day, we recognize the contribution that this hundred-year-old medium has provided four generations.
For four decades, one of the most popular radio personalities in America was Garrison Keillor, Creator and host of public radio's Prairie Home Companion. That live musical variety show was a Saturday evening fixture in millions of homes.
The Minnesota-born Keillor brought his Midwest sensibilities, and sense of humor, to the ongoing stories of Lake Wobegon.
In 2003, Keillor wrote a novel. So here now, from 2003, Garrison Keillor..
New York governor, or more precisely, soon-to-be ex governor, Andrew Cuomo has certainly had a rough few weeks.
In the face of a scathing report accusing him of sexual misconduct, Cuomo last week announced his resignation. It was a breathtaking fall from his Emmy award-winning performance during the pandemic in 2020.
And now the political future looks very murky for a man once considered the future of the Democratic Party.
I met Andrew Cuomo in 2003, when he was promoting a book, ananthology of essays by Democrats and Republicans on politics in America.
And Cuomo's comments from 18 years ago still sounds very current.
Perhaps no one has ever had a bigger impact on an entire generation of children than Dr. Benjamin Spock.
His book Baby and Child Care was published in 1946, just as the first baby boomers were being born. And his calm, reassuring tone quickly found an audience among new parents. Dr. Spock became the go-to guy for advice on child rearing.
Then, in the late 1960s, Dr. Spock became known for something else - his political activism. He even ran for president in 1972.
But Benjamin Spock had long resisted writing his autobiography. Finally, in the late 1980s, his second wife, Mary Morgan, persuaded him it was time. So, with her help, he finally wrote the book called Spock on Spock.
This weekend marks the 76th anniversary V-J Day, the day that the Japanese surrendered to the United States to end World War II.
And the interview you're about to hear includes one of the most moving and poignant stories associated with that day. More on that in a minute...
For the entire duration of the war, America's entertainers provided an invaluable service to their country, by putting on literally thousands of shows for servicemen and women in the US and abroad.
And one of the most popular entertainment Acts what's The Andrews Sisters, a trio from Minnesota that included Laverne, Maxine, and Patti. To this day, they are known for a number of hit songs...
It's a rare privilege for an author to see, in their lifetime, the broad and deep social and cultural impact the one of their books has.
One of those who were so privileged was author Alex Haley. His meticulously researched 1976 book Roots, which traced his own family's ancestry from Africa, became not just a best seller, but a cultural milepost.
It awakened a new pride of family have ancestry among millions of And it Shone a harsh Spotlight on the horrors of slavery, four black and white alike.
ABC TV recognized the power of roots, and turned it into television's first major miniseries. It was, and remains to this day, a landmark television achievement.
I met him almost 33 years ago, after he had just finished a novel based, in part, on the kind of characters he popularized in Roots.
A lot of people say that is the voice of an
It's actually the voice of young Welsh soprano Charlotte Church. And when I say young, I mean Young. Charlotte got a record contract when she was just 11. By age 13 she was, literally, world-famous.
I met her when she was a grizzled old veteran of 15, in 2001. She had writen a book called voice of an angel, with the subtitle, my life so far.
Name a famous serial killer.
There's a good chance that one of the first names that came to your mind was Ted Bundy.
Over a period of years, mostly in the 1970's, Ted Bundy killed at least 30 people that we know of, but probably more.
Finally, in 1979, the charismatic 33-year-old was caught, tried, and convicted in Florida.
He spent the next eight years in prison, as appeal after appeal went through the courts. Then, in 1987, he met the woman who would be his last lawyer: Polly Nelson.
A freshly minted lawyer with a big Washington law firm, Nelson was chosen to do some pro bono work – it turned out, it was the Bundy case.
In 1969, shortly after he graduated from college, Thomas Boswell joined the staff of the Washington Post. Over the next 15 years he honed his craft as a sportswriter, eventually earning his own column in the post in 1984.
What Boswell brought to his columns was more than just an account of balls and Strikes, touchdowns and field goals, holes-in-one or hat-tricks.
He brought a literary sensibility, often diving deep into the personal lives of the sports stars, and would be stars, that he covered.
Oh, he knew all the technical stuff, but his real strength was his ability to bring out the personalities.
As a Young Man, Robert Evans wasn't even in Show Business.
Then one day, just like something out of a storybook, actress Norma Sherer spot of him and thought he would be great to be in a movie.
The rest, as they say, well,...
From an acting career, Evans became a movie producer. And in the60s and 70s some of his movies are now Classics. Movies like Rosemary's Baby, Love Story, The Godfather, and Chinatown.
But a drug-related conviction in 1980 was a major setback to Evans, and he never came back to his former glory. His last movie in 2003 was How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days.
When you think of the best of Motown in the late 1950s and early ‘60s, one of the names that has to be near the top of the list it Martha and the
Behind lead singer Martha Reeves, they racked up a series of hit singles.
Finally, 30 years after their heyday, Martha Reeves wrote a memoir. And that's when I met her.
A dog may be man's best friend, but many of us unconsciously do things that can undermine that relationship, says Cesar Millan, otherwise known as The Dog Whisperer.
When I met him a 2006, his show was just nicely taking off, he had a large following, and was so very eager to talk about the dogs he had known.
Doing a 13-year career at PepsiCo, including six years as its president, John Scully prove to be something of a marketing genius.
If you’ve ever seen The Pepsi Challenge, well .. that was John Sculley’s idea.
Then he made the switch from selling flavored sugar carbonated water to selling personal computers.
In 1983 Scully became CEO of Apple. And soon, behind his marketig skills, Apple had rival i b m on the run.
In 1987, in the middle of his 10-year run at Apple, Scully wrote a book about his transition from Pepsi. And that's when I met him.
The covid-delayed Tokyo Olympics get underway today. We'll seen enougbh know who the next athletic heroes will be.
Throughout the 1980s and into the ‘90s, one of the world's dominant sprinters and long jumpers with Carl Lewis.
In addition to several world championships, Lewis won gold Olympic gold medals in 1984, 1988, 1992, 1996.
Sports Illustrated once named him “Olympian Of Tje Century.”
No doubt Carl Louis was one of the world's greatest athletes. The problem, according to many of his competitors, was that he was much too aware of how good he was, and eager to show it off.
In November 1980, after serving just one term as President, Jimmy Carter was voted out of office. The following January he and First Lady Rosalynn Carter moved back to their hometown of Plains, Georgia.
But they didn't simply settle into a quiet life of retirement and leisure. Quite the opposite.
Just a few years later, in 1987, the two of them wrote a book called Everything to Gain. Their aim was to help people in all walks of life -- not just former presidents -- navigate their later years.
Amd tjat's how I met them.
So here now, from 1987, Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter.
Fifty-two years ago this week the world watched in fascination, as Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first human beings to set foot on the surface of the moon.
As they were planting their footprints on the moon, orbiting above it was the third member of the history-making crew, Michael Collins.
After all, someone had to stay in the car with the motor running while Armstrong and Aldrin did their thing.
More than 20 years later, I met and interviewed Mike Collins. Twice, in fact. The interview you're going to here was the second one we did, about a book he wrote called Missino to Mars
Ginger Rogers is one of those Hollywood figures who transcended mere stardom, and became a cultural icon.
In the 1930s she and her dance partner Fred Astaire dominated American film.
Her talent was apparent early on. At age 14, she wanted Charleston dance contest.
And before long she was in vaudeville, then Broadway, and finally the movies.
And then RKO Pictures paired her with Fred Astaire, and the rest, as they say, is history.
And it was famously said of her that she could do eveything Fred Astaire could do, but backwards and in high heels. You’ll hear more about that in this interview...
It takes a certain kind of man to be a successful u.s. Marine drill instructor. It seems to come naturally to some men.
And one of them turned it into a successful acting career.
R. Lee Ermey was nominated for a Golden Globe for his work in the 1987 film "Full Metal Jacket."
He went on to play tough, rugged authority figures in a number of oher movies -- even “Toy Story.”
In 2002 the History Channel came calling, and made Ermey the star of the show “Mail Call, which quickly became the network's most popular show.”
Young journalist David Brinkley first came to Washington, D.C. in 1943, just as World War II was transforming the nation's capital.
The sleepy Southern town that had been home to a small federal government suddenly burgeoned into a major city filled with office buildings, bureaucracy, lobbyists, and lots of money.
After the wa, in 1956, NBC paired Brinkley with Chet Huntley to co-anchor their nightly news.
After leaving NBC in the 1970s, Brinkley joined ABC, where he was the founding host of the Sunday morning show “This Week.” He retired in 1997.
It was in the late 1980s that Brinkley wrote his first book, on account of the War years called Washington Goes to War. It became a major bestseller. And that's when I met him.
His first big break in the movies came with a film called The Heartbreak Kid.
But that was just the beginning for Charles Grodin.
Then came Midnight Run. Seems Like Old Times. The Lonely Guy. And, finally, a new generation discovered him in the Beethoven movies.
It looks like the classic success story. But in his 1989 book called It Would Be So Nice if You Weren't Here, Grodin wanted to reveal how about 1% success overshadowed the 99% rejection actors suffer.
From a very early age, Caroline Kennedy was taught to appreciate the beauty and power of poetry.
No surprise, really. Her parents were both very well red. Her father was a famous author, her mother was an author handbook editor.
Of they were better known, perhaps, as President John F Kennedy and first lady Jacqueline Kennedy.
One of their enduring legacies to their children was a love of literature. So, no surprise, in 2011, Caroline Kennedy published a poetry anthology.
In the 1960s and into the early 70s, one of the most dominant pitchers in the National League was St. Louis Cardinals right-hander Bob Gibson.
During a 17-year career, Gibson racked up 251 wins, over 3000 strikeouts, won two Cy Young awards and one year was Most Valluable Player.
He was a star of the 1967 World Series in which the Cardinals beat the Boston Red Spx.
Now, like any picture with that kind of record, Gibson was an intimidating presence on the mound.
If he had wanted to, Dave Berry probably could have been a successful stand-up comedian.
Instead, he wrote a humor column. And wrote books. Lots and lots of books.
Over about a 20-year period, I think I interviewed Dave almost 20 times.
Two of those interviews stand out, including the one you're about to hear. It was for his book Dave Barry Turns 40. I thought it was an appropriate interview to run, because tomorrow, July 3rd, is David's birthday.
In the '90s and early 2000s, one of the most popular TV personalities in the world was Crocodile Hunter Steve Irwin.
He happily and enthusiastically introduced his viewers to some ofthe world's most exotic, and dangerous, wildlife.
Ultimately it was a fatal encounter with a stingray that prematurely eded his life in 2006. Steve was just 44.
The following year his widow Terri published a book called Steve And Me. And that's when I met her.
55 years ago African Americans were making historic gains in civil rights. But much work was still to be done.
That year, 1966, Bobby Seale and his longtime friend Huey Newton created a new organization they called the Black Panther Party.
In 1968 Seal made a name for himself during anti-Vietnam War protests outside the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.
It was not his first run-in with the law and it would not be his last.
