Now I've Heard Everything

Father's Day is next Sunday and all this week on Now I've Heard Everything we're featuring interviews about fathers.  Few men are as widely praised as Sargent Shriver was. after his death in early 2011. Thousands of tributes hailed Shriver not only for his great public accomplishments -- including founding the Peace Corps, building President Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty -- but also his per...

Next Sunday is Father's Day, so all of this week on Now I've Heard Everything, we are featuring interviews about fathers.  The late Richard Pryor was a hugely talented comedian and brilliant entertainer — but, by his own admission, a failure as a father.  In 2006 his daughter Rain Pryor wrote a memoir, a sympathetic portrait of the man, failings and all.

Few poets ever rise to the kind of prominence enjoyed by Maya Angelou.  But of course, she was much more than a poet -- essayist, memoirist, and civil rights activist.  And not a bad singer, as you'll hear in a few minutes. She worked with both Martin Luther King and Malcolm X.  In 1993, Angelou recited her poem "On the Pulse of Morning" at the first inauguration of President Bill C...

This is an episode of Now I've Heard Everything that made me think very carefully about.  Given the tensions the entire nation -- the world -- is enduring right now, I did not want to further inflame things. But ultimately, I think this interview, from 1992, with former Sgt. Stacey Koon, may provide some relevance and context. Let's go back to March 1991.  An LA cop makes a late-night tr...

Hairspray. Cry-Baby. Serial Mom. Pink Flamingos. Filmmaker John Waters has a long, illustrious, and unique body of work.  He started making movies in the early 1960s, but only rose to prominence in the '70s, and by the '80s was a cultural icon. I first met him in the fall of 1986.  He had just published a by collection of his writings, a slender little book called "Crackpot."

Reba McEntire recorded her first song in 1976, when she was just 21. Her first number one record didn't come for another decade, but she's been on a roll ever since, and today is a country music icon. In 1994, Reba wrote an autobiography, and that;s when I met her. And yes, it was another one of those times that I was pretty starstruck. But she immediately put me at ease.

In 1979 major league baseball umpires went on strike.  MLB hired substitutes -- scabs, as m,any call them -- and veteran minor league umpire Dave Pallone was offered a big-league job. He remained in the National League for ten years. But as he told in his 1990 book "Behind the Mask," his fellow umpires disliked him.  And he developed a reputation for being quick-tempered. In April 1988,...

When I was a kid, all my friends and I were into The Twilight Zone, the Rod Serling TV series. But in the later 2000s, another "twilight" captured the world's imagination:  the "Twilight" series of novels by Stephenie Meyer.   Four, in all, chronicling the stories of teenager Bella, vampire Edward. and werewolf Jacob.

This was actually one of the most popular interviews I posted last year on Now I've Heard Everything -- and since tomorrow, May 30th, would have been his 112th birthday, I wanted to re-share my 1988 interview with the unmatched master of voice acting, Mel Blanc. Bugs Bunny. Daffy Duck. Elmer Fudd, Sylvester and Twety, Porky Pig, Barney Rubble.  Heck, he was even the voice of Jack Benny's car.

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...