Radio Personalities – Now I've Heard Everything

Memoirs of a DJ: John Records Landecker and Top 40 Radio

August 23, 2025Bill Thompson

Every August 20th is National Radio Day, commemorating the contributions the radio industry has made for more than a century.

Today we are revisiting my 2013 interview with a disc jockey who has been a radio audience favorite in cities across the country for decades.

John Landecker is more frequently known by his full legal name: John Records Landecker. And believe it or not, that was the name he was born with, not just some disc jockey gimmick. More on that in a moment.

John started in radio – as I did – while still in high school. During his college Years he could be heard spinning the hits on several radio stations in Michigan, and then he joined to Philadelphia station.

Get your copy of John Records Landecker’s book

But his career took off when he joined Chicago Top 40 powerhouse WLS in 1972. The station’s signal blasted into 38 states in the evening, and Landecker built a national following over the next several years.

Later his radio career took him to Toronto, back to Chicago, Cleveland, and back again to Chicago.

And finally in 2013 he had the chance to write his Memoir, a book that he called Records Truly Is My Middle Name.

It’s a book filled not only with John’s own stories, but it is itself the story of AM Top 40 radio in America, now a bygone era.

So here now from 2013, John Records Landecker.

John Records Landecker is 78 now. He can be heard four evenings a week on Chicago’s WGN Radio.

Looking at The Battle of Gettysburg Through a Modern Lens, With Radios Mark Levin

July 3, 2025Bill Thompson

The first day of July 1863 was a warm, mostly cloudy summer day in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. It was the first day of the three-day Battle of Gettysburg, one of the most pivotal moments in the American Civil War.

For three days thousands of soldiers fought heroically, many suffering gruesome injuries and death.

A few months later, President Abraham Lincoln visited Gettysburg and delivered what has become one of the most familiar and revered speeches in American history.

One hundred years later, a Philadelphia man named Jack Levin, the son of immigrants, published a book about Lincoln, his famous speech, and the battle that inspired it.

And 45 years after that, the book was republished, with a new preface written by Jack Levin’s son – nationally-syndicated talk show host Mark Levin.

The book, called Abraham Lincoln\’s Gettysburg Address Illustrated, came out in 2010. And that’s when I had the chance to talk with Mark Levin about it. So here now, from 2010, Mark Levin.

Jack Levin died in 2018. Mark Levin can be heard on his national radio show, and seen on Fox News.

The Story Behind the Voice: Radio’s Diane Rehm

June 18, 2025Bill Thompson

One day in 1973 a 37-year-old former State Department secretary with no radio experience walked into a public radio station in Washington DC to be a volunteer.

Within six years she was on the air, and soon after that Diane Rehm was given her own talk show. And for the next 32 years Rehm was a popular fixture on radio not just in the nation’s capital, but across the country, syndicated by public radio.

But in her early 60s Rehm faced a serious health challenge, a vocal cord disorder that threatened to silence her familiar voice. Ultimately she found the treatment that allowed her to continue her career.

In 1999 Diane Rehm wrote a long-awaited autobiography called Finding My Voice, and the woman who had spent years interviewing the famous and the powerful now became the interviewee herself .

She and I talked about her book one day in the fall of 1999.

So here now, from 1999 Diane Rehm

Diane Rehm is 88 now. She still hosts a weekly podcast.

Is The 25th Amendment a Recipe For a Coup? John Batchelor Imagines this Scenario

March 13, 2025Bill Thompson

On its face the 25th Amendment to the US Constitution seems pretty straightforward. If a president is rendered incapable of carrying out the duties of the office, the vice president takes over – perhaps just temporarily, if the president’s condition is temporary.

But there is a fundamental flaw in the 25th Amendment, says popular radio host and novelist John Batchelor.

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In his 1994 novel, called Father’s Day, Batchelor imagines what would happen if the 25th Amendment resulted in a constitutional crisis. And in today’s political climate it’s not hard to see how this could happen.

Although this interview is 30 years old it still feels very timely and relevant.

So here now, from 1994, John Batchelor.

John Batchelor will be 77 next month. He is currently heard on Eye On The World on CBS Radio.

TV-radio Fixture Charles Osgood, On How He Practiced His Unique Journalism

February 19, 2025Bill Thompson

Most journalists can craft a pretty good straight news story, in that classic inverted pyramid style. All the facts, expertly and objectively told.

But then there are other journalists, those who have a unique talent for taking that same set of facts but putting them into a context and a perspective with such nuance and grace that it almost becomes a whole new story.

