Talk Cocktail: Recent Episodes
Jeff Schechtman
What if the roots of fascism weren’t European at all, but embedded in America’s founding struggles over democracy and race?
For more than a decade, we’ve been flooded with books warning about fascism — how to recognize it, how it spreads, how democracies lose their way. Almost all begin with the same assumption: Fascism was a European creation that eventually washed up on American shores.
Joseph Kelly says we’ve got it backwards.
Kelly, a professor at the College of Charleston and author of The Biggest Lie: The Prehistory of American Fascism 1818-1915, joins me in this WhoWhatWhy Podcast to explains why fascism is less an ideology than a corruption of democracy itself.
Get full access to Talk Cocktail Podcast at jeffschechtman.substack.com/subscribe
The AI debate is endless. One writer decided to measure it by asking not how smart the machines are, but how humane they are.
Talking about artificial intelligence has become its own industry. AI will save us or doom us. It will cure cancer or end work. Panels, manifestos, congressional hearings, op-eds without end — and through all of it, the machines keep getting better at talking back, and no one can tell you whether the thing you confided in last night was good for you or not.
My guest on this recent WhoWhatWhy podcast, Erika Anderson, has stopped arguing and started measuring.
Get full access to Talk Cocktail Podcast at jeffschechtman.substack.com/subscribe
The digital world is being rebuilt around AI, and for the first time in a generation the concrete of that world is still wet.
Lainey Feingold thinks that's the opportunity! Technology can now read any text aloud, describe any image, caption any voice in real time — the most powerful equalizer disabled people have ever had, if it's designed in rather than bolted on.
Feingold, a disability rights lawyer who won talking ATMs and accessible banking without ever filing a lawsuit, has gathered thirty-nine authors from ten countries into Digital Accessibility Ethics. Their case: build for the person at the edge and everyone gets a better product. Who do we decide to build for?
Get full access to Talk Cocktail Podcast at jeffschechtman.substack.com/subscribe
The author and journalist Mark Arax joins me on the California Sun podcast to discuss his recent sweeping essay in the Guardian, published under the headline “California: Land of Plunder and Hypocrisy.”
From the Gold Rush to the artificial intelligence boom, Arax explores how California’s myths, ambitions, and repeated reinventions have often concealed a far more complicated history of extraction, contradiction, and self-deception.
Get full access to Talk Cocktail Podcast at jeffschechtman.substack.com/subscribe
We’re living through the greatest transfer of wealth in history. Trillions of dollars are slowly passing from one generation to the next. Yet for all the money that’s changing hands, something far more important isn’t: Power.
Our guest on this WhoWhatWhy podcast, Yale historian Samuel Moyn, believes America has quietly become something few of us have recognized: an aging society where the balance between generations has fundamentally shifted.
The cohort of people making the biggest political decisions, controlling the most valuable assets, dominating elections, and shaping the country’s future are getting older, not younger.
We’ve spent years arguing over whether this politician or that president is too old. But what if those debates have distracted us from a much larger story?
Get full access to Talk Cocktail Podcast at jeffschechtman.substack.com/subscribe
The future is arriving faster than ever. So why are we more anxious than excited?
We are living through one of the most extraordinary periods of technological advancement in modern history. Artificial intelligence is reshaping knowledge work. Biotechnology is opening doors to better health and longevity once thought impossible. SpaceX has redefined spaceflight, and a new generation of innovators is tackling problems that seemed beyond our reach just a decade ago.
So why does the future feel so frightening?
In this WhoWhatWhy podcast, economic policy expert and futurist James Pethokoukis argues that America may be suffering from something more profound than political polarization or economic anxiety. We may be losing confidence in progress itself.
This is ultimately a conversation about whether America still believes in tomorrow — and whether progress itself remains our most important product.
Get full access to Talk Cocktail Podcast at jeffschechtman.substack.com/subscribe
A veteran of three tech eras on how the innocence was lost — and whether AI actually might win it back, through what he calls “enlightened AI.”
Recently, on WhoWhatWhy podcast, Matthew Stepka — early internet-café founder, McKinsey alum, nine-year Google veteran who shepherded many of the company’s mission projects including the first self-driving cars, and now an investor in what he calls “enlightened AI” — walks us back through the Valley’s reinventions and asks what each one cost.
Before the trillion-dollar IPOs, before the data centers and the doom, before “Silicon Valley” became shorthand for unaccountable power and unimaginable wealth, there was a teenager with an Atari — a gift from his NASA-engineer father — certain he could build any world he could imagine.
Get full access to Talk Cocktail Podcast at jeffschechtman.substack.com/subscribe
Water is the oldest promise we have. Baptism, ablution, the plunge that separates who you were from who you're about to be. Every summer we go back to it — lakes, rivers, the cold shock of an ocean in June — as if some part of us still believes the water knows something.
Kate Washington, on a recent California Sun Podcast, talks to me about the fifty immersions she did before her fiftieth birthday, after caregiving and motherhood and a dissolving marriage had emptied her out. The author of "Midstream: A Life Remade in 50 Swims" on depletion, endurance, and what it means to surface changed.
Get full access to Talk Cocktail Podcast at jeffschechtman.substack.com/subscribe
What if the real threat to democracy isn’t artificial intelligence, but a government that never learns to use it?
In this WhoWhatWhy podcast, Beth Simone Noveck makes the unexpectedly optimistic case that AI is not just one more thing for government to regulate. It may be the tool that finally reinvents how government works, and more to the point, how it feels to deal with it.
For 50 years we have been told government is the problem: slow, bloated, hopeless, a relic that could never keep pace with the modern world. Then came DOGE, swinging a chainsaw in the name of efficiency and cutting out much that worked along with much that didn’t, as if the whole apparatus were beyond saving. But what if we have been asking the wrong question all along? Noveck’s question is why institutions built for an age when information was scarce still cannot listen, learn, and respond in a world drowning in it.
Get full access to Talk Cocktail Podcast at jeffschechtman.substack.com/subscribe
One year after the death of the legendary Beach Boys leader Brian Wilson, author David Beard joins me on the California Sun podcast to talk about his new book, “All Summer Long: Conversations with The Beach Boys from Surfin’ to SMiLE.” Beard discusses how the Beach Boys didn’t just make iconic music but defined Southern California itself — surf, sun, cars, the postcard invitation west — while Wilson quietly pushed pop into uncharted territory for the whole country.
Get full access to Talk Cocktail Podcast at jeffschechtman.substack.com/subscribe
New York in the 1980s was a city in convulsion — deindustrializing, gentrifying, financializing — and the young urban professionals who flooded its trading floors and law firms weren't just a cultural moment. They were the architects of the America we live in now. Historian Dylan Gottlieb explains how the yuppie takeover of New York wrote the blueprint for today's inequality — and why we're still living inside it.
Get full access to Talk Cocktail Podcast at jeffschechtman.substack.com/subscribe
Putin didn’t seize a democracy — he hollowed one out. Twenty-five years inside Russia’s slow spiral, and what it tells us about our own moment.
My guest on this recent WhoWhatWhy podcast, Marc Bennetts, arrived in Moscow in January1997, before most of the world had ever heard of Vladimir Putin. He stayed for 25 years. He watched Putin rise, the economy boom and bust, and freedoms quietly disappear.
Russia has fallen off the front page. The global conversation has moved on — to China, to trade wars, to the Middle East, to whatever is consuming the news cycle this week.
But Russia hasn’t gone anywhere. It’s still there, still fighting a war it started, still governed by a man who controls the world’s largest nuclear arsenal and who, a former Kremlin adviser says, appears to be reacting to pictures in his own head.
Get full access to Talk Cocktail Podcast at jeffschechtman.substack.com/subscribe
From Beijing to Washington to Cuba, the old world order has collapsed. Is this the most dangerous moment since 1945? One man says yes, and the clock is ticking.
My guest on this recent WhoWhatWhy podcast is Peter Apps. As Reuters’s global defense commentator, he has spent two decades in the rooms and on the roads where history is actually made. His new book, The Next World War, puts the odds of major war within the next 10 years at 1 in 3.
He argues that the world is more dangerous right now than at any point since the end of World War Two. More dangerous, in fact, than the Cold War — because at least then we knew the rules.
Today there are no rules. The old order is gone, and what has replaced it is something most of us can barely bring ourselves to look at directly: a world of permanent polycrisis, where Ukraine grinds on against Russia, where Iran has absorbed an American and Israeli strike and survived, where China watches and waits, and where a new generation of weapons — drones, AI, hybrid attacks on the invisible infrastructure of modern life — has rewritten the rules of conflict faster than the great powers can absorb them.
Get full access to Talk Cocktail Podcast at jeffschechtman.substack.com/subscribe
Grief is the one experience nobody escapes, nobody schedules, and nobody gets to opt out of. In that sense it's almost democratic — ruthlessly, mercilessly so. I’m joined by Danielle Crittenden, long time journalist and the author of Dispatches from Grief. Danielle lost her daughter Miranda suddenly in 2024. She writes about it the way a foreign correspondent files from a war zone — dispatches from a country we think we're prepared for, until we arrive.
Get full access to Talk Cocktail Podcast at jeffschechtman.substack.com/subscribe
With just days to go before the June 2 California primary, Joe Mathews joins me on the California Sun podcast to examine how California’s race for governor has become strangely disconnected from the state itself and what it says about local politics everywhere.
With almost all the campaigns built around generic national talking points and anti-Trump messaging, Mathews explores the growing nationalization of state politics, and why the actual mechanics of governing barely seem to be part of the conversation.
Get full access to Talk Cocktail Podcast at jeffschechtman.substack.com/subscribe
In my latest WhoWhatWhy podcast, you’ll see that there’s a moment in the conversation when something clicks. When the thread connecting baby names to the fall of the Roman Empire to Bitcoin to Jeffrey Epstein to the basket of deplorables to the last reserve currency suddenly becomes visible. And once you see it, you can’t look away.
That thread is the signal. Not communication. Not language. Something older and more fundamental than either: the mechanism by which civilization itself coordinates billions of people who will never meet, across timescales no single human life can fully comprehend.
Simon Pearce writes the Liminal Lens Substack and is president of Emotif, a strategic consultancy that helps organizations thrive in an eara of rapid change and disruption – He has spent years mapping how that mechanism works, how it fails, and what it looks like when a civilization is deep into the failure.
Get full access to Talk Cocktail Podcast at jeffschechtman.substack.com/subscribe
Valerie Ziegler, a high school teacher in San Francisco, and Joel Breakstone, executive director of Stanford’s Digital Inquiry Group, join me on this California Sun podcast to talk about digital literacy in the classroom. Many self-described “screenagers,” they say, can no longer tell real from fake. Together, Ziegler and Breakstone are at the forefront of a movement to prepare young people for a world of influencers, algorithmic manipulation, and artificial intelligence, an effort recently profiled in the New York Times.
Get full access to Talk Cocktail Podcast at jeffschechtman.substack.com/subscribe
On this California Sun Podcast I’m joined by William Riggs, a professor of engineering and management at the University of San Francisco and an expert on transportation innovation.
He expalins how San Francisco — now ground zero for America’s autonomous vehicle future, with more than 1,000 Waymos on its streets — is exposing a strange contradiction: Society tolerates the deadly carnage caused by human drivers while holding self-driving cars to an impossible standard, even as the data increasingly suggests the technology will save lives.
Get full access to Talk Cocktail Podcast at jeffschechtman.substack.com/subscribe
Everybody’s talking about prediction markets.
In the hours before the US struck Iran, a cluster of large anonymous bets landed on exactly the right answer as to when the war would start.
But almost nobody is explaining what these markets actually are, how they work, or why they keep getting the future right when everyone else gets it wrong. My guest on last week’s WhoWhatWhy podcast is Robin Hanson, an economist who saw this coming.
A professor at George Mason University, he started the first internal corporate prediction market in 1990 — decades before any of this was an industry — and invented much of the mathematical machinery these platforms run on today. He’s watched prediction markets get killed by Congress, dismissed by regulators, and ignored by the institutions that needed them most.
Get full access to Talk Cocktail Podcast at jeffschechtman.substack.com/subscribe
Climate researcher and SOLARCYCLE co-founder Pablo Dias discusses why collective action is better than individual guilt in addressing environmental challenges. From China's renewable energy surge to the dangers of "doomism," Dias argues technology and markets are already delivering progress—but only if we move beyond lifestyle policing. The future isn't written, but are we reading the present correctly?
Get full access to Talk Cocktail Podcast at jeffschechtman.substack.com/subscribe
When an authoritarian regime offers no ideology, no story, no reason to believe, it plants the seeds of its own destruction. Minneapolis and Iran show this story.
In this recent WhoWhatWhy podcast, I talk with political theorist John Ambrosio, about the moral failure that’s becoming to impossible to ignore.
Every authoritarian regime in history has understood something that Donald Trump apparently does not: People need a reason to go along. Not necessarily a good reason, or even a true one. But something they can tell themselves — some story, some larger purpose, some ideological cover that lets them live with their own compliance without having to examine it too closely.
Trump has thrown that playbook out entirely. No story, no veil, no pretense of a larger purpose.
Get full access to Talk Cocktail Podcast at jeffschechtman.substack.com/subscribe
Smog was once as much a symbol of L.A. as palm trees — a bane to public health and a national punchline on Johnny Carson’s “Tonight Show.”
My guest on this California Sun podcast, Ann Carlson, author of “Smog and Sunshine: The Surprising Story of How Los Angeles Cleaned Up Its Air.” details the decades-long battle that transformed the air from toxic to breathable. Today’s rollbacks once again threaten the air in L.A. and everywhere else.
Get full access to Talk Cocktail Podcast at jeffschechtman.substack.com/subscribe
The old rules are gone. The new ones aren’t written yet. And no one in charge knows how to write them. Detail in my recent WhoWhatWhy podcast.
The old world order is dead. The new one hasn’t been written yet. And the people currently in charge — on both sides of the Atlantic — are structurally incapable of writing it.
That’s not a provocative opinion. It’s an analytical conclusion, and few people are better positioned to make it than Bianka Banova. Bulgarian-born, Switzerland-based, she runs the Waronomics Substack with what she calls Balkan candor and systems thinking — no institutional affiliations, no ideology to protect, and two decades of pattern recognition developed by someone who grew up watching history happen to her country.
Get full access to Talk Cocktail Podcast at jeffschechtman.substack.com/subscribe
My California Sun conversation with Peter Richardson, author of the new book “Brand New Beat: The Wild Rise of Rolling Stone Magazine.” A time when the media had a different kind of power — between 1967 and 1977 — when the Bay Area’s counterculture reshaped music and the journalism. From Haight-Ashbury to the Fillmore, Hunter S. Thompson to Annie Leibovitz, the magazine documented a social revolution while simultaneously creating it.
Get full access to Talk Cocktail Podcast at jeffschechtman.substack.com/subscribe
he inside story of how greed, ambition, and rivalry destroyed AI’s safety mechanisms — and why human failings, not technology, are driving us toward catastrophe.
Despite everything you think you know about artificial intelligence — the models, the capabilities, the existential predictions — it’s simply humans all the way down. Men building things, making choices, placing bets, and abandoning safeguards the moment competitive pressure intensifies.
On this recent WhoWhatWhy podcast I talk with Sebastian Mallaby, who spent three years embedded in the world of AI as it evolved from research lab to civilizational force. With over 30 hours of access to Demis Hassabis, CEO of Google’s DeepMind, alone, Mallaby was present at the creation. His book The Infinity Machine reveals the inside story you’ve never heard.
Get full access to Talk Cocktail Podcast at jeffschechtman.substack.com/subscribe
A jury recently shattered Big Tech’s legal shield. Meta and YouTube: guilty of engineering addiction. This is social media’s tobacco moment .
Two industries in America have enjoyed near-total legal immunity for their products: gun manufacturers and social media platforms. Now, juries found Meta and YouTube guilty of harming users by deliberately engineering addiction, knowing the harm, and doing it anyway. Legal experts are calling it social media’s tobacco moment.
On a recent WhoWhatWhy podcast I spoke with Fordham University law professor Olivier Sylvain, a former senior adviser at the Federal Trade Commission and author of Reclaiming the Internet: How Big Tech Took Control — and How We Can Take It Back.
He explains why these suits, in New Mexico and California, succeeded where previous attempts had failed to hold social media platforms accountable.
Get full access to Talk Cocktail Podcast at jeffschechtman.substack.com/subscribe
Severin Borenstein, is a professor at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business and one of he nations leading experts on the economics of energy. He joins me on this California Sun podcast to explain exactly how the Iran war is disrupting global oil markets and why California especially faces even sharp price impacts.
Get full access to Talk Cocktail Podcast at jeffschechtman.substack.com/subscribe
War without strategy. Drones without limits. Data without wisdom. How the Iran conflict is stumbling toward World War III — and no one can explain why.
My guest on this recent WhoWhatWhy podcast, RAND senior defense analyst David Shlapak, has for decades made a living by imagining how wars spiral out of control — war-gaming the scenarios where miscalculation becomes catastrophe, where deterrence fails, where World War III stops being theoretical.
Today, those scenarios are no longer simulations. They’re unfolding in real time over Iranian airspace, and the people running them may not have thought through what happens next.
Get full access to Talk Cocktail Podcast at jeffschechtman.substack.com/subscribe
Miriam Pawel, author of the definitive Cesar Chavez biography, "The Crusades of Cesar Chavez," joins me on this recent California Sun Podcast to reflect on the shattering of the Cesar Chavez myth — and the harder questions beneath it: what was known, what was ignored, and why movements so often need saints. In this wide-ranging conversation, Pawel explores Chavez’s charisma, control, contradictions, and the challenge of holding both his historic achievements and the harm he may have caused in the same frame.
Get full access to Talk Cocktail Podcast at jeffschechtman.substack.com/subscribe
China loses two oil partners to US action in Iran. Their response? Strategic patience. Are we watching restraint or preparation for what’s next?
There’s an old saying: When your enemy is digging himself a hole, the smart move is to hand them a bigger shovel. China appears to be doing exactly that — watching, waiting, keeping its powder dry while America commits massive military resources to the other side of the world.
On this week’s WhoWhatWhy podcast, USC professor of international affairs David C. Kang returns to examine whether China’s restraint vindicates his contrarian thesis, or reveals something more calculated.
Get full access to Talk Cocktail Podcast at jeffschechtman.substack.com/subscribe
On this recent TalkCocktial podcast I’m joined by Oxford political scientist Pepper Culpepper, who has spent a decade studying when corporate scandals force actual change—Dieselgate, Cambridge Analytica, Goldman Sachs—and when they just fade away. His book Billionaire Backlashargues scandals briefly overwhelm corporate lobbying when they tap simmering public resentment. He pushes back hard on whether billionaire wealth reflects value creation for society or corruption, and whether making policy through outrage is democracy working or failing.
Get full access to Talk Cocktail Podcast at jeffschechtman.substack.com/subscribe
Chef Geoff Davis opened Burdell in Oakland to cook the soul food his grandmothers made — a distinct American cuisine rooted in migration and adaptation rather than Southern tradition. In 2024, Food & Wine named Burdell the “Restaurant of the Year.”
On our recent California Sun podcast, he expalins how it was a 20% service fee at the bottom of Burdell’s receipts that recently started anational conversation about labor, class, and whether we’ve ever really reckoned with the racial history of tipping.
Get full access to Talk Cocktail Podcast at jeffschechtman.substack.com/subscribe
We imagine the internet as invisible—wireless, ethereal, everywhere and nowhere. The truth is far more precarious. Nearly 95% of global data moves through 900,000 miles of fiber optic cable lying unprotected on the ocean floor, controlled increasingly by four American tech giants. When Tonga's single cable was severed in 2022, ATMs went dark and the country vanished from the world. That was an accident. Samanth Subramanian, author of The Web Beneath the Waves, reveals that what comes next might not be.
Get full access to Talk Cocktail Podcast at jeffschechtman.substack.com/subscribe
Jeff Schechtman 03/06/26
Iran didn’t ask for regime change. It asked for bread. How a protest movement got hijacked — and turned into a war nobody planned for.
And the man who saw all of this coming has been saying so, loudly and at personal cost, for 20 years.
My guest on this very recent WhoWhatWhy podcast is Hooman Majd, the grandson of an ayatollah, the son of a diplomat who served the shah, a contributor to NBC News and The New Yorker, and the author of four books on modern Iran — most recently the memoir Minister Without Portfolio. He has spent his career as the voice in the room insisting that Iran is always more complicated than Washington wants to believe. He has never been more right, and the moment has never been more dangerous.
Get full access to Talk Cocktail Podcast at jeffschechtman.substack.com/subscribe
The guardrails weren’t real — they were simply norms. The Constitution wasn’t a firewall. And the Madisonian dream? Always more myth than reality. So now what?
The Federalist Papers, argues our guest, University of Maryland law professor Maxwell Stearns, belongs in the fiction section of the library. And after watching the Trump years dismantle everything we were told would hold, it’s getting harder to disagree.
Back in 2024, we asked the hypothetical question of Stearns whether American democracy had reached its sell-by date? It’s no longer hypothetical.
Stearns, author of Parliamentary America: The Least Radical Means of Radically Repairing Our Broken Democracy, returns to the WhoWhatWhy Podcastto talk to me about what’s been lost — and more provocatively, what might still be salvageable. His diagnosis is clear: We have thrived in spite of our constitutional structure, not because of it.The guardrails weren’t structural; they were customary. The Constitution wasn’t a firewall; it was a framework held together by norms that turned out to be entirely optional. And the Madisonian dream of competing institutional jealousies keeping power in check? That, Stearns says, was always more mythology than reality.
Get full access to Talk Cocktail Podcast at jeffschechtman.substack.com/subscribe
For decades the conflict between Israel and Iran lived in the shadows—proxies, sabotage, and covert strikes. Not anymore.
According to my guest, Michael Oren—historian and former Israeli ambassador to the United States—what began with Hamas’s October 7 attack has spiraled into a widening regional war stretching from Gaza to Tehran.
Oren shares his view of how a long-building confrontation suddenly burst into the open, drew in the United States, and what it may mean for the future of the Middle East and the world.
Get full access to Talk Cocktail Podcast at jeffschechtman.substack.com/subscribe
Can democracy survive computerized vote counting? Systemic and man-made vulnerabilities in our election infrastructure may threaten integrity.
My guest on this recent WhoWhatWhy podcast, Jonathan Simon, senior editor at WhoWhatWhy and author of CODE RED: Computerized Elections and the War on American Democracy, has spent more than two decades tracking the fault lines in America’s computerized voting infrastructure. What he’s found raises uncomfortable questions about whether our elections truly reflect the will of the people — or something else entirely.
Last November’s elections in New Jersey and Virginia showed that democracy still can work. Against the authoritarian tide, voters showed up and democracy delivered results that mattered.
But before we celebrate, ask yourself: What happens when those in power today realize they’re losing ground? What happens when 2026 looms as a potential reckoning?
Get full access to Talk Cocktail Podcast at jeffschechtman.substack.com/subscribe
When California legalized recreational cannabis, Silicon Valley envisioned a new Gold Rush. Tushar Atre — a tech entrepreneur, surfer, and disruptor — thought he could bridge two worlds: venture capital and the black market. On Oct. 1, 2019, he was shot execution-style on his own property, hands bound.
Investigative journalist Scott Eden, author of “A Killing in Cannabis,” joins me on the Califorina Sun podcast to discuss the four years he spent unraveling what happens when ambition meets an industry that never forgot its outlaw roots.
Get full access to Talk Cocktail Podcast at jeffschechtman.substack.com/subscribe
They’re booing “The Star-Spangled Banner” in Toronto. At hockey games. In Canada.
Not because Canadians have suddenly turned anti-American, but because for the first time in 150 years, they’re genuinely afraid of us. And that fear, says Andrew Coyne, is reshaping everything — their politics, their economy, their identity, their future.
Coyne is a long time Canadian political observer and columnist for Toronto’s Globe and Mail, and my guest on this recent WhoWhatWhy podcast.
When Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney stood at Davos and declared “the old order is not coming back,” Coyne heard something most people missed. Not a speech — a death notice.
The assumption that had anchored Canada’s international strategy for 150 years — a stable, democratic United States to the south — was gone.
Get full access to Talk Cocktail Podcast at jeffschechtman.substack.com/subscribe
Iran on the brink.
On a recent WhoWhatWhy podcastI spoke with Shay Khatiri who insists that the real question isn’t what happened on January 8 and 9 — it’s what comes next. Because this wasn’t an economic protest that got out of hand. This was the maximum force Iranian civil society can muster on its own. And it wasn’t enough.
Khatiri — a leading Iran scholar expalins that every previous uprising (2009, 2019, 2022) left a residue of unfulfilled promise and mounting rage. This time, the pattern breaks. What Khatiri heard from every source inside Iran was the same plea: We’ll do everything we can, but we need help from outside.
Now Iran poses an enormously difficult choice with nuclear stakes: a tottering but still powerful theocracy that has exported revolution and brutality for 47 years, facing an uprising that can’t succeed without US help.
Get full access to Talk Cocktail Podcast at jeffschechtman.substack.com/subscribe
While America now fully abandons climate action, the world races ahead—and watches in dismay. A look at the cost of US denial and how good things happening without us.
Mads Christensen, the executive director of Greenpeace International, has spent three decades on the front lines of environmental activism. In my conversation with him on a recent WhoWhatWhy podcast, he brings a perspective that cuts against the prevailing American narrative of climate despair.
He explains that while climate change vanishes from American political discourse, something remarkable is happening in the rest of the world: Beijing, a city once choked by smog, has transformed into an electric metropolis with blue skies. Pakistan has gone from minimal renewable energy to over 25% in just five years. The UK just became the largest economy to end new oil and gas exploration. And in the real world, the intellectual argument about the reality and the existential danger of climate change has been won.
Get full access to Talk Cocktail Podcast at jeffschechtman.substack.com/subscribe
The numbers coming out of Iran stop you cold: 12,000 to 20,000 dead in 48 hours. Not across months of civil war or years of grinding conflict, but concentrated into two January nights of systematic slaughter.
My guest on this recent WhoWhatWhy podcast, Shay Khatiri, insists we’re focusing on the wrong horror. The real question isn’t what happened on January 8 and 9 — it’s what comes next. Because this wasn’t an economic protest that got out of hand. This was the maximum force Iranian civil society can muster on its own. And it wasn’t enough.
According to Khatiri — a leading Iran scholar at the Yorktown Institute focusing on US foreign policy toward Iran and Russia – every previous uprising (2009, 2019, 2022) left a residue of unfulfilled promise and mounting rage. This time, the pattern breaks. What Khatiri heard from every source inside Iran, from overworked surgeons to furious shopkeepers, was the same plea: We’ll do everything we can, but we need help from outside.
Get full access to Talk Cocktail Podcast at jeffschechtman.substack.com/subscribe
Diversity has become a political weapon—but what if it was never meant to be political at all? UC Berkeley law professor David Oppenheimer argues in our conversation that diversity is an intellectual principle, not a moral slogan or corporate checkbox. Drawing on history, law, and hard science, he explains why diverse perspectives drive better thinking—and how the idea got lost along the way.
Get full access to Talk Cocktail Podcast at jeffschechtman.substack.com/subscribe
Daniella Mestyanek Young escaped a notorious sex cult, then joined the Army where she studied terrorists—and recognized the same coercive tactics everywhere.
The author of The Culting of America, she reveals in our podcast how cult dynamics pervade American life, from MAGA's authoritarian tribalism to corporate culture. We're obsessed with AI threats, she argues, while missing the real danger: human manipulation operating at scale through social media and political movements demanding absolute loyalty.
Get full access to Talk Cocktail Podcast at jeffschechtman.substack.com/subscribe
On this recent California Sun Podcast, I spoke with Los Angeles-based artist Laurie Lipton about creating massive political works in chaotic times, her obsessive cross-hatching technique learned from Dutch Masters, and returning to the US after 36 years abroad to find America rolled back to 1955.
A relentlessly productive artist, Lipton described drawing as an almost physiological need. “I use my work to deal with life. … I have very, very strong emotions, but I need the illusion of control,” she said. “Otherwise I think I’d start running through the streets screaming.”
Get full access to Talk Cocktail Podcast at jeffschechtman.substack.com/subscribe
It started with Rodney King—eighty-two seconds of video that should have changed everything but didn't. Thirty-four years later, after George Floyd and now events unfolding in Minneapolis, we're still asking: what happens after the cameras capture undeniable truth?
Danny Goldberg was there in 1991 when an unlikely Los Angeles coalition fought to hold the LAPD accountable. His book Liberals with Attitude raises the question: is such cross-ideological cooperation even possible today?
While this conversation touches on how communities can come together to demand accountability—issues dominating headlines—it was recorded just before the recent Minneapolis shootings.
Get full access to Talk Cocktail Podcast at jeffschechtman.substack.com/subscribe
Esther Mobley, the senior wine critic for the San Francisco Chronicle, joins me on the California Sun podcast to talk about California and the world’s wine industry crisis — In California alone, nearly 5,000 wineries competing for declining demand, 38,000 vineyard acres removed in 2025, mounting closures. She discusses why younger generations aren’t drinking wine, what happens to tourism-dependent communities when vineyards close, and whether wine’s romance can survive its greatest challenge yet.
Get full access to Talk Cocktail Podcast at jeffschechtman.substack.com/subscribe
Two garbage trucks of plastic hit the ocean every minute. Microplastics are in your brain. Recycling doesn’t work. What the plastic industry never told you.
In thisWhoWhatWhy podcast, former EPA Regional Administrator Judith Enck pulls back the curtain on an industry built on deception. Her new book, The Problem with Plastic, connects dots most people miss — between fracking booms and plastic floods, between what you’re told to recycle and what actually happens, between industry promises and courtroom battles that reveal decades of lies.
You think you know about plastic pollution. You’ve heard about ocean gyres, you recycle diligently, maybe you switched to a reusable water bottle. But here’s what they haven’t told you: Two garbage trucks worth of plastic enter the ocean every minute. Recycling? It’s a lie — only 5-6 percent of plastic actually gets recycled, and the industry has known this since the 1970s.
Chemical recycling, the new salvation, doesn’t work. And those microplastics aren’t just in fish anymore — they’re in your brain, your heart arteries, your kidneys, with no known way to get them out.
Get full access to Talk Cocktail Podcast at jeffschechtman.substack.com/subscribe
Last week, MTV officially shut down, ending an era that revolutionized music, video, and shaped California’s youth culture. Tom Freston co-founded the television channel 44 years ago, building a creative empire on principles that seem impossible today: hiring people with no experience, protecting creatives from corporate pressure, valuing disorientation over data, and treating loyalty as strategy.
He joins me on the California Sun podcast to discuss his memoir “Unplugged.” Freston chronicles how adventure became business, and what we lost when Silicon Valley replaced joy with efficiency.
Get full access to Talk Cocktail Podcast at jeffschechtman.substack.com/subscribe
Why is America uniquely terrified of AI while the world races ahead? The arguments driving that fear often collapse under scrutiny—real concerns go unaddressed.
In this Talk Cocktail podcast, economist and author of the Noahopinion Substack, Noah Smith helps us understand what happened to American optimism—and why our fear may be built on foundations far shakier than we realize.
Somewhere between our childhood dreams of robot friends and today’s reality of having them in our pockets, America lost its nerve.
While China, India, South Korea, and even traditionally cautious Europe race toward artificial intelligence with enthusiasm, the United States stands alone—the most terrified nation on earth about a technology we’re simultaneously pioneering. The disconnect is as profound as it is puzzling: the same country that wired itself for the internet faster than anyone else, that sent people to the moon when computers had less power than a modern toaster, now trembles at the prospect of tools that could democratize knowledge itself.
Get full access to Talk Cocktail Podcast at jeffschechtman.substack.com/subscribe
Eleven federal workers reveal what it felt like to be fired by Musk’s DOGE — the emails, the trauma, and the institutional destruction we’ve never heard about.
On this recentWhoWhatWhy podcast I talked with journalist Sasha Abramsky, the author of American Carnage: How Trump, Musk and DOGE Butchered the US Government.
Abramsky spent six months embedded with 11 fired federal workers from eight different agencies, documenting their lives as they unraveled in real time.They were fired with an afternoon email. Denied their pensions. Told their health care ended immediately. One worker got the termination notice an hour outside her new duty station after driving cross-country for five days. Another was ordered to stay home with full pay — psychological warfare designed to inflict maximum humiliation.
This is what it felt like from the inside when Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency took a chainsaw to the federal workforce. And we’ve never heard these stories — until now.
Get full access to Talk Cocktail Podcast at jeffschechtman.substack.com/subscribe
We’re not one nation split by politics — we’re 11 regional cultures that have been at war since the colonies. And now the divisions are life and death.
What if the America we think we know has never actually existed?
The divisions tearing us apart aren’t new — they’re four centuries old, rooted in the very founding of this country. And now there’s data proving it.
On this recent WhoWhatWhy podcast, I am joined by Colin Woodard, a bestselling author, George Polk Award winner, and director of the Nationhood Lab at Salve Regina University. His new book, Nations Apart: How Clashing Regional Cultures Shattered America, presents evidence that reframes everything we thought we understood about American identity.
Get full access to Talk Cocktail Podcast at jeffschechtman.substack.com/subscribe
When billionaires mock the Pope with memes and fund “cheating apps,” something’s gone seriously wrong. The collapse of tech idealism; betting takes its place. Silicon Valley used to sell itself as the future. Today it often feels more like a funhouse mirror of the culture — loud, aggrieved, addicted to posting, increasingly divorced from any notion of social purpose.
In this WhoWhatWhy podcast I talk with Jeremiah Johnson, co-founder of the Center for New Liberalism and author of the Infinite Scroll podcast, begins by exploring how Marc Andreessen — once a champion of world-improving innovation — became the avatar of a tech culture defined by irony, cynicism, and compulsive online performance.
Johnson argues that real power in technology no longer lies with the mythic founder but with the venture capitalists who decide what gets built. Increasingly, those decisions reflect the sensibilities of people who spend more time in algorithmic combat than in sober reflection about the world they’re shaping.
Get full access to Talk Cocktail Podcast at jeffschechtman.substack.com/subscribe
Arkansas legally whipped prisoners until 1968. Today, U.S. officials celebrate images from El Salvador’s concentration camp-style prisons while federal courts abandon “evolving standards of decency” for 1790s baselines. Yale Law Professor Judith Resnik, author of book Impermissible Punishments, talks to me about how prisons maintain structural ties to plantations and argues democratic governments cannot “set out to ruin people.” A urgent conversation about what we owe those we cage—and whether mass incarceration is collapsing under its own weight.
Get full access to Talk Cocktail Podcast at jeffschechtman.substack.com/subscribe
On this recent California Sun podcast Roddy Bottum, a founder of the alternative metal band Faith No More, talks with me about 1980s and ’90s San Francisco — a dark, overlooked era between the Summer of Love and the tech boom. His memoir, “The Royal We” recalls a vanished city of bicycle messengers and punk rock in the shadow of the AIDS crisis. It’s a poetic testament to community, loss, and the creative rebellion that defined pre-tech San Francisco.
Get full access to Talk Cocktail Podcast at jeffschechtman.substack.com/subscribe
In this recent California Sun podcast I talk with Dina Gilio-Whitaker, author of the new book “Who Gets to Be Indian?“ She explores how California became ground zero for Native American identity fraud — from Hollywood’s early film lots to today’s casino capitalism and tribal disenrollment crisis.
All of it created the perfect conditions for “Indianness” to become commodified, challenging authentic tribal sovereignty and belonging across the nation.
Get full access to Talk Cocktail Podcast at jeffschechtman.substack.com/subscribe
Families who voted for Trump now carry passports to prove they belong here. Inside the fear, resistance, and betrayal reshaping Latino communities.
Something remarkable is unfolding in American politics, and most people are missing it. The Latino voters who handed Donald Trump a historic victory less than a year ago are now turning against him in numbers that should terrify the Republican Party.
But this isn’t just about polling — it’s about something far more profound happening on the ground in communities from Chicago to southern California.
My guest on this WhoWhatWhy podcast, Los Angeles Times columnist Gustavo Arellano, has spent decades covering Latino communities, and he saw this moment coming long before anyone else.
Get full access to Talk Cocktail Podcast at jeffschechtman.substack.com/subscribe
When the world’s richest men decide democracy is optional, we all pay the price.
They once championed marriage equality and promised to make the world more open and connected. Now Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Marc Andreessen, and a tight network of Silicon Valley billionaires are bankrolling authoritarian politics, questioning democracy itself, and leveraging their control of our communication infrastructure to reshape American power.
But here’s the uncomfortable question: Is this genuine ideological conversion, or simply the world’s most expensive insurance policy? And does it even matter?
On this recent WhoWhatWhy podcast, journalist and author Jacob Silverman talks to me about how a few dozen mostly white men — many connected through South African roots, shared grievances about “woke culture,” and an interlocking web of investments — transformed from progressive donors into Trump’s most powerful allies.
Get full access to Talk Cocktail Podcast at jeffschechtman.substack.com/subscribe
Can capitalism have a conscience? Yvonne Chouinard built Patagonia into a billion-dollar empire while trying to save the planet—then gave it all away rather than be called a billionaire. My guest NYT reporter David Gellis expalins how in an age of Musk and Bezos, Chouinard’s story reveals both the promise and paradox of doing well by doing good. A half-century journey led by a French-Canadian dirtbag who slept in the dirt, managed by absence, and stayed so stubbornly uncommercial that only someone this odd could pull it off. Character—eccentric, contradictory, uncompromising—reshaping what business can mean.
Get full access to Talk Cocktail Podcast at jeffschechtman.substack.com/subscribe
Luigi Mangione became a folk hero after allegedly killing a healthcare CEO. “Free Luigi” merchandise. Hacked highway signs. But he’s not alone. In a recent WhoWhatWhy podcast I spoke with journalist John Richardson who reveals how Ted Kaczynski’s ideology radicalized Mangione and is appealing to alienated young men who’ve reached a dark conclusion: the system won’t change without violence.
Get full access to Talk Cocktail Podcast at jeffschechtman.substack.com/subscribe
San Francisco’s underground robot fight clubs: humanoid machines in steel cages, VR pilots, roaring crowds. China builds the hardware, America stages the spectacle, AI makes them lethal.
I talk with journalist and filmmaker Ashlee Vance on my latest California Sun Podcast. He expalins how the technology is advancing at breakneck speed — raising questions about entertainment, military applications, and what happens when these machines become truly intelligent.
Get full access to Talk Cocktail Podcast at jeffschechtman.substack.com/subscribe
On this recent California Sun podcast I talk with Todd S. Purdum, veteran journalist and author of “Desi Arnaz: The Man Who Invented Television.” Purdum expalins how a Cuban refugee revolutionized Hollywood. He invented the three-camera sitcom format, shifted television production from New York to LA, and created the business model that sustained the industry and TV production for seven decades—fundamentally transforming the entertainment business. It cost him everything!
Get full access to Talk Cocktail Podcast at jeffschechtman.substack.com/subscribe
Political violence isn’t an aberration in American democracy — it’s a defining trait. From the Boston Tea Party to January 6, it’s how we settle our differences.
My guest on this WhoWhatWhy podcast is professor Matthew Dallek of George Washington University. The author of numerous books and papers on political violence, including the definitive history of the John Birch Society. Dallek argues we’re living through an “era of violent populism” — driven by institutional distrust, dehumanizing rhetoric, and social media acceleration.Every time political violence erupts in America, we fall back on the same comforting phrase: “This isn’t who we are.” But what if we have it exactly backwards?
Get full access to Talk Cocktail Podcast at jeffschechtman.substack.com/subscribe
On this latest California Sun podcast, John Freeman, author of “California Rewritten: A Journey Through the Golden State’s New Literature,” talks to me about how California has become America’s new literary center, challenging New York’s dominance. He discusses the pandemic book club that sparked his journey, the state’s evolving mythology, and how diverse voices are redefining what it means to imagine America’s future.
Get full access to Talk Cocktail Podcast at jeffschechtman.substack.com/subscribe
In the theater of history, irony often plays a leading role. How did the greatest engine of prosperity the world has ever known — according to the World Bank lifting 1.5 billion people out of crushing poverty — become America’s most dangerous political wager?
In this recent WhoWhatWhy podcastI spoke with Journalist David J. Lynch — author of The World’s Worst Bet: How the Globalization Gamble Went Wrong (And What Would Make It Right.) He witnessed first-hand globalization’s arc from golden dawn to political twilight and the impact on global trade today.
He asks why the smartest people in Washington were so spectacularly right about the economics and so catastrophically wrong about the politics.
Get full access to Talk Cocktail Podcast at jeffschechtman.substack.com/subscribe
Minerva University, has earned the No. 1 ranking in the World University Rankings for Innovation for four consecutive years.
Founded in San Francisco in 2012, Minerva reimagined higher education — eliminating campuses, lectures, and tenure while sending students to live and study across seven global cities.
In this California Sun podcast, Mike Magee, President of the University discusses how Minerva, with only a 4% acceptance rate and students from more than 100 countries, is preparing the next generation of leaders for an interconnected world.
This post is FREE for everyone. Please spread it far and wide. And please consider becoming a paid subscriber to TalkCocktail. It’s $8 a month or just $80 for an entire year of great conversation.
Get full access to Talk Cocktail Podcast at jeffschechtman.substack.com/subscribe
More than taking to the streets, a souring economy may be democracy’s last hope. Beneath calm headlines, inflation persists and wealth accumulates. The numbers reveal what matters most.
It’s the economy, stupid.” Bill Clinton’s 1992 campaign mantra has never felt more prophetic. In an era when presidential scandals barely register, where lawbreaking and corruption seem consequence-free, where the president himself once boasted he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue without losing support — the economy may be the only force powerful enough to reshape our political landscape.
And right now, beneath the surface calm, something fundamental may be shifting.
In this recent WhoWhatWhy podcast I spoke with Matthew Klein, economics commentator and publisher of The Overshoot newsletter. He takes us deep into the weeds of consumer spending, inflation persistence, housing market dysfunction, and the ticking time bomb of household wealth that could reshape everything in ways that simple politics cannot.
Get full access to Talk Cocktail Podcast at jeffschechtman.substack.com/subscribe
Today, as immigrant families are again separated and detained, Satsuki Ina joins me on the California Sun podcast to talk about her memoir “The Poet and the Silk Girl.” Her story chronicles her family’s journey through California’s network of assembly centers and permanent camps during World War II. It’s a reminder, she says, that what happened then is not just history — it’s a warning about how easily such chapters of fear and racism repeat themselves.
Satsuki was born behind barbed wire at Tule Lake, where she became one of roughly 120,000 Japanese Americans incarcerated during the war. Her parents, both U.S. citizens, lost their freedom and faith in America, leaving a legacy of silence and trauma.
Get full access to Talk Cocktail Podcast at jeffschechtman.substack.com/subscribe
While America fixates on President Donald Trump’s psychology, the real story may be the fundamental mutation of American power itself — one that makes Trump merely a symptom of a deeper transformation reshaping our world.
On this recent week’s WhoWhatWhy podcast, I talk with British novelist and essayist Rana Dasgupta, who argues we’re missing the seismic shifts beneath the surface. Author of the upcoming book After Nations: The History and Future of the Nation State, Dasgupta reveals how three interconnected crises are fundamentally altering the relationship between the state and its people, creating conditions that demand exactly the kind of disruptive figure Trump represents.
America can no longer control the flow of strategic resources that once guaranteed its superpower status. China is building alternative trading networks that bypass traditional American corporate access. Meanwhile, the dollar’s global dominance — which has allowed the US to sustain massive debt — faces unprecedented threats from China.
Get full access to Talk Cocktail Podcast at jeffschechtman.substack.com/subscribe
In March 1998, I had the privilege of sitting down with Jane Goodall, whose pioneering work transformed how we understand chimpanzees and our shared planet. This week, as we mark her passing at 93, we revisit that conversation. The recording has survived nearly three decades — the audio may not be perfect, but her wisdom and spirit shine through.
This post is FREE for everyone. Please spread it far and wide. And please consider becoming a paid subscriber to TalkCocktail. It’s $8 a month or just $80 for the entire year.
Get full access to Talk Cocktail Podcast at jeffschechtman.substack.com/subscribe
How one of California’s corporate crown jewels, Apple, faces an unprecedented rebellion. Tech leaders such as Spotify’s Daniel Ek and Epic Games’ Tim Sweeney are waging a legal war over what they have portrayed as a shakedown operation — the 30% App Store cut that generates massive profits for Apple while stifling competition.
On this Califonria Sun podcast I talk with WSJ reporter Tim Higgins to discuss his new book “iWar,” examining Apple’s hold on the mobile world, and how the rise of artificial intelligence is threatening to potentially displace the smartphone era altogether.
This post is FREE for everyone. Please spread it far and wide. And please consider becoming a paid subscriber to TalkCocktail. It’s $8 a month or just $80 for the entire year.
Get full access to Talk Cocktail Podcast at jeffschechtman.substack.com/subscribe
We inhabit a fractured information landscape where truth itself has become negotiable. Lying has not only lost its stigma — it’s become a viable strategy for success.
My guest on this WhoWhatWhy podcast, Renée DiResta, author of Invisible Rulers: The People Who Turn Lies into Reality, reveals the machinery behind this transformation.
Politicians lie with impunity, corporate leaders fabricate narratives, and social media influencers craft false personas, all understanding that in the attention economy, authenticity is just another performance metric.
The infrastructure of deception, she explains, has become so sophisticated and pervasive that we’ve normalized dishonesty as simply another tool in the communications toolkit.
Get full access to Talk Cocktail Podcast at jeffschechtman.substack.com/subscribe
Jeff Chang, in his new biography “Water Mirror Echo,” and in our recent California Sun podcast explores how the short of life of Bruce Lee helped shape modern Asian American culture and politics.
Born in San Francisco’s Chinatown, Lee was denied the lead role in Warner Bros.’s 1970s TV series “Kung Fu,” which was given instead to David Carradine in yellowface. Lee’s collision with Hollywood rejection became a catalyst for his rise at a time of emergent Asian American political consciousness.
Chang discusses how Lee became a global symbol of Asian American dignity, and how his legend has only grown in the decades since his death.
This post is FREE for everyone. Please spread it far and wide. And please consider becoming a paid subscriber to TalkCocktail. It’s $8 a month or just $80 for the entire year.
Get full access to Talk Cocktail Podcast at jeffschechtman.substack.com/subscribe
What Ghislaine Maxwell knows about her father Robert Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein may be the final untold chapter of two of the great scandals of our time
Both men were fabulously wealthy, both wrapped themselves in the trappings of power, both had rumored ties to intelligence services, and both of their lives ended in disgrace. Epstein’s death in a Manhattan jail cell remains a source of speculation and allegations of conspiracy. Robert Maxwell’s fall from his yacht, the Lady Ghislaine, is no less shrouded in mystery.
And at the center sits Ghislaine — the connective tissue between these two disgraced moguls. A kind of modern-day Mata Hari whose knowledge of Epstein, Trump, her father, and their networks of power and corruption could rewrite history if ever fully revealed.
On the WhoWhatWhy podcast I spoke with British author John Preston about Robert Maxwell. His book, Fall: The Mysterious Life and Death of Robert Maxwell, Britain’s Most Notorious Media Baron, captures a man whose life was a study in hubris, ambition, and deceit. Today, revisiting that conversation sheds light not only on Ghislaine’s inheritance but on the larger web of power and predation that continues to haunt us — linking Maxwell, Epstein, and the whole bloody mess in between.
Get full access to Talk Cocktail Podcast at jeffschechtman.substack.com/subscribe
Joan Williams— a UC law professor, author of Outclassed: How the Left Lost the Working Class and How to Win Them Back delivers the prevailing wisdom on Democrats' working-class exodus: how cultural condescension drove voters to Trump. But this tidy narrative misses deeper currents of economic and technological transformation, aspirational politics, and structural failures that shaped today's realignment. Getting the prescription wrong could doom us to years more of the chaos we're desperately trying to escape.
This post is FREE for everyone. Please spread it far and wide. And please consider becoming a paid subscriber to TalkCocktail. It’s $8 a month or just $80 for the entire year.
Get full access to Talk Cocktail Podcast at jeffschechtman.substack.com/subscribe
Violence subsumes us this week, but at the end of the day, it’s still the economy that impacts all of us.
Politicians sell tariffs as job protection, but economist Kimberly Clausing cuts through the spin: They’re a direct assault on working families’ wallets while destroying the very manufacturing jobs they claim to save.
In this recent WhoWhatWhy podcastThe former Treasury official and UCLA professor talks to me about how Donald Trump’s trade war has become an expensive lesson in economic self-sabotage.
Clausing walks through the real costs: $2,500 annually per household from existing tariffs, with over half of our imports being materials that American companies need to stay competitive. When those costs rise, US manufacturers become less competitive globally, leading to layoffs rather than job creation.
The conversation reveals how political rhetoric about trade obscures where the money actually goes — from working families paying higher prices to corporations and governments collecting tariff revenues, funding a policy approach that economists broadly agree makes little economic sense.
Get full access to Talk Cocktail Podcast at jeffschechtman.substack.com/subscribe
The sons of the elite also struggle.
Filmmaker Peter Jones turned his camera on his former classmates from the Harvard School for Boys, a former military academy for boys in Los Angeles, for his new PSB documentary “Fortunate Sons,” chronicling the lives of the 1974 graduating class through their 50th reunion.
In this California Sun podcast, Jones tells me that what started as pandemic Zoom calls became surprisingly honest conversations about addiction, suicide, and the pressure of living up to successful fathers. Jones discovered that wealth can’t shield against every hardship, and that the men now in their 60s were finally ready to drop the macho act and talk about what really happened.
This post is FREE for everyone. Please spread it far and wide. And please consider becoming a paid subscriber to TalkCocktail. It’s $8 a month or just $80 for the entire year.
Get full access to Talk Cocktail Podcast at jeffschechtman.substack.com/subscribe
How did Silicon Valley's best and brightest become Trump's cheerleaders? Journalist Scott Alan Lucas may have found the origins in his investigation of Cash App founder Bob Lee's 2023 murder.
When Lee was killed in San Francisco, tech elites immediately abandoned their supposed data-driven principles, blaming liberal governance despite clear evidence pointing elsewhere. The same figures—including future Trump advisor David Sacks—chose narrative over facts, ideology over analysis.
Lucas reveals how this case foreshadowed tech's wholesale embrace of Trump, exposing a disturbing pattern where supposedly rational leaders prioritize political convenience over truth, offering crucial insights into how Silicon Valley went MAGA.
This post is FREE for everyone. Please spread it far and wide. And please consider becoming a paid subscriber to TalkCocktail. It’s $8 a month or just $80 for the entire year.
Get full access to Talk Cocktail Podcast at jeffschechtman.substack.com/subscribe
With China's rising global influence amid America's shifting position worldwide, understanding China's complex history has never been more critical. New York Times diplomatic correspondent Edward Wong offers unparalleled insight in his book "At the Edge of Empire: A Family's Reckoning with China." Through his family's personal story and decades of reporting from Beijing, Wong reveals how China's imperial past continues to shape its modern aspirations and growing tensions with the West.
This post is FREE for everyone. Please spread it far and wide. And please consider becoming a paid subscriber to TalkCocktail. It’s $8 a month or just $80 for the entire year.
Get full access to Talk Cocktail Podcast at jeffschechtman.substack.com/subscribe
For nearly a decade, we've waited for the "smoking gun" that would expose the Trump-Putin relationship. But what if the scandal isn't hidden at all?
On this recent WhoWhatWhy podcast I spoke with Craig Unger, bestselling author of House of Trump, House of Putin and American Kompromat. He has spent years documenting what he argues is a 40-year intelligence operation in plain sight. From Russian money laundering through Trump Tower to Jeffrey Epstein's shadowy network, Unger traces connections that others have ignored — and reveals what they spell for Western democracy itself.
Get full access to Talk Cocktail Podcast at jeffschechtman.substack.com/subscribe
Privacy expert Heidi Boghosian argues that America's democratic survival hinges on developing sophisticated digital literacy skills to combat surveillance capitalism and algorithmic manipulation. She connects declining civics education with rising technological dependence, advocating for enhanced cyber hygiene and citizen activism against corporate data collection. While her concerns about digital privacy and educational gaps merit attention, her solutions lean heavily toward regulatory interventions and activist resistance rather than embracing market-driven innovation and empowering individual technological choices.
Get full access to Talk Cocktail Podcast at jeffschechtman.substack.com/subscribe
When we stop thinking, we enable harm. In this reprise of my WhoWhatWhy podcast with Elizabeth Minnich, she warns us that systemic evils don’t need monsters — “it takes all of us” through everyday compliance.
I talk with moral philosopher Elizabeth Minnich, who delivers a timely warning about collective thoughtlessness. Building directly on her experience as Hannah Arendt’s long-time teaching assistant, Minnich reverses Arendt’s famous “banality of evil” thesis.
Where Arendt observed how unremarkable Nazi bureaucrat Adolf Eichmann appeared during his trial — a conventional man simply “doing his job” — Minnich argues the true danger lies in the “evil of banality”: the way unthinking adherence to clichés, career preservation, and social conformity creates the conditions for extensive harm.
Get full access to Talk Cocktail Podcast at jeffschechtman.substack.com/subscribe
On my latest California Sun podcast, Jim Newton joins me to discuss “Here Beside the Rising Tide,” exploring how Jerry Garcia and the Grateful Dead emerged from 1960s California to become unlikely architects of America’s counterculture. Newton reveals Garcia as a reluctant icon who feared leadership yet created a multigenerational community that thrives decades after his death. We explore the Dead’s anti-commercial ethos, their role as cultural catalysts rather than political activists, and how their California values of freedom and authenticity continue to influence everything from music to tech culture.
Get full access to Talk Cocktail Podcast at jeffschechtman.substack.com/subscribe
In a week when two Al Jazeera journalists were killed in Gaza, we’re reminded that foreign reporting isn’t just dangerous—it’s occasionally fatal. In this WhoWhatWhy podcast, I talk with three veteran correspondents—William Dowell, Greg Dobbs, and James Dorsey—they swap stories from Vietnam to Beirut, Iran to South Africa. They trade notes on the life-threatening scrapes they barely walked away from, how the job has changed, and why, even with an average age north of 75, they still can’t resist the fight.
Get full access to Talk Cocktail Podcast at jeffschechtman.substack.com/subscribe
Discover the hidden force shaping every aspect of your community—from housing costs to racial inequality to environmental sustainability. Architect and attorney Sara Bronin, author of Key to the City, reveals how zoning, one of the most powerful yet misunderstood tools in local government, dictates where we live, work, and play. Learn why this "invisible" regulation holds the key to building more equitable, livable cities for our future.
This post is FREE for everyone. Please spread it far and wide. And please consider becoming a paid subscriber to TalkCocktail. It’s $8 a month or just $80 for the entire year.
Get full access to Talk Cocktail Podcast at jeffschechtman.substack.com/subscribe
My 2024 conversation with Rachel Bergstein explores the lasting political influence of Judy Blume, whose writing shaped a progressive worldview now under siege from conservative forces. As one of America's most frequently banned authors in the 1980s, Blume became an early champion against censorship—a fight that endures today.
Discussing Bergstein’s new book, The Genius of Judy: How Judy Blume Rewrote Childhood for All of Us, we examine how Blume’s candid treatment of adolescence, puberty, sexuality, and divorce transformed children's literature in the 1970s.
Bergstein argues that Blume’s impact reaches beyond literature, inspiring a generation of progressives and fortifying the ongoing movement for intellectual freedom and the right to read.
Get full access to Talk Cocktail Podcast at jeffschechtman.substack.com/subscribe
I’m joined by Gene Seroka, executive director of the Port of Los Angeles. The port handles 20% of America’s incoming cargo. In thisCalifornia Sun conversation,he reveals how the 7,500-acre complex serves as an economic bellwether, highlighting trends months before consumers feel them. From automation debates to tariff-induced cargo swings, Seroka explains how what happens at the port ripples through the economy and shapes global trade.
This post is FREE for everyone. Please spread it far and wide. And please consider becoming a paid subscriber to TalkCocktail. It’s $8 a month or just $80 for the entire year!
Get full access to Talk Cocktail Podcast at jeffschechtman.substack.com/subscribe
In 1951, a 25-year-old oil heir with an unplaceable accent declared war on Yale University — and modern American conservatism was born.
On this WhoWhatWhy podcast, Sam Tanenhaus, former editor of The New York Times Book Review and the author of Buckley: The Life and the Revolution That Changed America, talks to me about his monumental 1,000+ page biography of Buckley, a project 30 years in the making.
We constantly ask how did we get here? How did the Republican Party transform into MAGA? The answer lies with Buckley — he was the engine that drove this evolution.
William F. Buckley Jr. understood what few politicians grasped: Politics was becoming theater, and ideological battles would be won on cultural battlefields.
Through meticulous research, including previously unknown family archives, Tanenhaus reveals how Buckley became the original conservative-coalition builder — simultaneously maintaining elite respectability while appealing to grassroots activists.
Get full access to Talk Cocktail Podcast at jeffschechtman.substack.com/subscribe
What if everything we believe about changing political minds is wrong? The real work of transformation happens elsewhere.
What if everything we believe about changing minds is wrong? What if the foundation of democratic discourse — the belief that better arguments lead to better outcomes — is not just flawed but destructively naive?
Sarah Lubrano, with her PhD from Oxford and years of writing about the intersection of psychology and politics, brings devastating news: Decades of research reveal that political debates don’t change minds; they calcify them.
Her book Don’t Talk About Politics reads like a clinical study of American democracy, dissecting why our most sacred ritual of reasoned argument has become democracy’s poison pill.
But Lubrano’s diagnosis goes far beyond the failure of debate. She reveals something more troubling: We’ve accidentally engineered a society that systematically prevents the kinds of human connections that actually do transform political thinking.
Former Israeli Ambassador to the United States Michael Oren joins me on the WhoWhatWhy podcast to decode this historical inflection point. A historian, former Knesset member, and veteran of Israeli government service, Oren offers a unique perspective from someone who has spent his life at the intersection of scholarship and statecraft. Hours before Israel’s first strike, he published a prescient piece asking whether this was Israel’s “Dirty Harry moment” — the confrontation that would finally call Iran’s bluff.
$500 drones destroyed $100M Russian bombers.
Last month (it seems so long ago) Ukrainian forces achieved what seemed impossible: Commercial drones costing less than a smartphone successfully struck Russian strategic bombers worth $100 million each, deep inside enemy territory. This isn’t tactical innovation—it’s the emergence of warfare where David doesn’t just defeat Goliath, but renders him obsolete.
On this WhoWhatWhy podcast, I talk with David Shlapak, senior defense researcher at RAND Corporation, to examine how these miniature flying weapons are rewriting the rules of military power.
And while we’re already seeing the future of warfare unfold in the skies over Eastern Europe, an even more disruptive shift lies just ahead: the integration of artificial intelligence into autonomous weapons systems.
That convergence could redefine not only how wars are fought, but who — or what — does the fighting.
When the Soviet Union collapsed, it wasn't the end of history—it was the beginning of capitalism's most seductive experiment.
Russia became a Wild East where Big Macs symbolized freedom and suitcases of cash ruled reality. Western corporations flooded Moscow with intoxicating chaos, chasing astronomical returns that seemed too good to be true. They were!
Charles Hecker, talks to me about his provocative book "Zero Sum: The Arc of International Business in Russia." He explains how corporate greed and willful blindness transformed this capitalist Camelot into Putin's authoritarian trap—a cautionary tale of moral compromise that still tempts businesses today.
When we stop thinking, we enable harm. In this WhoWhatWhy podcast Elizabeth Minnich warns us that systemic evils don’t need monsters — “it takes all of us” through everyday compliance.
I talk with moral philosopher Elizabeth Minnich, who delivers a timely warning about collective thoughtlessness. Building directly on her experience as Hannah Arendt’s long-time teaching assistant, Minnich reverses Arendt’s famous “banality of evil” thesis.
Where Arendt observed how unremarkable Nazi bureaucrat Adolf Eichmann appeared during his trial — a conventional man simply “doing his job” — Minnich argues the true danger lies in the “evil of banality”: the way unthinking adherence to clichés, career preservation, and social conformity creates the conditions for extensive harm.
The “Golden Dome” that Trump is promising is a fantasy at best.
Back in February, on the WhoWhatWhy podcast, I explored the seductive dream of an impenetrable missile defense — and the sobering reality behind it.
I spoke with Marion Messmer, a senior research fellow at Chatham House’s International Security Program in London. She lays bare the hard truths behind the rhetorical hype of space-based defense systems. In an age of hypersonic weapons and artificial intelligence, she argues, no nation can truly construct an impenetrable shield against missile attacks
In this latest podcast I talk with Emmy-winning journalist Gianna Tobani about "The Volunteer." Gianna Tobani takes me through the harrowing story of Scott Dozier, a death row inmate who volunteered for execution but was ultimately driven to suicide after the state repeatedly failed to carry out his sentence.
Through intimate conversations with Dozier, Tobani unveils a broken death penalty system where pharmaceutical companies refuse to provide execution drugs, states resort to black market deals, and the condemned endure psychological torture in 9x5 foot cells.
Dozier's story transcends debates about justice to expose a brutal truth: sometimes not being executed is worse than execution itself.
America once built highways and reached the moon. Now we can’t even fix a bridge. The reason? The reforms meant to improve government have paralyzed it.
In this recent WhoWhatWhy podcast I talk with Marc Dunkelman, whose recent book, Why Nothing Works: Who Killed Progress — and How to Bring It Back, uncovers the real reasons why America has lost its ability to build and manufacture.
The culprit? A fundamental shift in progressive thinking itself.
Dunkelman reveals how a deep distrust of and “cultural aversion to power” emerged in the 1960s and gradually transformed governance.
What began as well-intentioned safeguards against political overreach has created a paralysis where anyone can veto almost anything. Progressives replaced discretionary authority with procedural obstacles — environmental reviews, endless community meetings, and litigation tools that allow virtually anyone to block progress.
In this WhoWhatWhy podcast, I talk with China expert Dinny McMahon who explains how Beijing is desperately racing to innovate its way out of demographic disaster — replacing construction-led growth with advanced manufacturing and automation. But as the collapsing property market exposes mountains of municipal debt, and rising global trade barriers threaten China’s export-driven strategy, the sustainability of this economic pivot hangs in the balance.
As factories across China operate in darkness — not because they’ve failed but because they’re so automated they need no human presence — a profound contradiction emerges: a nation that produces one-third of the world’s goods while consuming only 12 percent of them, simultaneously dominating global manufacturing while its aging population hurtles toward catastrophic decline.
According to UN estimates, China’s population could literally halve by the end of this century, creating a society where retirees will soon outnumber workers.
David Denby, long time New York Magazine film critic and acclaimed New Yorker writer, joins me to discuss his captivating new book "Eminent Jews." He examines how Leonard Bernstein, Mel Brooks, Betty Friedan, and Norman Mailer—all born within eight years of each other—wielded their Jewish heritage as a creative weapon in post-WWII America. In our conversation, Denby reveals how these boundary-breaking figures transformed American culture with their bold, unapologetic genius while embodying a new Jewish confidence.
In this recentWhoWhatWhy podcast, I talk with John Lechner, author of Death Is Our Business. He details how private armies increasingly blur the lines between state power and mercenary force. The prospect of billionaires and politicians commanding their own military forces is no longer just a dystopian idea.
John Lechner’s five-year investigation into Russia’s notorious Wagner Group reveals a disturbing template for what privatized warfare could mean for America and the world.
Americans see Canada as that friendly neighbor up north. Canadians now see America as their greatest threat. How did we get here, and what does it mean for both nations?
Joining me on this week’s WhoWhatWhy podcast is veteran political analyst and Globe and Mail columnist Andrew Coyne. Trump’s talk of annexation and punitive tariffs has profoundly transformed Canada’s relationship with the US, creating a mixture of bewilderment, fear and, unexpectedly for Canadians, fierce national pride.
For Coyne, author of the upcoming book The Crisis of Canadian Democracy, the impact goes far beyond politics: It’s forcing Canadians to question basic assumptions about their sovereignty and security that have held firm since World War II. What was once unthinkable — the need to defend against US aggression — has become part of the national conversation.
For over two centuries, the American experiment has weathered crises that would have toppled lesser democracies — a resilience celebrated as uniquely American. But what if this story of perpetual reinvention through adaptation has reached its limits, our Constitution stretched too thin by the democratic achievements we cherish most?
In this WhoWhatWhy podcast, Yale professor Stephen Skowronek talks to me about his “adaptability paradox” theory: Our constitutional system functioned for centuries because it excluded many Americans, allowing a homogeneous elite to govern effectively. When the rights revolution of the ’60s and ’70s finally attempted to include everyone, the balancing act collapsed, leaving our institutions unable to manage diverse interests with competing demands.
There was a time when geographic mobility defined America — one-third of the population relocated each year, chasing better jobs and brighter futures. But today, historian and journalist Yoni Appelbaum argues in his new book, Stuck: How the Privileged and the Propertied Broke the Engine of American Opportunity, that America’s once-robust engine of upward mobility is grinding to a halt.
Appelbaum challenges the long-held belief that income alone dictates housing choices. Instead, he reveals how restrictive housing policies — exclusionary zoning, historical redlining, and modern NIMBYism — have dramatically limited the supply of new housing, effectively blocking the paths that families once took toward prosperity.
Today, affluent neighborhoods, often proudly progressive, tout diversity while quietly building invisible walls against newcomers, turning geographic mobility into a privilege reserved mainly for the wealthy.
The result is profound economic stagnation, deepening political polarization, and psychological harm — leaving millions trapped, angry, and increasingly cynical about the future. Yet despite the immense costs, estimated at $2 trillion annually, Appelbaum sees genuine hope.
What if Donald Trump’s strange fixation on William McKinley isn’t just historical trivia, but the key to understanding what happens next?
On this WhoWhatWhy podcast, long-time journalist and author Chris Lehmann argues we’re not necessarily headed for authoritarian collapse — we’re rewinding to the Gilded Age.
How might McKinley’s transformation from economic nationalist to global imperialist more than a century ago foreshadow Trump’s second term? Lehmann explores the forces that shaped McKinley’s presidency and how similar dynamics are at play today, from the influence of wealthy backers to the quest for historical legacy.
The sports betting explosion has unleashed a $500 billion monster that engulfs everything game its path. Since the Supreme Court opened the floodgates in 2018, betting and its betting apps bombard fans during every game, turning each play into another chance to wager. As millions will trade their paychecks for the dopamine hit of a winning bet during March Madness, the same leagues that banned Pete Rose now cozy up to sportsbooks. States hungrily eye their cut while young men are scientifically targeted. Few understand this transformation better than my guest Jonathan D. Cohen, whose new book "Losing Big: America's Reckless Bet on Sports Gambling" takes us deep inside this revolution that happened so fast we barely had time to understand its implications.
How did America transform from a nation of self-aware optimists to one of angry cynics in less than two decades?
In this recent WhoWhatWhy podcast I talk with political scientist Yascha Mounk, an associate professor at Johns Hopkins’s School of Advanced International Studies. He witnessed this cultural metamorphosis first hand after arriving in the US in 2005; his insights on this podcast paint a startling picture of how our society has fundamentally changed, and not for the better.
David Pakman, host of his eponymous podcast and program, joins me to talk about his book "The Echo Machine" and how right-wing extremism has methodically undermined America's shared information ecosystem over decades. Pakman and I discuss the deliberate fragmentation of media from talk radio through social media, explaining how this has eroded critical thinking and created parallel realities in American politics.
Drawing from his position as both media practitioner and analyst, Pakman illuminates the economic and psychological forces that incentivize division. Our conversation explores the compelling case for changes in the way the left understands poltics and media in a post-truth environment.
Renowned evolutionary biologist Neil Shubin joins me for an epic journey to Earth's most extreme polar frontiers.
The author of the new book 'Ends of the Earth, explains why scientists are willing to brave bone-chilling environments where flesh freezes in seconds. Shubin shares with me stories of daring historical expeditions, cutting-edge climate research, and how these frozen landscapes hold the keys to our planet's past and future. We discuss human courage, scientific discovery, and the urgent stories emerging from Earth's poles……and from Greenland.
Is China’s unstoppable rise actually a carefully constructed illusion?
In this recentWhoWhatWhy podcast, I talk with Timothy Heath, a senior international defense researcher at RAND Corporation who spent over 15 years in the US government analyzing military and political issues related to China.
Heath peels back layers of propaganda to reveal a surprisingly fragile superpower wrestling with existential challenges.
As the embers go cold, the smoke clears and the ashes are carted off in Los Angeles a stark reality emerges: not just winds but climate change played a significant role in this deadly and destructive event.
A new World Weather Attribution study found that human-caused climate change increased the likelihood of extreme fire conditions by 35 percent and intensified their severity.
In this recentWhoWhatWhy podcast, Daniel Swain, a leading climate scientist at UCLA and the University of California’s Agricultural and Natural Resources division, frames the January disaster not simply as a fire event, but as “an extreme weather event with fire embedded in it.” This distinction, he explains, is crucial for understanding how climate change is reshaping fire risks.
On a recent WhoWhatWhy podcast, I spoke with Princeton historian Julian Zelizer who offers a provocative argument from his new book In Defense of Partisanship. At a time when nearly a third of Americans view both major parties with disgust and many blame partisan loyalty for our democratic decay, Zelizer says that strong, disciplined political parties — not feel-good Biden-style bipartisanship — have historically been crucial to America’s greatest achievements.
