Now I've Heard Everything

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 Tom...

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...

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 A...

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...

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 acquire...

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 interview...

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 establis...

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...

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...

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, Playb...

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...

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 me...

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 Ch...

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 ha...

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...

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...

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 w...

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...

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...

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...

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 th...

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 t...

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...

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...

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...