Now I've Heard Everything

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 th...

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. Tha...

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...

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-imag...

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 pa...

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...

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-f...

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 Gle...

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 b...

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....

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.

Where is this podcast been recently? Here's the explanation...

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 turne...

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 event...

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...

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 Wedding...

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 wa...

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 e...

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...

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 Everyt...

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...

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 remembe...

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 eventua...

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 in...

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 internationa...