The problem isn’t that parties fight hard for their beliefs; it’s that we’ve lost the guardrails that once transformed partisan combat into incremental but lasting progress.
Brewster Kahle, founder of the Internet Archive, housed in a former San Francisco church with Greek columns that echo the ancient Library of Alexandria, discusses his three-decade mission to preserve humanity's digital knowledge and culture. Now facing unprecedented challenges, including a major cyberattack and legal battles with publishers over the site's distribution of copyrighted materials, Kahle reflects on the growing threats to digital preservation while reaffirming his commitment to universal access to all knowledge. We begin the year by looking back.
When LA’s hydrants failed during massive fires, misinformation spread. What really happened – and the hard truths about our urban water systems.
In my latest WhoWhatWhy podcast, I talk to one of California’s leading water experts who cuts through the noise to explain what really happened.
Gregory Pierce — director of the UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation and of the Human Rights to Water Solutions Lab — delivers a masterclass in understanding this infrastructure crisis.
The story that emerged about what led to this deadly failure has been animated by finger-pointing, misinformation, and political opportunism.
Oh, how the party has changed.
At a moment when the Republican Party has shifted dramatically from its Reaganite roots, I talk with Washington Post columnist Max Boot, whose definitive biography of Ronald Reagan arrives with particular resonance.
Through a decade of research, Boot reveals a pragmatic leader who would likely be puzzled by today's GOP—a president who supported immigration reform, worked with Gorbachev to reduce nuclear weapons, and prided himself on compromise, getting "80 percent of what he wanted" rather than demanding everything. Boot shares with me a fascinating exploration of Reagan's true legacy.
What if we’ve been asking the wrong question about technology all along? Not “What can it do for us?” but “What is it doing to us?”
In my recent WhoWhatWhy podcast we talk with Chris Colbert, former managing director of the Harvard Innovation Labs, to explore a provocative idea: that technology as we know it may be dead — and that’s exactly what humanity needs to thrive.
Drawing from his new book, Technology is Dead: The Path to a More Human Future, Colbert talks to me about how our obsession with innovation and productivity has eroded our connections, amplified our vulnerabilities, and left us more isolated than ever.
In this WhoWhatWhy podcast, veteran journalist Sasha Abramsky reveals a striking paradox: Progressives, long suspicious of states’ rights — once a reactionary battle cry against civil rights and federal reforms — are now embracing state power as their best defense against growing authoritarianism.
As the federal government tilts rightward, blue states are forming unprecedented coalitions to preserve democratic values and progressive policies. But could these defensive measures actually accelerate America’s political fracturing?
In a world drowning in misinformation, we keep pointing fingers at those who create and spread false narratives. But what if the real story isn’t about them — it’s about us?
In this recentWhoWhatWhy podcast I talk with professor Dannagal Goldthwaite Young, author of Wrong: How Media, Politics, and Identity Drive Our Appetite for Misinformation, we discover a surprising truth: Humans are naturally drawn to misinformation.
It’s not just about believing what we want to believe — it’s about satisfying our fundamental needs for what Young calls “comprehension, control, and community,” even if that means embracing falsehoods.
The recent election has sparked new discussions about changing demographics across America. Austin, Texas is no exception. Long celebrated as a liberal bubble in the heart of red Texas, this once magical and creative city is transforming dramatically. From the controversial new University of Austin, featured this past Sunday on 60 Minutes, to Elon Musk's growing presence with SpaceX, to the influx of tech giants like Larry Ellison and Oracle, along with characters like Joe Rogan and Alex Jones, the city's character is shifting. Add to this the mounting challenges of climate change making Austin hotter and drier than ever. Journalist Alex Hannaford, who lived in Austin for nearly two decades, talks to me aboutthis transformation and his eventual departure from a city that has changed beyond recognition. He writes about it in his new book “Lost in Austin.”
While women have yet to shatter the ultimate glass ceiling of the White House, they've been steadily scaling the towering heights of Wall Street since the 1960s. The author of the groundbreaking book "She Wolves: The Untold History of Women on Wall Street," historian Paulina Bren talks to me about how these trailblazers navigated the male-dominated world of finance. From Muriel Siebert becoming the first woman to own a NYSE seat in 1967 to the waves of female graduates entering finance in the 1980s, women transformed the financial sector despite facing persistent discrimination. Bren explains how these pioneering women rose from secretarial pools to trading floors and executive suites, reshaping one of America's most powerful industries.
What happened to women voters as Harris drew fewer of them than Biden in 2020? Even in pro-choice strongholds, economic concerns trumped reproductive rights.
To examine this I’m was joined the morning after the election on this WhoWhatWhy podcast by Amanda Becker, a 2023 Nieman Fellow and Washington correspondent for The 19th. She is the author of the book You Must Stand Up: The Fight for Abortion Rights in Post-Dobbs America.
She expalins that the great female firewall against Trump’s return never materialized. In fact, it crumbled.
Vice President Kamala Harris actually performed worse than Joe Biden did in 2020, capturing just 54 percent of women’s votes compared to his 57 percent.
Even more stunning: In states like Ohio and Kentucky, where women had recently mobilized to protect reproductive rights, the expected momentum vanished. What happened?
The answer challenges everything we thought we knew about women voters in post-Roe America.
Journalist and presidential historian Jonathan Alter's new book 'American Reckoning: Inside Trump's Trial—and My Own' offers unique insights from inside the Manhattan courtroom where he sat just 25 feet from Donald Trump. While the political landscape has shifted dramatically since those summer days, Alter finds hope in the long view of history. Drawing on his experience covering nine presidents, the former Newsweek senior editor and NBC News analyst reminds us how other nations have successfully fought to restore their democracies. His deeply personal meditation on democratic accountability becomes a call to arms, arguing that American democracy, while challenged, has the resilience to prevail.
On a recent California Sun podcast I spoke with Sasha Abramsky, author of the new book “Chaos Comes Calling.” Abramsky talks to me about how America’s deep polarization has cascaded from national politics down to local levels of governance. Abramsky reveals that even in small rural communities, once-mundane local issues like library policies, road repairs, and child care have become ideological battlegrounds. Abramsky illuminates how the pandemic, social media echo chambers, and talk radio amplified partisan voices, transforming school boards and city councils into microcosms of the broader red-blue divide.
"Vigilantism” - it's a word that conjures images of lynch mobs and frontier justice. But today, both would be Presidents and state governments are not just turning a blind eye to vigilantes, they're actively encouraging them.
From Virginia's tip line for parents to snitch on teachers, to Texas unleashing bounty hunters against abortion providers, to Florida encouraging drivers to run over protesters - vigilantism is becoming the new normal in American politics.
My guest, Jon Michaels, argues in 'Vigilante Nation' that this represents a concerted effort by right-wing politicians, pundits, and preachers to subvert democracy and cement their hold on power. The pattern they expose should concern us all."
On this California Sun podcast I talk with Los Angeles Times columnist Gustavo Arellano who dismantles the myth of a monolithic “Latino vote.” After 3,000 miles across the Southwest, Arellano finds Latino communities laser-focused on local issues & identity, not national politics The real power? It's in city halls, not DC.
This is January 6 as you’ve never seen it before.
My guest on my latestWhoWhatWhy podcast is filmmaker Jon Long. Long has just completed Fight Like Hell, a documentary that offers a provocative, unfiltered, never before seen look at the day’s shocking events, and the Stop the Steal movement’s evolution.
Long explains that what you will witness in this documentary may shock you, move you. You may have thought the talk of January 6 was old news, that the candidates and the country had moved on, but not so fast. What happened still matters a lot.
https://youtu.be/ZC-Wo9nJ3O4?si=DXoOaixFGafV34d0
Steve Wasserman's journey from Berkeley radical to literary luminary is a testament to the enduring power of the written word. In our conversation, Wasserman reflects on a life shaped by books, ideas, and an insatiable curiosity that led him from tear gas-filled streets to the pinnacles of publishing. His friendships with intellectual giants like Christopher Hitchens and Susan Sontag honed his empathetic sensibility, while never dulling his capacity for outrage at injustice. Having navigated the literary landscapes of New York, Los Angeles, and the Bay Area, Wasserman offers a unique perspective on American culture and politics. His memoir, “Tell Me Something, Tell Me Anything, Even If It's a Lie,” serves as both a celebration of and a rallying cry for the life of the mind in our digital age.
In a time when democracy hangs in the balance, how do we turn political conviction into victory? My guest, Robert Creamer, argues it's all about execution - the nuts and bolts of political organizing.
With five decades of activism under his belt, from working with Saul Alinsky to helping pass the Affordable Care Act, Creamer has been at the forefront of progressive battles.
His new book, "Nuts and Bolts: The Formula for Progressive Electoral Success," offers a pragmatic handbook for today's political climate. In an era of base elections where undecided voters are rare, Creamer's insights on turning out voters could shape the future of America.
In an age when our smartphones have become extensions of ourselves, allowing us to summon a ride, order dinner, or transfer money with a few taps, why can’t we use the same technology to participate in the most fundamental act of democracy — voting?
In my latest WhoWhatWhy.org podcast, I talk with Bradley Tusk, a venture capitalist, philanthropist, and political strategist. He believes voters, using a smartphone app, could cast ballots securely from anywhere, potentially increasing turnout. He explains that by engaging more moderate voters — especially in primaries — mobile voting could reduce political polarization and encourage more centrist policies and could also lead to a more responsive democracy. He details exactly how mobile voting would work
After the shocking 2016 election, it was Arlie Hochschild in her book "Strangers in Their Own Land," not "Hillbilly Elegy," that truly explained the power of populist appeal in Appalachia.
In my recent conversation with Hochschild, about her new book “Stolen Pride: Loss, Shame, and the Rise of the Right,” the renowned sociologist continues this exploration, emphasizing the crucial need for what she calls cultural bilingualism to bridge America's political divide.
Hochschild argues that understanding today's politics requires examining the role of emotions, particularly pride and shame. She introduces the "pride paradox" and explains how Donald Trump has masterfully manipulated these emotions to gain support. By transforming "lost pride" into "stolen pride," Trump channels feelings of loss and shame into blame, creating a powerful emotional narrative.
Hochschild's work, based on deep, empathetic listening in Appalachia, reveals how economic decline and cultural shifts have reshaped political allegiances.
AI’s rapid advancement comes with a hidden human cost. Not just the vast number of jobs that may be eliminated, but the little known digital sweatshops that are crucial to the ongoing development of AI itself.
In my recent WhoWhatWhy podcast, James Muldoon, associate professor of management at the University of Essex and co-author of Feeding the Machine, argues that the rapid advancement of AI technology comes with a significant human toll. Research by Muldoon and his colleagues exposes the often-overlooked exploitation of human capital in the Global South that lies behind the high-tech rollout of AI.
America’s sheriffs, often seen as small-town peacekeepers, are becoming a major threat to democracy. My latest WhoWhatWhy Podcast examines what’s happening.
In a country where 80 percent of counties are red, and 90 percent of sheriffs are white, a shadowy world exists where these elected officials wield unchecked power, often aligning with far-right militias and potentially influencing the 2024 presidential election.
Jessica Pishko, journalist, legal expert, and author of The Highest Law in the Land: How the Unchecked Power of Sheriffs Threatens Democracy, talks to me about the sheriffs group that believes their authority supersedes federal and state laws. It’s a movement gaining traction across rural America.
My guest on this week’s WhoWhatWhy podcast, David Daley, argues that the six weeks following Election Day 2024 could be more consequential than the entire campaign season.
At a rally in Pennsylvania recently, Donald Trump said, “You know, they do polls on this stuff, and I’m at like 93 percent. So why are we having an election? They didn’t have an election. Why are we having an election?’”
It’s a scary question when we consider that the next president of the United States might very well be decided by an unelected conservative supermajority on the Supreme Court.
Daley, author of the new book Antidemocratic: Inside the Far Right’s 50-Year Plot to Control American Elections, foresees a looming crisis that could dwarf the chaos of the 2000 election.
My latest WhoWhatWhy podcast focuses on how and why young voters, a potential deciding factor in the upcoming election, are shaped by the events of 9/11.
Historian Matthew Warshauer offers a provocative perspective on how the attacks of 9/11 continue to shape American politics and the nation’s youth. Warshauer — a professor of history at Central Connecticut State University and the author of Creating and Failing the 9/11 Generation — argues that those who came of age in the shadow of the attacks harbor a deep distrust in government and a pervasive sense of chaos that profoundly influences today’s political landscape.
For nearly 30 years, Judge David Tatel served on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, often considered the second most important court in the nation. Tatel accomplished this while dealing with progressive vision loss, eventually becoming completely blind.
Judge Tatel's author of the memoir, "Vision: A Memoir of Blindness and Justice," offers us a very intimate look at an extraordinary judicial career and personal journey. Our conversation explores Tatel's path from civil rights lawyer to respected jurist, his initial resistance to acknowledging his blindness, and how writing his memoir ultimately freed him to discuss his experiences more openly.
An important part of Tatel's journey involves Vixen, his guide dog, who not only assisted him practically but also helped him become more comfortable discussing his blindness openly.
Tatel reflects on the evolution of disability rights and the transformative impact of technology on his work and independence. He also expresses deep concern about the increasing politicization of the judiciary, particularly the Supreme Court, and its implications for democracy. Tatel's story is not just about overcoming personal obstacles, but also a thoughtful examination of the changing landscape of civil rights, the role of the judiciary, and the ongoing struggle for equality and justice in America.
Like a hand reaching up from the grave, the recent Supreme Court decision on presidential immunity represents the posthumous triumph of Richard Nixon, Robert Bork, and Antonin Scalia.
On thisWhoWhatWhy podcast I examine this constitutional crisis with Brown University law professor Corey Brettschneider, author of The Presidents and the People: Five Leaders Who Threatened Democracy and the Citizens Who Fought to Defend It.In a ruling that seems to place former presidents beyond the reach of criminal law, the court has breathed new life into Nixon’s infamous claim: “When the president does it, it can’t be illegal.”
Brettschneider unravels how the ghosts of conservative legal titans have shaped a ruling that threatens the very foundations of American democracy.
On this WhoWhatWhy podcast, I talk with Andrew R. Chow, author of Cryptomania: Hype, Hope, and the Fall of FTX’s Billion-Dollar Fintech Empire. Chow guides us through the crypto landscape, from its original utopian dreams C
Cryptocurrency defies conventional wisdom. Once a fringe element in volatile financial markets, it’s now a campaign talking point, with Donald Trump surprisingly emerging as an enthusiast. As blockchain-based crypto goes mainstream, its growing influence on the global economy raises alarm bells. Is it an exciting tech revolution or a financial time bomb?
Billionaires. They're everywhere. But how did this obsession begin?
In many ways, Bill Gates is patient zero in our collective fixation on billionaires, particularly those bred in the tech world. Before there was Bezos, Musk, Zuckerberg, or Thiel, there was Bill Gates. If Warren Buffett is the modern father figure of billionaires, Gates is undoubtedly the first son.
Anupreeta Das, S. Asia editor of The New York Times and author of the new book 'Billionaire, Nerd, Savior, King: Bill Gates and His Quest to Shape Our World.' has spent years covering the intersection of wealth, power, and influence, and her book offers a penetrating look at Gates and the world he both shaped and was shaped by.
A revolutionary perspective on American constitutional history with Alison LaCroix, author of "The Interbellum Constitution."
Our discussion challenges everything you thought you knew about federalism, originalism, and the foundations of our legal system. LaCroix unveils how the often-overlooked period between 1815 and 1861 profoundly shaped our modern constitutional debates, offering fresh insights into today's political struggles. She reveals how even James Madison rejected what we now call originalism, upending conventional wisdom about the Founders' intent.
As states and federal authorities clash over immigration, abortion, and more, LaCroix's exploration of historical federalism provides crucial context for our current crises.
When people say their perception of the economy doesn’t match the numbers, are they just ill-informed?
It’s a familiar refrain: stock markets soar, GDP rises, unemployment falls, yet many Americans feel left behind, struggling to make ends meet.
So what’s causing this disconnect between the rosy numbers and people’s lived experiences?
Joining me for thisWhoWhatWhy podcast are two leading thinkers on reimagining how we measure economic health and well-being: Jacob Hacker, professor of political science at Yale, and Jonathan Cohen from the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
In my latest Califonria Sun podcast Sara Fenske Bahat, the former interim chief executive of San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, explores the interplay between art, politics, and institutional responsibility. Bahat explains the museum’s mission and history leading up to a crisis involving pro-Palestinian protests, questions of free speech, and accusations of antisemitism that ultimately led her to step down. She reflects on that decision, her concerns about safety within the museum, and the broader implications for arts institutions nationwide.
As passion runs high on the extremes, so does apathy about this election, about democracy, and about any kind of participation in our civic life. This raises the question: Whose responsibility is it to ensure our civic participation?
In this WhoWhatWhy podcast, I examine the reasons for diminished engagement in American democracy with Yale political scientist Kevin J. Elliott. Elliott argues in his book Democracy for Busy People that many well-intentioned reforms actually exclude and discourage potential voters, especially those struggling to make ends meet. He proposes a radically new approach, emphasizing accessibility, inclusivity, and flexibility, to ensure everyone has a voice in the political process.
When did giving the weather report become a political act worthy of death threats? For years, we got mad at TV weather forecasters if it rained on our picnic when they predicted a clear day. Today, just explaining the “why” behind the weather can get you fired — or even murdered.
In this recent WhoWhatWhy podcast I talk with Chris Gloninger, former chief meteorologist at KCCI-TV in Iowa, who faced this chilling reality when his climate change coverage sparked harassment and death threats. His story exposes a troubling trend: the erosion of respect for expertise and facts, even in realms as fundamental as weather reporting.
The decision this week in the Purdue Pharma case emphasizes how the bankruptcy system protects some and fails others, and how the rich and powerful manipulate it to their advantage while perpetuating race, gender, and financial inequality.
My guest Melissa Jacoby (author of "UNJUST DEBTS: How Our Bankruptcy System Makes America More Unequal") is a legal scholar focused on bankruptcy and debt.
Jacoby reveals how the bankruptcy system not only falls short in providing basic debt relief to struggling families, but also how lawyers for big enterprises have transformed bankruptcy into a legal Swiss Army knife, impacting everything from sexual harassment, health care and police violence to employment discrimination and the opioid crisis.
The Battle of Seattle, the 1999 protests against the World Trade Organization, marked a major turning point not just for an anti-globalization movement, but for the way we would come to see the world between that protest and the rise of the populist right in 2015.
The direct line between those protests and the election of Donald Trump 16 years later is indelible.
It's a story full of enduring lessons about people and power in an age of ascendant corporate influence.
Talking to me in this podcast is DW Gibson, an accomplished oral historian whose new book One Week to Change the World draws on over 100 original interviews with organizers, officials, observers, and more to bring those momentous days to vivid life.
The Supreme Court has been eroding democracy for decades. In my recent WhoWhatWhy conversation with Joshua Douglas (The Court v. The Voters: The Troubling Story of How the Supreme Court Has Undermined Voting Rights) he reveals that since the 1970s, the US Supreme Court has been actively destabilizing democracy in the United States.
In this week’s TalkCocktail podcast, Nicholas Kristof, long-time NY Times journalist and two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, talks to me about his new memoir, "Chasing Hope." He takes me on a deeply personal journey through a career spanning more than four decades. Kristof's unwavering commitment to exposing injustice and giving voice to the voiceless has taken him to the far corners of the globe, from the front lines of conflicts to the heart of humanitarian crises, as he has borne witness to some of the most significant events of our time.
Like every social construct, espeically those impacting women, the divorce landscape is changing. and as usual, California is setting the path. After all, California was the first state to introduce no-fault divorce in 1970 under then-Gov. Ronald Reagan, and celebrity divorces make lots of headlines. My guest on this California Sun podcast, Lauren Petkin, has been practicing family law in Los Angeles for 36 years. She lays out today's divorce landscape, including mediation vs. litigation, the rise in prenups, collaborative divorce, alimony reforms, and the use of private judges.
There is still hope for local news. Over the years, the Pulitzer Prize for “breaking news reporting” has typically been awarded to major legacy media brands. However, this year a hyperlocal online publication, the Santa Cruz Lookout, received the prestigious honor for its coverage of the once-in-a-century floods that devastated Santa Cruz in January 2023. On this week’s California Sun podcast I talk with Ken Doctor, who founded the Lookout in 2020, details how the newsroom covered the floods, and how it has emerged as a potential model for the future of local journalism.
Can elections be predicted like hurricanes or sporting events? American University professor Allan Lichtman believes so, and he has the track record to prove it. Using his unique “13 Keys to the White House” system, Lichtman has, according to him, correctly predicted the outcome of 10 out of the last 10 presidential elections.
In this episode of my WhoWhatWhy podcast, I talk with Lichtman to unpack his groundbreaking method, which goes beyond fleeting polling numbers to consider the complex interplay of 13 immutable forces that, he says, determine who will occupy the Oval Office.
Like a shark, if we don't keep moving forward, we die. James Pethokoukis, a renowned economic policy expert, shares insights from his groundbreaking work, "The Conservative Futurist." Pethokoukis presents a captivating vision of a future where technological advancements and environmental preservation harmoniously coexist. Where the intersection of technology, culture, and politics, and discovery join to embrace a bold, future-oriented mindset. One that could lead us to a world of abundance and wonder.
In "The Guarantee," Natalie Foster argues that our current economic system is failing too many Americans, despite signs of growth. As millennials and Gen Z build wealth amidst the greatest transfer of wealth in history, stubborn pockets of economic stagnation persist.
Foster explores what it would take to create an economy that works for everyone, questioning whether the government should guarantee basic rights like housing, healthcare, education, and a living wage. Drawing on mainstream and heterodox ideas, she passionately argues for a radical rethinking of the relationship between government, the economy, and the people, viewing guaranteed economic rights as an urgent necessity.
On this week’s WhoWhatWhy podcast, I sit down with the lead author of that report, military sociologist Marek N. Posard, to examine these alarming threats and what we can do to counter them.
Imagine a small, seemingly innocuous hack on a local water treatment plant. A carefully timed disinformation campaign, powered by the latest in artificial intelligence. The physical security of our voting machines compromised. Suddenly, we have the perfect storm that could bring down the integrity of the entire 2024 presidential election and our democracy along with it
This isn’t just a hypothetical scenario — it’s a very real possibility outlined in a chilling new report from the RAND Corporation, titled, The 2024 U.S. Election, Trust, and Technology: Preparing for a Perfect Storm of Threats to Democracy.
On thisWhoWhatWhy podcast, we explore the potential for a total reimagining of our beleaguered American democracy.
Joining me is Maxwell Stearns, a professor of law at the University of Maryland Carey School of Law. An esteemed author of numerous articles and books on the Constitution, the Supreme Court, and legal economics, Stearns’s latest work is Parliamentary America: The Least Radical Means of Radically Repairing Our Broken Democracy.
Climate change is not just threatening our planet, but also our minds. In my WhoWhatWhy podcast, I examine the hidden mental health crisis triggered by climate change with neuroscientist-turned-environmental-journalist Clayton Page Aldern.
Aldern takes us on an eye-opening journey through cutting-edge research, exposing the ways our changing environment is physically altering our brains and behavior. From cognitive impairment sparked by rising temperatures to the psychological aftermath of natural disasters, he paints a haunting portrait of a crisis that has been largely ignored.
A Rhodes scholar who holds advanced degrees in neuroscience and public policy from the University of Oxford, Aldern is a research affiliate at the Center for Studies in Demography and Ecology and the author of the new book The Weight of Nature: How a Changing Climate Changes Our Brains.
Max Podemski is an urban planner, writer, and illustrator who currently serves as a transportation planner for the city of Los Angeles. In his new book, “A Paradise of Small Houses,” he traces the evolution of American housing types, from the Philadelphia row house and Chicago workers cottage to the California bungalow. Podemski argues, in my recent California Sun podcast, that California’s rich history of desirable multifamily housing could hold a solution to the state’s housing crisis.
In today's digital era, the unseen threads of algorithms intricately weave through our daily lives. They significantly mold our preferences, decisions, and worldviews. At the core of our modern digital experiences, algorithms curate almost every aspect of our online existence—from the articles we read to the music that we listen to and even the social interactions we engage in. This pervasive influence has subtly streamlined cultural diversity and complexity, ushering us into a domain that my guest, Kyle Chayka, aptly terms "Filterworld."
In this realm, our experiences are increasingly filtered through algorithmic formulas, aiming not just to predict but to shape our desires. The result is an online landscape that often leads to a uniform culture, devoid of the chaos and ingenuity that fuel human creativity.
Between the shimmer of America’s coastlines an inferno of anger and disillusionment consumes the heartland. This week’s WhoWhatWhy podcast explores this social and political divide with Tom Schaller and Paul Waldman, guided by their book, White Rural Rage.
Armed with journalistic insight and scholarly acumen, Schaller and Waldman unpack the reality of white rural America’s turmoil. They argue that Trump’s MAGA movement transcends a mere campaign catchphrase to symbolize the deep-seated rage of communities ensnared by economic decay, technological neglect, and cultural isolation.
Sports gambling is a multi-billion-dollar business, with 38 states legalizing sports betting. The story of Shohei Ohtani's interpreter reminds us that sports and betting can still be a dangerous mix. And yet, Las Vegas, the betting and sports capital, was the home of this year's Super Bowl. Against this backdrop, the story of Pete Rose becomes even more poignant.
Bestselling author Keith O'Brien's latest book, "Charlie Hustle," offers a captivating chronicle of Rose, one of baseball's most iconic and controversial figures. From a working-class kid to the pinnacle of baseball glory, Rose's journey and his dramatic fall from grace due to gambling scandals reflect a changing America and its beloved pastime. O'Brien's narrative delves deep into the complexities of Rose's character, exploring how he became the center of a storm that changed not only his life but also the fabric of the game of baseball.
In this WhoWhatWhy podcast, I’m joined by national security journalist Andrew Cockburn. He exposes the little- known links between the Pentagon’s military-technology complex at the dark heart of Silicon Valley.
Drawing from his recent cover story for Harper’s, entitled “The Pentagon’s Silicon Valley Problem,” Cockburn delves into the military’s controversial alliance with tech behemoths.
This collaboration ropes in some of Silicon Valley’s most contentious figures, such as Peter Thiel and Palmer Luckey, further complicating the moral implications of this union.
The Village Voice existed at a unique moment in journalistic history. My guest, journalist Tricia Romano, has penned 'The Freaks Came Out to Write,' the definitive oral history of The Village Voice. It was a publication that not only captured but also shaped the zeitgeist of New York City from the paper's inception in 1955 until its closure in 2018.
The Voice was more than a newspaper; it was a cultural beacon, a meeting point of news, culture, and lifestyle, embodying the ever-evolving spirit of the city. It's one of those rare instances where a city and a publication converge to capture something unique in the annals of journalism, akin to Playboy and Chicago in the '50s, Rolling Stone and San Francisco in the '60s, and Texas Monthly defining the so-called New South of the '70s.
A recent suggestion for a bumper sticker reading “Trump First, Putin Second, America Last” is more than just a witty jab at current political dynamics; it encapsulates the historical depth of right-wing politics in the United States.
On thisWhoWhatWhy podcast I’m joined by Jacob Heilbrunn, editor of The National Interest, who offers a compelling analysis of the right wing’s enduring fascination with authoritarian figures.
Drawing on his latest work, America Last: The Right’s Century-Long Romance With Foreign Dictators, Heilbrunn helps us understand the conservative admiration for past autocrats like Mussolini, Franco, and Pinochet. He draws a direct line from these historical figures to today’s political landscape, where figures like Viktor Orban, Donald Trump, and Vladimir Putin are seen not just as authoritarian leaders but as exemplars in the fight against liberalism and progressivism.
Professor Melissa Kearney, talks to me about the overlooked economic and social impacts of marriage and family structures and her book, "The Two-Parent Privilege." Kearney's research reveals the decline in marriage rates, particularly among non-college graduates, as an economic crisis with far-reaching consequences. She argues that the decrease in two-parent households, from 77% in 1980 to 63% today, affects children's behavior, education, and the class divide. Kearney emphasizes the economic imperatives of this issue, moving beyond the traditional cultural and political debates.
Matthias Gafni, an investigative reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle, delves into the darkest corners of the streets of San Francisco. For a recent project, he attempted to attribute names, faces, and families to 24 overdose deaths during a particularly harrowing week in 2023. They were not mere statistics but individuals with stories: a recent immigrant dreaming of a new life; a star student and athlete; a mechanic striving to escape his past, among others. Each narrative sheds light on the complex interplay of drug use, mental illness, and profound, systemic issues fueling the city’s drug crisis.
As we look at the global political landscape, we see a resurgence of movements labeled as populist. Propelled by rapid social and technological changes, economic upheavals, and complex migration patterns, people around the world are in search of simple solutions to increasingly complex problems. This week my guest on the WhoWhatWhy podcast Steve Babson, argues that this represents a serious misinterpretation of the concept of populism.
In this podcast, I welcome Laura Pappano, author of "School Moms: Parent Activism, Partisan Politics, and the Battle for Public Education," to explore the intense politicization of American public schools. Pappano, with over thirty years of experience, delves into the far-right's efforts to control education, highlighting the shift from parental support to activism amidst challenges like local school failures and the pandemic. This conversation sheds light on the battle for the soul of our nation, emphasizing the critical role of public schools in democratic society and the ongoing fight to preserve them as a cornerstone of inclusion, hope, and belonging.
Do we have the control over our own lives that we think we do? According to Brian Klaas, in his mind-bending new book FLUKE: Chance, Chaos, and Why Everything We Do Matters, we control nothing, but we influence everything.
Think about the unexpected twists of fate that shape our lives. How many times have you stumbled upon a life-changing moment purely by accident? The party you almost skipped, where you met your significant other or a lifelong friend. Or that time you got lost in a neighborhood, only to find your future home. And in a more somber reflection, those who, by sheer chance, overslept or got stuck in traffic and missed their flights on September 11th.
We operate under what Klaas calls the 'delusion of individualism.' But it’s small changes in the world that often result in big changes."
In this week’s WhoWhatWhy podcast — marking the 51st anniversary of Roe v. Wade — I talk with Felicia Kornbluh, professor of history and gender studies at the University of Vermont. In our far-ranging conversation, we delve into significant shifts in the battle for reproductive rights following the Dobbs decision.
Kornbluh, drawing insights from her book, A Woman’s Life Is a Human Life, sheds light on the resurgence of effective activism in states like California, Ohio, and Kansas.
She explores how this wave of reproductive rights activism, ignited by Dobbs, is emerging as a key driver of political participation in 2024, potentially impacting the upcoming elections at local, state, and federal levels.
In a rapidly changing media landscape, where giants like Conde Nast, the Los Angeles Times, Sports Illustrated, and the Washington Post face massive layoffs, the very nature of news is transforming and it’s impacting our democracy.
I talk with Mickey Huff, director of Project Censored, about the critical state of the media, who’s to blame and about his book "STATE OF THE FREE PRESS 2024." We delve into the top 25 underreported stories of 2023, and examine how corporate and political influences shape news reporting today.
Amid widespread concern about our politics, young, passionate individuals like Devon Murphy-Anderson and Alex Berrios are making a significant impact. In this week’s WhoWhatWhy podcast, we delve into their efforts to turn Florida blue.
Murphy-Anderson and Berrios, through their initiative Mi Vecino, are revitalizing the grassroots political scene in Florida. They’re particularly focused on engaging Latino and Hispanic voters, not just during election cycles but throughout the year. They explain how this approach marks a departure from traditional, election-focused voter contact strategies.
The U.S. economy has shifted from traditional manufacturing giants to tech behemoths such as Amazon and Apple, driving significant economic and social changes. This evolution, while beneficial, also stirs fears about corporate power and change. Today's digital landscape, according to my guest, Tom Wheeler, mirrors the Gilded Age, suggesting a repeat of history's paradoxes of innovation and corporate excess. Wheeler, former FCC chairman and author of "Techlash," draws parallels between these eras, highlighting how digital entrepreneurs, like their industrial predecessors, create groundbreaking products while often engaging in questionable practices. He talks to me about these dynamics and the need for regulatory oversight in the digital age.
The U.S. economy has shifted from traditional manufacturing giants to tech behemoths such as Amazon and Apple, driving significant economic and social changes. This evolution, while beneficial, also stirs fears about corporate power and change. Today's digital landscape, according to my guest, Tom Wheeler, mirrors the Gilded Age, suggesting a repeat of history's paradoxes of innovation and corporate excess. Wheeler, former FCC chairman and author of "Techlash," draws parallels between these eras, highlighting how digital entrepreneurs, like their industrial predecessors, create groundbreaking products while often engaging in questionable practices. He talks to me about these dynamics and the need for regulatory oversight in the digital age.
On this week’s WhoWhatWhy podcast we talk with journalist Tina Nguyen, author of The MAGA Diaries: My Surreal Adventures Inside the Right Wing and How I Got Out. A one-time MAGA fellow traveler, Nguyen delves deep into the heart of the movement.
Challenging the notion that it’s merely a product of Trump’s influence, Nguyen — who journeyed from a conservative student to disenchanted MAGA-member to jobs at Politico, Vanity Fair, and now Puck — exposes the intricate network of well-funded conservative organizations that have shaped right-wing politics going all the way back to the 1960s.
McKay Coppins' 'Romney, A Reckoning' transcends a mere political biography, Coppins highlights Mitt Romney as the final presidential candidate of a now-transformed party, portraying him as a historical footnote. Coppins adeptly elucidates Romney's journey and the pivotal role he played in the party's evolution.
On the third anniversary of January 6th, this WhoWhatWhy podcast features Brian Stelter, former CNN host and author of Network of Lies: The Epic Saga of Fox News, Donald Trump, and the Battle for American Democracy.
It’s clear that Fox News will likely play a key role in determining whether America remains a democracy, and Stelter provides a colonoscopy into Fox News’s influential role in shaping U.S. politics, especially post-2020 election.
He examines the network’s complex relationship with truth, and why it’s been so successful in conning a huge group of low information voters. He shares unknown information about key figures like Tucker Carlson and Rupert Murdoch.
The podcast also explains Sean Hannity’s clever avoidance of fallout and Carlson’s impact on the GOP and white nationalism.
Stelter discusses the details of the billion-dollar defamation lawsuit by Dominion Voting Systems, revealing how Fox News perpetuated election falsehoods and its ongoing effect on the decay of American democracy.
On October 7th, a pivotal event in Israel echoed globally, deeply affecting the local Israeli community. This impact extended worldwide, influencing international politics and discourse, from the Red Sea to capitals like Moscow, Washington, and Beijing. In the U.S., notably in Los Angeles and San Francisco, streets filled with protests, mirroring societal divides. These events highlighted the interplay of geopolitics and history, shaping future narratives about Israel, Judaism, and anti-Semitism. In California, local issues mirrored these global dynamics, showcasing our world's interconnectedness. Daniel Sokatch, CEO of the New Israel Fund since 2009, is a key figure in this narrative. A former CEO of the Jewish Community Federation in San Francisco and founder of what is now Bend the Arc, he's recognized as a major Jewish influencer. Author of 'Can We Talk About Israel: A Guide for the Curious, Confused, and Conflicted' (2021), Sokatch is a notable author and commentator.
My WhoWhatWhy conversation with legendary campaign strategist Stuart Stevens, whose new book THE CONSPIRACY TO END AMERICA looks deep into the GOP’s True Colors and its dying future.
Jonathan Taplin, a film producer, scholar, and director emeritus of the Annenberg Innovation Lab, is a vocal critic of excessive techno-optimism. In his book, "The End of Reality: How Four Billionaires are Selling a Fantasy Future of the Metaverse, Mars, and Crypto," he argues that the California-centric billionaires Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, and Marc Andreessen are diverting public attention from critical issues. He criticizes the media's role in glorifying them and advocates for a cultural shift that emphasizes real solutions over escapist narratives.
My California Sun podcast with Jonathan Taplan:
The middle class stands as the most successful demographic in world history. By the time we reach 2030, it's projected that the fifth billionth person will have joined its ranks. This journey, which began just over two centuries ago by people in pursuit of a better life, has sparked an unparalleled global transformation.
In today's landscape, where half of the global population finds themselves at or above the middle-class threshold, the work of my guestHomi Kharas shines a light on their journey from poverty to empowerment. He outlines this future in his new book, The Rise of the Global Middle Class: How the Search for the Good Life Can Change the World.
My conversation with Homi Kharas:
Robert M. Sapolsky, a Stanford neurobiologist and MacArthur “genius” fellow, challenges our deeply ingrained beliefs about free will. Building on his seminal 2017 work "Behave," which explored the dynamics of nature and nurture, Sapolsky's latest book, "Determined: A Science of Life Without Free Will," suggests that science, medicine, and philosophy may actually support determinism over free will. As societal discourse increasingly embraces a culture of victimhood, he questions the quintessentially Californian belief in personal agency.
My California Sun conversation with Robert Sapolsky:
In this WhoWhatWhy podcast I talk with Scott Keeter, the senior survey adviser at Pew Research Center. In this role, he guides all of Pew’s research and polling. An expert on American public opinion and political behavior, he is a co-author of four books on the subject.
Keeter discusses the complexities of modern polling amid a climate of skepticism and change. As the 2024 elections approach, Keeter confronts the polling industry’s pressing issues: dwindling response rates and the public’s eroding trust in institutions.
My conversation with Scott Keeter:
As our nation teeters on the knife's edge of democracy, it's imperative to understand the historical roots of our current predicament. Heather Cox Richardson offers a deep dive into the intricate weave of America's past and present. A Professor of History at Boston College, Richardson is not only an acclaimed author but also the influential voice behind the daily Substack 'Letters From an American.'
In an era marked by relentless political turmoil, authoritarian threats, and pervasive societal corruption, Richardson's work serves as a crucial reminder: these challenges are not sudden anomalies but the culmination of a long, complex history.
Through her latest book, 'Democracy Awakening,' Richardson provides more than a mere chronicle of events. She offers a critical narrative that links our past to the present, shedding light on how America, once a beacon of democracy, now hovers dangerously close to autocracy. Her analysis is not just about understanding our history; it's about charting a course back to democratic principles.My conversation with Heather Cox Richardson:
In this special WhoWhatWhy podcast, I talk with Zeke Faux, whose book Number Go Up: Inside Crypto’s Wild Rise and Staggering Fall (Crown Currency, September 2023), unpacks the crypto phenomenon and its disintegration, culminating in Sam Bankman-Fried’s (SBF) conviction for fraud and potential 110-year sentence.
Faux, a Bloomberg investigative reporter who has covered SBF and the crypto craze since the beginning, spent time with SBF in the Bahamas and sat in the courtroom every day of the trial. Faux’s investigation into the $3 trillion crypto delusion offers a sobering look at our financial epoch which is defined by SBF’s rise and fall. My conversation with Zeke Faux:
On this week’s WhoWhatWhy podcast, I explore the intricate landscape of global terrorism, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the geopolitical reverberations of recent events.
My guest is Kenneth Katzman, a senior adviser with The Soufan Group and a preeminent expert on the Middle East. Specializing in Iran, the Persian Gulf states, Iraq, and Afghanistan, Katzman has previously served as a senior analyst at the Congressional Research Service and an analyst at the CIA.
My conversation with Kenneth Katzman:
Sam Ramani, is a distinguished Oxford scholar specializing in international relations. Ramani, also a member of London's Royal United Services Institute, brings a wealth of firsthand experience from Russia and Ukraine, as well as academic insights into Russia's military involvements in Chechnya and Syria.
Ramani describes our global politics as increasingly volatile due to the erosion of international law and the rise of a multipolar world. He views Russia's invasion of Ukraine not merely as a breach of sovereignty but as a symptom of a larger, systemic decay in international norms.
My conversation with Sam Ramani:
In a digital age that often alienates us from nature, ecologist and author Carl Safina offers a transformative tale in 'Alfie & Me.' Rescuing Alfie, a near-death baby screech owl, with his wife Patricia, Safina challenges conventional ideas about interspecies boundaries and our philosophical relationship with the world. Set amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the story serves as a poignant reminder that life's deepest lessons often come from unexpected sources. A MacArthur "genius" and Stony Brook professor, Safina's work illuminates the intricate tapestry of life, nature, and human experience.
My conversation with Carl Safina:
On this week’s WhoWhatWhy podcast, Harvard professor Daniel Ziblatt, co-author of the new book Tyranny of the Minority, takes a hard look at the institutional inertia and political extremism that is threatening the future of American democracy.
Ziblatt argues that the nation’s precarious condition is defined by two contrasting views of what George Washington called “the last great experiment for promoting human happiness”: one that aspires toward a multiracial, multicultural democracy focused on equity and inclusion, and another that leans toward authoritarianism — a dichotomy Ziblatt says is epitomized by the events of January 5 and 6.
My WhoWhatWhy conversation with Daniel Ziblatt:
Updated October 8, 2023 — The podcast below was recorded earlier this week before the horrific events in Israel and Gaza. However, while the focus of the podcast is on Israel’s efforts to halt Iran’s nuclear program, it clearly lays out what could be considered the precursor to the Hamas attack. The weakness and division within Israel, the broad effort to isolate Iran through the Abraham Accords, and attempts to establish peace between Israel and Saudi Arabia are all contributing factors.
October 6, 2023 — While Iran may not be dominating today’s headlines, its nuclear ambitions are as fervent as ever. Equally unyielding is Israel’s determination — covert or otherwise — to thwart these ambitions.
On this week’s exclusive WhoWhatWhy podcast, Yonah Jeremy Bob, a senior analyst for the Jerusalem Post and former high-ranking Israeli official, pulls back the curtain on Israel’s covert operations against Iran.
Bob’s latest book, Target Tehran, offers a rare glimpse into Israel’s multilayered strategy to counter Iran through sabotage, cyberwarfare, assassination, and secret diplomacy.
My WhoWhatWhy conversation with Yonah Jeremy Bob:
Our era is defined by trauma — from COVID-19 to climate change, divisive politics to economic pressures, gun violence and generational upheavals. And the collective effect of all these traumas can make it pretty hard to face the day.
Robert J. Lifton, my guest on this week’sWhoWhatWhy podcast, has inspiring and realistic ideas for coping with it all, as suggested by the title of his latest book, Surviving Our Catastrophes: Resilience and Renewal from Hiroshima to COVID-19.
The 97-year-old Lifton, a renowned psychiatrist, is also the author of the National Book Award–winning Death in Life: Survivors of Hiroshima and Losing Reality: On Cults, Cultism, and the Mindset of Political and Religious Zealotry.
Teams and athletes often define more than games; they encapsulate eras and collective memories. While some teams symbolize a specific year, like the 1998 Yankees, others represent an entire era, such as the Celtics from 1960 to 1966. Rarely, individual athletes like Tiger Woods in 2000 become the face of a time period. Even rarer is a year that defines an entire league, and for the modern NBA, that was the 1987-1988 season. It was a pinnacle year featuring iconic battles and drama with legends like Magic Johnson and Michael Jordan. Today, we're joined by Rich Cohen, a New York Times bestselling author and columnist, to discuss his latest book, "When the Game was War," which delves into this unforgettable NBA season.
My conversation with Rich Cohn:
In this WhoWhatWhy podcast, I talk with Harvard Law Professor John Coates who discusses his new book, "The Problem of Twelve," which warns against the alarming concentration of financial power in the U.S. Four index funds control 25% of the S&P 500, and along with dominant private equity firms and "too big to fail" banks, they wield outsized influence over the economy and politics. Coates argues that this lack of transparency and extreme concentration of power threatens not just the economy, but U.S. democracy itself.
My conversation with John Coates:
As we mark the 60th Annerversay of the March on Washington, it takes us back to the issues of mid-century America. So it's only appropraite to be joined by Drew Gilpin Faust, a Bancroft and Francis Parkman Prize winner and former Harvard president. Her memoir, "Necessary Trouble: Growing Up in Midcentury," is more than a personal story; it's a lens into the pivotal moments of the 1950s and '60s. Faust's life personifies the era's turning points, illustrating that history isn't just a collection of facts but a tapestry woven through lives lived. Her journey from racial and gendered assumptions to civil rights activism serves as a microcosm of the societal transformations that continue to shape us today.
My conversation with Drew Galpin Faust:
In the 1960s, baby boomers captured the world's attention with their youthful zeal, setting the cultural tone for fifty years. Today, as they age, the spotlight has shifted to aging, reflecting our concerns about older leaders and a fondness for bygone times. The adage "60 is the new 50" is common, yet we must question the reality of modern aging. Has our progress truly allowed us to age more gracefully, and are there immutable aspects of aging? This is what Dr. Rosanne Leipzig examines in her new book "Honest Aging."
My conversation with Dr. Rosanne Leipzig:
Today we idolize those who excel in nearly every sport, viewing them as heroes and role models, and they are among the highest earners in our society.
Undeniably, these individuals bring innate talents to their respective sports. However, these talents alone are insufficient. Their success hinges on what they do with their abilities—the discipline, practice, conditioning, resilience, and dedication to their sport.
The question we face today is what we can learn from their success. In all aspects of our lives, some, if not all, of the skills exhibited by these athletes are crucial. How we utilize our talents, how we 'come to play' every day, as the saying goes, can make the difference between success and failure in lif
The narratives we construct internally are what distinguish greatness from mediocrity.These are some of the topics discussed by the great Sally Jenkins, in this podcast and in her new book, "THE RIGHT CALL."
It appears we're not alone. No one enjoys solitude, and based on yesterday's testimony, we seem to have company in the cosmos.
Science fiction has certainly presented us with a myriad of interpretations of what might exist beyond our planet. However, the individual manner in which we conceptualize the possibility of extraterrestrial life becomes a sort of Rorschach test—reflecting our worldviews, our notions of life, and our innate longing to connect with something larger than ourselves, even on an intergalactic level.
This flight of imagination is a significant element of what my guest, Jamie Green, discusses in her book, The Possibility of Life. In it, she delves into our evolving understanding of the cosmos and underscores our need to pose an even deeper question: What does it mean to be human?
My conversation with Jamie Green:
In the latest WhoWhatWhy podcast, I talk with award-winning author Sam Quinones about the growing crisis of fentanyl in America, arguing it's transforming not just individual lives, but also affecting cities and society at large. Highlighting the impact of potent synthetic drugs like fentanyl and methamphetamine, Quinones links their widespread availability to increased mental illness, homelessness, and declining urban quality of life. He asserts that the traditional voluntary approach to addiction treatment is outdated and advocates for a fundamental rethinking of how we understand and address drug addiction. Moreover, Quinones challenges the notion of "minor" drug possession and questions the concept of "safe injection sites," given the lethal nature of today's street drugs.
Quinones, known for his award-winning books The Least of Us and Dreamland, delves into the unprecedented challenges posed by potent synthetic drugs, the exacerbating role of homelessness, and the systemic failures that have allowed the crisis to spiral out of control.
My WhoWhatWhy conversation with Sam Quinones:
Exactly 78 years ago this week, the first atomic bomb test took place in Alamogordo, New Mexico. A scene so profound it was likened to witnessing creation.
Our guest is Greg Mitchell, author of "The Beginning or the End", a book that explores the crossroads of science, politics, and Hollywood in the Atomic Age." revealing how an early movie about Oppenheimer became pro-bomb propaganda and shaped public perception for over 75 years.
As Christopher Nolan's "Oppenheimer" nears release, Mitchell's insights into our nuclear past become ever more relevant as we look at the influences of government and military on the media.
My conversation with Greg Mitchell:
Today, every major news network is steered by women; Fox, NBC, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, CNN, not to mention leading papers like The Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, and even the New York Times. A scenario that would have been scoffed at just two decades ago, but now made possible thanks to the tireless efforts of countless trailblazers. Pioneers like Margaret Fuller, Nellie Bly, and Ida B. Wells paved the way for extraordinary women like Martha Gellhorn, Rachel Carson, and Joan Didion. Each of these women not only broke barriers but also shaped journalism as we know it, in a field still primarily controlled by men.
Brooke Kroeger, in her new book "Undaunted: How Women Changed American Journalism." tells the story of the relentless pursuit of truth, and the transformative power of journalism when in women's hands.
My conversation with Brooke Kroeger:
Unleashing the power of AI and supercomputers, we're on the brink of a cosmic revelation. The creation of galaxies in code, a feat akin to the invention of the telescope, is revolutionizing our understanding of the universe.
Renowned cosmologist Andrew Pontzen, harnessing the might of these computational behemoths, is leading us into a new era where virtual worlds mirror reality, offering unprecedented insights into our cosmos. His book, 'The Universe in a Box,' explores how these simulations are not just pushing the boundaries of cosmology, but also transforming diverse fields from finance to disease forecasting.
My conversation with Andrew Pontzen:
Our celebration of Juneteenth is a direct result of the civil rights struggles of the 1960s. The battles led by Martin Luther King Jr. and many others created an enduring legacy on which the continued fight for civil rights rests. But what happens when this legacy is manipulated, distorted, and appropriated to further agendas far removed from the original purpose? What does it mean when various causes are labeled the “civil rights struggle of our time?” Does it dilute the impact of the original battle? When wielded in the wrong hands, could it even be seen as an affront to 50 years of civil rights progress? These questions form the central theme of my conversation today with Hajar Yazdiha.
Hajar is an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Southern California, and she has critically examined how various movements, including those on the far right, have appropriated the symbols and rhetoric of the civil rights era to advance their cause. She examines this in her new book The Struggle for the People’s King: How Politics Transforms the Memory of the Civil Rights Movement.
My WhoWhatWhy conversation with Hajar Yazdiha:
The recent congressional budget battles have underscored the scarcity of public funds for space, science, and technology. This has paved the way for the private sector, a world that Ashlee Vance delves into in this week’s WhoWhatWhy podcast and in his new book, When the Heavens Went On Sale: The Misfits and Geniuses Racing to Put Space Within Reach.
My WhoWhatWhy conversation with Ashley Vance:
The concept of American individualism, is a fundamental aspect of our culture and the American dream. Historically shaped by the westward expansion, manifest destiny, and the Puritan theology of self-reliance, this ideology is now facing a shift.
Current trends suggest that a growing number of young Americans are rejecting the traditional American dream. We'll explore the reasons behind this shift, questioning whether societal complexities, generational changes, or the absorption of 60s and boomer values into the culture are influencing this trend. Despite these changes, why is there a lack of reflection in our politics? This is what Alissa Quart writes about in her new book Bootstrapped: Liberating Ourselves from the American Dream.
My conversation with Alissa Quart:
One of the great ironies of the world today is that while the problems we face, particularly with respect to climate, must, if they’re ever to be solved, bring the world closer together in seeking solutions. One of the ways that we can come together via travel or in person is also one of the supreme carbon-intensive things that we do to harm the planet.
And yet, the airline industry has committed to at least making the effort towards zero emissions by 2050. Like so much of what must save us from the ravages of climate change, technology lies at the heart of the solution. Along with it, the forces of the market, of innovators, investors, entrepreneurs, and scientists, must move with the same vision that the Wright brothers took to create the idea of flying itself.
Telling this modern story is renowned British journalist Christopher de Bellaigue, a historian, and journalist, known for his reporting and books on the Middle East and environmental and ethical issues. His latest is Flying Green: Flying Green: On the Frontiers of a New Aviation.
My WhoWhatWhy conversation with Christopher de Bellaigue:
In the early 2000s, a significant media-business mistake emerged: the belief that website traffic is a commodity like oil, which would generate increased revenue as advertising improved. However, unlike other commodities, traffic lacked scarcity. The internet made traffic virtually infinite, posing challenges for new media-business models.
In this podcast, Ben Smith, former founding editor-in-chief of BuzzFeed, former media columnist for The New York Times, and author of Traffic: Genius, Rivalry, and Delusion in the Billion Dollar Race to Go Viral, discusses the rise and fall of new media like Gawker and BuzzFeed, the impact and consequences of megaplatforms like Facebook and Twitter, and the shifting landscape of contemporary journalism.
Smith examines the fluctuating trust in legacy news brands and the growing power of individual voices over faceless institutions, drawing parallels to developments in Hollywood, sports, and politics. Smith highlights the recent decline in both social media’s influence, and as a destination for news and information, and how this has led to more readers visiting homepages directly. He also emphasizes that conservative media outlets appear to have derived the most valuable insights from the social media era, adapting their strategies to thrive in the changing landscape.
Looking ahead, Smith suggests that journalism must help beleaguered consumers navigate the vast information landscape by providing context and a clear voice. He speculates that this may involve a return to some of the principles of print journalism — concision and an editorial perspective — while adapting to the digital era’s demands.
My conversation with Ben Smith:
Hernan Diaz was just awarded the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for his novel, "Trust."
Last year, I had the opportunity to talk with Diaz about the book, his perspective on the Gilded Age, the persistent myths surrounding wealth, and the impact of these narratives on society as a whole. We also explored how the affluent can essentially "buy" their own reality amidst the enigmatic allure of money. Diaz's novel couldn't be more relevant to our current times.
My conversation with Hernan Diaz:
As software takes over our lives — from hospitals to schools and even our national infrastructure — we’re facing an explosive wave of cyberattacks that could threaten our very existence.
The US — a hacker’s favorite playground — is a ticking time bomb, with 80 percent of its crucial systems tied to the internet and in private hands, with ZERO government control.
Join me in my WhoWhatWhy podcast for a conversation with New York Times cybersecurity reporter Nicole Perlroth. We are diving deep into her book This is How They Tell Me The World Ends, freshly updated with new revelations.
My WhoWhatWhy conversation with Nicole Perlroth:
My WhoWhatWhy conversation with Jeff Sharlet about “The Undertow.” He explores the complex relationship between religion, religious nationalism, right-wing politics, and how these forces have intertwined with Trumpism and are fueling a slow civil war
My WhoWhatWhy conversation with Jeff Sharlet:
Struggling to find time for various tasks, our multi-colored Google calendars signify the complexity of the 21st century. The TV show Friends, popular across generations, nostalgically reminds us of simpler times in the early '90s without constant digital distractions.
This era allowed for unstructured, agenda-free time spent with friends, which now seems like a quaint memory. Nowadays, we hang out less frequently and with fewer friends, often while multitasking or participating in structured activities.
The once-common late-night dorm room hangouts have become nostalgic. Are we losing something valuable by giving up this unstructured time? Sheila Liming explores the potential disconnect between socializing and our ever-growing to-do lists in Hanging Out: The Radical Power of Killing Time.
My conversation with Sheila Liming:
We live in a world that's constantly evolving, driven by innovations in digital technology, AI, and space exploration. Yet, we often overlook the underlying physics that form the foundation of these advancements. The discoveries in physics of the past 120 years have truly shaped our world in ways that were once unimaginable. They were fueled by curiosity, serendipity, and the desire to ask "why?"
Dr. Suzie Sheehy, a physicist, science communicator, and academic has devoted her life to exploring the mysteries of our universe. In her groundbreaking new book, "The Matter of Everything," she delves into the incredible history of physics and the groundbreaking discoveries that have paved the way for the world we live in today.
My conversation with Dr. Suzie Sheehy:
Recent police shooting victims Tyre Nichols and Anthony Lowe highlight the ongoing trend of officer impunity. The recent report on the Louisville police department and Breonna Taylor further underscores this issue. Greater accountability is necessary for police improvement, but the responsibility extends beyond law enforcement to our legal system, courts, and elected officials.
UCLA law professor Joanna Schwartz, an expert in police accountability and public interest lawyering, has has studies the depths of police misconduct and details it in her new work Shielded: How the Police Became Untouchable.
My conversation with Joanna Schwartz:
It has been a momentous week for banks and markets. What some have dubbed an “extinction-level event” was, at its core, the failure of a couple of banks.
To help us put all of this into proper perspective, we are joined on this week’s WhoWhatWhy podcast by two distinguished economists, J. Bradford DeLong and Dean Baker.
DeLong served as deputy undersecretary of the treasury in the Clinton administration and is currently a professor of economics at the University of California, Berkeley. He is also the author of the substack Grasping Reality and the recently published book Slouching Towards Utopia: An Economic History of the Twentieth Century.
Baker co-founded the Center for Economic and Policy Research. His areas of research include housing and macroeconomics, intellectual property, Social Security, Medicare, and European labor markets. He has been credited as one of the first economists to have identified the 2007–08 United States housing bubble, and, in 2006, Baker predicted that “plunging housing investment will likely push the economy into recession.”
Together, they discuss the venture-capitalist libertarian overreaction to the event, as well as the way it has been massively misrepresented by all of the press, including the mainstream press.
They detail the differences between this event and the 2008–09 banking crisis, the power of contagion and rumor in the digital and social media age, and what actually transpired during the 36 hours the bank was shut down by the FDIC.
We discuss what this means for both small and regional banks, and for the “too big to fail” banks, which are now suddenly in favor.
While the whole story could be forgotten in a matter of weeks, the implications and downstream effects will be with us for quite some time.
My WhoWhatWhy conversation with Dean Baker and Brad DeLong:
The hacking of Sony Pictures back in 2014, by North Korea, made us all wonder about spies in Hollywood. Today, our paranoia tells us that the Chinese have spies everywhere. If they are checking on TikTok, they must be in Hollywood?
Well, during the Cold War, it turns out the studios were infiltrated with spies. One of those was a producer/director turned double agent named Boris Morros, and Jonathan Gill tells his story in Hollywood Double Agent: The True Tale of Boris Morros, Film Producer Turned Cold War Spy.
My conversation with Jonathan Gill:
The ever-evolving landscape of business, finance, entertainment, and medicine is often shaped by technological advancements and cultural changes. However, those in power during these changes often resist them and try to maintain their grip on the status quo, particularly if family is involved. This is exemplified in the TV show "Succession" and James B. Stewart's books, including "Disney Wars," "Den of Thieves," "Deep State," "Tangled Webs," and "Blood Sport."
The pandemic was a transformational event for the entertainment industry, but the #MeToo movement was also a catalyst for change, with Harvey Weinstein as its poster child. Additionally, the theatrical movie business faced pressure from the ongoing streaming wars, which have altered the fabric of Hollywood.All of these forces come together in the story of Sumner Redstone, his family, and his mistresses. Redstone was a one-time movie theater magnate and the owner of Paramount, Viacom, CBS, and Simon and Schuster. In his 90s, he was surrounded by hangers-on, adversaries, family members, and a group of women whose experiences highlighted the worst of Hollywood, even in modern times. When you add the worst of corporate governance to the mix, you have the story that James B. Stewart and Rachel Abrams tell in "
My conversation with James Stewart and Rachel Abrams:
J. Storrs Hall, author and futurist, who discusses why the promised technological advancements of the 1960s have yet to materialize.
Hall believes that technological stagnation on big projects began in the ’70s, fueled by factors such as the failure to adopt nuclear energy and the rise of a counterculture hostile to energy production, which has had devastating consequences on global wealth creation and distribution.He argues that future exponential growth and technological progress must be powered by advancements in nanotechnology, biotechnology, AI, and nuclear power, and issues a call to action for a future that matches the ambitious visions of 1960s science fiction writers. My WhoWhatWhy conversation with J. Storrs Hall
Joe Biden is the oldest President to take office in the past 234 years. He has a long public life, and has grown into the person and politician he is today. Biden was seen as the perfect antidote to Trump, but it is still uncertain if his preference for “normalcy” will enable him to be the 21st century President we need. Chris Whipple's new book, "The Fight of His Life: Inside Joe Biden's White House," explores this and more.
My conversation with Chris Whipple:
A recent Gallup survey of American concerns showed that foreign policy is nearly at the bottom of the list, with inflation and prices near the top. Other high-ranking topics include the economy in general, immigration, crime and violence, race, the environment, and, topping the list, the proper role of government.
The fact is that none of these problems can be solved without a thriving, healthy democracy to address their root causes and work together to find bipartisan solutions.
That's why it becomes clear that our collective angst about all of these issues is really about whether we have a strong enough democracy, both locally and nationally, to solve anything.
Maybe that's why one of our most distinguished foreign policy experts has turned his attention inward, from understanding the world to trying to better understand the future of our place in it.
Richard Haass takes all this on in his new book, The Bill of Obligations: The ten habits of good citizens.
My conversation with Richard Haass
Division and conflict have been the default setting for civilization. It’s what wars, shifting alliances and even relational conflict is all about. So why, even after thousands of years of evolution, of death and recrimination and unhappiness, is this still true?
Perhaps the answer lies in our human desire to try and understand to make sense of the world. In science or mathematics, there is often one right answer.In man's understanding of the world and of each other, that does not happen. So we strive, we seek and we hope to find peace. To come to terms with some answer that explains it all. But life, physical and spiritual and even social and political is not like physics. There is no one answerThis is where I begin my conversation with Pico Iyer.
Citizenship used to be a cherished status, taken seriously by those who held it. But in today’s globalized world, it has become a commodity that can be bought and sold.
In this week’s WhoWhatWhy podcast, journalist Atossa Abrahamian, senior editor of The Nation and author of the 2015 book The Cosmopolites, delves into the world of “global citizens.”She explains how multiple passports are becoming more popular as a status symbol, and a plan B for those who want to live in several countries. Some nations are turning citizenship into a business, selling economic citizenship (tax havens) as a product, and offering citizenship to the wealthy, while making it more difficult for the poor to obtain it.Abrahamian warns that this commodification of citizenship may weaken its value and lead to criminal dangers.
My WhoWhatWhy conversation with Atossa Abrahamian
In spite of deregulation, airline and air traffic control systems in need of updates, pilot shortages, airport overcrowding and even a pandemic, flying has never been safer.
What’s the secret sauce that makes this the case? Why, when safety in other industries from hospitals to construction to automobiles, seems so difficult to achieve, how has the airline industry been so successful and what can we all learn from their efforts?I explore this with John Nance. John has written about all of these issues in his non fiction work and incorporated much of it in his prolific fiction. He is also an aviation analyst for ABC News and a familiar face on Good Morning America.My conversation with John Nance:
Even if you didn’t know the full story, just judging by the number of gyms on every corner, and the number of retailers selling high priced exercise equipment and workout clothing, you’d see what an obsession exercise has become. But why? A form of activity that uses huge quantities of our time, it is neither playful, sports-like, or seemingly rewarding. So why is it so popular, so all consuming, Where is the fun in sweat?
This is the subject of the new work "Sweat," by Bill Hayes.
My conversation with Bill Hayes:
In 2023, let us resolve to look at more art than cable news. Perhaps it is art, more than news, that will help us see around corners, solve problems and enhance our ability to see the world in a better way.
This approach has been the work of Amy Herman. Amy is the author of Fixed: How to Perfect the Fine Art of Problem Solvingand the founder of the Art of Perception, a program that uses works of art to help people observe more closely, think more creatively and communicate more effectively.My conversation with Amy Herman:
From the days of beat up motels offering HBO as a special amenity to the metaphorical "creative destruction" of today, HBO has been a revolutionary force in entertainment and media. From its inception 50 years ago, HBO has been a pioneer in the blending of show and business. Disrupting television and paving the way for streaming, nonlinear programming, and more. HBO is the ultimate example of the power of entertainment and story telling.
In his new book It's Not TV: The Spectacular Rise, Revolution, and Future of HBO, Felix Gillette takes us through the remarkable history.
My conversation with Felix Gillette:
While January 6th and the attempted coup may have been the final trigger at the end of the Trump presidency that could have brought down democracy, it was the four years prior that may have been the end of governance in America. The unsung heroes deep inside government, the departments, the cabinet secretaries, and the national security apparatus, all of whom took an oath to protect and defend the Constitution, may have been the ones who saved the Republic from its dismantling. All of this is laid out by David Rothkopf in his new book American Resistance.
My conversation with David Rothkopf:
Think of all the true crime stories you’ve watched or read. The image of a dogged or even sometimes fumbling detective usually lies at the center. But today, like almost everything else, technology has changed that.
Since the mid-80s, DNA technology has begun to transform the search for both guilt and innocence. Suddenly cold cases, like the Golden State Killer, are solvable, dozens and dozens of years later.DNA databases are growing, as are privacy fears about their misuse. Dedicated cold case detectives, both professional and amateur, are evolving into a new profession.The idea of no statutes of limitations on murder has always been a fundamental tenant of our criminal justice system. But now, with DNA’s ability to solve so many other types of crimes, will the system change?…Will the long arm of justice be forever.That is what Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Edward Humes examines in his new book THE FOREVER WITNESS.
My conversation with Ed Humes:
Language has always been an important tool in American politics. It allows politicians to communicate their ideas and visions to their constituents and persuade them to support their policies. The power of words is so great that politicians often have teams of speechwriters to help craft their messages. These writers often work closely with the politicians to understand their vision and goals, and help express them in a way that resonates with the public.
In his book GRACE, Cody Keenan writes about his experiences as President Obama's chief speechwriter during a critical ten-day period in June 2015.Through Keenan's perspective, we see the inner workings of the Obama administration and the challenges they faced in trying to pass legislation and shape the future of the country. His book offers a unique insight into the role of language in American politics and the way it can be used to shape history.My conversation with Cody Keenan:
Somewhere in the magic formula that makes great art is the internal potential for pain. Someone once said of artists that they were like the rest of us, except that their emotions were just always sitting closer to the surface…. more accessible, more sensitive, and more vulnerable to pain, despair, and even suicide.
The stories of people like Kurt Cobain, Van Gough, Virginia Woolf, Hemingway, Sylvia Plath, and Hunter Thompson, while all different, reinforce the image and reality of the tortured artist.
Add to this list, Anthony Bourdain. A complicated artist in so many ways, he would suffer a similar fate. But we should also remember that while all these stories have the same ending, each artist and their journey tells us more and more about ourselves and about the human condition.
This is the story that Charles Leerhsen tell in Down and Out in Paradise: The Life of Anthony Bourdain.
My Conversation with Charles Leerhsen:
Herbert Hoover said that “the business of America is business.” And for decades no business better defined that than General Electric. An industrial titan, everything about it, from credit to jet engines, from x-ray machines to lighting the nation, to bringing entertainment to the masses, defined the broad shoulders of American business and American capitalism.
As might be expected, its executives also lived a good life. Like an episode of Succession, there were multiple private jets, cars always at the ready, and offices that make today's tech offices look provincial. There was the office staff waiting to fulfill every executive whim, and CEOs like Jack Welch and Jeffrey Immelt became household names and were seen on the covers of Fortune and BusinessWeek.
Today, after 130 years GE, like many companies of its time, has all but disappeared. Like so many corporate icons of that era, Polaroid, Kodak, Dow, and US Steel, we were led to believe that “creative destruction” took them down; that Clayton Christensen's Innovator's Dilemma had caught up with them.
But sometimes we discovered in hindsight that it was simply bad management, bad decisions, hubris, and the idle worship of what William James called the bitch goddess success that turned its ugly gaze on the company. This story, a cautionary tale about management men and money, is the story that best-selling author William Cohan tells in his latest book, Power Failure: The and Fall of An American Icon.
My conversation with William Cohan:
Not just here in America, but throughout the world, the forces of liberty are battling the forces of authoritarianism. These forces are global as well as local.
Here in America such battles played out after George Floyd’s death, and on January 6th, and we still don’t know what might happen between now and 2024. These are moral battles for the soul and future of the country.
But hopeless as it may sometimes seem, these kinds of "against the odds" battles have been won before. The Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, and even the anti Vietnam war movement were both, in their own way, successful. But why and how were they successful and what lessons do they provide us in today’s moral battles?
The Civil Rights movement was framed as a nonviolent struggle. Yet baked into that nonviolence were methods, tactics, training and communication from which we can all go to school.
Few understand the context of the battlefield and the military better than Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Thomas Ricks. In his new book Waging a Good War: A Military History of the Civil Rights Movement, 1954-1968 he details how the military tactics of the Civil Rights movement outshined even the US military.
My conversation with Tom Ricks:
On Tuesday we will have our first election since January 6. There is every reason to believe that things will get worse. That January 6 was merely an inflection point on the road to a government we may not recognize in a few years.
This according to my WhoWhatWhy podcast guest, New York Times Magazine reporter and author Robert Draper. In his new book, Weapons of Mass Delusion, Draper explains how January 6 was a signal moment for the Republican party, one that left the MAGA base as the core and future of the party.
My WhoWhatWhy conversation with Robert Draper
Almost since the beginning of time, men have shaped society. From ancient times to Mad Men, patriarchy was the defining framework of our society. Men dominated in industry, as workers and leaders; in college graduation, in earnings, in national and local leadership, and in protecting our society. Women and girls were left behind
In the 70s and 80s, all of that began to change. Things like Title IX in1972, and the feminist movement were both achievements and symbols of success, and harbingers of important societal changes
But none of this happened in a vacuum. Other social, political, and sociological changes were taking place. In the nature of work, of communication, of education of character and economics.
Over time, and not just as a zero sum exercise, the world of boys and men changed. Some of the changes were obvious and frankly, more men should have seen them coming. Others happened in a more subtle way, not unlike the frog in boiling water.
Suffice it to say that today these changes have fully reshaped our society. The gender gap is reshaping our politics and feeding authoritarian populism. It impacts the raising of younger generations and adds to class, cultural, economic, and political divisions. And unfortunately, like almost everything else, it’s become a talisman of left / right polarization.
Trying to raise the conversation about that is my guest Richard V. Reeves in his new book Of Boys and Men: Why the Modern Male Is Struggling, Why It Matters, and What to Do about It.
My conversation with Richard V. Reeves:
Few subjects engender more reaction and discussion in our politics and our culture than immigration and education. When the two come together in our schools they sit at the precipice of both politics and our future.
We are not talking of the dreamers that have been here, but waves of new young people that are on the front lines of shaping the immigrant experience in the United States.
