Q&A: Experts On Constitutional Law

Written on May 5th, 2011

 

 

Aired 05/01/11

Live from USC - The Annual Los Angeles Times Festival of Books

ERWIN CHEMERINSKY, founding dean of the UC Irvine Law School, has also taught at DePaul and Duek. An expert on constitutional law, he has frequently argued cases before the US Court of Appeals and occasionally before Suprem Court. His latest book is THE CONSERVATIVE ASSAULT ON THE CONSTITUTION.

BILL BOYARSKY is a columnist for LA Observed and the online magazine Truthdig. He is the author of six books, including Calfornia's Big Daddy, and his most recent, Inventing LA: The Chandlers and Their Times. Boyarsky lectures in journalism at the USC Annenberg School for Communications.

HENRY WEINSTEIN, a reporter for the LA Times for 30 years, covering law, labor and politics, now teaches law and journalism at UC Irvine's School of Law.

Q&A: MICHAEL LEWIS, MONEYBALL

Written on December 19th, 2010

 

 

Aired 10/16/11

Both Ira Glass and Malcolm Gladwell say today’s guest is their favorite storyteller. In his books and magazine articles, Lewis writes about sports, business, Wall Street, Silicon Valley, political campaigns, fatherhood. Stuff that matters to a lot of people. He’s smart and he has a sense of humor.

Lewis was a trader at Salomon Brothers before he wrote his first best-seller, LIAR’S POKER about the excesses of Wall Street during the 1980s. He continues to write about that world with his last two books, a column for Bloomberg, and articles in Vanity Fair.

His newest book BOOMERANG: Travels in the New Third World is made up of articles originally published in Vanity Fair and picks up where 2010’s THE BIG SHORT left off. What happens after the meltdown of 07-08? Governments are the focus of this book. Mostly because they have taken on the bad debts of the too big to fail banks, so now they are themselves at risk. Now politics and culture become much more important as to how they will deal with that risk. Then there’s the story of California which as a state ran up unsustainable debts during a series of bubbles and can’t raise the taxes to pay for them.

We’ll also talk about the twisted path taken to get MONEYBALL into theatres. The film based on his 2003 book is now a popular and critical success.

MICHAEL LEWIS received a BA in art history from Princeton University and a Masters in economics from the London School of Economics. He contributes to bloomberg.com and Vanity Fair. His other books include The Blind Side, Panic, The New New Thing, and Home Game.

Q&A: ROBERT SCHEER, editor-in-chief of Truthdig – Author

Written on December 7th, 2010

 

Aired 12/05/10

ROBERT SCHEER, editor-in-chief of Truthdig, was Vietnam correspondent and an editor of Ramparts magazine from 1964-69. He worked with the Los Angeles Times for nearly 30 years, as a national correspondent from 1976-1993 and as a weekly syndicated columnist until 2005. In 2005 he co-founded Truthdig. Scheer is heard weekly on Left, Right and Center on NPR's KCRW. A clinical professor of communications at the University of Southern California's Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, he is a contributing editor for The Nation as well as a Nation Fellow. Scheer has written nine books, including With Enough Shovels: Reagan, Bush and Nuclear War; The Five Biggest Lies Bush Told Us about Iraq; The Pornography of Power and his newest, THE GREAT AMERICAN STICKUP.

http://www.truthdig.com/