In the three decades this program has been on the air we’ve talked about science and math and history and literature and education policy and theory. But not today. Today, we’re talking show tunes.
If you make a list of the most important names in American culture in the latter half of the 20th Century, Stephen Sondheim has to be right near the top. When he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2015, President Obama said “Put simply, Stephen reinvented the American musical”. Now there is a marvelous collection detailing the composer’s remarkable output called “The Stephen Sondheim Encyclopedia”, written by Rick Pender.
We also spend an Academic Minute wasting food.