Most people consider Terry Bradshaw, formerly of the NFL's Pittsburgh Steelers, to be among the greatest quarterbacks ever.
His list of accomplishments, on and off the is impressive.
He's had a long and fruitful career as a broadcaster, and he's one some acting.
And he's also written a couple of books. That's how I met him, in 2002.
And no, football is not the center of his life.
Today doctors call it "dissociative identity disorder" but when Chris Costner Sizemore was diagnosed and treated for it over 60 years ago, it was simply called "multiple personality disorder."
The movie "TheThree Faces of EVe" came out in 1957, changing Sizemore's name to EveWhite. Her "alters" were Eve Black .. and Jane. Actress Joanne Woodward won an Oscar for her portrayal of Eve.
It later came out that Sizemore had something more like 22 personaliities, not just three.
I mer in 1989, when she wrote a book called A Mind of My Own. IT told the story of how, with years of psychiatric help, she had integrated her several personalities.
He was one of the hottest young movie stars in the 1950s...
Tab Hunter -- who grew up as Artt Gelien -- was a figure skater as a teenager. As a young man, a friend introduced him to a Hollywood agent who specialized in beefcake actors like Rock Hudson and Rober/ Wagner. That agent dubbed Art Gelien "Tab Hunter" and by 1950 he was in the movies.
And by the mid 1950s was major star, the strapping blond hunk of a man every girl wanted. Hunter made over 40 movies, and even recorded a hit song.
Hunger was also a witness to, and a participant in, the end of the Hollywood studio contract era. His movie and TV roles were fewer, until his last film role in 1992.
Then, in 2005, Tab Hunter wrote a memoir called Tab Hunter Confidential. In that book, he acknowledged publicly, for the first time, that he was gay. Turns out those gossip rags back in the day that had him romantically linked with various starlets were all fiction.
In the 1950s, few actors dominated Broadway the way Yul Brynner did.
Playing the lead in the Rodgers and Hammerstein's play “The King and I,” Brynner eEstablished himself as a top-tier performer.
He won two Tonys for his portrayal of the King of Siam, as well as an Academy Award when the play was adapted to film.
Later he was cast in such big budget movies as the Ten Commandments, The Magnificent Seven, and Westworld.
Naomi Judd was born "Diana Judd" not long after World War II ended. Her dad ran a gas station in Ashland, Kentucky,
By the time she was in her mid 30s, Judd was a divorced single mom with two daughters, struggling to keep a household going.
That's when she and her older daughter discovered that they liked to sing and harmonize with each other. And they got pretty good at it.
Before long, they came to the attention of the right people, and in 1983, they formed The Judds.
As a young journalist in the 1950s, Carl T. Rowan covered the emerging civil rights movement, and its leaders, including people like Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks.
The reputation he built came to the attention of President John F. Kennedy, who, in 1961, name Rowan to a high level position in the State Department.
And in 1963, Kennedy appointed Rowan ambassador to Finland.
Row and remain in the government for three years after Kennedy's assassination, before resuming what would be a long and acclaimed journalism career.
It's not always easy to babysit money of a very famous politician.
But, perhaps, especially if you're a lesbian and your brother is one of the nation's leading right-wing conservatives.
In 1994 a republican wave took over Congress, and Newt Gingrich became Speaker of the House.
And suddenly, his half-sister Candace -- who pronounces the family name “Ging-rick” -- found themselves, as they later described it, as an “accidental activist.”
For decades, going back to the 1970s, one of the most popular contemporary British mystery writers was PD James.
In a style sometimes reminiscent of Agatha Christie, James wrote about cases solved by her fictional detective she named Adam Dalgliesh.
He was a character she named after a teacher at Cambridge High School.
Book after book, a reputation and popularity grew, until in 1991 James was amed a Life Peer in Britain's House of Lords. She was Baroness James of Holland Park.
Robert Osbourne Denver graduated from college with a degree in political science, then caoched physical education and even taught math and history at a California elementary school.
But today, this well-educated, smart, soft-spoken man is best remembered for this... Gilligan's Island.
Gilligan's Island only lasted three seasons in the mid-1960s, but thaks to reruns and syndication the show has effectively never been off the air since.
And, like so many other popular TV actors, Bob Denver found himself typecast.
Julia Child is probably the reason many people became professional chefs. She's also the reason many many millions of us have attempted things in the kitchen we never thought we could do.
For many years Child was America's most famous chef, thanks largely to herpublic television series The French Chef.
In 1993, as another of her TV series was premiering, Child collected culinary wisdom from some of her peers, for a book called "Cooking With Master Chefs."
Do you have to be kind of an SOB to be a success?
What kind of connotation does that term even have anymore?
Those were two of the key questions that Al Neuharth tried to address in his bestselling memoir “Confessions Of An S.O.B.”
Al Neuharth was the founder of USA Today, as well as The Freedom Forum, and the Newseum. So apparently being an SOB helped him.
Memorial Day is an occasion to pause and honor those who have given their lives in military service.
But we can also remember those who went to war to save lives.
In 1963, a 21-year old student nurse named winning Smith joined the Army, and in 1966 was sent to Vietnam, where the war was escalating. She was there until 1967,
But it wasn't until years later that she realized that she, like many of the servicemen she treated, or suffering from PTSD.
We learned recently that daytime TV's Ellen DeGeneres Show is coming to an end next year after 19 seasons.
Her show made its debut just a couple of years after I met and interviewed her mom, Betty DeGeneres.
In 1999, Betty published a book called “Love, Ellen,” a memoir of her relationship with her famous daughter -- and the challenges both mother and daughter experienced when Ellen revealed her sexual orientation.
Long before Jimmy Fallon, way before Jay Leno, before Johnny Carson, or Jack Paar .. NBC's Tonight Show was hosted by its co-creator Steve Allen.
In the fall of 1954, the 32 year old comedian and entertainer became the host of televisions first-ever late night talk show.
Largely thanks to Alan's intelligent humor, The Tonight Show became a hit.
Steve Allen soon moved on to other Ventures, but was always widely popular and in-demand.
I first met him in early 1987, when he wrote a book he modestly called How To Be Funny.
A new nationally syndicated radio talk show is debuting this week.
Its host is conservative commentator Dan Bongino, who was, for several years, a Secret Service agent who's assignments included the presidentia protective l detail.
After unsuccessful bids for US Senate and the US House, bongino turned to writing books .. and radio.
I met him in the fall of 2013, after he wrote a book called Life Insde the Bubble.
Is there any man, woman, or child in America -- or anywhere around the world, for that matter -- who does not know Charlie Brown, Lucy, Linus, and Snoopy?
Those, and the other characters created by Charles Schulz more than0 years ago are among the most popular icons in American art.
He is widely considered one of America's greatest cartoonists of all time, and the roster of other famous cartoonist who say they were inspired by Charles Schulz is a long one.
I was offered the chance to interview hin in 1989 after a book about him by author Rheta Johnson was published -- she called it "Good Grief."
George Shulz served in various positions under three U.S. presidents -- in fact Shultz held four different cabinet-level posts over the years.
An economist by training, Shultz came to Washington as Richard Nixon's first Labor Secretary. He became Director of the Office of Management and Budget a year later, and a year after that Nixon appointed him Treasury Secretary.
Ronald Reagan was elected president in 1980. and in 1982 chose Shultz as his Secretary of State. Shultz became a key shaper of foreign policy during the Reagan's administration.
I met him in the spring of 1993, when he wrote a long memoir of his years at the State Department.
So here now, from 1993, George Shultz.
When three guys from San Francisco started Starbucks 50 years ago, in 1971, they probably had little idea of what the future would bring for their little coffee bean business.
By 1986 there were still only six Starbucks locations. But in 1987, they sold the company to Howard Schultz. And under his leadershipp, Starbucks grew to 46 stores by 1989, and in1992 the company went public,
Howard Schultz was CEO of Starbucks from 1986 to 2000, and again from 2008 to 2017.
In 1997, Schultz wrote a book called "Pour Your Heart Into It," and that's when I met him.
She was born into what would become one of America's most famous music families.
La Toya Jackson is the fifth, and middle, child in the Jackson family. Lss well-known than the Jackson Five or little brother Michael, La Toya carved out her own place in pop culture, as a singer and songwriter.
But little by little America learned about the private side of the Jackson family, the side the fan magazines didn't want to write about. It was a a story of domestic abuse.
I met La Toya in 1992, after her bestselling memoir "La Toya" was published.
He was a farm boy from Hamlin, West Virginia. Chuck Yeager join the Army at the outset of World War II, Have it wasn't long before he became a fighter pilot.
Two years after the war ended, in 1947, Chuck Yeager became the first test ilot to break the sound barrier.
He rose through the ranks to become a general, before retiring.
By the time I met him in the fall of 1988, Yeager was still finding new adventures. He and his longtime friend Bud Anderson co-wrote a book about their adventures hiking in the High Sierras.
They say baseball is a funny game. No, really, it's a funny game full of funny characters.
In the 1980s, one of the best chroniclers of those characters was former Major League umpire Ron Luciano.
Luciano umpired in the American League from 1969 to 1979. And along the way, he collected hundreds of stories about some of the most colorful characters in Major League Baseball, past and present.
I met Ron Luciano in 1989, as we talked about his book Remembrance of Swings Past.
Happy Mothers Day weekend to all the moms listening right now.
Today, the story of one exceptionally courageous mom.
Her name is Betty Mahmoody. In the mid-1980s she accompanied her her iranian-born husband back to his native country for what she thought would be a two-week vacation.
But instead of returning to the US, her husband informed her that they would be living permanently in Iran. And that was just the beginning of the ordeal for her and the couple's four-year-old daughter Mahtob.
Betty Mahmoody tells the story of what happened over the next 18 months in her best-selling book Not Without My Daughter. Her book was later made into a major Motion Picture starring Sally Field as Betty Mahmoody.
For seven years, the Duggar family captivated American TV viewers, with their reality show “17 Kids and Counting” -- which was later renamed “18 Kids and Counting” and ultimately “19 Kids and Counting.:
Michelle and Jim Bob and their multitude of offspring stood for solid Christian family values.
But, as you know by, eldest child, 33-year-old Josh, has been charged With ossessinon of child pornography. He has pleaded not guilty.
I met the Duggar parents ten years ago when they published their second book, when their TV show was at its peak of popularity.
Lewis Black makes us laugh by being the angry man.
The perpetually irritated Lewis Black wrote a book in 2005, a semi-autobiographical account but he called Nothing's Sacred.
And that;s when I met him.
But instead of an “angry ma,” I found a gentle, warm, and very likeable man, who was eager to talk about seriouos things as well as comedy shtick.
When I was a kid one of the TV shows I most look forward to every week was the Sunday night episode of “Candid Camera.”
With hidden cameras set up to catch their reactions, host Allen Funt played benign but often ingenius practical jokes on ordinary people. “Candid Camera” was a TV hit for years.
After Funt's death in 1999 at aged 84, his son Peter Funt took over the family business, as it were, and carried on the “Candid Camera” franchise.
She is one of America's most high-profile lawyers.
