Val is away from the internets for the moment, giving me a chance to do some pinch hitting for Team NFZ. Looks like Stephen will be covering some pretty serious topics this week – from unidentified objects endangering our air space to the realities of global warming to the escalation of tension in the Middle East. I hope he’s got his nail gun loaded and ready for this line up!
Who do you predict will be nailed? And who are you looking forward to the most?
Monday, August 23: Leslie Kean
Leslie Kean is an investigative journalist, freelance writer, and Director of The Coalition for Freedom of Information (CFi). She has spent the last 10 years investigating reported UFO phenomena and documenting evidence that unexplained flying objects do, in fact, exist and need to be recognized by the U.S. Government and studied in an unbiased, scientific manner. Ms. Kean’s book, UFOs: Generals, Pilots and Government Officials Go On the Record, is a collection of first-hand accounts ranging from UFO encounters by Air Force pilots to investigations by a former head of the British Defence Ministry’s UFO Investigative Unit.
Kean has contributed articles to dozens of publications here and abroad. Formally the full time director of the human rights and media advocacy group Burma Project USA, Ms Kean is the co-author of Burma’s Revolution of the Spirit: The Struggle for Democratic Freedom and Dignity (1994) which includes contributions from Nobel Peace Laureates Aung San Suu Kyi and The Dalia Lama. In 2000, Leslie Kean was a producer and on-air host for an investigative news program on Pacifica Radio station KPFA when a colleague in France sent her a translation of a study by former high-ranking officials in the French Government which concluded that UFOs do exist. This lead to Leslie’s first article on UFOs, UFO theorists gain support abroad, but repression at home, published in The Boston Globe and her new field of investigation. Never claiming that alien spaceships exist, Kean’s rational reporting has focused on the 5 – 10% of UFO sightings which cannot be explained as man made or natural phenomena. As director of the CFi, she was the plaintiff in a successful, five-year Freedom of Information Act federal lawsuit against NASA regarding the Kecksburg (Pennsylvania) UFO incident of 1965. Kean was a producer for the 2009 independent documentary I Know What I Saw and is currently working with Break Thru Films on a new feature documentary.
Follow Leslie Kean on Twitter here.
Fract: Tanning Hyde? Leslie Kean co-authored Henry Hyde’s Moral Universe: Where More Than Space and Time Are Warped following Congressman Hyde’s high profile involvement in President Clinton’s impeachment.
Tuesday, August 24: Jeffrey Goldberg
Friend of the show Jeffrey Goldberg is a national correspondent for The Atlantic. His cover story in the September 2010 issue of The Atlantic, The Point of No Return, discusses the likelihood of Israeli air strikes on Iran within the next year if Iran continues developing nuclear capabilities. (The article has sparked a lively inter-Atlantic debate on the issue.)
Goldberg is the author of the book Prisoners: A Story of Friendship and Terror (2008) and has reported from the Middle East and Africa. He’s not afraid to show his lighter side, writing The Atlantic‘s advice column What’s Your Problem.
Long time viewers remember Goldberg’s previous TCR appearance in December 2008 when he discussed his article on the failures of airport security and showed off knives, box cutters, and the ‘Osama Bin Laden World Hero’ T-shirt he was able to carry on board his flight to New York that day.
Follow Jeffery’s blog on Atlantic.com here.
Fract: Cue Abbot and Costello… As reported by The No Fact Zone, flying home after his interview with Stephen, airport security missed all the knives and razors Goldberg still had in his carry-on bag, but they did seize the 8-oz. tube of body cream from his TCR gift-basket!
Wednesday, August 25: Heidi Cullen
Heidi Cullen is a senior research scientist and Director of Communications for the nonprofit research organization Climate Central and currently serves as interim director of the organization. Her new book, The Weather of the Future, predicts what the world will look like in 2050 if current levels of carbon emission levels are not reduced, focusing on seven of the most at-risk locations in the world.
Dr. Cullen received a bachelor’s degree in engineering/operations research from Columbia University and went on to receive a doctorate in climatology and ocean-atmosphere dynamics at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University. She received the NOAA Climate & Global Change Fellowship and spent two years at Columbia University’s International Research Institute for Climate and Society. Dr. Cullen worked as a research scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, CO, and then served as The Weather Channel’s first on-air climate expert. She is a visiting lecturer at Princeton University a member of the American Geophysical Union, the American Meteorological Society and is an Associate Editor of the journal Weather, Climate, Society. In 2008, Dr. Cullen was awarded the National Conservationist Award for Science by the National Wildlife Federation (NWF). Dr. Cullen currently reports on climate for PBS NewsHour, Time.com and The Weather Channel.
