Now I've Heard Everything

Canadian-born comedian Samantha Bee was a fixture on TV's The Daily Show or twelvve years. Indeed, she was Most Senor Correspondent.  I met her tewn years ago next week, at the height of her popularity on that show, when she wrote a breezy memoir, a hilariously guided tour of her childhood and adolescence.

On this Memorial Day 2020, a very moving story of a father and son caught up in an unpopular war, with an unexpected and poignant outcome. In the 1960s, U.S. forces in Vietnam used the defoliant known as Agent Orange in an effort to make it harder for enemy forces to hide in thr jungle.   Agent Orange was very effective -- but it also proved very deadly for hundreds of U.S. troops who were ex...

If you're of a certain age, you probably have fond memories of Nickelodeon's popular '80s and '90s shows "Double Dare" and "What Would You Do?" hosted by Marc Summers. Every episode invariably featured lots of slime, goo, cream pies, a vat of beans, whatever. Kids loved it. But Marc Summers was silently suffering.   As he told me in our 1999 interview, he has OCD -- Obsessive Compulsive Disor...

Few people have had the kind of impact on a professional sport that Wilt Chamberlain had on the game of basketball. In a career that started with the Harlem Globetrotters, the 7-foot-1 Chamberlain became a superstar and a record-setter. To this day, no one has broken the record he's best known for: scoring 100 points in a single game. 

2004 Nobel Peace Prize winner Wangari Maathai was the first African woman to win the Nobel Prize. Kenyan-born Wangari Maathai was educated in the U.S., then returned to Kenya and became a social, environmental and political activist  In 1977, when she was 37 years old, Wangari Maathai established what she called the "Green Belt Movement."

Sixty years ago this week, May 1960, a team of Israeli Mossad agents quietly traveled to Argentina, where they found and captured Adolf Eichmann, the Nazi officer who was instrumental in organizing the extermination of millions of Jews during World War II. A key member of that Israeli team was a young man named Peter Z. Malkin. I met him in 1990, around the 30th anniversary of that famous episode....

He had his first number-one song in 1951, a tune called "Because of You" -- and Tony Bennett has never slowed down since. Over his seven-decade show business career, Bennett has proven to be as popular today, among all age groups as we was when he was just beginning his rise to stardom. In 1998 Bennett finally wrote his autobiography, a book called "The Good Life."  That's when I met him, and...

Last week the National Football League and its fans lost a truly iconic figure,  Don Shula, the all-time winningest NFL coach, died at the age of 90. I met Don Shula in 1995, just a few months before the start of what would be his final season coaching in the NFL.  He had written a book on coaching and leadership, along with Ken Blanchard, the prolific author who [s best known for his bo...

Mothers are always proud when their children are successful, and especially so when their grown children become entertainment stars. One such mom is Georgia Holt, whose daughter is one of those rare performers who is such a star she's known by just one name -- Cher. I met Georgia Holt in 1988, after she had written a book called "Star Mothers." which told not only her story and Cher's, but the mot...

All this week on Now I've Heard Everything, as we look ahead to Morthers Day next Sunday, we\re featuring interviews with or about mothers. Today my 1988 interview with a wopman whose book about her adoptive mother became a cultural nilepost. Christina Crawford;s mother was Hollywood legend Joan Crawford. But as she revealed in her 1978 bestseller, life with the fanous actress was not a fairy tale...

Mother's Day is next Sunday, so this week on "Now I've Heard Everything we're featuring interviews with and about mothers. Today, a loving and devoted mother who suffered a devastating and very public loss. On October 6, 1998, a 22-year-old gay University of Wyoming student named Matthew Shepard was beaten and tortured, and died six days later.  Two other young men, Aaron McKinney and Russell...

"Married to the mob" was more than just a snappy catch phrase for Georgia Durante.   Her 1998 autobiography told an incredible story -- teenage model, sexual assault victim, mob wife, Hollywood stunt driver.

People often ask me if I ever got starstruck when I was interviewing famous people -- and yes, it happened sometimes. One of those times in early 1994, when I had the opportunity to interview a true literary lioin: novelist, short-story writer, poet, and critic John Updike. How big a literary figure is he? Well, John Updike is one of only three writers who have ever won the Pulitzer Prize for Fict...