In a career that began in the 1970s, Gloria Allred has become especially known for taking on cases involving sexual harassment and women's rights, especially in the workplace.
In 2006, she looked back on her career in a book that she admits may be the closest she will ever come to writing a full-fledged autobiography.
In the early 1960s, the San Diego Chargers were a powerhouse in the American Football League.
In 1966, the franchise was purchased by a very successful California businesman named Gene Klein. He paid the them-princely sum of 10 million dollars.
But after running the team for 18 years, Klein solded in 1984.
And a couple of years later he wrote a book about his experience, which he called First Down And a Billion. And that's when I met him.
Well, in most of the U.S. warm spring weather is here. And for many of us, that's an inspiration to get
outside work in the garden.
And it reminded me that in the late fall of 1991, I had the first of several interviews I’ve done with Martha Stewart, the well known master of all things domestic.
People often ask me, when they find out I have interviewed her if she was rude or condescending or otherwise difficult. And I always say, no, Martha Stewart was always kind and pleasant to me.
He was the kid from a small town in Arkansas who grew up to become a country and western superstar.
Born in 1936, Glen Campbell first took up the guitar as a young boy. By the time he was in his twenties, he was an in-demand studio musician in Los Angeles, recording with some of the biggest names of the day.
He broke out as a solo artist in the mid-’60s, and had his first big hit -- "Gentle on My Mind" -- in 1967.
Then came more chart-toppers: "By the Time I Get to Phoenix".. "Dreams of te Everyday Housewife" .. "Wichita Lineman" .."Galveston" .. "Rhinestone Cowboy".. and "Southern Nights."
He also had his own very popular, TV variety show.
When you begin to list the greatest American Jazz percussionists of all time, near the top of that list has to be the great Vibe the harpist and drummer Lionel Hampton.
In a career that began in the 1920s, when he was a teenager, Lionel Hampton rose to primnence in the jazz community, playing alongside such names as Louis Armstrong and Benny Goodman.
Later, Hampton became a bandleader himself.
He wrote a memoir in 1989, and that's what I met him
Raise your hand if you had a Barbie Doll, or Hot Wheels, when you were a kid.
Or how about a Chatty Cathy, or a See-and-Say?
Bu perhaps no toy of the 20th century in America was more iconic, more popular, and more widely known than the ubiquitous Barbie doll.
Ruth Handler was the key figure in bringing all of those to market, as the co-founder of Mattel Toys.
Well before her 20th birthday, Patty Duke had already won an Oscar and was star of her own TV series.
Patty Duke won the Oscar for best supporting actress in The 1962 movie The Miracle Worker, which was the captain from the Broadway play in which she also starred.
On the heels of that success came her TV series, the Patty Duke Show, in which she played the dual roles of typical American teemager Patty and her identical cousin from England, Cathy.
Later Patty Duke moved on to more sophisticated, adult roles, including a part in the movie Valley of the Dolls.
But all along the way, she suffered from severe, undiagnosed bipolar disorder, Exacerbated by various forms of abuse.
In 1953, an earnest and ambitious 25-year-old scientist nmaed James Watson made a groundbreaking discovery that helped revolutionize science, medicine, even the law.
Working alongside Francis Crick, Watson identified the double-helix structure of DNA.
That breakthrough earned Watson and Crick the Nobel Prize in medicine in 1962. Watson wrote a book explaining the double helix.
I met him in 2002, when he published another book, which he called "enes, Girls, and Gamow." That was a reference to George Gamow, a pioneering theoretical physicist who contributed to, and built on, Watson and crick's work.
A third-rate burglary” at Washington's Watergate hotel and office complex in the summer of 1972 launched a scandal that ultimately brought down the presidency of Richard M. Nixon.
At the very center of that burglary, and ensuing Scandal, was G. Gordon Liddy, a former FBI agent who headed the the infamous White House “Plumbers” unit.
After serving prison time for his role in Watergate, Liddy wrote a book called “Will,” which became a bestseller for years to come.
In 1991 Liddy updated his book, adding new information that had been revealed in a book by two journalists,Len Colodny and Robert Gettlin, called “Silent Coup.”
Sometimes when I interview celebrities, they are exactly the way I thought they would be.
And sometimes, a celebrity would surprise me a little. I was surprised a little by former First Lady Barbara Bush, wife of George H.W. Bush, our 41st president.
When I met her in 1994, when she published her Memoir, I was unprepared for how simple, straightforward, and folksy Mrs. Bush was. It was like talking to my mom or one of her friends over a cup of coffee.
It's important to remember that Barbara Bush holds a rare distinction in American history: she is only the second woman, behind Abigail Adams, to be the wife of one president and the mother of another.
You would probably be hard-pressed to find a person with more natural energy and enthusiasm than Dick Vitale -- former high school, college, and NBA basketball coach turn sports broadcaster.
Indeed, it's kind of hard to think of college basketball these days without Dick Vitale coming to mind.
And when I met him, more than 32 years ago now, he seemed as perplexed as anyone by how successful he had actually become.
Jim Lovell was the commander of the three-man crew, whose mission was to land on the Moon. But just two days into the mission, something went terribly wrong.
Tom Hanks, who played Jim Lovell in the movie Apollo 13, uttered the words that have become a catchphrase. But in the moment when level actually said those words, he and his crew mates were dangerously close to death.
In 1994, Jim Lovell co-authored a book about the Apollo 13 mission, and that's when I met him.
Tomorrow is Major League Baseball's opening day. So today, a conversation from a few years ago with one of the greatest major league pitchers of all time.
Bob Feller, a farm boy from Iowa, joined the Cleveland Indians when he was just 17 years old. And during his 18 Major League Seasons that followed, seller set all kinds of pitching records.
Is 98 mile per hour fastball earned him the nicknames rapid Robert, or Bullet Bob.
And he is to this day the only major league pitcher to ever throw a no-hitter on the first day of the season.
I had the chance to speak with Bob Feller in 1990, 50 years after his historic opening day no hitter.
40 years ago this week, a young would-be assassin put a bullet in President Ronald Reagan.
The man whose quick thinking likely saved the president's life was Jerry Parr, a member of Mr. Reagan's Secret Service detail that day outside the Washington Hilton Hotel.
Before anyone was aware that one of John Hinckley jr. shots had actually hit the president, Jerry Parr recognized something was seriously wrong, and he ordered the president's driver to head straight to the hospital.
The president arrived at the hospital just in time. He collased inside the door, and was rushed into surgery.
Born in Somalia, and raised in East Africa, Iman first caught the attention of the fashion world soon after she turned 20. And very soon, she became a supermodel, as photographers and designers recognized her extraordinary beauty and grace.
She is frequently seen with other beautiful people, from Hollywood and elsewhere around the world. She was married to David Bowie.
I met Iman in 2005, when she published a book of beauty advice for women of color.
so here now, from 2005, Iman.
She's been a top New York City real estate broker for many years, but you may know Barbara Corcoran best for her role that's one of the investors pitched by entrepreneurs each week on the TV series Shark Tank.
What you may not know is that Barbara Corcoran is one of 10 children, and that her very strong mother inspired her to become a business success.
I met Barbara Corcoran in 2003, when she wrote a book about the wisdom her mother had passed along to her.
if you were in high school or college in the 1970's, as I was, you undoubtedly are familiar with the comedy of Cheech and Chong.
Cheech Marin went on to act in dozens and dozens of TV shows and movies, as well as doing voices for several animated films.
But what you may not know is that Marilyn is also an astute art collector.
That's how I met him, in 2002, when he published a book of his collection of Chicano art.
If you were in network TV news 50 or 60 years ago, the place to be was the CBS News Washington DC bureau.
CBS was long considered the gold standard of television news - after all, Edward R, Murrow helped shape and define it.
Among the roster of journalism heavyweights in the bureau was Roger Mudd. He had a front-row seat to that historic 20-year period from 1960 to 1980, which he wrote about in a 2008 memoir. That's when I met him.
Happy Saint Patrick's Day!
As I was mulling over all of the Irish or Irish-Amerian people I've interviewed through the years, one name kept coming to the forefront: Frank McCourt.
McCourt burst onto the literary scene in 1996, wth his memoir of his early childhood, a powerful book called Angela's Ashes. It also became an award-winning movie.
He followed that up with volume two of his memoirs, a book called 'Tts/. Then, in 2005, the third volume, a book called Teacher Man. And that's when I met him.
ia Farrow may have been born to be a star.
Her parents were both major Hollywood figures, and she grew up amongst big stars. By the time she was a teenager Mia Farrow was a star on the ABC TV primetime soap opera Peyton Place.
Then came movie roles, as well as a brief marriage to Frank Sinatra. In 1968, Farrow starred in "Rosemary's Baby," the movie which propelled her to major stardom. And another brief marriage, to Andre Previn.
Then, in 1980, she began a relationship with Woody Allen. It ended in 1992 with a very messy, complicated, and very public court battle over custody of their children. Allegations of sexual abuse were thrown about.
In January 1966 a new TV series premiered, unlike any we had seen before. Even though it only ran on the ABC network for three seasons, it changed television history. And it made the show's star a folk hero. That show, of course, was Batman.
Adam West played millionaire philanthropist Bruce Wayne, aka Batman, whoalong with his sidekick Dick Grayson, aka Robin, fought evil criminals in Gotham City.
Every week, the Dynamic Duo faced off with another super villain -- Riddler, Joker, Penguin, Catwoman.
But the show also typecast Adam West, and it took him many years to extricate himself.
I met him in 1994, when he wrote A Memoir of his Batman years.
Larry Flynt is best known for Hustler magazine, which he founded in the mid-1970s, and for the videos and cable TV channels the grew out of the Hustler brand.
But it turns out Larry Flynt was also an amateur student of history.
Ten years ago, fFlynt and a professional historian co-authored a book called "One Nation Under Ssex: How the Private Lives of Presidents, First Ladies, and Their Lovers Change the Course of American History.
She was Donald Trump's first wife, from 1977 to 1992. Ivana Trump is the mother of Don Jr, Ivanka, and Eric Trump.
Ivana Trump has also been a professional athlete, a designer,and a novelist. And that's how I met her in 1993, the year after she and The Donald divorced. She had just published the second in what was to be a series of novels, about a beautiful Czech immigrant named Katrinka.
While we do not even mention the name Donald Trump in this interview, if you know their backstory, you can kind of read between the lines.
Economist and Texas Republican politician Dick Armey was first elected to Congress in 1984. By 1995, he has risen to the post of Majority Leader, as the Republican Revolution swept Washington.
He remained in that post until his election defeat in 2002.
The following year, Armey wrote a little book of wit and wisdom called Armey's Axioms.
Long before she was a successful solo act, Cher was half of Sonny and Cher.
Perhaps no married couple in music was popular in the mid-'60s as Sonny and Cher. Sonny Bono wrote hit songs like I've Got You, Babe and The Beat Goes On,
Eventually, they even had their own television variety show.
Sonny and Cher went their separate ways in the early '70s. Sonny became interested in politics, and bwas elected mayor of Palm Springs, California in 1988. And he was elected to Congress in 1992.
