In 1935, a young actor, screenwriter, and dancer had an idea.

He started a weekly amateur night competition at the Apollo Theater in Harlem, in New York City. And before long, Ralph Cooper and his amateur night at the Apollo became a major influence in Black Entertainment.

Over the next five decades, Cooper's amateur night made hundreds of previously unknown performers into Stars.

I met Ralph Cooper in 1991, when he wrote A Memoir of his many years at th Apollo.

Remember those ads in the back of magazines and comic books back in the day, promising to show you how to do tricks that will Amaze your family and friends?

Well, fast forward to the 1990s, when magicians Penn & Teller starteealing a few of the old magician's tricks. And then, in 1992, they actually wrote a book of their own, called Penn & teller's how to play with your food.

And that's when I had the chance to meet the talking half of teuo, Penn Jillette.

And something happened during this interview that has never happened before, and has never happened since. Was it something Penn Jillette put together, as a practical joke?

If you were a regular viewer of NBC's popular soap opera Days of Our Lives in the 1970s and 80s, you know instantly who I'm talking about when I simply say Doug and Julie.

Actress Susan Seaforth joined the cast in 1968, followed by Bill Hayes two years later. And 4 years after that, their on-screen romance turned into reality, when they married in real life.

And while Bill and Susan Hayes have lived happily ever after, unfortunately the same was not true for Doug and Julie. Oh yes, they suffered the usual soap opera tribulations, but then in the mid-1980s, MBC decided to take it soap operas - including Days of Our Lives - in a new, much younger Direction.

Doug and Julie - I mean, Bill and Susan Hayes - were fired.

In the mid-1980s one of President Ronald Reagan's favorite speechwriters was the talented wordsmith Peggy Noonan.

She crafted some of Reagan's most impressive speeches, including teone he delivered on the 40th anniversary of the D-Day invasion, as well as his televised message to the nation after the Challenger disaster in 1986.

And then, working with the presidential campaign of Vice President George HW Bush, Noonan came up with even more phrases that have stuck in our memories.

Along the way, Noonan became an accomplished speaker in her own right, and in 1998, wrote a book to help others facing the prospect of speaking in public.

In the 1970s and 1980s, perhaps no one was more popular on Christian television than Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker.

Founders of the PTL club, and later the Heritage USA Christian theme park, the Bakkers also espoused a Theology of prosperity. God wanted you to do well financially, they told us.

But in the 1980s it came out that the Bakers were prospering a little bit too much off of the donations their viewers had set in. And after Jim Bakker was accused of sexually assaulting Church secretary Jessica Hahn, prosecutors moved to charge him with fraud.

Bakker was convicted, and in 1989 was sentenced to 45 years in prison.

Recently the 20-year war in Afghanistan came to an end. Have his given all of us time to reflect on those two decades.

We also remember the 23 hundred or so US servicemen and women who died in Afghanistan.

One of them, in particular, drew public attention. Then-27 year-old Army Ranger, and former NFL star, Pat Tillman was killed in 2004.

But that tragedy was compounded when the Pentagon apparently attempted to cover up the circumstances of his death.

Fifty years ago this week, NBC TV introduced America to four young men who would change the way music and television interact.

Looking to capitalize on the humongous an ongoing success of th Beatles and so many other groups,NBC assembled a team of four actors who also happened to have musical talent: Mike Nesmith, Davy Jones, Peter Tork, and, of course, Micky Dolenz who, years before, actually started in a short-lived series called Circus Boy.

After The Monkees premiered something strange happened. It wasn't clear whether this was a TV show about musicians or musicians doing a TV show ,, or something in between.It was a strange and new hybrid that actually frightened some people in the entertainment industry.

On that terrible day 20 years ago, September 11th, 2001, countless Heroes emerged.

Some wore police, fire, or military uniforms.

Some will be forever anonymous.

But many were just ordinary Americans. Like Todd Beamer, a passenger aboard United Airlines flight 93.

Their plane was already in the air that morning when the other planes went into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

And as the passengers learned what was happening, terrorists took over there playing. And soon, a group of passengers formed a bold and audacious plan to take over the plane and support the terrorist plot to slam that playing into the US Capitol or the White House.

The NFL regular season kicks off tomorrow night, September 9th, at the Dallas Cowboys take on the Super Bowl champion Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

Now, for 29 Seasons, those cowboys were coached by one of the most successful coaches in NFL history: Tom Landry. He was, in fact, the first head coach of the expansion Dallas franchise, in 1960.

He racked up 20 consecutive winning seasons with the Cowboys. Under whose leadership the Cowboys won two Super Bowls, five NFC championships, and 13 divisional titles.

But a string of losing seasons in the late 1980s made of done him in. One day after the new team owner, Jerry Jones, took over, Landry was unceremoniously fired.

Hope you had a happy Labor Day Weekend 2021. 

Labor Day, of course, is the day set aside to honor the contributions of America's labor force.

Most presidential administrations understand the need for a an advocate for at Workforce in the federal government. The position of labor secretary is therefore critical.

At one of the most influential secretaries of Labor in recent memory is Robert Reich, who served as President Bill Clinton's first labor secretary from 1993 until just before Inauguration Day 1997.