Kinky Friedman

Kinky Friedman has performed with Bob Dylan, traveled with Led Zeppelin on their private plane, and partied with John Belushi, Robin Williams, Don Imus, Lowell George, Levon Helm, Eric Clapton, Iggy Pop, Mike Bloomfield, and Dennis Hopper. When his cocaine habit nearly killed him, he returned to Texas and wrote 30 books, including 18 detective novels, as well as memoirs with Willie Nelson and Billy Bob Thornton. More than 547,000 Texans voted for him when he ran for governor in 2006, and friends Willie Nelson, Jimmy Buffet, and Lyle Lovett helped with fundraisers.

Kinky Friedman is a true Renaissance man, and in EVERYTHING’S BIGGER IN TEXAS: The Life and Times of Kinky Friedman (Backbeat Books Hardcover, November 2017, $29.99), biographer Mary Lou Sullivan provides an intimate look at Richard “Kinky” Friedman culled from hours of candid, in-depth interviews with the Kinkster, his friends, and his associates.

Kinky was a child chess prodigy, a camp counselor, and a Red Cross-certified swimming instructor. In the 60s, he picketed segregated businesses while in college and served in the Peace Corps in Borneo. A singer/songwriter/satirist who called his country band the Texas Jewboys, Kinky was the “first full-blooded Jew” to play the Grand Ole Opry and put on the only show in Austin City Limits’ history deemed too offensive to air.

He’s been a columnist, politician, entrepreneur (Kinkajou Records, Kinky Friedman’s Private Stock Politically Correct Salsa and Dip, Kinky Friedman Cigars, Man in Black Tequila), and animal activist who co-founded the Utopia Animal Rescue Ranch, a no-kill shelter in Texas. Never one to let age define him, at 70, Kinky released his first studio album in thirty-nine years and toured the country to promote it on his Resurrected Tour.

On November 15th, Kinky and his biographer, Mary Lou Sullivan, will go on the road for the “Everything’s Bigger in Texas” book and music tour.

Tour dates are as follows:

November 4th – Texas Book Festival - Austin
November 15th - The Townsend - Austin
November 16th - The Mucky Duck - Houston
November 17th - Poor David’s Pub - Dallas
November 18th - McCabe’s Guitar Store - Los Angeles

"Bo Monday" with Bo Dietl

Richard “Bo” Dietl was a New York City Police Officer and Detective from June 1969 until he retired in 1985.  Bo was one of the most highly decorated detectives in the history of the police department, with several thousand arrests to his credit.  There were two particular cases that represent his career highlights.  The first was what former New York City Mayor Edward I. Koch labeled “...the most vicious crime in New York City history” (1981) which involved a nun who was raped and tortured in an East Harlem convent as 27 crosses were carved into her by two men, who later confessed and were convicted.  The second was the Palm Sunday Massacre in 1984, which was one of New York City’s most bloody mass slayings, of ten people.  Bo was instrumental in the arrest and conviction of the suspects in both cases.

In 1986, Bo was nominated for the U.S. Congress by the Republican and Conservative parties of New York State for the 6th Congressional District (to fill the seat of the late Joseph Addabbo). In a 7-1 Democratic District, the Rev. Floyd Flake edged out Bo by a mere 2,500 votes - one of the closest races in New York history. 

President George Bush appointed Bo as Co-Chairman of the National Crime Commission.  Governor George E. Pataki appointed Bo Chairman of the New York State Security Guard Advisory Council.  He served as Security Consultant to the National Republican Convention and as Director of Security for the New York State Republican Convention

Richard “Bo” Dietl is the Founder & Chairman of Beau Dietl & Associates. Founded in 1985, Beau Dietl & Associates has grown to become one of the premier investigative and security firms in the nation and is a full service organization providing a wide

Don Imus on CBS Sunday Morning

Imus broadcast his first program from New York City back in 1971. His life journey has by some accounts been arduous, by other accounts a freak parade, and by still others as a matter for a RICO investigation. It began out in the great American West, California and Arizona, and eventually would make its way on across the country to Ohio and New York.