Dan Quayle was a Republcian U.S. Senator from Indiana. and not a very well-known Senator, when George H.W. BuSh chose him as his 1988 running mate.  Quayle took a lot of heat from critics who derided him as an intellectual lightweight. Bush won that election, and Qualye became America's 44th vice president. But the 1992 camapign proved more difficult for Bush and Quayle. 

It's been almost 50 years since the tragically untimely death of Janis Joplin, whose rock, soul and blues set the standard for a whole generation of musicians who followed.  About 30 years ago, I met Janis's younger sister Laura Joplin, who had just published a biography of Janis, based largely on a cache of letters her sister wrote, back in the day. As she told me in this interview, it becam...

It's not a government job that gets a lot of attention or media coverage. But the office of U.S. Chief of Protocol is a uniquely sensitive position. If done right, no one even notices. But if done wrong, it can spark an international crisis. Former journalist Selwa Roosevelt -- always known as "Lucky" -- was Chief of Protocol under :resident Ronald Reagan, from 1982 to 1989.  That's longer th...

Happy birthday to George Takei, who today is 83. Many of us remember him best s Helmsman Sulu on the original "Star Trek" TV series, or perhaps as an author or activist or wildly popular and widely quoted and rweeted internet commentator. George Takei was just four years old when the Japanese empire attacked Pearl Harbor and plunged America into World War Two.   The U.S. government ordered Ja...

On a cold January morning in 2009, a US Airways flight left New York's LaGuardia Airport. At the controls that morning was veteran Captain Chesley Sullenberger, whom everyone called "Sully." Moments after takeoff, the plane ran into a flock of geese, disabling its engines. Unable to reach any nearby airport, Sully and co-pilot Jeff Sykes safely guided the plane into the Hudson River, where it stay...

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 interviewing career that I wished I could have had a couple of hours, instead of just 15 minutes, with a subject.

Sir James Dyson will tell you, it's not eas being an innovator. Dyson is the guy who, a few years ago, came up with a whole new kind of vacuum cleaner, which he dubbed the Dual Cyclone bagless vacuum. It was a revolution in vacuum technology that upended that well-established undustry. But as he told me, in our 2004 interview, it isn't as easy as just building the better mousetrap. 

On this Easter weekend, I wanted to share with you one of several comversations I had with one of the most popular of the TV evangelists of his day: Rev. Robert Schullt, creator of The Hour of Power, the leader of a congregation that worshiped in the Crystal Cathedral in Garden Grove, California. In 1992, we met for an interview about a new book about his life.  It was called "Goliath," writt...

Back in the '70s, Robert Blake was a huge TV star.  His career actually began when he was a kid -- did you know he was a star in many of those old black and white "Little Rascals" movies? So it's kind of sad that many people today only know Robert Blake -- if they remember him at all -- for his 2005 murder trial, in which he was eventually acquitted in the shoorting death of his second wife B...

Everyone knows the story of young Dorothy Gale of Kansas, and her epic journey to meet the great and powerful Wizard of Oz.   And we know that along the way she "liquidates" the Wicked Witch of the West.  Back in 1995, Gregory Maguire built on L. Frank Baum's work to create "Wicked," the backstory of the Wicked Witch of the West.  "Wicked" became a moden day cultural phenomenon.

If not for the coronavirus, this would have been Final Four weekend.  So, for you basketball-starved fans, let me share with you an interrview I did some 20 years ago with the coach who took his team to the Final Four eleven times during his 36 seasons with the University of North Carolina. Dean Smith was one of the winningest coaches in college basketball history. Here is my 1999 interview.

Since 1985, I've done over 10,000 interviews, with notable people, not-so-notable folks, some you've never heard of, some downright infamous. In most cases, I had anywhere from 15 to 45 minutes with my interview subject. Time to have a cup of coffee, make some small talk, do the interview, and sign some autographs, and say our goodbyes. But every now and then, I would have a lot less time for the...