This weekend marks 55 years since human beings first set foot on the surface of the moon

The Apollo 11 mission put astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the moon Good 3rd crew member, Michael Collins, remained in the orbiting And module .

It was the fulfillment of an ambitious goal set at the beginning of the 1960s by President John F Kennedy .

At the heart of it all was a brilliant aerospace engineer named Christopher Columbus Kraft Jr. It was largely Chris Kraft created, pioneered, or invented many of the things that we now regard as standard elements of the NASA space program

In this 2001 interview Jraft discusses his life, career, and the growth of NASA in the 1960s.

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You may also enjoy my interviews with Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins

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Edna Buchanan joined the Miami Herald in 1973, working the police beat. And she was good at it. She won the Pulitzer Prize in 1986 for her reporting.

By the late 1980s, she had turned to fiction writing, The real life stories she had covered became the raw material for her fiction.

And it turned out she was really good at that, too. Many of her books became best sellers, and a couple were turned into movies.

In this 1992 interview Buchanan discusses her career, crime in Miami, and why she never learned to speak Spanish.

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It was 25 years ago tomorrow, July 16, 1999 that a small plane crash off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard took the lives of 38-year-old John F. Kennedy Jr.. his wife Carolyn and sister-in-law Lauren Bessette.

At the time of his death Kennedy was struggling to keep his magazine, George, afloat.

Richard Bradley was one of the original editors at George in 1995, and by 1999 was the magazine’s executive editor.

In this 2002 interview Bradley recalls John Kennedy and his legacy.

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Sixty years ago, convening in San Francisco, Republicans nominated firebrand Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater as their party's nominee against incumbent Democrat Lyndon Johnson.

But ,many Republicans in 1964 saw Goldwater as too extreme. And Goldwater himself didn't do much to calm those concerns, with his acceptance speech.

After being trounced by LBJ that fall, Goldwater remained in the Senate for another 22 years, helping shape the conservative policies of the GOP.

In this 1988 interview Goldwater talks about how nasty politics have become, but how otimistic he is about America's youth.

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Up until the mid-1980s, no U.S. state had ever elected a woman to be attorney general It took a former Roman Catholic nun in America's smallest state to shatter that glass ceiling.

In 1984, Arlene Violet – running as a Republican in deep blue Rhode Island – was elected attorney general. Her goals were to strengthen victims’ rights, and to try to root out the state's entrenched public corruption .

In this 1988 interview she reveals what happened next.

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You may also enjoy my interviews with Madeleine Albright, and Wilma Mankiller

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Andre Previn was still in high school when MGM gave him a job in their music department, doing piece work. His first official movie credit came in 1949, and over the next dozen or so years Previn was involved in creating the musical scores for over 50 MGM films.

In this 1991 interview discusses his memoir of his 16-year MGM career, No Minor Chords.

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Phyllis Newman made her Broadway debut in 1952, when she was 19. Just a few years later she won a Tony award for Best Featured ACtress in a Musical. More awards came her way, and she was soon in demand on Broadway and in television.

But off screen, in the mid-1980s, she faced her biggest life challenge: she was diagnosed with breast cancer.

In this 1988 interview Newman recounts her fight to beat the cancer.

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You may also enjoy my interviews with Kitty Carlisle Hart and Lynn Redgrave

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The United States was founded on a bedrock of freedom. But what, exactly,y, is “freedom?” Does it depend on who you ask? Or when you ask?

In this 1998 interview renowned historian Eric Foner explains how the definition of freedom has evolved -- and continues to.

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John McEnroe won 77 career singles titles, including three at Wimbledon. He also won 77 doubles titles, including five at Wimbledon.

It was at Wimbledon in 1981 that McEnroe came up with what has become his signature phrase – “You cannot be serious!” He embraced the phrase, even calling his memoir You Cannot Be Serious

In this 2002 interview McEnroe talks about his life, his career, and his marriage to Tatum O'Neal.

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Since her college days in the early 1960s Rita Mae Brown has been an advocate for the LGBTQ community. Long before it was known by that shorthand descriptor..

But she is also widely known for her fiction, her “cozy” mysteries as well as her standalone novels. Her book Rubyfruit Jungle, published in 1973, has become a literary classic.

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