Imus was born in Riverside, California. Ranching was the family business and he was actually raised on a big cattle spread called the Willows near Kingman, Arizona. Don recalls that period of his childhood fondly and his familiar cowboy persona is completely legitimate. His irascibility appears to be equally legitimate, influenced by more than a few hard knocks along the way. If he revels in the agony of others, as he jokes, it may just be because he’s had a little of that himself. His parents divorced when Don was fifteen, he changed schools frequently, got arrested after a school yard fight, won election in secondary school as class president and was impeached, and, at seventeen, was pushed by his mother to join the marine corps as the best strategy to keep him out of jail. While it all added up to what Imus himself has described as a fairly horrible adolescence, it also disproves a theory that he actually had no parents and instead spawned spontaneously in dust clots behind the Laundromat dryers where one day he would seek shelter. When did all of these events unfold? It doesn’t really matter. And why annoy Don by asking?

Despite the occasional rough patch, Imus did spend a full twelve years in public school and emerged with no formal education…a product of automatic social promotion not even casually tied to merit. He graduated with no honors and no skills, a rare stroke of luck because a broadcasting career required neither. Difficulty continued to dog Imus after his school days: his undistinguished, infraction blotched stretch in the marines, onerous labor in a Superior, Arizona copper mine and a Grand Canyon uranium mine where an accident left him with both legs broken. There was work as a freight brakeman on the Southern Pacific railroad and a back injury suffered in an engine derailment and at one point the indignities of homelessness, hitching, being flat broke. Better, and worse days were to come. This quintessential American and often challenging personal passage materially defined Imus, instilling him with humility, a deep respect for our country and its workers, and a disturbing need to get even. He emerged from the experience with attributes that contributed enormously to the broadcasting distinction he would realize: an intrinsic, conspicuous authenticity, and a unique ability to connect with real people who work hard, serve their country, and care passionately about what really matters in the world.

Once Imus began broadcasting, fame and acclaim came quickly. He was showered with the laurels of radio celebrity including inductions into both the National Association of Broadcasters and radio halls of fame. He was the recipient of four Marconi awards, broadcasting’s equivalent of Hollywood’s Oscars. It got to the point that he would throw this or that slab of walnut with crystal crap glued to it against the wall of his office as a convenient means of intimidating horrified underlings. He was featured on television programs from NBC’s “Today” show to CBS’ “60 Minutes.” He was a guest of Charlie Rose, David Letterman, and of special note, Larry King, in shameless, mutual ass-kissing marathons that challenged the audience's gag reflex.

Don and wife Deirdre will continue to run the Imus ranch for kids with cancer, raise more millions for the Tomorrows Children Fund, the CJ Foundation for SIDS, America’s veterans and their care, autism studies, environmental concerns, and all the countless other things Don does, most with notice neither assigned nor sought.

Dr. Qanta Ahmed

Dr. Ahmed is a physician, non-fiction author and broadcast media commentator. Her first book, In the Land of Invisible Women (Sourcebooks 2008) details her experience of living and working in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and has been published internationally in 14 countries, translated in multiple languages, now printing in its 13h edition.  Most recently her book has been published in Complex Chinese. She is also a prolific opinion journalist and contributor to the American, British, Australian, Pakistani and Israeli media.  Her articles, columns and opinions have been published in over sixteen news outlets including The Guardian, The Wall Street Journal, The Spectator ( in both Australia and Britain), Al Jazeera , The Independent, USA Today, The Christian Science Monitor, The New York Post, The New York Daily News, The Daily Caller, Newsday, The Telegraph, The Daily Beast, the World Policy Journal, Fox News Opinion, CNN Opinion, Pakistan’s The Daily Times,  Pakistan’s The Express Tribune, Kuwait’s Gulf News, and many others. In Israel she publishes in The Times of Israel, Ha’aretz and The Jerusalem Post. At invitation, she has also contributed editorials to Chatham House’s The World Today among others. She regularly provides political commentary focusing on Islam, Radical Islam, Islamism and terrorism on radio and television on many networks including  CNN,  BBC World, Voice of America, NPR, CNN, Fox and Fox Business, Fox News Radio, C-Span, The Glen Beck Network, Al Arabiya, Israel’s IBA Channel 1 and many others. 

Dr. Ahmed has also held funded fellowships in the field of Journalism. In 2010 she became the first physician, and first Muslim woman to be awarded the Templeton-Cambridge Fellowship in Journalism at the University of Cambridge, England. In 2014, Dr. Ahmed was nominated by her journalism peers for the prestigious Ford Foundation Public Voices Fellowship in New York City as recognition for her journalistic advocacy for the marginalized minority.