It can be fun, informative, and educational to go back and revisit the things that futurists said years ago. Just, you know, to check and see if they were right.
Kurzweil has been honored by three U.S. presidents, he has 21 honorary doctorates, and has been called the rightful heir to Thomas Edison.
In 1990, I met and interviewed legendary inventor and futurist Raymond Kurzweil. He had written a book called The Age of Tnte Intelligent Machine.
You be the judge -- was he right?
February is, of course, the shortest month of the year. So it occurred to me it might be an appropriate time to share some of my shortest interviews with you.
Normally, I would get 15 to 20 minutes or more with a given celebrity or VIP. But occasionally, because of the constraints of their schedules, I might only get two minutes, or three, or four.
So here now are some of those short takes:
Gtammy-winner Patti LaBelle, literary giants Kurt Vonnegut and John Irving, Oscar-winning actress Kathleen Turner, and Brady Bunch star Maureen McCormick.
Margaret Cho rose to prominence in the mid 1990s, with her TV sitcom All-American Girl. Since then, she's established herself as not only a talented actress but as a standup comic, fashion designer, and social activist.
I've met her and interviewed her twice, about her first two books. Thi interview was the second one we did, and as you'll hear, her views seem as current today as they did the day we talked, 16 years ago.
Most of what the scientific world knows about chimpanzees comes from the work of anthropologist Jane Goodall.
She first went to Tanzania in 1965.
And in 1990 she wrote a memoir of her work. That's when I met her.
So here now, from 1990, Jane Goodall.
Warning: What you're abiyt ti gear is a true story, told by the suvivor of a violent and horrisying attack. You need to know that some of the descriptions are graphic, some of the words used are offensive.
James Cameron was born in 1914 in LaCrosse, Wisconsin. When he was a child, his family moved to Marion, Indiana.
It was there, in the summer of 1930, that James Camero survived a lynching attempt.
He was a suspect in a robbery-and-murder case in Marion, Indiana along with two older teenagers. Both of them were lynched, and died. Cameron was to be the third victim of the Ku Klux Klan-led mob.
They tied a noose around Cameron's neck, and death appered imminent. But just as he was about to be hanged, a mysterious female voice was heard, saying Cameron was innocent.
A star local football player then stepped up, removed the noose and saved Cameron.
For nearly 20 years Joan Lunden was the co-host of ABC's Good Morning America. Millions woke up every morning to her cheerful, reassuring, and professional presence.
As a journalist, Lunden interviewed presidents and royalyu. She covered the Olympics. She bungee-jumped.
In 1997. she left the show -- and was a bit taken aback by what other people assumed she must have been feeling.
I met her just a little over a year aftrer her last brodcast on GMA. She had written a book called A Bend in the Road is Not The End of the Road.
Happy Presidents Day.
Now, if you're old enough, as I am, you may remember that this day was traditionally celebrated as Lincoln's birthday. It was transformed into President's Day in 1971, as part of the move toward more Monday holidays.
In 2005, noted presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, whose best selling books included volumes about Lyndon Johnson and John F Kennedy, took on a new subject: Abraham Lincoln.
Struck by the political acumen displayed by this simple country lawyer, Goodman titled her book
Team of Rivals.
Happy Valentine's Day weekend! I thought this would be an appropriate time to bring back an interview with the author of one of the great love stories of our time -- Love Story, by Erich Segal.
His book became a huge bestseller in 1970, and even bigger box office movie smash in 1971, starring Ali MacGraw and Ryan O'Neal as the star-crossed lovers.
I met him in 1988, when he published his latest novel, called Doctors. But as you are about to hear, Segal was still both honored and haunted by the success of Love Story.
Was the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 60s a social or political movement? It was, but it was also a religious or spiritual movement, says former Congressman and UN Ambassador Andrew Young.
In a 1994 book called A Way Out of No Way, Young, a confidant of Martin Luther King jr., a former preacher, former Atlanta mayor, told his own story against the backdrop of the movement that he was a key part of.
So here now, from 1994, Andrew Young:
For three weeks in October 2002, the Washington DC area was terrorized by a series of sniper attacks. Someone was randomly shooting and killing people throughout the district, and the Maryland and Virginia suburbs.
Piecing together scant eyewitness Clues, police began searching for the gunman, and ultimately found, and arrested, 41 year old John Allen Muhammad and 17 year old Lee Boyd Malvo.
Both were eventually convicted, and John Allen Muhammad was sentenced to death.
In the fall of 2009, I met Muhammad's wife, Mildred. Muhammad had planned to kill her, in a custody dispute over their children, and make her death appear to be one of the series of random sniper killings.
The Kansas City Chiefs are meeting the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in Super Bowl LV. The Chiefs were also in the very first Super Bowl, in 1967.
But it was their misfortune that year to be playing the Green Bay Packer, who are led by future Hall of Fame quarterback Bart Starr. He was named the game's Most Valuable Player, as well as MVP of Super Bowl II Ithe following year.
I met Bart Starr in 1987, when he wrote a memoir of not just his years with the Packers, but his college career, his childhood, if you supposed to Green Bay career.
A few days ago on Now I've Heard Everything, I featured an interview that I had done many years ago with one of my broadcasting Heroes, the late Larry King.
Today, another one: longtime CBS radio and TV news personality Charles Osgood.
Osgood grew up in Depression-era, World War ii-era Baltimore. And in 2004, he wrote a memoir recalling those years, called Defending Baltimore Against Enemy Attack.
They may have called her "the original 'bad girl of rock and roll'," but Ronnie Spector was nothing but nice to me, when I met her in 1990.
Spectre was the lead singer in the '60s girl-group The Ronettes. Their big hit, of couse, was "Be My Baby." but of course there were others, too.
But Ronnie Spector was also Mrs. Phil Spector. And we get into that a little bit, in this interview.
I listened to Larry King on the radio long before I first met him, in 1988. That was actually the first of several interviews I did with King, who passed away the other day at age 87.
Larry King was a legend in radio and television. Whether you like them or not, you had to acknowledge he had Broad and deep influence in broadcasting.
Larry did tens of thousands of interviews over the years, often with VIPs and celebrities who would talk to no one else.
And even though I was still in the "minor leagues" while Larry was a major league all-star, he treated me like we were equal colleagues. That's one of the things I liked best about him.
Tomorrow is January 28, and if you are old enough, you undoubtedly have a clear memory of exactly where you were 35 years agp, on January 28, 1986.
That was the day of that horrible tragedy, the explosion of Space Shuttle Challenger.
Among the crew members was teacher-astronaut Christa McAuliffe, who had won a nationwide competition to become the first teacher in space.
Watching the liftoff in person that day was Christa McAuliffe's mother, Grace George Corrigan.
Do you remember The Dating Game? Or The Newlywed Game? How about The Gong Show?
They and many other TV game shows were all created by e same man: Chuck Barris. He was the king of game shows for many years until he retired in the 1980s and moved to France.
A few years later, he wrote a memoir clled The Game Show King. And that's when I met him and interviewed him.
In 1969, a young Texas woman sought a legal abortion. But when she was unable to obtain one, she turned to two young lawyers for help.
Those lawyers took Norma NcCorve's case to court, and eventually to the United States Supreme Court.
Along the way, Norma NcCorvey became known in the court papers as "Jane Roe." Henry Wade was the local prosecutor she was suing, so the case became known as Roe v Wade.
And on January 22, 1973, the Supreme Court ruled in her favor, effectively legalizing abortion across the U.S.
I met Norma McCorvey in 1994, when she wrote a book clled "I Am Roe."
In early November 1979, a group of students and militants stormed the U.S. embassy in Tehran, taking everyone inside hostage, including the chargé d'affaires, a career diplomat named Bruce Laingen.
The militants were demanding the return of the exiled Shah of Iran, who was undergoing medical treatment in the U.S.
But diplomatic and even military efforts to free thehstages failed, and they ended up being held in Iran for 444 days. It was only on Inauguration Day 1981 that the hostages were ultimately freed.
Years later, Bruce Laingen wrote a ook, based on a journal he'd kept while in captivity. And that's when I met him.
Today is Martin Luther King Jr. Day in the U.S. So I wanted to revisit an interview I did nearly 30 years ago with a woman whose actions helped propel Dr. King to national prominence.
In December 1955, a young woman named Rosa Parks was on her way home after a long hard day at work. She was on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, when she was ordered to the back of the bus so a white man could have her seat.
She refused to move, and was arrested and jailed.
Many people may think Leonard Nimoy's career started with Star Trek. But he was a serious actor for a number of years before that. He even appearing in other science fiction shows.
But of course it was Star Trek that propelled him not just to fame but to Iconic status. His portrayal of a half-human, half-Vulcan Spock practically launch a cottage industry.
In 1975, Nimoy wrote a book called I Am Not Spock. Fast forward 20 years to 1995 when I interviewed him for another book he written, called I Am Spock.
And as you'll hear, there's a reason for his change of heart.
In the summer of 1988 leaders of the Democratic party invited Texas State Treasurer Ann Richards to deliver a prime-time address at the Democratic National Convention.
Richards delivered. all right, in a big way, targeting Republican presidential nominee George H.W. Bush, who had just spent eight years as Ronald Reagan's vice president. Richards delivered a takedown line that has lived forever: "He was born with a silver foot in his mouth."
I met Ann Richards in the fall of 1989 when she had just launched her campaign for governor of Texas.
It was on January 12th. 1971 -- 50 years ago -- that situation comedy changed in a big way, with the premiere of a controversial show called All in the Family.
At the center of the show was an irascible middle-aged blue collar worker named Archie Bunker. What made Archie so controversial, then and now, was how utterly unapologetic he was for his politically incorrect views.
Cast in the role of Archie Bunker was veteran actor Carroll O'Connor, who went on not only to win 4 Emmys as Archie but later starred in the series In The Heat of Tthe Night.
In 1998 O'Connor wrote A a memoir, and that's when I got to meet and interview him.
TRIGGER WARNING: This interview that you're about to hear includes talks about O'Connor's adult son's drug abuse and suicide.
Midnight Plane to Houston?
Doesn't sound quite right, does it? And in her 1997 memoir, singer Gladys Knight told the story of how it became the Midnight Train to Georgia.
And in this interview you're about to hear, she also tells about the connection that Danny Thomas has to another classic Gladys Knight and the Pips song.
In 1993, a single mother with no legal training, no experikence as an attorney, helped bring a major corporation to its knees.
Erin Brockovich joined attorney Ed Masry in suing Pacific Gas & Electric, which was accused of poisoning the water supply in a small California town called Hinkley.
Soon, Hollywood heard about the story, and itwas turned into a major Motion Picture in 2000, starring Julia Roberts as Erin Brockovich.
Don Knotts is perhaps best know as Deputy Sheriff Barney Fife from The Andy Griffith Show. But you also remember him as Ralph Furley from Three's Company. Maybe you remember him from The Apple Dumpling Gang movies, or The Ghost and Mr. Chicken, or The Shakiest Gun in the West. Or The Incredible Mr. Limpet.