What’s really like for the students and the teaching that are, each and every day, helping to define and sometimes even reimagine what it means to be an American
As an award-winning teacher, this is Jessica Lander’s work in a Massachusetts public high school. She tells of her experience in her new book Making Americans : Stories of Historic Struggles, New Ideas, and Inspiration in Immigrant Education.
My conversation with Jessica Lander:
We are finding out that politics and the law are sometimes about separate ways of looking at the world. The law is often about the past. It’s about adjudicating events that have happened, laws that have been broken, and punishments that should be meted out in the public sphere, particularly with respect to Donald Trump. We see it playing out with January 6th, past tax violations, stolen documents, and the results of past elections.
Politics on the other hand is about what’s ahead. It’s about how imagining, defining, and enacting policy and laws will shape our individual and collective future. While we’ve all been focused on the law of late, many have missed the political discussions taking place on the far right under the moniker of national conservatism, a set of ideas and potential policies that pull together all the forces that Trump has unleashed. This is more than just traditional populism. It’s a set of ideas that bear little resemblance to traditional conservatism. It’s an intellectual framework that does nothing short of turn back every idea from the enlightenment to the evolution of America since the 1950s.
Not to take anything away from the legal proceedings that are currently underway with respect to Trump, the forces that he has unleashed as voiced at the gathering of national conservatives a couple of weeks ago, which included over 100 speakers, 23 panels, and three US senators, governors, and billionaires, are where our eyes should be focused. This is the world that professor William Galston of Brookings Institution has studied.
My WhoWhatWhy conversation with William Galston:
Social media often seems like an element tacked on to our culture. Its fads come and go. Things like Instagram, Tick Tock, Twitter, Pinterest, and Snapchat are often fungible and subject to the laws of creative destruction.
On the other hand, companies like YouTube and its parent Google feel like they are deeply integrated into our lives. We search on Google, learn, and can be entertained on YouTube. They have become essential utilities to get through life.
As such, YouTube often gets less scrutiny, for both its influence and its business practices. When Andy Warhol said that everyone would be famous for 15 min, he could not have imagined YouTube, that everyone would be able to broadcast themselves to the planet and make money while doing it.
More than an add-on to our culture, in many ways YouTube is our culture. Unlike those other social media whose apps come and go, YouTube is our culture, or at worst as its CEO Susan Wojcicki says, "it’s a mirror of who we are." Capturing both its history and its cultural role is journalist Mark Bergen in his new book, LIKE, COMMENT, SUBSCRIBE.
My conversation with Mark Bergen:
The great screenwriter William Goldman once said of Hollywood, that “nobody knows anything.” I hope that we have learned by now that this does not apply to science.
Random as knowledge sometimes might be, it is safe to say that the entire technological infrastructure of modern society, all of Silicon Valley, is built on top of the reliable functioning of the laws of mathematics and physics.
The fundamental laws of physics which govern the workings of the cosmos are not some untethered abstract set of rules. They have a direct impact on how we live and on the very meaning of human existence. It has to. After all, it’s the only way we can look out on the vastness of space and time, and ask ourselves what it's all about, and what's my place in it.
That's where we need the insights of Sean Carroll. He is one of our most trusted explainers of some of the mind-boggling concepts of physics, that have for too long defined the most valuable building blocks of modern science. His most recent work is The Biggest Ideas in the Universe: Space, Time, and Motion.
My conversation with Sean Carroll:
Look at the British press most days, and you’ll find that the government and the royals are being skewered and made fun of. The Brits have a long tradition of publicly calling out their leaders for absurdity, stupidity or embarrassing behavior. In America, it seems that part of the population almost embraces this kind of behavior; that rather than calling it out, it votes for it.
It celebrates it on talk radio and on Fox. Imagine an entire portion of the electorate for whom ignorance is bliss. What we do have, however, is a healthy tradition of satire but almost entirely on the left. Historically, from the likes of Will Rogers or H.L. Mencken or Ambrose Bierce and in more contemporary times, folks like Mort Sahl and Lenny Bruce and Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, Al Franken and Andy Borowitz.
Andy is an award-winning comedian, a New York Times bestselling author, a graduate of Harvard College, where he became president of The Harvard Lampoon, and in 1998, he began contributing humor to The New Yorker‘s Shouts & Murmurs and Talk of the Town column. And in 2001, he created The Borowitz Report, a satirical news column that’s must reading for anyone that cares about the country. His newest book is Profiles in Ignorance: How America’s Politicians Got Dumb and Dumber.
My WhoWhatWhy conversation with Andy Borowitz::
If our current era is one of politics, technology, and economics, it's fair to say that the 60s were an era where social science, self-reflection and cultural anthropology ruled the day.
And if places like Stanford, and MIT are the intellectual hubs of our day, Harvard was an intellectual hub of the ’60s
Nowhere was that more true than in Harvard's establishment of a Department of Social Relations. With figures like Timothy Leary, Ram Das, and Ted Kaczynski, as part of the faculty, it was an epicenter of its time.
Today Harvard is restarting psilocybin reaching and launching a new center for the neuroscience of psychedelics in association with Mass. General Hospital. So it’s a good time to look back at the antecedents of this effort.
Patrick Schmidt has written about it in his new book HARVARD’S QUIXOTIC PURSUIT OF A NEW SCIENCE.
My conversation with Patrick Schmidt:
For much of our 246 years, we were a young, dynamic, striving country. Sure, we had flaws, we made mistakes, we took wrong turns, but we believed deeply in our ability to learn from those mistakes and to move the country forward. Today, it seems that we’re caught between that young, energetic country and some of the more mature, but less dynamic nations we see in Europe, for example. We are like a mean, angry adolescent nation ready to fight with anyone and about anything. When the James Dean character in Rebel Without a Cause was asked, “What are you rebelling against, Johnny?” The answer was, “What do you got?” We are like that adolescent. Some are rebelling against our founders, some against our institutions, against our diversity, our technology. Essentially, what do you got? Like any adolescent, maybe we will outgrow this, or will there be enough time before we destroy the very fabric of our democracy? We’re living in a high school lunchroom with cliques, and anger, and hormones, and guns, and bravado. We’ll either graduate to the next level, or we’ll take the world’s longest time out while China and the rest of the world pass us by.
We’re going to talk about the state of the nation today with Michael J. Mazarr.
Michael is a senior political scientist at Rand, where he's the author of a recent Rand report entitled The Societal Foundations of National Competitiveness.
My WhoWhatWhy conversation with Michael Mazarr:
Early on in the pandemic, in the earliest days of the lockdown, we wondered how was this going to change the world. In part, it was easier to look out and to try and figure out its effects on the world, rather than dig deeper and wonder how it might affect us.
But it did give us time to think, to wonder, and for some to be deeply creative. We were all dealt a springboard to see the familiar in new ways. To cope with isolation in new ways, to reaffirm or reconstruct our most intimate relationships.
All of this has given way to what might become the new genre of the pandemic art form; be it in the form of art, or music, movies, or novels.
If Katie Hafner's debut novel The Boys is any indication, it will be a great genre.
My conversation with Katie Hafner:
In spite of the supposed transparency of the internet age, more and more we live in the age of complicity. Last month we saw it with the trove of documents and stories that came to light about UBER. Tim Miller’s recent book about Trump's enablers shows how it’s happened repeatedly in the White House, just as Michel Lewis showed us, several years ago, how it happened on Wall Street in the face of the 2008 financial crisis.
For 20 years in Hollywood, the complicity around the actions of Harvey Weinstein was airtight.
What is it about Hollywood and Wall Street and politics that encourages and even condones such complicity in bad behavior?
Long-time media journalist Ken Auletta tells the thirty-thousand-foot view in telling the story of Harvey Weinstein, his rise and fall, through the lens of his enablers and his victims in his new book Hollywood Ending: Harvey Weinstein and the Culture of Silence.
My conversation with Ken Auletta:
Modern Washington has always offered up an impressive roster of toadies. Yet the Trump administration seems to have offered up a unique period of bowing and scraping. Historically, sucking up takes a variety of forms, from pretty compliments to cloying flattery and outright treachery.
But it doesn't stop there. The kind of sycophant we see from those in the GOP combines other attributes like hypocrisy, lying, and manipulation. Throughout history we’ve certainly seen our share of sycophants; from the courts of Caligula to Dickens' Uriah Heep. We certainly get to see a lot of this in Mark Leibovich's new book Thank You For Your Servitude My conversation with Mark Leibovich:
We spend our life negotiating. At work, at home, with kids and with friends. Rich Cohen stories of his father Herbie, is the story of making all of this work for you, and what it looked like up close and personal. As Rich tells his story, it's not Geoffrey or Tobias Wolff seeing their father’s story through the lens of deception, but through a celebration of the power of imagination.
Rich Cohen is the New York Times-bestselling author of Tough Jews, Monsters, Sweet and Low, The Sun & the Moon & the Rolling Stones, The Chicago Cubs, and The Last Pirate of New York. His latest is The Adventures of Herbie Cohen.
My conversation with Rich Cohen:
Sometimes the world makes little sense. That’s why when the right novel comes along, it helps us to look inward at the things that really shape us, move us and help carry us into tomorrow.
For a time, amidst the dark days of the pandemic, there was a precariousness about life itself. When we felt more confident of coming out of that, it gave way to an equal uncertainty about our most intimate relationships. It opened a pandora's box, letting out our grief and fear and inadequacies.
This is the stuff of Edie Meidav's new novel Another Love Discourse.
My conversation with Edie Meidav:
When we talk about our dreams, it's usually in the context of limitless possibilities. It’s the one often private place where we are free from the constraints of reality. Seemingly limited only by our imagination, our dreams often hold the key to how we see our future.
But those dreams have a context. Our life experience, our social position, race, gender and status all shapes those dreams. It’s an interesting irony that the dreams that we think can move us to unlimited possibilities, can often hold us back. Our dreams both shape who we become, as we think we shape them.
We explore this with Karen Cerulo and Janet Ruane in their book Dreams of a Lifetime - How Who We Are Shapes How We Imagine Our Future.
My conversation with Karen Cerulo and Janet Ruane:
We often look at leadership today as about celebrity or attention. In a time when we have elected a reality show star as President, when celebrity politics is the lifeblood of the American political class, it’s hard to imagine world class a politician or global leader emerging today
It makes you wonder, Is there something in our culture that has become antithetical to leadership? We watch Valdamer Zalinsky in wartime, and we’ve seen the leadership qualities that are possible. We even see it in some of our military leaders…but why the seemingly dearth of political leaders today.
David Gergen, who has devoted more than half a century of public service, and has served as a White House adviser to four US presidents of both parties: Nixon, Ford, Reagan, and Clinton, examines the perils of leadership in his new book Hearts Touched with Fire: How Great Leaders are Made . My conversation with David Gergen:
It seems we live in a society where everyone wants to be protected. We don’t want to hear views we disagree with for fear that it might upset us, we don't’ want to go back to the office because we get stressed by a commute. We are afraid to let our kids go out and play unless they are supervised. We are anxious about money, about politics, about family…it’s no wonder there is an entire drug industry with provides for our every anxious moment.
We live emerged in first world problems that pale compared to the Greatest Generation, that fought a World War, lived through a Depression and did duck-and-cover drills in fear of nuclear annihilation.
Just maybe the fault is not in our society but in ourselves. Maybe instead of trying to eliminate all that might make us anxious, suppose we just got better at dealing with it. Just Maybe coping has fewer side effects than medication? Maybe that is what we were trained to do, as man first stepped onto the savannah, and the lion came after him. He learned very quickly to cope with anxiety. That coping is still buried somewhere in our DNA
This is where Tracy Dennis-Tiwary takes us in her new book Future Tense - Why Anxiety Is Good for You .
My conversation with Tracy Dennis-Tiwary:
In our lifetime and in the 246-year history of the republic, there was a time when great men walked astride the United States Senate. It was the crucible of democracy. Once referred to as the greatest deliberative body, and a cooling saucer to modulate the nation's passions, it now fails on all counts. Today it’s filled with small-minded men and women, whose desire for reelection, money, and partisan advancement over the interests of the people, rules the day. And while there may be more crazies and corruption on one side, the other side has proven itself to be weak freckles and lacking in imagination. All of which makes them just bad at politics.
Certainly, the “how we got here” is a complicated story. There is plenty of blame to go around. However, since 2006, when he became minority leader, Mitch McConnell has sucked dry any moral compass the Senate might have. McConnell's actions during the Obama and Trump presidency may mark the end of the Senate as we know it. Whether it also marks the end of democracy is for today at least, an open question.
That's the question that Senate historian Ira Shapiro takes up in his new look at McConnell Betrayal How Mitch McConnell and the Senate Republicans Abandoned America.
My conversation with Ira Shapiro:
Back in 2002 in the wake of the George W. Bush election political demographer Ruy Teixeira, along with journalist John Judas, wrote The Emerging Democratic Majority. It spoke of the changing demographics of America. It looked at ethic diversity and how it was destined to forever shape Democratic success in the 21st century. This has not worked out so well for a multitude of reasons.
It turns out that the feature, not the bug, was the way our constitution was written. Rural voters matter.
Books like Hillbilly Elegy, What’s The Matter with Kansas and Kevin Phillips’ Emerging Republican Majority, painted a different picture than Teixeira and Judas. One where rural votes would succumb to the seduction of populism, culture wars and the power of the evangelical right. Enter Donald Trump and his collection of populist crazies.
But is this a permanent condition? Is this the real 21st century political future? Main State Senator Chloe Maxmin and her campaign manager Canyon Woodward think there is another way forward for the Democratic Party. They detail it in their book Dirt Road Revival.
My conversation with Sen. Chloe Maxmin and Canyon Woodward:
Gabriel Garcia Marquez famously said that it’s much easier to start a war than it is to end it. Certainly, we’ve seen this up close and personal in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, and even, if we look more closely at the history, both world wars. It’s difficult to lose a war, but just as difficult to win, since winning a war is certainly not the same as winning the peace.
We see often in the corporate world that the founders of companies may be great at startups, but not so good at running mature companies. War is not that different. Those that start them, that direct them, and sometimes even win them may not be so good at ending them in a way that cements or makes worthwhile any victory. All these are important things to think about in the crucible of Ukraine, because someday this war will also end and whether it will be worth the loss of lives and treasure for the Ukrainian people or for Russia is certainly an open question.
It’s hard to imagine that either side is thinking about that end game at this point, but certainly, they should be according to my guest on the WhoWhatWhy podcast former Foreign Affairs editor and CFR fellow Gideon Rose.
My WhoWhatWhy.org conversation with Gideon Rose:
While everyone is busy opining on the unknown and probably minor impact of a change of ownership of Twitter, we have literally ignored the chilling and perhaps long-term impact that the pandemic has had in enhancing government misinformation, curtailing free speech, and giving more powers to government. All while censuring information that actually might have helped people. And not just in China…but in the U.S. and around the world.
It was Churchill who originally said, “never let a good crisis go to waste.” Certainly, governments of the world did not. In China, Israel, Brazil, Egypt India, and int the US Covid-19 gave carte balance to leaders to misinform, misdirect and take political advantage.
Joel Simon writes in The Infodemic that throughout the pandemic many people felt as if they were drowning in information, yet in fact, they were being censored. My conversation with Joel Simon:
The metaverse notwithstanding, the nexus between what happens on the internet, and what happens in the real, physical world, is disappearing. The blood-brain barrier between the two has broken. And every day, in our finances, in our interpersonal communications, in our entertainment, in our transportation, and even in what we eat, the connection between our digital world and our real world is further integrated.
Reactions to this vary from, “I’m terrified of everything; the government should control the internet,” to, “There is no privacy; do I have nothing to hide; and why should I care if I’m being served up greater convenience?” The fact is that vast sums of data on all of us are being collected, sometimes in the name of convenience, sometimes in the name of national security, and it’s unclear exactly what’s going on. It’s unclear where security theater starts, and real security begins.
In short, the cyber world presents 21st-century problems that have not yet been solved, much less, fully understood. We talk about that today with my guest, Bruce Schneier, a public interest technologist working at the intersection of security, technology, and people.
My WhoWhatWhy.org conversation with Bruce Schneier:
Think about how different the world is because of whistleblowers. Think about the impact of Daniel Ellsberg, Coleen Rowley, Sherron Watkins, Jeffery Weigand, and Karen Silkwood.
Each changed the trajectory of a company or a government for the better, and in doing so risked making their own lives so much worse.
So why do they do it? Why do some individuals put their own moral compass ahead of the risks of being a whistleblower?
Ashley Yablon might be able to answer some of these questions because he is a whistleblower. His information would have a profound impact on one of China’s largest technology companies. It would result in large fines for the company, but what impact did it really have, and was it worth what it cost Yablon?
Ashley Yablon joins me to discuss STANDING UP TO CHINA. My conversation with Ashley Yablon:
Even if the details were never reported in real-time, you knew instinctively during the chaos of the early days of the Pandemic, in the winter of 2020, that some people would get rich. Testing, PPE, Government loans, PPP, small business loans, and all overseen by Donald Trump and his cronies. What could possibly go wrong?
Obviously, a lot did go wrong. As a result, many died and many got rich. The pandemic in a way gave rise to a group of American oligarchs, many with a checkered history at best, who took advantage of both the inherent corruption and the blatant incompetence of the administration.
And yet the stage was set for it all, by mistakes over the years that were made by both political parties and even some politicians with better intentions.
Now, as the dust settles the story of what became Pandemic Inc. is being told by J. David McSwane.
My conversation with David McSwane:
Cryptocurrencies, NFTs, Dows, and the blockchain they ride on are still, in the view of many, the decentralized financial instruments of the future. Even if they never replace the fiat currencies of nations, their roles in markets are here to stay.
And crypto, like everything else, has become politicized. You would think that an asset class that is almost pure speculation and not even about owning anything would be immune from the primal forces of partisanship. But no, both the left and the libertarian right have very different views of what crypto and its sister products on the blockchain and Web 3.0 should be.
Few have been harder than the left, who sees in it some kind of pure evil of the market. The good news is that when my guest — author, thinker, and all-around wiseman — Daniel Pinchbeck talks about the politics of crypto, he also helps us to understand what it really is, why it matters and why to the folks on all political sides it should matter in the future.
Daniel Pinchbeck has long been considered a Renaissance man and ahead of his time. He’s the author of the books Breaking Open the Head, The Return to Quetzalcoatl, Notes from the Edge of Time, How Soon is Now, and When Plants Dream. He saw around corners long before many others with respect to our ecological crisis and was a one-time executive director of the Center for Planetary Culture.
His essays and articles have appeared in every major publication. He’s spoken at conferences around the world and had his work featured in a 2010 documentary. He currently writes the Daniel Pinchbeck Newsletter on Substack.
My WhoWhatWhy conversation with Daniel Pinchbeck:
For journalism, it may be the best of times and the worst of times. On the one hand the national media is more vibrant than ever before. The NYT, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, as well as broadcast news and cable news networks are thriving, even amidst the post Trump drop in ratings. For these outlets the transition to digital has been painful but successful. In other efforts, recurring revenue models are driving the success of independent news outlets as well as individual journalists on Substack and similar platforms. While romantics, like my guest Brian Karem rap quixotic about the 23 newspaper that once were available in New York, news websites and Twitter have now subsumed that, while new sites start up regularly with lower barriers to entry. In his new book Free The Press, Brian Karem argues that journalism, particularly local journalism, is dying and that he has a specific, if very traditional formula to save it.
My conversation with Brian Karem:
Historian and journalist Sarah Chayes, argues that we can’t fix our floundering democracy until we face — and fix — our current levels of corruption.
In her view, we are in a “pandemic of corruption,” fostered by a network of corrupt businesses and political leaders worldwide. Before we can begin to set things right, however, we first have to grasp what modern-day corruption really is.
Behind this evolving crisis, says Chayes, is a shift in the very definition of power. Where society’s leaders once at least paid lip service to the concept of public service, today the only measure of social status, she contends, is money: The pursuit of power has turned into a no-holds-barred scramble for more and more wealth.
Chayes, the author of On Corruption in America, explains how we got here, and how we must build a coalition of integrity that transcends ideology, one that has its roots in equity and the public interest.
My WhoWhatWhy conversation with Sarah Chayes:
Beyond the minute-by-minute reporting of the ground war, the Twitter feeds, TickTock images, there are broader and more economically complex issues surrounding the war in the Ukraine, and the world’s response to it. Issues that include sanctions, the SWIFT system, and the seizure of assets, including yachts and private planes parked around the globe.
All part of the interconnectedness of a global economic structure that Russia, for better or worse, has been a part of. Few understand the intricacies of these connections better than Bill Browder. Years ago, Browder made millions in Putin’s Russia. What he didn’t know was what kind of price he would pay for getting involved in the ever-entangling web of Putin and his oligarchs.
The ultimate result was the brutal death of Browder’s lawyer and friend Sergei Magnitsky, who was murdered in prison after uncovering a multi-million dollar fraud committed by Russian government officials. Browder has carried on Magnitsky’s legacy, at great personal risk to himself. That legacy and the Magnitsky Act is a large part of the basis of the sanctions that we’ve been talking about.
Long before current events, Browder’s been leading a campaign to expose Russia’s endemic corruption and human rights abuses. He’s the author of the international bestseller Red Notice and the soon-to-be-published Freezing Order.
My WhoWhatWhy.org conversation with Bill Browder::
All the way back in 1971, with the publication of Frances Moore Lappe’s Diet for Small Planet, the world began to take notice of the connection between what we eat, who we are, our environmental future, and the sustainability of our food supply.
Since then, the external forces that impact all of these things have brought more pressures to bear. The state of our climate and its consequences, the quality of our food, and how long we live are all going in the wrong direction. Even more problematic is that each seems to be siloed.
Dana Ellis Hunnes, in her new book, Recipe for Survival, takes a more modern and holistic approach in looking at ways to improve our health and at the same time improve the health of our planet.
My conversation with Dana Ellis Hunnes:
It’s the power of narrative that shapes every aspect of our lives. We rush to tell stories to our friends and family to validate our experiences. We buy products and brands because of the story they tell us. We vote, make friends, and even enemies, because of the stories that we believe.
Narrative has an emotional pull on us. Sometimes we take away joy, anger, laughter, or sadness. People don’t rush out in large numbers to see PowerPoints, policy discussions, or even most documentaries. But they will react to drama, comedy, or horror. They will like or dislike social media, based on the stories they have ingested.
It all sounds so simple, so logical, but it’s often lost in the cacophony of noise, data, and information that surrounds us.
Frank Rose writes about this in his new book The Sea We Swim In: How Stories Work in a Data-Driven World
At no time in civilization have so many forces been at play in reshaping the world. The complexity of everything is growing. Global geopolitical risks are rising. Technologies are impacting everything and creating new anxiety. Climate change is reshaping our very topography. The economic gap within and between nations is rising, and a younger generation feels alienated from being able to control the levers that will shape their changing future. Arguably, this convergence of forces and events is having precisely the wrong effect in parts of the world.
Instead of huddling together to take on these challenges, our anxiety and alienation has made the world more tribal, more fearful, more nationalistic, and we see the worst of populism on the rise. Rather than seeing the world and all this change as an opportunity, too many want to dig in, shelter in place, and simply be angry. How we move on from this is the work and insight of visionary futurist Parag Khanna. Khanna's latest book is Move: The Forces Uprooting Us.
My WhoWhatWhy conversation with Parag Khanna:
The story of how the world's oldest living language adapted to the modern world is one that carries within it the story of how language itself shapes our vision and our thinking. How the quest for progress is often stronger than the pull of history. It’s how a language can literally be reinvented, iterated and adapted, and at the same time carry a country along with it.
That is the story of the evolution of the Chinese language that my my guest Jing Tsu tells in her new book Kingdom of Characters: The Language Revolution That Made China Modern
My conversation with Jing Tsu:
For as long as humans have interacted with each other, spies in one form or another, have been with us. To quote the legendary John le Carre, “Jesus had only twelve friends over for dinner, and still one of them turned out to be a double agent.”
And while the nature of spy-craft has evolved, its fundamental missions remain the same. To gather actionable information. To get results.
So when we look at our failure to fully understand the Soviet Union during the Cold War, our inability to understand what to expect in Afghanistan, our shock with the recent Chinese hypersonic missile launch, and the lack of certainty as to what the Russians are planning in Ukraine, what does it say about the state of American intelligence?
Today we’re told that technology is the successor to human intelligence, but what has that wrought, and doesn't it still take humans, and their infinite capacity for suspicion, to understand and interpret that data?
Retired CIA officer Douglas London write about this in his new book The Recruiter: Spying and the Lost Art of American Intelligence.
My conversation with Douglas London:
Imagine a political leader that is not about celebrity or attention? In a time when we have elected a reality show star as President, when celebrity politics is the lifeblood of the American political class, it’s hard to imagine a politician or world leader whose life is private; who keeps their own counsel, who listens first, who shuns celebrity, and yet proves powerful as a leader.
Such was Angela Merkel, who served for 16 years as German Chancellor. Its first and only woman Chancellor, and without questions the glue that held parts of the world and certainly the Western Alliance together for many years.
What can we all learn from this Greta Garbo of geopolitics? To find out we have to dip into Kati Marton’s new biography of Merkel, The Chancellor: The Remarkable Odyssey of Angela Merkel
My conversation with Kati Marton:
As we witnessed on January 6th, the level of hostility and anger awash in the country today has real consequences. Demagogues and hateful rhetoric have real power. And while some argue that history teaches us that such rage burns white-hot and then dies out, what happens while it's burning hurts people and sometimes changes nations.
It’s really no different than when we see protestors in other countries attacking America, burning the American flag, and taking Americans hostage.
In a world moving at the speed of light, tribalism, and hatred for the other, for those that are different, are everywhere. Even in a small Kansas town,
That is the story that Dick Lehr tells us in White Hot Hate: A True Story of Domestic Terrorism in America’s Heartland.
My conversation with Dick Lehr:
Too often when talking about the media and journalism we engage in a board discussion of ideas, policy, and how the levers of power really work
What we often forget is that all of this is made up of people. People who bring to the exercise of power and of reporting on it, their own values, education, and personal history.
In that fact lies much of what is wrong with the media today. It's how we lost sight of the power of class in journalism, why we’ve tried to bury class differences inside racial differences and wokeness.
If all of this sounds too nuanced, Batya Ungar-Sargon, the deputy opinion editor of of Newsweek, helps us understand how it’s shaping our media and democracy in her new work Bad News: How Woke Media Is Undermining Democracy
My conversation with Batya Ungar-Sargon:
The link between what we watch in movies and on television and the business, the money and the people behind it, are inseparable. Business decisions impact and shape what we see, just as one hit can change the finances of an entire company or industry The story of HBO, and the way in which it disrupted television, beginning back in the early 1970s, is perhaps the penultimate example.
Just as today we are going through a sea change with respect to how stories are delivered to us, HBO was the creative destruction of its day. Its motto, like Facebook, could easily have been “move fast and break things.”
And just as HBO disrupted television. Blockbuster would eventually disrupt HBO, Netflix would disrupt Blockbuster, and technology and streaming would disrupt everything. But in many ways the story all starts with HBO.
That’s the story that James Andrew Miller tells in his comprehensive and entertaining oral history Tinderbox: HBO's Ruthless Pursuit of New Frontiers
My conversation with James Andrew Miller:
Think of all that has changed as a result of startups and creative destruction. Nothing is the same as it was because of the sometimes revolutionary ideas of entrepreneurs.
In a similar way the 1960s were a time of creative destruction for America and the world. The post war paradigms that had shaped the country through the late 40’s and early 50’s were shattered. And just as today we are struggling, socially, politically and economically to come to grips with the our technology disruption, on a grander scale we are still trying to come to grips with the social and political shattering of the 60’s
We explore this with National Book Award winner Kevin Boyle, whose new book is The Shattering: America in the 1960s
My conversation with Kevin Boyle:
Everyone desperately wants to know what the post-pandemic world will look like. Adam Tooze has been thinking hard about it and he thinks he knows. Comparing the US experience to China’s, he notes how cultural and political differences have determined successes and failures in dealing with the unprecedented challenge of COVID-19. Tooze argues that, like soldiers returning from mortal combat, we are suffering from a kind of national — and even global — PTSD.
Tooze, Columbia University history and economics professor is the author of Shutdown: How Covid Shook the World's Economy.
My WhoWhatWhy conversation with Adam Tooze::
In The Universe Is on Our Side: Restoring Faith in American Public Life Bruce Ledewitz argues that there has been a breakdown in American public life that is beyond issues or politics. He argues that America is living with the consequences of the death of faith, which Nietzsche presumed would be momentous and irreversible.
According to Ledewith, America's future requires that we begin a new story by asking a question posed by theologian Bernard Lonergan: Is the universe on our side?
My conversation with Bruce Ledewitz:
For the past 40 years, the debate about the proliferation of guns in America has revolved around the NRA. All public policy has been shaped and driven by the political influence of the NRA. Few if any lobbying groups in American history have ever been so powerful for so long.
But how did this power evolve, and what led to its downfall. What was behind its scorched earth “never give an inch” philosophy and was it simple greed and old fashioned corruption that brought it down?
Four years of research have given my guest NPR Washington investigative correspondent, Tim Mak some answers to these and many other questions. He details them in Misfire: Inside the Downfall of the NRA My conversation with Tim Mak:
Elbridge Colby, is co‑founder and principal of The Marathon Initiative. He served as deputy assistant secretary of defense for strategy and force development from 2017 through 2018, and led the development of the 2018 National Defense Strategy.
In his recent book, The Strategy of Denial: American Defense in an Age of Great Power Conflict, In it, Colby addresses our relationship with China in brutally frank terms
Some of the questions he sets out to answer: * Do we need a grand strategy for China, similar to the Cold War policy of “containing” the former Soviet Union? * To counter China’s military strength, do we need to remove our troops from Europe and the Middle East, since we are no longer realistically capable of operating in three theaters? * What should we do if China moves on Taiwan? * What role would our Western allies play if we confronted China? * In a US/China conflict, would other Asian nations side with the US or make their own deal with China? * Has US credibility in Asia been irreparably harmed by our Middle East performance? * If China is politically dominant in Asia, does that mean they would also dominate the world economy? * What might a war with China look like?
My WhoWhatWhy.org conversation with Eldridge Colby:
Amidst all of the noise and debate about vaccine mandates, less than clear information from the CDC, and the broader context of healthcare and society, it’s easy to forget that these vaccines are truly miracles of modern science, and that the herculean effort to develop them in record time, is a science story for the ages.
But the story doesn’t exist without the understanding the players. The global panoply of scientists, entrepreneurs, government officials and market forces that all came together in a kind of war effort that saved millions of lives. After all, imagine the debate we’d be having today, and what our society would look like, if no vaccine had happened?
This story, one of the rare ones about what went right in the COVID battle, is told by Gregory Zuckerman in A Shot to Save the World: The Inside Story of the Life-or-Death Race for a COVID-19 Vaccine.
My conversation with Gregory Zuckerman:
Never have so many individuals been actively engaged in trading in the equity markets. Robin Hood, Reddit, meme stocks, crypto, blockchain are the language of a whole new world of mostly young traders. And most of them will lose money.
They think they can outperform markets that have long humbled the smartest guys in the room.
So back in the early seventy, a group of those guys got together to imagine and evolve a way to passively participate in the markets. Long before information about the markets had been democratized. Long before we checked our portfolio every-time we checked our phone, the idea of passive index funds would take hold.
And even in our hyperbolic financial world today, they are still going strong. In fact, they are so powerful, they alone can move markets.
What this all means for markets and economics is worth examining. To do so I’m joined by Robin Wigglesworth, the global finance correspondent at the Financial Times and the author of Trillions: How a Band of Wall Street Renegades Invented the Index Fund and Changed Finance Forever My conversation with Robin Wigglesworth:
Workers left their jobs at a record pace in the past few months. They left because of health concerns, child care issues and because, post pandemic, they did not want to return to what they saw as rotten jobs. Jobs that were ethically and morally challenging.
The pandemic has brought new light to these workers. Often, in what has been called essential work. It has highlighted and personified the work we often don’t see, but that we all rely on for keeping the wheels of society working. Studs Terkel said that “work is about a search for daily meaning as well as daily bread, for recognition as well as cash, for astonishment rather than lethargy; in short, for a sort of life rather than a Monday through Friday sort of dying." And yet for millions of workers this dying that Terkel talked about, is what they face, day in and day out.
We can't imagine what it does to them, but also what it does to our society. This is what Eyal Press examine in Dirty Work: Essential Jobs and the Hidden Toll of Inequality in America. My conversation with Eyal Press:
Without comparing one historical era to another, suffice it to say that we live in a nation filled with anger, despair and at best anxiety. Our ideological, economic and cultural divisions have infected every fiber of the public square. And all of this is happening amidst loss of faith in our once valued institutions, both public and private. A loss of faith in facts and truth, and in the fundamentals founding principles of self governance of fairness and selflessness.
But we didn’t get here overnight, nor did some external forces (no not even Donald Trump) create this environment.
NY staff writer Evan Osnos went, like Simon and Garfunkel, looking for America. He looked in the mix of places he knew best, Greenwich, Connecticut where he grew up, Clarksburg West Virginia where he worked as a young reporter, and Chicago, the very definition of urban America.
The result of that effort is his new book Wildland: The Making of America's Fury
My conversation with Evan Osnos:
A recent survey showed that the reason people are reluctant to go back to the office has nothing to do with COVID, but with their commute. It’s not the office they object to, it’s getting there.
Particularly in places like New York, San Francisco, Atlanta and Washington DC, commute times have exploded in recent years.
Perhaps when the dust settles, perhaps what we will have changed as a result of a year at home, is less how we work, and more how we move about.
But will we ever give up our love affair with the automobile? Will new generations approach transportation in a new way? Are flying cars ever going to be a thing? And what can we learn from the last great inflection point as we went from the horse to the car?
All of this is part of Tom Standage’s new book, A Brief History of Motion: From the Wheel, to the Car, to What Comes Next.
My conversation with Tom Standage:
I suppose even the most ardent technologists have at times wanted to get off the grid...usually that urge doesn't last long. But for the people of Green Bank, West Virginia, it’s an ongoing state of affairs. The only town that is designated as a national radio quiet zone, is actually not all that quiet. It seems that just as before technology subsumed us, people do find other ways to communicate, and to get into all sorts of trouble. The story of Green Bank and its people is where my guest Stephen Kurczy takes us in The Quiet Zone: Unraveling the Mystery of a Town Suspended in Silence My conversation with Stephen Kurczy:
While the issue of systemic racism, along with a long history racial conflict occupies a large portion of our social and political landscape, the issue of racial influence in law enforcement and the problem of police violence directed at people of color, holds a unique place in our history. The idea of equal justice under the law is a unique pillar in the American experience. It is, arguably, one of the weight-bearing pillars upon which our entire system of law and justice is based. And yet for years this idea has been under siege. Not just on the streets, or in squad rooms, but in the courts rooms of our states and even in the Supreme Court.
How the courts have undermined a foundational tenant of their very existence tells us a lot about how we got where we are today. Erwin Chemerinsky, the Dean of the UC Berkeley School of Law expands on this idea in Presumed Guilty: How the Supreme Court Empowered the Police and Subverted Civil Rights. My conversation with Erwin Chemerinsky:
It wasn’t very long ago that to see a foreign language film, you wound up in the smallest theater in the multiplex or a little art theater somewhere in a college town...or you lived in New York or San Francisco or Boston. But like everything else, creative destruction has done its job. Streaming and the long tail of the internet has moved to supplant cable, movie theaters, broadcast television, and even the English language as the talisman of all of our entertainment. Even amidst the bifurcation and division in both the US and the world, filmed entertainment seems to be one of the few things bringing the world together. Suddenly at our fingertips is programming made everywhere. And rather than looking at it as an oddity reserved only for a few cinephiles, it’s now working its way into the mainstream of all of our living rooms.
Is this just a temporary blip due to COVID and the pandemic, or has global entertainment undergone a tectonic shift that both reflects and might reshape our culture? We’re going to talk about this with Scott Roxborough.
Scott is an international reporter covering film and television and music. He reports on entertainment from Europe for the Hollywood Reporter, Billboard, and German TV, and wrote a seminal article for the Hollywood Reporter dealing with this subject.
My conversation with Scott Roxborough:
For journalism, it may be the best of times and the worst of times. On the one hand, the national media is more vibrant than ever. The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal, as well as broadcast and cable news networks are thriving. For these outlets, the transition to digital has been painful, but successful and is still ongoing. It was recently announced by CNN and NBC News that they would be moving to a streaming model.
Today, The New York Times derives more than sixty percent of its revenue from digital subscriptions. Recurring revenue models are driving the success of independent and specific news outlets and individual journalists on Substack and similar platforms that are thriving. While romantics rap quixotic about the 23 newspapers that once were available in New York City, websites and Twitter have now subsumed that. New sites start up regularly with lower barriers to entry and what some argue is a greater democratization of information.
For local news, however, the story is different. For what’s happening in your neighborhood, your school board, your city council, is a very different story. Thousands of local newspapers and local radio stations have shut down. The economics of the enterprise has proven to be unsustainable, and even large regional papers in places like LA, Chicago, and Miami have proven to be problematic. While many of the best of these papers have been stripped and plundered by hedge funds, let’s also remember that many were acquired by the hedge funds out of bankruptcy.
All of this begs the question as to whether our political, cultural, and social divide stems from the top as is assumed, or whether the hollowing out of news in our communities, something that should be bringing us together, is at the heart of what’s wrong? If so, does the government have a role to play in fixing that effort? Is the problem with the product, with the public, or as it is often so easy to do, should we just blame social media? Understanding this is the work that Martha Minow takes on in Saving the News: Why the Constitution Calls for Government Action to Preserve Freedom of Speech.
My WhoWhatWhy.org conversation with Martha Minow:
The more we know about disasters, the more we realize that most were preordained. Covid 19 or Katrina, the current fires in California or the deep freeze this past winter in Texas. None of them were what we would call Black Swan events.
We are certainly, because of climate change, complexity and complacency, going to be experiencing more such events, we had better become much better at disaster preparedness.
If we know these disaster events are coming, how can we get better at dealing with the consequences? Fire season is yet to reach its peak this year, hurricanes are starting early and we know that more infrastructure and buildings will collapse.
Therefore, the area of disaster management should be one of our number one priority, just as it has been for my guest Dr. Samantha Montano, the author of Disasterology: Dispatches from the Frontlines of the Climate Crisis
My conversation with Samantha Montano:
Survey after survey shows that trust in the news media is at an all time low. And it’s not just the left/right divide.
A recent study by the American Press Association reveals that not all Americans universally embrace core journalistic values, and that the trust crisis might best be understood through people’s moral values even more than their politics.
When journalists say they are” just doing their jobs,” the problem is many people harbor doubts about what that job should be.
Couple this with an ever changing media landscape driven by economics, the political bifurcation of news via the long tail of the internet, the news/entertainment nexus, celebrity culture, and now cancel culture, and it makes for an environment that has very little to do with getting at the truth. Maybe democracy dies not in darkness, but in the chaos of competing truths.
This is the world that long time journalist Robert M. Smith explores in Suppressed: Confessions of a Former New York Times Washington Correspondent.
My conversation with Robert M Smith:
Almost everywhere in the world, liberal democracy is, if not under siege, or at least being tested. Only in rare historical times have would-be autocrats found such fertile ground. But why? The world's and yes, America’s standard of living is rising overall. As Steven Pinker has pointed out, crime and violence is down. The census tells us that diversity is naturally occurring and technology has made life easier. While we are not perfect, the arc of history is bending towards justice. And yet we’re angrier, more frustrated, and more willing to buy snake oil than ever before. We’re quick to cast blame. Quick to believe anything that fits our preconceived narrative, and each side has its Boogeyman and Straw-man. But what if the answer to these problems is not out there? What if Cassius was right? — that the fault is not in our stars, but in ourselves. This is what Tom Nichols explores in his new work Our Own Worst Enemy: The Assault from within on Modern Democracy My WhoWhatWhy conversation with Tom Nichols:
From Alexis de Tocqueville, to Alexander Solzhenitsyn to John Lennon, it has often taken those born outside of America to help us understand and define America back to those of us that have grown up here. Those of us long engulfed in both the popular culture and political noise inherent in our society, often can’t see the proverbial forest from the trees. Today British/American broadcaster Roger Bennett has taken up that mantle. The impresario of the Men in Blazers media empire not only explains soccer to its burgeoning American audience, he also explains America in his new book Reborn in the USA: An Englishman's Love Letter to His Chosen Home. My conversation with Roger Bennett:
In the 1960s and early 1970s political and social battles were fought by people who were trying to reshape America. Sixty years later, we are still at war.
My guests on this week’s WhoWhatWhy podcast, David and Margaret Talbot, label that war the Second American Revolution. The issues revolved around armed conflict abroad (Vietnam), civil rights, feminism, gay rights, Native American rights, workers rights, and the role of celebrities in the political process.
One of the Talbots’ conclusions is that the past is not just prologue — It’s not even the past.
They argue — in this conversation and in their new book, By the Light of Burning Dreams — that the ’60s were a time when every cultural and political progressive action was met with an equal reaction. A time when the FBI engaged in the kind of widespread, invasive surveillance that makes even today’s Pegasus project seem like child’s play.
The Talbots remind us that charismatic leadership, not just grassroots efforts, catalyzed the political and social activism of the ’60s. Leaders had to put their bodies on the line in the streets, not on social media.
Discussing how these efforts morphed from the optimism of the early ’60s to the weary cynicism of today, the Talbots draw a sobering lesson in By the Light of Burning Dreams: The Triumphs and Tragedies of the Second American Revolution.
My WhoWhatWhy.org conversation with David and Margaret Talbot:
If someone pitched the story idea of a guy who was a former baby clothes salesman who then started a company that sublet co-working office space to millennials, and that that company would then become the most well financed startup ever, and that the story of its eventual rise and fall would give birth to an Apple tv series, a Hulu documentary, an HBO movie, several books, and two podcast series, the pitch would be rejected immediately.
And yet this is the story of Adam Neumann and WeWork. But it’s also a story of Silicon Valley, of Wall Street, of international investors, of obsessions with millennials, of portfolio theory taken too far, and it all comes together to create the perfect corporate storm.
While there are some bad and greedy actors in this story, I would argue it's one with no heroes, and no real villains….because it exists, like many of our greatest corporate dramas, inside the protective bubble of a unique moment in place and time. -
Telling this story, as more than just the story of Adam Neumann and a failed business model, but telling it in the context of all of the aforementioned moving parts, is WSJ reporter Maureen Farrell in The Cult of We: WeWork, Adam Neumann, and the Great Startup Delusion.
My conversation with Maureen Farrell:
If daily news reporting is the first draft of history, books that come out almost contemporaneously to events are I suppose the second draft.
But today the world is speeded up. Today, especially in the wake of Trump, we need the facts much sooner. We need to learn not just how to escape the mistakes of history but to escape their repetition and to learn quickly from the actions of recent times.
Pulitzer prize winning Washington Post reporters Phil Rucker and Carol Leonnig have become the modern masters of this genre. With their first book A Very Stable Genius, early in the Trump presidency, they telegraphed what was ahead. No one that read their book could have been surprised at what happened next.
And now with their latest, I Alone Can Fix It: Donald J. Trump's Catastrophic Final Year they have given us a narrative history of the troubled final days of the Trump presidency, and maybe the final days of democracy as we've come to know it.
My conversation with Carol Leonnig:
While everyone has their own personal list, we could all maybe agree on some of the most iconic cars ever made. The VW Beetle, the 1968 Ford Mustang, the 1960 Corvette, the 57 Chevy, the Porsche 911, The 1955 Mercedes gull-wing, the DeLorean, and just for good measure, the 1963 Aston Martin.
But equally important is a vehicle that gets little attention, All of its models together only traveled under 100 miles. When it was built it was over budget, over schedule, and was only a two-seater. It was the lunar rover vehicle that was a part of Apollo 15, 16, and 17. Without it, we’d know a lot less about the moon, about our own planet, and even the solar system. Not bad for a car that was bare bones and electrified, long before Elon Musk was born.
That’s the story that Earl Swift tell in his new book Across the Airless Wilds: The Lunar Rover and the Triumph of the Final Moon Landings.
My conversation with Earl Swift:
Two years ago if you convened a focus group to give an opinion on Bill Gates and his foundation, the response would have been overwhelmingly positive. Today, not so much. The divorce, the behavior with respect to female employees, and violation of rules that any employee would know much less the company’s founder, former CEO, and chairman, and his condoning of poor behavior by his associates would be enough in and of itself to change public opinion. Add to this his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, and the picture gets darker.
Investigative journalist Tim Schwab, argues that none of this is as bad or as global as some of the actions of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Tim and all of this out in his recent articles in The Nation and in a book he's working on about Gates and his foundation. My WhoWhatWhy conversation with Tim Schwab:
When Hal asked Astronaut David Bowman to “open the pod bay doors,” it was as if our most primal fear of machines came rushing headlong into the 20th century. Today, in our 21st-century world, we understand the basics of the artificial intelligence behind HAL.
We see on display every day our interaction with Siri and Alexa, our reliance on algorithms in flying our planes and soon our self-driving cars.
It’s the full blossoming of the promised brave new world.
But AI is just the Internet in1995. While it dominates every conversation about technology, commerce, the workplace and the economy today, there is an awful lot of misinformation.
Its impact can be felt in manufacturing, retail, healthcare, automotive, robotics, finance and science, as well as defense and national security.
The academic progress of AI is taking place every day in places like Stanford, Google, Amazon and Facebook. And the proverbial elephant in the room with respect to AI is always China and its deep, rich and no holds barred commitment to be the world leader in AI
But nothing beats understanding AI’s future like seeing how we got where we are today, who are the people making it happen and what it portents for its future.
That is what NY Times journalist Cade Metz does in his book Genius Makers: The Mavericks Who Brought AI to Google, Facebook, and the World
My conversation with Cade Metz:
In the period immediately following WWII, the United States dominated the global economy. We had won the war, and the economic status that went along with it.
Then over time, and initially as a result of our efforts and generosity, other economies began to grow. Japan, West Germany, Canada and Australia would stir, but the world would, in the war's aftermath, acquiesce to an American imposed system of monetary order. One underpinned by gold and the US direction.
But 28 years later the children would grow up. The other economies of the world would come into their full inheritance. So much so that by the time of the Nixon administration, in 1971, it had to accommodate the change.
What happened next, as Nixon and his economic advisers would meet secretly at camp David, in August of 1971, set the stage for the modern era of globalization.
The gold standard would be abandoned, and a new world economic order would be born. I think it’s fair to say that it’s impossible to understand the global economy today without understand this singular moment
Jeffrey Garten, the Dean emeritus of the Yale School of Management, takes us back to this moment in his new work Three Days at Camp David: How a Secret Meeting in 1971 Transformed the Global Economy
My conversation with Jeffrey Garten:
Some days it seems that everything we’ve taken for granted with respect to the functioning of America and American democracy is under siege. Hundreds of thousands of words are written and spoken almost every day as to why. However, before we can even begin to answer that question, we must understand what it is that’s being attacked and how the system was built before we can shore it up. It’s like a building after an explosion or a natural disaster. It can’t be righted until someone comes in, looks at the blueprints, develops engineering plans, and lays out the construction work. Today, the American experience feels like it’s in exactly the same place.
Jonathan Rauch, digs out those dusty blueprints in his new book The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of Truth
My WhoWhatWhy.org conversation with Jonathan Rauch:
We are awash in data and information. So much so that we wonder if it has any meaning at all? But what if the very existence of the information and data was actually our society's knowledge. A kind of intuitive database acquired from absorbing all the information that surrounds us.
And as we do so, how does it change us? Are we even aware of it, or like velocity and position, can it even be measured.
These are just some of the mind bending ideas put forth by renowned astrobiologist and the award-winning author Caleb Scharf in his latest book The Ascent of Information: Books, Bits, Genes, Machines, and Life's Unending Algorithm
My conversation with Caleb Scharf:
Back in 1953, it was reported that Charlie Wilson, the then head of General Motors, said that what’s good for General Motors was good for America. While that quote is a bit apocryphal, the idea was real. The notion that the success of any particular business was inextricably tied up with the success of the nation.
Perhaps in the 70’s it might have been said of Exxon. Today it might very well be said about Amazon.
The company has changed the way we shop...not insignificant in a nation where retail accounts for 6% of our GDP and 25% of our employment.
It has changed the way we think about the cloud, privacy, and electronic storage. It’s now changing transportation, and health care.
How did one company become so powerful and successful not just in one area….like GM or Exxon, but in multiple areas. The answer lies in understanding Amazon’s visionary founder Jeff Bezos.
Currently, the richest man in the world, the money should not obscure his vision, his talents and his place in the founder/CEO hall of fame.
Few understand Bezos better than Brad Stone. Bard is the author of Amazon Unbound: Jeff Bezos and the Invention of a Global Empire
My conversation with Brad Stone:
There once was a time when we were, if not united, at least we had a common set of cultural touchstones. Movies, TV, sports, even the three networks that delivered the evening news were part of a national town square that provided both water cooler conversation and comity. No more!
Over the past 40 years, all that has changed. The long tail of the internet coupled with the evolution of our politics has divided us as never before. Even COVID, an outside enemy that should have united us, has become a cultural and political cudgel. Ironically our collective anger over politics may now be the only thing we have in common, even as it’s devolved into trench warfare.
We are divided into superclusters of like-minded people. People so siloed that they are literally shocked that everyone does not think and vote as they do. In short, reality has become negotiable and we sort ourselves accordingly.
The weaponized culture wars lead to more enmity, disgust, and dehumanization of our opponents. One wonders if all the king’s horse and all the king’s men can ever put the Humpty Dumpty that is our political civility back together again. That's the reality that Peter T. Coleman looks at in The Way Out: How to Overcome Toxic Polarization.
My conversation with Peter Coleman:
In an effort to make urban American understand rural America, particularly since the 2016 election, books about rural America have become almost a genre unto themselves. Works by J.D. Vance, Sarah Smarsh, Nancy Isenberg, James Fallows, Sara Kendzior and Nichols Kristoff, and others, have cast a class driven and almost apologetic eye on rural America.
Certainly much is wrong there. In part as a result of years of external change and neglect at the hands of public policy makers. Places and towns where “everybody knows your names,” are no longer appreciated or reflective of the values that they injected into the nation's DNA.
But there really are things they can still teach us. Especially if we look at the best of what these towns have to offer, not the worst. What happens when young people choose to stay? When those with gifts and talent choose to redirect it into their community, rather than spend their intellectual capital in the attempt to escape. It's not a choice for all in places like Downeast, Maine, but it’s good that it’s a choice for some.
Those are the one that Gigi Georges introduces us to in debut book Downeast: Five Maine Girls and the Unseen Story of Rural America
My Conversation with Gigi Georges:
I think we can all stipulate that we are at a precarious moment in the relatively short history of American democracy. Even among those not following it on an hour by hour basis via an addiction to cable news, people are anxious. So many, on both the left and the right, are using millions of words to comment on the moment.
But perhaps the only way to really understand it is through the sharp lens of contemporary American political history. Particularly the years since the end of WWII.
Our divisions no matter how profound and how powerful, do not stand alone. They exist as a link in the broad scope of our contemporary political story. Without grasping that history, this moment is just noise.
Sure we can study history. Many great books have been written about these times. But those that have lived through all of it, who have paid attention to both the players and the events of this 75 year period are best qualified to try and figure out where we are today. Chris Matthews is certainly on of these. He writes about it in his new book This Country: My Life in Politics and History.
My conversation with Chris Matthews:
Think of all the things you have believed in that have recently been shattered. That the government might protect us from a pandemic. That Congress and our democracy were secure. That COVID came from a wet market in Wuhan, and that Bill Gates was a paragon of business and virtue. Now add to this growing list, the belief in quality and ethics of the United States Secret Service.
With respect to the secret service, albeit some of our view comes from Hollywood. But surprise, not all secret service agents are Clint Eastwood, or Gerard Butler, or Nicholas Cage.
Now, as a result of the great investigative reporting of three time Pulitzer Prize winner Carol Leonnig we have a look inside the reality of life in the secret service.
While the service lived by the shibboleth of Zero Fail, today that goal exists inside a nation more divided than ever, more armed and angry than ever before, and a Secret Service that’s overworked, overtasked and even sometimes incompetent. It all part of Carol Leonnig's new book Zero Fail: The Rise and Fall of the Secret Service. My conversation with Carol Leonnig:
Fifteen months ago most of us knew very little about viruses. Today, spike proteins, mRNA, and monoclonal antibodies are household words. Perhaps it’s this new knowledge that has forced science and the media to confront the reality, long ignored or covered up, that the SARS-CoV-2 virus could have escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV). Our new knowledge and vocabulary are now liberating tools.
Investigative science journalist Nicholas Wade helped to turn the tide. His massive, in-depth article in Medium and in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists opened the floodgates on the discussion. Wade joins me on this week’s WhoWhatWhy podcast.
My WhoWhatWhy conversation with Nicholas Wade:
Ever since 1960, the campaign memoir has become almost a genre unto itself. Over the years many of these books have shaped our view of politics. In each of these stories men and even some women have competed for the presidency with the strongest of passion, with the proverbial fire in the belly. In many cases that ambition and their foibles have driven the country's narrative. As divided as we are as a nation, one thing that seems to be unique and universally embedded within our democracy, is the carnival that is American presidential campaign. 2020 was no exception. Chronicling this campaign, or at least the Democratic side of it, is the Atlantic’s Edward-Isaac Dovere. His campaign memoir is Battle for the Soul: Inside the Democrats' Campaigns to Defeat Trump My conversation with Edward-Isaac Dovere:
As divided as we are today about the state of our current politics and the debate about facts, it seems that at least we should be able to agree about our shared history. And yet even that is debated today. When did America begin? Who gets credit, and how did it shape us? Patrick O’Donnell is one of our most distinguished military historians and he always trying to answer these questions. He is author of twelve books, including The Unknowns and Washington’s Immortals. and served as a combat historian in a Marine rifle platoon during the Battle of Fallujah and has dedicated himself to understanding the truth about our history, particularly our military history, and it’s importance in helping us better understand who we really are and where we come from. His latest is The Indispensables: The Diverse Soldier-Mariners Who Shaped the Country, Formed the Navy, and Rowed Washington Across the Delaware My conversation with Patrick O'Donnell:
Many of our great cities are known for one or two things. Detroit certainly for the auto industry, San Francisco for the 60s and Tech. Houston for the oil industry, and Los Angeles for Hollywood. New York in so many ways transcends that. Sure it’s the home of Wall Street and the capital of finance, but without putting down any other cities, New York stands alone as a pantheon to the very ideas of cities themselves and all that they represent.
The great chronicler of cites Jane Jacobs said “that by its nature, the metropolis provides what otherwise could be given only by traveling; namely, the strange.”
Very few cities, other than New York offer that strangeness.The ability to round the corner and be surprised,
Craig Taylor get to the heart of this in New Yorkers: A City and Its People in Our Time
My conversation with Craig Taylor.
We have a fascination with scoundrels. Especially if they are public figures. We love to build them up, to celebrate their success and then when they make mistakes, and disappoint our false expectations, we love to tear them down. It’s a cycle we see repeat itself over and over again.
And this is not just an American phenomenon, it’s a global one
The publisher Robert Maxwell is a keen example. Once celebrated for the publication of science knowledge around the world, for buying and rescuing the NY Daily News, for serving the good deeds of British Intelligence, he would turn out to be a common thief who who ripped off working men and women, and who mysteriously disappeared on his yacht…..And then there is his daughter Ghislaine.
It’s a story, like many that my guest John Preston tells, worthy of cinematic treatment. For the moment John tells the story in his new book Fall: The Mysterious Life and Death of Robert Maxwell, Britain's Most Notorious Media Baron. My conversation with John Preston:
One year ago fear stalked the world. That fear created a common bond. We celebrated those on the front lines who walked into danger, we worried about our neighbors and felt kinship without those suffering halfway around the world.
And yet, a year later we celebrate a return to normal, and yet our divisions have intensified. Normal is now represented by a mass shooting every week, and even wearing a mask in the name of health, safety and science divides us.
Twenty years ago 9/11 united us for a brief and shining moment. A year ago, it seemed that the pandemic, like war and depressions before, would positively imprint and unite us.
And yet in some ways it doesn't seem like we’ve learned very much. However, there are those that see hope, who see the light at the end of the proverbial tunnel.
Tim Shriver knows a lot about hope and perseverance, as the long time chairman of the Special Olympics. Now he has coedited a new volume entitled The Call to Unite: Voices of Hope and Awakening.
My conversation with Tim Shriver:
Almost as wide as the wealth gap in America is the gap in the way we view wealth. We look at it as a monolithic thing. Yet part of the country demonizes it, part covets it and part of the country manages.
The same is true for kinds of wealth. Those that inherit it are different from those that win it, or those that start from nothing and create it for them and for others. All wealth is not the same
The bitch goddess success, William James said, demands strange sacrifices from those that worship her. Some people are willing to make those sacrifice and other are not
All of this speaks to the varieties of wealth in America. But are there similarities, are there patterns and behaviors of the wealthy, both good and bad, that we can understand? And if so, what does that knowledge do for us?
That’s what Michael Mechanic, a senior editor at Mother Jones, looks at in Jackpot: How the Super-Rich Really Live—and How Their Wealth Harms Us All.
My conversation with Michael Mechanic:
Great art, particularly movies at their best, reflect the times in which they were created. In 1968 political assination paralyzed the nation. In 1969 we were mired in Vietnam, New York City, was in decay and getting worse, The Stonewall Riots were energizing gay people, generational warfare, race riots were the norm, Woodstock reshaped and energized music and Richard Nixon was a year into his presidency.
Is it any wonder that the most important film of that year would be a dark, bleak film that pushed the limits of sexuality on screen and would go on to be the first X-rated film to win an Academy Award. The film was Midnight Cowboy.
My guest Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Glenn Frankel defines the terms and history of the film in Shooting Midnight Cowboy: Art, Sex, Loneliness, Liberation, and the Making of a Dark Classic
My conversation with Glenn Frankel:
Origin stories are usually part myth, part apocryphal and they often come to define the culture and sometimes the products of the companies themselves. What they always do is to reflect the dreams and perceptions of the founder.
The business of news and media is no different. The founders of our great news brands all have a story to tell.
Such a powerful origin story is the founding visions of National Public Radio and the extraordinary women who gave it life. These women didn't invent NPR, anymore than many tech found invented their technology. What they did do is give it shape, life and a reason for being, and in so doing assured its growth and survival. These women, Susan Stamberg, Linda Worthhieer, Nina Totenberg and Cokie Roberts are the subject of new joint biography by Lisa Napoli entitled Susan, Linda, Nina, and Cokie: The Extraordinary Story of the Founding Mothers of NPR
My conversation with Lisa Napoli:
The nature of work in America has changed. Good paying jobs in the manufacturing sector have been diluted, the service sector has exploded, and the gig economy is not just about Uber and Postmates. Today, even hard, brutal work in the oil fields has been gigafide.
For the men caught up in this change the price is high, but so are the lessons and yes, even the rewards.
Michael Patrick F. Smith is a folk singer and playwright who made the dramatic move from Williamsburg, Brooklyn to the booming oil fields of Williston North Dakota in order to participate in what he thought would be a modern day gold rush.
What he learned tells us a lot about work, men, and America today. He writes about it in The Good Hand: A Memoir of Work, Brotherhood, and Transformation in an American Boomtown
My conversation with Michael Patrick F. Smith:
Someone once said that the best way to predict the future is to invent it. In many ways that’s been the story of scientific progress. It seems there is always someone that leads us into the future. Someone whose vision and entrepreneurship and obsessive drive combine to turn the next big idea into the next big thing.
This has been true from Franklin, to Edison, from Henry Ford to Thomas Watson, from Bill Gates to Steve Jobs, and today Elon Musk is the inheritor of that mantel.
Electric cars, commercial space travel, high speed transportation and even new forms of education are all part of the vision that Musk sees, and his vision may be on its way to become our reality.
As we all know Musk disruption of the automotive industry is full blown. What we may not fully understand is the way in which Musk, though Space X, is disrupting the aerospace industry, how we talk about space exploration, space travel and simply what a rocket is and does.
Aerospace journalist Eric Berger captures Musk's look into the future in Liftoff: Elon Musk and the Desperate Early Days That Launched SpaceX My conversation with Eric Berger:
There was once a time when we didn’t think a global pandemic was possible in the 21st century. The events of 9/11 took us by surprise as they did at Pearl Harbor and Midway.
Yet all of these tragic events were imaginable and some aspects of them even made their way into fiction, long before they happened.
They remind us that events like a pandemic or a world war are mostly at core, a failure of human imagination. Imagination which should be our first line of defense in preparing for our eventual future.
That is what distinguished Admiral James Stavridis and former Marine and award winning author Elliot Ackerman have given us in 2034: A Novel of the Next World War
My conversation with Admiral James Stavridis and Elliot Ackerman:
Those of you that are old enough, will remember when people got dressed up to fly. When having a meal onboard, especially on a transcontinental flight was like dining in a fine restaurant. When inflight service was more than peanuts and admonitions about the size of carry on bags.
It was also a time when those that provided that inflight serve, were a different breed than Cassie Bowden in The Flight Attendant. It was an era when air travel was awash in glamor not the horrors of today.
The flight attendants or stewardess, as they were known, were a select breed. Especially for global airlines like Pan Am. They had to have the right look, the right BMI, the right education, speak more than one language and abide by a strict dress code. By today's standards the requirement would probably generate a class action discrimination or “me too” lawsuit that would put the airline out of business.
This is the retro world that Julia Cooke takes us into in Come Fly the World: The Jet-Age Story of the Women of Pan Am My conversation with Julia Cooke:
It’s been a while since the British monarchy was so front and center in our consciousness. The Crown, on Netflix, and Meghan and Harry have pulled back the curtain on the sometimes romantic notion of royalty. But more importantly, it’s also given us a look into what’s been called The Firm or The Institution, the British monarchy and its wider political economies of wealth and power. Because behind the scenes is simply a corporation, engaged in capital accumulation, profit extraction, labor relations, national and international finance arrangements, and a network of legal status, all of which converge with, and impact on, contemporary Britain.
Prince Philip, the husband of the Queen, and the Duke of Edinburgh, is quoted to saying back in 1969 that “It’s a misconception to imagine that the monarchy exists in the interests of the Monarch. It doesn’t.”, he said “It exists in the interest of the people.” In fact, history tells us that nothing could be further from the truth. The monarchy is more precisely, in the words of the late Christopher Hitchens, “What you get when you found a political system on the family values of Henry VIII.”
To bring all of this in perspective, I’m joined by the right honorable Norman Baker. Norman Baker was a Member of Parliament from 1997 to 2015, and established a reputation as one of the most persistent parliamentary interrogators in the modern House of Commons.
His most recent book about the British monarchy entitled ...And What Do You Do?: What the royal family don’t want you to know In his spare time, he’s also an established singer-songwriter and has released three albums.
My WhoWhatWhy.org conversation with the Right Honorable Norman Baker:
Racial identity, socialism, the role of art in society, the responsibilities of artists and the position of the artist in popular culture. These subjects which sound like they are taken from today's headlines are also part of the life of Frida Kahlo. They are all a part of new biography of Kahlo by Celia Stahr that looks at Frida in America: The Creative Awakening of a Great Artist.
My conversation with Celia Stahr:
While the world has changed in so many ways lately and turned most of our routines upside down, the one constant I suspect for many is their ritualistic morning coffee. For the moment it may not be in your favorite coffee shop, but nonetheless, the magic elixir helps start each day and power it along with consistency as the uncertain future unfolds. But how did Coffee of all things become not just our universal drug of choice, but an essential lubricant in connecting us to each other and to the world?
It’s a story that begins in the volcanic highland of El Salvador and is often as complex as the taste of your hand-selected organically grown coffee beans. This is the story that Augustine Sedgewick tells in Coffeeland: One Man's Dark Empire and the Making of Our Favorite Drug.
My conversation with Augustine Sedgewick:
Georgetown law professor Rosa Brooks was working at the Pentagon when she heard about the D.C. Metropolitan police corp program. Intrigued, much to the consternation of friends and family she joined up. Suddenly she had a badge, a gun, a uniform and a whole lot of academic ideas about cops, criminal justice, law enforcement and what it means to protect and to serve.
Suddenly she was over and inside the blue wall. It was as if she was going into another country. She had to learn a new culture, a new language, and even her family feared not only for her safety, but that she’d be somehow co opted by the journey.
What she found should radically change how we think about police and policing in America. Hint, it’s not anything that is part of our current rhetoric. She spells it all out in Tangled Up in Blue: Policing the American City
My conversation with Rosa Brooks:
During the past year, perhaps a year like no other year, we have been bombarded with statistics. Covid cases, numbers of deaths, positivity rates and flattening the curve. Add to this an election and polling data that drowned us in information. On top of all of this is disinformation and the traditional ways in which numbers and statistics can be used to deceive us. And then just this week, statistics about stocks, and all manner of economic information. Data is everywhere. Every publication of note, now has whole departments devoted to data visualization. One wonders though, where is the information we’ve lost in all that data. If you are good or bad at math, there is a lot to take in, to process and to try and understand.\ Tim Harford just might be able to help us with that with his new work The Data Detective: Ten Easy Rules to Make Sense of Statistics. My conversation with Tim Harford:
Amidst the cacophony of social and cultural noise that’s all around us, we have too often neglected the role of the arts in shaping who we are and how we might be better, or at least different. Like almost everything else, we tend to commodify the arts. Everything from streaming revenue, to box office grosses, to the price of paintings at auction.
I would argue that what we don’t do enough of is look deep into the artists themselves. Artists who because of the very nature of their work, must keep their emotions closer to the surface. And in so doing, we can see how their work reflects the best and worst aspects of our culture.
Mike Nichols was such an artist. In a multi decade-spanning career, the films and plays he directed have in some ways impacted us all. In the early comedy of Nichols and May, to the social insights of films like The Graduate, Silkwood, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, Catch 22, to his plays that reflected who we were in the human comedy, he not only understood his art and craft, but valued other artists; specifically actors and writers as creative tools to help him to help us see the world.
My guest Mark Harris gives us all of this in his new biography Mark Harris gives us all of this in his new biography Mike Nichols: A Life
My conversation with Mark Harris:
Once it was the moon. Today Mars is the holy grail of space exploration. In the coming months three missions, one from the US, one from Taiwan and one from the UAE will be approaching and/or landing on Mars. Next year Russia, Japan, and India have missions planned. It could get crowded up there! And while NASA, the President and Congress may be less enamored by space than by that latest social media site, there is amazing work being done at NASA. Also the private sector, in the form of wayfarers such as Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and Richard Branson are giving the government some competition. All of this is part of the history of space and its future exploration. This includes an amazing mission planned to Europa, one of the moons of Jupiter in 2024. Giving us a telescopic view of all of this is David W. Brown in his new book The Mission: A True Story My conversation with David W. Brown:
As we work the phones and Zoom calls, it makes you wonder if physical connection is even necessary? Has the pandemic given us a new normal. How has it impacted things like conversation in the hallways or parking lot, a lunch meeting or a discussion over a glass of wine. Just like science, when you change the way and the amount of elements you mix together, you get a different result. It’s just chemistry right? So is the same true for real life? Is the chemistry of our connections a static condition or a dynamic process that will be changed forever for the past year? To understand this we talk with Marissa King, the author of Social Chemistry: Decoding the Patterns of Human Connection My conversation with Marissa King:
For some of us, a sense of history is the only thing that gets us through each day. As divided as we are, as angry as we are, as exhausted as many of us are, history tells us that we’ve been here before. And while history doesn’t exactly repeat itself, as Mark Twain says, it often rhymes. To better understand our current moment, the run up to the Civil War gives us clues. We were a country going through transformation. Members of congress were armed. One congressman beat up a member of the Senate. Bloodshed was a part of Washington. Succession was on everyone's mind. Lincoln, with all his skills, could not prevent the war. All he could do was try and manage it. David Reynolds put all of this in perspective in his new work of history Abe: Abraham Lincoln in His Times. My conversation with David Reynolds:
The great baseball manager Casey Stengel famously said that he never makes predictions, especially about the future. That also might be good advice for political pundits.
For months in the run-up to the election, we heard pundits talk about the Latino vote, that they were all reachable by Democrats and it was just a matter of Democrats committing more time, more energy, and resources. Latinos were just waiting to be given a reason to vote for Democrats. The problem is the demographics, history, culture, and the hard numbers of the election results themselves tell us that this is simply not true.
Since around 1972, Hispanic Republicans have developed their own partisan identities and an actual loyalty to The Republican Party. Even to this day, there were issues that continue to draw Latino voters into The Republican Party.
Imagine if this took place in the Trump era, what it might mean in the future for Republicans. Clearly, Latinos are not a monolithic group, but rather complicated human beings that are not just pieces to be moved around on a political chess board. Bringing this all into bold relief is Geraldo Cadava.
Geraldo Cadava is an associate professor of history and Latinx studies at Northwestern University and the author of The Hispanic Republican: The Shaping of an American Political Identity, from Nixon to Trump.
My WhoWhatWhy conversation with Geraldo Cadava
:
If you follow business, you know that part of the lure of every company is its founding story or myth.