During the Templeton-Cambridge Fellowship she completed her treatise on the Psychological Manipulation of Islam in the Service of Terror, focusing on Islamist suicide bombing. As a result, she traveled to Pakistan’s Swat Valley to meet rehabilitated child jihadists, formerly operatives of the Pakistan Taliban. Her recognized expertise lead to her testimony to US Congress in June 2012, called by the Homeland Security Committee as a witness for the Majority in the 5th Investigative Hearings on Radical Islam in the United States at the request of Chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, Congressman Peter King. She subsequently has provided Congressional Briefings at the invitation of Congressional Staff on the issues of Palestinian child radicalization in the Disputed Territories in 2014.

Dr. Ahmed is a noted international speaker in both her fields of medicine and journalism. She has addressed the National Press Club in Washington DC, The Union League Club of Philadelphia, The Citadel in Charleston, South Carolina, Cambridge University, Glasgow Caledonian University, the Saudi Arabian National Guard Health Affairs in Riyadh and Jeddah, the Saudi Arabian Ministry of Health, the US Consulate in Jeddah, the Saudi Arabian Football Federation, FIFA’s Medical Research committee at Qatar’s Aspetar in Doha (home of the 2022 World Cup), The Menachen Begin Center, in Jerusalem, Israel, The Bar Ilan University in Tel Aviv, Israel, The IDC in Herziliyah, Israel, the Technion-Israel Institute of Science and Technology in Haifa Israel and many other national and international  academic and governmental venues.  In 2013 she was honored to deliver a keynote address in Herziliyah at the IDC’s Institute of Counter Terrorism’s Global Summit on Counter Terrorism. She has also addressed multiple public and private gatherings in London, England, and Sydney and Melbourne, Australia in her work as an ambassador for collaborative Israeli Palestinian projects. Recently she was invited to address members of the Knesset at a specially convened caucus examining the threat of Boycott and in November 2014, alongside European Parliamentarians she addressed the Council of Europe on Islamism in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo Attacks and the Bataclan Massacre. In March of 2016 she delivered the Ron Arad Memorial Lecture at the Royal College of Physicians in London and was hosted by the Speaker of the House of Commons in the Speaker’s Chambers at the Houses of Parliament to address British Parliamentarians from both the House of Lords and the House of Commons in London on the challenges posed by Islamism.

She volunteers her limited time for Women’s Voices Now, a nonprofit foundation as a Member of the Board of Directors.  She has provided expert commentary to "Honor Diaries", a film documenting human rights violations of women in Muslim societies and served as an advocate for the Foundation’s fundraising mission. She has provide expert commentary in two further documentaries by the Glen Beck Network. In June 2015 she was inducted as Honorary Fellow at the Israel Technion Science and Technology Institute in recognition of her efforts combating anti-Semitism and radical Islam. In 2015 she was named to the Next Generation Council at the University of Southern California’s Shoah Foundation-Institute for Visual History and Education, where she also serves on the Anti-Semitism Committee raising funds for Combating anti-Semitism through testimony. In April 2016 she was nominated to Life Membership at the Council on Foreign Relations in the United States in recognition of her journalistic work focusing on Islamism.

A graduate of the University of Nottingham, England, Dr. Ahmed has practiced subspecialty medicine in the United Kingdom, the United States and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and continues her practice in New York.  Currently, a triple board certified pulmonologist and sleep disorders specialist, Dr. Qanta Ahmed is appointed Associate Professor of Medicine at the State University of New York (Stony Brook), Honorary Professor, School of Health and Life Sciences at Glasgow Caledonian University in Scotland, UK and Honorary Fellow at the Technion-Israel Institute of Science and Technology in Haifa, Israel. She is a Fellow of the American College of Chest Physicians, a Fellow of the American College of Physicians and a Fellow of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine.  In 2014, she was appointed a Media Spokesperson for the American Academy of Sleep Medicine at the invitation of the Academy. In 2012 Dr. Ahmed completed her first fiction work at the invitation of Akashic Books published in an anthology of stories in ‘Long Island Noir’, edited by noted author Kaylie Jones. She is now working on her first novel examining the worlds of Muslim heroines. In December 2015 she was naturalized as an American, gaining nationality on the basis of the US National Interest in recognition of her academic body of work. She maintains dual British and US citizenship. She lives in New York where she continues to write and practice medicine.

Bryan Hoch

Bryan Hoch has written about New York baseball for the past two decades, including covering the Yankees as a beat reporter for MLB.com since 2007. Regularly seen on MLB Network, Hoch's work has also been featured in Yankees Magazine, New York Mets Inside Pitch, and on FOXSports.com. He lives in New York City with his wife Connie and daughter Penny.