Don Knotts had a decades-long entertainment career, which actually began soon after World War II, but which really took off when he reconnected with his old friend Andy Griffith.
I met Don Knotts in November 1999, when he wrote a book called Barney Fife And Other Characters I Have
As we look for a place in the history books to put 2020, we also are taking a look back at Season Two of Now I've Heard Everything.
And stay till the end, for preview of season 3, coming in Jauary!
Did you know that December 21st is National Short Girl Appreciation Day? Ever since 1984, one of America's favorite short girls has been Olympic gold medal gymnast Mary Lou Retton.
At the age of just 16, Retton became the first Anerucab woman to ever win the gold medal in all-around gymnastics competition at theOlympics. She also won two silver medals, and two bronze medals.
Her boundless energy and infectious smile made her one of America's most famous, and most beloved, athletes.
I met her in the spring of 2000, when she wrote a motivational book on how to achieve happiness in life.
Next Monday, December 21, marks the 50th anniversary of a very strange day in White House history.
It was on December 21, 1970 that the king of rock and roll, Elvis Presley, showed up unannounced at the White House gate, asking for a personal meeting with President Richard M.Nixon.
The man who put that meeting together that day was Nixon aide Egil "Bud" Krogh. Officially, Krogh was head of the White House special investigations unit, later colloquially known as the "Plumbers" – it was the unit assembled to plug leaks of information from the Nixon White House.
In 1994, krogh wrote a book about that famous 1970 meeting. And that's when I met him.
Regular listeners of Now I've Heard Everything know that I don't often get starstruck. But this was one of those times.
If you grew up in the '60s, as I did, you may best remember Kitty Carlisle as a panelist on the game show "To Tell the Truth." But heracting career went back many decades before that.
In fact, Kitty Carlisle was a featured performer in the 1935 Marx Brothers classic "A Night at the Opera."
In 1988, Kitty Carlisle Hart Road an autobiography. That's what I met her.
Graham Nash is actually in the Rock and Roll Hal;l of Fame twice - once as a member of the '60s pop group The Hollies, and again for his work as a member of Crosby Stills and Nash.
Nash been an icon in pop and rock music for decades -- and in 2002, he puboished a book about some of the best-known and mosticonic songs of our time,
It was called "Off the Record," and I met Graham Nash when he was on tour promoting that book.
While Molly Shannon may be best known for her six seasons on Saturday Night and her many many television and movie appearances, it turns out she is also a children's book author.
In 2011, Shannon published a book called Tilly the trickster. It's about a young girl who loves to play practical jokes on people, ranging from her brother, to her parents, to her school mates.
So, is there a little bit of Molly Shannon in Tilly the trickster, I wondered?
Ed McMahon had a career in broadcasting that dated back to the 1940s. But perhaps nothing he did on television was as memorable as this: his 30-year on-are partnership with Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show.
In 1998, McMahon wrote an autobiography, a mmoir of his decades in television entertainment. That's when I met him.
One night, 40 years ago this week, a young man approached musician John Lennon outside Lennon's Manhattan apartment building. The young man appeared to be asking for an autograph, but instead, shot and killed Lennon, who was just 40.
A few years later, Lennon's half-sister, Julia Baird, wrote a book about her, her brother, and their mother, called John Lennon, My Brother.
Today we're wrapping up Celebrity Cookbook Week on Now I've Heard Everything.
On Monday, we heard from actress Dawn Wells (Mary Ann from Gilligan's Island), then on Wednesday, musician-actor IsaacHayes.Today, one of my favorite comic actors from the '60s amd '70s,
Dom DeLuise may be best known for the many movies he made with Burt Reynolds, and Mel Brooks.
I met him on a snowy Friday afternoon in January 1988, after he published his cookbook "Eat This, it'll Make You Feel Better."
It's Celebrity Cookbook Week here on Now I've Heard Everything. We continue today with a man who my younge listeners may kknow best for his work on South Park.
But for decades, Isaac Hayes was a major figure in the Southern soul music label Stax Records, where he was a songwriter, a session musician and record a producer
I met him 20 years ago, when he published a cookbook that brought together some of his own favorite family recipes, plus those of dozens of celebrities.
It's Celebrity Cookbook Week on Now I've Heard Everything.
And we start with not only one of my favorite sitcom stars, but also one of my favorite cookbooks.
Dawn Wells portrayed Kansas farm girl Mary Ann Summers on Gilligan's Island. Turns out, she was pretty handy with coconuts, bananas, and whatever else the castaways were able to find -- plus a few food items probably not normally found on a desert island, but, that was Gilligan's Island. It was a fantasy.
Berkeley Breathed is perhaps best known for his comic strips "Bloom County," "Outland," and "Opus."
But he's also a gifted children's book creator. I first met him in 2003, upon publication of his book "Flawed Dogs."
We tal;;kerd again in 2007 after he published "Mars Needs Moms," which later became a Disney animated film. It's about a 9-year-old boy named Milo who comes to appreciate everything about his mom, after she's abducted by Martians.
In the music business, backup singers often fade into the background. Few achieve much fame on their own. One who did was Cissy Houston.
After a successful career backing up the likes of Elvis Preslet, Dionne Warick, and Aretha Franklin, Houston struck out on her own -- and won two Grammies.
I met Cissy Houston in the spring of 1998, after she'd written her memoir.
Alexa stopNot since Carl Sagan, perhaps, has there been a professional stargazer as engaging and as popular as Neil de Grasse Tyson.
A witty, Charming personality who seems to know everything about astrophysics, Tyson has become a very popular TV host, public speaker, and podcaster.
I met him in 2000, when he wrote a book for the light person, not the professional scientist. Science literacy is Tyson's thing.
If you're of a certain age, you remember where you were when something big and historical happened. For my parents, it was Pearl Harbor. For my children, it was the Challenger explosion. For me, it was the John F Kennedy assassination, on Nomb 22, 1963 in Dallas, Texas.
But in the intervening decades, members of the president's Secret Service detail rarely spoke about that day, even among themselves. That changed in 2010, when Gerald Blaine, a senior member of the detail, wrote a book about their common experience.
Very few professional athletes are best remembered for the game, or the play, that ended their career. But Joe Theismann maybe one of them.
It was on this date, November 18th, 1985 -- 35 years ago -- that Joe Theismann sustained a gruesome, career-ending injury before a national TV audience.
I met him two years later, after he had written a book about his football career an d the play that ended it..
Tomorrow, November 17th, is National Entrepreneurs Day. And perhaps no one better embodies what the day is about that Paul Orfalea.
Back in 1970, the young man with e kinky red hair started a small business, making photocopies for students at UC Santa Barbara.
The business took off, and before long Orfalea -- known to his friends as Kinko -- was a successful entrepreneur.
Not all funny people on TV are comedians. Some are weathermen, like NBC's Al Roker.
For years, Roker has been a fixture on The Today Show. And in 2000, he wrote a funny book about fatherhood, and especially the challenges of raising children years apart in age.
But as you're about to hear, it wasn't all jokes and humor. Al Roker had some serious and poignant things to say about fatherhood.
Like many of my fellow Baby Boomers, I grew up watching Phyllis Diller on TV and in movies. She was one of America's first female stand-up comedians, inspiring the likes of Joan Rivers, Roseanne Barr, and Ellen DeGeneres, among others.
Diller was known for her wild outfits, her even wilder hair, her self-deprecating humor, a cigarette always in a long holder, and her jokes about her long-suffering husband whom she nicknamed Fang.
Phyllis Diller wrote a memoir in 2005. She was too frail at that point, in her late 80s, to go on a book tour, so I interviewed her byphone.
By now you've heard the sad news that Jeopardy host Alex Trebek passed away early Sunday.
So today, we'll be revisiting my interview with him from some 30 years ago. He was promoting a book called, appropriately enough, The Jeopardy Book.
And get ready for some real Insider information about the show he hosted since 1984.
For nearly two decades, Chris Jericho was a fixture of the WWE. In fact, he was widely considered one of pro wrestling's best.
But since the end of the 1990s, he has also been a rock star.
I met him in 2011, when he wrote the second volume of a memoir.
It was an iconic White House photo. Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, shaking hands on a peace deal at the White House, with a smiling President Bill Clinton looking on.
Just a couple of years later, in 1995 - on this day in 1995, November 4th - Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated.
Less than a year-and-a-half later, his widow, Leah Rabin, wrote a memoir. Not just a memoir of the military and political leader Yitzhak Rabin, but of the husband, father, and grandfather Yitzhak Rabin was.
Tomorrow is the presidential election. It's been a tough campaign, with not a lot of humor.
But politicians, and their constituents, need a good sense of humor. In 1998, Bob Dole, the unsuccessful GOP nominee in 1996, compiled a book of presidential and political humor.
Now, Dole himself was hardly known for his comic genius. But when I interviewed him in 1998, I found out how funny even conservative Republicans can be.
It's Halloween weekend, so, I have to give you a little bit of a scare, don't I?
If you've ever seen the 2009 movie The Haunting in Connecticut, you know the story that you're about to hear. That scary movie was koosely based on real events, in which a family moved into what used to be a funeral home in Connecticut.
Turned out, it was a haunted funeral home.
And that's where Lorraine Warren comes in. She and her husband Ed, both paranormal investigators, or "ghostbusters," were called into help the family.
Some of you, if you're old enough, grew up listening to Cousin Brucie on New York City radio from 1961 to 1974. Others remember him from the movie Dirty Dancing. And still others know him from his show on Sirius XM in the last 15 years.
Bruce Morrow, known on the air as Cousin Brucie, is one of America's most famous, and most popular, disc jockeys.
I first met him in 1987, when he wrote A Memoir of his broadcast years.
And yes, he's just as wacky and funny in person as you'd expect him to be.
Next week is our presidential election, so I thought it appropriate today to hear from one of our former presidents.
I first met Jimmy Carter in 1987, and interviewed him several times over the years, including this conversation, from 1993.
Mr. Carter had just written a book for young people, about peace, and war. I brought both of my daughters, ages 11 and 13, with me that day to meet our 39th president.
As the U.S. Senate moved closer to confirming Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court, we're reminded that not all nominees have such an easy ride.
In 1987, President Ronald Reagan nominated appeals court judge Robert Bork to the Supreme Court. But after a contentious hearing, the Senate rejected Bork's nomination. And now, in fact, his name has become virtually synonymous with ignominious defeat, as in "he got borked."
One of the several times I interviewed him was in 1991, not long after David Souter was confirmed to a seat on the high court. As you'll hear in this interview.
I first saw Rita Rudner perform her comedy on an HBO special in the mid-1980s. And I immediately fell in love with her, and her comedy.
Her routine is so low-key, so dignified, yet so hilarious. So I was delighted to have the chance to interview her, in 1992, when she had written a book of essays called "Naked Beneath My Clothes."
What comes to mind when I say the name Marvin Hamlisch?
You may think of The Sting. Or Tthe Way We Were. Or A Chorus Line. Certainly Hamlisch is known for all of that, but much more.
I met him some 28 years ago, when he wrote A memoir of his decades in show business, starting with his early years at Juilliard.