Over time the myth takes on a life of its own, as it comes to define the company and its products. In a similar way it’s true of nations, including the United States. We were a nation forged from disparate regions. The Northeast, the South, the West, Midwest. Each with different cultures, different philosophies and demographics. And yet we have bought into the myth of one nation, one United States. The proverbial “shining city on the hill.” It seems that every few decades the patina wears off. The myth and the differences come to the surface and we struggle to hold it all together. We are living through that now. To explain why we need listen to Colin Woodward, author of Union: The Struggle to Forge the Story of United States Nationhood.
My conversation with Colin Woodard:
When we think of the past four years of the Trump administration, the analogies to The Godfather come
immediately to mind. The reality truly reflects the sometimes magisterial and always violent family saga of the large organized crime family
But what about for the foot soldiers that have been corrupted by Trump? Those who have taken on his imprimatur to lie, steal and cheat. To understand them, we need to go back 30 years and look at Nicholas Pileggi's Wise guys, later to become the movie Goodfellas.
The movie was iconic and perhaps we could have learned form from it. Glenn Kenny digs keep into the movie, and those lessons in his book Made Men: The Story of Goodfellas.
My conversation with Glenn Kenny:
There is no more significant issue than race in America. If perplexed our founders, it flies in the face of the notion of American exceptionalism, it clouds our dealing with the other nations, and it's an underlying current throughout American political history...right up to this very moment.
The Black lives matter movement, profound and successful as it is at this moment, is simply part of the arc of history trying to bend toward justice.
It’s impossible to understand that without understanding the work and the ideas of so many who have shaped the movement. And Malcolm X stands amidst the pantheon of those
Over the years many have tried to understand Malcolm X and his politics, his philosophy, his evolution and his influence on the civil rights movement. Certainly his speeches and autobiography are part of that cannon. But to fully understand the man, we need Les Paynes biography The Dead Are Arising: The Life of Malcolm X
Thirty years in the writing, Les Payne died in 2018 and the book was completed by his daughter Tamara Payne who was also it’s co-author and his principal researcher.
It is the winner of this year's National Book Award for Non-Fiction. My conversation with Tamara Payne:
Regardless of whether you are for single-payer health insurance, fee for service, a hybridized French system, or the Affordable Care Act, what’s clear is that most of our health care system is broken. It’s left behind from the world of technology and creative destruction and it’s far too expensive.
It’s a system that is broken, and that increasingly places barriers to entry for those without knowledge of the system or the poor without the financial resources to access it.
But what about the doctors that work in such a system. How does it impact them, many of whom wanted to practice medicine not social work. Dr. Michael Stein looks a this in Broke: Patients Talk about Money with Their Doctor.
My conversation with Dr. Michael Stein
Every company has its foundational myth. Usually carved out of air by its founder. It becomes the basis of its culture, its marketing and its fundraising. However, often, the reality of running a business is much more mundane. It’s often separated from the myth.
Most people, even charismatic founders of companies can understand the difference. It's like what used to be said of political campaigns, that candidates campaigned in poetry and governed in prose. Sometimes though when the myth takes over the reality, trouble is not far behind.
Rarely has the foundational myth and a company's operations become as interconnected as they were with Adam Neumann and WeWork.
That’s the story that Reeves Wiedeman tackles in Billion Dollar Loser: The Epic Rise and Spectacular Fall of Adam Neumann and WeWork My conversation with Reeves Wiedeman:
There was a time when we looked upon Saudi Arabia as the gas station to the world. Certainly to the US. At the time it generated fear and a lack of understanding. It’s tribal structure, our lack of knowledge about its history and the repeated failures of US policy in the Middle East all placed the kingdom beyond our comprehension.
Its effort today to modernize both its culture and its economy, the US’s own confidence about oil independence and other dramatic geopolitical shifts have caused us to reassess the Saudi role in the world. At the same time, the murder of Jamal Kashogi and other human rights abuses have not helped. In short, Saudi Arabia still remains a great enigma. Trying to help us understand it is as a new administration must face another new policy is Saudi expert David Rundell, the author of Vision or Mirage: Saudi Arabia at the Crossroads.
My conversation with David Rundell:
The past four years, really right up to this moment, have been a test for the American republic. Over and over we’ve heard it asked, “can our institutions hold, are the ideas and documents of the framers adequate for the modern age.”
At the same time, we’ve heard over and over again since Nov. 8, 2016, how did we get here? What has driven us to such political and social division, to our appetite for authoritarianism, the disregard for norms, the rural-urban and the educational divide?What ties all of these questions together is the idea that when faced with a complex sometimes unsolvable problem, it’s best to go back to foundational principles. To deconstruct the enterprise and strip it to its original foundation to see how all of the problems have been layered on and how we might find meaning and/or solutions. This is essentially what Pulitzer prize-winning journalist and another Tom Ricks does in his new work First Principles: What America's Founders Learned from the Greeks and Romans and How That Shaped Our Country My conversation with Tom Ricks:
During our last great cultural and political upheaval in the 60s, music provided the soundtrack. Rock stars were not in Silicon Valley, but in the recording studios of Los Angeles, San Francisco and Nashville.
Historically, our culture has been shaped by music and music has shaped by our culture. Additionally music, like sports, has been a way out of poverty for many. Few personify this better, particularly for many women, then Dolly Parton, and no one captures this better than Sarah Smarsh in her new work She Come By It Natural: Dolly Parton and the Women Who Lived Her Songs. My conversation with Sarah Smarsh: DOG
Every company has its foundational myth. From the beginning, it becomes the basis of the company’s culture, its marketing, and really its DNA. The same is true for nations. And perhaps not surprisingly no nation has done a better job of that mythology than the United States.
From the ideas of manifest destiny to John Winthrop's shining city on the hill, from freedom and equality to American exceptionalism, these stories are not only foundational for Americans, but they run in the American bloodstream.
So what happens when it’s discovered that the myth and reality don’t match up? That the emperor has no clothes.
Ultimately, the myth is exposed, the wheels come off, the anger spreads, first internally and then outside and the enterprise usually collapses or morphs.
Arguably that’s what we’ve been living through today. The exposure and crumbling of the American myth. It explains the populist anger that brought Trump to power, as well as the anger on the other side that has fueled Black Lives Matter. When the myth is stripped bare, the company or the nation must be reinvested or die.
These ideas are at the heart of Jared Yates Sexton’s book American Rule: How a Nation Conquered the World but Failed Its People. My conversation with Jared Yates Sexton:
With the election just hours away, think about how many Presidents we’ve watched grow into the office. Clinton, Bush, and Obama. Earlier JFK and Jimmy Carter also came to the office unseasoned
Compare this to Ike, or Reagan, George HW Bush, or Lyndon Johnson all who arrived, for better or worse as fully formed political and human beings.
In this year’s election, policy aside, Joe Biden comes to us having lived a very long public life during which time he has grown into the person and politician he is today. Arguable, as a man who would become the nation’s oldest president it is fair to say that he is not still becoming.
While our presidential candidates seldom lack for position papers and policies, it’s who they are that ultimately determines if they have what it takes. Our vote for president is essentially a gut check vote about the man and the moment.
And sometimes, not always, but when we are lucky, the man and moment match up.
This is the question much of the nation is asking and answering about Joe Biden. After almost 50 years in the arena, it should be easy to answer. But amid all the clamoring, it takes work like the new book by National Book Award winner Evan Osnos to pull it all together in Joe Biden: The Life, the Run, and What Matters Now.
My conversation with Evan Osnos:
The United States Senate was once considered the world’s greatest deliberative body. As we witnessed in the first presidential debate, it’s entirely possible that honest debate in America is actually dead. And why should we assume that the US Senate is any different?
But rather than coming to mourn what once was, perhaps by summoning up the history of some of those senators who once infused the body with all that made it and the country great, we can almost by sheer force of will create an environment that might let it bloom once again. After all, isn’t that why we study history, why we visit monuments and capitals and museums. So that we might take with us, in some primal and visceral way, the inspiration of the best that came before and integrate it into doing good today?
In part, this is what US Senator Sherrod Brown, does in his new book, Desk 88.
My WhoWhatWhy conversation with Sen. Sherrod Brown
Bernie Sanders an avowed Democratic socialist, never a member of the Democratic party, ran two failed presidential campaigns, and yet he has succeeded in moving the Democratic Party to the left.
AOC, is a one-term congresswoman with no previous political experience and yet her Democratic Socialist views have gotten attention on a national scale.
Particularly among young people, there is a growing dissatisfaction with the state of capitalism and free markets today. Even the likes of billionaires such as Chase’s Jamie Diamon and Salesforce’s Mark Benioff have talked about the need for a new more inclusive capitalism.
While this is essentially about the economy, it’s also about shifts in the social, cultural, and political landscape. The coronavirus has laid bare many of the lurking flaws in our system and the politics of the moment magnify everything.
Is this a tectonic shift in the politics of America or a temporary blip in an otherwise centrist nation?
John B. Judis breaks this down in his new work The Socialist Awakening: What's Different Now About the Left. My conversation with John B. Judis:
There was a time when there were things that united us. Through most of the 20th century for example they were things that had nothing to do with politics. They were movies and TV shows and books and sports and one of the three choices for getting our evening television news. We were for a long time part of a commonweal, a kind of national town square that provided our water cooler conversation around the things we had in common.
Over the past 40 years all that changed. Technology and the proverbial long tail atomized us into our individuals interests. The explosion of thousands of sources of news, entertainment and information satisfied us, satiated us really, but took away our common bonds.
The result is where we are today. On the verge of session. Divided as never before in an environment so fragile and truly the house divided will not stand.
David French has been thinking and writing and living this experience. He brings it forward in Divided We Fall: America's Secession Threat and How to Restore Our Nation. My conversation with David French:
Before his massive failure with the Covid crises, someone remarked that Donald Trump may not turn out to be the worst President we ever had, but for sure he will be the worst person ever to be President. In many ways, Jimmy Carter is the opposite. He may not have been a great President, but he may have been one of the best people to ever be President.
It’s hard to say if the problems that Carter faced, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, inflation, unemployment, and the Iranian hostage crisis, might have happened to any President of that period. But history tells us they were the crisis he was dealt. And the nature of them brought out some of Carter's worst, not his best qualities.
It really is a job that’s about the nexus between crisis and character. Sometimes they line up and sometimes they don't. For Carter, it was often out of sync. Jonathan Alter tell the whole story in His Very Best: Jimmy Carter, a Life. My conversation with Jonathan Alter:
Fitzgerald got it right. The rich are different. Even in the way they commit crimes.
Law and order phrases are shouted from rooftops with respect to street crime, as small time criminals are abused by law enforcement and often overcharged. The reality is that crimes of much bigger significance, and many more victims, are committed in and from the boardroom.
While anger is still palpable in many places over those executives not not charged as for their role in the 2008/2009 financial meltdown, many smaller but similar white collar crimes have been committed with no oversight, no punishment and not even any more anger.
Has high end while collar crime simply become an acceptable cost of doing business? Has it become the collateral damage of capitalism that we are willing to accept? This is where Jennifer Taub takes us in Big Dirty Money: The Shocking Injustice and Unseen Cost of White Collar Crime.
My conversation with Jennifer Taub:
The world has been through tough times before. Wars, depression, the threat of Armageddon, and racial hatred are all nothing new. And yet something seems different today. Perhaps it’s the result of a generation that focused on the self. The me generation, the culture of selfishness, the enduring power of the work of Ayn Rand and obsessive focus on self esteem. Maybe these things have come together to make this moment as corrosive as it feels. So what the answer? The Beatles said that “all we need is love.” The Most Reverend Michael B. Curry, the presiding bishop and primate of the Episcopal Church, also thinks love is the answer, but in a less sentimental and more transformative way. Reverend Curry garnered worldwide attention to his idea in his sermon at the wedding of Prince Harry and Megan Markel in May of 2018. Now he has taken it step further in his new book Love is the Way: Holding on to Hope in Troubling Times My conversation with Rev. Michael B. Curry:
Day after day people ask “how we got here?” In fact we don’t need a time machine. All we need do is to look back at the political history of the past 50 years and and we can see exactly how we got here.
With the rise of Reagan in the mid 70’s we can see with almost GPS precision, that map that got us to our tribalism that so deeply divides us today. We see the meanness, the racism, the quest for raw political power, particularly on the right. And while Reagan may have masked it in sunny optimism to make it digestible, it would later become the stuff of talk radio and the exploitation of populist anger. All of this is captured by Rick Perlstein in his new book Reaganland: America's Right Turn 1976-1980 My conversation with Rick Perlstein:
If you picked up the New York Times one day last week, you would have discovered that about half of the stories on the front page were directly related to science. Think about what we are dealing with; public health, vaccines, climate change, fires and hurricanes, technology, privacy, transportation, artificial Intelligence, medicine, the frontiers of space and of our oceans and this is just some of it. The future of science is the future of mankind. As a result science journalism has come into its own, as recently we have seen that poor science reporting can lead to dangerous misinformation. Leading that effort in quality science journalism is Scientific America. It has been the gold standard and is the oldest continuously published monthly magazine in the United States. Last week, for the first time in its 175 year history, it dipped its toe in political waters making a presidential endorsement for the very first time. Explaining this decision is the Editor and Chief of Scientific America, Laura Helmuth My conversation with Laura Helmuth:
Back on the 4th of July I saw a hat that said, "Make America Great Britain Again." A good laugh, even more so when superimposed on the current relationship between the two countries.
Certainly there is that much vaunted “special relationship''. Not just between the countries, in an abstract geopolitical way, but between leaders that have been shaping and reacting to the world at similar times and in similar ways for the past seventy-five years.
While Great Britain may have lost its empire, its connection to the US in contemporary times, has kept it relevant and dynamic. But after seventy-five years is that relationship due for a refresh? If so, perhaps it will require a degree of honesty about the relationship that has been heretofore lacking on both sides.
Ian Buruma looks at the contemporary history of that relationship in The Churchill Complex: The Curse of Being Special, from Winston and FDR to Trump and Brexit.
My conversation with Ian Buruma:
CNN's chief media correspondent Brian Stelter takes a deep look at Fox News, its power, and its stars in his new book Hoax: Donald Trump, Fox News, and the Dangerous Distortion of Truth.
My conversation with Brian Stelter.
As the late Richard Ben Cramer so brilliantly detailed in his seminal book “What it Takes.” running for president, as a serious candidate, is one of the hardest, most grueling and challenging things one can do. Cramer wrote about the 1988 campaign, before the internet, before 24/7 news and yet he said even then that politics had become a kind of a public utility, with hot-and cold-running politics any time of the day or night.
Today in our hyper politicized non stop news environment it’s even worse.
Now imagine breaking barriers and taboos along the way, as Pete Buttigieg did as the first LGBTQ candidate.
Just as challenging, again as Cramer wrote about, is being the spouse of the candidate. For Chasten Buttigieg, a 31 year old gay man with not political experience, he had only his own personal experience and history from which to draw upon.
He shares that journey in his new memoir I Have Something to Tell You: A Memoir.
My conversation with Chasten Buttigieg:
Imagine a time when diplomacy mattered. When the arts mattered. And when they could actually work together to project America at its best. Oh how we might long for the days of the Cold War.
Clausewitz said that diplomacy was simply war by other means. During the Cold War, that diplomacy took many forms. From Richard Nixon showing Khrushchev around an American Kitchen, to Ping Pong diplomacy with the Chinese
A little known form of diplomacy was the role that the arts played in the Cold War. Uniquely in the realm of dance in the hands of one of its great practitioners, and leaders, Martha Graham. Although Graham claimed she was not political, her company and her work were a real part of America’s Cold War propaganda apparatus.
Victoria Phillips tells the story in Martha Graham's Cold War: The Dance of American Diplomacy
My conversation with Victoria Phillips:
Most of you know or have lived in cities with long streets or boulevards and you know that some of the same stores repeat themselves over and over again. Starbucks, CVS, etc. The neighborhoods change, but some of the retail landmarks remain the same.
In a way, history is like that. It goes on and on. And while the neighborhoods often change, there are things along the way that repeat themselves over and over again. In American history, one of them is certainly racism and discrimination, but also our ongoing flirtation with authoritarianism. Our fascination with bullies, the appeal of strength that sometimes proves to be more than just meanness.... it’s really evil.
Whether it was Father Coughlin on radio, Joe Pyne on television, Huey Long in politics, or in the contemporary era, Joe McCarthy and Donald Trump.
The added reality is that each episode pushes the envelope of what’s acceptable. The predicate for new norms is laid out and the next would-be talk show host or political demagogue has to go further.
Perhaps no one pushed the envelope further than Joe McCarthy. So much so that the idea of McCarthyism became baked into our lexicon. Needless to say, now in the midst of one of those flirtations, it seems the perfect time to go back and look at Joe McCarthy with journalist and author Larry Tye, whose new book is Demagogue: The Life and Long Shadow of Senator Joe McCarthy.
My conversation with Larry Tye:
I guess it’s just that we are all getting older, but these In Memoriam programs are coming much too frequently lately…...Over the years I had the opportunity to do five interviews with Gail Sheehy. Beginning in May of 1998 we talked about everything from Men's Passages, to older women, Hillary Clinton, and the changes in middle America. Our last conversation was in the fall of 2014 upon the publication of her memoir Daring: My Passages: A Memoir.
My conversation with Gail Sheehy from October of 2014:
Donald Trump came to power on a wave of distrust. Americans had lost faith in government, it’s institutions, and the ability of their government to be honest with them.
It’s a through-line that begins perhaps with the assassination of John Kennedy, runs through the endless lies Americans endured about the Vietnam war, and continues through to the Iraq war; the lies about weapons of mass destruction.
And while Americans often want simple answers, the reality of policy, particularly foreign policy is far more nuanced and complex.
I have said over and over again of late, that I wish I could get into the time machine to read, 50 years from now, what historians will say about this period we are living through.
So it’s equally important that now, almost 20 years after 9/11 and 17 years after the start of the Iraq war that we can look with some perspective at the distrust that got us where we are today.
Again, the reality is nuanced, complicated and shaped by the foibles of human beings. Robert Draper tells that story in his new book To Start a War: How the Bush Administration Took America into Iraq
My conversation with Robert Draper:
Every generation faces the challenges thrust upon it by the generation that came before. Today the millennials face the challenge of how they pick up the baton and carry it forward Their contribution, their imprimatur is still being written. Will, it simply be too scold those that came before, or as we see millennials doing in silicon valley redefining the very nature of society.
This is what Jill Filipovic bring to the fore in OK Boomer, Let's Talk: How My Generation Got Left Behind.
My conversation with Jill Filipovic:
Over the 200 plus year history of political parties in the US, something our founders advised against, the same parties have, at different times, stood for different sets of ideas. The Federalists, the Whigs, the national Republican Party, the Democrats and others all have been made up of different coalitions at different times
We all know for example that Lincoln and his Republicans were once the anti-slavery party. Oh how that’s changed.
The modern Democratic party really emerged with the New Deal coalition beginning with FDR in 1933. It was an amalgam that was considered the core of American liberalism. It was anchored in ethno-religious constituencies (Catholics, Jews, African Americans,) white Southerners, well-organized labor unions, urban machines, progressive intellectuals, and populist farm groups.
However, like all previous party coalitions, it would begin to splinter. Elements of the once liberal base of the new deal coalition would become part of the Republican party of Nixon and Reagan and Trump.
The story of how this happened is really the story of our modern politics that begins in 1970 and it’s the story that David Paul Kuhn tells in The Hardhat Riot: Nixon, New York City, and the Dawn of the White Working-Class Revolution.
My conversation with David Paul Kuhn:
I had the distinct pleasure of speaking with and interviewing Pete Hamill six times since 1997. There was no subject that he could not hold forth on. Our discussions involved subjects ranging from immigration to tabloids, the lexicon of news to urban America, and even Frank Sinatra.
This podcast includes some lengthy excerpts from three of those conversations. First, in a conversation from June 2011, we talked about tabloids, the state of news today, and the way in which tabloids stitched communities together.
Our next conversation is great fun as Hamill talks about his book Why Sinatra Matters. Hamill argued that it’s not possible to understand the country without fully understanding the music and personality of Sinatra. He explains how he transformed the image of Italians and was the first example of American pop culture transported to the world. It was also a powerful way to learn more about both Prohibition and the Depression.
Last but not least, is my first conversation with Hamill from May 1997, just after the publication of his book Snow in August. It’s a look at immigration, the misguided power of television, and the story of a boy growing up in New York in the late 1940s. Because of the age of this conversation, the audiotape had not held up as well as I might have hoped, and I ask that you bear with a little 23-year decay of audio quality. However, I think it’s worth it.
Enjoy this reminiscence of the life and words of Pete Hamill.
58 years ago today, the world awoke to the death of Marilyn Monroe. At her death, she was already one of the most well known Americans of the twentieth century. In death she would become even more famous, steeped in mythology and contradiction, she would become a symbol of her times. The lens of her own dysfunction gave her a unique ken on post-war American. Today, looking at her life gives each of us a unique perspective on how far we’ve traveled in those 58 years.
This is the story that Charles Casillo tells in Marilyn Monroe: The Private Life of a Public Icon
My conversation with Charles Casillo:
Why do self-described evangelicals overwhelmingly support an irreligious commander-in-chief? Why do megachurches demand to stay open in a pandemic, and why is the pro-life act of wearing a mask seen as antithetical to masculinity?
In this WhoWhatWhy podcast I talk with Calvin University scholar Kristin Du Mez, who sheds light on how white evangelicals gave America Donald Trump (81 percent voted for him in 2016).
Du Mez, the author of Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation, argues that it is not the intellectual forebearers of Christianity who mobilize the faith today, but muscular, mythical artificial heroes like Mel Gibson or John Wayne, idealized cowboys or soldiers. The toughness and swagger they embody conjures up a nostalgia for a simpler time, a nation unencumbered by activism for racial equality, women’s rights, and same-sex marriage.
An in-depth look at why evangelicals are Trump’s most unwavering supporters, and their plans for making Christianity great again.
My conversation with Kristin Du Mez:
For journalism, it may be the best of times and the worst of times. The national media seems more vibrant than ever. The New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, as well as the cable news networks are thriving For these outlets the transition to digital was painful, but somewhat successful.
For local news, the story of what happing in your neighborhood, your school board, your city council, is a very different story. Thousands of local newspapers and local radio stations have shut down. The economics of the enterprise has proven to be unsustainable, and even large regional papers in places like L.A., Chicago, and Miami, have proven to be problematic at best and striped by hedge funds at worst.
All of this begs the question of whether our political, cultural, and social divide stems from the top, as is assumed, or whether the hollowing out of the news in our communities, something that should be bringing us together, is at the heart of what’s wrong.
It was the great NY Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia who said that there is no Republican or Democratic way to clean the streets. His comments remind us that locally, there is only the common community interest. Take that away and what’s left is all the bad stuff.
This is with Washington Post media columnist and former NY Times public editor Margaret Sullivan examines in her new book Ghosting the News: Local Journalism and the Crisis of American Democracy
My conversation with Margaret Sullivan:
It’s rare that the laws of physics and our ideas of race and politics find common ground.Newton’s third law of motion says that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. The American story of the struggle for racial equality seems to be subject to that law.
As the Founding gave way to the Civil War, and reconstruction to Jim Crow and segregation, and the civil rights struggle of the ’60s gave way to law and order and Richard Nixon, the election of our first black president would give us Donald Trump and where we are today.
One wonders what it is, particularly around the subject of race and the desire to establish a truly multiracial democracy that drives these contradictory reactions.
Equally, what toll does this whipsawing back and forth take on our democratic experiment, it’s people and those left behind when the moral weather changes. It’s no wonder we are anxious, angry, and exhausted
That just the surface of Professor Eddie Glaude’s new book Begin Again: James Baldwin's America and Its Urgent Lessons for Our Own
My conversation with Eddie Glaude Jr.
We seem to be facing a time when the speech police are everywhere, a time when even the majority of progressive people simply seem to be losing faith in the value of free speech, all the while seeming to want to narrow the words that we can use.
“Don’t you see,” George Orwell wrote in 1984, “the whole of newspeak is to narrow the range of thought. In the end,” he says, “We shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible because there will be no words in which to express it.” Just what does free speech mean? Is it under threat today from the left and/or the right? Why is it also about safety and why are our colleges and universities front and center in this debate?
To talk about this I am joined by one of the intellectual guiding lights of the discussion of free speech, Professor Stanley Fish.
My conversation with Professor Stanley Fish:
Christopher Dickey reported from war zones and published many books, including a powerful memoir about growing up with his father, the poet, and author James Dickey.
I had the opportunity to speak with Dickey several times over the years, usually about geopolitical hotspots around the world. Places where his unique reporting skills enabled him to see not only the politics but the cultural heart of what he was reporting on. His reports and books were more than just words and analyses.
However, our most memorable conversation and one I share here was about his memoir Summer of Deliverance. Memoirs, have over recent years, become a genre onto themselves. What Dickey uniquely does is to turn the tables and actually report on himself.
My conversation from September of 1998 with Christopher Dickey.
We regularly go through paroxysms of demanding law and order. It's a form of political rhetoric that while it has roots all the way back in the 16th century, is with us once again today.
In our contemporary history we watched Nixon in 1968, New York in the 70s and then were was 1994. A time when the law and order obsession seemed to reach some kind of peak
Rudy Giuliani had become Mayor of New York, the Simpson case shined an arc-light on domestic violence, California passed “three strikes,” and Congress passed the Violence Against Women Act.
It was a kind of perfect storm of both enforcing law, protecting women, and injecting steroids into the business of mass incarceration.
How this ultimately worked out for women, and the broad impact of these efforts on the criminal justice system is a subject that University of Colorado law professor Aya Gruber tackles in her new book The Feminist War on Crime: The Unexpected Role of Women's Liberation in Mass Incarceration.
My conversation with Aya Gruber:
Donald Trump’s presidency was not an immaculate conception. Rather, the result of 30 years of increased hyper-partisanship, the reshaping of the Republican party, the rise of Rush Limbaugh and talk radio, Robert Ailes and Fox Television, and Newt Gingrich. They all contributed to the pugilistic style of American politics. But perhaps Gingrich did the most damage.
It’s arguable that if Gingrich hadn’t come along, others would have picked up the mantle of this style that lead us directly to where we are today. But Gingrich was uniquely suited to the moment.Julian Zelizer tries to answer in his new book Burning Down the House: Newt Gingrich, the Fall of a Speaker, and the Rise of the New Republican Party
Understanding him, maybe a big part of that question that gets asked every day, amidst death, unemployment, and anger, how did we get there. That’s what historian and professor
My conversation with Julian Zelizer:
Then, as now, there was pent-up frustration, which boiled over, particularly in many poor black neighborhoods setting off riots that rampaged out of control. At the time, many Americans blamed the riots on what they saw as misplaced black rage and often vague outside agitators.
But in March 1968, the Kerner Commission Report turned those assumptions on their head. It declared that white racism, not black anger, was at the root of American turmoil. It talked about bad policing practices, a flawed justice system, unscrupulous consumer credit practices, poor or inadequate housing, high unemployment, voter suppression and other culturally embedded forms of racial discrimination that all combined to ignite the fuse on the streets of African American neighborhoods.
“White society,” the presidentially-appointed panel reported, “is deeply implicated in the creation of the ghetto.” “The nation,” the Kerner Commission warned, “was so divided that the United States was poised to fracture into two radically unequal societies, one black and one white.”
Today, there is only one living member of that commission, and he also happens to be the oldest living current or former United States senator. He was once a candidate for president to the United States. He served as chairman of the Democratic National Committee. He served for two terms as a senator from Oklahoma. He is Senator Fred Harris.
My WhoWhatWhy conversation with Senator Fred Harris:
Beyond the virus we fear most, we are also surrounded by bacteria, viruses, fungi and parasites. But wait, no need to reach for the Purell every time. In fact, these things represent what is called our microbiome. It accounts for as much as 90% of our cells, and its positive impact on our health is immeasurable.
However, as a result of antibiotics, the food we eat, urbanization and other wonders of modern world, we have done things in the name of “do no harm,” which just might be making us sicker.
Today, it’s as if this long-suffering field of research has suddenly been rediscovered. Back in 2016, when we had a White House that still believed in science, the office of science and technology announced a One Hundred and Twenty-One million dollar initiative for research into the microbiome.
Professor Rodney Dietert, has been doing this research and talking about this for a long time. He details it in The Human Superorganism: How The Microbiome is Revolutionizing The Pursuit of a Healthy Life.
My Conversation with Rodney Dietert:
In the current pandemic, we have seen men succumb to COVID 19 at far greater rates than women. A lot of theories have been expounded as to why. And many theories have to do with the disease itself and its inherent impact on the human body.
In fact, the reasons may be much more fundamental. They may be reasons that transcend the disease and may be directly related to deeper biological differences between men and women.
Differences that have applications in the treatment of virtually every disease, from colds to cancer. Clearly differences in chromosome may be the ultimate customization of medicine. Understanding this is the work of Dr. Sharon Moalem. He’s an award-winning scientist and physician whose latest book is The Better Half: On the Genetic Superiority of Women.
My conversation with Dr. Sharon Moalem:
Early in his political career, before he ever became president, Lincoln said referring to America, that “a house divided against itself cannot stand.” Little did Lincoln know at the time that he would one day stand at the fulcrum of that division. And that he might become crushed by the weight of it. Not only metaphorically, or ultimately in Ford’s Theater, but before he ever became president.
With Americans so angry today, with tempers, and temperatures so high we admirer the great job that the secret service does of protecting Presidents of both parties.
For Lincoln, the end could have come even before he took office. In a little know footnote of history, Lincoln had to sneak his way into Washington, to prevent an assassination attempt by pro-slavery excrements. That the backbone of historian Brad Meltzer’s new book The Lincoln Conspiracy: The Secret Plot to Kill America's 16th President--and Why It Failed
My conversation with Brad Meltzer:
Along with the ideological divisions that are part of our political and social life today there are also the geographical divisions that essentially, at least as far as conventional wisdom goes, mirror those same divisions.
Those of us on the East and West coast, have a kind of bond that would make you think that the Atlantic and Pacific are one. That the sun rises on one coast and sets on the other and nothing much else seems to matter.
After all, it’s just “flyover country.” It’s all the same, right? Flat, backward, disconnected from the global community and connected only to the drumbeat of Fox News.
But suppose that weren’t true. Suppose there was more vibrancy and wisdom and energy there than we thought. Could a better understanding of history and physical place, perhaps give us a better understating of the lives of the people that inhabit it? That the view of Professor Kristin Hoganson in her new work The Heartland: An American History
My conversation with Kristin Hoganson:
It was George Orwell who said that “to see what is in front of one’s nose needs constant struggle.”
Sometimes we are all trapped in our inability to see what is in front of us. However in the realm of science sometimes the facts should simply speak for themselves...and yet there have been those through history that have denied science. Mostly because it didn’t comport with their agenda. Sometimes they were blinded by the obvious and sometimes it was antithetical to the false gods of religion for the expediency of politics.
Yet the ability to accept science, almost more than anything else, shows the character of the people and nations, as they either evolve or head back to the primordial stew of ignorance.
This has been an issue from Galileo right up to the onset of COVID 19. To explain how we’re still dealing with the same ignorance I’m joined by Mario Livio, the author of Galileo: And the Science Deniers
My conversation with Mario Livio:
I’m sure you all remember when Bill Clinton ran for President in 1992, James Carville’s precinct slogan, “it’s the economy stupid” was a fundamental foundation of the campaign.
It was effective because it captured, in perhaps a more innocent time, the essence of the economy that personally impacted every single American.
Today, almost 30 years and a political chasm latter it seems there are many economies. The Wall Street economy, the economy of the one-percent, the middle class, those struggling to make ends meet, and those totally left behind. The “economy” is no longer a catchword that is a big tent for all.
Just look at the current situation as 35 million Americans are out of work, lines at food banks stretch for miles, and yet the stock markets are hitting new highs.
Today, the current pandemic and its resultant economic crises are an accelerant to further these divisions. So as we look out amidst massive unemployment and an even greater economic divide and we wonder if there might be a common goal that the economy should represent and strive for?
Former Clinton and Obama economic advisor Gene Sperling things so and he outlines it in Economic Dignity
My conversation with Gene Sperling:
When looking at the world of the CIA, spycraft, and espionage, it fair to say that the images of both WWII and particularly the Cold War, shape our vision. Unfortunately, it does not always allow us to understand the reinvented world of 21st-century coverts action and government secrecy.
Joining me to explore this, as he has done in his nine previous books about the CIA, is Washington Post global affairs columnist David Ignatius. His new book The Paladin: he takes us inside today's very different world of spycraft.
My conversation with David Ignatius:
Most of you have heard about the Butterfly Effect. The butterfly flapping its wings in New Mexico can cause a hurricane in China. It may take a very long time, but the connection is real. If the butterfly had not flapped its wings at just the right point in space/time, the hurricane would not have happened. It’s how the world works today. Except with modern communications, it happens at warp speed. Coronavirus and terrorism are just two of many examples
Even for those that try and eschew globalization, the protest is futile. The world, its peoples, its governments and yes its companies are deeply interwoven and interconnected. It why we do ourselves such a disservice as citizens and as a nation if
we don’t truly understand the world and our place in it.
Few understand this as well as Richard Haass who takes us through it in The World: A Brief Introduction
My conversation with Richard Haass:
Who knew that 17th-century pirates were both the original terrorists and the original globalists. We mark seminal events that we are living through and decide which ones are important and which re not. Yet often time and history tell a different story. Sometimes it’s the small events, tiny inflection, or hinge points in history that seep into all the tentacles going out into the future.
Steven Johnson, in his new book Enemy of All Mankind: A True Story of Piracy, Power, and History's First Global Manhunt finds one of those points and gives us the recipes of how it’s become part of today’s global and cultural diet
My conversation with Steven Johnson:
When we say, almost without much thought today, that we live in an era of 24/7 news and information, we don’t often think about the attribution of this state of affairs. No, it didn’t come from Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook, or Jack Dorsey and Twitter. In fact, it wasn’t the internet at all. It was Ted Turner, a guy who in the 1970s was hustling billboards and promoting a UHF TV station in Atlanta. Until he went ahead with the crazy idea of launching a 24/7 news channel in the form of CNN and that, as they say, changed everything.
What he created not only impacted television and network news, and gave rise to the likes of MSNBC and Fox, but it changed the entire landscape of the delivery of news. It changed everything from the small-town newspaper to the N.Y. Times and the Washington Post. It was one of those seminal moments, a hinge point in the history. of television, of news and media as we know it.
It’s the subject of the new book by author and journalist Lisa Napoli, Up All Night: Ted Turner, CNN, and the Birth of 24-Hour News
My conversation with Lisa Napoli:
Ever since the post-war years both fear and complexity have increased. Fear of the bomb, of communists, war, political assassination, and 9/11. Fear of technology, of the growth and concentration of business, and the growing increase in the size and power of government. Ideas that are often impossible to get one’s head around and to fully understand.
Much of our division today is about how we have navigated those fears and traumas. What has emerged it seems is two central narratives that have their origins early in the mid 20th century and are still evolving today. One that the blame lies with the military-industrial complex. With shadowy generals and CIA agents and covert operatives.
On the other side, the blame goes to governments. To faceless nameless bureaucrats. Educated elites who think they know better than what Nixon called the silent majority. The group t
hat Reagan wanted to shrink small enough to go down a bathtub drain. This became known as the “deep state.”
The battle between these two world views, one on the left today and one on the right provides much of fuel for our partisanship.
How we got here, and what the deep state really is, or even if there is one, is at the core of two time Pulitzer Prize winner David Rhode's In Deep: The FBI, the CIA, and the Truth about America's "Deep State"
Even in these troubled times, we are divided. At a time when we should all be pulling in the same direction, even issues of life and death are political. Politicians who have professed to be pro-life are suddenly more pro-money regardless of the body count. Many have asked recently, particularly in the push to prematurely open the economy, how we got here. The answer has nothing and everything to do with our current politics, but the roots go much deeper. The line is very straight between what’s ripping us apart today and a religious movement masquerading as a social movement that has roots in the late 1970s. To explain, we talk with Katherine Stewart. Her previous work includes The Good News Club, an investigation into the religious right and public education, and The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism. My WhoWhatWhy conversation with Katherine Stewart:
:
There are so many stories today about the economic competition between China and the US. Competition in technology, in 5G in AI, and every other trendy high tech endeavor. However, the same competition exists in many other areas of industry, including the staid world of agriculture.
In fact, it is this world of genetically modified agriculture that may, more than the trendy tech, shape the future of the peoples of both China and the US.
It’s no wonder then that industrial espionage is rampant in this area and its national security implications go way behind missiles and planes and communication.
That’s the world that Mara Hvistendahl takes us into in her latest book The Scientist and the Spy: A True Story of China, the FBI, and Industrial Espionage
My conversation with Mara Hvistendahl
People often talk about certain groups of immigrants that have come to America and wonder why some groups are so successful.
One of the reasons is that it is a self-selecting population. To escape one’s country, whether it was fleeing Germany in the 1940s or Cambodia or Vietnam in the 1960s or Central America today, takes a remarkable degree of perseverance and courage. It’s often a high-wire act, that requires a do or die mentality.
But it has a dark side. What happens when that same drive is carried too far? When bending the rules to survive becomes bending the rules to succeed. Then it's like that old adage that “behind every great fortune is sometimes a great crime.”
This certainly is true for the Trumps and the Kushners. And we all may be the victims. Andrea Bernstein tells this story in American Oligarchs: The Kushners, the Trumps, and the Marriage of Money and Power.
My conversation with Andrea Bernstein:
Perhaps at no single moment in modern time have we been more self-aware about the human body and human anatomy. I suspect that all of you have a new understanding of how viruses work, how RNA duplicates, how generic material plays a role in the evolution of disease.
Therefore it becomes the perfect time to zoom out from that personal insight to look at the broad evolutionary perspective of how we got here to this time and palace. How did our vulnerable lungs and respiratory systems evolve and what does that evolution tell us about life now, our collective future and our own evolution prospects? And most of all in this age of cutting edge biological and genetic science, what control do we have over any of it?
Neil Shubin is the Robert R. Bensley Professor of Organismal Biology and Anatomy at the University of Chicago. provost of the Field Museum of Natural History and his latest work is Some Assembly Required: Decoding Four Billion Years of Life, from Ancient Fossils to DNA
My conversation with Neil Shubin:
When we do come back from the current crisis, in some ways every business will be a startup. Sadly, some business will not make it through. Others will struggle to come back. And in some cases innovation will prevail. That is, new problems will result in new business opportunities. Disruption, innovation, and the desire and the will to succeed will drive entrepreneurs to imagine whole new companies and whole new ways of relaunching old ones. And some will be wildly successful and maybe even become household words.
It makes you wonder, is there a formula for start up success. Are there rules or at least a framework? There is what Jim McKelvey calls The Innovation Stack.
My conversation with Jim McKelvey:
If you go into any bookstore and go to the section with business books, you will find enough books on leadership to fill its own library.
The problem with most of them is that they focus on how to get followers to follow the orders of the leader. To enact in real life, the old kids game of follow-the-leader.
It’s often about trying to get inside the head of followers to understand what makes them tick and how to motivate them. But suppose, the real power of the leader was not to try and motivate followers but to be clear enough about articulating his or her own intent in such a way that it becomes almost axiomatic for others to understand and want to follow. Suppose motivation came from within the leader, not from external forces or orders.
That’s at the heart of the approach to leadership put forth by retired US Navy Captain David Marquet in his new work Leadership Is Language: The Hidden Power of What You Say--and What You Don't.
My conversation with David Marquet:
One of the seemingly consistent things about creative destruction, particularly as a result of technology, is that we have a short memory for what came before the change. We remember just immediately preceding a dramatic shift in some vital element of our lives, but we forget what came before. It has the patina of making us nostalgic for the remembered past, even though we forget the long history.
This certainly seems to be true of journalism. We look at the landscape of what venture capitalist Jason Calacanis calls “late-stage journalism” and we see a world that is certainly far from what folks once though was the Golden Age of journalism in the 60s, 70s, and 80 and ’90s. But as a part of broader history, the picture is different. And perhaps it is only in seeing that difference, that we can adapt to the economic, political and socials needs of journalism today.
To talk about this, I'm joined by the journalist and Dean Emeritus of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, Nicholas Lemann. His story, Can Journalism be Saved, appears in the most recent issue of the The New York Review of Books.
My conversation with Nicholas Lemann:
Even if you are not a political junkie, even if you only pay attention occasionally, the one thing you should have learned is that campaigns matters. And while this is true at the most local level, it is true in bold relief in our national presidential campaigns.
It seems that in the modern political era, presidential cycles each layer on new accessories to the campaign process.
In 1960 it was the televised debate. In l964 it was an insurgent winning primaries and the nomination. In 1968, it was the beginning of the politics of division and the Southern Strategy. In 1976, we saw the full flowering of the power of primaries and people over back rooms. In 1980 we saw the consolidation of personality over politics. In 1992 the coming together of personality and the emerge of modern campaign techniques. And in 2008 the first full emergence of GOTV efforts, digital media, more sophisticated polling combined with old school grassroots politics.
It didn’t hurt that in Barak Obama there was also a great candidate with finely tuned political instincts and a brilliant campaign lead by a man steeped in the history of campaigns. That was David Plouffe. He continues his political wisdom in his new work A Citizen's Guide to Beating Donald Trump.
My conversation with David Plouffe:
Usually attributed to Balzac is the observation that behind every great fortune is a great crime. In this day and age, It might be paraphrased as that behind every great financial crime is a great bank.
In the case of many such crimes in the 20th and 21st century lies Deutsche Bank. In its efforts to
grow it did away with all traditional ideas of risk management. In its pursuit of fees and earnings, bank executives got into business with some of the world’s most shady and financially needy characters. Russian oligarchs, the Trumps, the Kushners, the Mercers, Vladimir Putin, and many other key Russiagate figures were among their customers.
It got involved with other banks in Germany, Moscow, Cyprus, and Moldavia; money laundering; real estate deals; hedge funds; indictments; bankruptcies; and a cast of characters orbiting it that feels more like the bar scene in the original Star Wars.
Trying to tie all of this together into one overarching narrative is David Enrich in his book Dark Towers: Deutsche Bank, Donald Trump, and an Epic Trail of Destruction
My conversation with David Enrich:
We are living through what is perhaps the last hurrah of boomer leaders. It’s hard to believe that it was only 28 years ago that we elected, in Bill Clinton, the first of only three boomer presidents, after having eight presidents, from Ike to George H.W. Bush, who represented the Greatest Generation.
Today we have a cadre of boomers, all septuagenarians, trying to make one last attempt in a world moving and changing faster than ever, trying to keep alive the aging boomer legacy.
As they do, a whole new generation is waiting in the wings. Soon, in the words of JFK, the torch will be passed to a new generation of Americans. Millennials shaped not by JFK, as so many boomers were, by their memories of 9/11, endless war and the financial crisis.
Capturing the political zeitgeist of these millennials at this moment is Charlotte Alter, in her new book The Ones We've Been Waiting For: How a New Generation of Leaders Will Transform America
My conversation with Charlotte Alter:
Trade Wars, intellectual property, public health, the global economy and democracy vs. authoritarianism. All are major parts of our public dialogues and all pertain to the state of China today. No other nation on the planet presents such an enormous footprint of the future. Perhaps even more so than the US.
That’s why the protests and events of the past year or so in Hong Kong are so important. Not just to the people of Hong Kong, but as a symbol of the face that China decides it’s comfortable putting forth to the world.
Jeffrey Wasserstrom, Chancellor’s Professor of History at UC Irvine brings this into the focus in his new book Vigil: Hong Kong on the Brink.
My conversation with Jeffrey Wasserstrom
We look at our political and cultural divide today and think that it can’t get much worse. What we forget is that it has been worse. Not just when policy matters were settled by a duel or literally pitted brother against brother, but even in the 1960s and 1970s when students where shot at Kent State. Law enforcement was murdered in politically motivated robberies, and even the bombing of the US Capitol was part of our contemporary political history and division.
A powerful example of this period is a group of left wing women fresh from their time in the Weather Underground. They got together in the early 1980s in the first blush of the Reagan years to become essentially domestic terrorists bent on opposing the political, corporate, and government ideologies of the time.
William Rosenau, takes us back to that time in his recent book Tonight We Bombed the U.S. Capitol: The Explosive Story of M19, America's First Female Terrorist Group.
My WhoWhatWhy conversation with William Rosenau:
Back in 1962, sociologist and political activist Michael Harrington published a book entitled The Other America. In it, he argued that a full twenty-five percent of Americans were living in poverty. The book had a profound impact on both Jack and Bobby Kennedy and some said it was responsible for Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty.
Forty-one years later in 2003, John Edwards spoke of “two Americas.” A nation divided by race, and by poverty.
And today, a full 58 years after Harrington’s look at poverty, the homeless crises is worse than ever, the streets of cities, large and small, are living evidence. The opiate and drug crises have hollowed out a large part of the country and the latest proposed federal budget reaches new heights in cutting social safety net programs.
It’s hard to think there is hope...for the country or for those left behind.
This is the world that Nicholas Kristoff and Sheryl WuDunn look at though a very personal lens in their book Tightrope: Americans Reaching for Hope.
My conversation with Nicholas Kristoff & Sheryl WuDunn:
It’s hard to make the point in our 24/7 information-saturated culture, but all of us, politicians included, are a lot more than the worst or even the best thing that we have ever done.
Couple that with the fact that times change so quickly, values change, norms change and what might have been acceptable in 1962 certainly would get you fired today. This is perhaps most true with respect to the subject of race, the singular stain of our founders that we have worked 240 + years to try and redress.
The story of race is a long complicated one and former Alabama Governor George Wallace was a part of it. Today, his daughter Peggy Wallace Kennedy tries to put her fathers life in perspective. People like the great John Lewis and Congresswoman Barbara Lee have lent their hands to help her in that effort. All while our current president tries to rekindle the hatred she has worked hard to try and extinguish.
Peggy Wallace Kennedy talks to me about her memoir The Broken Road: George Wallace and a Daughter’s Journey to Reconciliation and about her recollection of her father.
My conversation with Peggy Wallace Kennedy:
Partly as a result of 24/7 cable news and its unending political coverage, politics today is simply another form of entertainment. A spectator sport at best.
We know the names of all the players. Nate silver homogenizes sports and election statistics as if we all had political bookies. We’re angry and we want purity tests for our candidates.
What we’ve lost sight of in all of this is what politics is actually for. It is, at its core, only about the wielding of power to accomplish something. Success comes not from shouting, or self-righteousness, or the sanctity of one’s views, but from the ability to muster the requisite number of votes.
This is true whether it’s about pre-existing conditions and guns or about filling a pothole or paving a road in your community.
Political science professor Eitan Hersh explains this in Politics Is for Power: How to Move Beyond Political Hobbyism, Take Action, and Make Real Change.
My conversation with Eitan Hersh:
When an event truly captivates the nation, it’s usually because it touches on something that we’re not very good at talking about. Such was the case with the Brett Kavanaugh hearing.
Reactions to Christine Blasey Ford personified a complex contradiction in our society. While many, particularly some men, respected her appearance and professionalism, they were way too quick to identify with and accept Brett Kavanaugh’s college sexual entitlement as some kind of norm. In doing that one wonders what message we are sending to boys and young men.
This disconnect between changing culture and stunted sexuality seems to lie at the heart of confusion that boys are experiencing today as they try to come to grips with intimacy and sexuality in a changing world while most are still stuck with sexuality in a 1955 time warp
It’s no wonder that people like Jordan Peterson tells his audience of angry young men to “look back to the 1950’s”
That's the world that best selling author and journalist Peggy Orenstein examines in Boys & Sex: Young Men on Hookups, Love, Porn, Consent, and Navigating the New Masculinity
My conversation with Peggy Orenstein:
By now, we’ve all seen the pictures and footage of Australia-on-fire. In many ways it’s equivalent to those Rover pictures of Mars. They make us sit up and take notice, but we have no real feel for what it’s like and how life can survive, or even if it can. For that we can only appreciate firsthand accounts of what may very well be the first great climate apocalypse of the 21st century.
Some of you may have read Judith Crispin’s harrowing account of the fires in a recent story in WhoWhatWhy. Now amidst the fire and devastation, it is an honor to talk with Judith Crispin
My WhoWhatWhy conversation with Judith Crispin:
The not so subtle joke has always been that the two things that are inevitable are death and taxes. And while efforts are always front and center to conquer disease and extend our life span, the inevitability of death has always loomed large.
Even efforts to regenerate life and the fascination with cryogenics still acknowledged death.
Now a whole new group of scientists are trying to defy the evolutionary idea of death. The funny thing is it’s not happening in the great halls of medicine. Not at NIH or Cleveland or Mayo Clinic or at our other great research hospitals, but in Silicon Valley. There, a group of wealthy boomers, not unlike aging politicians I guess, will do anything to avoid stepping aside. This is the world that Chip Walter takes us into in Immortality, Inc.: Renegade Science, Silicon Valley Billions, and the Quest to Live Forever
My conversation with Chip Walter:
Last Sunday the venerable NY Times got it all wrong. They said, and I’m quoting, “On the Democratic side, an essential debate is underway between two visions that may define the future of the party and perhaps the nation.” Not so.
The only thing that will really define the future of either party and of the nation is the defeat of Donald Trump. And anything that stops short of focusing on that and that alone is a failure of imagination.
The times went on to say, and again I’m quoting, “with a crowded field and with traditional polling in tatters, that calculation calls for a hefty dose of humility about anyone’s ability to foretell what voters want.” Wrong again.
Focus groups, polling, and campaigns still matter. They matter not just in “the election,” but in the elections in the states that will actually shape the outcome of that election.
It’s not a mystery. The methods today may be more modern, but campaigns for candidates, not unlike advertising for a product, if a done right, will work!
And that, not some vague nuances of policy is the only thing that will defeat Trump.
To try and explain and reinforce these ideas I’m joined by. Rick Wilson the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Everything Trump Touches Dies and most recently Running Against the Devil: A Plot to Save America from Trump--and Democrats from Themselves
My conversation with Rick Wilson:
In our current political and social climate, when polarization is so extreme, when purity tests are often required by your tribe, the idea of compromise and what some call “selling out,” takes on added weight and significance.
But because positions and even sometimes values are often so extreme does compromise and selling out even mean what it used to? And if not, can we actually square the circle of compromise, selling out and ethics.
That's the question that Inge Hansen asks in The Ethical Sellout: Maintaining Your Integrity in the Age of Compromise.
My conversation with Inge Hansen:
Most of you know the story of the scorpion and the frog and what it tells us about human nature.
It’s no surprise than that our everyday encounters, at work, at home, and on the street are driven by our innate nature. Wouldn’t it be easier if there were a set of immutable laws by which to understand that nature? Law that really might have been helped that frog?
These are the rules laid down by bestselling author Robert Greene. Greene, the author of The 48 Laws of Power and the Art of Seduction, now lays out The Laws of Human Nature
My conversation with Robert Greene:
We see endlessly how we are siloed with respect to politics, race, and geography. Add to this the generational silos that we all seem to live in.
Reams have been written about intergenerational conflict, particularly in the workplace. But might this be the one area where the imaginary lines of divisions can be crossed? Can the improvement of intergenerational relationships in the workplace be a kind of Rosetta Stone for better understanding of all the other issues that divide us? Issues that are fed by speed, modernity, technology, and popular culture. This is the exploration that Hayim Herrirng gives us in Connecting Generations: Bridging the Boomer, Gen X, and Millennial Divide.
My conversation with Hayim Herring:
The Harvey Weinstein trial, which begins this week, while perhaps extreme in its nature, reminds us of the realities of today’s work place.
Today it’s not enough to just stay on top of one's career and professional knowledge and development. There is also the changing dynamics and culture of the workplace itself. Multi-generational, multi-gender, multi-age, and the seemingly increased sensitivity and scrutiny.
The irony is that it is this very diversity, that carries within it the seeds and the power, to help us understand and to strive to function frictionlessly within it. In fact, it is only by embracing this very diversity that businesses can succeed in today’s environment.
Lauren Stiller Rikleen is the founder and president of the Rikleen Institute for Strategic Leadership, and is a provider of training, speaking, and consulting services to professional services entities. In her new book The Shield of Silence: How Power Perpetuates a Culture of Harassment and Bullying in the Workplace she addresses the strengthening multi-generational teams, women’s leadership and advancement, and minimizing the impact of unconscious bias.
My conversation with Lauren Stiller Rikleen:
Some of you may have seen the story that owning a dog gave you a 27% chance of living longer. Some of that was related to the exercise of walking the dog, some to the companionship, and the basic human-dog bond.
But suppose the reality was much deeper than that. Suppose dogs could be diagnosticians and even healers and protect us from the onset of symptoms. They can and many already do.
This is the world that Maria Goodavage, veteran journalist and New York Times bestselling author of Soldier Dogs, takes us into in her latest Doctor Dogs: How Our Best Friends Are Becoming Our Best Medicine
My conversation with Maria Goodavage
William Greider always knew that the chickens would come home to roost. Over many conversations, since 1997, he seemed to know and report the truth of that old adage "that if things were going to stay the same, a lot of things had to change." My conversation with Greider in March of 2010. RIP William Greider
It’s long been an adage that what we eat, defines who we are. That’s never been truer than in our polarized world today and beef and its mass production has long been at the center of this definition.
From the mid 19th century, the history of beef parallels, and often reflects social, cultural and economic changes. From the great plains in the 1850s to the slaughterhouses of the midwest, to the first McDonalds in San Bernardino in 1940, “where’s the beef,” has often told us who we are.
Joshua Specht tells us more in Red Meat Republic: A Hoof-to-Table History of How Beef Changed America
My conversation with Joshua Specht:
We all know that whether it’s a child’s toy or a powerful institution if something is built solid, misuse or the infliction of damage will not usually break it. How many times have you dropped your phone and it’s been fine? On the other hand, that which is weak or frayed will unravel with the least amount of stress.
In many ways, we can say that about America’s foreign policy and military establishment. Weakened over the years by uncertainly, hesitation partisanship, bad decisions and an exaggerated admiration that acted like a kind of superglue, that held the whole thing together.
However, in the hands of a rambunctious child, one with no respect for his property or what he was given, it can not hold.
This is the world of Donald Trump and today’s American military and foreign policy. Fragile from the start, this spoiled, bratty impetuous child may have finally broken it.
That’s the story that my guest Peter Bergen tells in Trump and His Generals: The Cost of Chaos.
My conversation with Peter Bergen:
Perhaps our greatest spy novelist of the cold war, John le Carré, talks about what he sees as the appetite for superpower, that still exists in the U.S. and Russia. He says that what’s shared is the desire for oligarchy, the dismissal of truth, the contempt actually for the electorate, and for the democratic system. That’s common to both of them.
While the U.S. has certainly made mistakes, and was not always been pure in its motives and actions, today under Donald Trump something is different. What is it, and how did we get here, and to what extent is the Trump-Russia connection part of what’s changed? Is Putin as Machiavellian as we’ve been led to believe, and have we now gone too far down the rabbit hole for any of this to change?
Few understand this better than Malcolm Nance, who back in 2014 was prescient about some of the issues that we’re facing and litigating, on this very day.
Malcolm Nance is a former U.S. Navy officer specializing in cryptology. He’s an internationally recognized intelligence, a foreign policy commentator, and a counter terrorism analyst for NBC news and MSNBC and his newest work is
My WhoWhatWhy conversation with Malcom Nance:
Just as we saw in America in the 1960s, as we saw when the Berlin Wall fell, as we witnessed in the Middle East, during the Arab Spring, and as we are witnessing today in Hong Kong, young people are always at the ramparts of change and revolution. This was equally true in France in the run-up to WWII and in the resistance to the German occupation.
On a day when people, mostly young, are taking to the streets, it’s worth talking to Ronald Rosbottom, about Sudden Courage: Youth in France Confront the Germans, 1940-1945
My conversation with Ronald Rosbottom:
The great screenwriter William Goldman once said of Hollywood that nobody knows anything. The physicist Richard Feynman once said that no one understands quantum mechanics.
And yet random as knowledge sometimes might be, it safe to say that the entire technological infrastructure of modern society, all of Silicon Valley, is built on top of the reliable functioning quantum mechanics.
Quantum Mechanics has been around since 1927. It is so ubiquitous in some ways that it’s been a little like being able to tell time and use that value of the information while not having any understanding of how a watch (digital or otherwise) actually works.
That where Sean Carroll comes and his book Something Deeply Hidden: Quantum Worlds and the Emergence of Spacetime.
My conversation with Sean Carroll
It’s no surprise that many fear technology is out of control. AI, facial recognition and robotics are the stuff of science fear. But it’s biotechnology and the understanding of what makes us tick that may be the ultimate frontier to both human understanding and human abuse by those that are malevolent.
Few understand this better than bestselling novelist Dr. Robin Cook. He has used his insights into the future to scare the bejesus out of us in his books like Coma, Cure, and Fever. Now in his latest work, Genesis he walks us through the cost-benefit analysis of DNA and even your simple search for ancestry.
My conversation with Dr. Robin Cook:
Clausewitz said that politics or diplomacy was “war by other means.”
Churchill put it more colorfully when he said that “diplomacy is the art of telling people to go to hell in such a way that they ask for directions.”
The Impeachment hearings have pulled back the cover on the work, the integrity, and the quality of America’s diplomats. Perhaps it’s their self effacing, sometimes quiet professionalism that makes them targets for the more malevolent unprofessional forces in government. This was as true with respect to the attacks on the State Department During the dark days of Joe McCarthy, or equally dark days of Donald Trump.
Whatever the reason, perhaps there is no better time to look at these talented and smart men and women than in the middle of the current Ukraine scandal. That's what Paul Richter does inThe Ambassadors: America's Diplomats on the Front Lines
My conversation with Paul Richter:
The great playwright Arthur Miller once wrote that too often “we know the price of everything and the value of nothing.” Perhaps nowhere is that truer than today. In a world where profit maximization and transactional value often seems to dominate, and the current push back to that could have unintended consequences, how do we find our equilibrium? How do we create a world of money and value, a world of profit and purpose, unbridled ambition and deeper meaning?
Yancey Strickler, a co-founder and former CEO of Kickstarter, now looks beyond the narrow focus of Silicon Valley into a way that just might bring on an exciting and better world. He shares his views in This Could Be Our Future: A Manifesto for a More Generous World
My conversation with Yancey Strickler:
Artificial flavors, fake news, authentic copies, and real replicas. They all sound like oxymoronic gibberish at worst, overzealous marketing at best.
And so it is that sometimes the fake is indeed real. Today we can appreciate and even learn or feel something by looking at a replica piece of art or liking an artificial version of our favorite food flavor or enjoying fake meat, But how about owning a Chinese made Louie Vuitton bag, Rolex or Mont Blanc pen?
The danger of course, on every level, is that we may have so blurred the lines between fake and real that virtual reality is no longer something we need glasses to see, it just the world we live in every day. That's the world that Lydia Pyne teaches us about in Genuine Fakes
My conversation with Lydia Pyne:
Edward Snowden, Chelsea Manning, Coleen Rowley, and the whistleblower who let us know about the Ukraine call, are just a few whose actions sparked international dialogue and their names may be universally recognized. But brave though they were, their courage isn’t universally revered.
Back in 2002 TIME magazine named three whistleblowers as people of the year and famed whistleblowers such as Frank Serpico, Jeffrey Wigand, and Karen Silkwood have been the subject of major films. Yet vitriol continues against individuals willing to speak out when they see crimes being committed.
Why are those who dare to expose corruption and worse so frequently ostracized? Why are we so quick to call treason on those who speak truth in the face of power? And what historical and patriotic obligation do we have to support and protect those that speak up? That’s our focus today as I’m joined by Middlebury College professor Allison Stanger to talk about Whistleblowers: Honesty in America from Washington to Trump
My WhoWhatWhy conversation with Allison Stanger:
Even when we don’t realize it, science is part of our lives. Physics, chemistry, biology...it’s all essential to our survival. So why is the general subject so confusing these days? Why do laymen think they know better than scientists?
And perhaps more importantly, at a time when everything else is advancing, when the cutting edge of
science impacts us all, how have the methodologies of science kept pace with modernity? Perhaps we’re all too stuck in the mindset of high school science class, and maybe that’s why we can’t progress in our thinking.
James Zimring, Professor of pathology at the University of Virginia, where he pursues basic and translational research in the field of transfusion medicine and blood biology, gives us some insight in What Science Is and How It Really Works
My conversation with James Zimring:
While many of you can recite the great battles of WW I and II and even the Civil War, the more recent battle that have been fought in the Middle East against ISIS are already forgotten. Certainly, the battle for Mosul was one of those
Beyond that, there is the relevance to events taking place today. The battle for Mosul, which helped take down ISIS in 2017, had as a major component, the forces of the autonomous region of Kurdistan. 40,000 Kurds that were part of the joint military effort in a battle every bit as important and as bloody as those of WW II.
Journalist James Verini was embedded with the Iraqi counter-terrorism service during the battle and tells the remarkable story in They Will Have to Die Now: Mosul and the Fall of the Caliphate
My conversation with James Verini:
There is not a morning that goes by without some story about the impact of social media. The power of Facebook or Twitter, or Instagram. With all of that, it’s easy to forget the power of television. Its impact on our lives growing up, its power today and what it has wrought. It’s given us Ronald Regan, Josiah Bartlet, and Donald Trump.
Howard Beal laid it out for us in Network, but James Poniewozik gives us the contemporary context in his new book Audience of One: Donald Trump, Television, and the Fracturing of America
My conversation with James Peniewozik:
In many communities you often see people wearing a button that says Be Kind. In an ever competitive
and sometimes selfish world that’s not always easy to do. Our political dialogue makes it even more difficult. Add to that our economic and personal pressures and the acceleration that we all face, and kindness often gets left way behind.
But suppose we found out that kindness is not just something we can do to make us feel better, suppose we discovered that kindness can really help us live longer and healthier lives. Not in some mystical and karmic way, but in a very real, practical and scientifically based context.
Discovering this has been the work of Dr. Kelli Harding. She explains in her book The Rabbit Effect: Live Longer, Happier, and Healthier with the Groundbreaking Science of Kindness.
My conversation with Dr. Kelli Harding
Imagine if you went to buy a car and rather than one price for the car, you had to essentially buy it ala carte. You had to negotiate a separate price for the wheels, for the engine, for the paint, for seats, all separate. All from different suppliers and all with hidden fees. Sound ridiculous? But that is essentially how we pay for health care in America.
It’s no wonder that there is no more polarizing issues than the delivery and the cost of health care. It’s why it’s front and center in our politics, and in all of our lives. It’s a system that alone makes us sick.
It’s amazing how many people say they like their doctors, but hate the system. A system that is broken, has lost public trust and has become a business model in which price gouging is built-in, outcomes are not part of pricing, and it corrupts people who often start out as idealists.
This is the system that Dr. Marty Makary details in The Price We Pay: What Broke American Health Care--and How to Fix It.
My conversation with Dr. Marty Makary:
The world is a complex place. The news comes at us at hyper-speed and 24/7. All while we have to deal with family, work and life.
Therefore more than ever, it’s critical that there are those among us, journalists mostly, whose job it is to distill and explain events to us. Not to tell us how or what to think, but to present the big stories in-depth and in a narrative that allows us to be smarter about the world, and refine how we are to live in it.
Few do this better than James B. Stewart. He has been doing it for years with books such as Blood Sport, Den of Thieves, and Disney Wars. Now with his latest Deep State: Trump, the FBI, and the Rule of Law, he takes us deep inside what we’ve all lived through for the past three years. The investigation of Hillary Clinton’s emails and of Trump, Russia, Comey and the Mueller Report. All of which has lead us to where we are today.
My conversation with James B. Stewart:
Harold Bloom, who died last week at the age of 89, was one of our great teachers and literary critics. Often out of sync with contemporary literary fashion, he defended the “Western canon” and fought against what he called “the School of Resentment,” multiculturalists and those whom he argued betrayed what he saw as literature’s essential purpose.
I had the opportunity to know Professor Bloom as a student, and later in life, I had the opportunity to interview him. Most recently in 2000 upon the publication of his book How to Read and Why
Here is that conversation with Professor Harold Bloom
Beyond the common denominator of poverty what are aspects of the poor that we just don't understand?
We've learned that poverty itself creates a different life, a different view of the world. A view that arguably accounts for the fundamental failures of so many well-meaning programs. Why this is, what works and why has it been so hard to find the magic bullet. Trying to answer this has been the work of the winners of this year's Nobel Prize in economics, Esther Duflo and Abhijit Banerjee.
My conversation with Esther Duflo and Abhijit Banerjee:
A look at the news any day reminds us that America is no longer the singular dominant power in the world. This is true vis a vis soft power, moral persuasion, and now cultural power.
American movies, music, and art no longer are the single option for global entertainment. Perhaps not since the British invasion of the ‘60s have we seen so much art and entertainment coming from outside of the U.S. This time form India, South Korea, and even Turkey. This is the world that Fatima Bhutto takes us into in New Kings of the World: Dispatches from Bollywood, Dizi, and K-Pop
My conversation with Fatima Bhutto:
Once upon a time, we didn’t have to think about political correctness. And we survived as a culture! We self-corrected, we became more sensitive to others, we learned to accept and appreciate diversity. It was sometimes difficult, even painful. But a lot of it was organic. Often we slipped up. We fell backward, and sometimes it even took appropriate legislation to provide better guardrails for our behavior. Such was the forward march of mankind.
But today, the bludgeon of political correctness hangs over all of us. And nowhere worse than on our college campuses. The fear of free speech, the absurdity of safe spaces, the desire to silence unpopular ideas and the seeking out of problems and conflicts that don’t really exist, are all hallmarks of where we are today.
But how did we get here, and is there any path out that does not divides us still further, polarize us even more and further enhance the sanctimony of those who consider their ideas singularly virtuous.
Skidmore professor Robert Boyers, the subject of a story in this week’s New Yorker takes us into the belly of the beast of political correctness in his new book The Tyranny of Virtue: Identity, the Academy, and the Hunt for Political Heresies.
My conversation with Robert Boyers:
Most of us remember being transfixed, just one year ago, to the hearings from now Supreme Court Justice Brent Kavanaugh. This week, as the court begins its new term, Justice Kavanaugh will be part of a court deciding on some of the most fundamental cases that affect our politics, our culture, and our freedoms. All in an atmosphere that, if even possible, is even more polarized than it was a year ago.
So who is Brett Kavanaugh? Certainly the one week FBI investigation and the televised circus that was his hearing may not have told the whole story. For that, we must rely on the reporting of Robin Pogrebin and Kate Kelly in their new book The Education of Brett Kavanaugh: An Investigation.
My conversation with Robin Pogrebin:
So much of what passes for history today is one dimensional. We see the events, the names, the places the timeline and the heroes and the villains. But there is often another dimension. Not so much a secret history, but almost like the moon, it has a dark side, hidden from us. It’s there, we just don’t see it and therefore we don't’ appreciate it and its broader impact.
So it is with Silicon Valley. Literally, millions of words have been written about it. In fact, with the exception of politics and Washington, no place gets more coverage and attention. No accident given their long symbiotic relationship.
Therefore you would think that by now we know it all. But we don't. This is why people still write books and surprise us about our origin story as a nation and about our wars past. And it’s why, particularly at this time when tech is under such scrutiny, we should understand everything we can about its history. That’s what Margaret O’Mara has tried to do in The Code: Silicon Valley and the Remaking of America
My conversation with Margaret O'Mara:
Today Trump's war is against Congress and the intelligence community. Previously he went to war with the FBI with the same mob boss approach that resulted in the firing of Jim Comey and Andrew McCabe and the repeated attacks on the integrity of the FBI
What can that recent history tell us about where we are now? About the strength and/or fragility of our fundamental law enforcement and intelligence institutions and the long term consequences to individuals and to the country?
To put it all in some kind of up-close perspective is CNN law enforcement analyst Josh Campbell, in Crossfire Hurricane: Inside Donald Trump's War on the FBI.
My conversation with Josh Campbell:
As a nation we’ve certainly gone through difficult times, times that as Thomas Paine said, try men’s souls. We’ve been divided as during the Cold War and the Civil War. But rarely have we been as tribal as we are today. Rarely have we been as willing to throw off facts, science, and reality, in the service of a cause. It’s almost like we’ve all joined cults. Little by little we’ve been encouraged to issue our faith in institutions and believe in nothing, which makes us more vulnerable to be made to believe anything.
As we throw off critical thinking, as we look for order out of the chaos of creative destruction, as we deal with the consequences of a rapidly changing and technological world, we exhibit so many of the signs of those that fall into cults. That’s our focus with Dr. Janja Lalich. She’s a researcher, author and educator specializing in cults and extremist groups with a particular focus on charismatic relationships and political and other social movements.
My WhoWhatWhy conversation with Dr. Janja Lalich:
No matter who we are, we are touched by food, shelter, and clothing. Of the three perhaps clothing is one we most take for granted. Unlike our food, we don’t usually think about where it comes from, unlike shelter, it’s in abundance and unlike these other necessities, the price keeps falling while style keeps improving.
It’s almost too good to be true. And maybe it is. Maybe there is a darker side, a steeper price for this proliferation of fashion. Dana Thomas explains this in Fashionopolis: The Price of Fast Fashion and the Future of Clothes.
My conversation of Dana Thomas:
Our attention span grows shorter while the events creating a whirlwind around the world, increase. N. Korea, Iran, China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, plus domestic turmoil is everywhere. In all of this, it’s easy to forget, just 18 short years after 9/11.
I often wonder how we’ll see this period that we are living through from the perspective of 50 years. But with respect to 9/11, the rearview mirror is starting to come into focus, as the objects are closer than they appear.
