|
Enlightened
discussions with knowledgeable guests- Margaret Thatcher,
Henry Kissinger, Colin Powell, Jimmy Carter, Jack Welch,
& others.
"Nation's
leading author interviewer.
A Chicago institution for the literate"
- Talkers
Magazine "Heavy Hundred" 2002
". . .when
it's time to feed your head, the guy with the biggest ladle
is Milt Rosenberg." - NewCity
Extension 720
with Milt Rosenberg is utterly
implausible radio, whether the topic is international politics,
the state of the English language, the latest discoveries
in astrophysics, the history of baseball or what local chefs
cook for their own dinners. You won't hear anything, anywhere,
quite as stimulating or quite as fascinating.
Milton
J. Rosenberg 
Since 1973, Milt Rosenberg
has been host of WGN Radio's "Extension 720", a two-hour
discussion show with one hour reserved for call-ins. The
program, which airs Monday through Friday from 9 to 11 p.m.,
deals with topics ranging from politics to financial investment
to entertainment to religion to foreign policy to literature,
and, as Milt says, "just about everything except pop psychology
and poodle-trimming."
Past guests of
note include such political figures as Margaret Thatcher,
Jimmy Carter, Henry Kissinger, George Stephanopolous, George
Shultz, Cyrus Vance and many members of the Senate and House
of Representatives. Among other interesting public figures
who have appeared on the program: Colin Powell, Charlton
Heston, William Safire, Bill Murray, William Bennett, Richard
Posner, Bob Feller, Betty Friedan, Zbignew Brzezinski, Cynthia
Ozick, Norman Mailer, Mary Higgins Clark, Calvin Trillin,
P.D. James, Peggy Noonan, David Brinkley, George Will, Gerry
Spence, Jim Lehrer, Michael Medved and on and on--virtually
a cast of thousands of interesting and significant people.
How does this
lone, bespectacled and slightly superannuated professor
pull such guests? Probably because the publicity people
in the New York publishing houses agree with comedian and
author, Steve Allen, who said, "All
interviewers should be forced to attend a class in that
particular art, conducted by Milt Rosenberg," and with
Paul Fussell, author of Class, The Great War and Modern
Memory, and Wartime, who said, "I
have been productively interviewed by Milt Rosenberg several
times, as I have been by various other radio and television
hosts, and I find him absolutely the best. Unlike others
he has not just read the book in question he has studied
and understood it. At the same time he is able to make the
conversation the opposite of studious that is, lively and
interesting to the 'general listener.' " Allen's comments
are reflected in the fact that for the past five years Talkers
magazine has included Milt in their "Heavy Hundred"
list of the top radio personalities in the country, citing
him as the "Nation's leading author interviewer."
However, visits
with leading authors are not the only, or even the main,
fare on Extension 720. Calling upon journalists, academics,
corporate types and just about any and every profession,
Extension 720 provides highly varied nightly shows. Some
of the programs heard during 2004 were:
Is
War Dead?, The Iran Enigma, Crazy Horse and the Wars of
the Plains, The Rise and Fall of Communism, The Changing
Face of Chicago, The Films of Francis Ford Coppola, Stem
Cell Research, A Night at the Opera, Bush's War Cabinet,
Shakespeare's Tragedies, The Undergraduate Life, Avoiding
Con Artists, Nanotechnology, The Language of the Presidency,
Great Gospel Music, Contemporary Russia and The Origin and
Descent of Man.
Outside of WGN
Radio 720 studios, in what he calls "real life," Milt
is a professor of Psychology at the University of Chicago,
where he has served as the director of the doctoral program
in Social and Organizational Psychology. Prior to coming
to Chicago, he taught at Yale, Ohio State University and
Dartmouth College. For a brief period he served on the staff
of the Naval War College and he has lectured at various
other universities both in the United States and abroad.
His degrees are from Brooklyn College (B.A.), University
of Wisconsin (M.A.), and University of Michigan (Ph.D.).
A prolific author
of numerous articles, both in professional journals and
political magazines, he has also authored or co-authored
a number of books. Among these are: Attitude Organization
and Change; Theories of Cognitive Consistency;
Domestic Sources of Foreign Policy; Beyond Conflict
and Containment: Critical Studies of Military and Foreign
Policy; and Vietnam and the Silent Majority.
Listeners from
thirty-eight states, and increasingly from around the world
via the Internet, tune in every night to hear Milt.
Robert Parker,
author of the Spenser novels and generally seen as the leading
purveyor of "tough guy" detective fiction, sums it up nicely:
"I have done 16 book tours in the U.S. and England (and
one in Japan) since 1978. In that time I have talked with
everyone who won't run away, about my books and about books
in general, and Milton Rosenberg remains the exemplar of
the species. He brings to the interview a genuine curiosity
and seems to know quite a good deal about almost everything,
and is thus able to place the book under discussion in broad
context. At the same time, he has a grasp of the work under
discussion so that he can illuminate it for the listener,
(and occasionally for the author, though I am not pleased
to admit that). He listens to an author, allowing ideas
to flow where they will, producing a conversation rather
than an interview, resulting in a satisfying evening for
both author and audience. He is an engaging personality
in his own right, and it would be a pleasure to listen to
him without a guest, though I have always resented that
his voice is deeper than mine. In a profession where one
is thrilled to learn that a host's producer has read the
flap copy, Milt Rosenberg is a salient triumph." |