For a few days in mid-October 1962, the world teetered on tghe brink of all-out nuclear war between the United States, led by PresidentJohn F. Kennedy, and the Soviet Union, commanded by Premier Nikita Khrushchev.
It began when U.S. spy planes detected Soviet missiles being shipped to, and installed in, Cuba.
President Kennedy weas determined not to allow what was seen as an act of Soviet aggression in our hemisphere, whil Khrushchev was acting in what he believed was defensed of Cuba against possihble U.S. aggression.
The situation quickly escalated into a showdown that brought us to the edge, but ultimately, cooler heads prevailed.
Every day millions of American TV viewers tune in to the syndicated Wendy WIlliams Show.
She's been a fixture on daytime TV since 2008. But her media career began long before that.
Some have even called her a "shock jockette".
When I met her in 2003, Williams was a major radio personality but had not yet broken out onto the national stage in a major way. She had just written her first book, Wendy's Got The Heat.
Tomorrow, October 13th. is the anniversary of one of history's most famous plane crashes.
It was on October 13th, 1972 that a Uruguayan Air Force flight, chartered by a rugby team, crashed high up in the Andes mountains. Authorities tried for days to find the wreckage, but ultimately they gave up, unaware that there were survivors.
For 72 days, they did what they had to do to survive -- including, unthinkably, feeding themselves by eating companions who had died in the crash.
In the end, only sixteen people came down from the mountain, including 22-year-old rugby player Nando Parrado.
At a time when her high school classmates were studying for exams or preparing book reports, Janis Ian was giving concerts, and appearing on television, and getting awards for her music.
From an early age, Janis Ian made a name for herself as a singer-songwriter. Among her biggest hits, Society's Child, and At 17.
And in 1975 -- 45 years ago this week, in fact, -- Janis Ian was one of the two musical guests on the very first episode of Saturday Night Live.
Tonight, October 7th, Senator Kamala Harris will meet Vice President Mike Pence in their one and only debate of the 2020 election campaign.
Harris is the first woman of color on a major party presidential ticket, and she is only the third woman ever nominated by a major party for vice president.
The first, in 1984, was Congresswoman Geraldine Ferraro, who was chosen by Democrat Walter Mondale to be his running mate.
You may know defense attorney Johnnie Cochran best for his participation in OJ Simpson's dream team in his 1990s trial.
But Johnny Cochran had a long legal career, and the Simpson case was just one of hundreds that he participated in.
I met him in 2002, when he wrote A Memoir, of his long, storied legal career.
Sixty-five years ago this week, a new children's television show was launched on the CBS networok. Its creator was a man who had actually been part of the supporting cast of The Howdy Doody Show. His name was Bob keeshan. But the world knew him for decades to come as Captain Kangaroo.
I actually interviewed Bob keeshan twice. This interview was the second time, in early 1995. He had written a book for a book filled with ideas for activities they can do with their kids.
Julie Andrews made her debut as an actress and singer in London in 1948.
She first appeared on Broadway in 1954.
But to audiences of all ages around the world, she may be best known as Mary Poppins, or as Maria von Trapp in The Sound of Music.
I met her in 2009, aftershe and her daughter Emma Walton Hamilton, had collaborated
Tomorrow night, September 29th, is the first debate between President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden.
So today on Now I've Heard Everything, I wanted to revisit an interview I did over 30 years ago with a man who played a key role in the 1984 presidential debates between Ronald Reagan and Walter Mondale.
Years before he became head of Fox News -- way before there even was a Fox News -- Roger Ailes was a media consultant. Most prominent among his many clients, perhaps, was President Ronald Reagan. Ailes was an adviser to the President in his 1984 reelection bid, and was indrectly responsible for one of that campaign's most memorable, and decisive, moments.
Fifty years ago today, a TV show premiered on ABC, about a family that had formed a rock band. It was called "The Partridge Family,: and its star was a young actor-singer named David Cassidy.
In very short order, Cassidy became a full-fledged teen idol. Girls went crazy for him. He sold out concert Halls.
But as he revealed in a 1994 memoir, life was not exactly what it looked like on the outside.
In nearly thirty years of interviewing celebrities and big names, I didn't often get very Starstruck, but this day I did.
It's hard to overstate how big a star Mickey Rooney was. For decades, he was one of the most recognizable names and faces in all of Hollywood. If you've ever watched one of his movies on one of the classic movie networks, you know his Andy Hardy series, and all those hey kids, let's put on a show movies with Judy Garland.
To the general public, Mickey was known primarily for two things: his height, he was only five foot three, and his marriages, of which there were many.
So when he published his Memoirs in 1994, I jumped at the chance to interview him.
Journalist and celebrity biographer Kitty Kelley first rose to prominence in 1978, with her biography of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, a book called Jackie Oh!
But it was her 1986 biography of the legendary Frank Sinatra that make kitty Kelley a household name.
Kelley is a meticulous and very thorough biographer, and in researching Sinatra's life, she uncovered a lot of things he didn't want uncovered.
If you've ever eaten that Wendy's, and most of us have, you probably know that the chain was founded by a guy named Dave Thomas. He needed a first daughter. And you probably remember his TV commercials:
But here's what you may not know about Dave Thomas. He was born during the Great Depression. Later he was adopted, but his homelife was so unstable, he dropped out of high school and struck out on his own at age 15.
As a young man, he got into the restaurant business. And eventually, he started working with an older gentleman, who had just started his own business: Colonel Harland Sanders, founder of Kentucky Fried Chicken.
I first met Dave Thomas in 1991, when he wrote a book that was part Memoir, part How to Succeed in Business.
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In the US, we take labor unions for granted. To many, it seems like they have always been around.
But in 1980, labor unions in countries under the grip of the Soviet Union we're totally hostile to labor unions. That's why it made huge news 40 years ago this week, when workers in the Gdansk shipyards of Poland formed a labor union called solidarity.
With the implicit blessing of the communist government.
And Solidarity was not limited to shipyard workers. Teachers and other educators also wanted in on the movement, and that's where Kazimierz Wierzbicki comes in. He was one of the early organizers of those educators
Today's episode is for my baby boomers. Because we all remember June Lockhart, whether it's from Lassie, Lost in Space, or even Petticoat Junction.
June Lockhart, child of Hollywood parents, has been a fixture classic TV for decades.
She typically played a firm but loving mom, someone we can all relate to.
I met her in 2001, after she'd written a memoir.
Do you remember where you were 19 years ago today?
Richard Picciotto will always remember that as the day he thought he would die. Indeed, he almost did.
PIcciotto was a New York City Fire Department battalion chief that day, and he was inside the North Tower of the World Trade Center when the South Tower collapsed. Half an hour later, he was still inside the North Tower when it, too, collapsed.
Whoopi Goldberg has been entertaining us for almost 40 years, in movies like "The Color Purple," "Ghost," and "Sister Act" as well as TV's "Star Trek: The Next Generation," and of course, on ABC's "The View."
I met her in 1997, after she wrote a book called "Book." It was a kind of stream-of-consciousness effort, with chapters each having a single syllable word as their title.
And our interview was kind of stream-of-consciousness, too.
Happy Labor Day!This is the national holiday set aside to recognize the efforts and contributions of America's Workforce.
So I want to revisit my interview almost a quarter-century ago with the man who was America's top labor leader for 14 years.
John Sweeney was president of the AFL-CIO. I met him in 1996, about a year after he assumed the presidency of the Union.
In 21 seasons with his hometown Baltimore Orioles,Cal Ripken racked up some very enivable numbers: 3,184 hits. 431 home runs. 1,695 runs batted in. A 19time All-Star, and two-time American League Most Valuable Plater.
But perhaps his greatest number was 2,632. That's w many consecutive games Ripken played in,shattering the Lou Gehrig record of 2,130, 25 years ago this weekend.
It was 46 years ago this week that NBC TV viewers first heard that theme music introducing a series called "Littel House on the Prairie."
For the next eight years, it was a perennial viewer favorite.
One of the stars of the series was Melissa Anderson -- known in those years as "Melissa Sue Anderson"; she'll explain why, in this interview. Anderson played "Mary," one member of the Ingalls family.
What is it like, growing up in what some say was the most famous family of the twentieth century?
Reeve Lindbergh knows. She was born in 1945 to Charles and Anne Morrow Lindbergh. Her father was "Lucky Lindy" the aviator who made history in 1927 as the first pilot to cross the Atlantic Ocean in a solo flight.
By 1991 when i met and interviewed him, Stan Lee -- the genius behind Marvel Comics -- was a legend. Almost royalty.
And as he told me then, the Stan Lee - Marvel Comics story actually went back decades.
Together they transformed a medium that was at one time the exclusive domain of children into a much richer art form.
As public scandals go, this one might seem pretty benign, by today's low bar. But in 1984, it was a big story when it was revealed thatthe authoirities had broken up a high-priced Manhattan escort service that was being run by a woman named Sydney Biddle Barrows.
Now, when a New York Post reporter uncovered the fact that the 32-year-old Barrows is from the Biddle family of Philadelphia, and is a direct descendant of some of the original Mayflower settlers, he dubbed her the "Mayflower Madam" -- and the name stuck.
Within two years of her company being put out of business, Barrows wrote a bestselling autobiography, called, of course, "The Mayflower Madam."
Last week Democrats nominated Joe Biden for president. This week, Republicans will renominate Donald Trump, for a second term.
Let's go back 56 years, to July1964, when the GOP nominated Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater.
When I met him in 1988, the country was in the midst of the George H.W. Bush vs Michael Dukakis race. And as you're about to hear, Goldwater had some very specific ideas about that contest.
Years before her husband Al was elected vice president of the United States, Tipper Gore established a reputation of her own, as a social issues advocate. And her issue, in the late 80s, was protecting America's children from sex and violence in the media.
She was co-founder of the Parents Music Resource Center, which led the effort to require warning labels if on media contained profanity, sexual references, or violence.
I met her in 1987. She had just published a book called Raising PG Kids In An X-Rated Society.
Tomorrow, August 20th, is National Radio Day.
Yoday, we're going to revisit my interview 25 years ago with one of the greatest radio personalities of all time.
And I'm going to let you hear the question I asked him that day, and the answer he gave me, that has haunted me to this day.
I'm talking about the great Wolfman Jack, one of the greatest figures in the history of the music business in America, as well as radio.
The 2020 Democratic National Convention is getting underway this week. It'll look a lot different from any past convention, though, because of the coronavirus pandemic.
Let's go back 48 years, to 1972, when the Democratic party nominated South Dakota Senator George McGovern as their standard-bearer.
Running on a liberal, anti-war platform, McGovern lost badly to Republican incumbent Richard Nixon -- who, less than two years later, resigned in disgrace over the Watergate scandal.
When I interviewed George McGovern 2004, in he had just published a book advocating for those same traditional liberal values.
Irish-born redhead Maureen O'Hara knew from an early age she wanted to act. After years of training, she was finally "discovered," if you will, as ayoung woman by Charles Laughton, considered one of thye world's finest actors.
