Thursday , March 28 2024
Join BC Radio Live for lively discussion about books and music.

BC Radio Live Welcomes Authors Gary Siegel and Leander Kahney Along With The Architects and The Band of Heathens

BC Radio Live is the flagship program of the BC Magazine station on BlogTalkRadio. It's hosted by Phillip Winn, Eric Olsen, and Lisa McKay and airs weekly on Wednesday evenings at 9:00 p.m. Eastern. Shows are archived and available for streaming or download after the live broadcast. Our guests on May 14 were author Gary Siegel, author Leander Kahney, Brandon Phillips from The Architects, and Seth Whitney from The Band of Heathens.

Ever wish you could take back something you said? Do you feel like you can use some help communicating with your co-workers, your boss, your spouse? Author Gary Siegel joined BC Radio to discuss his recent book, The Mouth Trap: Strategies, Tips, and Secrets to Keep Your Foot Out of Your Mouth. If you thought that communication skills were beyond your reach, Siegel would like to you to shed that notion and understand that those skills, like nearly everything else, can be learned. Although the book is largely geared toward the workplace, Siegel says that these skills are generalizable to one's personal life and can help facilitate those communications as well. As he notes, confusing "personal" language with the language that should be spoken in the workplace can get anyone in trouble, and if you need help being appropriate and keeping that size 9 out of your mouth, The Mouth Trap will surely provide you with some direction. As Siegel shared with us, assumptions can lead us down the wrong conversational road, so learning to probe and listen are important, too. Listen to the show archive to learn more about the book and pick up some helpful pointers.

Author Leander Kahney visited with us next to take us Inside Steve's Brain, which is the title of his new book about iconic Apple CEO Steve Jobs. Kahney has been writing about all things Apple for quite some time and has covered Jobs since the early 1990s. Noting that it's difficult to write critically about Apple without drawing the ire of the devoted, Kahney discusses with us the challenges of writing fairly about a topic that often serves as a lightning rod in the tech community. One of the more fascinating figures on the contemporary business scene, Jobs is widely known as a bundle of contradictions and Kahney's book attempts to get to the bottom of these and look at them in the light of Jobs' extraordinary business success. Kahney discusses the fact that Apple is, in his words, "a remarkable manifestation of [Jobs'] character traits," including some negative ones that would seem not to be desirable on the surface but nonetheless have contributed to the company's success. He discusses whether Apple would be the same company without Jobs at the helm, and concludes that the culture he's built at Apple will live on after his tenure. This interesting conversation is worth a listen regardless of whether you're Mac or PC.

Switching gears from books to music, our next guest was Brandon Phillips, vocalist and guitarist of The Architects, here to talk about the band's new album, Vice. The band hails from Kansas City, Missouri, and Brandon talks about how the city's relative isolation from the rest of the national music scene informs a great deal of their work by enforcing a certain amount of independence in the local arts scene. Brandon's band mates include his two brothers, and he talks about the process of keeping non-family band members feeling included. The band is touring throughout the U.S. this summer in support of Vice. You can hear some songs and find tour dates on The Architects' MySpace page.

Our last guest for the evening was Seth Whitney, bassist and vocalist of the Austin, Texas-based The Band of Heathens. Seth talks about the group's current self-titled release, and discusses the various geographic influences that have come to bear on the group's songwriting, as the three principle songwriters hail from different areas of the country, resulting in a country-tinged rock. The Band of Heathens were recognized at the 2006/2007 Austin Music Awards as the Best New Band. While the current album is the band's third, it's their first studio release. They spend a great deal of the year touring, and this year is no exception. You can check out the music, the band, and the tour dates on their MySpace page or at The Band of Heathens official website.

About Lisa McKay

Check Also

Book Review: ‘A Pocketful of Happiness’ by Richard E. Grant

Richard E. Grant details how his wife, Joan Washington, lived her final months and inspired him to find a pocketful of happiness in each day.