House of Crouse

Richard Crouse interviews Mena Massoud, the Canadian star of the Disney live action remake of "Aladdin." They talk about working with Will Smith, why he switched from neuroscience to theatre school and supporting ethnically diverse Canadian artists.

This week on The Richard Crouse Show: Woman Enough: How a Boy Became a Woman and Changed the World of Sport is the account of a human rights battle with global repercussions for the world of sport; it's a challenge to rethink fixed ideas about gender; and it's the extraordinary story of a boy who was rejected for who he wasn't, and who fought back until she found out who she is. It’s written by my guest today Kristen Worley.

In 1976, Ian McEwan’s first collection of short stories, First Love, Last Rites, won the Somerset Maugham award; his first novel, The Cement Garden, was published two years later. He won the Booker prize in 1998 with Amsterdam. He was awarded the CBE (Commander of the Order of British Empire) in the 2000 Queen's Millennium Honors List for his services to Literature. His novels Atonement, On Chesil Beach, Enduring Love and The Children Act have been made into films. His new book Machines Like Me is in bookstores now.

This week on The Richard Crouse Show: "In This Dark Chest of Wonders: 40 Years of Stephen King's The Stand," Andy Burns ("Wrapped In Plastic: Twin Peaks," BiffBamPop.com) tells the story behind the story of King's enduring opus and delves deep into its various incarnations — the unfilmed George A. Romero adaptation; the 1994 ABC mini-series; the audiobook; and Marvel Comics' adaptation. Included are exclusive interviews with Stephen King experts Bev Vincent, Robin Furth, Mick Garris, Jamey Sheridan, WG Snuffy Walden, Grover Gardner, Ralph Macchio, Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa and Mike Perkins.

This week on The Richard Crouse Show we welcome one of Canada's favourite performers, Mary Walsh. She became famous on the sketch comedy show CODCO, created CBC’s This Hour Has 22 Minutes, and is a versatile actress appearing in the Gemini Award-winning Hatching, Matching and Dispatching, which she wrote and starred in. She is a Member of the Order of Canada and has received a Governor General’s Performing Arts Awards for Lifetime Artistic Achievement.

NewsTalk 1010 morning host John Moore and Richard discuss the passing of Chewbacca portrayer Peter Mayhew. “Peter Mayhew was a kind and gentle man, possessed of great dignity and noble character. These aspects of his own personality, plus his wit and grace, he brought to Chewbacca. We were partners in film and friends in life for over 30 years and I loved him. He invested his soul in the character and brought great pleasure to the Star Wars audience," Harrison Ford said in a statement.

This week on the Richard Crouse Show director Larry Weinstein stops by to discuss his latest documentary "Propaganda: The Art of Selling Lies." A timely look at what activist Astra Taylor calls, “political brainwashing,” the film details the reasons why we are so often sucker punched by the use and abuse of the media.

This week on The Richard Crouse Show: "Black Leopard, Red Wolf" author Marlon James, recently named one of Time's 100 most influential people. From Time magazine: James lives part-time in St. Paul and teaches at Macalester College, where he is writer-in-residence. He was born in Jamaica and is the author of "The Book of Night Women," winner of the Dayton Literary Peace Prize; "A Brief History of Seven Killings," winner of the Man Booker Prize, and "Black Leopard, Red Wolf," already being made into a movie. About that book, Rushdie writes, it is "highly original, its language surging with power, its imagination all-encompassing. Marlon is a writer who must be read."

This week on The Richard Crouse Show: Funny, thought-provoking, and incredibly disturbing, Slow Death by Rubber Duck reveals that just the living of daily life creates a chemical soup inside each of us. The book by Rick Smith and Bruce Lourie empowers readers with some simple ideas for protecting themselves and their families, and changing things for the better.

On this week's show lifestyle celebrity and TV pioneer Debbie Travis stops by to chat. She discusses her new book "Design Your Next Chapter: How to realize your dreams and reinvent your life," her legendary television shows "Debbie Travis' Painted House," "Debbie Travis' Facelift," "From The Ground Up" and "All For One" plus how she designed her own success.