Monday, January 19, 2009: In honor of the Martin Luther King holiday we bring back Bob’s conversation with several Memphis residents who were active during the civil rights struggle of the 1960’s. All three guests touch on the city’s sanitation workers’ strike which brought Dr. King to Memphis. Maxine Smith led the city’s chapter of the NAACP from 1962 until 1996. Frank McRae was a local white minister who supported the sanitation workers marching for their rights and dignity. Benjamin Hooks was a close friend of King’s and went on to serve as executive director of the NAACP.
Tuesday, January 20, 2009: Today, we take a look back and a look forward at the U.S. economy. In the eight years since George W. Bush took office, almost every sector of the U.S. economy has worsened: the deficit has hit a record high, consumer debt has close to doubled, the unemployment rate is at a 16-year high and Iraq’s price tag is expected to be at least $3 trillion. Bob talks with Harvard economist Linda Bilmes about “The $10 Trillon Hangover,” an article she co-authored for the January issue of Harper’s magazine. Then, David Sanger is chief Washington correspondent for The New York Times. He talks about the foreign policy challenges and covert programs that President-elect Barack Obama will inherit from President Bush.
Wednesday, January 21, 2009: Rafe Esquith is a fifth grade teacher at a public school in Los Angeles. His students voluntarily come to school at 6:30am and stay well past the bell nearly every day. Bob last talked to Esquith about his book, Teach Like Your Hair’s On Fire. As part of our ongoing series on education reform, we touch base with the only teacher in history to receive the National Medal of the Arts to find out how he motivates his students and what he thinks about No Child Left Behind and other reform efforts. Then, Eighteenth-century scientist and philosopher Joseph Priestley was one of the world’s most prominent religious thinkers, as well as one of England’s most hated men. Writer Steven Johnson’s book The Invention of Air: A Story of Science, Faith, Revolution, and the Birth of America uses Priestley’s life to look at how new ideas emerge and spread.
Thursday, January 22, 2009: Dave Zirin writes the weekly online column Edge of Sports and hosts a show with the same name on Sirius XM Channel 167 Saturdays at noon EST. He’s also authored several books including What’s My Name, Fool? and Welcome to the Terrordrome. In his newest book, Zirin tracks an alternative history of our country as seen through the sports and games Americans have played. The book is called A People’s History of Sports in the United States. It is part of the New Press People’s History series, edited by historian Howard Zinn.
Friday, January 23, 2009: David Broder of The Washington Post joins Bob live with the latest from the capital and beyond. Then, Eugene Jarecki’s 2005 documentary Why We Fight was about the causes and inner-workings of what outgoing president Dwight Eisenhower dubbed the military-industrial complex. Jarecki has spent the last three years building on the ideas in the film and now has a book, American Way of War: Guided Missiles, Misguided Men, and a Republic in Peril. Bob talks with Jarecki about the military and economic challenges facing the new administration.