My latest film, “The Atomic Bowl: Football at Ground Zero—and Nuclear Peril Today” has been airing over PBS stations this past month and streaming (key links to easily watch and more here). A companion book, my 14th, has been available, and you can read more or order here. Thank you. And subscribing to this newsletter is still somehow FREE.
Last night, Colbert celebrated the 10th anniversary of his first night as host of The Late Show, while noting that it will all end too soon thanks to Paramount/CBS dealings. Here is the monologue and below that special musical guest Lady Gaga with “Vanish Into You.”
The apparent coming of terrible anti-woke righty Bari Weiss to a very important position at CBS News has provoked images such as below:
Then yesterday we learned:
Paramount Picks Kenneth R. Weinstein, Former Head Of Right-Leaning Think Tank, As Ombudsman For CBS News
Leading to this prediction:
Then there’s this just now from NY Times:
Nuclear Sites Dotted Across Ukraine Pose Threat of Radiation Disaster
I have recommended that you check out my friend Tony Scherman’s substack for great musical tributes and analysis and here is his latest, on how Aretha made the Bachrach-David “Say A Little Prayer,” already a hit for Dionne Warwick, all her own. Or just give it a listen here:
»»I’m going to start encouraging more Comments and dialogue at this newsletter, so please join in:
From Tunes to Toons
“So, how much are you looking to spend?”
Steve Brodner:
Thank you for the riveting book, The Tunnels, and your documentaries about Nagasaki and nuclear war. When we visited Berlin last year, a survivor of the Stasi prison system who was purchased into freedom by West Berlin described his arrest, interrogation and imprisonment. We had visited the prison for hours with a guide the previous day, making his account doubly powerful. The professor-granddaughter of another veteran of the overnight Soviet rupture said that in August, 1961, her grandfather, an 8 year old who lived in East Berlin with his parents, was summering with relatives in West Germany. He was given a knapsack, a loaf of bread, and an apple, deposited next to a north-south railroad track, and told not to stop walking until he reached his aunt and uncle in West Berlin. He made it. We like to think there were many people walking with and protecting him.
And thank you for the marvelous music and cartoons--they are a highlight of my day.
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