Month: March 2022

Betty Friedan

Bill Thompson

The roots of the modern feminist movement can be traced directly back to a single book published nearly 60 years ago.

It was called The Feminine Mystique. Its author was a young would-be journalist named Betty Friedan. It is widely regarded as the spark that lit the fire of the feminist movement.

But that was only the beginning for Betty Friedan. Three years later, she co-founded the National Organization for Women, and was its first president.

She also helped establish the National Womens Political Caucus. And she founded what was then known as the National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws, known today simply as NARAL.

In 2000, Friedan wrote a memoir called Life So Far.

This was actually my second interview with her, but the first in which I got to ask more personal questions.

So here now, from 2000, Betty Friedan.

Betty Friedan died on her 85th birthday in 2006.

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Judith Belushi

Bill Thompson

Tomorrow, March 5th, is the 40th anniversary of the untimely deaf of comedian. John Belushi.

Belushi was one of the original cast members of Saturday Night Live when it premiered in 1975, and he was the star movies like Animal House and The Blues Brothers.

But John Belushi also had a substance abuse problem, and on March 5th, 1982, he died in a Los Angeles hotel room. A woman named Cathy Smith was accused of administering a fatal speedball to Belushi.

And suddenly, at the age of 31, his high school sweetheart Judy was left a widow.

A few years later, Judith Belushi wrote a memoir of her experience. And that’s when I met her.

So here now, from 1990, Judith Belushi.

Judith Belushi Pisano is 71 now. She and Victor Pisano divorced a couple of years ago.

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Art Spiegelman

Bill Thompson

While there have been thousands of books written about the Holocaust, and Nazi Germany, and the horrors of the concentration camps, few have been as powerful in the telling as Art Spiegelman’s Maus.

Originally a serialized comic strip, Spiegelman published Maus in book form in 1986, with volume 1, and in 1991 with volume two.

And despite its unusual format — it is nonfiction — It is the story of the Holocaust as told to Art Spiegelman by his father, a Polish Jew who survived the a concentration camps.

While it has been labeled history, biography, autobiography, and more, spiegelman himself doesn’t quite know how to categorize it.

I first met Art Spiegelman in 1991, upon publication of the second volume of the Maus story.

So here now, from 1991, Art Spiegelman.

Art Spiegelman celebrated his 74th birthday last month.

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