How the world and the US intelligence has transformed as a result of those events impacts everything we do today and is worth examining with this renewed hindsight.
In that sense, my guest Philip Mudd was present at the creation. He was in the White House as events of 9/11 unfolded and now he’s writing about them in ways that may inform or future. His recent book is Black Site: The CIA in the Post-9/11 World.
My conversation with Philip Mudd:
Over the many years of doing this program, I'm sorry to say I only had one opportunity to talk with Cokie Roberts. We talked back in 1998 upon the publication of her book about mothers and daughters, and the changing role of women. It was a long time before Me Too, but she was prescient about so many of the issues that would evolve over the next 20 years.
I share that 1998 conversation.
In All the President's Men, as reported by Woodward and Bernstein, Deep Throat says to Woodward, in the bowls of a garage, “it leads everywhere, get your notebook, there’s more.”
And so there was. Just as there was with the story of Harvey Weinstein. But on a larger canvas, it was the story of men behaving badly for a long time and getting away with it.
Fortunately, journalism is more than the first draft of history. Sometimes, facts, especially if they are an agreed-upon set of facts that are exposed, can change the course of history. Woodward and Bernstein are certainly an example. But so is Sy Hersh for reporting on Mai Li, Neil Sheehan on the Pentagon Papers, and Bart Gellman and the Edward Snowden revelations Now.add to this pantheon Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey for their reporting on sexual harassment in the workplace, and ultimately on Harvey Weinstein and the explosion of the “Me-Too” movement.
Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey are investigative reporters at the New York Times and the authors of She Said: Breaking the Sexual Harassment Story That Helped Ignite a Movement.
My conversation with Megan Twohey:
Silent Cal Coolidge is reported to have said “that the business of America is business.” Correct or not, it’s fair to say that by looking at only American business over the past 60 years, we can see the full arc of our contemporary history.
Think of all of the things that have been front and center in our politics and our culture that have sprung from business, going all the way back to the 60’s. Conglomerates, the free movement of money around the world, manufacturing changes, management and blue-collar workers, government control and union membership. Private equity, derivatives, lobbyists, corporate political contributions, climate change, think tanks and branding.
Each and every one of these things have been a part of the empire that is Koch Industries and has been touched and shaped by Charles and David Koch.
Whether you like their particular brand of politics or not, the company and the empire they built have to be respected. Whether Balzac was correct when he said that “behind every great fortune is a great crime,” is a question worth examining in the context the Koch industry.
That’s part of the deep dive into Koch that business journalist Christopher Leonard has given us in his new book Kochland: The Secret History of Koch Industries and Corporate Power in America.
My conversation with Christopher Leonard:
In most places around the country, school is beginning. This includes the nation's colleges and universities where about 2 million high school graduates will soon start college.
Yet 40% of those incoming freshmen will drop out before graduating. Many with debt, limited job prospects, and shattered confidence.
Why is this number so high? Why are some colleges succeeding in keeping kids engaged and others failing so miserably? Are there best practices? Is this simply another reflection of the economic divide in America? Is it happening at elite universities? Can we test for it, and what are the consequences if the problem goes ignored?
All of these questions are part of the new book The College Dropout Scandal by my David Kirp
My conversation with David Kirp:
Our founders devised a political system that was inherently difficult to change. They saw almost every aspect of the desire for change as needing to be cooled before even the most white-hot desire for progress could be codified. With respect to race and gender, it’s been even more difficult. Those were the prejudices and stereotypes baked into the founding documents themselves.
This is certainly one of the reasons it has taken so long for people of color and for women to be a full part of the political process.
Hillary Clinton talked about those tens of millions of cracks in the glass ceiling. But the safety glass that is history, made those cracks very hard to break. In fact, perhaps it was only with the elections of 2018 that we have seen some of those cracks become full-blown breaks. Even though women have made political progress, the terms of the debate and the campaigns have been based on the historical precedents set by white men.
All of this is changing as is documented by Caitlin Moscatello in her new book See Jane Win: The Inspiring Story of the Women Changing American Politics.
My conversation with Caitlin Moscatello:
Long before the Internet, in the early days of talk radio, the all-night hosts were the progenitors of modern-day conspiracy theory. Hosts spent hours talking about crop circles, animal mutilation, Area 51, the Kennedy assassination and all manner of events and evidence that could be used to construct a hidden narrative.
The idea was that strange things were happening, that evidence in plain sight could be interpreted in ways that evolved to different conclusions. The narrative was always about the interpretation of evidence that was in plain sight. We were told that we just didn’t understand the full impact of what it meant.
Today, all of that has changed. Almost like science, the “conspiracy theories” today from people like Alex Jones, or Donald Trump are not about another way of interpreting the world. It’s all about flat out lies, fabricated rumors and it’s often presented with the only backup being the mantra, “people are saying.”
Laying bear this new look to conspiracies are Harvard Professor Nancy Rosenblum and Dartmouth Professor Russell Muirhead in their book A Lot of People Are Saying: The New Conspiracism and the Assault on Democracy
My WhoWhatWhy conversation with Nancy Rosenblum and Russell Muirhead:
Hollywood is a place where the assets go home each night. Not just the Stars, but the hard-working men and women who make magic happen. Who each play a singular and unique role in telling cinematic stories. Each is a piece of a large puzzle and without each individual piece, the picture never comes together.
Sure Hollywood is a business and billions are dollars are always at stake. But without the experience, the craft and the talents of those behind the camera, none of it happens.
These are the “gig workers” that writer-producer Bruce Ferber gets to open up in The Way We Work: On The Job in Hollywood.
My conversation with Bruce Ferber
Once upon a time the South was a solid Democratic block of votes. Many of those segregationist senators that Joe Biden recently talked about were in fact Democrats. Republicans just didn't get elected from there. And then things changed. The civil rights movement, the voting rights Act, the trailing impact of demographic change from the great migration, and broader cultural changes, including the rise of feminism, all provided an opportunity for Republicans in the South to exploit racial, social and cultural divides.
Today we are living with arguably the apogee that effort.
These divisions have been part of every national election since LBJ vs. Goldwater in 1964 and with each cycle, the divide grows larger. This long effort is the subject of a new work by Angie Maxwell and Todd Shields, The Long Southern Strategy: How Chasing White Voters in the South Changed American Politics.
My conversation with Angie Maxwell and Todd Shields
I know someone who is absolutely fascinated by true crime stories. She says that Silence of the Lambs is her Star Wars. And why not? Crime stories, especially true crime stories about the likes of Ted Bundy, John Wayne Gacy, or Jeffrey Dalmer, fascinate us, as it takes our thinking to the edges of human behavior. Understanding what makes these people tick stretches the human imagination.
That is exactly what investigative journalist Maureen Callahan does for us in her new book American Predator: The Hunt for the Most Meticulous Serial Killer of the 21st Century In it, she introduces us to a little know serial killer who may very well be one of the most chilling.
My conversation with Maureen Callahan:
It’s clear that like it or not, race will once again be the issue of our time. You’d think by now, we would at least the the language right. But maybe that’s the very problem. We’re still talking about it precisely because we’re having the wrong discussion.
Almost as long as anyone can remember, we’ve sincerely directed our efforts to eradicate racism by talking about a color-blind society. The goal has been to make race and difference disappear essentially to homogenize the culture. When that hasn’t worked, we perceive that we have failed.
The response to that has been a kind of bifurcated multiculturalism and identity politics, that has moved everyone into their own corner. None of that has helped our understanding
An important new work, by Professor Jennifer Harvey, Raising White Kids: Bringing Up Children in a Racially Unjust America, gives us a new way to view race, justice, and culture.
My conversation with Jennifer Harvey:
From the moment that Jackie Kennedy branded the Kennedy presidency as Camelot, in an interview with author and historian Theodore White, royalty was suddenly bestowed upon the survivors.
The recoil effect from that simple phrase on Ted and Bobby and the rest of the family was impactful. But at least they were able to understand and process it. For John F. Kennedy Jr. he would immediately become a prince without any say in the matter
As he came of age emotionally, physically and politically, he was permanently marked by the mythology. It shaped every aspect of his public and private life, right up until his untimely death.
Some men and women choose to live in the public eye. Others like royalty, like William and Harry, for example, are just born there and have to come to grips with it.
JFK Jr. was as close as we have gotten to royalty. He was to become an American Prince. How well it served him and his country is still an open question. One explored by Steve Gillon, a historian and long-time friend in his new book America's Reluctant Prince: The Life of John F. Kennedy Jr.
My conversation with Steven Gillon:
We all remember that Al Capone was ultimately busted on tax fraud, even though he had a long, violent and ugly criminal career. We see it play out in politics where someone is charged with one crime that the government is able to prove, while it is really reflective of a career of many crimes.
So it is with the mythology of Linda Taylor. Busted in 1974 for welfare fraud, Taylor had a long history of criminal behavior and is even potentially linked to three suspicious deaths in the 70’s and 80’s
But is was ultimately her conviction on welfare fraud, which made her the infamous “welfare queen,” whose myth would shape our policies from her arrest in 1974, her trope elevated by Ronald Reagan and arguably right up to the political debate today. This is the story that Josh Levin tells in The Queen: The Forgotten Life Behind an American Myth.
My conversation with Josh Levin:
Many of you may have started watching the Showtime series, THE LOUDEST VOICE IN THE ROOM, about Fox News founder Roger Ailes. The problem with it is, that with respect to what Ailes did, what he is credited with accomplishing at Fox, very little of it is true.
Sure Ailes understood television and politics. But at core what he did was to take the world of talk radio, combined it with a bit of “blondification” and transferred it to television. When Fox new went on the air in 1996, Limbaugh had already been on the air for almost ten years.
Ailes simply exploited the rise and power of conservative talk radio. The Economist said many months ago that, “to understand the Republican politics, get in a car, turn on the radio and drive.”
Talk radio, is far more than the viewers that watch even the top rated Fox News shows each night. It's the lens through which millions and millions of its hard core listeners view the world.
No one understands this better than the go-to-guy for talk radio, the founder, editor and publisher of Talkers and Talkers.com, Michael Harrison.
Back in July of 2017, upon the death of Ailes, Harrison and I spoke about this mythology.
My conversation with Michael Harrison:
My 2014 conversation with Gabe Sherman on his then just-published book, THE LOUDEST VOICE IN THE ROOM. It's a great preview for the Showtime series that begins on Sunday
The Loudest Voice in the Room: How the Brilliant, Bombastic Roger Ailes Built Fox News--and Divided a Country
Once upon a time war had structure. There was a kind of narrative arc to war. A beginning, a middle and clear end. In the modern era, certainly since Vietnam, they have become what Clausewitz called “protracted conflict.” Even the efforts to find resolution are nothing more than wars by other means.
Most have heard the biblical quote, that “you will hear of wars and rumors of wars, but be not alarmed. These things must happen, but the end is still to come.”
With respect to America's efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan the end has still not come. Few understand this better than the men and women who served. And few articulate it better than Elliot Ackerman in his new work Places and Names: On War, Revolution, and Returning.
My conversation with Elliot Ackerman:
Today, more than one-half of the world's population lives in cities. In every corner of the world, people are moving to cities at a rapid and geometric pace. The urban migration taking place today is both historic and inevitable. Our cities represent the ultimate triumph and organizing principle of humanity. They are more than either the concrete jungle portrayed by Billy Wilder in the Lost Weekend, or the human zoo, that Desmond Morris claimed.
The great San Francisco columnist, Herb Caen, one said of cities, “that they should not be judged just by their length and width, but by the broadness of their vision and the height of their dreams.” They are, in some ways, the ultimate achievements of mankind.
Few understand them better than Monica L. Smith, a professor of anthropology and professor in the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability at the UCLA where she holds a chair in Indian Studies and serves as the director of the South Asian Archeology Laboratory in the Cotsen Institute of Archeology. She is the author, most recently of Cities: The First 6,000 Years
My conversation with Monica Smith:
Never before in human history has so much change been so rapidly foisted on human beings. Not during the Renaissance, the Enlightenment or the Industrial Revolution.
Today, technology in all of its forms; from smart machines to robotics, from AI to VR to 3D manufacturing, to genetic and biomedical engineering, will make sure we are never the same
It's estimated by some that almost eighty million jobs could be gone in our lifetime. Certainly, the psychological and political consequences of this change, as we are already seeing, could be devastating. But so will the economic impact. It’s in this context that we need to reimagine capitalism. Just listen to some of the current candidates for president, and you’ll see that the very capitalist system that has produced this unprecedented change and wealth, is under siege. All of which raises the question, can capitalism itself keep up? This is the question that author and business professor Ed Hess in a new White Paper in our recent conversation.
My conversation with Ed Hess:
The evidence is overwhelming that in our schools today, the successful curriculums are those that are directed toward deeper learning, project-based learning, and social and emotional learning.
Learners that feel empowered and hands-on, that collaborate and learn empathy are the ones who excel academically.
So why shouldn't the same be true of parenting? The recent cheating scandal certainly shows the other extreme. What happens amidst helicopter parenting run amuck, of parents not having faith in the innate abilities and independence of their kids.
Maybe you don’t have to let your 11 or 12-year-old fly off to France and change planes by themselves as my guest did, but giving them responsibly at home from a young age is essential.
Few people understand this better than Esther Wojcicki. Esther understands not in some abstract white paper kind of way, but by having raised three incredibly successful daughters; Ann, the co-founder of 23 and me, Susan is the CEO of YouTube and Janet is a distinguished doctor and professor of pediatrics.
Esther is in her own right an amazing success story. A formidable voice on behalf of journalism and media literacy, Esther Wojcicki is the founder of the Media Arts programs at Palo Alto High School and serves as vice chair of Creative Commons and was instrumental in the launch of the Google Teacher Academy. Her new book is How to Raise Successful People: Simple Lessons for Radical Results.
My conversation with Esther Wojcicki:
Mark Twain is reported to have said that history does not really repeat itself, but it often rhymes. Today we live in a climate, not unlike the late ’40s and early ’50s, where fear is weaponized, and where suspicion of the other is exploited as a salve for change.
Yet there always seem to be brave men and women trying to rise above. As Ed Murrow said in his takedown of Senator Joe McCarthy,” we were not descended from fearful men. They were not men who feared to write or to speak,” who, again in Murrow’s words, “did not confuse dissent with disloyalty.”
But fear is personal, visceral, and chilling when exploited by the government. It undermines the very foundation of a democratic republic, and sometimes of families. Two-time Pulitzer Prize winner David Maraniss makes it as personal as it can be in A Good American Family: The Red Scare and My Father. The story of his father and his family caught in the maelstrom of the red scare in the 1950s.
My conversation with David Maraniss:
Today as we sometimes contemplate the real possibility of the end of the American experience. We think about its roughly 250-year history, often in the context of the people that have led us, good and bad, and taken us to where we are today.
So perhaps it might be instructive to look at the 500 years history of the Roman Empire, and look at some of its leaders. Some who drove it to great heights and others who were responsible for taking it over the proverbial cliff.
Barry Strauss, professor of history and classics at Cornell, is a leading expert on ancient military and Roman history. His latest work, Ten Caesars: Roman Emperors from Augustus to Constantine, and our recent conversation gives us new insights to where we might be headed.
My conversation with Barry Strauss:
Immigration and the fear of outsiders is a deep strain in the American psyche. It didn’t start with Donald Trump. In fact, it hasn’t even reached its full flowering under this administration. When Trump talked of murderers and rapists coming to the border, of other nations not sending us their best, he was merely echoing a historical context that has actually played out in far worse ways in our history
From the Chinese Exclusion Act through the highly restrictive immigration acts passed in the early 20th century, the white Christians have always felt under siege. To make matters even worse, in the early part of the 20th century the rhetoric and false science of eugenics was weaponized in the immigration battles.
This is the story that my guest Daniel Okrent tell in The Guarded Gate: Bigotry, Eugenics and the Law That Kept Two Generations of Jews, Italians, and Other European Immigrants Out of America:
My conversation with Daniel Okrent:
Every day, no matter what the issue — whether it’s election integrity, rule of law, climate change, guns, impeachment, or the Mueller report — what’s at stake is not just daily political wins and losses, but the very survival of the republic.
As was the case at its founding, during the Civil War, and at a select few times in US history, Americans would be making a huge mistake if they took the survival of the nation for granted. History tells us that the Roman Republic had a very good 400-year run, only to have its citizens let it fail.
In this podcast we talk to prize-winning historian, professor, and Rome scholar Edward Watts. He takes us through some of the frightening parallels, which include cults of personality, dramatic wealth creation, the wearing down of critical guardrails and norms, and the willingness of Roman voters to ignore the damage being done as Rome exchanged freedom for autocracy.
Watts explains how, while it may have taken 100 years for the full effects to be felt, violent language, immigration issues, the ginning up of fear, and the violation of conventions in order to implement policy all played important roles. It’s ancient history we should well remember.
My WhoWhatWhy.org conversation with Edward Watts:
Long before the Internet, in the early days of talk radio, the all-night hosts were the progenitors of modern-day conspiracy theory. Hosts spent hours talking about crop circles, animal mutilation, Area 51, the Kennedy assassination and all manner of events and evidence that could be used to construct a hidden narrative.
The idea was that strange things were happening, that evidence in plain sight could be interpreted in ways that evolved to different conclusions. The narrative was always about the interpretation of evidence that was in plain sight. We were told that we just didn’t understand the full impact of what it meant.
Today, all of that has changed. Almost like science, the “conspiracy theories” today from people like Alex Jones, or Donald Trump are not about another way of interpreting the world. It’s all about flat out lies, fabricated rumors and it’s often presented with the only backup being the mantra, “people are saying.”
Laying bear this new look to conspiracies are Harvard Professor Nancy Rosenblum and Dartmouth Professor Russell Muirhead in their book A Lot of People Are Saying: The New Conspiracism and the Assault on Democracy
My conversation with Nancy Rosenblum and Russell Muirhead:
Even though it may not seem like it, domestic terrorism, particularly built around white supremacy, is nothing new. Given that racism is our nation's original sin, it should not be surprising that in the post Civil War period, the historical efforts to deal with the Ku Klux Klan are both instructive in their own right, but at the same time foreshadows the thru lines that lead us to where we are today.
This is the story that the Washington Post’s Charles Lane shares in his book Freedom's Detective: The Secret Service, the Ku Klux Klan and the Man Who Masterminded America’s First War on Terror.
My conversation with Charles Lane:
America has often been a divided nation. Battles at our founding were often settled at 50 paces.The western ethos that is part of half of America fueled many of those divisions. Brother fought against brother
in the civil war. The industrial revolution gave us riots, and death and violence. The cold war and fear of communism gave rise to whole careers and lives ruined just by accusation. The ’60s didn’t just produce great music but led to the death of students on the safety of a college campus.
But, to use the often tired cliche of Wall Street, this time it’s different. Or at least so it seems. The divide today, fueled by social media, by 24/7 news cycles and the decline of faith in our basic institutions and fear of hyper-rapid and deep fundamental change has produced a kind of tribalism that undermines rather than reinforces all the central ideas of democracy and republican government.
Darrell M. West vice president and director of governance studies at the Brookings Institution looks at all of this in Divided Politics, Divided Nation: Hyperconflict in the Trump Era.
My conversation with Darrell West:
Ukraine just elected a comedian as its president. A reality TV character holds the most powerful office on the planet. Talk show hosts are driving the agenda of US policy and not a day goes by that we don’t hear talk about more celebrities running for office
The membrane that separates news, governance, and entertainment has all but disappeared and efforts to raise any conversation above the noise drives our celebrity culture.
The debate about this goes to the core of our democratic system. The question of whether we will have to change our system or our change our culture is a legitimate open question. It’s also one that our framers viewed 140 years ago.
Nancy Isenberg and Andrew Burstein talk to me The Problem of Democracy: The Presidents Adams Confront the Cult of Personality.
about it and about their book
My conversation with Nancy Isenberg and Andrew Burstein:
Sometimes the personal is professional. It’s not all that common when ones work and one's survival is linked so inexorably together. They are in the story Tom Patterson and Steffanie Strathdee.
Imagine, you're climbing a mountain, you slip and your spouse is the clinging to the rope above you and that’s the only thing keeping you alive. In the story of Tom and Steffanie, it was Steffanie clinging to science, history and medical bravery that Tom would have to hang on to.
They tell their remarkable story in The Perfect Predator: A Scientist's Race to Save Her Husband from a Deadly Superbug: A Memoir
My conversation with Tom Patterson & Steffanie Strathdee:
Old songs, like old memories, are the purveyors of a kind of double imagery. Triggers of thought that somehow short circuit time and make yesterday's events today's reality. So when we write or read about the past, particularly in novels or memoirs, what we are reading, or writing, is not necessarily factual, but represents our remembered past..almost a separate world unto itself.
Award winning novelist Siri Hustvedt looks at this in her latest novel, Memories of the Future
My conversation with Siri Hustvedt:
Think of the millions of hours we spend thinking and talking about technology. About the future, what it all means, and how it impacts us. But before any this happens, before robots or AI, or even making a phone call, someone had to sit down at a screen and create the code to make it possible.
A process that is not just about abstraction, but about both art and craft. Like Chomsky said of language itself, “it etches a groove through which thought flows.” It’s been said that when we study human language, we are approaching what some call the human essence. When we study code and those who create it, arguably we are getting to the singularity of man and machine. This is the state that NY Times journalist Clive Thompson takes us to in Coders: The Making of a New Tribe and the Remaking of the World.
My conversation with Clive Thompson:
Several years ago, the tech company Cisco ran an ad campaign talking about the “human network.” It tried to humanize their networking products as more than just wires and routers but focused on the human beings at the other end of those wires, and the collective experience of connection.
Social connections that have been with us since man first stepped out of the cave and talked to his neighbor. All of that was before today’s social networks that have been like steroids to the idea of connection.
Today we are part of a networking feedback loop. Who we connect with impacts who we become and who we become impacts who we connect with. If all of this sound is a bit abstract, Matthew Jackson puts it all into perspective in The Human Network: How Your Social Position Determines Your Power, Beliefs, and Behaviors.
My conversation with Matthew Jackson
It’s hard to believe today, but leaching was once considered a legitimate and effective medical practice. Years from now, we may look back upon chemotherapy and radiation treatment for cancer in much the same way we now look upon leaching.
In labs today, all across the world, new forms of treatment for cancer and many other diseases under the general heading of immunotherapy are being discovered. The magic of the body’s own immune system is being brought to the task. However, there is no one size fits all, no silver bullet and such treatments are not a free ride. Either with respect to costs or side effects.
Just as the discovery of penicillin and the class of antibiotics, saved millions and truly changed the world, immunotherapy is on the precipice of doing the same for the 21st century.
However, its complexity, its connection to virtually every other aspect of the human body makes its study and the ability to harness and manipulate it, the medical holy grail of our times. Helping us to understand this is Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Matt Richtel in Elegant Defense, An: The Extraordinary New Science of the Immune System: A Tale in Four Lives.
My conversation with Matt Richtel:
In a world that is increasingly more authoritarian, in a political atmosphere that is more and more polarized and tribal everywhere, the threat of global hostage-taking has increased exponentially.
As the murder of Jamal Khashoggi illustrates, this threat has particularly increased for journalists, many of whom are on the front lines of reporting on repression and brutality. A record 262 journalists were jailed around the world at the end of 2018.
All of this raises the far larger question, one that journalists have to think about every day, of how should we deal, as a matter of public policy, with journalists or anyone other citizen that is taken, hostage.
The American policy has been that "we do not negotiate with hostage takers." This policy is not universal. Many nations, including France, Spain, and others have taken a different view. The answer is not clear cut or obvious. What is clear is that sometimes playing mister tough guy is just plains stupid.
Joel Simon, a long time journalists in California and Latin America, is the Executive Director of the Committee to Protect Journalist. His new work is We Want to Negotiate: The Secret World of Kidnapping, Hostages and Ransom.
My conversation with Joel Simon:
A couple of years ago, Senator Elizabeth Warren made headlines with the phrase “nevertheless she persisted.” Sheryl Sandberg told women they had to “lean in.” These approaches, while certainly valuable for dealing with the symptoms of the problems that many girls and women face, ignores the core of why these actions might, in fact, be necessary.
Men, for the most part, don't have to make the effort to persist or to lean in, because they are socialized from the beginning to do that. To be fearless, to be disruptive, to be brave.
Reshma Saujani, a graduate of Harvard and Yale law school and former NY City public advocate, is the founder of Girls Who Code. Her organization has made remarkable inroads in bringing more girls and women into STEM and technology.
But even more than just changing the gender make up of tech, she has seen coding as a kind of metaphor for teaching women to be brave.
Her Ted talk on the subject has gotten over 4 million views and now she’s expanded on it in her new book Brave, Not Perfect: Fear Less, Fail More, and Live Bolder
My conversation with Reshma Saujani:
When Hal asked Astronaut David Bowman to “open the pod bay doors,” it was as if our most primal fear of machines came rushing headlong into the 20th century. Today, in our 21st-century world, we understand the artificial intelligence behind HAL.
We see on display every day our reliance on automation and AI and algorithms in flying our planes and soon our self-driving cars.
It’s the full blossoming of the promised brave new world. But is there anything we should or could do about it? Is it out of our control, or do we just need to surrender?
Joining me to talk about this is Kartik Hosangar, the author of A Human's Guide to Machine Intelligence: How Algorithms Are Shaping Our Lives and How We Can Stay in Control.
My conversation with Kartik Hosangar:
When we talk about the broad swath of technology and its progenitors in Silicon Valley rarely are we talking about great breakthroughs. A new app for dating or dog walking, the one-hundredth messaging app or new forms of enterprise collaboration are hardly the stuff of Steve Jobs, or Bill Gates or Mitch Kapor or Robert Noyce or Bill Hewlett.
But every once in a while there is a new new thing that really matters. Like the PC or the smartphone or Microsoft Word and Excell.
For years, many thought something called Virtual Reality might be that thing. What was not know is that it would take a 19-year-old dreamer, one of odder character in a world that celebrates oddness, to make it a reality. The fact that Mark Zuckerberg the man that the European Union just called a “technology gangster,” would co-opt it and screw it up, only adds to an important chapter of legends of Silicon Valley.
Like other legends, this one is told by Blake Harris in The History of the Future: Oculus, Facebook, and the Revolution That Swept Virtual Reality
My conversation with Blake Harris
How many times a day do you hear or read someone opining on what’s wrong with America and American politics? As is too often the case we love to look for the simple solution. The one answer that will explain it all. The unified field theory of American politics.
But unlike physics, the answer to understanding politics, the business and the interaction of people, is more nuanced, more complex and more like evolution than physics.
Layer upon layer of behavior, decisions, and leaders have lead us to where we are today. To a politics not just of polarization, but of pure primal tribalism
Longtime journalists and author Michael Tomasky tries to peel back these layer in is his new book If We Can Keep It: How the Republic Collapsed and How it Might Be Saved.
My conversation with Michael Tomasky:
As underemployment grows and many who once seemed solidly middle-class are losing their economic foothold, the working class is getting larger and more frustrated. Both its size and perspective make the working class more important than ever before. So perhaps, more than ever, Americans across the class spectrum have good reason to try and understand working-class culture and experience.
Millions of words have been written about the economic divide in America. An equally powerful divide is the one between those who make policy and those who live with the consequences of that policy. Even among well-meaning progressives, sometimes the consequences of their efforts are counter to their real objectives
Part of that comes from not really understanding the lives of working people in America. Perceptions of poverty and struggling come from our personal experience and often from popular culture and political rhetoric. That’s why it's so singularly unique and powerful when a voice emerges that can make us see what that world is really like. Today Stephanie Land adds her voice in Maid: Hard Work, Low Pay, and a Mother's Will to Survive.
My conversation with Stephanie Land:
We’ve talked before about those frightening four words heard all too often. “This time it’s different.” Perhaps, besides Wall Street, nowhere else is that said as much as in Silicon Valley and the among the purveyors of every aspect of today technological and digital revolution.
No question that today is different. But it also fits into a pattern of human invention that has been a part of our evolutionary biology. It’s built around our curiosity, and the need to connect and share stories and information.
In examining this, it appears that there have been several inflection points along the way. Former FCC commissioner Tom Wheeler argues in his new book, that they are Gutenberg and the invention of movable type, and the telegraph. Both of which were every bit as profound as today's insanely great products.
To take us both back and forward on this journey I’m joined by former FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler. to talk about From Gutenberg to Google: The History of Our Future.
My conversation with Tom Wheeler:
The 19th century has often been referred to as the imperial or British century. The period, after WWII was, in words coined by Henry Luce, the American Century.
Today, as we move headlong into the 21st century, we are entering what Parag Khanna sees as the Asian Century.
This dramatic change is not just about China, although China is a big part of it. It’s also about the 40 other countries that make up Asia, that are connecting in a system of trade and engagement that is both ancient and modern. It’s about the greater integration of Europe and Asia,
It’s about a world and a future where history matters, even in the face of cutting edge modernity. It’s a world where politics, economics, geography, and historical context matter. Where any nation not understanding all of these factors will do so at its own peril.
How we got here is important, as is where we are. This is the subject of Parag Khanna’s new book,The Future Is Asian
My conversation with Parag Khanna:
We live in an age of extremes. We talk about it every day with respect to the economic divide, the political divide, the racial divide, and the gender divide.
Particularly with respect to gender, how can we explain the election of the most patriarchal President ever, in an era of me too? A President whose election was supported by the majority of white women who voted.
Today, in our politics, we devote a great deal of attention to how we can address the economic divide. Think tanks and candidates pursue it endlessly. Pundits and political scientists opine daily, almost hourly, on this socio-political divide. But what is the nexus of all of this to the gender divide? How can we reconcile the seemly successful attacks on patriarchy on the one hand, and it’s powerful persistence on the other?
It's a kind of cognitive dissonance that takes a great thinker about these subjects to try and understand and address. That's what Carol Gilligan does in her new book Why Does Patriarchy Persist?
My conversation with Carol Gilligan:
We wonder why millennials are different. Imagine growing up in our current highly partisan, polarized political environment, and not knowing anything else. Not knowing an America where compromise is possible, where division within the political parties produced candidates that moved to center. They did not watch Ronald Reagan and Tip O’Neil work across the aisle, or Lyndon Johnson exhibit political courage by championing civil rights legislation.
Imagine if all you knew politically was Rush, Hannity, and Maddow? For a brief and shining moment, we tried something else. Barack Obama captured it. Rather than being radical or progressive, he really was the person who we looked to make America great, to bring back the better way it used to be.
Instead, the opposite has happened.
It seems that every day we are fighting the same battles. Boomers in a kind of one last hurrah are relitigating the fights of the 60s and ’70s and things only get works, as the center cannot hold. These are the divides examined by Julian Zelizer and Kevin Kruse in Fault Lines: A History of the United States Since 1974
My conversation with Julian Zelizer & Kevin Kruse:
According to a report just released by Freedom House, a watchdog group that advocates for democracy, political rights, and civil liberties became weaker in 68 countries. The report also says the U.S. freedom score has declined by 8 points (from 94 to 86) over the past eight years.
At the same time we know that voters are unhappy, We are told that democracy is collapsing, that fascism is on the rise. We hear particularly from the left about the need for more direct democracy. For greater citizen participation, for more direct referendum and initiatives. One group, on this program recently called for citizen assemblies that would supplant representative government.
Yet it seems the more of this do it yourself politics we have, the more anger there is, the more divided we are.
What if we are going in the wrong direction? What if the answer to democracy’s problems is not more democracy, but more appreciation for the system of parties and representative government that our founders passed down to us.
It seems today that this is a very contrarian view. Perhaps that’s why it just might be correct. It’s put forth by Yale Professor Ian Shapiro in Responsible Parties: Saving Democracy from Itself
My conversation with Ian Shapiro:
Ken Starr, Archibald Cox, Leon Jaworski, Lawrence Walsh, and Robert Mueller. These names are almost as familiar as the Presidents they investigated. What does that say about the role of Special Prosecutors, the power the have, the evolution of their role in history and how we should see them today?
When a lesser know name, John Henderson was the special prosecutor pursuing Ulysses S. Grant in 1875 we didn’t have a 24/7 new cycle, and hundreds of former US Attorneys, commenting on his every move.
So once again, the question has to be asked, does this important safeguard of democracy even work in our current political, media and partisan environment.
Of course the best way to know is to examine the history. That what Andrew Coan does in Prosecuting the President: How Special Prosecutors Hold Presidents Accountable and Protect the Rule of Law
My conversation with Andrew Coan:
In an era in which everything it politicized, from the TV shows and the movies we watch to the places we shop, it’s not surprising that architecture and design would also be reflective of the politics of the day. This phenomenon is nothing new.
For proof of this, we need to look no further than Philip Johnson. Considered one of the greatest of modern architects, he would spend a good part of his life caught in the vortex between his politics and his art. His art, on the one hand, reflecting who he really was (because art seldom lies,) but also using the scope and causes of that work, to try and escape from who he was and what he believed.
That dilemma lies at the heart of an insightful new biography of Johnson by Mark Lamster, the architecture critic of the Dallas Morning News, a professor in the architecture school at the University of Texas at Arlington, a 2017 Loeb Fellow of the Harvard Graduate School of Design, and the author of The Man in the Glass House: Philip Johnson, Architect of the Modern Century.
My conversation with Mark Lamster:
All over the world, as populism surges, as creative destruction makes economic change inevitable, the focus on manufacturing and manufacturing jobs is often front and center. Maybe it’s the old romantic of a nation of big shoulders; the factories and machines spinning noisily, providing well-paying jobs.
But the fact is that far more jobs, almost 30 million, exist in the retail sector in the US, and those jobs are in far greater jeopardy than anything in manufacturing.
We see it all around us on empty main streets and in malls. It’s easy and somewhat lazy to blame it all on Amazon, and the internet. The causes go far deeper. Our entire relationship to shopping, to the acquisition of things, and to brands is changing. And millennials are leading the way.
As both millennials and aging, empty nest boomers move to cities, there simply isn't as much space to store all the stuff that we used to buy. Why else has Marie Kondo become an international icon?
So if retail is to survive, a lot has to change according to Mark Pilkington in his book Retail Therapy: Why the Retail Industry is Broken – and What Can Be Done to Fix It.
My conversation with Mark Pilkington:
The Blue Wave of the recent election would not have been possible without black women voters. The election of Doug Jones in Alabama would not have been possible without the turnout of black women.
The recent focus on Stacy Abrams, Kamala Harris, Maxine Waters, Oprah, and even Michelle Obama speak to the fact that Democratic and progressive politics today, as well as our cultural politics, is being defined and even redefined by black feminist politics.
When we look back at the history of black women and racial progress, women like Ida B. Wells, Fanny Lou Hammer, and even Rosa Parks, all of this should be no surprise. Today, coupled with the Me Too movement and the resistance to Trump, this has the makings a lasting, permanent and far-reaching a change in our politics.
Few understand this better, both historically and contemporaneously than Professor Duchess Harris, the author of Black Feminist Politics from Kennedy to Trump.
My WhoWhatWhy conversation with Duchess Harris:
The poet John Milton writing in the 17th century got it right when he said that “They also serve who only stand and wait.” No better description could be written to capture the essence of military families.
Today, as a nation, we have acknowledged that service. We have some, but still not enough understanding and services for those waiting at home. But back during the Vietnam war, when those serving did not represent a true cross-section of America, when the opportunities, especially for the wives back home were very limited, the price our soldiers, and we as a nation paid for that was high.
As we struggle to serve the soldiers and veterans of today's Iraq and Afghanistan era, it’s a history we best heed. A history captured eloquently and powerfully by Andrew Wiest in Charlie Company's Journey Home: The Forgotten Impact on the Wives of Vietnam Veterans.
My conversation with Andrew Wiest:
Over the past two decades, we’ve seen a modern great migration as more and more Americans move from suburban and rural America to cities. This trend cuts across all demographic groups but has been especially true for millennials and aging boomers.
As a result, our great cities have experienced skyrocketing rents, displacement of the poor, gentrification and protracted conflict between NIMBY homeowners, landlords, and renters
What was once a local debate has become a national story. How it plays out, is a kind of petri dish of our collectives values and how we see our communities in this first quarter of the 21st century.
Randy Shaw, a longtime housing activist in San Francisco, has lived these issues. Now he delivers a broad view in Generation Priced Out: Who Gets to Live in the New Urban America.
My conversation with Randy Shaw:
Every day we talk about disruption as if it's mostly positive within the business and consumer environment. But for companies today, both large and small, an array of challenges and potentially disruptive events can have a real negative impact on the company, its earnings, its employees and its customers.
Corporate executives today realize that the degree to which they can anticipate and prepare for that disruption will have a deep impact on how it all turns out on the other end. What's more, many of the approaches and techniques that today's companies can and should adhere to just might be applicable to the chaotic lives of all of us.
Studying this for years is Wharton professor Howard Kunreuther. He's the James G Dinan Professor of Decision Science and Public Policy and co-director of the Center for Risk Management and Decision Processes at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, and he’s the co-author of Mastering Catastrophic Risk: How Companies Are Coping with Disruption.
My conversation with Howard Kunreuther:
Some of you may recall a few weeks ago, newly elected Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez made a splash, talking about $21 trillion in misappropriated Pentagon money, which she claimed was enough to take care of Medicare for all. She based her conclusions on the misreading of an article in the Nation by investigative reporter, Dave Lindorff.
It’s too bad, because her misreading took the focus away from what the story did say about the Defense Department’s shady and possibly unconstitutional budgeting practices and the massive amount of fraud that has now been uncovered. What the story did detail is how the Pentagon badly failed its audit that it has resisted for decades, and that $21 trillion of financial transactions on both sides of the ledger between 1998 and 2015 could not be accounted for. This is the story that award-winning investigative reporter Dave Lindorff writes in"The Pentagon's Massive Accounting Fraud Exposed," in a recent issue of The Nation.
My WhoWhatWhy.org conversation with Dave Lindorff:
Social, cultural and technological change is all around us. We live in an era of upheaval, not unlike the movement from an agrarian to a manufacturing economy that took place 100+ years ago. At the time, many thought it was, to borrow a phrase, the end of history. Many spoke about the evils of cities. They thought that leaving the farm was anti-American, that it went against the Jeffersonian ideal of America.
It produced anger, sometimes violence, labor strife, and in the end a whole new economy that some long for today. The current shift that is far from done. As AI, crypto, virtual reality and whole new ways of looking at the world change the landscape of just about everything.
Arguably ground zero for this remarkable change is San Francisco and the Silicon Valley. Ground zero in a time of monumental change is never an easy or safe place to be. And certainly, it is having its impact on a City that once saw itself first as a bastion of manners and old wealth and then as the center of progressive cultural revolution. Today, it’s the center of another kind of inevitable and inexorable revolution that Cary McClelland details in Silicon City: San Francisco in the Long Shadow of the Valley.
My conversation with Cary McClelland:
We think that politics might actually change the world for better or for worse. It probably won't. It's certainly more likely that climate change, weather, and rising sea levels will have a far more profound impact. The recent UN report on climate indicated that we could be facing existential risks within 20 years. So what is the world to do?
Jeff Goodell, a contributing editor at Rolling Stone, takes us deep into not the debate but the story of the particle reality in The Water Will Come: Rising Seas, Sinking Cities, and the Remaking of the Civilized World
My conversation with Jeff Goodell:
How much of your work day is about emails, texts, Slack, Basecamp or Shift? And how much is about phone calls or meetings or basic human contact? If you’re like most people today, a large portion is devoted to apps, to screens, and to technology. And less and less to human contact.
How many times have you sent a work text or email to someone yards or even feet away? How many Holiday texts or emails did you send, rather than make a phone call, or a date for coffee? All of this comes with a price. It disconnects us over and over again so that we begin to lose the basic skills of human contact and interaction.
According to Dan Schawbel, the price we pay is not just in the workplace but in the very act of being human. Schawbel writes about this in Back to Human: How Great Leaders Create Connection in the Age of Isolation.
My conversation with Dan Schawbel:
The U.S. imprisons a higher portion of its population than any country in the world. The so-called “prison industrial complex” is, for many towns in rural America, a driving force for its economy. At the same time, many of these prisons have been turned over to private companies, like Prison Corporation of America, to be run as cheaply and profitably as possible, regardless of the damage inflicted on inmates.
The result, in fact, the necessity, is the dehumanization of prisoners and subsequently the gradual dehumanization of those that work in these places.
Shane Bauer, a senior reporter for Mother Jones, went inside, as a $9 an hour guard, to see first hand what was happening inside the Winnfield, Louisiana prison. His magazine story gained national attention and has now become a new book American Prison: A Reporter's Undercover Journey into the Business of Punishment
It seems that every day, as Trump makes another seemingly horrible comment, we ask ourselves how did this happen? Millions of words have been spilled trying to answer that question. Fascism, bigotry, populism, social and cultural issues, have all been trotted out. But first and foremost is the jingoistic nationalism that seems to be rampant among Trump's base, as it is around the world. As dislocation, change, and creative destruction continues, people seek solace in their most fundamental national tribe.
But is the left making a mistake by rejecting nationalism out of hand, or is there a place for nationalism and national identity even as one believes in immigration, open borders, free trade, and globalization? That the questions that John Judis takes on in The Nationalist Revival: Trade, Immigration, and the Revolt Against Globalization
My conversation with John Judis:
At a time when journalism is under siege when the attacks sometimes result in too much caution when the goal of politicians is to attack journalist like they are working the refs, it’s worth thinking about times when we’ve seen full-throated, muscular and sometimes participatory journalism. The kind practiced by the likes of Jimmy Breslin, or H.L. Menken, George Plimpton, Truman Capote, Norman Mailer or Hunter S. Thompson.
Thompson had the opportunity to be present for many world-changing moments. How he saw them, and how he reported them, may have shaped a generation of readers and it may still be in the very DNA of how we consume news today.
Timothy Denevi captures the zeitgeist of the Thompson moment in Freak Kingdom: Hunter S. Thompson's Manic Ten-Year Crusade Against American Fascism
My conversation with Tim Denevi:
When we hear the phrase follow the money, we’ve come to understand that it usually leads back to nefarious political activities, self-dealing and corrupt public servants or worse. But sometimes that money trail leads to something that’s become so commonplace we hardly notice it anymore. The business of corporate bribery, and kickbacks around the world
As the global economy becomes ever more interconnected, as the membrane between governments and transnational corporations become ever thinner, this kickbacks and bribes have a multiplier effect that often leads directly to conflict, repression, and violence around the globe.
Like the butterfly flapping its wings in Main, the impact can be felt in the caves of Afghanistan, or the boardrooms of China, or the corridors of power on Capitol Hill.
David Montero cuts to the quick of this in Kickback: Exposing the Global Corporate Bribery Network.
My conversation with David Montero:
Each day more of our national political and governmental norms fall away. Our national leadership is at best in a moral vacuum, at worst, a corrosive force, an autoimmune disease eating the very fabric of the nation.
The violence of the past months reminds us that it does no good to hold the Pollyannaish belief that everything will all be all right, that we’ve been through this before and that the democratic institutions that Madison and the founders designed, and that moral framework upon which it was built, can withstand what we face today.
We like to think, based on past crisis, that our systems are strong enduring, resilient. Maybe. But there is no guarantee that it will last forever. After all, the Roman Republic lasted for 500 years and then collapsed. It Collapsed for many reasons similar to the issues and choices we face today. Historian and Professor Edward Watts, in his new book Mortal Republic: How Rome Fell into Tyranny shines a light on the path we are headed down.
My conversation with Edward Watts:
For those that study and write about politics, the holy grail is to find those seminal moments in the nation's public and political life that change everything. And while the antecedents of those events may be years in the making, they usually create a perfect storm that results in an event that is a kind of tipping point; one that marks a permanent tectonic shift in the political landscape. Sometimes we have to let time pass, before we appreciate or even understand those moments.
The televised Nixon-Kennedy Debate, Watergate, the Nixon’s resignation and the Vietnam war piped into our living rooms, are such event. And, according to longtime political journalist Matt Bai, the implosion of Gary Heart's presidential campaign in 1987, was also such a moment. One that Bai captures in all its complexity, in All the Truth Is Out: The Week Politics Went Tabloid. The book has been turned into the recently released movie THE FRONT RUNNER, also co-written by Bai.
It's about a time when politics became a plot-line, when the personal became both political and public, and when Who, What, Where and When, became Gotcha. This conversation, while it originally took place in 2014, shows the blueprint of how Trump got elected and how we got to where we are today.
My conversation with Matt Bai:
For those of you that are old enough, you may remember that one of the crazy ideas that came out of counterinsurgency during the Vietnam War was that we often had to destroy a village in order to save it. It was counterintuitive and maybe it was right or wrong, but it went to the heart of the broader argument that we see playing out over and over again in so many areas. In order to do better and really focus on long-term good, we have to go beyond the immediate emotional reactions and see the bigger picture.
Such is the case with California’s forests. Many are overgrown, populated with millions of dead trees, and the state has neither the resources nor the manpower to deal with this. More complicating is the relationship with California’s largest landowner, the federal government, and the interface with private property. Today, the cost in terms of life, property, and environmental damage is staggering.
Julie Cart, a long-time environmental reporter in California and a writer for CALmatters, has written extensively about the horrors California now faces, seemingly on an annual basis.
My WhoWhatWhy.org conversation with Julie Cart:
The world of journalism faces an existential crisis . Attacks on the press as "the enemy of the people" by the president of the United States and other authoritarian leaders is just the beginning. Bombs sent to CNN, reporters spat on at political rallies, and the murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi make the prima facie case.
Award-winning international journalist and foreign policy analyst Rula Jebreal, comes to this discussion with a unique perspective. Having covered stories and worked in Italy, the US, and the Middle East, she sees the global dimensions of the issues. Perhaps most significantly, she secretly conducted one of the last interviews with Jamal Khashoggi. In that interview Khashoggi talks about what it might take for the US to actually look objectively at Saudi Arabia. But this would only happen, he believed, in the face of a serious crisis. Little did he know that his brutal murder would be that crisis.
My WhoWhatWhy.org interview with Rula Jebreal.
Bill Clinton got it almost right when he said, “it’s the economy stupid.” But it’s more than that. It might be more accurate to say, it's capitalism, stupid. The system that took thirteen disparate colonies, and in 400 years became the greatest economic engine on the planet.
How this happened, why it happened, is not an accident. But the results of some very specific events, decisions, and attitudes. Equality true is that if we are not careful, it may not be forever
In today's world, we either keep up, or we don't. Just as we stole our model from Great Britain, others are closing in on us. Today we have 5% of the world's population, 20% of the world's patents and 25% of the world economy. Going forward that may not always be the case.
To the extent that what is past is prologue, it’s worth taking a look at the history of capitalism in America, to see if we can indeed keep it going. Taking us on this historical journey is Economist journalist and columnist Adrian Wooldridge, the co-author, with Alan Greenspan, of Capitalism in America: A History.
My conversation with Adrian Wooldridge:
Someone wrote a national column last year suggesting that whoever we elect to office should at the very least be able to pass a basic high school test in American history. The fact is, we all should be able to. If only because the past is prologue. Because where we are as a nation today, and the problems and privileges we embrace is a direct result of all that history.
Few have done more to help us understand our military history than Patrick O'Donnell.
In his latest book, The Unknowns: The Untold Story of America’s Unknown Soldier and WWI’s Most Decorated Heroes Who Brought Him Home, Patrick takes us back 100 years to a story that, while unique to itself, represents the fundamental reverence we should have as a nation for those that gave their last full measure of devotion.
In looking at the world today, not just at our politics, but at our social and moral climate, it’s easy to conclude that there is no hope. Things fall apart, the center does not hold and it does seem in as if, in Yates’ words, “mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.”
So what do we have to be hopeful about? The answer it seems lies deep within each of us, and not from some outside force. While we are feeling doomed and overwhelmed, Anne Lamott reminds us, that almost everything will work out “if you just unplug it for a few minutes.”
In her new work, Almost Everything: Notes on Hope, she lays out some guideposts, some touchstones to hold on to in the midst of personal turmoil and global chaos.
My conversation with Anne Lamott:
Just how fragile or resilient are our democratic institutions? For two years we’ve heard that the fundamental institutions, like the courts, the rule of law, and the so-called grown-ups and the permanent govt. would provide guardrails against the worst authoritarian impulses of this presidency.
We are told that we’ve been through bad times before. It may be, however, that, in the often scary words of wall street, “this time it's different.” What we face now is less about ideology than about the exercise of raw power. Fed by fear of change and appealing to white nationalism, hate, and racism. All in an environment that is hyper-pressurized, piped in 24/7 and brilliantly fueled by the lowest appeals to human behavior. In that way, maybe this time is different.
Trying to pull all these strings together is Washington Post Plum Line columnist Greg Sargent, in his new book An Uncivil War: Taking Back Our Democracy in an Age of Trumpian Disinformation and Thunderdome Politics
My conversation with Greg Sargent:
Every day, as a new Trump embarrassment emerges from the White House, people ask, how did this happen?
Millions of words have now been written about the current state of our politics, our country and of our civic discourse. About the anger that abounds. Every publication, every cable channels, every journalist who covers politics, and many that don’t, have opined on how we got here.
There are as many theories as there are journalists, pundits, professors, and consultants. How did eight million voters who voted for Obama twice become Trump vote
How did the political class miss what was going on among the group that Hillary Clinton called a “basket of deplorables,” while Obama talked of how “they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren't like them.”
Ben Bradlee Jr. went looking for answers and looking for America in Luzerne County Pennsylvania. What he found was both sobering and frightening and proof positive of two Americas. He reports it all in The Forgotten: How the People of One Pennsylvania County Elected Donald Trump and Changed America.
My conversation with Ben Bradlee, Jr.:
Someone said recently that Donald Trump may not be our worst President ever, the jury is still out. But for sure, he is the worst person ever to be President.
The point is that character, personal legacy, personal relationships and upbringing do matter. We place our trust as a people and has a nation in the sum total of the lives of the people we elect to lead us. Personal traits and politics are often separate, but equal. Over the past 240 years, we did a pretty decent job of combining the two. One such example was Ronald Reagan. Whether we agreed with him politically or not, he brought with him personal qualities that we long for today. Personal qualities that in so many ways shaped his politics and his policy and created his legacy.
Biographer Bob Spitz takes a look at this in Reagan: An American Journey
My conversation with Bob Spitz:
Alan Greenspan has argued that the essence of American capitalism is creative destruction. That our tolerance for change, for the new, for being willing to replace incumbents, even when painful, is the essence of what has moved the US to become, in a mere 400 years, the most powerful economic engine on the planet.
However, With respect to our governance, we have not been as tolerant or as flexible. We have clung to ideas and systems that have changed only under the most dire circumstances. The civil war changed us, but not entirely...The great depression changed us, but again, not entirely...just listen to Mitch McConnell last week looking to shred the social safety net.
As for the present, Donald Trump did not deliver all the problems we face today. He merely exploited them….just as demagogues often do.
And so as we once again face a huge disconnect between the reality of the world...a world of global integration, social and economic dislocation and division, siloed and self-reinforcing news and information, and a governmental system unattuned and unresponsive. All of this can’t help but leaveBen Fountain has examined this world from the first volleys of the 2016 election, right up until today. His observations are in his new work Beautiful Country Burn Again: Democracy, Rebellion, and Revolution
whole groups of people behind. Author and journalist
My conversation with Ben Fountain:
It is almost axiomatic to say that so many of the problems that plague men in our society today stem from changes in economics. That technology, globalization, education or lack thereof, are all at the core of the problem. Yet, regardless of who we give credit or blame too, unemployment is at the lowest it’s been in 50 years. American manufacturing is relatively strong.
Sure things have changed with respect to jobs and the economy, but clearly, other forces are at play for men. The result is not just the “me too” movement, but a redefinition of the very idea of masculinity
Often times, pop culture gives us insight into the human condition. As we watch the rise, fall, and transformation of Don Draper, and Tony Soprano trying to get in touch with his feelings, perhaps we saw precursors of what’s happening in America today.
The problem is that the cost for the country and for our communities is high. Andrew L. Yarrow, a senior fellow at the Progressive Policy Institute, has been a New York Times reporter, a Labor Department speechwriter, and a U.S. history professor at American University, and is the author of Man Out: Men on the Sidelines of American Life.
My conversation with Andrew Yarrow:
For several years now, we’ve been inundated with fake news about alleged voter fraud. Fraud that simply does not exist anywhere in the country. However, these stories have been used as the basis and justification of voter suppression efforts in several states today. Efforts that may directly and adversely impact the outcome of some close races. These efforts take several forms — untenable voter ID laws, exact match, purging voters from the registration rolls, and many more tactics, all very specifically directed at suppressing the votes of African Americans and minority voters.
There was a time when the federal government, in the form of the Department of Justice, would step in and try to right these wrongs. Not so today. As a result, we have to rely on independent legal groups and organizations of journalists like WhoWhatWhy to take up the challenge of these efforts, absorb the cost, and know how to redress the appropriate courts. Much of this legal work of late has been taken up by the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, and we’re going to spend some time today talking to my guest Ezra Rosenberg, who is the co-director of the organization’s Voting Rights Project.
Ezra Rosenberg has been consistently ranked among one of the top litigators in the country. He’s been involved aggressively in pro bono representation, was one of the lead counsels challenging Texas’s photo ID laws, and was named to the National Law Journal’s Pro Bono Hit List for his role in significant public interest cases of national importance.
My WhoWhatWhy conversation with Ezra Rosenberg:
Last night in Houston Trump declared himself a “nationalist, “with all the baggage that the label implies. That phrase, along with things like “America First,” almost instantly bring us back to another time and place. An America, not of 2018, but of 1940 and 1941, as Hitler’s tentacles reached through Europe, and as America contemplated entry into the war.
Even though we fantasize about it today as a gentler time, as a less divided time, in the run up to America's entry into the war, the country was profoundly divided. Hitler had friends in America, and they were people in high places who represented a powerful strain of American isolationism, antisemitism, and racism. Indeed history does repeat itself. Bradley Hart brings all of these strains together in his new book Hitler's American Friends: The Third Reich's Supporters in the United States
My conversation with Bradley Hart:
Winston Churchill said of Russia that it was “a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.” Today the same might be said of Russia's interference in the 2016 elections and the connection between that interference and the campaign of Donald Trump.
We know so much. Every day it seems new information is revealing itself. And yet we seem to be missing the rosetta stone that will enable us to explain it all. Perhaps Bob Mueller holds that. But until then, two time Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post reporter Greg Miller’s new book, The Apprentice: Trump, Russia and the Subversion of American Democracy, may not quite be that rosetta stone, but it’s as important a piece of codebreaking as we have so far.
My conversation with Greg Miller:
The word fascism gets thrown around a lot in the context of Donald Trump. As if he somehow were its progenitor. But the fact is Trump is merely the most contemporary and American exploiter. Right wing nationalist trends, fascist trends, are happening throughout the world. The underlying reasons are many and complex, but the response to those reasons and the way in which it portends towards fascism has been pretty consistent.
Fascism is not some abstract idea, but a clear definable set of attitudes that people like Trump or Le Pen or Nigel Farage know how to exploit and magnify. For all of us experiencing it, it’s like a disease. Only if we know and understand the warning signs can we prevent it. And to help us to understand this, I am joined by Yale Professor Jason Stanley, the author of How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them.
My WhoWhatWhy.org conversation with Jason Stanley:
The founders understood that a free press was a bulwark against tyranny. In the system they set up, they understood that they created inherent tensions between leaders and the press. Historically, those tensions have served us well in that it has motivated both sides to do better.
Sometimes the tensions have burst forth into full-scale political warfare. Trust-busting, Teapot Dome, Watergate, and Joe McCarthy are a few examples. McCarthy knew, as despots all know, that if he could undermine the press, make them the enemy, you can get away with a whole lot.
In 1954 Ed Morrow, the most noted journalist of his time also knew and understood the importance of the free press as a load-bearing pillar of all of our democratic institutions. Morrow believed that if McCarthy had gone further in his vilification of the press, our very democracy could be at risk. He instilled that idea in one of his young proteges, Marvin Kalb. Kalb, concerned about the current state of affairs, has just written Enemy of the People: Trump's War on the Press, the New McCarthyism, and the Threat to American Democracy
My conversation with Marvin Kalb:
I think it’s fair to say that when most of you hear about fracking, the first thing that comes to mind is the potential environmental damage. This has been a big story over the past several years. What you might not think about is how fracking is changing the geopolitics of the world. How it’s helping America towards energy independence, which in a counterfactual way, may not be a good thing. But at the same time, it’s also impacting Saudi Arabia and Russia in ways that affect power politics throughout the world.
It’s not only geopolitics. The fracking industry in Texas, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, and New Mexico is impacting politics right here at home. Just ask candidates running in those states. Add to this the importance of the industry’s deep, symbiotic ties to Wall Street, plus a cast of characters in the fracking business that could easily produce a modern day ‘Giant’ or ‘Dallas’. Bringing all of this together is my guest, Bethany McLean in here new book Saudi America: The Truth About Fracking and How It's Changing the World.
My WhoWhatWhy conversation with Bethany McLean:
We hear much loose talk these days about all the things that are supposed to unite us as Americans. But there are far more important and powerful forces that divide us.
At the center of that divide is the subject of class. Even more than race, the class divide lies at the base of the chasm that separates what John Edwards once called “two Americas.”
The symbols are everywhere: Starbucks America versus Dunkin’ Donuts America. Educated versus non-educated. Walmart versus Whole Foods. But these are just symbols for the manifestations of a long history of class conflict in America.
How they're playing out today is reflected in Sarah Smarsh's new memoir
Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth.
My conversation with Sarah Smarsh:
We are ten years out from the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the beginning of the worst financial meltdown since the Great Depression. The shock waves of those events are still with us today and they take many forms
Not the least of which has been the loss of faith in the efficiency of markets, the underlying ideas of modern economics, the role of the state in intervening in those markets, and the moral and political consequences of capitalism itself.
However, any conversation about these ideas does not begin with the crisis ten years ago, but probably should begin with enlightenment thinkers and with Adam Smith. Considered by many to be the father of modern economics.
Jesse Norman, a highly regarded Member of British Parliament, takes a deep dive into Smith in his new book Adam Smith: Father of Economics.
My conversation with The Honorable Jesse Norman:
We spend hours and hours talking about the divides in America and the world today. Red and Blue divisions, class divisions, social sorting, urban vs. rural, left vs. right, progress vs. conservative and the ways we look for the world to make sense.
But what if there were an overlay to all of this? One that, while not exactly putting us in neat little boxes, does help explain a core reason for so much of contemporary division.
Michele Gelfand, a Professor of Psychology at the Univ. of Maryland,Rule Makers, Rule Breakers: How Tight and Loose Cultures Wire Our World
takes us inside this idea in
My conversation with Michele Gelfand:
We are ten years out from the fall of Lehman Brothers, and the worst financial crises in the lifetime of most of us. But what are we actually marking, and more importantly, what have we really learned?
So much of the debate, to this very day, as to what caused the crash, and the bursting of the housing bubble is so caught up in political rhetoric, confirmation bias, and rear end covering, that it's still hard to tell.
But certainly after 10 years we know more than we did then, and perhaps it’s time to ask some real questions and to try and put it into some kind of better perspective. To do this, I’m helped by Sebastian Mallaby, the Paul A. Volcker senior fellow for international economics at the Council on Foreign Relations and a long time journalist, public speaker, and a contributing columnist for the Washington Post. His recent article in the Washington Post was “The Dangerous Myth We Still Believe About the Lehman Bros. Bust.”
My conversation with Sebastian Mallaby:
It is an accepted axiom of modern life that disruptive change is all around us. Almost every aspect of our lives has felt some or all of this change. It’s equally true that what were once the traditional institutions of government and public policy, that moderated and even sometimes democratized that change, no longer exist. This too is part of the disruption. In this process, there have been winners and losers, just as there have been during every great social and scientific upheaval, the last, perhaps, being the industrial revolution over a century ago. This time, however, partly because of the nature of change, the speed of communication, the complexity of technology, globalism, and overall distrust, the consequences have been even more profound.
It’s all led to a large measure of social upheaval, anger, and fear that we see today. Perhaps the progenitors of change have been too young or too naïve to understand the consequences of their action, and those that did understand have been too blinded by greed. It’s a combination that has shaken the country to its very core, and which made Trump possible. This is the one of the underlying ideas of Anand Giridharadas in his new book Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World.
My WhoWhatWhy.org conversation with Anand Giridharadas
Joan Didion referred to California as the “golden land.” “The place where the dream was teaching the dreamers how to live. That it was a metaphor for some larger, insidious process at work in American society. One that became a parable of the American penchant for reinvention and for discarding history and starting tabula rasa.”
That may have once been true for California. But today, when California is the the fifth largest economy in the world, what happens in California does not stay in California. The state’s actions, leadership and history often resonate around the globe. One of the things that’s so critical to understanding that history, is The Browns of California: The Family Dynasty that Transformed a State and Shaped a Nation. That's the subject of a new book by Miriam Pawel.
My conversation with Miriam Pawel:
Just a couple of weeks ago, I interviewed a distinguished and respected journalist and author, who said that voter suppression to him was like the Loch Ness Monster. A lot of people talked about it, but no one had ever really seen it. I tell this story because I’m afraid that his attitude is far too prevalent, and his confusion between voter fraud and voter suppression all too common.
While widespread voter fraud may be a fragment of Kris Kobach and Donald Trump’s imagination, it should never be conflated with voter suppression, which is very real, anti-democratic and infused with a degree of racism that particularly, since a 2003 Supreme Court decision, has become almost the regular order of things in multiple parts of the country. As we sit two months out from the midterm elections, the basic right of millions of Americans are under threat, at precisely the time when the future of the country is at stake as never before. This is particularly true in states with high profile races like Georgia and Florida, where voter suppression may truly affect the outcome.
I look at this with Carol Anderson who is the Charles Howard Candler professor and chair of African-American Studies at Emory University and the author of One Person, No Vote: How Voter Suppression Is Destroying Our Democracy
My WhoWhatWhy.org conversation with Carol Anderson:
Next month we mark 17 years since the US invasion of Afghanistan, certainly the longest single military effort in US history.
Our original goal was to destroy Al-Qaeda and oust the Taliban that were protecting them. Since that time, a great deal has happened, and mostly the law of unintended consequences has been the victor. Security and political stability still seem elusive. US government understanding of the country and the region still seems sketchy at best, and corruption still seems rampant. And even with all of that, some think real peace is still possible. Where we are today and what’s really happening on the ground, and what the US can do, even if it had the will and competence to do it, are subjects that I talk about with RAND senior foreign policy expert Laurel Miller.
My WhoWhatWhy.org conversation with Laurel Miller:
We make hundreds, sometimes thousand of decisions a day. What to wear, what to eat, what route to take to work, and what to put on our to-do list. But these are tactical decisions. They get us from point a to point b. But what about the big strategic decisions? The big ones that impact our lives and the lives of others, now and for many years to come.
The decisions about who we marry, were we want to live, what career we want to pursue. These are often irrevocable, or at the least profound, decisions that have long term consequences.
How then do we make these decisions? How
do leaders, CEOs, generals and even presidents make decisions? Is there a right or wrong way? Do algorithms help and has technology made it easier or harder? The fact is that often by the time all the facts are in, the time optimum or imaginative action may have long since disappeared. The disconnect between external events and our ability to process them, lies embedded in the decision making process.
From George Bush saying he is “the decider,” to battlefield commanders; from the halls of business schools, to the basement of the Pentagon, from leaders that operate only on instinct, devoid of facts, to those that suffer from analysis paralysis, our lives are shaped by decisions we and other make. But could we do it any better?
These are just some of the questions asked by best selling author and thinker Steven Johnson in Farsighted: How We Make the Decisions That Matter the Most
My conversation with Steven Johnson:
Perhaps more than at any other time in contemporary history, we have a deep need to understand who we are, what tribe to we belong to, and how, in a rapidly changing, interconnected and homogenized world, do we fit it. Who are we in relation to everyone else.
Just look at the advertising for home DNA testing and you’ll get the idea. Since it’s less clear everyday, where we are going, it feels most comfortable to look back at our ancestry and at least be clear about where we came from and how it defines who we are.
The problem is, that’s complicated to. Who we are is the result not just of our DNA or our heredity, but of an array of complex and shifting forces that we also have no control over. This is the reality that Carl Zimmer explains in She Has Her Mother's Laugh: The Powers, Perversions, and Potential of Heredity
My conversation with Carl Zimmer:
By every objective measure, unless you live on the Southside of Chicago, the world is a safer place today than it’s been for long time. As people like Steven Pinker have repeatedly pointed out, almost every form of violence is less today than it was 50 or even 100 years ago.
So why is everyone so afraid, especially parents? Sure we’re afraid that our kids won’t have opportunities greater than ours, and we’re afraid about being ready to pay for their education, and we’re afraid that they will fall in with the wrong crowd.
But we’re also afraid of them going out to play, of riding a bike, of them being alone, or just being on a playground that doesn't have the proverbial good housekeeping seal of approval.
We want our kids to succeed and ultimately to feel at home in the world. But does mean overprotecting them in ways driven only by fear? Those are some of the questions that Kim Brooks as in Small Animals: Parenthood in the Age of Fear, based on and motivated by her own awful experience.
My conversation with Kim Brooks:
The last opportunity I had to interview JOHN McCAIN was back in September of 2000, in the thick of the Bush v. Gore campaign and after he had lost the Republican primary to George W. Bush.
We talked about his book, FAITH OF MY FATHERS, and even then talked about patriotism vs. nationalism, money in politics, the cynicism of young voters, the consequences of deregulation during the Reagan years and about the opening up of Vietnam and Bill Clinton's upcoming trip there.
Here is a condensed version of that conversation:
Often understanding global affairs, particularly in the Middle East, is like a game of three-card monte. What’s in view is never really a reflection of what’s going on underneath. What’s more, alliances, loyalties and truth is ever shifting and almost always hidden.
Such has long been the case in Egypt. As the Arab spring descended on Tahrir Square in February of 201, what once seemed like the hope for freedom and democracy gave way to ongoing authorianism. And like the three-card monte game, for a while it was impossible to tell who was with who, and who was on what side, including the United States.
David Kirkpatrick, an international correspondent for the NY Times, led the papers coverage of the Arab Spring, first in Tunisia and then in Egypt and Libya. He has reported from virtually everywhere in the region, but also brings the perspective of having coved Washington, two presidential elections, and the rise of the Christian right in the US.
In his new book Into the Hands of the Soldiers: Freedom and Chaos in Egypt and the Middle East he bring us a unique and sobering perspective on the Middle East, and the US, which always seems to get it wrong.
My conversation with David Kirkpatrick:
We live in an age of paradox. Crime and murders are down, yet we are more fearful than ever about gun violence. Technology has made life easier in so many ways, yet Silicon Valley is becoming the boogeyman and technology is and will be replacing jobs with greater and greater speed. Diseases that were once a death sentence are now manageable, but healthcare costs are escalating and the divide among those that can and cannot afford quality healthcare is growing. And we’re not living as long as we used to, and other nations have a better quality of life.
Millions and millions of people in the developing world are experiencing a standard of living never imagined possible, yet some would pull up the bridges and have us disconnect from that world, all while the doomsday clock moves closer to midnight. Tribalism divides us, social media, politics, and economics reinforces that divide, and the 24/7 always on culture makes it happen faster and faster. So, where is there any reason for optimism in all of this? This is where Gregg Easterbrook takes us in It's Better Than It Looks: Reasons for Optimism in an Age of Fear.
My WhoWhatWhy.org conversation with Gregg Easterbrook:
Millions of words have been written about millennials and the Democratic Party. The debate about how left they are, how involved they are, how can, or will they be mobilized to participate in the midterms are all subjects of feature stories and cable news fodder. It all goes with the old adage, the origins of which are a bit murky, that if you're not a liberal when you're young you have no heart, and if you're not a conservative by middle age you have no head.
The fact is there are many young conservatives, be they Young Republicans, College Republicans, or members of many other groups. Some are traditional conservatives, some libertarian, some Trumpian, and some trying to define a new millennial approach to what it means to be a conservative or a Republican.
Clearly like the divisions on the left, the gap between Donald Trump and Edmond Burke is wide, but filled with opportunity and consequences for the GOP of tomorrow. Journalist Eliza Gray takes a look at this in her recent article in The Washington Post Magazine: “The Next Generation of Republicans: How Trumpian Are They."
My WhoWhatWhy.org conversation with Eliza Gray:
Almost from the day he was elected, certainly from the day her took office, people have been talking about the impeachment of Donald Trump. His basic failure to divest his business holdings, his refusal to abide by ethical norms, nepotism, cronyism, his odd and still not fully known relationship with Russia and Vladimir Putin, and his disregard for the intelligence community, have all stoked the fires.
But are there legitimate grounds for impeachment, as laid out by the constitution? What kind of constitutional crisis might be precipitated by such efforts, and how do we define, political vs. legal impeachment and would that even matter? After all, so much of what our founders did was designed as a bulwark against the corruption that we see playing out each and every day at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
To try and put all of this rhetoric in context is constitutional scholar Ron Fein, the co-author of The Constitution Demands It: The Case for the Impeachment of Donald Trump.
My conversation with Ron Fein:
Look at any book of quotations, and the subject of power is one of the most discussed topics. Sometimes it seems everyone has an opinion on it. And why not? It is at the heart of all of our relationships, at home, with family, kids and spouses and at work, with our bosses and our coworkers.
Certainly the Me Too movement and racial politics have both provided fertile ground for both the understanding of and the exercise of power. It’s one of the things we most desire, and at the same time we are afraid, or put off by it.
