A sample of online interviews & stories buried in the NPR, MPR, and BBC archives PAGE 2 OF 2

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More NPR Interviews — Page 2

• Beginning in 1974, the L.A. Theater Works began recording live theater for an audio archive that now ranks as the best in the world, with more than 320 major American productions. Via LATW's Web site, a complete play can be heard each week, along with 15-minute openings from dozens of others. In addition, its archive of plays is available for purchase on CD or audiocassette.
• Author Ernest J. Gaines was raised by his crippled aunt who had never walked a day in  her life, who crawled everywhere she went. In this NPR interview, he explains the role she and her friends played in his book and movie, The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman. (NPR, Feb. 5, 2005, 8 mins.)
• For three decades, Charlayne Hunter-Gault has been one of America's most distinguished African-American journalists (The New York Times, Saturday Review, NPR, and PBS). This interview examines her 20 years of reporting for PBS' "The NewsHour," including the interview she had with Nelson Mandela upon his release from 27 years of imprisonment. As a young student, Charlayne Hunter integrated the University of Georgia-Athens. Her guardian through that tumult was a young lawyer named Vernon Jordan, today the counselor to some of the mightiest figures in Washington and corporate America. (June 1997, 28 mins.)
• When Minnesota Public Radio's "Talking Volumes" book club spotlighted The Polar Express, author-illustrator Chris Van Allsburg gave two hour-long interviews, one in-studio with listener calls and one before a live audience at the Fitzgerald Theater. (Minn. Public Radio, "Midmorning," December 2004, 60 mins.)
• David Boies, one of America's most powerful lawyers (clients: Yankees, Al Gore, Mike Wallace, and Imus), discusses his memoir, Courting Justice. Included in the interview is his take on coping with and overcoming severe dyslexia. After that challenge, prosecuting Microsoft wasn't so difficult. ("Forum" with Michael Krasny, KQED, Dec. 29, 2004, 50 mins)
  
  
• At any given time you can find as many as three sports biographies on The New York Times top-10 bestseller list. Sold as the athlete's own view, invariably the books are written by "ghostwriters" who often can't get the athlete to even read the book, never mind think it through. Listen as three top writers tell what it's like to write the life of a professional but non-reading athlete. (Leonard Lopate Show, WNYC, Dec. 2004, 30 mins.)
  
  
• Daniel Handler, aka Lemony Snicket, talks about the translation of his books to film on the eve of the film's opening, and what he feared most as a child. ("All things Considered", Dec. 2004, 8 mins.)
  
  
• Dr. Jack Shonkoff, pediatrician and dean of the Heller Graduate School at Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts, and chairman of the Committee on Integrating the Science of Early Childhood Development, waves a red flag about some of the learning mandates imposed today by federal education authorities. He declares, "Any attempt to use research on brain development for assessing children in education settings at the present time is completely unwarranted." Here he addresses the Minnesota School Readiness Business Advisory Council, a group of local business leaders working on issues of early childhood development. (2004, Minn. Public Radio)
  
  
• Academy Award-winning actor Sidney Poitier tells Terry Gross how he went about losing the heavy Caribbean accent he brought to the U.S. as a semi-literate teenager, an accent that prevented him from gaining roles at New York auditions: He listened to American radio announcers between rounds of hotel dishwashing, mimicking the announcer's words, sentence after sentence. ("Fresh Air," 2001, 17 mins.)
  
  
• On the 190th anniversary of the famous battle at Fort McHenry, historian Anthony Pitch, author of The Burning of Washington, explains how the Star-Spangled banner came to be written and why it is so important. (NPR, 14-minutes, 9/12/04)
  
  
• Listen as a panel of librarians, booksellers, publishers, and educators discuss the findings of the NEA that shows a record 10% decline in serious reading over the last decade. According to them, it's not all "doom and gloom." (KQED's "Forum," 8-6-04, 52 mins.)
  
  
• Geoffrey Canada is spearheading what might be the most hopeful urban school project ever: "The 24-Block Solution," covering 60 blocks and 6,500 families. The goal — educating parent and child, before birth and after, before school and after school, in-school and out of school. Listen to his approach, now funded in the tens of millions by New York's elite for the city's poorest. The rest of urban America is watching this one with bated breath. ("Leonard Lopate Show,"WNYC July 21, 2004, 32 mins.)
  
  
• The issue of "black underclass culture" reared its head in 2004 from an unlikely source: Bill Cosby. Cosby explains his controversial remarks to "Talk of the Nation" and takes teachers' phone calls (July 7, 2004, 48 mins.), as well as guesting on "Tavis Smiley Show" (30 mins.). Also: Listen to a recording of Cosby's actual speech, and then a discussion by black writers and callers on "The Brian Lehrer Show" (WNYC, July 16, 2004, 32 mins.). "The Tavis Smiley Radio Show" took on the subject again with 5-minute commentaries by University of Pennsylvania professor Michael Eric Dyson (May 27, 2004) and Princeton professor Cornel West (May 26, 2004).
  
  
• Award-winning novelist Walter Dean Myers ("Diane Rehm Show," WAMU, July 2004, 50 mins.)
  
  
• Newbery-winner Avi talks to MPR about his writing craft and the mind behind his more than 50 books. (Minnesota Public Radio, "Midmorning Show," June 22, 2004, 53 mins.)
  