Follow Heidi Cullen on Twitter here.
Fract: Because irony is Universal! While serving as the Weather Channel’s first on-air climate expert, Dr. Cullen helped create Forecast Earth, the first weekly television series to focus on issues related to climate change and the environment. The Weather Channel announced the programs cancellation in November 2008 – during parent company NBC Universal’s “Green is Universal” Week.
Thursday, August 26: Richard Engel
Friend of the show Richard Engel is NBC News Chief Foreign Correspondent, appearing on “NBC Nightly News,” “Today,” MSNBC, and msnbc.com. Previously, Engel reported as a freelance journalist for ABC News during the initial U.S. invasion of Iraq and was NBC News’ lead Iraq correspondent from 2003 until his appointment to Beirut Bureau Chief in 2006. He is one of the only western journalists to cover the entire war in Iraq.
Engle received his B.A. degree from Stanford University in International Relations. He has since lived throughout the Middle East where he has reported for BBC, NPR, The USA Today, Reuters, AFP and Jane’s Defense Weekly. He covered the war between Israel and Hezbollah during the summer of 2006 from Beirut and southern Lebanon and continues to cover the ongoing war in Iraq as well as other assignments throughout the Middle East, Asia, Africa and Europe. Engle is the author of two books, A Fist in the Hornet’s Nest (2004) and War Journal: My Five Years in Iraq (2008) which chronicle his experiences covering the Iraq war.
In 2008 Engle was awarded the Medill Medal for Courage in Journalism for his one hour documentary War Zone Diary compiled from Engel’s personal video journal. His mantelpiece also holds a Peabody, 3 Emmys, and 2 Edward R. Murrow awards. But who’s counting?
Richard was last seen on The Colbert Report at Stephen’s desk in April 2009 giving Stephen some advice for his upcoming trip to the Middle East.
Follow Richard Engle on Twitter here.
Fract: Richard speaks fluent Arabic, which he learned while living in the slums of Cairo after his graduation from Stanford.
Enjoy this week’s shows!
UFOs, Israeli air strikes, global warming, and the Iraq War. This week’s episodes are full of some heavy issues indeed! I’m particularly excited for Monday’s show, not only for the Leslie Kean interview, but because I’m certain Stephen’s going to show off that new Best Writing Emmy! :)
I’m looking forward to Richard Engel as well, I can already tell that’s going to be a great interview.
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I really hope Stephen nails Goldberg. He’s the leading drum-beater of this “bomb Iran” talk that the “Serious People” are going on about now and it scares me to death!
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It sounds as if you feel Goldberg is advocating bombing Iran, which far from what I took away from his article (or any thing I’ve heard/written by him). Still more reason to look forward to the interview.
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“It sounds as if you feel Goldberg is advocating bombing Iran, which far from what I took away from his article (or any thing I’ve heard/written by him).”
Well, I guess we’ll have to agree to disagree.
For me, the fact that he contradicts his own previous 2002 reporting, (as shown by Jonathan Schwarz & Glenn Greenwald) when he wrote that Israeli’s bombing of Iraq did not stop Saddam nuclear programs. (Goldberg wanted America to invade Iraq.) While in his recent Iran article he writes that when Israeli’s warplanes bombed Iraq it bought a STOP to Saddam’s nuclear ambitions. The fact that he would make mincemeat of his own reporting leads me (and Schwarz & Greenwald) to think that he’s now pushing for the bombing of Iran.
And that’s what I’d loved to see Colbert nail him on.
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I am so glad Heidi Cullen will be on to discuss climate change! I remember her show on the Weather Channel, and how shamefully that channel has sold out, now carrying ads for Dirty Coal and the like, and ads trying to persuade the public to oppose Climate Change legislation.
That will be an interesting conversation!
And UFOs as well! Imagine what Stephen will do with that.
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If all goes according to plan, I’ll be at today’s taping! UFOs and hopefully a big celebration of their Emmy win!! Should be epic.
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Have a great time, Ann! A balloon drop is definitely in order! Don’t forget to let us know all the details.
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That’s awesome, have fun! Looking forward to the taping reporT :)
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