Now I've Heard Everything

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 H...

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 de...

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...

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 charac...

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 CB...

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 Awaken...

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 Nationa...

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...

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 st...

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...

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.  ...

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...

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 bo...

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...

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....

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...

 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 touc...

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 autobio...

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...

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...

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.  So...

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 internati...

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?