One of the great practitioners in that second category was longtime CBS radio and television personality Charles Osgood.

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His special skill was taking the mundane and turning it into something sparkling, taking some ordinary government pronouncement and turning it into something you would tell your grandchildren about.

His daily feature on CBS radio was known as “Tile Osgood File.” In 1991 Osgood published a collection of some of his best work, in a book called, of course, The Osgood Files. That was when I first met him.

So here now, from 1991, Charles Osgood.

Charles Osgood died in 2024. He was 91.

Ed Bliss, Broadcast News Pioneer Recalls Radio’s Infancy

August 19, 2024August 17, 2024Bill Thompson

Tomorrow, August 20, is National Radio Day, the annual commemoration of the contributions the radio industry has made.

Commercial radio has actually been around for more than 100 years, and, as you might expect, has changed and evolved rather dramatically.

Radio in its infancy was a novelty, and it took years for the medium to begin realizing its full potential as an essential part of American life.

A young boy growing up in the early 20th century was among those we would now call “early adopters” – and he went on to a broadcasting career in which he helped shape what we now know as broadcast 5 news.

Like so many radio journalists of the time, Ed Bliss was a newspaper reporter for several years before landing a job, almost by chance, at CBS radio in 1943.

For the next 25 years Bliss wrote for and produced Edward R. Murrow, and later, Walter Cronkite.

After leaving CBS in 1968 Bliss founded the broadcast journalism program at American University.

And in 1991 Bliss wrote a history of broadcast journalism in America, a book called Now The News.

That’s when I have the chance to spend a few minutes with this legend in my chosen profession.

So here now, from 1991, Ed Bliss.

Ed Bliss died in 2002. He was 90.

Barry Farber: The Quintessential Voice of American Talk Radio

May 8, 2024May 5, 2024Bill Thompson

When you hear the expression “he has the gift of gab,” It might be Barry Farber they’re talking about.

Farber launched his on-air radio career in 1960, And over the next six decades became one of America’s most popular and best known talk show hosts and interviewers.

A world traveler who spoke several languages Farber seemed to know almost everyone who was anyone It

I spoke with him a few times over the years, including this conversation from 2012 when he put out a book called Cocktails with Molotov.

So here now, from 2012, Barry Farber .

Barry Farber maintained a talk show presence online until the day before his death in 2020. At age 90.

Rock and Roll 101: Cousin Brucie Shares His Insights

December 8, 2023December 3, 2023Bill Thompson

Over the last few decades, entire libraries full of books have been written about the history of rock and roll.

Where do you even begin? How do you wrap your arms around such an enormous subject? And how do you keep it in proper context of the culture and society?

Perhaps few people are as well qualified to do that as Bruce Morrow, otherwise known to millions of radio listeners as cousin Brucie.

When I sat down with him a few years ago, we talked about the music, the culture, the society, and the careers that he helped shape.

So here now from 2009 Cousin Brucie, Bruce Morrow.

Bruce Morrow is 86 now.

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Bob Edwards

August 18, 2023August 13, 2023Bill Thompson

This Sunday is National Radio Day, the annual commemoration of the contributions the radio industry has made.

Today, a look back at an interview I did about one of the legends of radio. And the person I interviewed was, and is, a stalwart figure in modern day radio.

For a dozen years the pioneering radio sports broadcaster Red Barber called in every Friday to NPR’s Morning Edition show, for an unscripted 4 minute talk with host Bob Edwards.

Listeners loved those segments. Even those listeners who seem to have little or no knowledge of baseball.

But Barber died in 1992.The following year, Bob Edwards wrote a memoir of those memorable conversations, a book he called Fridays With Red. And that’s when I met him.

So here now, from 1993, Bob Edwards

Bob Edwards, who is 76 now, left NPR in 2004. He currently hosts a podcast produced by AARP.

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Garrison Keillor

August 20, 2021August 17, 2021Bill Thompson

Today, August 20th, is National radio day. Every year on this day, we recognize the contribution that this hundred-year-old medium has provided four generations.

For four decades, one of the most popular radio personalities in America was Garrison Keillor, Creator and host of public radio’s Prairie Home Companion. That live musical variety show was a Saturday evening fixture in millions of homes.

The Minnesota-born Keillor brought his Midwest sensibilities, and sense of humor, to the ongoing stories of Lake Wobegon.

In 2003, Keillor wrote a novel. So here now, from 2003, Garrison Keillor..

Garrison Keillor celebrated his 79th birthday last week.

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