Scott Simon appears in the following:
Guest Picks: Scott Simon
Tuesday, March 31, 2015
A Hospital Room, A Dying Mother, and A Twitter Handle
Tuesday, March 31, 2015
At Last, A Fitting Farewell For Richard III
Saturday, March 28, 2015
Richard III was buried this week, two years after his abandoned bones were certified to be under a modern-day car park, and 530 years after he was the last English king to die in battle on English soil.
If you look past all the dukedoms and earldoms, the dust-up between ...
Might A Brush With Death Set The Stage For Greatness?
Saturday, March 21, 2015
A name from the small print of history died this week.
Izola Ware Curry was 98. She died in a nursing home in Queens in New York City. In September 1958, Dr. Martin Luther King was signing books in a Harlem department store when Izola Curry stabbed him with a ...
Rev. Willie Barrow: Remembering 'The Little Warrior'
Saturday, March 14, 2015
Seven Decades On, Anne Frank's Words Still Comfort
Saturday, March 14, 2015
A 15-year-old girl named Anne Frank died 70 years ago this week; the exact day is unknown. She died in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, not long after her sister Margot, who was 19.
Anne Frank's Wikipedia entry refers to her as a "diarist and a writer"; she sure was. ...
High School Coach Takes The Heat, And Teaches Her Team About Character
Saturday, March 07, 2015
Gauchos don't wear pink.
The Narbonne Gauchos high school girls' basketball team in southern California will play for the section championship against the Palisades High School Dolphins tonight.
But they began the week on the bench, tossed from the championships because in their slender victory last Saturday over the View ...
Rats Blamed For Bubonic Plague, But Gerbils May Be The Real Villains
Saturday, February 28, 2015
Rats have a bad rap. They have for centuries. Ever since the middle of the 14th century when the Black Plague descended over Europe.
Rats took the rap for spreading the bubonic plague, which killed millions of people over the next 400 years. It has long been believed that swarms ...
The Heavy Moral Weight Of Carnegie Mellon's 800 Botched Acceptances
Saturday, February 21, 2015
A lot of people saw their hopes and dreams fulfilled this week — for just a few hours.
Carnegie Mellon University emailed about 800 people who had applied to graduate school to say, 'Congratulations, you're in.' They were — to quote the message of acceptance — "one of the select ...
'Do Not Fear For Me': Remembering Kayla Mueller With Her Own Words
Saturday, February 14, 2015
It has been wrenching these last few weeks to hear about the hostages killed by the group that calls itself the Islamic State, and learn about the extraordinary people we have lost: humanitarian workers, independent journalists, people who chose to put themselves in one of the most dangerous spots on ...
Oscar Romero, The Murdered Archbishop Who Inspires The Pope
Saturday, February 07, 2015
Pope Francis and the Vatican have recognized Oscar Romero as a martyr. This may move the name of the late archbishop of San Salvador a little further in the process that could one day make him a saint.
But being deemed a martyr is also holy. It means the church ...
Rod McKuen, The Cheeseburger To Poetry's Haute Cuisine
Saturday, January 31, 2015
It May Take A British Actor To Make An American Story Sing
Saturday, January 31, 2015
Martin Luther King Jr. is British. Coretta Scott King, too. So is Lyndon Baines Johnson, Superman, Batman, the last Abraham Lincoln, the ramrod U.S. Marine, and the chisel-chested CIA operative in Homeland, and many of the B'almer cops and hoods on The Wire. So are Philip on The Americans, ...
Let's Play Two! Remembering Chicago Cub Ernie Banks
Saturday, January 24, 2015
Every Saturday just before our show begins I get on the public address system here to announce to our crew, "It's a beautiful day for a radio show. Let's do two today!"
It's an admiring imitation of Ernie Banks, the Chicago Cubs Hall of Fame baseball player who died last ...
From A Frequent Flier To SkyMall, Thanks For The Memory Foams
Saturday, January 24, 2015
Rainy Day Women Ages 55 And Up: Bob Dylan Makes Cover Of AARP Magazine
Saturday, January 24, 2015
Are Stripes A Zebra's Cooling System?
Saturday, January 17, 2015
Remembering Al Bendich, Fierce Defender Of Free Speech
Saturday, January 17, 2015
When Alan Ginsberg wrote, "I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked" in 1955, his poem "Howl" wasn't immediately acclaimed a masterpiece. Some people read the explicit parts and said it was mere porn.
Shig Murao, a clerk at City Lights Bookstore, was arrested ...
Satire May Be Uncomfortable, But Humor Makes Us Human
Saturday, January 10, 2015
Satire is a tricky business. The punch lines quickly get stale. The same people who laugh at one joke can get offended by the next.
But this week, with the targeted killings of the cartoon satirists of Charlie Hebdo in Paris, we were reminded how dangerous people with no sense ...