Parts 1 and 2:
The presidency of William Jefferson Clinton was balanced by nearly equal parts grand achievementand sordid scandal…but how historians will measure the man might end up somewhere in between. This is the subject of a new film, in which those closest to Clinton during his career in politics reveal the motivations of a president divided between his sense of duty, and the defense of nearly constant personal lapses.
"Clinton" is the latest installment in PBS's American Experience Presidentscollection. The film makes its debut Monday night, Presidents Day, with part two airing the following evening. Barak Goodman has been writing and directing documentaries for more than fifteen years, including the 2010 Peabody and Emmy winning film “My Lai,” and the Academy Award nominated, “Scottsboro: An American Tragedy.” He is producer, with Chris Durrance and writer and director of "Clinton.”
Part 3:
We here on the low end of the FM dial are not known for our humor. But each weekend, public radio listeners who’ve paid attention to all the news programs, high-brow culture and balanced discourse are rewarded with the oddly informative, extremely funny Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me!
Paula Poundstone is a longtime comedian and regular panelist on Wait Wait. She’s performing at the Flying Monkeyin Plymouth this Saturday and joins us on the line.
Part 4:
One year after the Arab Spring, protestors in Syria are uploading videos and images of the Assad regime’s brutal crackdown of the opposition. The use of new technologies to spread messages and unify resistance against authoritarian regimes is by now familiar. Five centuries before demonstrators tweeted from public squares in the middle-east, an obscure minister and theologian named Martin Luther exploited the social media of his time to challenge entrenched power. We know, at least, how that revolution fared. Tom Standage is digital editor for The Economist. He wrote about the dynamics of social networks during the Arab Spring and the Protestant Reformation in an article for the magazine called "How Luther Went Viral.”
Social Media Lessons From Ancient History