Now I've Heard Everything

It's not always easy to babysit money of a very famous politician. But, perhaps, especially if you're a lesbian and your brother is one of the nation's leading right-wing conservatives. In 1994 a republican wave took over Congress, and Newt Gingrich became Speaker of the House. And suddenly, his half-sister Candace -- who pronounces the family name “Ging-rick” -- found themselves, as they later de...

For decades, going back to the 1970s, one of the most popular contemporary British mystery writers was PD James. In a style sometimes reminiscent of Agatha Christie, James wrote about cases solved by her fictional detective she named Adam Dalgliesh.   He was a character she named after a teacher at Cambridge High School. Book after book, a reputation and popularity grew, until in 1991 James w...

Robert Osbourne Denver graduated from  college with a degree in political science, then caoched physical education and even taught math and history at a California elementary school. But today, this well-educated, smart, soft-spoken man is best remembered for this... Gilligan's Island. Gilligan's Island only lasted three seasons in the mid-1960s, but thaks to reruns and syndication the show h...

Julia Child is probably the reason many people became professional chefs. She's also the reason many many millions of us have attempted things in the kitchen we never thought we could do. For many years Child was America's most famous chef, thanks largely to herpublic television series The French Chef. In 1993, as another of her TV series was premiering, Child collected culinary wisdom from some o...

Do you have to be kind of an SOB to be a success? What kind of connotation does that term even have anymore? Those were two of the key questions that Al Neuharth tried to address in his bestselling memoir “Confessions Of An S.O.B.” Al Neuharth  was the founder of USA Today, as well as The Freedom Forum, and the Newseum.  So apparently being an SOB helped him.

Memorial Day is an occasion to pause and honor those who have given their lives in military service. But we can also remember those who went to war to save lives. In 1963, a 21-year old student nurse named winning Smith joined the Army, and in 1966 was sent to Vietnam, where the war was escalating.  She was there until 1967, But it wasn't until years later that she realized that she, like man...

We learned recently that daytime TV's Ellen DeGeneres Show is coming to an end next year after 19 seasons. Her show made its debut just a couple of years after I met and interviewed her mom, Betty DeGeneres. In 1999, Betty published a book called “Love, Ellen,” a memoir of her relationship with her famous daughter -- and the challenges both mother and daughter experienced when Ellen revealed her s...

Long before Jimmy Fallon, way before Jay Leno, before Johnny Carson, or Jack Paar .. NBC's Tonight Show was hosted by its co-creator Steve Allen.  In the fall of 1954, the 32 year old comedian and entertainer became the host of televisions first-ever late night talk show.  Largely thanks to Alan's intelligent humor, The Tonight Show became a hit.   Steve Allen soon moved on to other...

A new nationally syndicated radio talk show is debuting this week. Its host is conservative commentator Dan Bongino, who was, for several years, a Secret Service agent who's assignments included the presidentia protective l detail. After unsuccessful bids for US Senate and the US House, bongino turned to writing books .. and radio. I met him in the fall of 2013, after he wrote a book called Life I...

Is there any man, woman, or child in America -- or anywhere around the world, for that matter -- who does not know Charlie Brown, Lucy, Linus, and Snoopy?  Those, and the other characters created by Charles Schulz more than0 years ago are among the most popular icons in American art.  He is widely considered one of America's greatest cartoonists of all time, and the roster of other famou...

George Shulz served in various positions under three U.S. presidents -- in fact Shultz held four different cabinet-level posts over the years. An economist by training,  Shultz came to Washington as Richard Nixon's first Labor Secretary.  He became Director of the Office of Management and Budget a year later, and a year after that Nixon appointed him Treasury Secretary. Ronald Reagan was...

When three guys from San Francisco started Starbucks 50 years ago, in 1971, they probably had little idea of what the future would bring for their little coffee bean business. By 1986 there were still only six Starbucks locations.  But in 1987, they sold the company to Howard Schultz. And under his leadershipp, Starbucks grew to 46 stores by 1989, and in1992 the company went public, Howard Sc...

