Now I've Heard Everything

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?

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 ca...

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 b...

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 writ...

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 ta...

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 fal...

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...

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 n...

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 a...

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 lab...

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! W...

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 celebri...

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...

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...

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 forwar...

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, &nbs...