Our relationship to power begins when we are young. It’s imprinted from grade school, right on through high school, which is everyone's mosh pit of power dynamics.
Power and how we talk about it has changed since the days of Michael Korda, and Cyndi Suarez understands this. She is the author of The Power Manual: How to Master Complex Power Dynamics
My conversation with Cyndi Suarez:
Deep inside our first reality TV presidency, one designed, whether you like the policy or not, to squeeze maximum drama from every encounter, it’s almost hard to remember that the Obama presidency was 180 degrees away. It was built on the idea of “no drama.”
In the current context, it may look almost dull. It was professional, competent and the apogee of the work of hundreds, who’s life's work was to serve their country, and leave it better than they found it.
That’s why perhaps now, more than ever, we need the bracing reminder of what competence, rational decision making, and hard work were really like in the exercise of government.
Brian Abrams does this in his comprehensive oral history of the Obama administration, Obama: An Oral History.
My conversation with Brian Abrams:
For George Bush, it was once part of the Axis of Evil. For Donald Trump, Iran seems only to be part of an axis of firing up his base, placating Israel, and being supine to the Saudis. The Iran Nuclear Deal was far better and more enforceable than anything we will ever see with North Korea. Iran, according to those on the ground, the IAEA inspectors and other parties to the deal often referred to as the JCPOA, was a deal that Iran more or less was abiding by.
Now with the US having pulled out of the deal and imposing new sanctions, the Europeans, the Chinese, and the Russians, the other parties to the deal, are trying along with Iran to hold all the pieces together. The problem and complexity is that it’s about both proliferation and economics. And while the administration is filled with Iran hawks, many of whom still seek regime change in Iran, there’s no telling where all of this will wind up. In a global neighborhood it remains a tinderbox: what’s next for Iran, for Syria, and for the region.
To try and bring all of this together and provide an Iranian perspective, I’m joined by Ambassador Seyed Hossein Mousavian, one of the foremost authorities on the subject of Iran.
My WhoWhatWhy.org conversation with Seyed Hossein Mousavian:
It began as a crazy idea. DJs would get bored with music and start talking to the audience. They would take calls, tell stories, and even talk a little politics, sports, and pop culture. Early on, it produced some enduring national personalities like Jean Shepherd, and Brad Crandall, Long John Nebel, and Larry King, and Barry Gray, and Joe Franklin. It was known first as Spoken Word Radio. Later, it would give way to an even more colorful and cantankerous cast of characters. People like Joe Pyne, Alan Berg and Morton Downey Jr..
Talk radio moved to the big cities with folks like Don Imus and Howard Stern. In New York, Bob Grant would redefine the formula beginning in the early 70s. In fact so much of Trump on race, comes directly out of the Bob Grant playbook. Grant was the soundtrack for the New York that Donald Trump came of political age in.
The Fairness Doctrine would be repealed in 1987 and suddenly radio would be set up to have political power. Then in 1988, a little known Sacramento newscaster and talk show host named Rush Limbaugh would be let loose nationally. He took the freedom of being untethered from the Fairness Doctrine, combined it with the formulas that had already proven successful in talk, added conservative politics in a sardonic and entertaining tone, and the rest is radio history. It began 30 years ago last week, and it certainly changed our entertainment, news, and the political landscape.
To bring this all into focus, I'm joined by Michael Harrison, the editor and publisher of Talkers Magazine, the "bible of the talk radio industry."
My WhoWhatWhy.org conversation with Michael Harrison:
How many gatherings do you really enjoy? Certainly not meetings. But what about social events? How many times have you felt awkward at a party, an event or even just a gathering of friends. How often have you had the feeling that everyone else was invited for dinner, and you were only invited for cocktails?
And if you were the host, you made sure that all the napkins and silverware was just right, but what about the inner workings of the gathering? How did you prepare?
In a world where networking and face to face gatherings are the rare exception to being transfixed to screens, shouldn't we pay more attention to those face to face encounters? Priya Parker look at our crises of connection in The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why It Matters
My conversation with Priya Parker:
Once upon a time, hope and change formed the basis of our political discourse. That now seems so long ago. Remember a time when the Koch brothers were the enemy, when we thought John McCain was the far right, when those of us on the left thought the FBI and the justice department needed watching?
In just ten years, we’ve gone through the looking glass. Now up really down, down is up, black is white and our enemies are embraced.
Our divisions over culture, politics, race and class have been weaponized. And demographics, geography, social media and technology make it so we seldom have to interact with anyone that disagree with us.
In this atmosphere of tribalism on steroid, is any kind of positive national politics still possible? Clearly on a local or community level, there is some reason to be optimistic. However on a national level, have we digressed to a point where even the instruments of our founding father, may not bring us back.
Dan Pfeiffer is a bit more optimistic in his new book Yes We (Still) Can: Politics in the Age of Obama, Twitter, and Trump
My conversation with Dan Pfeiffer:
Wherever you are in the political spectrum, we should at least be able to agree on a set of facts about the forces reshaping our society. The cost of housing, particularly in our cities, continues to rise. The cost of higher education, healthcare, and quality day care continue to take a larger and larger share of individual and family incomes.
Income inequality is growing. The impact of automation and AI is only in its infancy. The freelance and gig economy, and recent political and legal moves, have shattered the ability of workers to bargain collectively. All at a time when the social safety net of Medicare, Social Security and pensions are under siege.
What was once the middle class is being hollowed out. While there is no question that some people are doing well in this economy, as evidenced by the fact that retail sales are up, housing sales, particularly driven by women, are holding steady, and the technical unemployment numbers are low. There is no question that as the song lyrics go, “there’s something happening here. What it is ain't exactly clear.” Whatever it is, the net result is hurting and squeezing a lot of people.
Alissa Quart takes us onto the front lines in Squeezed: Why Our Families Can't Afford America.
My WhoWhatWhy.org conversation with Alissa Quart:
Look at any business or education sector today and discussion of teams often dominates the agenda. Teams and partnerships, particularly in business, have become not just the new normal, but almost a requirement.
However for every Hewlett and Packard, Jobs and Wozniak and Brin and Page, there are many partnerships and teams that don’t work. So what’s the secret sauce? Why are some more than the sum of the parts and some carry within them the seeds of their own destruction
Science and business journalist Shane Snow digs deep into this phenomenon in Dream Teams: Working Together Without Falling Apart.
My conversation with Shane Snow:
When Putin singled out Americans he’d like to have sent to Russia for interrogation, a lot of attention was focused on former US Ambassador Michael McFaul. He also mentioned others, including very prominent international businessman, Bill Browder. More significantly, Putin talked about the Magnitsky Act, which Browder birthed with the help of the United States Congress.
We often throw terms around today in our political and geopolitical debate like capitalist and community and oligarch, but very few who use these terms really understand the essence of what they mean. One of those that does understand is Bill Browder. He rebelled against communism as a teenager, became a very successful capitalist, and made millions in Putin’s Russia. What he didn’t know was just what kind of price he would pay for getting involved in the ever-entangled web of Putin, oligarchs, and a system 180 degrees from our own, a system of men and not of laws.
The ultimate result was the brutal death of Browder’s lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky. Browder has since carried on Magnitsky’s legacy at great personal risk to himself. Putin’s remarks underscore that Bill Browder’s ongoing quest for justice for the murder of Sergei Magnitsky has taken a dark turn under the presidency of Donald Trump.
My WhoWhatWhy conversation with Bill Browder:
Not since the civil war have we been as tribal as a nation as we are today. What’s worse, is that today, through the power of modern communication, social media, bifurcated business models, and 24/7 news, we can be siloed from dawn to dusk. We never have to associate with people whose views are different than ours. We never have to friend people with uncomfortable or different points of view. We get our news, our products and even sometimes our meals, only from people that agree with us.
It’s all very comfortable. But what have we lost in the process. Intellectual challenge, empathy, understanding, compassion, bravery, and getting out of our comfort zone are all lost. All so we can be cocooned in the warm bath of confirmation bias.
And as bad as this is in society at large, no where is it worse than on college campuses. A world where “safe spaces” mean don’t challenge me. 50 Years ago college campuses were alive with ferment and yes, even revolution. Today, to many campuses represent a world of intellectual cowardice and laziness.
No one knows this better than former Williams College student, Zachary Wood. He writes about this experience in Uncensored: My Life and Uncomfortable Conversations at the Intersection of Black and White America.
My conversation with Zachary Wood:
There is a boy crisis in America. Girls are graduating from college in far greater numbers. Their numbers in law schools, business schools and in post graduate programs are exceeding boys, and the imbalance keeps growing.
Concurrently, everyday we see bad behavior on the part of men. Harvey Weinstein, Charlie Rose and the president are the tip of the proverbial iceberg. They are just the poster boys for bad behavior.
So how to stem the tide? The answer perhaps lies in understanding today's boys and the hope that by setting them on a better path as teenagers, there is hope for the 21st century.
Dr. Adam Cox has been working on just that for years. His latest work on the subject is Cracking the Boy Code: How to Understand and Talk with Boys
My conversation with Adam Cox:
Not since the apogee of the Cold War has Russia been so paramount in our national discourse. But Churchill’s “riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma” is a very different Russia than the former Soviet Union. Although as Churchill pointed out, Russian national interest still seems the key.
Vladimir Putin, while Russian to the core, is somehow different from Khrushchev, and Brezhnev and Gorbachev, or the Tsars that came before.
Our conflicts and tensions with Russia today are also different. We risk making a big mistake if we don’t understand modern context. If we don’t understand that this is not just Cold War 2.0, but rather a global conflict whose antecedents may be the Cold War, but whose reality is sui generis to the world in the 21st century.
Former US Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul pulls of this together and a lot more in From Cold War to Hot Peace: An American Ambassador in Putin’s Russia.
My WhoWhatWhy.org conversation with Ambassador Michael McFaul:
Back in 2004, a full fourteen years ago, Thomas Frank published a book entitled What’s The Matter with Kansas? In it, he looked at how a segment of the population was consistently voting against their own economic self interests. He argued that so called “culture war” issues, played to emotions that overrode economic concerns.
Twelve years later that trend reached its apogee with the election of Donald Trump. Therefore it’s important to remember that Trump didn’t create the economic, class and cultural divisions in America, he merely exploited them.
Those trends, fed by changes in the nature of work, technology, communication, and global economics have resulted in a society that is, in many ways, not recognizable from the America of yore. Given that, it's important to remember that the American people played a role in creating this environment, do they now have the power to fix it? Can they put Humpty Dumpty back together again?
Thomas Frank, like the Simon and Garfunkel song, has spent a long time, looking for America to try and find the answer to this question. He reports it in his new book Rendezvous with Oblivion: Reports from a Sinking Society.
My conversation with Thomas Frank:
When we talk about change, about creative disruption, about all the ways that the world, both local and global is different, it all seems to have it’s genesis in Silicon Valley.
The games, the apps, the communication and the nature of life and work itself. But these changes were not the result of some kind technological immaculate conception. Sure they were engineered, and 0s and 1s and transistors were all a part. But this also had a cultural underpinning, based on the people, the characters and often the geniuses that migrated to the Valley
Hollywood is often been referred to as High School with money. If that’s true, then Silicon Valley has all the element of Hollywood, but its results have truly changed the world.
Capturing the zeitgeist of the Valley though all its’ ups and downs is Adam Fisher in his book Valley of Genius: The Uncensored History of Silicon Valley (As Told by the Hackers, Founders, and Freaks Who Made It Boom)
My conversation with Adam Fisher:
Be it the troubled minds, young and old, that commit mass shootings, the incredible and successful talents that commit suicide, or those that seek solace in alcohol or opiates, mental illness is all around us.
What’s encouraging is that we are finally talking about it. Not enough and not openly enough. But remember back in the 50’s there was a reluctance to even talk about cancer.
Times change. And one of the things that precipitates that change is the courage of individuals that are willing to come forward and tell their story. Suddenly when we see our friends, neighbors, even our doctors and other people like us, reveal all, suddenly that shroud falls away sunlight does it’s job.
Edward Hallowell, one of our most distinguished psychiatrists and a leading authority in the field of ADHD, has now pulled back the curtain on his own life to reveal a story of dysfunction, hope and ultimately of survival and success. He shares the story with me and in his new memoir Because I Come from a Crazy Family: The Making of a Psychiatrist.
My conversation with Ned Hallowell:
We hear over and over, that we are a nation of immigrants. Unfortunately, we’re hearing it in a boiler factory. We are hearing it over the cacophony of noise about race, about change and about security and raw politics.
What’s lost is the reality of the very personal immigrant experience. What it’s like to be a stranger in a strange land. To straddle two nations, appreciate both, and not look at nationalism and culture as a zero sum game.
The immigrant experience demands a degree of self awareness that is not present in most Americans. That by itself changes that way that immigrants see themselves and the world around them. It creates a kind of heightened reality, appreciation and skepticism that most of us don't have the privilege of seeing.
That’s why we need people like award winning journalist Alfredo Corchado, who’s recent book is Homelands: Four Friends, Two Countries, and the Fate of the Great Mexican-American Migration.
My conversation with Alfredo Corchado:
Fifty years ago, during the last great social and political upheaval in America, young people lead the way. The mantra of the day, of not trusting anyone over 30, defined the generational and political divide.
Today we face an altogether different, but equally powerful social and political dislocation. Except that this time we wonder, where are the young people. Where are the millennials, where is the rising generation.
Perhaps it’s why the Parkland kids struck such a resonate note. With David Hogg reminding us that the children will lead us.
But in our current divide, all sides of boomers and gen X, red and blue, are battling for the hearts, minds and soul of the millennial generation. The left has the advantage of the natural state of liberalism in the young, but the right has the organization, the business savvy and the money.
How this plays out may truly impact the fate of the republic. This is the subject of a series of stories by journalist Michael Hobbes.
My WhoWhatWhy.org conversation with Michael Hobbes:
Groucho Marx famously said, upon resigning the Friars club, that he would “never want to belong to any club that would have him as a member.” That line has been used since by those that are afraid of not belonging. What better way to prevent being excluded than saying, or convincing yourself, that you don’t want to join?
The facts, and our world today, tell us something entirely different. Not only do we want to belong, but we want to belong to groups that are exactly like us. While tribalism may be built into our DNA, the added anxiety and fear in our culture today, puts that tribalism on steroids.
This tribalism is enhanced by our hi-speed 24/7 world. It accentuates fear of the other, it drives our identity politics, and it fuels our confirmation bias driven life. In short, the more we want or need to belong, the more we are divided. All leading us to the conclusion that Groucho had the right idea.
This is also the idea put forth by Howard J. Ross in his new book Our Search for Belonging: How Our Need to Connect Is Tearing Us Apart.
My conversation with Howard Ross:
The founders were wise enough that they made freedom of the press first among equals, as a constitutional guarantee. They also even understood fake news in the form of the pamphleteers of the day. But they never could have imagined bots and trolls and social media, as a way for that fake news to be disseminated at light speed. We’ve seen how lies beak from the gate quickly, and the truth can seldom seem to catch up.
For those that aren’t monitoring the news 24/7, and for the vast majority of the country that has neither the time nor resources to fact check every story, or each new online site, how are we to determine, as Stephen Colbert would say, the truthiness of stories.
We’ve seen lately that algorithms alone simply don’t work. So how can the human element be brought in, in a way that is informative and yet not intrusive? In a process that allows for advocacy, opinion and human bias, but still respects facts, expertise and professionalism? The answer might be Newsguard.
Steven Brill is the founder of American Lawyer, Court TV, Brill's Content and the Yale Journalism initiative. He’s recently confounded NewsGuard.
My conversation with Steven Brill:
There's an old axiom with respect to quality and culture that says if something is popular, it can't be very good. Certainly that's true for fast-food, overhyped action movies and maybe even some crummy literature. However, there's a way that creativity can be combined with commercial success that brings out the best of both. What's more, creativity in this regard, is not something that's limited to those that are born geniuses.
To examine this, I talked to Allen Gannett, the author of The Creative Curve: How to Develop the Right Idea, at the Right Time.
My conversation with Allen Gannett:
A few weeks ago , the press reported aggressively on the fact that Kim Kardashian had visited the White House. Just as it had the visits of Kid Rock and Ted Nugent before her. With homage toDr. Seuss, Oh, how far we have fallen.
On April 29, 1962, John F. Kennedy welcomed a group of Nobel Prize winners to the White House. Other guests included William Styron, James Baldwin, Mary Welsh Hemingway, Ernest Hemingway’s widow, who sat next to the President and grilled him on Cuba policy. Also there were John Glenn, historian Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., Researcher Linus Pauling, and Pablo Casals. Actor Fredric March gave a public recitation after the meal,
Held at the height of the Cold War, the dinner celebrated American achievement, and symbolized a time when ideas and facts were esteemed, divergent viewpoints could be respectfully discussed and the great minds of an age might all dine together in the glamour of “the people’s house.”
It was about this event that Kennedy said, “I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge, that has ever been gathered together at the White House — with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone.”
To revel for twenty minutes on what used to be, you’ll want to listen to Joesph Esposito, the author of Dinner in Camelot: The Night America's Greatest Scientists, Writers, and Scholars Partied at the Kennedy White House.
My conversation with Joseph Esposito:
By now we are all familiar with crimes and criminals on Wall Street. Bernie Madoff, Enron, Ivan Boesky, Barry Minkow and many others that have become household names. On the West Coast, the startup world of Silicon Valley had been somewhat spared from this taint. The world of “insanely great products,” “do no evil,” and “bringing friends together,” has, at least until recently, kept it’s patina.
Yet in a world where people want to see the future and want to be a part of it, it certainly was a fertile ground for fraud. And no one perpetrated a greater fraud than Elizabeth Holes and her company Theranos.
The story of a company whose mission was to tell you everything about your blood, with a simple finger prick, seemed too good to be true. And like most thing that seem too good to be true, it was.
John Carreyrou is a two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter at The Wall Street Journal. He has, from the beginning, been the leader in telling the story of Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos. His book, soon to be a major motion picture, is Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup
My conversation with John Carreyrou:
I assume that most of you believe that the state of America has seldom been worse. Racial progress, America as a melting pot, the global alliance that has seen us through the past 75 years, character, civility, and liberal democracy itself, all seem to be under siege. While this is all true, it's also true is that we’ve been here before.
There have been many dark moment in American history. Maybe there is something in our very DNA that sets us up for it. But certainly from the Alien and Sedition acts though the Civil War, the industrial revolution, America First, the great depression, Jim Crow, the cold war and the tyranny of Joe McCarthy, we’ve seen that bad things happen to good countries.
Each time though we have emerged stronger. We have understood that the fault was not in our stars, but in ourselves and so we have reached deeply within ourselves for our better angels. But as the pundits of Wall Street ask all the time, is it different this time? This is the heart of Pulitzer Prize winning historian and best selling author Jon Meacham's latest work The Soul of America: The Battle for Our Better Angels
My conversation with Jon Meacham:
Everyday we get another glimpse of just how divided America is. The racial training at Starbucks, the horrendous tweets from Roseanne Barr, and the ongoing collection of psychotic hate filled lies from the president, are just some recent manifestations.
To try and understand it all, Charlie LeDuff takes the journalistic admonition to “go here,” and puts it on steroids. Charlie is part of the great tradition of participatory journalists, people like George Plimpton, and David Foster Wallace. In his latest work Sh*tshow!: The Country's Collapsing . . . and the Ratings Are Great, what he participates in is America as it is today. And for him, it is splintering, collapsing and headed down the drain and in his view, no one is really talking about it.
My conversation with Charlie LeDuff:
Since last weeks tragic news, many have spoken of the multiple talents of Anthony Bourdain. Over the years I had the privilege of learning about Bourdain, in his own words.
Beginning all the way back in 2002, I had the opportunity to speak with him several times. We talked about foods around the world, the lure of the restaurant business, the depressing state of food culture in America, how he got his start, and what it meant to be chef today. He told me that what he did was "like running away with the circus."
What follows are some clips from those conversations.
The great songwriter Johnny Mandel wrote in the theme song for MASH, that “Suicide is Painless.” It’s not. The emotional pain and depression that often leads to it is anything but. Moreover the pain for the survivors is unfathomable.
Yet we have witnessing an epidemic of suicide among some of best and brightest young people today. Suicide is now the second leading cause of death among college students.
And back in 2014 and 2015, even such an esteemed institution as MIT experienced a suicide cluster, resulting in the death of 6 students and 1 faculty member.
Because of its deeply personal nature, the search for symptoms and causes needs to be more personal than clinical. After the MIT suicides an MIT computer science professor, Daniel Jackson, set out to do something to begin to understand what had happened and to help others.
What he did, reached not into the pharmacy, but into the soul of his students. These end result is Portraits of Resilience.
My conversation with Professor Daniel Jackson:
There are many that believe that solution of our fractured politics is simply for individuals to take power from the grassroots. That bottom up organizing is the antidote to the wave of authoritarianism that is sweeping the world.
The counter to that argument is that even with committed grass roots efforts, charismatic and effective leadership is essential.
The 60’s represented the end of consensus politics in America. Since that time we have been searching for the politician or leader that could restore that. The irony has been that in this time of hyper polarity, it’s been impossible for that leader to emerge. So we look back to what might have been. And when we do, the image, the mythology and the reality of Bobby Kennedy rises as an apparition from the body politic.
He had a unique ability to to match an empathetic and compassionate agenda with the instincts of a street fighter. Something the left has not been very good at. As we mark the death of Bobby Kennedy today, I’ve joined by Richard Allen, the author of RFK: His Words for Our Times
My conversation with Richard Allen:
How did our culture, politics and economy get where we are today? Just how bad is it and is it fixable? By comparison, 50 years ago, the country was truly coming apart. War, assassination and riots undermined the very fabric of America.
All of this came just twenty years after the Greatest Generation won the the war, and five years after Camelot. Out of this cauldron came of age a new generation. One, as Kennedy said, was “born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace, proud of our ancient heritage.”
So what happened and how does it explains today’s disfunction, chaos, distrust and tribalism? The tailspin we seem to be in, finds it origins and in turn maybe its solutions, in the the molten core of something that happened in the 1960’s
To try and find and pull these threads together, Steven Brill gives us Tailspin: The People and Forces Behind America's Fifty-Year Fall--and Those Fighting to Reverse It
My conversation with Steven Brill:
In trying to understand what makes us tick, people still debate the old nature vs. nurture argument. Yet modern science, medicine, psychology and biology all tell us it’s far more complex.
In fact it’s a little like a variation of the uncertainty principle in physics. The very act of trying to understand our behaviors or the behavior of others, tell us more about the observers and sometimes the way in which the observer is even influenced by others behavior
This complexity is what Robert Sapolsky examines in Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst.
My conversation with Robert Sopolsky:
We hear over and over in our domestic political debates about the need to improve America’s infrastructure, that to do so is good for business and in the big picture, good for the economy and a projection of America as a global leader. Certainly, LaGuardia Airport and the 45 years it took to build the Second Avenue Subway in New York are not good indications.
On the other side of the world, few countries have repeatedly taken on infrastructure projects as big as those taken on by China. From the movement of water to the transportation of people, the Chinese have seen infrastructure not only as good for its internal economy, but as a true projection of pride and power. Now, these projects have pierced the Chinese border in the form of China’s One Belt, One Road project. The question is, has China gone a railroad bridge too far?
This is the among the questions that Will Doig asks in his book High-Speed Empire: Chinese Expansion and the Future of Southeast Asia.
My WhoWhatWhy.org conversation with Will Doig:
Someone once said of actors that they have their emotions much closer to the surface than the rest of us, in order to make them more easily accessible. If this is true, than it might be said that for some comedians their emotions are not just close to the surface, but raw and fully exposed.
In the case of Robin Williams this certainly seems to have been the case. With Williams you always had the feeling that the more he exposed about himself and about the human condition, the more he made us see it and laugh about it, the more it took him to deep and dark places to find it.
With comedians it's often a question as to whether they are just reflective of the culture and the time they work in, or perhaps the way Lenny Bruce did, they actually help shape that culture.
For Williams the jury is still out. That’s why Dave Itzkoff’s new biography of Williams, Robin, is so important.
My conversation with Dave Itzkoff:
Historians have long written about inflection points in history. In American history, events surrounding the Revolution, the War of 1812, the Civil War & Reconstruction, the Industrial Revolution, the Great Depression, and WWII, are all such points.
It’s arguable that we may very well be living though another one right now. But clearly the last great historical inflection point came exactly fifty years ago, and reached its apogee in the year of 1968. Lyndon Johnson was President, and a series of events led us to believe like Yeats, “that the center cannot hold, and that mere anarchy was loose upon the land.”
The Tet Offensive, MLK and RFK assassinations, the Praque Spring, racial conflicts, the Democratic Convention in Chicago, Lyndon Johnson's decision not to seek reelection and the election of Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew, made 1968 quite a year.
Lyndon Johnson presided over it all and that's the story that historian Kyle Longley tells in LBJ's 1968: Power, Politics, and the Presidency in America's Year of Upheaval
My conversation with Kyle Longley:
The debate over Gina Haspel running the CIA has, like most things, devolved into a partisan political debate: The usual tribes, the usual sides, and the usual arguments. But if we can only step back a bit, we see that it’s so much more. It goes to the heart of who we are as a nation, as a moral society, and whether we can ever again be that shining city on a hill.
As the nomination becomes closer to a vote in the Senate, we’re going to talk about it with John Kiriakou, who was the first member of the intelligence community to expose the CIA’s use of torture, and as a result, became one of the very few Americans ever prosecuted under the Espionage Act, for which he served 23 months in federal prison.
My WhoWhatWhy.org conversation with John Kiriakou.
Look at any days news output, and its getting harder and harder to separate fact from fiction. Not because of fake news, but because the real news and the actions of so many cross the bounds of credible behavior.
As someone recently pointed out, after a few recent days of the usual craziness, if someone had submitted the days real events has a script or story idea for West Wing, or Homeland or even House of Cards, , it would have been rejected as too absurd.
The sad truth is that it’s really happening. This is why it’s sometimes necessary to look at it all in the realm of fiction or specifically a kind of meta fiction. This is what Laurie Calhoun does in her novel You Can Leave.
My conversation with Laurie Calhoun:
It’s become a cliche, but the fact is that in just the past 10 years, almost everything we do has changed. From the way we drive, take pictures, communicate, shop, to the way we seek relationships.
What hasn’t changed is the fundamental underlying idea of human relationships. Connecting, relating and maybe even falling in love. It’s probably a good thing that evolutionary biology is not subject to Moore's Law.
So how do we reconcile the two? How does Tinder or Match or Bumble sync up with our human needs, which have not really changed all that much in thousands of years? Trying to tie these threads together is Joanna Coles in her new book Love Rules: How to Find a Real Relationship in a Digital World
My conversation with Joanna Coles:
Trump, Brexit, and the worldwide populist revolution are not causes, but symptoms. Symptoms of a wider systemic plague of fear of change, anxiety, and a feeling by people of being part of a world they no longer can control or even understand.
Technology today, rather than being a cause, is merely the host that carries the fear. Not unlike the Industrial Revolution a century ago, disruptive change takes its toll. The difference now is that it all happens at hyper speed, and in full view 24/7. How we deal with it, whether we put those that have been left behind in Hillary Clinton’s basket of deplorables, or find leadership that will lift up entire countries may very well determine the fate of the world.
Ian Bremmer, the president and founder of Eurasia Group is more on point than most in understanding all this is going on. He explains a big part of it in Us vs. Them: The Failure of Globalism.
My WhoWhatWhy.org conversation with Ian Bremmer:
In his book Profiles in Courage, JFK writes that courage exists “when a man does what he must — in spite of personal consequences, in spite of obstacles and dangers, and pressures — and that is the basis of all human morality.”
It’s hard to even think about this in the realm of pubic life in 2018. A time when courage is in short supply, reality is subjective and facts are not the “stubborn things” that John Adams said they were, but merely fungible talking points to gin up the base.
It’s sad then that we have to rely almost solely on history to find examples of this courage and morality. That’s where multiple Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Thomas Ricks tanks us in his joint biography Churchill and Orwell: The Fight for Freedom
My conversation with Thomas Ricks:
There is a line from the 1973 movie The Way We Were, where Katie Morosky, played by Barbra Streisand, talks about Hubbell Gardner, played by Robert Redford. She says of Gardner/Redford, “In a way he was like the country he lived in; everything came too easily to him.”
And that has been a narrative, albeit, often a false one, of ease and grace that the public often seeks to buy into with respect to its leaders. Certainly Kennedy successfully exploited it, maybe even laid the political predicate for it, in his race against Nixon in 1960. In a way it was even a part of the Obama narrative.
On the flip side, it may have very well worked against Hillary Clinton in 2016. It seems that for Hillary Clinton, nothing came easily. Everything she had ever achieved was, or appeared to be, a struggle. One that played out on the public stage for more than 40 years.
Jennifer Palmieri got to see this up close and personal as Hillary Clinton’s Communications Director, and herself a veteran of many years in politics and in the White House. She brings it all into focus in her new book Dear Madam President: An Open Letter to the Women Who Will Run the World
My conversation with Jennifer Palmieri:
Woody Allen once said that the world was divided into the horrible and the miserable. The horrible he thought were people with terminal cases, blind people, and the crippled. “I don't know how they get through life,” he said. “It's amazing to me.”
To answer Woody Allen's existential question, it is usually hope that carries the day. But the form that that hope takes can vary widely. Sometimes, it grows out of faith, sometimes out of denial and sometimes out of science. This is often true for both real cutting edge science, or the placebo that is most Western medicine.
Author and journalist Richard M. Cohen, has long lived with conditions Woody Allen would call horrible. Yet though his writings and his voice, he has not only defined his hope, he has given it to others. He does so once again in his look at stem cell research in Chasing Hope: A Patient's Deep Dive into Stem Cells, Faith, and the Future.
My conversation with Richard M. Cohen:
Isn’t it interesting that the more we have technology to save us time, the more we complain about not having enough time. Before the digital revolution we never heard as much talk about everyone not having enough time.
Just think about how much time we spend setting up our CRM and To do list apps, when a simple list in a notebook might have actually been faster.
And while the technology of everything from dating apps to GPS, may make things more efficient, do they actually limit our ability to see the wider world, and in so doing make us cogs in a wheel that sacrifice our humanity and our sense of wonder. That what author and distinguished scholar Edward Tenner looks at in The Efficiency Paradox: What Big Data Can't Do
My conversation with Edward Tenner:
There is not a day that goes by that the subject of immigration is not in some way part of our national discussion. However, even with all the talk, there is little focus on either the large number of immigrants that arrive from China, or on the their immigrant experience.
We think very little about what it must be like leaving one's country, friends, family and culture behind, to begin anew as a stranger in a strange land.
Perhaps if we all understood the commitment, the bravery, the strength it takes to do that, we would be having a very different conversation about immigration.
That experience is the world that Lauren Hilgers gives up a window into in Patriot Number One: American Dreams in Chinatown
My conversation with Lauren Hilgers:
In 1964 Lyndon Johnson enacted his war on poverty. Three years later Robert Kennedy knelt in a crumbling shack in Mississippi, watching a toddler pick rice and beans off of a dirt floor. What Robert Kennedy saw on that trip would impact him personally and in part, drive is run for the Presidency one year later.
While Vietnam was the seminal issue of the day, poverty and its nexus with the civil rights movement, were very much on Kennedy’s mind.
Ellen Meacham takes us back to this transformative moment for RFK in Delta Epiphany: Robert F. Kennedy in Mississippi.
My conversation with Ellen Meacham:
The legendary studio boss Harry Cohn once said to one of his writers, that if you want to send a political message, use Western Union. The point was that movies were for entertainment. Some have even tried to make that argument with respect to novels, but over the years, this has hardly been the case.
One of the great examples is Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead. Released 75 years ago, this month. This story of ambition, love, and architecture reverberates through our political discourse today, both in middle America and in the halls of Congress. What other 75-year-old novel can spark a heated debate between Paul Ryan and Paul Krugman?
Yaron Brook is an Israeli American entrepreneur and writer. He’s the current chairman of the board of the Ayn Rand Institute where he was its executive director from 2000 to 2017 and is leading the effort to mark the 75th anniversary of The Fountainhead.
My WhoWhatWhy.org conversation with Yaron Brook:
Emma Gonzalez and David Hogg understood how to maximize social media to achieve the highest in democratic ends. The Russians and Cambridge Analytica used that same social media to undermine democracy, to spread lies, and to manipulate facts.
Recently we’ve seen Mark Zuckerberg and members of Congress musing about the business model of Facebook and the holy grail of hyper-directed advertising. All of this, good and bad, misses the larger point.
In a world that is totally interconnected, when every aspect of Internet culture feeds steroids to the human tribal instinct, when information moves at the speed of light, and when there is more of it than we have the evolutionary ability to process, is this technology simply antithetical to traditional ideas of democracy? Particularly to the system that our founders passed down to us.
Perhaps it’s no coincidence that as the Internet grows, so to do authoritarian regimes. As tech companies get bigger, democratic institutions become smaller. What is the nexus to all of this and if it’s true, do we have to change tech or change the very idea of democracy?
All of this is at the core of work by Jamie Bartlett in his book The People Vs Tech: How the internet is killing democracy (and how we save it)
My WhoWhatWhy.org conversation with Jamie Bartlett:
I think it was Howard Cosell who first referred to sports at the “toy department of life.” Oftentimes player performance has been put down as people say that “it’s not rocket science.”
The fact is however, that we now know it is neuroscience, computer science, medical science, AI, and a whole lot more.
We often talk about the game of golf as being so much inside the heads of players. But now, new research show us that this is just as true for football, basketball, and especially baseball.
The metrics that drove Moneyball, have now been amplified to include new arenas of scientific data. This data may be the handicapping tools and tip sheets for the future of sports. Zach Schonbrun takes us inside this new science in The Performance Cortex: How Neuroscience Is Redefining Athletic Genius.
My conversation with Zach Schonbrun:
In the movie Jurassic Park, perhaps the most famous line is that “nature will find a way.” It might just as accurately be said today, that technology will find a way.
Think about where we are. Fear of Facebook, the attacks on Amazon, the opioid crisis, and the kind of mini “techlash” we’re going through and the anger of a great many voters in former manufacturing hubs like Michigan, Pennsylvania or Wisconsin. It all stems from the degree to which technology is displacing almost every aspect of society. And if this is where we are now, just wait until it really kicks in.
Then, maybe the idea of a Universal Basic Income, may finally come into its own. Not as a form of welfare, but as a pro growth, pro business policy.
To help understand this, Andrew Yang spells it all out in The War on Normal People: The Truth About America's Disappearing Jobs and Why Universal Basic Income Is Our Future.
My conversation with Andrew Yang:
Religion, violence, anti-semitism, and the fate of the Catholic Church. All subject as contemporary as today’s headlines. To often we see these headlines and think about these issues in the moment, in the now. Yet to really understand any of these issues, begs for a deeper understanding of history.
And what better way to get that history, then in the storytelling of a great novel. That’s what James Carroll has been helping us with for years. Teaching us, while he entertains us.
James Carroll is a distinguished scholar in residence at Suffolk University and a columnist for The Boston Globe. He is the author of ten novels and seven works of nonfiction. He is a winner of the National Book Award, the best selling author of Constantine’s Sword and his latest work is The Cloister
My conversation with James Carroll:
Spend any time watching television and you’ll see the apotheosis of western medicine. There is a drug for everything. We live in a pharmaceutical culture where every pain, ache, and known and unknown disease has its own pill.
The areas of mental health, depression and anxiety have become a kind of hedge fund for the drug companies. And while we see the occasional pushback to this western model of drug care, we don’t see it enough in the world of mental health and depression.
Distinguished journalist Johann Hari thinks there is a better way to treat depression and it’s one that takes into account the reality of the world we live in. He sets out to prove it in is new book Lost Connections: Uncovering the Real Causes of Depression – and the Unexpected Solutions
My conversation with Johann Hari:
Lately, there have been countless articles about the rise of authoritarian regimes. One aspect of all of these regimes is, even as we’re seeing here in America, the dramatic extremes in corruption. Often fueled by power, money laundering, drugs, and simply all manner of crimes upon the public.
Perhaps nowhere in contemporary times was this worse than in Columbia in the 1990s and 2000s. Amidst a complicated, murky civil war, drug cartels, corruption and unrestrained violence, the country came apart.
What exactly happened, where is it today and what we can learn from it, is the subject a new and powerful book by Peruvian-American activist/writer Maria McFarland Sánchez-Moreno entitled There Are No Dead Here: A Story of Murder and Denial in Colombia.
My conversation with Maria McFarland Sánchez-Moreno:
I don’t think there is anyone that would argue that the world is a far more complex place today. All of the machines and technology that are supposed to make our lives easier have, at times, made it more complicated, more frustrating, and more subject to things going wrong.
Anyone who’s tried to operate the GPS or radio in a new BMW, or even to operate their television knows exactly what I mean.
This is not just about technology and algorithms. It’s also about the systems and organizations that make our world work. We have embraced complexity as an operating system, but we have yet to build into that complexity the fail safe systems that prevent all of it from spiraling out of control.
We seem to be at a critical juncture. We have designed so much that can go wrong, and have yet to design the internal systems that can prevent it. For complexity, it’s both the best and worst of times. Until we figure it all out, a Meltdown is around every corner. That's the title of a new book co-authored by Chris Clearfield.
My conversation with Chris Clearfield:
Back in the 1960s, Richard Nixon would talk and write a lot about the Middle East in general, and about the Israeli situation specifically, and he talked about how it easily could become the flash point of the next world war.
Certainly almost 60 years and many crises later, this is still true. Today, as a second and third generation still hears about settlements and a one and two-state solution, and peace plans are reconstituted over and over again, one wonders, do we even remember how this all got started?
Does the original sin grow out of the post-World War I agreements of 1916, or did something happen after Israel’s success in the Six-Day War, in 1967? Did Israel, to paraphrase our current President, get “tired of winning”?
So one more time, we’re going to go back and look at the past, the present, and the future of the Israeli enterprise. This time, with Avraham Burg. One time Speaker of the Israeli Knesset. He’s a past leader of the World Zionist Federation and the Jewish Agency for Israel. He served in the Israeli Labor Government of Shimon Peres, and back in 2004, he retired from active involvement in politics and is the author of In Days to Come: A New Hope for Israel.
My WhoWhatWhy.org conversation with Avraham Burg:
Every so often the media picks up the meme that books and readers are on the decline. That our short attention span, along with our Twitter and Facebook driven culture, has supplanted long form narrative. And it seems that every time those stories circulate, something happens to change or debunk the narrative. Even the national obsession with a book like Fire and Fury, proves something.
Joan Didion said that we tell each other stories in order to live. It’s also those stories, in literature, in popular fiction, or even nonfiction, that still, after all these centuries, shape how the world continues to unfold. That’s the journey that Martin Puchner takes us on in The Written World: The Power of Stories to Shape People, History, Civilization.
My conversation with Martin Puchner:
What is the nexus between our political system and our economic system? Certainly during the Cold War we fought to defend our political system against the economic threat of communism. So, does it work the other way around? Do we now have to defined our republic and our democracy against the threat of a new gilded age, of oligarchs and of deep income inequality? Is the fight for civility and justice, also a fight for economic justice.
In a system designed to be class blind, can the widening economic divide actually bring down the system?
The way in which these political and economic ideas are related, is the basis of Ganesh Sitaraman's new book The Crisis of the Middle-Class Constitution: Why Economic Inequality Threatens Our Republic.
My conversation with Ganesh Sitaraman:
Everyday we are reminded how difficult it is growing up, and being a teenger. The work of Jean Twenge and others has shown the impact of technology and social media on our culture. Add to this, the reality of what it’s like growing up black or hispanic in America and the pressure becomes even more intense..
Even tougher, imagine what it must be like growing up in America as a Muslim teenager.. particularly one who cares about their religious practices and so must walk that fine line between wanting to fit in and still trying to maintain their Muslim identity.
John O’Brien, went directly into the heart of a Muslim community to understand what all of this translates to in the everyday lives of these Muslim teenage boys. He shares that journey in Keeping It Halal: The Everyday Lives of Muslim American Teenage Boys.
My conversation with John O'Brien:
There is no question that the easy availability of guns, especially assault weapons, has contributed in some way to the rash of school shootings. However, we would be naïve to think that this is the totality of the problem. Beyond guns, the broader questions always should be how these shootings can be averted. How can we understand and interpret the data from so many past events in ways that help us to prevent the next? In a world where big data is becoming the holy grail, can this data be used to keep our students safe?
Jeff Daniels is a Professor of Counseling at West Virginia University and his work in research on averting school shootings is groundbreaking. His recent article in the academic journal The Conversation is entitled “If You Want To Know How To Stop School Shootings, Ask The Secret Service.”
My WhoWhatWhy.org conversation with Professor Jeff Daniels
Every day the news gets darker. Polarization is increasing, constitutional norms are being overthrown, the social fabric is tearing and as Yeats said, “the best lack all conviction while the worst are full of passionate intensity.”
Still, as bad as it appears on cable news each night, it’s nothing compared to what was happening in the 60’s and 70’s. Cities were burning, violence was loose upon the land. Nixon was drinking himself to sleep each night, and new villains had to be created to take the heat off Watergate and Vietnam. For Nixon, one of those villains became Timothy Leary.
The story of Leary, the enemy that Nixon created to embody all that he thought wrong with the country, is story that is a little bit Wag the Dog, Keystone Cops and All The President's Men.
The story is that Steven L. Davis and Bill Minutaglio tell in The Most Dangerous Man in America: Timothy Leary, Richard Nixon and the Hunt for the Fugitive King of LSD.
My conversation with Steven L. Davis:
We often hear that we live in a post industrial world. Yet all of those consumer goods we and the rest of the world love so much, are made in factories. Factories that, at the dawn of the industrial revolution, did not always represent the best of working conditions. Today, out of nostalgia, we romanticize them and long for the “big shoulders” of the industrial heartland.
Today things are still produced in factories. However, they are increasingly either located offshore, or are more and more manned by robots. Auto workers from the 50s and 60s would be shocked walking through the factory that turns out Teslas.
Yet in the minds of many, these factories represented something more than just places to make things. They were a symbol of another time and place. But one that we can still learn from, even in the digital age.
Few know more about his, than my guest Joshua Freeman the author of Behemoth: A History of the Factory and the Making of the Modern World.
My conversation with Joshua Freeman:
We hear over and over again that the future belongs to China. Looking at what the Chinese are accomplishing in both infrastructure and technology, it’s easy to believe it. But what about in human relations and the issues of the gender wars?
As the #MeToo movement reshapes or recalibrates the nature of sex, work and gender relationships in America, it’s worthwhile to look and see how and if these same issues are playing out in China.
In China, an entire cadre of well educated and financially successful woman are taking their place. The result is that the deep, deep traditions of Chinese society are having to change in ways that are even more difficult and upending than all than all the physical changes China has endured.
Taking us through this journey is Economist correspondent Roseann Lake in Leftover in China: The Women Shaping the World's Next Superpower.
My conversation with Roseann Lake:
A couple of weeks ago, The N.Y. Times ran a story about “global nomads.” People whose work allows them to plug-in anywhere in the world. This may not be for everybody. But it’s a reminder that the fundamentals of work are changing.
How do we work today in an always on, 24/7 world. In a world where intellectual capital is increasingly the coin of the realm, we are essentially at work. whenever we are awake. and maybe even as we sleep.
All of this change arguably creates the need for a rebalancing of our relationship to work. Even redefining what the word “work,” really means. Always changing is how we determine priorities, how generational dynamics impact work, and and is the cliche of work/life balance even a thing anymore.
There is no better person to talk to about all of this than author, professor and management guru Morten Hansen. His latest is Great at Work: How Top Performers Do Less, Work Better, and Achieve More.
My conversation with Morten Hansen:
In the debate about immigration we are reminded of the original notion of America as a melting pot. As a nation that could absorb different cultures, different identities and different ethnic groups.
The trade off was the embrace of an American identity. A kind of super nationalism that would subsume these subgroups and, at its best, world supersede ethnic and religious tribalism, and replace it all with the American brand.
Over the years we’ve seen fissures in this idea. Usually it happens when dramatic change or pressure comes to America. The onset of the industrial revolution and the Cold War against communism are some examples. We’ve always done better when we’ve had common external enemies.
But today, the pressures may be just too great. Globalization and the decline of nation states, greater economic inequality, a 24/7 always connected culture, and the rush of change, both social and technological, and at a dizzying pace, have all stoked fear, uncertainty and insecurity. The result is that it feeds a new kind of tribalism that Americans may never have experienced before.
To help us understand this, as well as the very idea of tribalism I’m joined by best selling author and Yale law professor, Amy Chua to talk about Political Tribes: Group Instinct and the Fate of Nations.
My conversation with Amy Chua:
There was a saying during the Vietnam era, the attribution of which is a bit fuzzy, that said “if you grab them by the balls, their hearts and minds will follow.”
I suppose this was not inconsistent with another quote of that era that said, “come let us reason together...or we’ll burn down your village.”
Vietnam, like so many counterinsurgency efforts, before and since, was or should have been, about winning those hearts and minds. Unfortunately, the political, foreign policy and military establishment never seemed to get it right.
However, during the Vietnam era, one man did. He was Maj. General Edward Lansdale. He was military and CIA, and in retrospect he maybe the only true wise man of the time.
Now, foreign policy scholar Max Boot gives us The Road Not Taken: Edward Lansdale and the American Tragedy in Vietnam. The fist full look at Lansdale and why this obscure figure from the period, should be a household,
My conversation with Max Boot:
Years ago, the great Dorothy Parker said that the movie business was the only business where the assets went home at night….Well that may have had a ring a truth then, but today in a world where intellectual property and human capital are what makes our economy tick, it seems that the assets always go home at night.
And what they do, what they think about, and what they conceive of when they are home, opens a minefield of issues that are legal, cultural and human. Add to these issues the global world where work is 24/7, where nomadic work patterns are the subject of a NY Times Magazine cover story, and where a single idea can be worth billions and can change the world, the consequences of these issues are enormous.
Distinguished law professor Orly Lobel in You Don't Own Me: How Mattel v. MGA Entertainment Exposed Barbie's Dark Side, tells a story of the toy business that is both compelling in its own right and emblematic of the future of law and work.
My conversation with Orly Lobel:
Amidst the cacophony of 24/7 news and information that pours in at us every day, we seem to have lost sight of what constitutes truth, facts and actual information. The signal to noise ratio has shifted overwhelming towards noise.
Remember, it wasn’t that long ago that we got our information from local papers and three television networks. The original Cronkite nightly news was only 15 minutes long. It was a big and controversial deal when it was expanded to a full half hour.
In many ways it feels like we are in a chicken and egg cycle. Technology has helped provide us with endless sources of “information,” and we are also more polarized than ever. Is it the abundance of options that creates the polarization, or is it the polarization that cause us to see or hear only information to support our cognitive bias? All of this is part of what a recent report by the RAND calls Truth Decay
RAND recently released a 300+ page report on the diminishing role of facts and analysis in American public life. I recently spoke with one of the authors of that report Jennifer Kavanaugh.
My WhoWhatWhy.org conversation with Jennifer Kavanaugh:
Think about what we value today. What we give rewards for as a society? Now imagine, if you can, a business tycoon who is modest and filled with generosity. Who could gamble a million dollars on one roll of the dice, but whose story is a true Horatio Alger, rags to riches story. A man whose word is his bond. Who eschews self promotion, yet operated in Las Vegas and Hollywood. A man who saw the importance ot the larger world, and helping others in it, while still appreciating all that is American. A man who knew how to fly, but never flew too close to the sun
This is, in part, the story of Kirk Kerkorian. It's a story told by William Rempel, in The Gambler: How Penniless Dropout Kirk Kerkorian Became the Greatest Deal Maker in Capitalist History.
My conversation with William Rempel:
At the time of the invention of writing, Socrates worried that it would destroy memory, and undermine the oral tradition. The invention of the printing press worried many. For those old enough you remember, the fear of television was once pervasive. It was the “boob tube,” “the vast wasteland.” We fragmented over other great changes, including the great migration and the move from a rural agrarian culture to an urban industrial revolution.
All of these changes came with great promise and predictive as well as unintended consequences. Why should we think that the Internet, that the digital revolution, would be any different? As someone once said, “history may repeat itself exactly, but it certainly rhymes.”
Andrew Keen has, with an objective eye, been following this history since the dawn of the information age. He wrote about the democratization of information in his book THE CULT OF THE AMATEUR, and he warned us how social media would, rather than brings us together, fragment us and feed into our narcissism.
Now in HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE, he pulls together all of the consequences of tech. He shows us what Joan Didion once said of Southern California, is true of tech, that the dream was teaching the dreamers how to live.
My WhoWhatWhy Conversation with Andrew Keen
If you’re following or trying to follow the Trump-Russia story, no doubt your head is filled with dozens of threads: the Trump Tower meetings; the dossier; the names of countless Russians, mobsters, and oligarchs, and bankers; banks in Germany, in Moscow, Cyprus, and Moldavia; money laundering; real estate deals; hedge funds; indictments; bankruptcies; and a cast of characters orbiting Trump that feels more like the bar scene in the original Star Wars.
How is it possible then to understand it all? Especially if, as Steve Bannon told Michael Wolff, it’s all about following the money. We could all imagine some kind of huge whiteboard or bulletin board in Mueller’s office with arrows, and pictures, and bank logos, and lines, and threads connecting them all together.
WhoWhatWhy.org has published a multi-part series entitled Deutsche Bank: A Global Bank for Oligarchs — Americans and Russians by Martin Sheil, a retired branch chief of the IRS Criminal Investigation Division. His WhoWhatWhy series could easily be seen as part of a preamble or executive summary to the report that Mueller may ultimately deliver to Congress.
My WhoWhatWhy.org conversation with Martin Sheil:
It’s ironic that at a time when our air, water and food are under siege, more people than ever seem to care about the protection of all three. Organic grocery sales have never been higher and local agriculture is undergoing a kind of millennial renaissance.
Nonetheless, for best practices, we have to turn our gaze to a small town in the Italian alps. It is the first place on earth to fully ban pesticides via referendum, and it represents what may very well be the future of local agriculture everywhere.
Philip Ackerman-Leist tells this story in A Precautionary Tale: How One Small Town Banned Pesticides, Preserved Its Food Heritage, and Inspired a Movement.
My conversation with Philip Ackerman-Leist:
Elections do have consequences and leaders really do matter. Grassroots voices and organizing can bring attention to a problem, but it’s the job of government, of our constitutional process, to put those policies in place.
As modern history tells us, it’s no easy task. This week we watched a State of the Union speech devoid of ideas, or programs or lofty goals to lift people up, or in the parlance of our times, to solve problems.
It was a far cry from Bill Clinton’s laundry list of small ball in his ‘95 SOTU and even further from the goals once set out by Lyndon Johnson.
So much of the legislative battle today is not about, as some commentators have said, undoing the New Deal, but undoing the remarkable achievements of Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society. It’s a remarkable list that includes medicare, medicai
d, public radio, public television, the voting right act, federal aid to education, consumer protections, creating the Department of Transportation, and the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and the great 1964 Civil Rights Act. All done in five years, while struggling with the disaster that was Vietnam.
Johnson did it all not through executive orders, but through the simple Article One powers of the Constitution. That’s the story that Joshua Zeitz tells in Building the Great Society: Inside Lyndon Johnson's White House
My conversation with Joshua Zeitz:
In the US. or anywhere else around the world, when freedom is threatened, when liberty is under siege, it is often the artist that comes to the rescue. Not necessarily in the realm of changing politics, but in reminding us why that freedom is important, inspiring us to remember what matters, amidst the fear and noise of repression.
In a new book entitled It Occurs to Me That I Am America: New Stories and Art, Jonathan Santlofer, has brought together some of the most profound artists and writers of our time, to do exactly that.
My conversation with Jonathan Santlofer:
Those that study history know that not only is it not static, but that it tends to go though seemingly recurring periods. We’ve seen times where freedom flourishes, times when despots seem to be the flavor du jour, times where great bursts of innovation happen and where darkness and stagnation cast a pall.
Even in our modern day we see the tension between, “I alone can fix it,” and the power of grassroots and social networks to try and bring people together in a common cause.
This idea, the individual vs. the network is, according to esteemed historical Niall Ferguson, one of the most recurring tensions throughout history. He takes us through this remarkable journey in his book The Square and the Tower: Networks and Power, from the Freemasons to Facebook.
My conversation with Niall Ferguson:
Playing Clue, writing, quizzing our kids or friends, or analyzing data to make decisions, we are all familiar with those key question of who, what and why. And yet the question that goes to the heart of what we actually do and how it will turn out, is often WHEN.
We make dozens of when decisions everyday. Sometimes we jump into something to quickly, sometimes we procrastinate. We schedule the hard stuff in the morning when we are fresh, or some schedule the easy stuff in the morning, to get it out of the way.
We think that most of these decisions derive from habit or intuition. But in fact, modern science and research in psychology, biology, economics and even anthropology, all provide road maps for making our when decisions.
Now bestselling and influential author Daniel Pink takes us into the essence of those when decision in When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing.
My conversation with Daniel Pink:
For those that are politically engaged, and are horrified by the current policy decisions being made and enacted by the current administration, it sometimes seems as if the challenge is overwhelming. Can any amount of the traditional forms of protest, and organizing make a dent. Or has technology, the speed of communications and our ever shortening attention spans put us in a post organizing environment?
In a world in which facts are suspect, life is lived online, only with people that we agree with, and the no ones mind ever seems to change, does protest even matter? Longtime activist and organizer Gordon Whitman thinks it does. His new book is Stand Up!: How to Get Involved, Speak Out, and Win in a World on Fire.
My conversation with Gordon Whitman:
In the current debate over taxes we here a lot about offshore funds, the repatriation of corporate dollars, and how lowering marginal tax rates will stimulate the economy and bring all this money pouring back into America. Unlikely! Particularly because what we don’t hear about is the almost hundred trillion dollars that is hidden from view, in a complex web of offshore accounts, tax havens, laundered money, corrupt banks and nations that have created a kind of alternative world financial system.
Back in April of 2016 the leaked documents from a Panamanian law firm, that became known as the Panama Papers, began to shed light on this universal flow of this tainted money. More recently the
Paradise Papers, brought this corruption to the doorstep of the White House.
Covering every step of this, has been distinguished journalist and two time Pulitzer winner Jake Bernstein. He details it all, and a lot more in Secrecy World: Inside the Panama Papers Investigation of Illicit Money Networks and the Global Elite.
My WhoWhatWhy.org conversation with Jake Bernstein:
Poll after poll tell us that people have lost faith in government and in big institutions to solve the nation’s or even the world's problems. As that disconnect grows, and it will likely continue to, we are looking more and more to local centric, often non-profit institutions to do the heavy lifting.
But what will those non profits look like? As donors today want rapid and measurable results, metrics, and an entrepreneurial spirit and business approach, that will certainly not resemble your father's non-profit.
To help us understand this transition and what may very well be the future of non-profits, as a growing instrument of public policy, I’m joined by Kathleen Kelly Janus, the author of Social Startup Success: How the Best Nonprofits Launch, Scale Up, and Make a Difference.
My conversation with Kathleen Kelly Janus:
In today’s world it’s not just technology that changes quickly. Just twenty-five years ago, some thought we had reached the end of history. That the end of the Cold War would bring about protracted peace, that the ending of the great power struggle between the US and the Soviet Union would mark a new era. In many ways it did, but not necessarily the one that was anticipated.
Just as we’ve seen deconstruction in almost every area of society, so too in foreign policy. The gravitational pull of great powers that held the world together, just as that same force held major industries together, fragmented. Independence, democratization, real time instant communications and commerce, let loose global and destabilizing forces that we are trying hard to sort through. While in business it might mean the end of a company or an industry, in foreign affairs this disarray just might mean the end of the world.
Dr. Richard Haass, the president of the Council on Foreign Relations has served in several administrations and is also the author or editor of twelve books on foreign policy and international relations. His latest is A World in Disarray: American Foreign Policy and the Crisis of the Old Order.
My conversation with Richard Haass:
Somebody asked me recently if I thought that this time that we are living through will be as significant and as profoundly influential as the ‘60’s. I don't’ know the answer to that. What I do know is that there are recurring themes from that period that we seem to be relitigating and reliving.
Race is certainly one. Renewed discussion about Vietnam, press freedom and the threat of nuclear war, are some of the others.
Daniel Ellsberg, was once at the center of these issues and he is still here to provide his wisdom and insights into the way that history maybe repeating itself.
The Ken Burns documentary about Vietnam, which conspicuously did not include a conversation with Ellsberg, and the Steven Spielberg film, The Post, have once again catapulted Ellsberg to the front of our national dialogue.
Most of us know Daniel Ellsberg for the Pentagon Paper which he copied and leaked in 1971. What we don’t know is that Ellsberg was a war planner and nuclear strategist at RAND, and one of the leading thinkers about the role and actual use of nuclear weapons.
Now, after all of these years, he’s written about it in The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner.
My WhoWhatWhy.org conversation with Daniel Ellsberg:
There is an old expression that’s long been part of the training of medical students. It says that if you hear hooves, look for horses, not zebras. The idea is simple. Look first in the most obvious places. Often times the solution is in pain sight and doesn't require some deep, expensive digging.
The same might very well be said of Donald Trump and Russia. Sure we all hear about the complex web, but really there is a kind of elemental simplicity to the story.
Trump came to the attention of Russians as far back as 1987. The Russians, seeking contacts or assets in the US, dangled in front of Trump the prospect of doing business in Russia. They paraded before him oligarchs who he admired, and who he was jealous of.
They keep their eyes on on him for years. He even married two wives from the former soviet bloc. Two wives who grew up behind the Iron Curtain.
He went back to Russia in 2013, by which time planet Trump was surrounded by people like Michael Cohen, Felix Sater, the Agalaroffs, Paul Manafort and dozens and duzens of Russians that had bought property in Trump Tower, or one of his other real estate interests.
When he fell on financial hard times, Russians and particularly Deutsche Bank in Moscow, were there to help with laundered money
In 2016, when he finally ran for president, something he’d been talking about for decades, we know the Russians intervened to help. Paul Manafort, with deep Russian and Ukrainian ties, would, for a time, manage the campaign.
When he won, so many that were circling the mothership Trump would lie about their contacts with Russia. His cabinet would be filled with people like Wilbur Russ, Rex Tillerson and the sister of Eric Prince, all with deep ties to Russia.
All the while he would continue to praise Vladimir Putin. This is the story that Luke Harding brings forth in Collusion: Secret Meetings, Dirty Money, and How Russia Helped Donald Trump Win
My WhoWhatWhy.org conversation with Luke Harding:
Bill Binney was an NSA analyst whose work was so effective it was shut down. It threatened to derail the gravy train fueled by the kinds of problems he might have solved — including preventing potential terrorist attacks. The contractors and executives riding that train had a motto: “keep the problem going, so the money keep flowing.”
My WhoWhatWhy.org conversation with Bill Binney:
Once upon a time, at the apogee of the cold war, the CIA recruited the best and the brightest from our most elite universities. The likes of George HW Bush, James Jesus Angleton, William Bundy, Porter Goss, and Cord Meyer, all owed their allegiance to God Country and Yale. And Harvard also had its share. These universities were, as someone once referred them, “a nursery of spooks.”
Today, like everything else, espionage has gone through its own creative destruction. Colleges and universities are still at the epicenter of espionage, but it’s all been impacted by globalization, technology, the free flow of international students and professors and information, and yes, 9/11. It’s as if the military industrial-complex that Eisenhower warned us about, is now the military, industrial, intelligence and university complex.
Bringing this all into bold relief is Pulitzer Prize winning author Daniel Golden, in his book Spy Schools: How the CIA, FBI, and Foreign Intelligence Secretly Exploit America's Universities.
My conversation with Dan Golden:
As the new year begins, we often think about what to do with our money. In a world in which we are more socially and politically divided than ever, in which change is happening at an exponential pace, in which technology may lead us to a worse or a better place, how we invest, how we spend money, and where that money goes, takes on more urgency than ever.
Both spending and investing is now more than just part of our economic dialogue. It is a part of our social fabric. How it comes together, and what it accomplishes has profound consequences.
Morgan Simon is a leader in impact investment who builds bridges between finance and social justice. Over the past seventeen years, she has influenced over $150 billion in capital and she recently authored Real Impact: The New Economics of Social Change.
My conversation with Morgan Simon:
I’m not sure when politics became a dirty word. But there was a time when it was a noble profession. When the best the the brightest sought to serve, and when differences of opinion were about how to better the lives of all people, not just those at the top, or those at the margins, or those in power.
To successfully engage in politics tooks a very special skill set, that was about understanding people and what they wanted, and forming coalitions to compromise and get things done. How far we have fallen from that ideal.
It was Bismarck who said that “politics was the art of the possible.” Few understood this better than the 32nd President of the United States, Franklin Roosevelt. Presidential historian Robert Dallek takes a deep dive into the political Roosevelt, in Franklin D. Roosevelt: A Political Life
My conversation with Robert Dallek:
From the time we first enter the world, to the moment we read or listen to the morning news, we are trying to make sense of the world. We are trying to discern patterns, to create a narrative, to fit the puzzle pieces together in ways that make sense. All the while creating the minimum amount of cognitive dissonance, so that we can move forward each day without having a complete nervous breakdown.
And so it is that societies and cultures do exactly the same things as part of a kind of collective effort to finding meaning. Be it in art, as we try to find metaphorical meaning in the equivalent of a grain of sand, or in the worship of religion, money, success or hierarchical achievement. The problem often comes when these patterns we internalize, run headlong into reality.
That’s a part of what I explore with Jeremy Lent as we look at The Patterning Instinct: A Cultural History of Humanity's Search for Meaning.
My conversation with Jeremy Lent:
You may remember that during the cold war, particularly during the Vietnam conflict, we were told that the battle was for the “hearts and minds” of the enemy. We understood that in conflict, propaganda, particularly as told through narrative, was an important tool of warfare.
Narrative, if successful, was there to reinforce the battle. The ultimate expression of this was the phrase, sometimes attributed to both John Wayne and Chuck Colson, that “if you have them by the balls, their hearts and minds will follow.”
Today, in our 24/7 always on, social media saturated world, the objective has changed. Now, the battle through social media and television, for the proverbial hearts and minds, is sometime the goal, in and of itself.
As we’ve seen with Russia in both the Ukraine, and in it’s new cold war with the US, sometimes control of the Twitter and Facebook narrative is enough to create disruption, to change the terms of the conflict itself and ultimately to win. Suddenly, in cold war 2.0, a keyboard has as much power as an F15. That's the reality that David Patrikarakos lays bear in War in 140 Characters: How Social Media Is Reshaping Conflict in the Twenty-First Century.
My WhoWhatWhy.org conversation with David Patrikarakos:
Tune in to the news any day, and there is lots to lose sleep over. Not the least of which is the worry that if we are not sleeping correctly, we will age faster, increase our risk of Alzheimer's and be susceptible to a host of other illnesses.
It’s hard to imagine, that with all of the other crisis going on, how much time and conversation gets devoted to the subject of sleep. It must mean that it’s pretty important. At least Matthew Walker thinks so. He is a professor of neuroscience and psychology at UC Berkeley, the Director of its Sleep and Neuroimaging Lab, and a former professor of psychiatry at Harvard University, and the author of Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams.
My conversation with Matthew Walker:
One of the criticisms of Silicon Valley is often that so much talent and engineering is going toward the creation of minor advancements. A new dating app, new forms of banking, or even games.
But all of this belies what’s really going on beneath the surface, in the world of Artificial Intelligence. A world that conjures up a whole host of fears and confusion. Perhaps it comes from too many science fiction movies, or maybe it’s just the fear of the ultimate change and loss of control. Either way, it is coming in every aspect of our lives. We can choose to have the conversation now, or complain, protest and get angry later.
One of the people leading the way in this arena is Amir Husain. He is a serial entrepreneur and inventor, and the author of The Sentient Machine: The Coming Age of Artificial Intelligence.
My WhoWhatWhy conversation with Amir Husain:
In our hyper partisan and over politicized culture, we’re always quick and anxious to talk about DACA, Dreamers, immigration, deportation, etc. Too often even the most well meaning stories are often lost in the weeds of policy and politics.
What we often forget, or can’t personally understand, is that all of this is about real people. About kids who are caught up in events they can’t control while getting impressions of how they are accepted or not as refugees. The result will shape how they grow up, what they will always believe about this country.
Even in the best of environment refugee resettlement is hard work. Although as my guest Helen Thorpe show us, in her book The Newcomers: Finding Refuge, Friendship, and Hope in an American Classroom, it should be filled with joy.
My conversation with Helen Thorpe:
There are many writers that reflect a particular time, place and style. Tom Wolfe, Faulkner, Norman Mailer, to name a few. Each conjures up a specific time and place.
It’s very rare that a great writer spans both places and decades. Joan Didion is that rare exception. Be it New York or California; the upheaval of the 60’s, or the aging baby boomers of the present, who must deal with death and grief. Joan Didion has captured it all with precision, insight and the poet's gift for defining the world in a grain of sand.
Never before has there been a documentary about Joan...until now. Until Griffin and Annabelle Dunne have given us The Center Cannot Hold. It comes to Netflix on October 27th.
My conversation with Griffin Dunne:
Forty nine years ago, on June 5th 1968, the world shifted on its axis. The assassination of Bobby Kennedy, after his victory in the California primary, changed politics forever. It’s might not be too far fetched to say that had Bobby survived, our politics and our country might look very different today.
Sydney Schanberg, the great reporter, once told me in an interview that he thought Vietnam and the 60’s represented the end of consensus politics in America.
Since that time we have been searching for the politician or the leader that could bridge that divide. The irony has been that in a time of polarity, it’s been impossible for that leader to emerge. So we look back to what might have been. And when we do, the image, the mythology and the reality of Bobby Kennedy rises as an apparition from the body politic.
Why? What was it about Bobby that made us think he was different?
This is where Chris Matthews takes us in Bobby Kennedy: A Raging Spirit.
My conversation with Chris Matthews:
When we talk about the refugee crises in Syria, we are really only talking about a small fraction of the world's refugee crisis. Hundreds of millions of people throughout the world are affected by armed conflict and genocide. Refugee populations come from Afghanistan, Iraq, Bosnia, Guatemala, Sri Lanka and more.
It’s hard for most of us to even imagine the what these people are willing to endure and the grief and trauma they face. In a time of asymmetrical warfare, they are the new face of war.
Kenneth Miller is an international expert on the impact of armed conflict on civilians. He's a psychologist who been working with war affected communities as a researcher, clinician, and filmmaker. He’s a professor of clinical and community psychology and the author of War Torn: Stories of Courage, Love, and Resilience.
My conversation with Kenneth Miller:
The only thing that may be more pervasive than talk of Russia today is music. Music is everywhere. It seems no space, public or private, is not in some way filled with music. Even sporting events are now enveloped in music.
In spite of music having been at the cutting edge of technological creative destruction and in spite of the fact that its business models no longer works, it is still omnipresent. One of the few things that has been with us through the ages and is as strong if not stronger today.
So why is music so much a part our lives and what is the seemingly magical power it has for so many people. John Powell explains in Why You Love Music: From Mozart to Metallica--The Emotional Power of Beautiful Sounds.
My conversation with John Powell:
We are in the midst of awards season. The Oscars, the Grammys, the Golden Globes. They are all about both content and popularity. But what is the nexus and separation of the two? To many people, if it’s popular, it can’t be “good.” To others, choosing anything other than the top movies or the top 50 songs on Spotify seems useless.
What this doesn’t tell us is what drives popularity. Can it be manufactured, or is it the proverbial lighting in a bottle? How real or artificial is popularity?
It’s seems like the perfect time to explore these questions. Senior Editor of The Atlantic, Derek Thompson takes us down this popular road in Hit Makers: The Science of Popularity in an Age of Distraction.
My conversation with Derek Thompson:
While there may be 63 million more cracks in the glass ceiling, the recent election brought into bold relief the challenges faced by women in leadership and in the workplace.
While electoral politics is not the perfect hothouse for understanding the issues of women and leadership, it certainly reflects back many of the problems, challenges and even opportunities that women face today.
It’s interesting to look at some of the statistics. Women account for a majority of college graduates, but only about a quarter of full professors and university presidents. Almost half of law school graduates are women, but only 17 percent of the equity partners of major firms. Women constitute a third of MBA graduates, but only 5 percent of Fortune 500 CEOs.
So how might this change? Will it be by woman becoming more like men, or will it take a fundamental shift for woman to co-opt the rules and redefine the playing field?
Sallie Krawcheck, one of Wall Street’s most successful women, tells women that what they have to do is Own It:
My conversation with Sallie Krawcheck:
It’s kind of amazing that we spent a whole Presidential campaign talking about jobs and outsourcing and immigration, when the fact is that all of that is yesterday’s news. The real impact on future jobs, income and how we conduct our lives is not coming from Mexico or China, but from Silicon Valley and from that 7 oz rectangular piece of glass in your back pocket.
We’ve already watched the disruption of the music business, the travel business and the retail business., Today disrupters like Brian Chesky and Travis Kalanick have disrupted transportation and hospitality in ways that no one could have imagined as recently as just eight years ago.
But disruption has a price; for the disrupter, for society and for those that stand in the way by defending the status quo.
When that happens, it’s always a good story. And that's the story that my guest Brad Stone tells in The Upstarts: How Uber, Airbnb, and the Killer Companies of the New Silicon Valley Are Changing the World
My conversation with Brad Stone:
Every day we hear what’s become today’s language of medicine. Time with patients, bending the cost curve, managed care, health saving accounts, primary care, etc. It’s all about medicine as a commodity.