She was born into what would become one of America's most famous music families.  La Toya Jackson is the fifth, and middle, child in the Jackson family.  Lss well-known than the Jackson Five or little brother Michael, La Toya carved out her own place in pop culture, as a singer and songwriter. But little by little America learned about the private side of the Jackson family, the side the...

He was a farm boy from Hamlin, West Virginia.  Chuck Yeager join the Army at the outset of World War II, Have it wasn't long before he became a fighter pilot. Two years after the war ended, in 1947, Chuck Yeager became the first test ilot to break the sound barrier. He rose through the ranks to become a general, before retiring. By the time I met him in the fall of 1988, Yeager was still find...

They say baseball is a funny game. No, really, it's a funny game full of funny characters. In the 1980s, one of the best chroniclers of those characters was former Major League umpire Ron Luciano.  Luciano umpired in the American League from 1969 to 1979. And along the way, he collected hundreds of stories about some of the most colorful characters in Major League Baseball, past and present....

Happy Mothers Day weekend to all the moms listening right now.  Today, the story of one exceptionally courageous mom.  Her name is Betty Mahmoody. In the mid-1980s she accompanied her her iranian-born husband back to his native country for what she thought would be a two-week vacation.  But instead of returning to the US, her husband informed her that they would be living permanentl...

For seven years, the Duggar family captivated American TV viewers, with their reality show “17 Kids and Counting” -- which was later renamed “18 Kids and Counting” and ultimately “19 Kids and Counting.: Michelle and Jim Bob and their multitude of offspring stood for solid Christian family values. But, as you know by, eldest child, 33-year-old Josh, has been charged With ossessinon of child pornogr...

Lewis Black makes us laugh by being the angry man. The perpetually irritated Lewis Black wrote a book in 2005, a semi-autobiographical account but he called Nothing's Sacred. And that;s when I met him. But instead of an “angry ma,” I found a gentle, warm, and very likeable man, who was eager to talk about seriouos things as well as comedy shtick.

When I was a kid one of the TV shows I most look forward to every week was the Sunday night episode of “Candid Camera.” With hidden cameras set up to catch their reactions, host Allen Funt played benign but often ingenius practical jokes on ordinary people. “Candid Camera” was a TV hit for years. After Funt's death in 1999  at aged 84,  his son Peter Funt took over the family business, a...

She is one of America's most high-profile lawyers.   In a career that began in the 1970s, Gloria Allred has become especially known for taking on cases involving sexual harassment and women's rights, especially in the workplace. In 2006, she looked back on her career in a book that she admits may be the closest she will ever come to writing a full-fledged autobiography. 

In the early 1960s, the San Diego Chargers were a powerhouse in the American Football League. In 1966, the franchise was purchased by a very successful California businesman named Gene Klein.  He paid the them-princely sum of 10 million dollars.  But after running the team for 18 years, Klein solded in 1984.  And a couple of years later he wrote a book about his experience, which he...

Well, in most of the U.S. warm spring weather is here. And for many of us, that's an inspiration to get  outside work in the garden. And it reminded me that in the late fall of 1991, I had the first of several interviews I’ve done with Martha Stewart, the well known master of all things domestic. People often ask me, when they find out I have interviewed her if she was rude or condescending o...

He was the kid from a small town in Arkansas who grew up to become a country and western superstar. Born in 1936, Glen Campbell first took up the guitar as a young boy. By the time he was in his twenties, he was an in-demand studio musician in Los Angeles, recording with some of the biggest names of the day. He broke out as a solo artist in the mid-’60s, and had his first big hit -- "Gentle on My...

When you begin to list the greatest American Jazz percussionists of all time, near the top of that list has to be the great Vibe the harpist and drummer Lionel Hampton. In a career that began in the 1920s, when he was a teenager, Lionel Hampton rose to primnence in the jazz community, playing alongside such names as Louis Armstrong and Benny Goodman.  Later, Hampton became a bandleader himsel...

Raise your hand if you had a Barbie Doll, or Hot Wheels, when you were a kid. Or how about a Chatty Cathy, or a See-and-Say?  Bu perhaps no toy of the 20th century in America was more iconic, more popular, and more widely known than the ubiquitous Barbie doll. Ruth Handler was the key figure in bringing all of those to market, as the co-founder of Mattel Toys.