Now I've Heard Everything

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...

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...

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 so...

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 Ral...

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...

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 Coop...

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 wh...

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 liv...

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 Ge...

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 thei...