Her first movie came in 1938, and it launched an award-winning career that spanned decades.
I met her in 2004. She had just written a memoir that included her recollections of working with some of the greatest names in movie history: director John Ford. Her longtime friend and co-star John Wayne. Even John Candy.
or decades the USSR -- the Soviet UInion -- was a major world power, but it was held together largely through force and intimidation.
Things began to unravel in the late 1980s -- the momentum built after President Ronald Reagan delivered these words at the Berlin Wall:
The wall did come down two years later, and two years after that, the Soviet Union came to an end.
Watching it all, from a front-row seat, was high-profilpe Soviet journalist and broadcaster Vladimir Pozner, who was also a freqeuent guest on American television, largely because in his youth, he spent a lot of time in tghe U.S. abd vecame fluent in English.
She burst onto the American television scene in the late 1980s, when she hosted her own show on the fledgling Fox network.
And Tracey Ullman has been a favorite in this country ever since.
Her Fox show ended in 1990, and she next appeared on American television in 1996, on the HBO series Tracey Takes On.
I met her in early 1998, when she published a book that was companion to the HBO series.
Mrs. Fields Cookies can be found in hundreds of cities across America, and around the world. It's one of the largest names in the snack food industry.
It all started back in 1977, when Debbi Fields and her husband started a small business selling homemade-style cookies.
It grew into a major enterprise, which Debbi Fields sold in 1993.
When I met her in 1996, she had just published a book of dessert recipes -- traditional classics ti which she had added the Mrs. Fields touch.
Tomorrow, August 6th, is the 75th anniversary of the first-ever use of a nuclear weapon in war, when the U.S. dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan.
At the controls of the B-29 called the Enola Gay was a young pilot named Paul Tibbetts.
After the war, Tibbetts returned to a very humble and private life in Ohio.
As the 1990s were drawing to a close, Chicago Tribune columnist and author Bob Greene was finally, after years of trying, to get PaulTibbetts to talk about his history-making flight.
A few years before he was an Illinois state senator, long before he became a U.S. Senator and years before the nation elected him our first African-American president, Barack Obama was a law professor and community organizer.
Just before he went off to law school, Obama traveled to Kenya to learn more about his father, and to try and put some perspective on his mixed-race heritage.
The result was his book "Dreams From My Father."
One of the most popular, and most iconic series from the early days of television was "The Adventures of Superman," which ran from 1952 to 1958.
George Reeves was Superman / Clark Kent. Jack Larson played young photographer Jimmy Olson, and Noel Neill was reporter Lois Lane.
But, like so many TV stars, Neill saw her career take a new and unexpected path, and not necessarily the path she had planned.
In all of major league baseball history, going back well over a hundred years, there has been only a handful of pitchers who have won30 or more games in a single season.
That very short list includes names like Cy Young, Grover Cleveland Alexander, and Dizzy Dean.
And .. the last to do it -- righthander Denny McLain.
If you know Jim Gaffigan's comedy, you know he has a big family, five kids.
He was one of six kids, his wife was one of nine. So they know big famililes.
I met Jim in 2013, when he wrote a memoir that was funny and poignant and reflective -- as was our interview.
Sam Huff was such a force in the National Football League in the 1950s and ’60s that CBS television produced a special called “The Violent World of Sam Huff.”
One of the first middle linebackers in the NFL, Huff was one of the game’s toughest competitors, first for the New York Giants, later for the Washington Redskins.
Huff played in six NFL Championship Games and was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 1980 and the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1982.
In 1981, at the age of 16, Andrea Jaeger was ranked number two in the world among professional women tennis players.
But at age 19, a shoulder injury ended her five-year pro career.
Within two years, however, Jaeger launched her second career as an advocate for children with life-threatening illnesses.
On July 20th, 1969, Buzz Aldrin was 39 years old, as he and Neil Armstrong became the first two human beings ever to set foor on the surface of the moon.
Fifty-one years sounds like a long time, but to those of us who remember watching it unfold live on TV, it's almost like it was yesterday.
To untold millions of people all over the world, Buzz Aldrin, to this day, remains a larger-than-life hero. That's why, when I met him in 2000, I was more than just a bit starstruck.
An icon of the American civil rights movement has died. Congressman John Lewis was 80 when he passed away this weekend.
Here is a repost of an episode of Now I've Heard Everything that I first posted last February.
You could say that Richard Branson's success in business has always been about disruption.
He disrupted air travel, he risrupted the music business, he disrupted retail -- all through the Virgin Group, which he founded in the 1970s.
I met him in fall 1998. He had just written a memoir called "Losing My Virginity."
Hot air balloons, or lighter-than-air craft, have been around for centuries. But it wasn't until March 1999 that humans were able to circumnavigate the entire world in a single hot air balloon flight.
The two guys who did it were British balloonist Brian Jones and Bertrand Piccard, a Swiss psychiatrist and balloonist.
They co-piloted a massive balloon called Breitling Orbiter 3, which launched March 1st,1999 from Switzerland and landed in Egypt 19 days and 27-thousand-900 miles laer.
In the 1980s movies like The Breakfast Club, St. Elmo's Fire, WarGames, and Short Circuit made Ally Sheedy a star. She was a prominent member of the so-called Brat Pack.
I met her in 1991 when, at age 28, she had just published a collection of her poetry. Many of the poems in her book dated back to her teenage years. But as she remionded me, it's not like she was new to writing, or publishing.
Glamour, glitz, sex, power, drugs, and money. All were staples of novels by Jackie Collins.
At the same time her sister Joan was making her name as an actress, Jackie Collins honed her craft as the author of novels in the tradition of Jacqueline Susann or Mickey Spillane.
And she was really, really good at it. She wrote 32 novels, all of which became New York Times Best Sellers. Her books have sold over 500 million copies worldwide. And many have been made into movies or TV series.
We lost a true American comedy genius last week.
Carl Reiner was 98 when he passed away.
I first met Carl Reiner in 1993, and again in 1995, when he published a sequel to his iconic 1950s novel "Enter Laughing."
If Donald Trump thinks he's getting a rough time from the journalist who cover him at the White House, he's never met Sam Donaldson.
From 1977 to 1989 -- the Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan years -- Donaldson was was Chief White House correspondent for ABC News.
During those twelve years, Donaldson proved to be a relentless, aggressive reporter, never letting the president get away with a vague, evasive, or unsatisfactory answer to a question.
As we head into the Independence Day weekend, it's a good time to look back on American history.
For example, we all know that Christopher Columbus discovered America. No, wait, Leif Erikson did.
Abe Lincoln once walk 3 miles to return a library book.
George Washington had wooden teeth.
Are these things true, or are they Legends and myths?
She's a supermodel, a role model, and a popular actor.
Tyra Banks was already, at 24, an international celebrity when I met her in 1998. She had written her first book, called "Tyra's Beauty Inside & Out."
Is it possible to get a major supporting role on a major television show, and have it cripple your acting career?
It nearly happened to George Lindsey. You remember him as Goober from The Andy Griffith Show.
Taking that role, he says ,typecast him for years to come.
Vanna White has been turning the letters on TV's "Wheel of Fortune" since 1982..
But viewers of the show know that Vanna is much more than just a letter turner.
Soon after joining the show, she rose to nearly the prominence of host, Pat Sajak.
I met Vanna White in 1987. She had written a memoir called "Vanna Speaks," and I interviewed her at the convention of the American Booksellers Association.
Tomorrow, June 25th, would have been Anthony Bourdain's 64th birthday.
That's why June 25th has been designated "Bourdain Day" by friends of the late chef, author, TV personality, and world traveler.
Bourdain shot to fame some twenty years ago with his book "Kitchen Confidential," in which he pulled back the curtain to let us see what really goes on in a restaurant kitchen.
Baby Boomers had The Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew books. Millennials had Harry Potter. And Generation Z grew up with Lemony Snicket.
From 1999 to 2006, author Daniel Handler -- writing under the pseudonym Lemony Snicket -- wrote a series of books called "A Series of Unfortunate Events."
Father's Day is this Sunday and all this week on Now I've Heard Everything we've been featuring interviews about fathers.
Today a conversation with a father and son who have been making us laugh for decades.
Actor-comedian Chris Elliott and his dad, Bob Elliott, collaborated on a 1989 book called "Daddy's Boy: A Son's Shocking Account of Life with a Famous Father."
Don't be alarmed -- it's a parody celebrity tell-all memoirs, and was all very, very tongue-in-cheek -- as was our interview just before Fathers Day 1989.
Father's Day is next Sunday and all this week on Now I've Heard Everything we're featuring interviews about fathers.
Few men are as widely praised as Sargent Shriver was. after his death in early 2011. Thousands of tributes hailed Shriver not only for his great public accomplishments -- including founding the Peace Corps, building President Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty -- but also his personal virtues.
He was, in nearly everyone's words, a "good man."
Next Sunday is Father's Day, so all of this week on Now I've Heard Everything, we are featuring interviews about fathers.
The late Richard Pryor was a hugely talented comedian and brilliant entertainer — but, by his own admission, a failure as a father.
In 2006 his daughter Rain Pryor wrote a memoir, a sympathetic portrait of the man, failings and all.
Few poets ever rise to the kind of prominence enjoyed by Maya Angelou. But of course, she was much more than a poet -- essayist, memoirist, and civil rights activist. And not a bad singer, as you'll hear in a few minutes.
She worked with both Martin Luther King and Malcolm X.
In 1993, Angelou recited her poem "On the Pulse of Morning" at the first inauguration of President Bill Clinton. I met her a few months later.
This is an episode of Now I've Heard Everything that made me think very carefully about. Given the tensions the entire nation -- the world -- is enduring right now, I did not want to further inflame things.
But ultimately, I think this interview, from 1992, with former Sgt. Stacey Koon, may provide some relevance and context.
Let's go back to March 1991. An LA cop makes a late-night traffic stop, pulling over a car driven by a man named Rodney King.
Hairspray. Cry-Baby. Serial Mom. Pink Flamingos.
Filmmaker John Waters has a long, illustrious, and unique body of work.
He started making movies in the early 1960s, but only rose to prominence in the '70s, and by the '80s was a cultural icon.
I first met him in the fall of 1986. He had just published a by collection of his writings, a slender little book called "Crackpot."
Reba McEntire recorded her first song in 1976, when she was just 21.
Her first number one record didn't come for another decade, but she's been on a roll ever since, and today is a country music icon.
In 1994, Reba wrote an autobiography, and that;s when I met her.
And yes, it was another one of those times that I was pretty starstruck. But she immediately put me at ease.
In 1979 major league baseball umpires went on strike. MLB hired substitutes -- scabs, as m,any call them -- and veteran minor league umpire Dave Pallone was offered a big-league job.
He remained in the National League for ten years.
But as he told in his 1990 book "Behind the Mask," his fellow umpires disliked him. And he developed a reputation for being quick-tempered.
In April 1988, Pallone had a very high-profile confrontation with someone else who had a reputation for his temper: Cincinnati Reds manager Pete Rose. During an argument over a controversial call, Rose shoved Pallone -- a very serious offense in baseball -- and was suspended for 30 days.
