Patt Morrison for Monday, 7/5/2010 - HOLIDAY - SHOW IS ON TAPE

PATT MORRISON SCHEDULE

Monday, July 5, 2010

1-3 p.m.

HOLIDAY – PROGRAM IS ON TAPE

 

1:00 – 1:30

Bruce Watson’s Freedom Summer: the savage season that made Mississippi burn and made America a democracy

In the summer of 1964, college students traveled to Mississippi, facing jail, beatings and death.  It was Freedom Summer: the mission to register black voters and build schools to educate black children.  Freedom Summer became one of the turning points in the civil rights movement, especially for its grassroots campaigning tactics.  Author Bruce Watson traces the lasting effectiveness and the many players of the movement in his new book “Freedom Summer: the savage season that made Mississippi burn and made America a democracy.”  How is it that 700 college students and some pretty determined politicians could turn an entire state and country around?

 

Guest:

Bruce Watson, author of “Freedom Summer”  He is a contributor to Smithsonian and featured writer in the Los Angeles Times and the Wall Street Journal.  His other books include  “Bread and Roses” and “Sacco and Vanzetti: the men, the murders and the judgment of mankind”

 

1:30  - 2:00

Captive in North Korea: Journalist Laura Ling tells her story

It’s any reporter’s worst nightmare to become bigger than the story they’ve put so much hard work into. That nightmare became a reality for Current TV correspondent Laura Ling in the Spring of 2009 when she and colleague Euna Lee were detained for trespassing and “hostile acts” by the North Korean government for nearly five months. The two women were held with very little contact with their friends and loved ones and eventually sentenced to work in a labor camp until President Bill Clinton and an envoy were able to secure their release. Laura and her sister, journalist Lisa Ling, tell their harrowing tale of nightmare come true in Somewhere Inside: One Sister’s Captivity in North Korea and the Other’s Fight to Bring Her Home.

 

Guest:

Laura Ling, journalist and author of “Somewhere Inside:  one sister’s captivity in North Korea and the other’s fight to bring her home”

 

 

2:00 – 2:20

Charles P. Pierce Idiot America: how stupidity became a virtue in the land of the free

First there was American Idiot.  Now there’s “Idiot America: how stupidity became a virtue in the land of the free.”  Charles P. Pierce’s new book uncovers the inner workings of the American idiot, finding that any attention-getting story or crazed yet persuasive leader can make anyone believe anything.  Pierce lays out his three “Great Premises of Idiot America,” which include facts and the truth are measured by how many and how passionately people believe it.  But is this what our entire country is made of, though, these “Idiot Americans”?  Or is it just the few loud individuals that seem to get duped all the time?

 

Guest:

Charles P. Pierce, writer for Boston Globe Sunday Magazine and writer-at-large for Esquire; author of “Sports Guy”; regular guest on NPR’s “Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me”

 

2:20 – 2:40

Seth Lipsky, “The Citizen’s Constitution”

The U.S. Constitution is like a holy grail for most Americans.  People spend time, energy and courage fighting and protecting what’s written in the Constitution… but does the average American actually understand what the 1^st or 5^th Amendment really means?  Seth Lipsky, a journalist with a fascination with the Constitution, brings all of us up to speed in his new book “The Citizen’s Constitution” about what the Founding Fathers meant in their language and ‘little-known’ facts about the most famous document in U.S. history.  Lipsky even touches on current events, like healthcare reform and bank bailouts, and whether they follow the original Constitution.  What would Hamilton say about Fannie Mae? Goldman Sachs?

 

Guest:

Seth Lipsky, author, “The Citizen’s Constitution”. He is founding editor of the New York Sun, has also worked at the Wall Street Journal at home and abroad, and was founding editor of the Forward newspaper, where he was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing in 1991.

 

[

2:40– 3:00

Peter Carey's Parrot and Olivier in America

Two-time Booker Prize winning author, Peter Carey is back with a new novel set in early-nineteenth-century America. The book follows Olivier, a character based loosely on Alexis de Tocqueville, and Parrot, the motherless son of an English engraver, as they make their way to and through America. An unlikely friendship is forged between the two characters as Carey explores the founding of America through their experiences. Peter Carey dishes to Patt about the new novel and his vision of early America.

 

Guest:

Peter Carey, two-time Booker Prize winning author; his latest book is “Parrot and Olivier in America.”

 

 

Janice Watje-Hurst, Producer

Patt Morrison - winner of the 2009 RTNA Golden Mike for best Public Affairs program

Southern California Public Radio

89.3 KPCC-FM | 89.1 KUOR-FM | 90.3-KPCV-FM

474 South Raymond Ave

Pasadena, CA 91105

Desk: 626-583-5172| Mobile: 818-970-9345

www.scpr.org | jwatjehurst@scpr.org | jwatjehurst@kpcc.org

Facebook | Twitter