Former Channel 7 anchor and reporter Liz Claman is back on the air. After leaving CNBC, Claman has joined up with the just-launched FOX Business Network. We talked to Claman on a snowy Friday afternoon about the nascent network, the differences between local and business reporting, and where Mayor Tom Menino stashes his candy.

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When sports fans think of spring, they imagine baseball players flocking to Florida, college basketball players prepping for March Madness, and the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition. For the 2008 issue, SI featured 12 cheerleaders from around the NFL, including Patriots Cheerleader Meghan White.

We talked to the New Hampshire native about her experience with an SI shoot, the opportunities that come with being an NFL cheerleader, and her experiences at this year’s Super Bowl.

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We here at Boston Daily fondly remember Christine Elise McCarthy as the volatile Emily Valentine on Beverly Hills, 90210 (especially the male staff members). But the Roslindale native has continued acting since she left the Peach Pit, and she returned to Boston to wait out the writer’s strike (hopefully she’ll stick around a little longer). While she’s in town, McCarthy will display her photography at the 2nd Cup Cafe in Allston.

We talked to the actress-writer-photographer about how her hometown has changed since she left, if she still gets recognized from 90210, and why Hollywood insists blue-collar Boston is ugly.

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When people think of scientists, they imagine a geeky and socially awkward person hiding behind a beaker in a lab. But researchers can tear themselves away from their work and hobnob with the best of them. The Tufts-New England Medical Center’s fifth annual Rising Stars Gala brings out Boston’s stars to honor philanthropists and doctors like Dr. Diana Bianchi.

The geneticist talked to us about her research, Donnie Wahlberg, and the difficulties of sharing a name with a homewrecker.

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The Super Bowl isn’t the only mega event we have to look forward to this week. Super Tuesday, the delegate-rich mother of all primary days will be taking place two days after the Patriots and Giants wrap up the NFL season.

To coincide with their Super Bowl coverage, FOX will devote three hours of political coverage as a lead-in to their football pregame show. Chris Wallace will kick things off at 9 a.m. with Fox News Sunday, and then Shepard Smith will host a 2-hour Super Tuesday Special from Glendale, Ariz. featuring reports on all the candidates including FOX-25’s Joe Battenfield with Mitt Romney.

We talked to Smith, an enthusiastic fan of both football and politics, about the show, the historic nature of the primaries, and his love of Ole Miss and Eli Manning. (more…)

Boston has a long history of producing great writers and poets, but until last year nobody thought to create a poet laureate position to continue the tradition. After a long search, the city has its first poet laureate in Sam Cornish, a long-time professor at Emerson College who is respected for his poems about the African-American experience in the 1970s.

We talked to our first poet laureate about how he got the job, the sound of hoofbeats, and Mayor Tom Menino’s deep intellectual life.

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In yesterday’s installment of Questions For, we engaged in a lively back and forth with one Will Leitch, the genius behind Deadspin and the author of the upcoming book, God Save The Fan, (available Jan. 22, pre-order now!)

In Part II of our interview, we talk about Bill Simmons, the corrupting influence of ESPN, John Rocker as performance art, and Leitch’s newfound love for the Patriots. As we pick up our conversation from yesterday, we were discussing the decline of the species of human known as sportswriters. (more…)

You probably know Will Leitch from the groundbreaking website Deadspin, where he and his merry band of commenters gleefully skewer the sports world every day.

From his work at New York magazine and the New York Times, among others, you also know him as a damn good writer. In his new book God Saved the Fan: How Preening Sportscasters, Athletes Who Speak in the Third Person, and the Occasional Convicted Quarterback Have Taken the Fun Out of Sports (And How We Can Get It Back) he has combined his Deadspin experiences with his own wry observations to write a long overdue—and incredibly long-titled—treatise on the world of sports. (Go here for info on his Feb. 19 reading at BU’s Barnes & Noble).

God Save the Fan is hilarious, great fun, and exactly what you would expect from Leitch who takes shots at everyone (fans, jocks, media, owners) but not in a smarmy sportswritery kind of a way. We talked to Leitch this morning, and since we couldn’t decide what to cut, we decided to run the interview in two parts.

After the jump, Leitch discusses sports in Boston, sports writers, and a life-altering moment with Robert “Tractor” Traylor’s appendage. (more…)

When we last saw MIT physics professor Walter Lewin—the craziest, funniest professor this side of Buddy Love—he was enjoying minute seven of his 15 minutes of fame. Looks like he’ll have his last quarter-hour soon, as the late-night talk shows want some of his beat-a-student-with-cat-fur hilarity. We couldn’t help but wonder when he’ll appear on the tube, and where, and how he came up with all those, um, unconventional lectures.

So, we asked him.

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The Hot Stove/Cool Music benefit has become an annual winter rite. It’s a chance, as event organizer and local legend Peter Gammons says, to turn the page on last season and look forward to the new one. With a little rock ‘n roll thrown in, naturally. Gammons was kind enough to give a few minutes to Boston Daily on the eve of this year’s event.

After the jump, we asked Peter which band he would want to jam with, where Johan Santana may end up, and how the current group of Red Sox kids compares to the 70’s version. (more…)