Stage and screen actor Jonathan Pryce plays Gustav Mahler in the new film Bride of the Wind. Pryce has won many acting awards, including two Tonys, first for The Comedians, and later for his role in the hit musical Miss Saigon. Hes also appeared in many films including Brazil, Evita, Tomorrow Never Dies, and Glengarry Glenn Ross.
Andrew Spielman is one of the worlds leading experts on mosquitoes. He's just written a book, Mosquito: A Natural History of Our Most Persistent And Deadly Foe. (with Michael D'Antonio; Hyperion) Well find out why mosquito bites itch, and how the mosquito transmits deadly diseases. Spielman is a professor at Harvard University.
Writer Michael Pollan's new book, The Botany of Desire: A Plants-Eye View of the World (Random House) takes a look at four plants cultivated by humans: the apple, the tulip, potatoes and marijuana. Pollan demonstrates that plants and humans have developed a reciprocal, co-evolutionary relationship: do we plant potatoes, or do potatoes seduce us into planting them? Pollan questions the assumption that we are in charge of our agriculture.
His new movie, With a Friend Like Harry, has been compared to the thrillers of Hitchcock. Its about an accidental meeting of two old friends and the subsequent unsettling turn of events. The French film thrilled audiences at the 2000 Cannes Film Festival, and won 4 Cesars awards (the French equivalent of the Oscars). This is the second feature for the 38 year old German born filmmaker; his first was the 1993 Intimacy, a flop at the box office.
He brings his guitar to the studio. His new album is Blue Boy. Elvis Costello has been a big supporter of Sexsmith, praising his songwriting abilities and bring him on tour as an opening act. Sexsmith has recorded three other albums. He hails from Toronto, Canada.
He is the creator of Linux, a computer operating system intended to improve upon UNIX. When Torvalds wrote the original code in 1991, he sent it out on the internet to allow anyone to make changes and improvements. So Linux was developed by a committee of thousands. In the past few years, investors backed Linux, thinking it an alternative operating system to Microsofts. However, with the recent crash in tech stocks, Linux suffered. Torvalds has just written a new memoir, called Just for Fun: The Story of an Accidental Revolutionary.
Music critic Milo Miles profiles singer Maria Muldaur, most famous for her 70s hit Midnight at the Oasis. She has a new album called Richland Woman Blues.
Broadway music director Paul Gemignani has been the musical director of almost every Stephen Sondheim work over the last 30 years. His other productions include Kiss Me, Kate, Crazy for You, and High Society. Next Sunday Gemignani will receive a lifetime achievement award at the Tony Awards.
Darren Star is the creator and executive producer of the HBO series, Sex and the City which begins its fourth season on June 3rd. The series stars Sarah Jessica Parker as a columnist in New York City who chronicles the mating habits of single New Yorkers. Much of her material comes from her life and that of her three closest friends. STAR is also the creator of Beverly Hills 90210 and Melrose Place.
El Tiempo is one of Columbia's leading dailies. Enrique Santos Calderon will talk about putting out a newspaper under the threat of kidnapping, torture or death from leftist guerillas and right wing paramilitary groups. In Columbia, more journalists have been killed in the past five years than in any other country.
Dr Barron Lerner writes of how science and culture influenced the battle with breast cancer in the new book, The Breast Cancer Wars: Hope, Fear and the Pursuit of a Cure in Twentieth-Century America. (Oxford) He writes of how the once-accepted practice of the radical masectomy gave way to lumpectomy and radiation and of how women activists helped alter the way doctors treated their patients and their cancers.
Linguist Geoff Nunberg responds to listeners comments about his anachronism piece a few weeks ago and the popular use of the word –gay— referring to homosexuals.