And certainly it is an often finite and limited resource. But lest we forget that it’s also about flesh and blood human beings...both patients and doctors. Your connection to your doctor is simply not the same as your car's connection to it’s mechanic.
Arguably, in that difference lies the soul of the physician, that is true beating heart of health care and that can shape patient outcomes. Understanding this has been the life's work of Dr. Ronald Epstein. He takes us on a journey into that world in Attending: Medicine, Mindfulness, and Humanity
My conversation with Dr. Ronald Epstein:
So how many Asians countries have we offended this week? This in spite of the fact that the 21st century may very well be, as many have predicted, the Asian century.
The rise of China and the strength of many other Asian economies take on greater significance as the US enters a period of what could well be political and economic chaos and isolation and Europe faces a rising tide of right wing populism. All of it points to Asia’s promise.
But does it? My guest AEI resident scholar Michael Auslin, a former history professor at Yale, argues not so fast. China and Asia overall face a set of real global and internal challenges that might change the conventional wisdom. He details this in The End of the Asian Century: War, Stagnation, and the Risks to the World’s Most Dynamic Region.
My conversation with Michael Auslin:
In business we often hear those meaningless four words, “this time it’s different.” Usually it means that it isn’t. That it’s just a delusional way to look at the same old problems.
In the current political landscape, it certainly seems things are really different. But from what? It’s different from political norms, certainly. But is it all that different from the early 1930’s, as we watched the rise of Hitler and Mussolini in Europe and the populism and racism of Huey Long here at home?
Originally published in 1935, It Can't Happen Here by Nobel and Pulitzer Prize winning author Sinclair Lewis, is a satirical and dystopian look at the rise of fascism in America. It has new and profound relevance today. Sales of this prescient and 82 year old book have skyrocketed as we learn more about it from Dr. Sally Parry, the Executive Director of the Sinclair Lewis society.
My conversation with Dr. Sally Parry:
Every day scientists go to work and make discovers, or at least observations, that help make the world a better place.
The ongoing expansion of our knowledge of chemistry, of physics and of biology should be the holy grail that we look to to make all of us better.
Yet as an overlay to this ideal notion of pure science there are the prejudices, constrains, shames, and social covenants, which to some seem more important than truth.
Author, lawyer and mother Ayelet Waldman recently threw off those constraints to use science and chemistry to make her life better.
She shares that story in A Really Good Day: How Microdosing Made a Mega Difference in My Mood, My Marriage, and My Life.
My conversation with Ayelet Waldman:
Contrary to recently misplaced words from the President, cities like Detroit and other places in the industrial heartland are not places of carnage. They are and will continue to turn around. Not by dystopian rhetoric, but by the love and hard work and commitment of people like Amy Haimerl and her husband.
They took their life savings, moved from a gentrifying expensive neighborhood in Brooklyn and bought an abandoned 1914 Georgian Revival in a troubled Detroit neighborhood. What they accomplished is the brick by brick way that Americans have always and will continue to improve neighborhood life. Their story is America's story. Amy tells that story in Detroit Hustle: A Memoir of Life, Love, and Home
My conversation with Amy Haimerl:
Amidst all the noise of politics, especially on the national stage, we forget that it's still made of up of real people with real lives; complex relationships and evolving marriages
Someone once said that the key to political success was learning how to fake authenticity. One thing we came to learn over the past eight years, is that the Obamas were very real. They were authentic, even if the nature of their lives and yes, even their authenticity changed over the first four years and perhaps even more so during the full eight years.
NY Times correspondent Jodi Kantor in her book The Obamas takes a look inside the Obama family, the Obama marriage and the complexity of a modern professional marriage inside the crucible of the White House. The book has just been updated and is now out in paperback.
My conversation with Jodi Kantor:
Fear is a funny thing. In our personal life, it often holds us back from things we know we should do. In our nation's collective life, fear often makes us do crazy things...to have a kind of national emotional and moral breakdown that feeds on the sum total and power of individual fears.
Such has been the case lately in our election and in our discussions of immigrants and our fear of the other, amidst a rapidly changing world. To better understand where we are, we need only look back to the spring of 1942. A time under FDR, when we rounded up over one-hundred thousand residents of Japanese ancestry, living along the West Coast and sent them to detention centers for the duration of the war. Each lost part of their lives and some would argue that our nation lost a part of its soul.
Richard Cahan captures the sadness of that moment in Un-American: The Incarceration of Japanese Americans During World War II: Images by Dorothea Lange, Ansel Adams, and Other Government Photographers.
My conversation with Richard Cahan:
More and more of us are moving to cities. Look at any demographic map and it’s clear we are becoming a more urban nation. Cities are the vital link in our cultural, social and economic well being. And no one knew more, or understood cities better than Jane Jacobs.
100 years after her birth, her work, her insights and her chronicle of cities is the gold standard by which we judge both the good and bad policy and planning decisions we make.
Robert Kanigel gives Jacobs the biography she has needed in, Eyes on the Street: The Life of Jane Jacobs.
My conversation with Robert Kanigel
While Rural America may have made its voice heard in our recent election, the numbers show that more and more Americans, as well as citizen around the world, are moving to cities. Look at any demographic map of the US and it’s clear that we are becoming a more urban nation. As such, cities are the vital link in our cultural, social and economic well being.
But they also are, by virtue of their density, laboratories for so many of the larger problems that face the society. Problems of inequality, education, race, class and creative disruption are all playing out in our cities.
Cornell professor William Goldsmith thinks they are also target rich in opportunities. He lays out his ideas in Saving Our Cities: A Progressive Plan to Transform Urban America.
My conversation with William Goldsmith:
It would be very easy these days to have contempt for where celebrity culture has taken us. Nonetheless, sometimes celebrities just by virtue of their talent, their fame and their own ambition are able to make change in the world.
Whether it's making cracks in the glass ceiling, having us look at things we might not have seen or simply modeling a very public life with lessons for us all...celebrities do sometime provide us a window into ourselves.
Such was the case with Joan Rivers. Whether in business, in comedy, or in life she was a trailblazer. And now journalist Leslie Bennetts gives her the biography she deserves in Last Girl Before Freeway: The Life, Loves, Losses, and Liberation of Joan Rivers
My conversation with Leslie Bennetts:
When we talk about the homeless, especially in our major cities, we imagine those that are visible on the streets and sidewalks. We don’t see the two million plus children who are homeless. The children and families living in cars, or motel rooms, or emergency shelters. They constitute an Invisible Nation: Homeless Families in America
How did this happen in a country and in cities as rich as San Francisco, or New York or Washington? Journalist Richard Schweid takes us deep into the bottom of a homeless economy that should shame us all.
My conversation with Ricahrd Schweid:
Long before NAPA's Hidden Figures of the 1960’s space program, there were the The Rocket Girls: The Women Who Propelled Us, from Missiles to the Moon to Mars.
When Sally Ride blasted off as the first American woman into space back in 1983, she may not have know it at the time, but she stood on the shoulders of dozens of woman who, beginning in the 1940's, helped America compete in the space race and the Cold War.
Based at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, these woman essentially provided the computational power that made rocketry viable. They shattered not only glass ceilings, but helped free us from what poet John Magee call the “surly bonds of earth.”
Nathalia Holt, trained at Massachusetts General Hospital, MIT and Harvard, takes us back to a seminal time for woman and America in space.
My conversation with Nathalia Holt:
Parenting has gone from something natural to something that has become a job with many specific rules, fears and requirements. In fact it’s both more than than and less than sum total of all those rules.
It should be a partnership with our kids, a kind of collaboration that makes both parent and child stronger. That a large part of the approach of Dr. Ross Greene lays out in Raising Human Beings: Creating a Collaborative Partnership with Your Child. It’s an approach that will be critical as we rely more on future generations to rescue us from our current folly.
My conversation with Dr. Ross Greene:
Listening to our political discourse today, vis a vis Russia, it brings back powerful reminders of the Cold War. A time when spies and covert action existed in what Le Carre called “a moral twilight.”
And yet when we think about people like Kim Philby or Alger Hiss or Aldrich Ames, is the way that they turned on their country any different than what we are seeing today?
We look at one of these instructive Cold War stories, True Believer: Stalin's Last American Spywith best selling author, and award winning journalist Kati Marton.
My conversation with Kati Marton:
In these troubled and uncertain times, it seems that the only thing we can take comfort from is history. Civilizations, empires and nations come and go. But how it happens and why is where we find lessons that may comfort us and maybe save us.
Few periods are as instructive as Pax Romana (Latin for "Roman peace.") It was the long period of relative peacefulness and minimal expansion by the Roman military force after the end of the Final War of the Roman Republic and before the beginning of the Crisis of the Third Century.
This is the story that famed historian Adrian Goldsworthy tells in in Pax Romana: War, Peace and Conquest in the Roman World. It’s a story particularly instructive today.
My conversation with Adrian Goldsworthy:
Just as the existential question of why individuals succeed and fail, vexes every aspect of both public policy and personal debate, so to with nations. History tells us of the rise and fall of nations. In so doing it gives us clues about economics, demographics, planning and even how the individual drive for success scales up to impact whole nations.
But of course, like everything else, we seek clear and precise metrics to try and make business decisions, geopolitical policy decisions, and simply anticipate the future in order to make a better world.
Ruchir Sharma, the Head of Emerging Markets and Chief Global Strategist at Morgan Stanley, tries to do this in The Rise and Fall of Nations: Forces of Change in the Post-Crisis World.
My conversation with Ruchir Sharma:
Whenever political discussion, particularly on the left, turns to what policies will really work to improve the lives of the middle class, invariably there is talk about the Scandinavian model.
Countries like Norway, Denmark, Iceland Sweden and Finland are constantly in the top tier of education, abundance of jobs, healthcare and a social safety net that is woven in the nation's DNA.
But this was not always so. Many of these countries had to work hard to achieve this and in some cases that did it from polarization as bad, if not worse than the current state of America. George Lakey takes us through this history in Viking Economics: How the Scandinavians Got It Right-and How We Can, Too.
My conversation with George Lakey:
It seems as if creative destruction and technology are changing everything ...even sex.
This may be problematic given the degree to which sex is connected to everything else; marketing, relationships, essentially all forms of human interaction. As Emily Witt says, “we organize our society around the way we define our sexual relationships.”
The inflection point at which all these forces are coming together, is in part what Emily Witt writes about in her new book Future Sex: A New Kind of Free Love. Yet even in that future, as Woody Allen so aptly said..."we all need the eggs."
My conversation with Emily Witt:
“Children's playthings are not sports and should be deemed their most serious actions," Montaigne wrote.
Freud regarded play as the means by which the child accomplishes his first great cultural and psychological achievements; through play he expresses himself. This is true, Freud thought, even for an infant whose play consists of nothing more than smiling at his mother, as she smiles at him. He noted how much and how well children express their thoughts and feelings through play.
Why then should we assume that we outgrow the value of play? The wonder of seeing the world through joy, rather than fear. Think about all that you’ve read about the creativity of silicon valley...the atmosphere of fun that entrepreneurs try to create.
Today even education is being built around the idea of projects, of teams, of fun and of wonder.
This is the world that best selling author Steven Johnson explores in Wonderland: How Play Made the Modern World.
My conversation with Steven Johnson:
Not a day goes by that you don’t pick up your smartphone to access a piece of information. Every dinner party or get together has the scene where everyone races to their phones to look up a fact or prove a point.
It’s so easy….so easy in fact that we often think, certainly our kids think, that they don’t need a large basic body of knowledge. Why memorize anything when you can just look it up..it’s all there in the cloud...right?
Well it is. But fundamental knowledge does matter. What we know, not what Siri knows, can truly impact and shape the lives we lead, the work we do, the friends we have and really defines our place in the world. We have just witnessed what happens when large groups of people don’t have that basic knowledge.
This is the reality that William Poundstone examines in Head in the Cloud: Why Knowing Things Still Matters When Facts Are So Easy to Look Up.
My conversation with William Poundstone:
A not terribly successful American President was right when he said that “the business of America is business.” In fact, today it would be safer to say that the business of the world is business.
Whether through globalization, or just through the individual entrepreneurship of citizen in the developing world, business is the one force that seems to counter unrest, instability, joblessness, and even extremism.
Wisdom and experience tells us we will not stop extremism in the Middle East, or other violent regions, with just guns, drones and military force. But it just may be that fostering entrepreneurship and job creation may be one answer.
Leading this school of thought is former State Department official Steven Koltai. Koltai is also the author of Peace Through Entrepreneurship: Investing in a Startup Culture for Security and Development.
My conversation with Steven Koltai:
Fifty four years ago JFK, at the height of the Cold War, set us on a path to the moon.
Today, absent the Cold War and in a world where a new photo or dating app becomes a billion dollar effort, it’s hard to think in terms of such massive, global and societal undertaking.
Yet one man does. Be it electric cars, solar powering the nation, or going to Mars, Elon Musk thinks differently than everyone else...but he does want all of us to join him in that effort. The Washington Post's Joel Achenbach has written the cover story for National Geographic's special Mars Issue
My conversation with Joel Achenbach:
Back in 1992 the mantra of the Bill Clinton campaign was that “it's the economy stupid.” Surprising, since the majority of American campaigns for President have always been about the economy.
However since the 1970’s that economy has been changing dramatically and rapidly. It was only as far back as the Nixon administration that we were still on the gold standard. Things like derivatives didn’t exist. Subprime lending, globalization of money and creative destruction in the economy had not yet set up a paradigm for collapse.
Presiding over so much of this change, watching all of it and directing some of it, was Alan Greenspan. Towering over the Federal Reserve for 18 years and serving five Presidents, no one knew more about the inner and outer working of the American economy than Greenspan.
Now we get the first full scale economic and person biography of Greenspan in Sebastian Mallaby's The Man Who Knew: The Life and Times of Alan Greenspan.
My conversation with Sebastian Mallaby:
Look around your home or office, or even your car. Everything there was designed. Albeit not always well. Sometimes with an eye towards function, sometimes looking at form and sometimes with thought into the human interface. Wouldn't it be great if everything was designed with equal parts engineering, aesthetics and a real understand of how human beings will interface with whatever it is?
That methodology, that combination of humanity and art and engineering is what’s now called Design Thinking. It’s an important part of Silicon Valley’s disruption and progress
But imagine if the same concepts could apply not just to computers or to a mouse or a phone, but to your entire life?
In many schools today these idea of Design Thinking are combining with project based curriculum and human centered collaborating and producing the future leaders of the 21st Century.
Two of the leader in all of this are Stanford’s Bill Burnett and Dave Evans. They are the authors of Designing Your Life: How to Build a Well-Lived, Joyful Life.
My conversation with Bill Burnett and Dave Evans:
Herbert Hoover said that “the business of America is business.” If he were around today, in the age of globalization, he might have referred to the business of the world.
Yet as our current election shows, as the recent Brexit votes showed, the connection between people and business has never been more tattered and frayed.
Globalization itself, disruption, dislocation, the obsession with short term profits and shareholder value, coupled with the free flow of goods and money and jobs around the world, has created a chasm between the world’s businesses and ordinary citizens.
At a time when technology has made it easier for citizens to actually come together and be engaged, business has too often retreated to its C Suites in the hopes that the storm would pass.
But the clouds are getting darker. With more automation and AI, now reaching virtually every sector of work.
With worker and public anger reaching toxic levels, business can no longer hide, it must be, in the words of former BP Chief Executive John Browne, more willing to Connect.
My conversation with Lord John Browne:
Think about those things that are usually the most personal, the most intimate and complex.
A few of them are what goes on inside a marriage,
why and how people give away money (there is a reason many do it anonymously) and the degree to which the business of America is business. These are the elements that make up the story of Ray and Joan Kroc.
A story that is part Edward Albee, part Fortune magazine and part political, in the sense that the personal is indeed political.
Ray Kroc was the driving and force that made McDonald's bloom throughout the world and Joan Kroc was one of our most liberal and generous philanthropists of our times.
An unlikely combination, and an unlikely but compelling story told by Lisa Napoli in Ray & Joan: The Man Who Made the McDonald's Fortune and the Woman Who Gave It All Away.
My conversation with Lisa Napoli:
It’s always so interesting all the assumptions we make about history. They tell us something about the assumptions we might be making about our divide today.
When we think about the Civil War era, for example, we think in clear lines...the North vs. the South. Yet in families, in communities and in the states themselves, many were conflicted. Then as now, there were personal and economic interests that crossed over both sides.
Nowhere was this more the case than in the city of New York. While seemingly a part of the North, its economic interests in cotton, shipping and even the slave trade made New York what it has always been. A capital of commerce, whose interests in the context of the war were conflicted. A cautionary tale about our divide today.
This is the story that my guest John Strausbaugh tells in City of Sedition: The History of New York City during the Civil War
My conversation with John Strausbaugh:
It's hard to imagine today, but the East, what we refer to now as the Middle East, was once a pinnacle of civilization. Like all great civilizations, it struggled with conflict between personal values and its laws, about succession and tribalism and security. It evolved a form of rule in the Islamic world that lasted for almost 1300 years..by any account a pretty good run.
Today that rule, what was once called the Caliphate, has been morphed into something far removed from it’s original meaning. As such, it has become a word that embodies the worst, not the best of civilization. Esteemed historian Hugh Kennedy puts all of this in perspective in Caliphate: The History of an Idea
My conversation with Hugh Kennedy:
We are a nation of immigrants. For 240 years we have opened our arms to those seeking to come to America and for many of those years New York has been ground zero. But the immigrant story, even in, or especially in New York, has not been one of ease. The process and pain of assimilation, the fear of the other, the competition for resources have always created wedges between immigrant groups and so called nativists.
So why is it that these issues seem to repeat themselves over and over, like a kind of Groundhog Day. The issues are the same, only the ethnic roots change...yet we never seem to learn the lessons.
George Washington University historian Tyler Anbinder looks at this history in City of Dreams: The 400-Year Epic History of Immigrant New York
My conversation with Tyler Anbinder:
Medicare has often been referred to as the third rail of American politics. Because it has become so woven into the fabric of American life, so necessary and vital for seniors, , both politicians and those that have legitimate interest in improving public policy, are afraid to touch it. It’s as if the admonition to "do no harm" is first and foremost about medicare.
Yet it is a program that at fifty-one, is showing signs of old age. It’s solvency in question, its operational model, post ACA, is in question and its relevance within the context of 21st century medicine and medical practice is in need of reassessment.
Dr. Andy Lazris bravely goes wither few doctors are willing to go in Curing Medicare: A Doctor's View on How Our Health Care System Is Failing Older Americans and How We Can Fix It.
My conversation with Dr. Andy Lazris:
How many times have we heard that this election is like no other? That this is an extinction level event, threatening the very fabric of the republic. And yet history tells us that we’ve survived far worse. Be it the civil war, McCarthyism, violent labor strife at the turn of the last century, political assassination and of course, the chaos of the 1960’s
To try and put all of this in context, in the home stretch of this political season, I spoke with Julian Zelizer. He is a Professor of History and Public Affairs at Princeton and the author, most recently of The Fierce Urgency of Now: Lyndon Johnson, Congress, and the Battle for the Great Society.
My conversation with Professor Julian Zelizer:
Looking at the broad sweep of history and change in the 20th and 21st Century, it’s arguable that the dynamics of Israel, its relationship to its neighbors and the meaning of the Zionist project, remain one of the most complex, historic and creative endeavors of our time.
But how did it all get this way and what can the world learn from all the good that’s come out of Israel? How did the desire for a homeland, a base for the Jewish diaspora, become so complex and lead to a statistically improbable amount of business and artistic success. And perhaps most importantly, can all of this power through the burdens of history.
Nowhere is this shown in a more dramatic and beautiful fashion than in the work of Lin Arison, Diana Stoll and Neil Folberg in The Desert and the Cities Sing: Discovering Today's Israel: A Treasure Box.
My conversation with Lin Arison and Diana Stoll:
More than race and more than gender, class and wealth are the great divide in America today. There was a time when those with wealth represented a kind of noblesse oblige. They had sense of obligation to the larger society that had allowed them the opportunity to succeed.
Today something is different. Something that goes far beyond reaction to the "greed is good" utterances of Gordon Gekko. There is, at the heart of today's class divide, an anger at the wealth pooling at the very top. It’s fueled further by the complexity of our economic systems, the power of money to shape policy, the rural/urban divide and role of education for successful jobs.
So how did we get here and what can we really do about it. Understanding this has been the life's work of Chuck Collins. He bring in his own personal experience in his new book Born on Third Base: A One Percenter Makes the Case for Tackling Inequality, Bringing Wealth Home, and Committing to the Common Good
My conversation with Chuck Collins:
If there is a central political principle that organizes what little policy debate there is in this election it seems to be centered around the idea of “income inequality.” From the embrace of Bernie Sanders by millennials, to boomers and traditional Democrats embracing of Clinton, right on through the angry, populist rage that makes up the core of the Trump supporters.
So if this is the core idea embedded deep in the national psyche and we agree in a modern sense that crowdsourcing matters, then how could it be wrong?
Bain Capital co-founder and former Mitt Romney adviser Edward Conard thinks it’s all wrong. He argues that it’s the one-percent that’s keeping our economy moving forward. In his book The Upside of Inequality: How Good Intentions Undermine the Middle Class, he makes the case that it’s not a zero sum game and that the the success of the one-percent is not what’s holding back the economic growth of the middle class.
My conversation with Ed Conard:
Part mythology and part the result of the current Presidential campaign, we have this image of the US/Mexican border as divided territory. We hear folks talking about it as if at one time north was north and south was south and never the twain would meet.
The truth is that this has never been the case. The border has almost always been a porous membrane through which people, drugs, money, and crime could easily pass.
The border is the kind of place that for poor teenage boys, was a kind of Disneyland. This is the world that Dan Slater takes us to in Wolf Boys: Two American Teenagers and Mexico's Most Dangerous Drug Cartel.
My conversation with Dan Slater:
For any music to be successful, there must be that special bond between performer and listener. Perhaps nowhere has that bond been stronger then in the unique relationship between Bob Dylan and music critic extraordinaire Greil Marcus.
Marcus explasins how for over forty years Dylan has drawn upon and reinvented the landscape of traditional American music, its myths, heroes and villains. Throughout all of it, Greil Marcus has been there to be our ears, to be a unique listener of an unparalleled singer and now Nobel Prize winner
Marcus' forty years of writing on Dylan has been compiled into a new volume. Bob Dylan by Greil Marcus: Writings 1968-2010.
To really understand Dylan, listen to my conversation with Greil Marcus from 2010
Back in 1960, in Fellini’s La Dolce Vita, the world took note of the decadence of life in the Italian capital of Rome. Inspired by two major political/sex scandals of the era, the film, which would win the 1960 Palme d'or in Cannes, depicted a Rome that was ultra sophisticated, ultra modern, ultra decadent and ultra cool.
This was a sensual world that was a far cry from the overt decadence and sexuality of America today. How have the tables switched so dramatically and what does it say about the state of love, sex and popular culture in the 21st century. And for those of us that weren’t there, what did we miss in this magical time and place.
Shawn Levy takes us there in Dolce Vita Confidential: Fellini, Loren, Pucci, Paparazzi, and the Swinging High Life of 1950s Rome.
My conversation with Shawn Levy:
Because we are in the midst of a heated presidential campaign, we know that much coverage goes to the people around the candidate. We want to know who will be the advisors. Who gets to whisper in the ear of the President and who might have the last word before important decisions are made.
During the Presidency of FDR, one of the most influential of those closest to the President was Missy LeHand. A little known or understood figure, who functioned as FDR’s de facto Chief of Staff.
While Eleanor Roosevelt was often referred to as the President's legs, LeHand was was his right hand. Giving us the first full scale biography of this important historical figure is Kathryn Smith in The Gatekeeper: Missy LeHand, FDR, and the Untold Story of the Partnership That Defined a Presidency.
My conversation with Kathryn Smith:
It is the original sin of America. 240 years later the issue of race still animates a significant portion of political and social discourse in this country.
A nation founded on the idea of all men being created equal, has at its corresponding co-founding principle slavery, racial violence and inequality.
The symbols, even today, are everywhere; Birmingham, Selma, Ferguson and even Los Angeles. They’ve all become whistle stops on the road to more violence and inequality. Add to this Forsyth County Georgia in 1912.
This is where Guggenheim and NEA Fellow Patrick Phillips takes us in his Blood at the Root: A Racial Cleansing in America.
My conversation with Patrick Phillips:
We throw around a lot of words and ideas about technology, about disruption, about progress and about the impact of technology in speeding up our lives.
The fact is the speed up is more than just technology. As we move to cities at increasing rates, as the workplace demands greater productivity, as global competition abounds, the pressures to speed up are everywhere.
But how fast is fast? How fast exceeds our evolutionary and biological ability to cope? And what happens to the the anger of those left behind in the cloud of dust from creative destruction.
These are just a few of the issues taken up by Robert Colvile in The Great Acceleration: How the World is Getting Faster, Faster.
Few modern day political figures have had more written about them than Henry Kissinger. From his own three volume, almost 4000 page memoir, to scores of books and articles. So why another we might ask historian Niall Ferguson.
Partly because beyond the policy and papers, in Ferguson's view Kissinger personified that George Bernard Shaw quote, “Some men see things as they are and say, why; I dream things that never were and say, why not.”
That vision, that idealism, is hard to imagine in someone so vilified by contemporary history. Still, Niall Ferguson tries to square this circle in the first volume of his biography Kissinger: 1923-1968: The Idealist
My conversation with Niall Ferguson:
No matter how close or estranged any of us may be for our parents, there always linger the questions of how well do we know them...that is really know who they are. Think about the questions kids wonder about, what their parents really do a work, their sex lives, the conversations that go on after they go to bed.
And as kids become adults they often still wonder...and sometimes they even transfer those very same questions in trying t understand their partners, or their spouses and ultimately themselves.
Because we are the sum total of the answers to so many of these questions. We keep seeking answers, aware of it or not, since it is a large swath of who we are. This intimate search for identity is at the heart of Susan Faludi’s new work In the Darkroom.
My conversation with Susan Faludi:
We are awash in information. Estimates are that 2.5 quintillion bytes of data are produced every day. That’s everything from data from space probes to your photos on Facebook. Google alone process approximately 3.5 billion requests per day.
But as TS Eliot so aptly said back in 1934, “where is the knowledge we have lost in information?”
From the billions of items posted on Facebook, to the tens of thousands of so called news sites and bloggers around the world, how is it even possible to begin separate it all, to know fact from fiction?
Never before in human history or human evolution have we encountered such a problem. As a result the way we approach it has to take the best thinking tools we’ve evolved and transform it to meet the needs of the 21st century and beyond,.
This is the road map to truth put forth by Daniel J. Levitan in A Field Guide to Lies: Critical Thinking in the Information Age.
My conversation with Daniel Levitan:
It is the job of historians and journalists to take contemporary information and give context and connection to events far beyond the time in which they happened. This is true for wars, for politics and for religion.
It’s true even in these highly polarized times, when we all hear the admonition, especially around get togethers of family and friends, to make sure you never discuss politics or religion.
So what is it about both of these subjects that are so personal, so internal, so potentially inflammatory and have been so powerfully connected both historically and right here in America.
This is part of what Ken Woodward examines in Getting Religion: Faith, Culture, and Politics from the Age of Eisenhower to the Era of Obama..
My conversation with Ken Woodward:
Nothing in the medical world is the way it used to be. Change is everywhere. The economic pressures, the political pressures and the very men and women who choose medicine as a career, has all being undergoing disruption.
Add to this maelstrom the issue of race. The shocking lack of black physicians, diseases that overwhelming impact black communities and the inherent complexities of race in the doctor/patient relationship and you see some of the problem in medicine that have confronted Dr. Damon Tweedy. A graduate of Duke Medical School and Yale Law School Dr. Tweedy shares his personal story in his memoir Black Man in a White Coat: A Doctor's Reflections on Race and Medicine
My conversation with Dr. Damon Tweedy:
We’ve all seen the pushback to Michelle Obama as she has attempted to improve food quality and nutrition in our nation’s schools. In part, it reflects the degree to which everything is politicized these days. But it also reflects the degree to which food is and has been a political, cultural and historical touchstone
It’s long been observed that if we want to understand the history of a nation or a city or a period in time, we can start by looking at its food.
Jane Ziegelman and Andrew Coe have long taken this approach and now they look at the food of depression era America in their new book A Square Meal: A Culinary History of the Great Depression.
My conversation with Jane Ziegelman and Andrew Coe:
The very fact that an unqualified, demagogic, racist could be close to the Presidency tells us less about the candidates and more about the shape and mood of America in the 21st Century.
The red/blue divide is after all, not about pure politics. It’s not about classical liberalism vs. Burkean or Randian conservatism. It’s not Disraeli vs. Gladstone.
What we see in America today is a cultural divide. One in which our own personal experience breaks out and defines itself into a kind of moral and political matrix that both traps and defines us.
These principles are universal and enduring and perhaps if we can better understand them, we can, if not accept, at least have compassion for the better angels of our opponents.
That exactly what noted sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild has tried to do in Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right
My Conversation with Arlie Russell Hochschild:
It’s a funny thing, all this talk about trade and globalization. On the one hand it’s used to divide us. To create walls and differences. But in fact, it has been one of the most powerful forces in shrinking the world. In allowing us to move personally, not unlike goods and dollars, freely between nations and cultures.
But even with the cultural homogenization of globalization, it has allowed us to appreciate and to come to understand how other cultures operate, what they value and how they see the world. In the end, it allows us to return home again and in the words of T.S. Eliot, “know the place we started, as if for the first time."
That the story that Frank Ahrens lives and share in Seoul Man: A Memoir of Cars, Culture, Crisis, and Unexpected Hilarity Inside a Korean Corporate Titan.
My conversation with Frank Ahrens:
We think that events move at a rapid pace today. But back in the late 1960’s, events spiraled out as if in a whirlwind. In 1967 San Francisco experienced the Summer of Love. Just two summers later, we would all experience men landing on the moon, Woodstock, the Manson killings and the concert at Altamont that would perhaps mark the end of the era of Peace Love and Music.
It wasn’t long after Altamont that the racial tensions would escalate. People like George Jackson would dominate the news. Hundreds of bombing would take place on the streets of America, The SLA would kidnap Patty Hearst and everyone would look back at Altamont as a turning point.
Joel Selvin's Altamont: The Rolling Stones, the Hells Angels, and the Inside Story of Rock's Darkest Day, puts it all in the perspective of the times. look at
My conversation with Joel Selvin:
When the national conversation does turn to real economic issues, it’s usually about numbers. Growth, GDP, home ownership and of course, the ongoing and too slow recovery.
What we often overlook is the impact of those number on real people. Not just those at the bottom, not those left behind. But those struggling to maintain a middle class life. The psychological impact that it has on their families, their marriages, their children and the way that it completely alters the trajectory of their lives.
There is a real estate website that advertises with the slogan, “What does home mean to you?” The most obvious meaning is a physical location where you live. But home is so much more than a warm bed and a comfy couch. Like it or not, it's come to represent love, security and connection. Home isn't a place, as much as it is a state of mind. This is at the heart of Joe McGinniss Jr's Carousel Court.
My conversation with Joe McGinniss Jr.
Amidst all the talk of the things that divide america, Race and Class always rise to the top. Over the years there have been many efforts to understand the social, cultural historical and policy underpinning of both of these divisions. And sometimes even efforts for solutions.
Add to this list of efforts the work of J.D. Vance in his captivating work Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis. Vance takes us deeply, from his own profound experience, into the heart of poor and rural America to try and help us understand the the resentment, intergenerational poverty and loss of hope that seems to be driving 45% of our country today.
My conversation with J.D. Vance:
For those of us that are parents, or grandparents, we are told over and over that parenting is the most important job we will ever have.
The assumption is that if we buy Baby Einstein, enroll our kids in the best preschool, (sometimes costing as much as college) provide just the right mix of extracurricular activity and teachers and pour in the right measure of self esteem, we will turn out, as if from a factory, the perfect child. One ready to take on the challenges and leadership of their world and one that will continue to be a part of the parenting/industrial complex
But is any of this true? What do children, with all their curiosity, really need? Do they need to be moulded, sculpted, or do they simply need room to grown and with lots of love as the fertilizer?
These are the questions that Alison Gopnik has been asking for years and now she bring all of this together in her newest work The Gardener and the Carpenter: What the New Science of Child Development Tells Us About the Relationship Between Parents and Children.
My conversation with Alison Gopnik:
Hollywood has always served a dual role, as both a reflection of the times is operates in and a projector sending out its light showing the broader changes taking place in society.
Just as the original Hollywood moguls, people like Warner and Selznick and Mayer, represented a generation that changed the “white shoe” world of business, people like the founders of CAA, men like Mike Ovitz and Ron Meyer, personified and were the apotheosis of the buttoned down world of Wall Street coming to Hollywood in the 70’s and 80’s.
Like every business, things would continue to change. A new generation would emerge. The old guard would be pushed out, or burn out and a group of so called young turks would emerge.
This ongoing story of the history of CAA is both Shakespearean in its drama and contemporary in subject. It’s that story that my guest James Andrew Miller tells in Powerhouse: The Untold Story of Hollywood's Creative Artists Agency.
My conversation with James Andrew Miller:
There are many defining markers of particular eras in American history. One of them is notorious crimes.
Think about it. Sacco and Vanzetti , the Lindbergh kidnapping, Jeff McDonald, Charles Manson, Ted Bundy, O.J. Simpson and the kidnapping of Patty Hearst. All are indelibly etched into the American psyche and each represents a set of fears and cultural markers.
Today, when domestic terrorism is on all of our minds, the story of Patty Hearst, the Symbionese Liberation army and its rag tag affiliates were a time when literally thousand of bombing were taking place on US streets. It’s a time well worth looking at. That what Jeffrey Toobin does in American Heiress: The Wild Saga of the Kidnapping, Crimes and Trial of Patty Hearst
My conversation with Jeffrey Toobin:
People used to joke that the one subject that everybody talked about was the weather. Today, it may very well be that the subject is education. Listen at school events, at the grocery store, at sporting events, everywhere there are parents and children, education is often topic one.
Along with that conversation are lots of buzzwords, opinions, traditional talk and the desire for change. Dr. Thom Markham is at the cutting edge of that change.
In the world of work, where people like futurist and Wired magazine founder Kevin Kelly say that today's employers have to “train for skills but hire for attitude,” clearly we have to rethink what education is all about. And few are doing that more than Dr. Thom Markham.
My conversation with Thom Markham:
Pick up any celebrity magazine in any grocery store line and the people gracing the cover were almost certainly unknown five years ago and most likely will be forgotten in another five years. Such is the transitory nature of celebrity culture today.
Of course there are exceptions. Mostly these exceptions are celebrities that are famous not just for being famous, but because they have given the public something unique in terms of their art, their personality and the narrative of how they achieved their fame. Such is the case with Barbra Streisand. Biographer Neal Gabler gives us a the big picture in Barbra Streisand: Redefining Beauty, Femininity, and Power.
My conversation with Neal Gabler:
We throw around words and ideas about technology, about disruption, about progress and the impact of technology in speeding up our lives.
The fact is, it’s more than just technology. As we move to cities at increasing rates, as the workplace demands greater productivity, as global competition abounds, as we experience the globalization of acceleration, the pressures to speed up are everywhere.
But how fast is fast? How fast exceeds our evolutionary and biological ability to cope? And what happens to the the anger of those left behind in the cloud of dust from creative destruction.
These are just a few of the issues taken up by Robert Colvile in The Great Acceleration: How the World is Getting Faster, Faster.
In this time of asymmetrical warfare, terrorism, and the war images that have been projected into our living rooms since Vietnam, it's easy for those not alive fifty years ago to forget, or even not even consider, the fear, the horror and the specter of nuclear annihilation.
The President's recent trip to Hiroshima and the fear of Trump having nuclear codes are both reminders that the nuclear reality still lives among us.
That reality is what motivated three unlikely activists in the summer of 2012 to break into one of our nation's seemingly most secure nuclear facilities. In so doing they triggered political, legal and moral issues that had lied dormant for so long.
Telling this powerful story and what it says about the nuclear age is my guest Washington post reporter Dan Zak in Almighty: Courage, Resistance, and Existential Peril in the Nuclear Age.
My conversation with Dan Zak:
Daniel Patrick Moynihan is often quoted as saying that “you can have your own opinion, but not your own facts.” This is as true in looking at the world, as it is here at home. There are lots of opinions about the US role and US actions in the world, specifically the Middle East. However, facts come first. And part of those facts include an understanding of the people, the history and the nuance of the region. Our domestic politics has debates every day about who best understands the American people...we conduct our global affairs with a similar understanding of others?
When it comes to the Middle East in general, or to Afghanistan, to Iraq and even our international policy architecture in the post war era, few understand the people, the history and the nuance better than Zalmay Khalilzad. He’s served four Presidents and has traveled from a small village in Afghanistan to the pinacle of the Oval Office. He tells that story in The Envoy: From Kabul to the White House, My Journey Through a Turbulent World
My conversation with Zalmay Khalilzad:
In October of 1939, Winston Churchill said of Russia that “I cannot forecast to you the actions of Russia. It is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma; but perhaps there is a key. That key is Russian national interest."
Today, almost 25 years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, we could say exactly the same thing about Russia. The Russia that Gorbachev ushered in as the Cold War ended is seemingly a far cry from the Russia today of Vladimir Putin.
What happened? Did the country change, the people change, or were the current tendencies there all along? Arkady Ostrovsky, the Russian-born journalist who has spent fifteen years reporting from Moscow, first for the Financial Times and then as bureau chief for The Economist, digs deep in his book The Invention of Russia: From Gorbachev's Freedom to Putin's War.
My conversation with Arkady Ostrovsky:
It’s no surprise that the influence of western popular culture is everywhere, even in our affairs of state. Remember when Ronald Reagan spoke the phrase “evil empire?” It was just five years after the release of the original Star Wars. The Empire was on all of our minds and the comparisons were immediate.
When was the last time your were pulled over and wished you could just wave your hand and call on the power of the the force?
When George Lucas created Star Wars he was fully aware of the primal power of narrative. He was a long time devotee of Joseph Campbell and knew that Star Wars would become a palette of archetypes that would burrow deep into our consciousness.
The only questions is how much Lucas and Star Wars reflected the culture of the time, or in fact, through its successes, helped to create and expand its own iconography.
Today, almost 40 after that premiere, legal critic and behavioral economist Cass Sunstein, deconstructs Star Wars in light of 21st century in The World According to Star Wars.
My conversation with Cass Sunstein:
Confucius may have said it first, but the oft quoted and repeated phrase, “wherever you go, there you are,” can certainly apply to families in the military.
Even in a culture as mobile and connected as ours, the reality of constantly moving, long separations, anxiety, stress, and danger are all realities that are not easily offset by Skype or Facetime.
We’ve seen and read a lot about military families. But what’s it like today in a mobile/global culture and with warfare, not cold but hot, as an almost permanent condition?
Rachel Starnes has lived this life and writes from the heart in The War at Home: A Wife's Search for Peace (and Other Missions Impossible): A Memoir
My conversation with Rachel Starnes:
As a society, we’ve all been brought up to believe deeply in the idea of the self made man. The power of persistence and hard work. The Horatio Alger mythology of pulling oneself up by your own bootstraps. In modern political theology we hear about “makers” and “takers,” and Randian and libertarian ideas.
We embrace that quote by Jefferson that, “the harder I work, the luckier I get.”
What we leave out of the equation is the role of pure dumb luck. Being in the right place at the right time. The existential circumstances over which we often have no control and often account for good things happening. That the jumping for point for Robert H. Frank in his book Success and Luck: Good Fortune and the Myth of Meritocracy.
My conversation with Robert H. Frank:
For those of us that old enough, when we think back to JFK and Camelot, we think of a time of innocence, of renewal and of possibility. And then the 60’s happened. There has been a lot of talk lately about the 60’s. About the fissures it opened up, and about the fact that we are still trying to heal them. Sydney Schanberg, the great reporter who died last week, once told me in an interview that he thought Vietnam represented the end of consensus politics in America.
Since then we have been seemingly searching for the politician or the leader that could bridge that divide. The irony has been that in a time of polarity it’s been impossible for that leader to emerge. So we look back to what might have been. And when we do, the image and mythology of Bobby Kennedy rises as almost an apparition from the body politic.
Why? What was it about Bobby that made us think he was different? It wasn’t his conviction, or his ideology or his morality or his intellect or his manners. Perhaps it was a unique ability to empathize, to see all sides, to shape-shift in ways that allowed him to find truth, or at least consensus where none had existed.
This is the Bobby Kennedy we get in Larry Tye new biography Bobby Kennedy: The Making of a Liberal Icon.
My conversation with Larry Tye:
Back in 320 BC Socrates worried about how written language would impact our ability to remember. This was long, long before moveable type, the computer, the pda or any form of digital technology.
Socrates worried that reliance on simply writing would erode memory. But also and maybe more importantly, that reading would mislead students to think that they had knowledge, when they only had data.
Today, similar debates are going on with respect to the digital world. Leading a great deal of this discussion and giving us much insight is Abby Smith Rumsey in her book When We Are No More: How Digital Memory Is Shaping Our Future
My conversation with Abby Smith Rumsey:
On this day, upon which we celebrate the birth of the “American Experiment,” it’s important to remember that it was not preordained.
In spite of today's overheated patriotic rhetoric, the revolution, the victory of the Continental Army, the success of Washington and the country that followed, could have easily gone another direction. There were many times when the revolution might have failed. (Given the state of our politics today, that may not have been such a bad idea)
Just as important and just as surprising are that there are still so many untold stories from that effort. Stories that, particularly on this day, prove instructive, informative and most of all inspirational.
Patrick O’Donnell is the master of telling the stories of our military heroes and as O’Donnell shows us in Washington's Immortals: The Untold Story of an Elite Regiment Who Changed the Course of the Revolution, it was the revolutionary generation that was indeed our greatest.
My conversation with Patrick O'Donnell:
Oliver Brown, the lead plaintiff in Brown v. the Board of Education was a parent of a child denied access to a Topeka Kansas School. Clarence Gideon changed the way poor defendant are treated in court. Ernesto Miranda and Jane Roe both, in their own ways, were part of cases that expanded the rights of individual citizens.
The latest name added to that pantheon is that of Jim Obergefell. He was the named plaintiff in the Obergefell vs. Hodges which , just one year ago, enshrined the civil right of same sex marriage in all 50 states. Jim has recently written about his experience in Love Wins: The Lovers and Lawyers Who Fought the Landmark Case for Marriage Equality
My conversation with Him Obergefell:
In 1953 in his first Inaugural Address, Dwight Eisenhower talked about the positive impacts of government. Thirty years later Ronald Reagan castigated the role of government. Twelve years after that we heard this from Bill Clinton that “the era of big government is over.”
So what happened? What happened to the partnership between business, the government and citizen that resulted in so much success and prosperity in the post war years? What happened to the progressive agenda once embarrassed by Woodrow Wilson and Teddy Roosevelt? And what is the price we are paying today for the absence of that partnership?
Author and Professor Paul Pierson talks to me about all of this in on discussion of American Amnesia: How the War on Government Led Us to Forget What Made America Prosper.
My conversation with Paul Pierson:
If there is one overriding meme today it’s about fear. Fear of change, fear of a shrinking world, fear of the impact of technology; in short fear of an unknown future. Regardless of that fear, the future is inevitable. It’s the place we are all going to be living.
Even for those that are afraid to embrace it, they should at least understand it. Few see the future more clearly and are better able to explain it than WIRED founder Kevin Kelly. He lays out the agenda for future in The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future
My conversation with Kevin Kelly:
Before Lin-Manuel Miranda, before the Play there was the book. Miranda has talked about how his inspiration was Ron Chernow's 2004 book about Hamilton. Here is my May 2004 conversation with Ron Chernow about HAMILTON.
We are a nation that believes deeply in the Horatio Alger story of hard work and pulling oneself up by their bootstraps. In political terms this has translated into an ethos of individualism, which arguably has been corrosive to our body politic.
In part, it grew in response to the culture of monarchy and inheritance that America was founded in opposition to. It is certainly far more egalitarian to believe that we are the masters of our fate. In economic terms, the Right has taken this to the extremes. But what does it mean in terms of learning, education and personal success.
In this context, we see how the classic argument about nature and nurture has been extrapolated to talent vs. perseverance. Or, in the words of MacArthur Fellow and Professor at the University of Pennsylvania, Angela Duckworth, into Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance.
My conversation with Angela Duckworth:
We know that children living in poverty generally tend to do worse academically than middle class kids. We also know that even some kids from wealthy backgrounds fail or breakdown. We’ve come to learn, in part through the writing of my guest Paul Tough, that it’s more than IQ or temperament. There is something else. Something that has to do with innate character, perseverance or just plain old fashioned grit.
But are these traits preordained? Helping Children Succeed: What Works and Why. Are children merely geographically and genetically predisposed to succeed or fail, or are these attributes of success something that can be multiplied, embedded and programmed into children in ways that increase the likelihood of success in school and in life? This is part of what Paul Tough now writes about in
My conversation with Paul Tough:
“We hear of of war and the rumor of war.” We thank our soldiers for their service and we think that we are welcoming them back into society. But what are actually welcoming back into? They return often with an experience we cannot really comprehend. An experience that often bonds them together into their own tribe. One that makes them different from us.
In fact as many of us work hard to breakdown the tribal bonds that divide us as a society, as globalization continues to homogenize us, both domestically and internationally, the experience of war often forms new, personal and deeper such bonds among the soldiers. In so doing, it makes it so much harder for them to be among us.
Sebastian Junger the bestselling author of The Perfect Storm, A Death in Belmont and Fire takes a look at this phenomenon in Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging
My conversation with Sebastian Junger:
If anything represents the new new thing in our technological age, it's the arena of artificial intelligence. From the factory floor to the glittering glass office of law firms, smart machine are doing job, after job, after job.
The conversation about jobs going offshore is so yesterday. Today it’s robots and algorithms that are the threats.
Manufacturing is only the beginning. Service sector jobs, clerical jobs, accounting, paralegal, are all starting to be done by machines. Drones will soon do deliveries and driving, perhaps the largest bastion of blue collar jobs, will, within 10 years, be replaced by the autonomous vehicles.
So what’s left for humans? As machines start to program themselves, as we’ve seen with autonomous cars, as more and more higher level functions are done by machines, what’s a human to do?
That the subject of Only Humans Need Apply: Winners and Losers in the Age of Smart Machines, a new book by Julia Kirby.
My conversation with Julia Kirby:
Look around us. Conflict is everywhere. In our culture, certainly in our politics, in the broader world and in our interactions with institutions. Sometimes, to try and seek shelter from that sea of conflict, we look into our own personal relationships for solace. When we do, we place even more pressure on those relationships and often the seeds of more conflict are sown.
So with all of this conflict how do we negotiate our way out of it? How do we break the habits of pervasive conflict, prevent or dampen conflict with those we care about, and are those skills applicable to the large framework of conflict.
These are some of the issues that Daniel Shapiro, the founder of Harvard’s International Negotiation Program takes up in Negotiating the Nonnegotiable: How to Resolve Your Most Emotionally Charged Conflicts.
My conversation with Daniel Shapiro:
Recently I had a conversation with a Professor at UC Berkeley about the subject of Power. In the course of the conversation he referred to what he saw as key centers of power. People who he saw as exercising real power. He referred to great generals, political leaders and Wall Street.
Wall Street was once a reflection of America's business. It was there to serve business. Today Wall Street and the business of finance is it’s own power center. It’s often greater than and in control of the whole of American and even global business.
Wall Street has become THE symbol of corporate greed. Railed against by politicians, analyzed 24/7 on several cable channels, the focus of it’s own newspapers and it’s stars, people like Stephen Schwarzman and Lloyd Blankfein, gracing the covers of magazines.
So how did this happen? How did Wall Street and the business of money become bigger, more powerful and more important than the business it was originally there to serve.
Rana Foroohar, the Assistant Managing Editor in charge of Economics and Business for Time magazine takes us through the history and future in Makers and Takers: The Rise of Finance and the Fall of American Business
My conversation with Rana Foroohar:
Whether we want to believe it or not, every relationship we have...with a friend, a spouse, a child or co-workers, has a power dynamic as a part of it. Power may shift and morph, but it’s a part of every relationship and often a force for good.
In understanding power at this most intimate level, we can better understand how it plays out, or should play out, on a more macro scale. It’s not something that comes from the barrel of a gun, or from bullying, but from empathy and social intelligence. As UC Berkeley professor Dacher Keltner points out, power is not something that’s won, but something that’s earned and given. The problem or paradox is that once we have that power, we act differently; often counter to the ways in which we earned it.
That what Dacher Keltner call the The Power Paradox
My conversation with Dacher Keltner:
We throw around the word globalization without really thinking about all of its impacts. The instant and free flow of goods around the corner and around the world comes with a cost. The iPhone delivered overnight from China, the speciality coffee from around the world, the stores filled with goods from hundreds of countries.
Rarely do we stop to think how all of this gets to us. Sure we see or even complain about all the trucks on the road. But that’s only the end of the journey, sometimes the last mile. Many of items of daily life travel hundreds of thousands of miles to reach us. Think about all those container ships at every major port in the world.
Beyond this, the story of traffic and of our cars, only compounds the problem. What successful community is not dealing with the scourge of traffic?
That’s the hidden story that Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Ed Humes tells in his new book Door to Door: The Magnificent, Maddening, Mysterious World of Transportation.
My conversation with Ed Humes:
We live in a world of bombast and noise. Sometimes it seems the volume is turned up full blast, all the time. A quick look at our Presidential campaigns is ample evidence.
We forget that for leaders, or just average folks, sometimes quiet can have amazing power. The power of thoughtfulness, of creativity and competence
For young people, trying to find their place in the world, sometimes growing up amidst this cacophony of a boiler factory is not the healthiest thing.
This is the world that Susan Cain took us into in her bestselling book QUIET: THE POWER OF INTROVERTS IN A WORLD THAT CAN’T STOP TALKING.
Now she looks specifically at young people in Quiet Power: The Secret Strengths of Introverts
My conversation with Susan Cain:
The poet William Blake talked about art as “seeing the world in a grain of sand.” I suppose that what he also meant was the ability to move in so tightly on something, that inside of it, we could construct an almost fourth dimension, through which to view the world and our experiences in it.
In a way that’s what New Yorker Staff writer, author and Pulitzer Prize winner William Finnegan has done with surfing.
Living the surfing life alongside the literary life, Finnegan has reached the apex of that duality in his autobiography Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life
My conversation with William Finnegan:
Not since the 1960’s have we lived in a time of more public anger. Today, issues of race, economic disparity, power imbalance and distrust of traditional institutions, have all conflated to bring us to what some believe is the brink of insurrection.
But should we be surprised? Insurrection, riots, strikes have long been an instrument of policy for the disaffected. It was a central form of protest in the 17th and 18th centuries and we saw our own examples in the 1970’s
But given the anger, given technology, given the immediacy of communication, what might riots look like today and are they on the horizon.
Joshua Clover, a professor of critical theory at UC Davis, thinks they are. He looks at the history in Riot. Strike. Riot: The New Era of Uprisings.
My conversation with Joshua Clover:
A Scottish writer, back in 1915, coined the phrase “think globally, but act locally.” While it was about grassroots movements, it could just as easily have been about our understanding of the universe.
The fundamental laws of physics which govern the workings of the cosmos, are not some abstract untethered set of rules. They have a direct impact on how we live and on the very meaning of human existence. It has to. After all, it’s the only way we can look out on the vastness of space and time, and ask ourselves what’s it's all about, and what's my place in it.
Few ask these questions and find answers as well as Sean Carroll, a renowned physicist at Cal Tech and the author of The Big Picture: On the Origins of Life, Meaning, and the Universe Itself.
My conversation with Sean Carroll:
For better or worse, particularly for those of us here in the Bay Area, we have come to think of science in rather utilitarian terms. A better phone, a better app, or a better car.
In fact science, especially theoretical physics, is or should be the real lens through which we see the world. It is our understanding of the larger universe that shapes how we see our place in it and that more than the latest gadget, shapes our times.
It’s why we need to understand that world and why we need guides along the way like Stephen Hawking and Christophe Galfard. Galfard, a protege of Hawking and has just published The Universe in Your Hand: A Journey Through Space, Time, and Beyond.
My conversation with Christophe Galfard:
Think about our built environment and how much of it is designed around safety and security. The gated communities, the numbers on top of office buildings, the entrances and exits, garages and elevators. eyes on the street.
Now imagine seeing our daily landscape through the eyes of someone that wanted to break into our homes and our offices. Suddenly architecture takes on a whole new dimension. One that my guest Geoff Manaugh conveys in his new book A Burglar's Guide to the City.
My conversation with Geoff Manaugh:
Ask any of the 20 and 30 somethings working in tech in San Francisco and Silicon Valley and I assure they think they are inventing the world. But the fact is that most, including some that have become household names, are merely leaving footprints in the shadow of David Sarnoff.
David Sarnoff born in 1891, had a visionary understanding of everything from the telegraph to the future of the internet. And just as Steve Jobs had Wozniak, Sarnoff had Edwin Armstrong. Not surprisingly, that relationship ended in an even worse way.
That story, the idea of everything old being new again and that history does repeat itself, is at the heart of .The Network: The Battle for the Airwaves and the Birth of the Communications Age, by Scott Woolley
My conversation with Scott Woolley:
It’s hard to believe from the rhetoric coming from both sides of the campaign trail this year, but there once was a time when policy mattered. When candidates on both sides talked about programs and public policy.
Perhaps it was Reagan wanting to shrink the size of government and drown it in a bathtub, or Bill Clinton declaring that the era of big government is over. The fact is we have stopped looking to government as an institution of proactive change. While it still may have a role in crisis, as we saw in 2008 and 2009, its larger role, to shape the betterment of life in America, has long ago reached a kind of perigee.
Perhaps the last time policy mattered was during the time of LBJ and the Great Society. A time when bipartisan politics really worked. This is the era that Randall Wood takes us into in Prisoners of Hope: Lyndon B. Johnson, the Great Society, and the Limits of Liberalism.
My conversation with Randall Woods:
How many times have you experienced an even mild form of depression, or anxiety or obsessive fear and wondered “how you got this way.” It turns out the answer may have as much to do with your ancestry as with your circumstances.
While today with things like 23andme and the vast array of genetic testing and sequencing we can do, we look for every clue to our health. What diseases we may carry and what medical dangers we may face. However, we are yet to fully understand how family trauma, the trauma of distant ancestors, might actually impact our genetics in a ways that affect our mental health. This is the world that Mark Wolynn reveals to us in It Didn't Start with You: How Inherited Family Trauma Shapes Who We Are and How to End the Cycle.
My conversation with Mark Wolynn:
We hear it in all the loose talk about health care. About the wonders of medicine, about how we are living longer and about the advances of our doctors. The fact is we are mostly still in the dark ages. The standard treatment for cancer today, poisoning the body, is a little like how we once viewed leaching.
As for diagnostics, a huge percentage of today's sickest patient go through a multi year odyssey, just to discover what’s wrong with them… and that’s if they are at a world class medical facility.
But all of this is changing. We are on the cusp of the brave new world of genomic medicine. A time when treatment will be personalized, when the brutality of some treatments will be vastly refined and when medicine really will be worthy of the 21st Century and all the highfalutin rhetoric we hear
Nowhere is this more clear than in the story that Pulitzer Prize winning journalists Mark Johnson and Kathleen Gallagher tell in One in a Billion: The Story of Nic Volker and the Dawn of Genomic Medicine.
My conversation with Mark Johnson & Kathleen Gallagher:
There is seemingly nothing in our society today that has not become politicized. From what bathrooms we use to the soda we drink, to the food we eat. Sometimes if feels as if common sense and good judgment have gone out the window.
We forget there are some absolutes. There are some facts that are irrefutable. Sometimes to ignore this, is to do irreparable damage. One of the areas where this is certainly true is with respect to the environment.
Where once protecting the natural environment was a conservative value, today for conservatives attacking those that seek to protect the environment has become an applause line.
For environmental activists, their extreme views, their disregard for business and property rights have helped to push the reaction on the other side.
In short there is plenty of blame to go around. However renowned lawyer Frederic Rich doesn't assess blame. Instead, in his book Getting to Green: Saving Nature, he looks for a bipartisan answer.
My conversation with Frederic Rich:
American history shows us that amidst election season we are often divided. That partisan rancor is often high and it is a healthy part of the passion of democracy. But today we seem to have something worse. While we’ve been here before as a county, we are at one of those historical inflection points where the bitterness spills over into every aspect of life.
And while history shows us other bitter splits, today, the long tail of the Internet and technology has made us more tribal. More prone to confirmation bias and only associating with our own tribe. Daniel Patrick Moynihan once said we are all entitled to our opinions, but not our own facts. Today, the proliferation of information, has made everyone feel empowered by their own facts, true or false.
We live in a world that William Butler Yeats writes about when he said that “Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world. The best lack all conviction and worst are full of passionate intensity.”
Mark Gerzon, like Barack Obama thinks he can change that. He outlines his plans in The Reunited States of America: How We Can Bridge the Partisan Divide.
My conversation with Mark Gerzon:
As they have done in so many other areas, the millennial generation has picked and chosen which parts of their social and sexual legacy they want to inherit. Particularly for millennial girls who were handed a legacy of sexual revolution, increased efforts to promote self esteem, Title 9, several waves of feminism and the ability to Lean In, they have made some interesting choices and compromises for themselves.
Nowhere is this more profound and more complicated than in their navigation of their own sexuality. How this plays out in our culture, how it impacts our daughters and what is says for the future of men women and sex is at the heart of Peggy Orenstein's new book Girls & Sex: Navigating the Complicated New Landscape.
My conversation with Peggy Orenstein:
If I gave you all a quiz and asked you to name five tech visionaries and entrepreneurs in the US, you’d all pass. If I asked you to name even one visionary entrepreneur in China, the world's largest market, you’d probably come up empty. If you didn't, you’d probably name Jack Ma, the founder and leader of Alibaba.
The company recently went public in the largest IPO in history. It’s the largest virtual shopping mall in the world and it’s impact not just in China, but in the developing world, is profound and impactful both economically and politically.
Longtime businessman and journalist Duncan Clark takes us up close and person with Jack Ma in Alibaba: The House That Jack Ma Built
My conversation with Duncan Clark:
It’s funny how history often pokes its head out in the framework of contemporary events. Remember during the government shutdown a few years ago, commentators said that the radical elements of the GOP were acting like terrorists from the 60’s and 70’s? We heard similar criticism of occupy Wall Street years ago. And who can forget the President being accused of paling around with terrorist because of an acquaintance with Bill Ayers.
That fact is that the idea of direct action, grassroots support and commitment to ideas of social change, no matter how flawed, were an essential part of America in the 70’s
Inspired by the communist revolutions in Cuba and China and Vietnam, by the actions of the Nixon administration and the war in Vietnam, a radical group of revolutionaries sought to launch what they believed to be a 2nd American Revolution.
Today, to look back upon it, is to be shocked by the level of violence that the public came of accept as commonplace and how the efforts of law enforcement to stop it, were almost keystone cops like.
Taking us back to this bizarre time in modern American history is award winning author and journalist Bryan Burrough, in his book Days of Rage: America's Radical Underground, the FBI, and the Forgotten Age of Revolutionary Violence
My conversation with Bryan Burrough:
The debate that raged between Apple and the Federal Government was on the surface about security, privacy and encryption. However, in a larger sense it’s about the balance between our liberty and right to privacy vs. what some perceive as the greater good of the nation.
When we put up with the indignities of the TSA, we are agreeing that the greater good of security, check makes certain individual liberties. When we pass laws about personal vices, about speed limits or about guns or fundamental civil rights, the framework is the same.
In fact, when we look at the history of America, right on through our present day polarization, we see this struggle between individual liberty and the common good as a fundamental debate that links us directly with our founders.
This is the tension that Colin Woodard writes about in American Character: A History of the Epic Struggle Between Individual Liberty and the Common Good.
My conversation with Colin Woodard:
For most of us, the pressures of daily life in the 21st Century are intense. Emails, calls, social media, commutes, every changing technology, all on 24/7.
Regardless of the economic and social discussion from all of this, there is the question of the impact it’s all having on our bodies and on our psyche. Given how slow evolution moves, can human psychobiology cope with all of this?
That’s why some people practice things like meditation and mindfulness. But how does that really help? Dr. Andrew Newberg, has spent his career studying the impact of religion, spirituality and enlightenment on our physical and mental health. In his latest work How Enlightenment Changes Your Brain: The New Science of Transformation, he looks at the power of what he defines as enlightenment to truly remodel who we are.
My conversation with Andrew Newberg:
T.S. Eliot wrote, in 1934. “Where is the life we have lost in living? Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?” He might have written those words yesterday.
Certainly we’ve never had more knowledge, more information and seemingly less wisdom than we do today. What is the connection? How is it, that the more we know, the less we seem to understand and the less we seem to able to clearly and logically process it?
Does the fault lie in the technology, the speed at which information comes at us, or an evolutionary limitation to process information that has not yet caught up with technology? Or is it simply fear of the new, and fear of the future.
This is what Michael Patrick Lynch addresses in The Internet of Us: Knowing More and Understanding Less in the Age of Big Data
My conversation with Michael Patrick Lynch:
When we examine the roots of today’s chaos in the Republican party, we see that much of it has been caused by the party using and manipulating social issues to hold together Red State voters, while ignoring and even acting counter to their real economic concerns. This was the premise of one of the seminal books of our modern political age, What’s the Matter with Kansas, by my guest Thomas Frank.
Today, Frank argues that the Democratic party is facing a similar situation and is ignoring a whole swath of it’s traditional working class base voters.
He argues in his new book Listen, Liberal: Or, What Ever Happened to the Party of the People? that the traditional working class Democratic voters, the ones that drove the Roosevelt, Kennedy, and Johnson coalitions, have been ignored. That the traditional Democratic Dunkin Donuts/ Walmart voter has been replaced by the Starbucks/Whole Foods voter. And that o once again, even in the Democratic party, social issues have been used to transcended the real economic needs and distress of Americans.
To some extent this has given rise to the Bernie Sanders movement. But more specifically it’s left the door open for a populist demagogue like Donald Trump, to take advantage of this openings on both side of the political equation.
My conversation with Thomas Frank:
A popular desire for authoritarian rule in the face of a changing and sometimes shaky economy. A overheated sense of nationalism, to cover up uncertainty about the future. Scapegoating and military adventurism as a salve for a lack of purpose and policy, a dislike of outsiders and a desire to crackdown on journalists to cover up anger about the changing nature of employment. Sounds like a certain candidate running for President of the US. In fact, it is a picture of the rise of Vladimir Putin and Russia, as Russia still comes to grips with the change heralded by the Soviet collapse.
But to fully understand Putin and Russia, it's important to look beyond Moscow, just as it’s necessary to look past Manhattan or San Francisco to try and understand America.
Long time NPR foreign correspondent Anne Garrels has spent decades exploring the Russia that’s far from Moscow, in what some might call the Russian heartland.
Putin Country: A Journey into the Real Russiais her story of twenty plus years of reporting from a town on the southern edge of the Ural Mountains. She reveals a Russia that today embraces a unique combination of Western goods, inherent corruption, and authoritarian rule
My conversation with Anne Garrels:
Just for fun, pull out or get a copy of the originally published version of the best seller What Color Is Your Parachute. Originally published in 1970, virtually no job that it listed that even touches technology, is even close to the same today. Remember that came out 46 years ago, just as the boomers were going into the workforce.
Today’s changes, human, technological and social, are happening at a geometrically much faster pace. Imagine then what the workplace will look like 46 years from now.
Children entering school today will work in a world that has almost no relationship to today's world. The jobs, the skills, the workplace and the products will be vastly different.
Given this, how do we plan? How to we teach our kids, shape public policy and prepare for a fourth industrial revolution that will happen, even if we do nothing to get ahead of it.
Alec Ross, one of America’s leading experts on innovation, served as Senior Advisor for Innovation to the Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. He’s the author of The Industries of the Future.
My conversation with Alex Ross:
We've all heard it before. Sixty is the new fifty, fifty is the new forty, etc.
It's all in the service our fear, or dread of aging; of death and the lost endless possibilities of youth. We believed that as we turned the corner onto the proverbial back nine, that a kind of midlife crisis would overtake us.
For a generation of narcissistic baby boomers, it seemed like the logical step. But a surprising thing happened along the way. Many of those same baby boomers began to appreciate age and its companions of wisdom and calmness
Some boomers actually began to thrive in midlife and that's the story that Barbara Bradley Hagerty tells in Life Reimagined: The Science, Art, and Opportunity of Midlife
My conversation with Barbara Bradley Hagerty:
Andy Grove, perhaps more than anyone other than Steve Jobs transformed technology, drove the growth of Silicon Valley and shaped the views of so many of the people that run tech companies today. To say that he was the Godfather of Silicon Valley would not be an understatement.
Andy Grove, who passed away yesterday, was one of the founders and CEO of Intel Corporation, where he transformed the role of semiconductors from an obscure part of tech, to almost a consumer product.
He was also at the cutting edge of the computer and Internet revolution. Back in 1996, twenty years ago, Grove wrote a book entitled Only the Paranoid Survive: How to Exploit the Crisis Points That Challenge Every Company. It's still widely read and respected.
Upon the publication of that book in 1996, I had the chance to speak with Andy Grove.
At the time, WiFi didn’t exist, Hi Speed Internet was still a dream, and networks were reserved only for the biggest of corporations. But Grove saw that key inflection points were coming. He foresaw the change they would bring about the creative destruction that would result in the change that has swept the world today.
Here is a little of that 1996 conversation with Andy Grove:
If we examine why so many students don’t graduate High School, we find that failure to succeed at High School math is often at the core of the problem. Yet we are told almost every day that STEM and that math are the keys to the kingdom of success in the 21st Century.
The fact is that most jobs, even very good ones, don't require the geometry, the algebra, the trigonometry that we are forced to lean in High School. What they do require is a hi gh degree of numeric literacy, critical and quantitative thinking and the ability to fully understand computation.
That’s not what we are teaching. Math Professor Andrew Hacker, took on this subject back in 2012 in a NY Times op ed pieces and the controversy hasn’t stopped.
Now he’s out with a book entitled The Math Myth: And Other STEM Delusions.
My conversation with Andrew Hacker
The power and reach of corporate America has become a staple of our political dialogue. Consolidation and corporatization has touched almost every area of our culture. The Disneyfication of our communities is almost complete. Food, retail, coffee, service, music, movies and now even sex and our most intimate fantasies.
Where once strip clubs had unique and individual identities, fulfilling a wide range of fantasies, today even they have gone the way of corporate homogenization. Jessica Berson has witnessed it up close and personal and in The Naked Result: How Exotic Dance Became Big Business she shares her story.
My conversation with Jessica Berson:
In this age of consumerism, instant gratification and information, it’s often hard to think about something as abstract as the “meaning of life.” The ideas of birth, death, and infinity, which used to introduce a popular television show of the early 60’s, are ideas seldom thought about today.
Yet these are questions that human beings have been asking since the beginning of time. Lee Eisenberg, who previously looked at our relationship to money in The Number, now takes on these questions with even more enthusiasm than Monty Python did, in his new book The Point Is: Making Sense of Birth, Death, and Everything in Between
My conversation with Lee Eisenberg:
Last week Elizabeth Warren gave a scathing speech on the floor of the U.S. Senate, about the seven year efforts, on the part of Republicans, to delegitimize the Obama Presidency. From the birther efforts to Mitch McConnell, saying that his goal, from day one, was to defeat Obama.
It’s not possible to carry on this discussion without accepting and understanding race as a part of it.The burden of being America's first black President, can’t even be imagined.
We know from the way this current campaign is playing out, how a large swath of white America has responded. But how has the black community viewed Obama? Long time journalist Erin Aubry Kaplan takes a look in I Heart Obama
My conversation with Erin Kaplan:
Today, globalization faces a crisis of its own success. The international movement of goods, money, communications and ideas has been going on since even before the 12th Century. However, today the context of that globalization has changed.
Where once driven individuals could change the world, today the very complexity of the world that globalization has created means that it can no longer exist in an economic vacuum, free from the drag of domestic and geopolitics.
But to fully understand what we might need to do, we have to understand how we got here. That’s the story that Jeffrey Garten tells in his new book From Silk to Silicon: The Story of Globalization Through Ten Extraordinary Lives. Garten looks at ten people who have single handedly changed the world during the last 800 years. It’s a kind of biography of globalization.
My conversation with Jeffrey Garten:
Money and politics have become synonymous. Politicians spend that majority of their time raising money, (which they claim they hate) while the cost of campaigns escalates and more money is needed and more money needs to be raised. And where does that money come from….not usually from small contributions, but from large and vested special interests.
The result is a system that is inherently corrupt and tilted toward big money. Even when it is practiced by the most sincere and dedicated elected officials.
We all seem to know this...what we don't see as clearly is the way in which this simple, fundamental and relatively recent development is responsible for so much that’s wrong with our democracy. Our wealth gap, political gridlock, inaction on some of our most pressing environmental issues,
For focusing on this core idea, Bernie Sanders has been accused of being a single issues candidate. But no matter where you stand on Sanders, it’s increasingly clear that this single issues is the foundational idea underlying the paralysis of 21st century America.
