Now I've Heard Everything

On a quiet Sunday in early December, millions of Americans went about their usual routines.

Folks went to church. Children played out in the yard. Teenagers went to moves. Families went to dinner. People listen to football games on the radio.

And then everything changed.

On the radio came the horrible news that the U.S. military base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii had been attacked by forces from Japan

And just like that, America was plunged into World War II.

Back in 1991 as the nation was preparing to mark the 50th anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack,  I took the opportunity to ask anyone I interviewed that year who was old enough to remember, where they were and what they were doing on that day.

Fprty years ago this weekend  a U.S. Army general who was stationed at a NATO facility in Italy was kidnapped by a Marxist terrorist group known as the Red Brigades.

General James Dozier spent the next 42 days in captivity, before a dramatic rescue.

And, as you're about to hear in this interview, Dozier's rescue by Italian special forces actually help break the back of the Red Brigades.

I met General Dozier and his wife Judy several years later.  They wrote a book about that harrowing episode.

Does this song help put you in the Christmas spirit?

That song was written by Mel Torme. He was born and raised in Chicago. He first sang in public and at age 4, wrote his first song at age 13, and was an actor in a radio show by his teens.

From the 1940s through the 1990s, Mel Torme established himself as one of America's favorite and most popular singers, songwriters, and the Rangers.

He acquired a nickname: The Velvet Fog. In 1988, when he wrote his autobiography, he actually called o. Ot Wasn't All Velvet. And that's what I met him.

The New York Times once labeled William Kunstler "America's most controversial lawyer."

What earned him that distinction was his defense of the so-called "Chicago Seven,"  a group of young radicals who tried to disrupt the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago.

But the Chicago Seven were hardly Kunstler's most controversial clients. He also represented clients ranging  from Jack Ruby to U.S. Marine and Russian spy Clayton Lonetree, to the man known as The Blind Sheikh, the man behind the World Trade Center bombing in 1993.

I met William Kunstler in 1994, when he wrote his autobiography, a book titled My Life As a Radical Lawyer.

Chuck Norris doesn't drink coffee in the morning, he has a mug of nails.

Chuck Norris can dribble a bowling ball.

ChuckNorris doesn't read books. He stares them down until he gets the information he wants.

But a book is how I first met Chuck Norris 32 years ago, in early 1988. He had just written an autobiography and was on tour to promote it. 

And it was one of the many times in my interviewing career that I wished I could have had a couple of hours, instead of just 15 minutes, with a subject.

On this Thanksgiving Eve, we'll be talking a little turkey. And gravy, and mashed potatoes, and lots of other delicious stuff from the cookbook written by actress and cookbook author Jill St. John.

In a long and successful acting career St. John was popular in movies and on television.  

She was in Diamonds Are Forever as Tiffany Case, the first American Bond girl.

Later. though, she established herself as a chef and food writer in print and on TV.

I met her a few days before Thanksgiving in 1987, when we had a nice conversation about all kinds of food, and how she came to write a cookbook. And her acting career.

Perhaps no one other than maybe Martha Stewart has helped more Americans gain the confidence they need to do things around the house then Bob Vila has

His popular home fixer upper show on PBS, this Old House, premiered in 1979, and for years afterward top millions of us how to do simple projects ourselves. And sometimes not so simple projects.

I met him in 1986, when he published a reference book and guide for us do-it-yourselfers. And we talked all about hammers, saws, plumbing, and wiring.

If you know Danica McKellar only as Winnie Cooper on TV's The Wonder Years, from the 1980s, what she has done since the show ended may surprise you.

After The Wonder Years ended in the early 90s, Danica McKellar went to UCLA and got a degree in math.

She now writes books about mathematics, and advocates for education. 

In 2007 she wrote a book for Middle school-age girls, called Math Doesn't Suck.

I had a few minutes with her after an event at a bookstore outside Washington DC. 

In the world of men's magazines, Hugh Hefner was king of the hill for years, as publisher of Playboy magazine.

But in 1965, a then-35-year-old laundromat manager, painter, and photographer named Bob Guccione launched a magazine to challenge the Playboy empire. 

He called it Penthouse. And by the early 1980s Penthouse had made Guccione one of America's richest businessmen.

But Penthouse, Playboy, and Larry Flynt's Hustler had also by then become the targets of conservative and religious groups, eager to see the magazines banished. 

I met Bob Guccione in 1986, at the height of his battles with people like Attorney General Ed Meese, and Rev. Donald Wildmon and Rev, Jerry Falwell’s “Moral Majority.”

In 1976 a British business woman started a small business to sell skin and hair care products. 

But she also wanted it to reflect her ethics and values, including human rights, animal rights, and the environment. 

Anita Roddick called her business The Body Shop. 

Today The Body Shop has over 3,000 stores in 65 countries. But it is still loyal to Anita Roddick's ethics and values.

In 2001 Roddick wrote a book called Business As Unusual, a look back at the sometimes-turbulent ‘90s for The Body Shop.