Now I've Heard Everything

or decades the USSR -- the Soviet UInion -- was a major world power, but it was held together largely through force and intimidation. Things began to unravel in the late 1980s -- the momentum built after President Ronald Reagan delivered these words at the Berlin Wall:  The wall did come down two years later, and two years after that, the Soviet Union came to an end. Watching it all, from a f...

She burst onto the American television scene in the late 1980s, when she hosted her own show on the fledgling Fox network.  And Tracey Ullman has been a favorite in this country ever since. Her Fox show ended in 1990, and she next appeared on American television in 1996, on the HBO series Tracey Takes On. I met her in early 1998, when she published a book that was companion to the HBO series....

Mrs. Fields Cookies can be found in hundreds of cities across America, and around the world.  It's one of the largest names in the snack food industry. It all started back in 1977, when Debbi Fields and her husband started a small business selling homemade-style cookies. It grew into a major enterprise, which Debbi Fields sold in 1993. When I met her in 1996, she had just published a book of...

Tomorrow, August 6th, is the 75th anniversary of the first-ever use of a nuclear weapon in war, when the U.S. dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan. At the controls of the B-29 called the Enola Gay was a young pilot named Paul Tibbetts. After the war, Tibbetts returned to a very humble and private life in Ohio. As the 1990s were drawing to a close, Chicago Tribune columnist and author Bob Gre...

A few years before he was an Illinois state senator,  long before he became a U.S. Senator and years before the nation elected him our first African-American president, Barack Obama was a law professor and community organizer.  Just before he went off to law school, Obama traveled to Kenya to learn more about his father, and to try and put some perspective on his mixed-race heritage.&nbs...

One of the most popular, and most iconic series from the early days of television was "The Adventures of Superman," which ran from 1952 to 1958. George Reeves was Superman / Clark Kent.  Jack Larson played young photographer Jimmy Olson, and Noel Neill was reporter Lois Lane.  But, like so many TV stars, Neill saw her career take a new and unexpected path, and not necessarily the path sh...

In all of major league baseball history, going back well over a hundred years, there has been only a handful of pitchers who have won30 or more games in a single season. That very short list includes names like Cy Young, Grover Cleveland Alexander, and Dizzy Dean. And .. the last to do it -- righthander Denny McLain.

If you know Jim Gaffigan's comedy, you know he has a big family, five kids.   He was one of six kids, his wife was one of nine.  So they know big famililes. I met Jim in 2013, when he wrote a memoir that was funny and poignant and reflective -- as was our interview.

Sam Huff was such a force in the National Football League in the 1950s and ’60s that CBS television produced a special called “The Violent World of Sam Huff.”  One of the first middle linebackers in the NFL, Huff was one of the game’s toughest competitors, first for the New York Giants, later for the Washington Redskins. Huff played in six NFL Championship Games and was inducted into the Coll...

In 1981, at the age of 16, Andrea Jaeger was ranked number two in the world among professional women tennis players.  But at age 19, a shoulder injury ended her five-year pro career.  Within two years, however, Jaeger launched her second career as an advocate for children with life-threatening illnesses.  

On July 20th, 1969, Buzz Aldrin was 39 years old, as he and Neil Armstrong became the first two human beings ever to set foor on the surface of the moon. Fifty-one years sounds like a long time, but to those of us who remember watching it unfold live on TV, it's almost like it was yesterday. To untold millions of people all over the world, Buzz Aldrin, to this day, remains a larger-than-life hero....

An icon of the American civil rights movement has died.  Congressman John Lewis was 80 when he passed away this weekend. Here is a repost of an episode of Now I've Heard Everything that I first posted last February.

You could say that Richard Branson's success in business has always been about disruption.  He disrupted air travel, he risrupted the music business, he disrupted retail -- all through the Virgin Group, which he founded in the 1970s. I met him in fall 1998.  He had just written a memoir called "Losing My Virginity."

Hot air balloons, or lighter-than-air craft, have been around for centuries. But it wasn't until March 1999 that humans were able to circumnavigate the entire world in a single hot air balloon flight.  The two guys who did it were British balloonist Brian Jones and Bertrand Piccard, a Swiss psychiatrist and balloonist.  They co-piloted a massive balloon called Breitling Orbiter 3,  ...

In the 1980s movies like The Breakfast Club, St. Elmo's Fire, WarGames, and Short Circuit made Ally Sheedy a star. She was a prominent member of the so-called Brat Pack. I met her in 1991 when, at age 28, she had just published a collection of her poetry. Many of the poems in her book dated back to her teenage years. But as she remionded me, it's not like she was new to writing, or publishing.

Glamour, glitz, sex, power, drugs, and money.  All were staples of novels by Jackie Collins. At the same time her sister Joan was making her name as an actress, Jackie Collins honed her craft as the author of novels in the tradition of Jacqueline Susann or Mickey Spillane. And she was really, really good at it. She wrote 32 novels, all of which became New York Times Best Sellers. Her books ha...

We lost a true American comedy genius last week.   Carl Reiner was 98 when he passed away.   I first met Carl Reiner  in 1993, and again in 1995, when he published a sequel to his iconic 1950s novel "Enter Laughing."

If Donald Trump thinks he's getting a rough time from the journalist who cover him at the White House, he's never met Sam Donaldson.  From 1977 to 1989 -- the Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan years -- Donaldson was was Chief White House correspondent for ABC News.   During those twelve years, Donaldson proved to be a relentless, aggressive reporter, never letting the president get away wit...

As we head into the Independence Day weekend, it's a good time to look back on American history. For example, we all know that Christopher Columbus discovered America. No, wait, Leif Erikson did. Abe Lincoln once walk 3 miles to return a library book. George Washington had wooden teeth. Are these things true, or are they Legends and myths? 

She's a supermodel, a role model, and a popular actor.  Tyra Banks was already, at 24, an international celebrity when I met her in 1998.  She had written her first book, called "Tyra's Beauty Inside & Out."

Is it possible to get a major supporting role on a major television show, and have it cripple your acting career? It nearly happened to George Lindsey. You remember him as Goober from The Andy Griffith Show.  Taking that role, he says ,typecast him for years to come.

Vanna White has been turning the letters on TV's "Wheel of Fortune" since 1982.. But viewers of the show know that Vanna is much more than just a letter turner. Soon after joining the show, she rose to nearly the prominence of host, Pat Sajak. I met Vanna White in 1987.  She had written a memoir called "Vanna Speaks," and I interviewed her at the convention of the American Booksellers Associa...

Tomorrow, June 25th, would have been Anthony Bourdain's 64th birthday. That's why June 25th has been designated "Bourdain Day" by friends of the late chef, author, TV personality, and world traveler. Bourdain shot to fame some twenty years ago with his book "Kitchen Confidential," in which he pulled back the curtain to let us see what really goes on in a restaurant kitchen.  

Baby Boomers had The Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew books. Millennials had Harry Potter. And Generation Z grew up with Lemony Snicket. From 1999 to 2006, author Daniel Handler -- writing under the pseudonym Lemony Snicket -- wrote a series of books called "A Series of Unfortunate Events."

Father's Day is this Sunday and all this week on Now I've Heard Everything we've been featuring interviews about fathers.  Today a conversation with a father and son who have been making us laugh for decades.  Actor-comedian Chris Elliott and his dad, Bob Elliott, collaborated on a 1989 book called "Daddy's Boy: A Son's Shocking Account of Life with a Famous Father."   Don't be alar...