  
• J. K. Rowling talks with the BBC about the trials of single-parenting while going to grad-school and writing the first Potter book. (Mar. 16, 2004, 5 mins. — push RealAudio meter to 1:30 min mark to start with Rowling)
  
  
• Harry Potter audio narrator Jim Dale tells how he manages the 200 different voices that make the Potter audios all-time bestsellers ("All Things Considered,"recorded 2000, 8 minutes).
  
  
• Diane Rehm interviews Lois Lowry (50 minutes).
  
  
• Lemony Snicket (Daniel Handler) is interviewed at The Commonwealth Club of California (Feb. 2004, 45 mins.)
• The irrepressible Daniel Manus Pinkwater ("Fresh Air," July 2004, 32 mins.)
  
  
• Science fiction great Isaac Asimov ("Fresh Air," Sept.1987, 12 mins.)
  
  
• How Dr. Seuss created "The Grinch"  ("Morning Edition," 8 minutes).
  
  
• Novelist Jon Sczieska on boys and reading (Minn. Public Radio, "Midmorning," 55 mins.)
  
  
• Novelist Kate DiCamillo, author of The Tale of Despereaux and Because of Winn-Dixie (55 minutes); see also a second MPR "Mid-Morning" guest appearance.
  
  
• Newbery-winner Christopher Paul Curtis (Minn. Public Radio, "Midmorning," 55 mins.)
  
  
• Terry Gross interviews Gary Paulsen ("Fresh Air," 12 mins.).
  
  
• Terry Gross interviews education professor Diane Ravitch on outrageous "sensitivity censorship" in textbooks and exams ("Fresh Air," 40 minutes).
  
  
• "Weekend Edition" interviews Art Spiegelman, Pultizer-prize winner and co-editor of the popular "Little Lit" series of comic book art that satirizes and plays with popular literature (It Was a Dark and Silly Night...), including efforts by Maurice Sendak, Lemony Snicket, William Joyce, and Neil Gaiman. (10 minutes)
  
  
• The irrepressible Dav Pilkey tells how an innocent comment by his 2nd-grade teacher led to his hugely popular but controversial "Capt. Underpants" series. ("All Things Considered," 5.5 minutes)
  
  
• Radio commentator/storyteller Jean Shepherd recalls (the night after) what it was like to participate in the 1963 Civil Rights March on Washington (NPR, 15 mins.)
  
  
• Harvard is the most difficult college to gain entrance to in America. To attain that distinction even via the privileged suburbs is a major achievement but to reach it from a Thailand refugee camp by way of a New York city hardware store is almost inconceivable. Listen to 24-year-old Van Tran tell his story ("Weekend Edition," June 5, 2004, 7 mins.)
  
  
• An executive with The Princeton Review examines the new S.A.T. essay criteria and conjures how the works of four famous writers (Hemingway, Stein, Shakespeare, and "The Unabomber") would stand up under the S.A.T. essay grading code. (NPR, Feb, 2004, 5 minutes)
  
  
• History teachers — here's a treasure trove of history from the man who explained America to the British from 1946 to 2004: Alistair Cooke. His weekly radio reports to the BBC from America tied a powerful knot to bind the two nations. Every show was a study in historical perspective. Nearly a hundred shows/columns from 2001 to 2004 can be heard (and read) on the Web (though the BBC doesn't make them obvious). To find these reports, try the one called "Don't pollute the enemy's water." The audio button is in the upper right hand corner. And at the bottom of the column you'll see "Links to more 'Letter From America' stories." Click on the menu just below that and they appear. Harder to find is Cooke's classic audio report of Sen. Robert Kennedy's assassination, so here's the missing link: http://news.bbc.co.uk/olmedia/215000/audio/_215401_kennedy.ram
  
  
• The oldest forum for community affairs in America is California's Commonwealth Club.More than 3,000 major figures have addressed this audience in the last 100 years and its archive of recordings is being digitally preserved. Click Commonwealth to see a list of persons whose speeches can be heard via the Web, including: Dwight D. Eisenhower; Edward Teller; Ronald Reagan; Robert F. Kennedy; Benjamin Spock; Shirley Chisholm; Cesar Chavez; Desmond Tutu; and Bill Gates.
  
  
• One of America's great contemporary immigrant success stories —from Iranian poverty to Ivy League college president to president of the Carnegie Foundation — Dr. Vartan Gregorian. ("The Connection," 2003, 50 minutes, "The Connection")
  
  
• For working class America, the public library has always been a major thru-way to achievement. Listen as Washington Post Book Week Editor Michael Dirda describes his journey from being a child his teachers thought was mildly retarded to winning a Pulitzer Prize ("Diane Rehm Show," 2003, 50 mins.).
  
  
• When Vernon Jordan began college, he was the only black in his class and his reading scores were lower than those of  his classmates. How did he catch up, graduate, and become one of the nation's leading civil rights leaders and Washington power broker? Listen as he tells his and his parents' story. ("Diane Rehm Show," 2001, 50 mins.

AND . . . the funniest 31 minutes you may ever hear on NPR and not the least bit educational — in fact, some of the most politically incorrect but falling-down funny minutes ever aired on NPR: "Dame Edna" with Scott Simon.

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