When I was a kid, all my friends and I were into The Twilight Zone, the Rod Serling TV series.
But in the later 2000s, another "twilight" captured the world's imagination: the "Twilight" series of novels by Stephenie Meyer.
Four, in all, chronicling the stories of teenager Bella, vampire Edward. and werewolf Jacob.
This was actually one of the most popular interviews I posted last year on Now I've Heard Everything -- and since tomorrow, May 30th, would have been his 112th birthday, I wanted to re-share my 1988 interview with the unmatched master of voice acting, Mel Blanc.
Bugs Bunny. Daffy Duck. Elmer Fudd, Sylvester and Twety, Porky Pig, Barney Rubble. Heck, he was even the voice of Jack Benny's car.
Canadian-born comedian Samantha Bee was a fixture on TV's The Daily Show or twelvve years. Indeed, she was Most Senor Correspondent.
I met her tewn years ago next week, at the height of her popularity on that show, when she wrote a breezy memoir, a hilariously guided tour of her childhood and adolescence.
On this Memorial Day 2020, a very moving story of a father and son caught up in an unpopular war, with an unexpected and poignant outcome.
In the 1960s, U.S. forces in Vietnam used the defoliant known as Agent Orange in an effort to make it harder for enemy forces to hide in thr jungle.
Agent Orange was very effective -- but it also proved very deadly for hundreds of U.S. troops who were exposed to it.
In the late '60s the Commander of Naval Forces in Vietnam was Admiral Elmo Zumwalt Jr.
His son, Elmo Zumwalt III, was in the Navy -- and was among those exposed to the Agent Orange his father ordered.
If you're of a certain age, you probably have fond memories of Nickelodeon's popular '80s and '90s shows "Double Dare" and "What Would You Do?" hosted by Marc Summers.
Every episode invariably featured lots of slime, goo, cream pies, a vat of beans, whatever. Kids loved it.
But Marc Summers was silently suffering.
As he told me in our 1999 interview, he has OCD -- Obsessive Compulsive Disorder -- which makes him super uncomfortable when things get messy or dirty -- or slimy.
Few people have had the kind of impact on a professional sport that Wilt Chamberlain had on the game of basketball.
In a career that started with the Harlem Globetrotters, the 7-foot-1 Chamberlain became a superstar and a record-setter.
To this day, no one has broken the record he's best known for: scoring 100 points in a single game.
2004 Nobel Peace Prize winner Wangari Maathai was the first African woman to win the Nobel Prize.
Kenyan-born Wangari Maathai was educated in the U.S., then returned to Kenya and became a social, environmental and political activist
In 1977, when she was 37 years old, Wangari Maathai established what she called the "Green Belt Movement."
Sixty years ago this week, May 1960, a team of Israeli Mossad agents quietly traveled to Argentina, where they found and captured Adolf Eichmann, the Nazi officer who was instrumental in organizing the extermination of millions of Jews during World War II.
A key member of that Israeli team was a young man named Peter Z. Malkin.
I met him in 1990, around the 30th anniversary of that famous episode. He had just published a book called "Eichmann In My Hands."
He had his first number-one song in 1951, a tune called "Because of You" -- and Tony Bennett has never slowed down since.
Over his seven-decade show business career, Bennett has proven to be as popular today, among all age groups as we was when he was just beginning his rise to stardom.
In 1998 Bennett finally wrote his autobiography, a book called "The Good Life." That's when I met him, and yes, I was hugely starstruck.
Last week the National Football League and its fans lost a truly iconic figure, Don Shula, the all-time winningest NFL coach, died at the age of 90.
I met Don Shula in 1995, just a few months before the start of what would be his final season coaching in the NFL. He had written a book on coaching and leadership, along with Ken Blanchard, the prolific author who [s best known for his book "The One Minute Manager."
Mothers are always proud when their children are successful, and especially so when their grown children become entertainment stars.
One such mom is Georgia Holt, whose daughter is one of those rare performers who is such a star she's known by just one name -- Cher.
I met Georgia Holt in 1988, after she had written a book called "Star Mothers." which told not only her story and Cher's, but the mothers of many otgher stars.
Here now, from 19o88, Georgia Holt:
All this week on Now I've Heard Everything, as we look ahead to Morthers Day next Sunday, we\re featuring interviews with or about mothers.
Today my 1988 interview with a wopman whose book about her adoptive mother became a cultural nilepost.
Christina Crawford;s mother was Hollywood legend Joan Crawford. But as she revealed in her 1978 bestseller, life with the fanous actress was not a fairy tale existence.
Mother's Day is next Sunday, so this week on "Now I've Heard Everything we're featuring interviews with and about mothers.
Today, a loving and devoted mother who suffered a devastating and very public loss.
On October 6, 1998, a 22-year-old gay University of Wyoming student named Matthew Shepard was beaten and tortured, and died six days later.
Two other young men, Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson, were later arrested, tried, and convicted in Matthew Shepard's death.
After her son's murder, Ju Shepard took on a new role as advocate for the LGBT community.
"Married to the mob" was more than just a snappy catch phrase for Georgia Durante.
Her 1998 autobiography told an incredible story -- teenage model, sexual assault victim, mob wife, Hollywood stunt driver.
People often ask me if I ever got starstruck when I was interviewing famous people -- and yes, it happened sometimes.
One of those times in early 1994, when I had the opportunity to interview a true literary lioin: novelist, short-story writer, poet, and critic John Updike.
How big a literary figure is he?
Well, John Updike is one of only three writers who have ever won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction more than once.
Dan Quayle was a Republcian U.S. Senator from Indiana. and not a very well-known Senator, when George H.W. BuSh chose him as his 1988 running mate. Quayle took a lot of heat from critics who derided him as an intellectual lightweight.
Bush won that election, and Qualye became America's 44th vice president.
But the 1992 camapign proved more difficult for Bush and Quayle.
It's been almost 50 years since the tragically untimely death of Janis Joplin, whose rock, soul and blues set the standard for a whole generation of musicians who followed.
About 30 years ago, I met Janis's younger sister Laura Joplin, who had just published a biography of Janis, based largely on a cache of letters her sister wrote, back in the day.
As she told me in this interview, it became a project she needed to do.
It's not a government job that gets a lot of attention or media coverage.
But the office of U.S. Chief of Protocol is a uniquely sensitive position. If done right, no one even notices. But if done wrong, it can spark an international crisis.
Former journalist Selwa Roosevelt -- always known as "Lucky" -- was Chief of Protocol under :resident Ronald Reagan, from 1982 to 1989. That's longer than anyone else has ever served in that position.
I met Lucky Roosevelt the year after she left the government.
Happy birthday to George Takei, who today is 83.
Many of us remember him best s Helmsman Sulu on the original "Star Trek" TV series, or perhaps as an author or activist or wildly popular and widely quoted and rweeted internet commentator.
George Takei was just four years old when the Japanese empire attacked Pearl Harbor and plunged America into World War Two.
The U.S. government ordered Japanese-Americans into internment camps, and the Takei family of California was among those taken into custody.
On a cold January morning in 2009, a US Airways flight left New York's LaGuardia Airport.
At the controls that morning was veteran Captain Chesley Sullenberger, whom everyone called "Sully."
Moments after takeoff, the plane ran into a flock of geese, disabling its engines.
Unable to reach any nearby airport, Sully and co-pilot Jeff Sykes safely guided the plane into the Hudson River, where it stayed afloat long enough to get every single persopn off the plane safe and alive.
ChuckNorris doesn't read books. He stares them down until he gets the information he wants.
But a book is how I first met Chuck Norris 32 years ago, in early 1988. He had just written an autobiography and was on tour to promote it.
And it was one of the many times in my interviewing career that I wished I could have had a couple of hours, instead of just 15 minutes, with a subject.
Sir James Dyson will tell you, it's not eas being an innovator.
Dyson is the guy who, a few years ago, came up with a whole new kind of vacuum cleaner, which he dubbed the Dual Cyclone bagless vacuum.
It was a revolution in vacuum technology that upended that well-established undustry.
But as he told me, in our 2004 interview, it isn't as easy as just building the better mousetrap.
On this Easter weekend, I wanted to share with you one of several comversations I had with one of the most popular of the TV evangelists of his day: Rev. Robert Schullt, creator of The Hour of Power, the leader of a congregation that worshiped in the Crystal Cathedral in Garden Grove, California.
In 1992, we met for an interview about a new book about his life. It was called "Goliath," written by his son-in-law James Penner.
Back in the '70s, Robert Blake was a huge TV star. His career actually began when he was a kid -- did you know he was a star in many of those old black and white "Little Rascals" movies?
So it's kind of sad that many people today only know Robert Blake -- if they remember him at all -- for his 2005 murder trial, in which he was eventually acquitted in the shoorting death of his second wife Bonnie Lee Bakley.
I mety him many years before all that, in 1986. He was part of a movement called the "Great Peace March for Global Nuclear Disarmament," a grassroots, cross-country effort to raise awareness of nuclear proflieration.
Everyone knows the story of young Dorothy Gale of Kansas, and her epic journey to meet the great and powerful Wizard of Oz.
And we know that along the way she "liquidates" the Wicked Witch of the West.
Back in 1995, Gregory Maguire built on L. Frank Baum's work to create "Wicked," the backstory of the Wicked Witch of the West. "Wicked" became a moden day cultural phenomenon.
If not for the coronavirus, this would have been Final Four weekend.
So, for you basketball-starved fans, let me share with you an interrview I did some 20 years ago with the coach who took his team to the Final Four eleven times during his 36 seasons with the University of North Carolina.
Dean Smith was one of the winningest coaches in college basketball history.
Here is my 1999 interview.
Since 1985, I've done over 10,000 interviews, with notable people, not-so-notable folks, some you've never heard of, some downright infamous.
In most cases, I had anywhere from 15 to 45 minutes with my interview subject. Time to have a cup of coffee, make some small talk, do the interview, and sign some autographs, and say our goodbyes.
But every now and then, I would have a lot less time for the interview. In some cases, only a minute. So today, some short takes.
Years before he became head of Fox News -- way before there even was a Fox News -- Roger Ailes was a media consultant. Most prominent among his many clients, perhaps, was President Ronald Reagan. Ailes was an adviser to the Presidentg in his 1984 reelection bid, and was indrectly responsible for one of that campaign's most memorable, and decisive, moments.
I met Roger Ailes in the fall of 1987.
Donnie Brasco was a real person. Well, no, Donnie was an identity created by the FBI, back in the 1980s, when they assigned an agent named Joseph Pistone to go undercover, as Donnie Brasco, and infiltrate some of America's most notorious organized crime familiies.
Janine Turner is best known for her roles on TV's "Northern Exposure" and "Friday Night Lights," and in the movie "Cliffhanger."
But until 2014, much of her private life -- how she prevailed over heartbreak, alcoholism, and the death of her father -- had remained out of public view.
There have been many authors I've interviewed year after year, and one of my favorites -- a guy I always looked forward to talking to -- was this guy, Robert B. Parker.
