1960s

Mark Shriver

Bill Thompson
R, Sargent Shriver

Father’s Day is next Sunday and all this week on Now I’ve Heard Everything we’re featuring interviews about fathers.

Few men are as widely praised as Sargent Shriver was. after his death in early 2011. Thousands of tributes hailed Shriver not only for his great public accomplishments — including founding the Peace Corps, building President Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty — but also his personal virtues.

Mark Shriver Photo: Amanda Rhoades

He was, in nearly everyone’s words, a “good man.”

I met his son Mark Shriver about a year-and-a-half after his father’s death, in 2012, when he wrote a book about his father, and what he had learned from him in life and in death.

So here now, from 2012, Mark Shriver.

Mark Shriver, who’s 56 noe, is President of the Save the Children Action Network. He and his family live in Maryland.

Laura Joplin

Bill Thompson
Photo: Elliot Landy

It’s been almost 50 years since the tragically untimely death of Janis Joplin, whose rock, soul and blues set the standard for a whole generation of musicians who followed.

About 30 years ago, I met Janis’s younger sister Laura Joplin, who had just published a biography of Janis, based largely on a cache of letters her sister wrote, back in the day.

As she told me in this interview, it became a project she needed to do.

Here now, from 1992, Laura Joplin:

Had she lived, Janis Joplin would be 77 now. And, no doubt, still setting the standard.