A con artist who plows into cars for pay while shaving her “bikini area.” The star of Louisiana-based reality TV show “Bayou Brethren” who is actually an accordion player from Wisconsin. A crooked businessman who steals sand from one beach to replace erosion on another.

On this edition of “Two Way Street” we talk to the great Atlanta-based blues guitarist Tinsley Ellis. Creative Loafing just named him blues artist of the year , and some time back, Rolling Stone magazine said of his hard-driving guitar style that his “eloquence dazzles…he achieves pyrotechnics that rival the early Jeff Beck and Eric Clapton.” High praise, indeed!

Our first guest on this edition of “Two Way Street” is Jim Wagner. He’s just stepped down as president of Emory University, retiring after 13 years in that position. During his tenure at Emory, Wagner presided over a dramatic expansion of the school’s work in scientific research and public health, recruited prestigious world figures like Salman Rushdie and the Dalai Lama to join the Emory faculty and oversaw the largest increase in fundraising in the school’s history.

For Georgians who love theater, watching the career arc of Kenny Leon has been thrilling. He’s now a Tony Award-winning director with numerous Broadway and Off-Broadway productions to his credit.

During my tenure as editor in chief of Chicagoland Monthly, a regional magazine I ran in the late 1970s, we decided to do a cover story on how the Arab oil embargo was affecting the daily lives of people in metropolitan Chicago. Of all the covers we created for the magazine, I’m proudest of the one that hangs in my office at GPB. There’s Uncle Sam, dying for gasoline and committing suicide by self-immolation.

On this week’s show we tell the fascinating story of how bluegrass music – born in the hills and hollers of the North Georgia mountains and Tennessee, and in rural communities in South Carolina and West Virginia more than 200 years ago – has crossed the Pacific Ocean and been enthusiastically embraced by a large fan base in Japan. Our guest is Denis Gainty , an associate professor of history at Georgia State University. He’s now researching and writing a book about Japanese bluegrass.

Musical theater geeks, here’s your heads-up: On this edition of “Two Way Street,” we’re showcasing one of the seminal Broadway musicals – Stephen Sondheim’s “Company.” The show debuted in April of 1970, and has been revived countless times on Broadway, in London, in Australia and by regional theaters ever since. Now Atlanta’s Actor’s Express Theater is mounting a new production of the show .

This week we feature conversations with two authors whose books are on a new list of “10 Books Every Georgian Should Read.” The list is compiled annually by the Georgia Center for the Book , a Decatur-based organization affiliated with the Library of Congress.

This week we revisit my conversation with journalist Christopher Dickey, author of “ Our Man in Charleston: Britain’s Secret Agent in the Civil War South .”

Bronwen Dickey has become one of the more controversial authors of the moment thanks to her book “ Pit Bull: The Battle over an American Icon .” In it, she argues that research shows that as a breed pit bulls are no more dangerous or vicious than any other dog.