This is the issue that Wendell Potter and Nick Penniman take head on in Nation on the Take: How Big Money Corrupts Our Democracy and What We Can Do About It
My conversation with Potter and Penniman:
It’s funny how history repeats itself. In the mid 19th Century, partly in response to the Great Famine, waves of Irish immigrants came to America. Most landed in New York, to seek a new and better life. Then as now, questions of immigration, assimilation and criminal behavior filled the air. The appropriately named Know Nothing Party grew up in opposition to these waves of immigration and filled the political dialogue with fear and hatred.
But fortunately leaders emerged in the Irish community that showed them how to be Americas. One of those was Thomas Francis Meaghar. He would become not just an Irish hero, but an American hero. Sometimes forgotten he is given new life by Pulitzer Prize winner and New York Times columnist Timothy Egan in The Immortal Irishman: The Irish Revolutionary Who Became an American Hero
My conversation with Timothy Egan:
With all the technology around today, doctors still often fail to make the right diagnosis. Usually not due to any failure of knowledge or smarts, but because diagnostics is often as much art as science.
As such, it requires an almost intuitive and/or subtle understanding of the patient, his or her circumstances and sometimes it’s as much about what is not said by the patient, as that which is voiced.
Drs. Saul Weiner and Alan Schwartz have taken these ideas to the next step in their research about art of context and diagnostics. Their work is revealed in Listening for What Matters: Avoiding Contextual Errors in Health Care.
My conversation with Dr. Saul Weiner and Dr. Alan Schwartz
Although, incorrectly attributed to Churchill, most of you have heard the quote that "if you're not a liberal when you're 25, you have no heart. If you're not a conservative by the time you're 40, you have no brain." While it’s a little silly, it does go to the core fact that personal beliefs can change as we grow, as we evolve and as context changes. And while people like Jonathan Haidt have made the case that political belief is in some ways tied to evolutionary psychology and biology, we know from the lives of prominent Americans who have changed their beliefs, that this has it’s limits.
Writer and filmmaker Daniel Oppenheimer in Exit Right: The People Who Left the Left and Reshaped the American Century looks at the lives of six prominent figures, not just whose politics have changed, but wholes ideas, and intellectual core beliefs shifted over time from left to right. In the process, they all profoundly impacted our political dialogue.
My conversation with Daniel Oppenheimer:
It always amazing with famous people, particularly those that sit atop the world stage, to find out things, even after decades, that we didn't’ know. It’s interesting information. But most of all it reshapes how we understand them and the how these new surprises might have shaped the world they touched.
Such is the case with Winston Churchill and his underreported years as a journalist and war correspondent. This is the world that Simon Read takes us into in Winston Churchill Reporting: Adventures of a Young War Correspondent.
My conversation with Simon Read:
Say the word immigration today, and the political implications are both ugly and controversial. On the plus side a survey out just this week shows that a significant majority of young people in the US see themselves as citizens of the world, and not just citizens of America. A full 58% feel that the US is no better than many other countries in the world.
It is against this backdrop of hope and acceptance, that Susan Eaton (Integration Nation: Immigrants, Refugees, and America at Its Best)explores real people doing real work, to fully realize the power of immigration and integration and to make us stronger in what certainly right now seems like our broken places.
My conversation with Susan Eaton:
While I have not seen the movie, I do know from talking to some teens that the new film Pride and Prejudice Zombies has actually inspired kids to ask questions about Pride and Prejudice and Jane Austin. It's a surprise that in our media saturated culture, at a time when texting seems like long form communications, compared to Instagram, many kids are still interested in reading. How is this possible? Long time New Yorker staff writer and film critic David Denby went back to High School to find out how students begin to appreciate reading and to see if screen obsessed teens can actually be inculcated in the pleasures of reading. The result is Lit Up: One Reporter. Three Schools. Twenty-four Books That Can Change Lives. My conversation with David Denby:
How many times have you gone to the movies, or to an art exhibit or read a book and not really felt that you’ve completed the experience until you’ve talked about the movie or show or exhibit with someone else? Either the person you went with, or somebody who read or saw the same thing. This is at once both the most primal of social media and also emphasizes the importance of opinion and criticism. Both give art context and, through the process of discussion or even argument, the ability to sort out, to understand and process what we saw. This is and has been the job of critics and criticism in our society. In this why criticism is like legal thinking. It marshals and structures ideas, in ways that give art its power and forward thrust. But in today's society, where everyone can have a platform, where our respect for expertise seems fragile at best, where the long tail of confirmation bias seems to drive everything from our politics, to musical and artistic taste, what role is there for the critic. This is what NY Times film critic A.O. Scott writes about in Better Living Through Criticism: How to Think about Art, Pleasure, Beauty, and Truth My conversation with A.O. Scott:
This year, in a very tired and traditional way, the Grammy’s focused on the world of Pop music. But the fact is, no matter how traditional the show, what’s undeniable is that the world of music is nothing like it was twenty years ago. Today, in your pocket is virtually all of the world's music. The long tail of music has never been longer. And yet in our music, not unlike our politics, our confirmation bias leads us over and over and over again to that with which we are familiar, which makes us comfortable and safe. Couple this with streaming algorithms that lead us back, over and over, to where we started. Yet with so much opportunity, with so many options, how do we expand our tastes and our music imagination in ways consistent with all of this new technology? One way is to start with a new book by long time NY Times jazz and music critic Ben Ratlif, Every Song Ever: Twenty Ways to Listen in an Age of Musical Plenty. My conversation with Ben Ratliff:
We are all driving cars with parts made all other the world. Our phones, our appliances, our banking is either made, touched and/or connected to every part of the world. Globalization is not going away. In fact, it expanding to now include even our health care. Where once the rich might engage in medical tourism for cosmetic or exotic procedures, today medical tourism is an international businesses taking place all other the globe. Like the free flow of money and ideas, the free flow of treatment could soon become the future of health care. Sasha Issenberg reports from the front lines in Outpatients: The Astonishing New World of Medical Tourism. My conversation with Sasha Issenberg:
I suppose it's the historian's curse that sometimes the people they are writing about become such icons, that getting to the truth becomes impossible. Certainly two such icons of our time, of the civil right era, are Malcolm X and Muhammad Ali. Both have become larger than life characters, whose actions and whose longtime friendship and then estrangement shaped not one, but several areas of our cultural landscape In their new book Blood Brothers: The Fatal Friendship Between Muhammad Ali and Malcolm X, historians Randy Roberts and Johnny Smith attempt to capture the real men behind the myths, as they look deeply into their intense two-year friendship and a bond that altered both lives and affected those of millions of others My conversation with Randy Roberts:
Millions of words have been written about Donald Trump. But one thing always seem to be certain with Trump. Unlike the warnings in the security industry, past performance is absolutely an indication for future returns. So what exactly do those past performances look like. Long before Campaign 2016 started, Trump telegraphed pretty much everything we are seeing today. Even 10 years ago my guest, journalist Timothy O’Brien was granted unfettered access to Trump, wrote TrumpNation: The Art of Being The Donald, only to wind up in court. Timothy L. O'Brien is the executive editor of Bloomberg View. He was previously the executive editor of the Huffington Post, where he won a Pulitzer Prize. Prior to that he was the Sunday Business editor and a reporter at the New York Times. My conversation with Timothy O'Brien:
Paper Moon, The Sting, American Hustle, The Grifters, House of Games, The Matchstick Men; just a few of the movies we love about con men and hustlers. Yet in real life, we don’t love the likes of Bernie Madoff, or Barry Minkow, or Steven Kunes or Charles Ponzi. So why the disconnect? Why do we feel joy in being taken in by movie con men, but not so much by the real thing? The answer may very well lie in what a con man does and what he or she is. How they appear and how they try and manipulate us. Unfortunately the line between con men and salesmen and politicians is fine one. Maria Konnikova shows us the tricks in The Confidence Game: Why We Fall for It . . . Every Time. My conversation with Maria Konnikova:
Think about how much the world has changed in just the past 25 years and then think about how little our politics has changed. Not just that we’re still talking about Clinton and Bush, but that the issues, the ideas and the ways in which they are discussed has not changed. One does not have to throw out the principles of our Founders to retool the political process. In fact, it is precisely those tools that should be used to reshape everything about our politics. The good news is that this effort is being midwifed by young people with new values, who believe in transparency and honesty as opposed to duplicity. Who believe in fairness not obfuscation. Who see that the future is not about fixing the old car, but blowing it up and taking Tesla or Uber. We are at what some have called the millennial moment. When power shifts from parents to children. When adults brought up in a different era realize they've lost touch with what's going on. Clearly, "there's something happening here" and few understand it better than journalists Sarah Leonard (The Nation) and Bhaskar Sunkara (Jacobin,) author of The Future We Want: Radical Ideas for the New Century. My conversation with Sarah Leonard and Bhaskar Sunkara:
This year's GOP primary race, perhaps more than others, does not exist in a vacuum. When Barry Goldwater accepted the GOP nomination in the SF Cow Palace in 1964, he spoke of extremism in the defense liberty and eschewed moderation. Ever since that moment, so called conservatives have been falling all over themselves trying to live up to those words. Words that had very little to do with the true conservatism of Edmund Burke or Michael Oakeshott and words that were later called into question by Goldwater himself. But the attempt to elevate their mythology, as Ted Cruz is trying to do, particularly in a rapidly evolving world, may be the final nail in the Republican coffin This is the context of E.J. Dionne’s insightful new book Why the Right Went Wrong: Conservatism From Goldwater to the Tea Party and Beyond. My conversation with E.J. Dionne:
There must be a dozen books out right now talking about the disfunction in our politics. Every day pundits, commentators and journalists analyze why our political system doesn’t work. Most all of them don’t see the forest from the trees. What they miss, and what Harvard Professor and onetime Presidential candidate Lawrence Lessig understands, is that the central institution, at the core of our democracy is broken. Not broken in a way that’s easily fixable by a single election or by a new Speaker of the House. But that the institution itself has been so infected by things like big money, gerrymandering and our modern day methods of campaigning, that just maybe the whole things has to be pulled up by its roots and reimagined and rebuilt. In fact, that’s why Lawrence Lessig briefly ran for President of the United States and wrote about his ideas in Republic, Lost: Version 2.0 Listen to my conversation for Radio WhoWhatWhy with Professor Lawrence Lessig:
This is a political year like few others. The traditional laws of political gravity have so far, not seemed to apply. Part of it is due to the collection of candidates, the public mood, and the long simmering divisions within the Republican party. It’s also a result of the changing demographics of America, congressional gerrymandering and the ways in which the idea that “all politics is local,” helps one party and not the other. These ideas are at the heart of University of Maryland Professor Thomas Schaller's new book The Stronghold: How Republicans Captured Congress but Surrendered the White House My conversation with Thomas Schaller:
Two of the most powerful threads in American history are the immigrant experience and America at war and the impact that those wars have had on the nation and it's people The impact of WWII, the Japanese American experience and the relationship with Japan that evolved out of the ashes of that war, are the penultimate manifestation of that uniquely American story. Pamela Rotner Sakamoto has, in her new book Midnight in Broad Daylight: A Japanese American Family Caught Between Two Worlds captured its true essence. My conversation with Pamela Rotner Sakamoto:
Last month Saudi woman cast their votes for the first time in municipal elections in Riyadh. And while this is an incredibly positive development in the region, it also, by its very nature points out how limited many of these woman are and how the deeply conservative and gender segregated world of the Middle East has changed so little. When we look around the world at developing nations, we see that where there has been real progress, in Africa, in Latin America and in parts of Asia, women have played a vital, often central role in advocating and bringing about that progress. In the Middle East, where that ability has been so limited, we see the consequences on a daily basis. Katherine Zoepf in Excellent Daughters: The Secret Lives of Young Women Who Are Transforming the Arab World gives us an inside view of how these woman are doing. My conversation with Katherine Zoepf:
After its loss in the Presidential election of 2012 the Republican Party felt it needed to do its own after action report. In the end, it was determined that all was basically ok and that the party only needed to broaden its tent and do a little better with Hispanic voters. Enter Jeb Bush. How did that work out? Not so well! What we are seeing today is a total repudiation of a Republican establishment that for 40 years has held onto many of its voters with cultural, racial and religious issues, while delivering nothing of economic value. For the GOP, today the chickens have come home to roost and we understand exactly "what’s the matter with Kansas." Covering all of this and telling the story from those first days after the 2012 election is BuzzFeed's McKay Coppins in his new book The Wilderness: Deep Inside the Republican Party's Combative, Contentious, Chaotic Quest to Take Back the White House. My conversation with McKay Coppins:
What goes on inside of a marriage is always a mystery. With a political marriage, even more so. We all know the stories of the neighbors who have the apparently idyllic marriage, that ends in divorce. Or the couple that battles incessantly, that have been together for 40 years. These dynamics, and the psychological mechanism behind them are truly a riddle wrapped in an enigma. However, with political marriages, and with public figures, we get a better glimpse. After the fact, we often have letters, tapes, diaries and tell-alls that become a part of the public record. In analyzing them, we learn a lot about how the marriage worked, how it shaped the individuals and in turn how it shaped history. This is what we learn about LBJ and Lady Bird in Betty Boyd Caroli’s Lady Bird and Lyndon: The Hidden Story of a Marriage That Made a President. My conversation with Betty Boyd Caroli:
How many times have we heard the phrase, “Big Oil,” when sometimes what we really mean is authoritarian oil. There seems to be a direct and long standing historical nexus between those nations that have much in demand natural resources and countries which have corrupt, brutal and inept economies. Our increasing demand for these resources, including oil and all the new resources needed by high technology, are helping to support tyrants around the world. Think about just today’s crisis in , ISIS, Syria, Darfur, the Ukraine; many have at their roots in oil and natural resources. Listen to my conversation, for Radio WhoWhatWhy, with King's College Philosophy Professor and "Clean Trade" advocate, Leif Wenar.
We live today in a world of instant communications. Our computers coupled with services like Skype, allow us to travel to anyplace on earth at the speed of light. We have seen the surface of the Moon and of Mars and have been in meetings with participants all over the world. So should this tell us that anyplace is everyplace? That things like geography, place, and indigenous cultures don’t matter in the 21st century? Eric Weiner, the author of The Geography of Genius: A Search for the World's Most Creative Places from Ancient Athens to Silicon Valley, argues that that it matters a lot. In fact, more than ever. After all, why is it that places like Athens, Florence, Virginia & Philadelphia in 1776 and Silicon Valley today have produced some of the crowning achievements of mankind? Maybe it’s because, as Eric Weiner says, place matters. My conversation with Eric Weiner:
There is almost nothing that we do the way we might have done it just ten years ago. The way we book travel, get a car, find places to stay, take photographs, date, communicate with your friends, or consume the news. Creative destruction is everywhere. However a few of the places where such change have been very late to the party, has been with respect to education, government and healthcare. In the world of healthcare that’s all beginning to change. The sheer force of science and discovery has pushed the otherwise staid walls of the medical profession to change. And like everything other change, it’s no longer one size fits tall. The new long tail of medicine is about the customization of treatment and along with it, a required need for individual empowerment. Some might call it squeaky wheel medicine, other might just call it the future. One of those is my guest Dr. David Agus who tells us about these ideas in The Lucky Years: How to Thrive in the Brave New World of Health My conversation with Dr. David Agus:
We live in a culture that is about sharing. First we shared music, then we shared our likes on Facebook, our photos on Instagram, our dating preferences on Tinder and now we share our cars, our houses, essentially our life. Amidst all of this, has been our ongoing and growing appreciation of memoir and of personal stories. Where once fiction provided a place to explore our inner lives and our moral and social choices, today memoir fills that void. One of the people who brought us to this point, is the bestselling author of The Liars' Club, Lit, Cherry and now The Art of Memoir, Mary Karr. My conversation with Mary Karr:
No matter how many times we hear the stories of pedophile priests in the Catholic Church, it’s hard to grasp that such things could go on, that they could go on for so long and that so many could be involved as both perpetrators and in the cover up. Perhaps it's that people didn't want to believe. Like the story told by a victim in the new movie SPOTLIGHT. It the story of a mother, who, even after her son tells her of his abuse, still, out of respect, puts out cookies for the priest when he visits. In business, or in any institution, it's hard to change culture. As Peter Drucker, has said of business, “culture eats strategy for lunch.” What we’ve seen in the Catholic Church is a layering of cultures. The culture of the perpetrators, and the culture of secrecy of those that covered it up, combined with the broader culture that encouraged a respect for authority. Together they were a toxic combination They certainly were at the Horace Mann school in New York, back in the 60’s and 70’s. The story of Horace Mann was revealed by Amos Kamil in a scorching New York times Magazine story in June of 2012. Now he tell the full measure of that story in Great Is the Truth: Secrecy, Scandal, and the Quest for Justice at the Horace Mann School. My conversation with Amos Kamil:
The world has changed in many ways since 9/11. One of those clearly has been the way we look upon Muslims, South Asians and Sikhs. Arguably these attitudes and prejudices and the degree to which they have become embedded in the fabric of our national DNA has had a corrosive effect on all of our relationships with people of color and people that might be different than ourselves. Today, since Paris and San Bernadino and the heated political rhetoric that has accompanied it, the depth of those divisions seems to be growing to dangerous proportions. Deepa Iyer has studied this, written about it and works every day to counteract it. A task made much harder each days since she wrote her book, We Too Sing America: South Asian, Arab, Muslim, and Sikh Immigrants Shape Our Multiracial Future. My conversation with Deepa Iyer:
Think about the real divisive issues today, both at home and in the wider world. Radical Islamic faith tearing apart the Middle East. The faith that drives suicide bombers to the far corners of the planet, and at home, divisions about abortion, marriage, and end of life issues. At a time when the focus both home and abroad should be on the global economy, health, energy, science, hunger, ending territorial disputes and ending regional conflicts, time and again, the conflict turns back to religion. Islamists, the Religious Right, all seem allied to restrict rather than enhance individual rights. And we know from history that such efforts always are the foundation of greater conflict and sometimes revolution. So how has a global society do we balance religious freedom with freedom from religion. That answer today seems impossible. All of that bring us back to atheism and why it’s so hard for atheists to get their message heard. David Silverman, the President of the American Atheists has been at the forefront of the effort to convey that message and he does it once again in his new book Fighting God: An Atheist Manifesto for a Religious World. My conversation with David Silverman:
We’ve been told for years that one of the key goals of technology was to simplify our life. In fact, for many people the opposite has happened. The combination of complexity, feature creep, and the ever updating world of new technology has made the complexity of the process sometimes not worth the effort. Enter David Pogue. He spent thirteen years writing about personal technology for the NY Times. He launched Yahoo Tech. He writes a monthly column for Scientific America and created the Missing Manual computer book series. He’s won two Emmys, two Webby awards, and a Loeb award for journalism. But most of all he is the undisputed master of how to harness the best of technology to serve us and not the other way around. He does it in a way that is both useful and humorous in his new book Pogue's Basics: Essential Tips and Shortcuts (That No One Bothers to Tell You) for Simplifying the Technology in Your Life. My conversation with David Pogue:
There is a school of thought in crisis management that says, if you have a completely intractable problem, sometimes the only solution is to create a larger problem. In fact, to blow things up to the point where you get to start over. Sometimes that’s a strategy that happens not just by design, but by outcome. When then Newark Mayor Cory Booker, N.J. Governor Chris Christie and Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg put together a plan that they thought would completely reform and transform Newark schools back in 2010, they thought they were doing the right thing. However what they did was reminiscent of what Ronald Reagan declared as the most terrifying phrases in the English language…”I’m from the government and I’m here to help.” What they did, what they failed at and even what they succeeded at, shows how incredibly hard it is to be transformative in public education. This is the story told by Dale Russakoff in The Prize: Who's in Charge of America's Schools? My conversation with Dale Russakoff:
When Oliver Wendell Holmes talked about Roosevelt's first class temperament, he never explained why that was important. It didn’t explain how, for a future President presiding over victory in two wars in just one term, without braggadocio, might matter,or respecting those with disabilities and allowing it to become a civil rights issues mattered, or how respecting manners in the conduct of both public and private affairs might shape the destiny of a great nation. Yet it is precisely that temperament, that George Herbert Walker Bush brought to the Presidency. Imagine any of today’s candidates exercising similar temperament, or restraint or manners. It would be a little like looking for the cool of Sinatra or Jesse Owens, in today’s music or sports celebrities. All of this just might be an amusing dinner table conversation about days and behaviors gone by, if Jon Meacham, in his new biography show us so profoundly how these qualities matter in the conduct and outcome of public and international diplomacy Destiny and Power: The American Odyssey of George Herbert Walker Bush. My conversation with Jon Meacham:
To say that music and pop stars today are transitory is an understatement. Very few performers today are building careers for the ages, as did entertainers like Frank Sinatra. Now on the 100th anniversary of Sinatra's birth we’re joined by poet David Lehman for a look at Sinatra's Century: One Hundred Notes on the Man and His World. My conversation with David Lehman:
In these highly polarized times, we all hear the admonition, especially around holidays and family get-togethers, to make sure you never discuss politics or religion. So what is it about both of these subjects that are so personal, so internal so potentially inflammatory that we’re admonished not to discuss them? Long time NBC journalist and former host of Meet The Press, David Gregory has, for years, been immersed in both of these arenas. Lately he has put discussion of politics on the side burner to talk about religion, and more specifically the journey he has taken in going deeper into his own faith. He’s shares that journey in his new book How's Your Faith?: An Unlikely Spiritual Journey My conversation with David Gregory:
Even long before the current extreme stratification of America, we heard about two Americas. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Michael Harrington and than John Edwards all talked about two nations living side by side. One of relative middle class ease on the cutting edge of technology and education and another mired in poverty, resistant to or fearing change. Today, the same can said about Africa. For in spite of much popular imaginary parts of Africa are at the cutting edge of technology and economic development. The rise of the African consumer economy is one of the biggest, and most under-covered, stories. In fact, by 2020, seven of the world’s top 10 fastest growing economies will be in sub-Saharan Africa.The continent already has more mobile subscribers than the US or the EU. Alex Perry has covered Africa for years for TIME and NEWSWEEK. Now he gives us The Rift: A New Africa Breaks Free. My conversation with Alex Perry:
We have seen that in almost any area of public endeavor, changing the status quo is almost impossible. The combination of entrenched special interests, coupled with the basic human resistance to change, in an era where change is a constant, creates a level of cognitive dissonance and fear that makes changing public policy almost impossible. So what do we do when the only alternative to change is catastrophic for our health, for our planet, for our economy and for the peoples of the world? Such is the case with Climate Change. While the science may be clear. The road ahead is anything but. In this we face an unprecedented situation as the world’s leaders gather in Paris this week That’s why people like Wen Stephenson, (What We're Fighting for Now Is Each Other: Dispatches from the Front Lines of Climate Justice,) are so passionate about the cause and see it not just from the point of view of science, but as a moral and social imperative. My conversation with Wen Stephenson:
But what happens when two countries, two trading partners do not have parity on the production of a particular product, but have interlocking and conflicting needs, jealously, interests and misunderstandings? The results, can create a crisis on a global level..even if the product is wine. That’s the story my guest Suzanne Mustacich tells in Thirsty Dragon: China's Lust for Bordeaux and the Threat to the World's Best Wines. It’s the story of China's quest to become a global wine power, France's Bordeaux region seeking to hang on to past glory and China expanding its tentacles into places like the Napa Valley. My conversation with Suzanne Mustacich:
How many of the candidates that are running for President today, have the depth of character and ideas that, if they were to be elected, we still might be talking about them, studying them and being surprised by them, 150 years after their death? The answer is probably none. That is certainly not the case with Abraham Lincoln. 150 years after his death, people like esteemed Lincoln scholar Harold Holzer are still plowing the depths of Lincoln's convictions and portraying what he accomplished. Convictions and ideas that are, in spite of the best efforts of Lincoln’s own party today, still part of the fabric of America. Holzer displays these ideas in A Just and Generous Nation: Abraham Lincoln and the Fight for American Opportunity My conversation with Harold Holzer:
We live in this world usually someplace between the mundane and the absurd. But regardless of which, it's one that is probably organized to the Nth degree. Our technology is almost embedded in our personal DNA, in order to keep us on task. But is all this structure an impediment to creativity? And if so, where might we get back to our youthful sense of play, of wonder and of discovery. For some, it’s in travel and visiting strange places and the strange surroundings that take us out of ourselves. For others, and often closer to home, it can be found in art; in what Alve Noe refers to as the boredom of art. Art that unlike so much of culture, goes beyond surface and draws us in, sometimes to see the world in a brush stroke, a dance step, a well crafted sentence, or in a grain of sand. Alve Noe takes this discussion of art to a new level in his book Strange Tools: Art and Human Nature My conversation with Alva Noe:
We think we know a lot about American history. About the events that shaped the formation of the republic. And while that knowledge might get you an audition for Jeopardy, at its roots sometimes, it's also true that everything we think we know is wrong. Essentially what that means, and maybe it's even a factor in what’s gone so wrong today, is that we tend to know only surface. That when we drill down to historical events, only then do we find that the facts, the nuances, the subtlety and the psychology are what really matters. This is what really makes up the historical ripples we are living with today. This is the story of the Salem Witch Trials, as told now by Pulitzer Prize winning historian Stacy Schiff. She won the Pulitzer for her book Cleopatra, and now she pivots to 1692 Salem to bring us The Witches: Salem, 1692 My conversation with Stacy Schiff:
It used to be, during the dark days of the Cold War, watching the Kremlin and trying to read meaning into every nuance, tea leaf and coming and going, was elevated to an art form. Today, it’s the same for the Fed. Every meeting, every utterance of the Fed Chair and Fed Governors is parsed and analyzed and poured over for some hint of what the Fed will do and what it might mean for the markets, for the economy and for the politics of the country. But it wasn’t always so. In the aftermath of the 1907 financial panic, Congress created the Federal Reserve. They did so for reasons not dissimilar to the state of our transitional economy today. But they did so in a spirit of compromise and national unity that seems a very far cry from anything that might happen today. Putting all of this in its proper perspective is Roger Lowenstein in his new book America's Bank: The Epic Struggle to Create the Federal Reserve My conversation with Roger Lowenstein:
We’ve seen that different cities often emerge as the the center of their times. This has been true from the Greek city states, through the Roman Empire and right up until the present, here in America. It seems that every major cultural, social and political movement of the modern era seems to be anchored in its own place. New York became a kind of capital of the 50’s. In the 60’s places like San Francisco and Berkeley were the center of gravity. New York and to a certain extent L.A. seemed to launch the post war economy of the 70’s. Washington seemed to dominate the 80’s and with the decline of New York, it seemed like the 80’s would belong to L.A. But something happened. Something that moved the locus of the knowledge economy to San Francisco and the Bay Area. What happened and why is at the core of the years of research done by Michael Storper and his colleagues and put forth in their book The Rise and Fall of Urban Economies: Lessons from San Francisco and Los Angeles. My conversation with Michael Storper:
Everything starts somewhere. Even very bad things. Many of the tremors we face today had their roots in the Ottoman Empire, in the run up to the First World War. In what’s come to be called the Armenian genocide. There we began to see the rise of Muslim extremism, the battle for post WWI borders in the Middle East, the plight of refugees, the competition between national and corporate interests, particularly big oil, the Israeli/Palestinian conundrum, and even acts of heroism in the face of seemingly improbable odds. All of these things had their roots 100 years ago in the first genocide of the 20th century. What we have forgotten is that for those that perpetrated it, there was a price to pay. A small band of brothers set out to avenge the death of the million-plus people killed in that Armenian Genocide. Now Eric Bogosian captures the essence of the story in Operation Nemesis: The Assassination Plot that Avenged the Armenian Genocide. My conversation with Eric Bogosian:
This Sunday over 50,000 people will run in the NYC Marathon. For many participants, part of the appeal is to be part of something larger and more personal than a Facebook group. For others it’s about achieving a personal best. But for a much smaller group of elite marathon runners, it’s about what once seemed the impossible dream...breaking the two hour mark for the 26 miles through the streets of New York. Why this goal is important, how long has it has hung over the sport and why is it now within reach? All these questions and more are part of Ed Ceasar’s book Two Hours: The Quest to Run the Impossible Marathon. My conversation with Ed Caesar:
Most of us will go into the hospital at some point. When we do, we might be subject to anesthesia, even for a minor procedures. What goes on while we're asleep is, at least to the patient, a complete mystery. At the same time, we look to the technology of medicine as the panacea to solve so many of our health problems. Yet when it goes wrong we get angry. Clearly, our emotional nexus with technology is out of balance with our intellectual understanding of it. In medicine, the price we pay, often with the simplest of procedures, is fear, alienation, confusion and a degree of appropriate paranoia. Few understand this better than bestselling novelist Dr. Robin Cook. He has used this imbalance to scare the bejesus out of us in his book like Cell, Nano, Coma, Cure, and Fever. Now in his latest work, Host, he once again walks us through the cost benefit analysis of medical technology falling into the wrong hands. My conversation with Robin Cook:
In the movie Broadcast News, William Hurt asks his colleague, as written by James L Brooks. “what do you do when your real life exceeds your dreams?” Aaron Altman, played by Albert Brooks tells him, “keep it to yourself.” Bestselling author Frederick Forsyth, has had a life that has far exceeded his own expectations. But instead of keeping it to himself, he has used it as the basis for fifteen books that have thrilled us, delighted us and taken us to places and situations that we may only dream about, but that Frederick Forsyth has touched. He tells all in his memoir The Outsider: My Life in Intrigue. My conversation with Frederick Forsyth:
In the desire to go to war, there is always the effort to sanitize warfare. Shock and Awe, Death from Above, are all about disconnecting man from the faces on the ground. It’s also about how the decisions are made to go to war. It's always easier when it's less about committing blood and treasure and more about technological prowess. Drones or Remote Piloted Aircraft are perhaps the ultimate manifestation of this attitude. A kid in Kansas or Nevada sits at controls and drones not only see the world, but also have the potential to apply remote control and sanitized devastation. These drones are here to stay. They are now a key part of the modern military and of counter-terrorism. Lt. Col. Mark McCurley in Hunter Killer: Inside America's Unmanned Air War,provides us a unique look at this key elements of military policies that didn't even exist 20 years ago. My conversation with Mark McCurley:
Before Dick Cheney, before Homeland Security, even before the Cold War itself, there existed forces within the US Government bent on shaping their own agenda for personal political gain, financial gain and perhaps worst of all, out of a self serving righteous belief in privilege and its exercise of power. During the dark days of WWII, Allen Dulles would would begin building, a national security apparatus, which would become centered at the the CIA, and which would grow exponentially during the Cold War and would ultimately expand its tentacle into to almost every aspect of American government. Even if it meant short circuiting the the key instruments of America’s democratic institutions. Now, with the help of recently released government documents, and personal diaries, investigative journalist David Talbot exposes Dulles and some of the CIA darkest secrets in The Devil's Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America's Secret Government My conversation with David Talbot:
The US seems to be giving up on training Syrian rebels. The Russians continue the bombing of ISIS targets, even while some of their missiles land in Iran. Refugees continue to flee from Syria. All while ISIS continues on the march, Palestinian protests turn more violent. The cauldron that is the Middle East continues to bubble. For a real and contemporaneous perspective we turn to author, journalist, esteemed Middle East foreign correspondent Charles Glass. My conversation with Charles Glass:
As a nation we have often faced existential crisis. The Civil War, the onset of the industrial revolution, the robber barons, the great depression, McCarthyism, the struggle for racial equality, assassination and the changes of the 60’s Each time, polarization and the depth of the crisis has led many to believe that the country would not survive in it’s current form. And yet it has. Today we face a similar time. Extremism is rampant, nativism has shown its ugly head, the economic divided threatens a new kind of civil war, racial tensions have flared, law enforcement is often unchecked, faith in the nation's operating system is at an all time low. Is this time different? Or just another of those crisis which we will come through even stronger. Or, as NY Times columnist David Brooks has said, will the laws of gravity simply return? My guest Andrew Schmookler believe that many of us do not fully understand nor appreciate or see what we are up against today. He makes his care in his new book What We're Up Against: The Destructive Force at Work in Our World - and How We Can Defeat It. My conversation with Andrew Schmookler:
Every great city has it’s defining era. Not always good, but certainly one that shapes its fortunes and reinforces its place in the urban pantheon. For New York it was perhaps the 50s, for Paris the mid 1920s, for San Francisco the ‘60s and for Hollywood, certainly the 1930s. For Detroit, the eighteen months from the fall of 1962, through the spring 1964 marked perhaps the apogee and the beginning of the downward arc of that once great city. A city that came to personify the American experience in the second half of the 20th century. Detroit at the time was the epicenter of music, racial strife, labor and of a middle class that now seems a bygone dream. Capturing that moment is Pulitzer Prize winning author and journalist, and Washington Post Associate Editor David Maraniss. He captures the essence of this period in Once in a Great City: A Detroit Story. My conversation with David Maraniss:
The lyrics say that “nobody walks in L.A.” That certainly has been true, in a city whose inhabitants were long hermetically sealed inside their cars...as if in a pneumatic tube shuttling from place to pace. L.A. was for a long time, a place where as John Didion said, “the entire quality of life accentuates it impermanence and unreliability.” Today’s Los Angeles is a vastly different place. A city of neighborhoods and of Freeways; a city both urban and suburban, a kind of hybrid that sits at the cutting edge America’s movement toward cities, while still trying to hang on to its suburban trappings. In short, L.A. just might be some kind of cultural or urban capital of the 21st century Few appreciate and understand the city more than former L.A. Times book editor David Ulin. His new book is Sidewalking: Coming to Terms with Los Angeles. My conversation with David Ulin:
We all know the old bromide, you can’t fight City Hall. Well imagine how tough it must be to take on the US Navy. Especially if the cause is about the condition of whales, and those who are fighting are an environmental lawyer and a Navy whistleblower. Many of you have probably heard parts of this story, in news reports, and on 60 Minutes. But now Joshua Horwitz, in his book War of the Whales: A True Story tells the full story of this David vs. Goliath battle, of the military industrial complex vs. environment. My conversation with Joshua Horwitz:
Hollywood is a like sports or politics. Each generation gives us stars and personalities that both reflect the culture and tenor of the times and also transcend it in ways that pave the way for the next generation. By the 1970’s Hollywood had seen a lot of agents. Names that you’ve seldom hear of. Men like Lew Wasserman, Myron Selznick, Swifty Lazer and Abe Lastfogel shaped the lives and careers of celebrities. And while by the 70’s woman were emerging in the more cloistered world of New York literary agents, one woman would put her mark on Hollywood in a way that came to define an era. One that combined the glitz and glamor of early Hollywood, with the informality and countercultural fervor of the 70’s. That woman was Sue Mengers. She the subject of biographer Brian Kellow’s new book Can I Go Now?: The Life of Sue Mengers, Hollywood's First Superagent. My conversation with Brian Kellow:
The world today is a dangerous, unstable and violent place. And while Stephen Pinker tells us that today is less violent than at any other time in human history, images from Africa and the Middle East would seem to belie that. But when we look at places that have improved, in Africa, in Latin America and even in the West, we see that woman and the empowerment of women have played a key role in the transformation to a more civil world. What does this mean, why has it happened, and what does it portent for solutions to those places that still seemed mired in hatred and violence. Sally Armstrong has spent her career covering wars and global struggles and now examines this nexus between global progress and the empowerment of woman in Uprising: A New Age Is Dawning for Every Mother's Daughter. My conversation with Sally Armstrong:
We see today in the debate regarding immigration, a little bit about the the ways that falsehood and mass hysteria, mixed with doses of fear and change, can create a movement. Back in the 1980’s a combination of delayed reaction to the 60’s, to the rise of woman, to the offshoots of feminism, coupled with the rise of the Christian Right and the changing American family, gave us a suburban fear that went beyond anything conjured up by Yates or Cheever. One of the ways that it manifested itself was in what became the longest criminal trial in US history, known as the McMartin preschool case. Richard Beck takes us back to that time in his new book We Believe the Children: A Moral Panic in the 1980s My conversation with Richard Beck:
For reasons that are both complicated and simplistic, immigration has become the issues of our time. Fifty years ago the passage of the Immigration and Naturalization Act put in place the system we have today. That system has helped make us a nation of of immigrants and set the stage for the diverse Asian/American population in the US today. Erika Lee takes us through the history of that population in The Making of Asian America: A History My conversation with Erika Lee:
Imagine one movement the combines every contemporary progressive social issue; race, immigration, Civil Rights, the labor movement, gender discrimination. It may sound on the surface like the ultimate impossibility. In fact, they all did converge in the movement for the rights of Domestic Workers. From the 1950’s to today, the movement in support of workers who are the most invisible, whom labor organizations thought could not be organized, is the story of an amazing group of women overcoming unique obstacle in a struggle that had much larger ripples on the social landscape. Premilla Nadasen takes us through the history of an amazing group of African American women who built a movement. She tells their story in Household Workers Unite: The Untold Story of African American Women Who Built a Movement. My conversation with Premilla Nadasen:
In spite of a rough stock market and a bumpy economy there is one business, not a tech company, that has grown revenues from $229 million in 1999 to over 800 million today. That is the business that is the ten largest programs in College football. It’s a business where the CEO’s, the coaches, are mostly part of the one percent. They earn millions annually and even worse than most big businesses, their employees work for almost nothing. The world of College football specifically and College athletics in general has grown out of all proportion to its real value. This is the world we begin to watch this week and that Gilbert Gaul writes about in Billion-Dollar Ball: A Journey Through the Big-Money Culture of College Football. My conversation with Gilbert Gaul:
I’ve often told the story of a newly minted teacher considering her first job. She had several offers, but in the end there were two that were intriguing to her. One in a difficult and struggling inner city school district; the other in a very wealthy, upper middle class suburban enclave. She said that she felt like it was a decision between difficult students or difficult parents. In that choice, we come to understand one of the dilemmas of today's educational system. The extremes between parents who simply don’t have the time or knowledge to engage in their kid's education, or parents like those portrayed as Tiger Moms, or the Upper East Side moms of Primates of Park Avenue, who take helicopter parenting to a new extreme. Worse yet, it generally reaches its apogee at precisely the time in Middle School when kids could most benefit from personal responsibility, social emotional development and yes, even owning their failure. This is what NY Times and Atlantic contributor Jessica Lahey writes about in The Gift of Failure: How the Best Parents Learn to Let Go So Their Children Can Succeed. My conversation with Jessica Lahey:
Through the efforts of both critics and audiences, we’ve come to understand that “genre films,” are just as significant as mainstream films. Few mastered the genre of horror and suspense to the degree that Wes Craven did. From his first, LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT (1972) to the 1984 classic NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET, Craven infused intelligence into all of his work. Back in 1999 I spoke to Craven about his work, and the publication of his first novel. Here is my conversation with Wes Craven:
How do we navigate the world in spite of change? It's one of the central tenants of modern society. Over and over again, Oliver Sacks used the experience and metaphor of debilitating conditions to explain the amazing resilience of the human mind. A resiliency he himself exhibited right up until the end of his life. I had many chances to talk with Sacks over the years, the last was in November of 2012. It was about his book The Mind's Eye. Inspired in part by his own experience with the cancer that would take him from us. My November 2012 conversation with Oliver Sacks:
The phrase “The Perfect Storm” has come to mean a lot of things. Most notably the unique and singular coming together of disparate forces to mark a disaster. In that context the City of New Orleans experienced the perfect storm not just from the meteorological confluence of isobars that would create hurricane Katrina, but in the impact and aftermath of a city torn by racial strife, economic division, identity politics, poor management and even poorer public policy. It it’s true that one should never let a crisis go to waste, many within New Orleans did not. In Katrina they saw an opportunity to remake the city anew. But in whose image and at the cost of whose future? This is the New Orleans that Gary Rivlin captures in Katrina: After the Flood My conversation with Gary Rivlin:
When we think about the iconography and the history of contemporary policing and urban criminal justice what comes to mind? Sixty years ago it was Dragnet and Joe Friday. Later, everything from Adam 12 to the work of Joe Wambaugh. Then their was the Rodney King beating and subsequent riots; the OJ trial, helicopters employed by police and chases, both high and slow speed. What they all have in common is the City of Los Angeles. A city that has been on the cutting edge of all that is right and wrong with urban policing. Long time investigative journalist Joe Domanick writes about this checkered history in Blue: The LAPD and the Battle to Redeem American Policing My conversation with Joe Dominick:
Even today, fifteen months before Election Day, we are in full political campaign season. And while we hear a lot of loose talk about issues, it’s easy to forget that politics is also about both the art of governing, and sometimes doing so in the real world of compromise and possibilities. Even with all the problems of our healthcare system, Doctors usually go into medicine because that have calling; a desire to help people. While it's’ hard to believe sometimes, many politicians also have a calling and go into it because they have a desire to use the levers of policy to make the world a better place. For Missouri Senator Claire McCaskill, this is true. Since Missouri became state, 194 years ago, she is the first woman to serve as its United States Senator and has just written her memoir Plenty Ladylike. My conversation with Senator Claire McCaskill:
One of the ongoing conundrums in sports is whether it’s about the team or the individual? Back in the early days of the NFL, Pete Rozelle believed passionately, that in a game played only once a week, the team was the key to marketing. In Basketball, former Commissioner David Stern saw the value of individual stars as the draw for fans. For Baseball it’s been a mixed bag. Even for iconic teams like the Dodgers or the Giants, the question of team vs. the individual is hotly debated. For the Dodgers, at least the current team and its current ownership group, the answer is clear. With players like Yasiel Puig, Clayton Kershaw, Hanley Ramirez, Adrian Gonzalez, Josh Beckett and Carl Crawford, stars outshine the team. The individual player is king, second only to the dollars that are being paid. Looking at this team, a team that was in bankruptcy just three years ago, as a result of a a messy divorce, is my guest sports journalist and former ESPN reporter Molly Knight. She takes a hard look at this team in her new book The Best Team Money Can Buy: The Los Angeles Dodgers' Wild Struggle to Build a Baseball Powerhouse My conversation with Molly Knight:
We have developed what amounts to an addiction/industrial complex. Each year billions are spent, in both public and private dollars, to treat, cure, and mitigate addiction. But is it working? Are today’s so called “best practices,” having measurable, metric driven results? If not, what might we be doing wrong? Dr. Marc Lewis believes that the current approach of treating addiction as a disease, lies at the heart of our repeated failures and frustrations. In The Biology of Desire: Why Addiction Is Not a Disease, he walks us through the lives of five people, who have journeyed in and out of addiction and show what we might do differently. My conversation with Dr. Marc Lewis:
As we debate the ins and out of nuclear proliferation, on editorial pages and in the drawing rooms of Georgetown; in the halls of Congress and in the boiler room political operations of AIPAC, it's worth taking note, on this 70th anniversary of the dawn of the nuclear age, of the full impact of what we are actually talking about. As powerful as the bomb on Hiroshima was, it was the second bomb, three days later, on Nagasaki that was even more devastating. Today, in the shadow of talks about other nations joining the nuclear club, we both note and remember the voices of atomic bomb survivors. Susan Southard in Nagasaki: Life After Nuclear War describes the events and the aftermath of August 9th, when a nuclear device, detonated over Nagasaki, changed life on Earth forever, even as U.S. policies at the time kept the suffering hidden. My conversation with Susan Southard:
As we debate immigration, we still always look favorably on the “Dreamers.” The young undocumented students thriving here in America. It’s easy to romanticize that experience and even draw conclusion from the success of individuals. The greater challenge is to look at those successes and see what real world lessons we might draw that can tell us more about success and failure and social mobility here in the U.S. Dan-el Padilla Peralta is perhaps the penultimate success story. Raised in New York's shelters, he would ultimately graduate from Princeton, Oxford and Stanford and is currently a Mellon Research Fellow at Columbia. His memoir is Undocumented: A Dominican Boys Odyssey from a Homeless Shelter to the Ivy League. My conversation with Dan-el Padilla Peralta:
Today when we think about the publishing industry, we usually think about the ways that it is changing to accommodate the digital world. E-books, E-readers, cloud storage and white backgrounds dominate the conversation. But believe it or not, there have been other times when the publishing industry has been rocked by fundamental change and when that change was met with fervent resistance. One of those times was eighty years ago when an executive name Allen Lane, had this idea for something called “paperback books.” Books that would be more accessible to the masses. Available not just in bookstores, but in train stations, newsstands and and even the corner grocer. That fundamental idea by Lane, has been a part of all our lives and of our reading and learning experience. It also became the basis for the company that he started, Penguin Books. One of the most iconic names in publishing today. An imprint that today is the flagship of Penguin Random House and on this very day marks its eightieth anniversary. Looking back and looking forward at the publishing industry is Patrick Nolan, VP, Editor in Chief and Associate Publisher at Penguin Books. My conversation with Patrick Nolan:
I’m often the first to criticize the way in which we are too quick to put things in political terms. Too often the rush to label “red” or “blue” America gets us into trouble. But one aspect seems to hold. We are bluer politically as we get closer to water. Look at any map and coastal America seems to have a different mindset. Perhaps it is because water and proximity to water make a difference. That it impacts us in profound ways that stem from our evolutionary biology and extend to health, happiness and a more holistic view of the world. Wallace J. Nichols has devoted himself to understand man's connection to the water. He explore it in Blue Mind: The Surprising Science That Shows How Being Near, In, On, or Under Water Can Make You Happier, Healthier, More Connected, and Better at What You Do. My conversation with Wallace J. Nichols:
We are told, almost from childhood, that we have a legal system and a government of laws and not of men. Yet it is a system created by man and subject to the biases, frailties and inherent actions of human behavior. Yet from such a system we often dispense the most draconian of punishments in the name of all of us. At a time when even member of the Supreme Court of the United States talk of the Founders intent, and of originalism, a whole body of modern scientific evidence suggests that we need to be looking at our criminal justice system in whole news ways... Law Professor Adam Benforado thinks we essentially need to bring “creative destruction” to one of the foundations of a free society. He outlines the problem and his plans in Unfair: The New Science of Criminal Injustice My conversation with Adam Benforado:
To about the same degree that Captain Renault was “shocked, just shocked” to find gambling going on Casablanca, that’s how shocked many of us are to find that politicians and business leaders lie to us. Whether it’s the latest candidate promising to make the world a better place, or Coca Cola offering the Real Thing, the idea of marketing and even misrepresentation has been around before spin doctors, and long before Don Draper. From the days on the Savanna when the caveman may have allowed his buddy to be eaten by a lion, because he coveted his woman, to the endless promise of the Apple Watch...we know we are often lied to. But does matter? Isn’t the idea of a free society the ability to allow us to have the information to be informed, to make our own decisions? And today, with creative destruction everywhere, when buyers know more about the price of a car than the salesman, when transpiration can be ordered and altered with the click of a mouse, aren't we better off? Talk radio host and author Ethan Bearman, whose new book is Liars & Whores: How Big Government and Big Business Are Working to Save Their Own Assets, Not Yours,is not so sure. My conversation with Ethan Bearman:
We all remember Ben Franklin flying his kite, or Alexander Graham Bell calling for Watson, even Jonas Salk working quietly in his laboratory. Today science, or at least big science, is a global effort. It involves governments, private enterprise, universities and vast institutional support. Think about the International Space Station, the Large Hadron Collider, and even before all of that, the Manhattan Project and even the development of the Internet itself. All are part of what Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Michael Hiltzik writes about in Big Science: Ernest Lawrence and the Invention that Launched the Military-Industrial Complex. My conversation with Michael Hiltzik:
As we hit the half way mark in the Baseball season, how many players are injured, how many are burnt out already? Are we creating a softer group of players or is 162 games in 180 days, just too many games? Washington Baseball writer Barry Svrluga explores this in The Grind: Inside Baseball's Endless Season. My conversation with Barry Svrluga:
We have always studied other cultures so that perhaps we could better understand our own. The realm of cultural anthropology has provided us keen insights into our evolutionary nature and why we do the strange things we do, as human beings. Wednesday Martin, has used the tools of cultural anthropology to zero in on one very narrow subgroup. The tiny percentage of the “One Percent” that reside in and around Park Avenue, on the Upper East Side of New York. Her book Primates of Park Avenue, has gotten a great deal of attention, both for its subject matter, its research and its authenticity. But there is no question that broadly, it accurately reflects a time, a place and a culture that says something about our collective character in 2015. My conversation with Wednesday Martin:
Listen to any of the Republican candidates and it’s clear that the culture war issues that have driven so much political debates over the past 50+ years, are still going on. Our political discourse is has polarized as ever. Even to the point where we’ve come to accept that you are never going to change anyones mind about social issues. So when we do talk, when we do try and debate, we simply talk past each other. It’s as if complicated personal issues are being discussed in a boiler factory. For no other subject is this more true, than the subject of abortion. My guest Aspen Baker, thinks there is a better way. A way to discuss perhaps the most contentious of all issues, the the subject of abortion, and use that discussion as a model to discuss other contentious issues. Her organization EXHALE has adopted Pro-Voice as its point of view. My conversation with Aspen Baker:
Most of us know the legendary story of the group of blind men who touch an elephant to learn what it is like. Each one feels a different part, but only one part, such as the side or the tusk or the tail.. They then compare notes and learn that they are in complete disagreement about what they experienced This is the story of Richard Nixon. So much has been written about Nixon. Much of it has come in waves. There was the period after his resignation, of the bad Nixon. Then after his death, the better Nixon. Now writers, journalists and historians are trying to tie all the threads together. Perhaps Bill Clinton put it best in his eulogy for Nixon, when he said that “the day of judging President Nixon on anything less than his entire life and career must come to a close.” Two very distinguished journalists, Evan Thomasand Tim Weiner, have, almost simultaneously, penned new books about Nixon. Evan Thomas has written and Tim Weiner One Man Against the World: The Tragedy of Richard NixonBeing Nixon: A Man Divided I recently had the opportunity to speak with both of them.
My conversation with Evan Thomas
Most of us know the legendary story of the group of blind men who touch an elephant to learn what it is like. Each one feels a different part, but only one part, such as the side or the tusk or the tail.. They then compare notes and learn that they are in complete disagreement about what they experienced This is the story of Richard Nixon. So much has been written about Nixon. Much of it has come in waves. There was the period after his resignation, of the bad Nixon. Then after his death, the better Nixon. Now writers, journalists and historians are trying to tie all the threads together. Perhaps Bill Clinton put it best in his eulogy for Nixon, when he said that “the day of judging President Nixon on anything less than his entire life and career must come to a close.” Two very distinguished journalists, Evan Thomas and Tim Weiner, have, almost simultaneously, penned new books about Nixon. Evan Thomas has written and Tim Weiner One Man Against the World: The Tragedy of Richard NixonBeing Nixon: A Man Divided I recently had the opportunity to speak with both of them.
My conversation with Tim Weiner
Long before Steve Jobs and Jony Ives bridged the divide between design and technology, before Target began selling Michael Graves tea kettles, Charles and Ray Eames made the connection between design, public perception and function. They created designs for furniture, architecture, toys and film and in so doing set the stage for much of the way we view our world today. They were visionaries, who were deeply grounded in the history, who understood that modern was also rooted in the classic. Daniel Ostroff is a world authority on Charles and Ray Eames. His latest and perhaps seminal work is just out entitled An Eames Anthology: Articles, Film Scripts, Interviews, Letters, Notes, and Speeches. My conversation with Dan Ostroff:
We live today in what many consider the age of technology. Everyday there are new apps, new ways in which incumbency is disrupted. But very few of the creators or inventors of today, understand the long view, or the way they are changing the world. Steve Jobs understood. Elon Musk understands. Maybe even Mark Zuckerberg does. Part of that understanding come from education. From seeing the world beyond themselves and their work, and seeing their place in world. During another fertile period of innovation in America, as we moved from the 19th to the 20th Century, the same was true. Sitting high atop the pantheon of those that would seek to change the world then, were Wilbur and Orville Wright. With the support of their family, their bicycle shop was perhaps the ultimate tech startup of the time. Wilbur and Orville Wright and their family are subject of a new biography The Wright Brothers, by multiple award winning historian David McCullough. My conversation with David McCullough:
Today boys want to grow up to be professional athletes, or tech billionaires. But there was time when being a secret agent seemed like just about the coolest thing to do. Whether it was the literary exploits of Bond or Bourne, or the real story Philby, or the moral twilight of le Carre, spycraft, particularly during the days of the Cold War, held a magical appeal. It certainly did for Naveed Jamali. He dreamt of being in Naval Intelligence and it inspired him to become a real life double agent, albeit ending in the parking lot of Hooters. His is both a very American story but also an international story Naveed tells his story along with Ellis Henican in their book How to Catch a Russian Spy: The True Story of an American Civilian Turned Double Agent. My conversation with Navid Jamali and Ellis Henican:
There is always someone that leads us into the future. Someone whose vision and entrepreneurship combine to make the next big idea, the next big thing. This has been true from Franklin, to Edison, from From Henry Ford to Thomas Watson, from Bill Gates to Steve Jobs and today Elon Musk may very well be the inheritor of that mantel. Electric cars, commercial space travel, high speed transportation and even new forms of education, are all part of the vision that Musk sees; and and his vision is on its way to become our reality. Bloomberg's Ashlee Vance has written a new biograph,y Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future. My conversation with Ashlee Vance:
Many of you, I’m sure, think you’d love the idea of seeing your life portrayed in movies or television. But imagine if you knew nothing about it. If one day, you saw an ad for a TV show, and you, or at least your life, was the central character. Would you be scared, shocked, angry, a little excited. Cleary Wolters experienced all of thee things. As she saw her life in prison portrayed as Alex Vaus in ORANGE IS THE NEW BLACK. Originally portrayed as Nora Jansen in Piper Kerman’s book, her life would transform again as a result of her story becoming part of an entertainment and cultural juggernaut. Now Cleary Wolters takes her star turn as a writer and tells her story in her memoir Out of Orange: A Memoir. My conversation with Cleary Wolters:
In the world of families, all eyes are on same sex marriage. In the Courts, in Statehouses, and in the political arena. But on the ground, in the households and families where people live, this is just one manifestation of the change in family structures and family relationships. As such, the world of law and particularly family law, has changed. The way in which these new, creative and ever changing familial bonds are structured, and the complex feedback loop between the legal and loving nature of these relationships, creates whole new ways that we seek legal stability in the face of social and cultural change. A the apex of this effort are people like my guest, Law Professor Martha Ertman, whose book Love's Promises: How Formal and Informal Contracts Shape All Kinds of Families looks at the way the law is trying to stay one step ahead of the social change. My conversation with Martha Ertman:
Today we have talking heads and pundits. But back in the second half of the 20th Century we had writers and public intellectuals, whose ideas, attitudes and personalities became a part of our public discourse. Two of those that were the touchstones of the times were William F.Buckley and Norman Mailer. Both wrote about history, about sex, about politics and sometimes all at once. They were the guests you wanted to have at any dinner party. They were also, each in his own way, bad boys of American letter. Buckley with his rapier wit and insults, pushed away as many people as admired him. Mailer with his pugilistic persona, further showed that with complex figures, the public surfaces were only part of the story. Kevin Schultz gives us a kind of conjoined biography of the two in Buckley and Mailer: The Difficult Friendship That Shaped the Sixties. My conversation with Kevin Schultz:
If we have problems in America, the solution is usually simple, check with the Founding Fathers. Can’t figure out modern health care, check with the Founders. Can’t deal with modern weaponry on America's streets, check in with the nation's Founders. Need to improve education for our kids..maybe a trip to Mt. Rushmore will solve it? Need to fix our airports, increase cancer and genetic research, or fund manned space travel..no problem. Just check in with Jefferson and Hamilton. Obviously a laughable idea.... but in fact this is exactly what we seem to do!! First of all our Founders, wise as they were, did not speak with a single voice, and they lived in a world that is barely recognizable from our own. So why are they relevant to every debate in America? Mostly because it’s a way for politicians to gain political traction, without having to marshall real debate or real solutions. This is the confusion that David Sehat explains in The Jefferson Rule: How the Founding Fathers Became Infallible and Our Politics Inflexible. My conversation with David Sehat:
Many years ago, Harvard Business School perfected something called the “case study method.” A new educational innovation that presented the challenges confronting companies, nonprofits, and government organizations—complete with the constraints and incomplete information found in real business issues. Students learned that through the process of exchanging perspectives, countering and defending points, and building on each other's ideas, they became adept at analyzing issues, exercising judgment, and making difficult decisions. Business journalist Sean Silcoff, in his new book, Losing the Signal: The Untold Story Behind the Extraordinary Rise and Spectacular Fall of BlackBerry, conducts his own case study. He reminds us that in real business situations, unlike business school, there are no simple solutions; personalities matter and, and he shows how easy it is to go from leader to irrelevance in an economy that values creative destruction far more than the status quo. My conversation with Sean Silcoff:
It was Churchill who reminded us that history is written by the victors. Well this is as true of religious history as it is of military, political and geopolitical history. Do you ever wonder how our religious and political divides of today came to be? How it is that the Republican party became a vehicle for the notion of America as a Christian nation? We’ve all been feed the story that it’s somehow part of originalism. We’ve all been been told that America, as conceived by our founders, was John Winthrop’s Shining City on the Hill. Even our leaders today seem to succumb to that mythology. But the fact is that the idea of America as Christian nation is a relatively recent construct. One that came both out of the Cold War and of business opposition to Roosevelt and the New Deal. This unholy alliance between Christianity and the Chamber of Commerce would continue to shape our politics and our government right up until today. Now Princeton Professor Kevin Kruse tells the story in One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America. My conversation with Kevin Kruse:
We all remember the youthful spiritual song Dem Bones, about the angle bone being connected to the shin bone, the thigh bone being connected to the hip bone, etc. What the song didn’t include is the connection between the stomach and the brain. And it’s not just about what you eat. It's about the vast array of bacteria and microorganism that live in your gut, and the impact they have on how your brain works. Dr. David Perlmutter, the author of the bestselling GRAIN BRAIN, now takes us inside this interplay between intestinal microbes and the brain in Brain Maker: The Power of Gut Microbes to Heal and Protect Your Brain for Life. My conversation with Dr. David Perlmutter:
Everyday it seem the world speeds up. The advances of technology, the need to make faster decisions, multitasking and a sometimes dizzying array of options, are all part of the creative destruction that is making the world a more efficient an in many ways, a better and freer place. On the other hand human evolution is a slow, deliberate process. So, to what extent have our brains evolutionary ability kept pace with 21st century life? To what extent is this true cognitive dissonance acting as a kind of governor on our ability to do our best in this modern world and in turn what impact is it having on how we treat the world around us. These are some of the ideas explored by the Director of the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at UCLA, Dr. Peter Whybrow, in his new book The Well-Tuned Brain: Neuroscience and the Life Well Lived. My conversation with Dr. Peter Whybrow:
In talking to someone recently about my guest, former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell, they went into a bit of tirade of criticism of him, saying that he was “just one of those Democrats they trot out to make things go away, to sweep things under rug.” My friend went on to say, “it proves that it's all just one big party.” Well the other side of that same coin is that Senator George Mitchell, through his skill as a negotiator and a listener, can find ways for people of opposing views to get along. That rather than the polarization of today, or a political world where everyone is an outlier, there are still ways to find common ground. That often, when no one is entirely happy, that’s exactly when we know the best compromise solution has been reached. Yes, compromise. Something that’s become a dirty word today, but used to represent the highest and best accomplishment of a skilled negotiator. Amidst the clanging of a political system that sounds more like a boiler factory, Senator Mitchell has written a memoir The Negotiator, that reminds us of both of a time gone by and a vision for what still might be. My conversation with Senator George Mitchell:
It has often been conventional wisdom that the military is always fighting current wars, based on lessons learned from the last war. That’s why we used centralized WW2 tactics in Vietnam, and then turned around and used the lessons of Vietnam in Iraq. But the fact is that today there is a whole new breed to military tacticians and strategists whose ideas come not from the last war, but from the creative destruction of places like Silicon Valley and and our most advanced and cutting edge business schools. Ideas that eschew top down, large organizational command and control and instead respond to the need to collaborate, be nimble, and embrace a team oriented approach to management. In today's military much of the movement in this direction has come from General Stanley McChrystal and his team. As the leader of the Joint Special Operation Command, this new approach was essential in fighting an enemy who itself was decentralized. But It was an approach that had to first break down traditional silos, rethink the link between communications and command, create a flatter organization amidst a culture that was build on top down thinking, and bring flexibility to an institution that revered tradition. All of these are ideas also apply to business. Now General McChrystal and his team at CrossLead, including co-founder David Silverman, have combined these ideas and are applying them everyday. They share them in Team of Teams: New Rules of Engagement for a Complex World My conversation with Co-Author David Silverman:
We are a culture obsessed with youth. We are told that youth is wasted on the young, but we do everything in our power to stay young. Growing up is seen as giving up. We are told that with each passing year, doors close behind and head of us. In short, youth is and has been the foundational cultural idea of the West for almost half a century. From the 60’s mantra of “never trust anyone over 30,” to to today when boomers are being pushed out by millennials. Given the negative light cast on maturity, why would anyone every want to to defy Peter Pan, and ever grow up. These are some of the questions that philosopher Susan Neiman asks in Why Grow Up?: Subversive Thoughts for an Infantile Age My conversation with Susan Neiman:
It sometimes seem that every generation has its disease. In earlier generations it was Tuberculosis, in the 40’s and 50’s the fear and the scourge of Polio gripped the nation. In the 80’s and 90’s, the fear and reality of AIDS overwhelmed the national consciousness. When we look at these diseases...the death tolls from them, the way they were perceived, the medical mystery, the research, the treatment and the movement towards a cure...we learn a great deal, not just about the march of medicine, but about the culture of the particular time. We see how disease evolves and what it says about our collective character. That’s the world that my Dr. Susan Ball writes about in Voices in the Band: A Doctor, Her Patients, and How the Outlook on AIDS Care Changed from Doomed to Hopeful My conversation with Dr. Susan Ball:
Someone once wrote that happiness is serious business. But should happiness be a goal in and of itself, or is it simply a construct for achieving what we really desire, and helping us in finding our pace in the world? Woody Allen in Annie Hall, saw the world divided only into the “horrible,” and the “miserable.” What kind of a construct is that? Certainly not the one laid out by philosopher Frederic Lenoir in Happiness: A Philosopher's Guide. My conversation with Frederic Lenoir:
Nietzsche said “that which doesn't kill us, makes us stronger.” Little did anyone know at the time that those words have a powerful psychological basis. Everyday we hear about trauma. About people surviving horrible tragedy to themselves and to their loved ones. And we all wonder how do they go forward. We know for example that the incidence of divorce, after the death of a child, is well over 50%. We know that the trauma of war and combat can take years, if not decades, to come to grips with. We see the horrors of genocide, tragedies like 9/11 and Oklahoma City and we wonder how to people cope and why, even in the face of such horror, so some people thrive and come out stronger. Or in the words of Hemingway, “the world breaks everyone, and afterwards some are stronger in broken places.” This is the phenomenon that my guest David Feldman and Lee Daniel Kravetz look at in their new book Supersurvivors: The Surprising Link Between Suffering and Success. My conversation with David Feldman & Lee Daniel Kravetz:
For years now, Sir Ken Robinson has been tirelessly explaining that conformity in education does not work. That it is the enemy not only of creativity, but of an authentic life. But understanding the problem, even articulating it as brilliantly as Sir Ken Robinson has, in his Ted Talk, viewed over 32 million times, his book The Element, and in his other books and lectures, is only half the battle. The other half is to define and design the kind of 21st Century schools that can achieve this. In his new work Creative Schools: The Grassroots Revolution That's Transforming Education, he argues for an end to our outmoded industrial educational system and proposes a highly personalized, organic approach that draws on today’s technological and professional resources to engage all students, develop their innate curiosity and love of learning, and enable them to face the real challenges ahead and feel at home in the world they will inherit. My conversation with Sir Ken Robinson:
Earlier this month most of you completed your taxes. Probably either you had someone else do it, or you spent hours navigating the complexity of the Federal tax code. Perhaps that tax code is the apotheosis of complexity...with the possible exception of booking air travel. On the other hand, if we look at Silicon Valley, it’s filled with examples of companies that have figured out how to do a limited number of things, do them well and create minimal rules around it. In between is the vast landscape of culture and business which is continuously tilting from one side or the other. Always trying to find a footing that, in an increasingly complex world, makes their product or service or idea, simpler. Standing on the bridge of simplicity, particularly in the world of business has been Stanford Professor Kathleen Eisenhardt. Her new book is Simple Rules: How to Thrive in a Complex World My conversation with Kathleen Eisenhardt:
Back in 1995, Robert Putnam argued in his bestselling book, Bowling Alone, that civic life in America was declining. That we had reached a kind of apogee from things like the closing of the American mind, our culture of narcissism and the ideas of people like Ayn Rand. The payoff from increased suburbanization also added to the general shift away from engaging with people, that were not exactly like us. Since then, for the past twenty years, we’ve added technology, changes in the nature of work, globalization, the influence of money and political polarization. Today, the proverbial chickens have come home to roost. We are more socially and class divided, more likely only to send time with people like ourselves, and money and economics are the ultimate determinant of success. At the turn of the last Century, as we moved from an agrarian to an industrial society, we saw a major shift in values, as we realized that shared values and shared success benefited everyone. Today, at the turn of this Century, as industrialization gave way to our brain powered economy, exactly the opposite seems to be happening. Our kids today seem to be more siloed than ever. Their future and upward mobility more predetermined than ever before. This is the world that Robert Putnam looks at in his remarkable new book Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis' My conversation with Robert Putnam:
For years we’ve had just one image of the drug wars. Images conjured up from movies like the Godfather or Scarface, or reading about the LA battles between the Bloods and the Crips. But drugs, like everything else, are subject to the pressures and demands of the free market. And creative destruction in the drug business has meant a drug dealer that is kinder and gentler. A dealer that appreciates the value of customer service, that understands that many drug users, particularly of painkillers and heroin, are respectable middle class citizens. According to the CDC, everyday 44 people in the United States die from an overdose of prescription painkillers, with many more addicts being created everyday. Together the unlikely combination of Doctors, all to eager and willing to prescribe and the boys of Xalisco, Mexico have created a perfect storm of addiction. Sam Quinones takes us to an Ohio town that is ground zero for the new heroin addiction, in Dreamland: The True Tale of America's Opiate Epidemic. My conversation with Sam Quinones:
Hundred of years ago if men wanted to settle a personal matter, even a political one, they picked up swords or guns and dueled their way to resolution. We all remember everything from d'Artagnan to the Gunfight at the OK Corral. Today there are many that seem to long for a return to those days. And while they are hardly condoned by respectable public standards, they still percolate within the heart of many men, for whom testosterone laden violence is still deeply programmed into their DNA. Jonathan Gottschall, a mild mannered English Professor, decides, like Kurtz to journey into the heart of darkness to understand what makes men, our society and our culture so prone to embracing violence If the first rule of Fight Club is not to talk about Fight Club, Jonathan Gottschall breaks that rule with The Professor in the Cage: Why Men Fight and Why We Like to Watch. My conversation with Jonathan Gottschall:
Those of us in California know all too well what’s its like to be living in the midst of a drought. Gov. Jerry Brown recently put in place restrictions demanding that urban water use be cut by 25%. Already the push back is coming. In a state where agriculture uses well over 50% of the state’s water, and only contributes 3% to the state’s economy, urban water users are becoming angry.There is much talk about pipelines, about desalination, and new technology to bring water to the parched desert that is much of California. All of this echoes a battle of an earlier time. A time, at the turn of the last century, when a man named William Mulholland would devise a plan to make the desert that was Los Angeles bloom and allow it to become the world class, cutting edge metropolis that it is today.Perhaps in these dry times, its instructive to look back to that previous period and see what we might learn. My conversation with Les Standiford about his book Water to the Angels: William Mulholland, His Monumental Aqueduct, and the Rise of Los Angeles
One of the big things missing in politics today is historical and institutional memory. The sense of collegiality, of institutional respect and the positive value of public policy, seem to have been replaced by gotcha politics, partisan positioning and the effort to achieve petty political advantage. Former Congressman Barney Frank has born witness to this change and he’s seen it from all sides. He helped usher in our renewed respect and acceptance for gays and lesbians in public life and fought in the civil right issue of our time, for gay marriage. He used the best of the public policy apparatus to bring forth financial reform, but he’s also seen the ways in which our political process has become mired and disconnected from the realities of 21st century life. He understands that principals must be part of politics and that “to legislate” is not a dirty word. He shares some of that life experience in his new memoir Frank: A Life in Politics from the Great Society to Same-Sex Marriage My conversation with Barney Frank:
Sometimes, even the most interesting of subjects are presented to us in more or less predictable or at least accepted ways. It’s rare that a work of ideas come to us in an truly imaginative form. But that is exactly what David Kishik has done with The Manhattan Project: A Theory of a City
As cities are becoming ever more important, as most of America and the world moves into urban spaces, understanding cities and their relationship to people is every more important. David Kishik is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the Institute for Liberal Arts and Interdisciplinary Studies at Emerson College My conversation with David Kishik:
There once was a time, back in the 18th and 19th centuries, when public shaming was the norm. The stockades, corporal punishment, torture marks and even the famed Scarlet Letter, all represented ways in which society could express it’s scorn. Today, with the power and reach of the Internet and social media, we are in a golden age of shaming. Monica Lewinsky’s recent Ted Talk on the subject has been viewed over 3 million times. But has this new age of shaming made us better? Has it reined in indecent behavior? Has it made us more just or just more paranoid? The long time radio host Don Imus used to say he’d like to ask guests, especially public figures, very tough questions in the hope that the answers just might ruin their careers. Today that can happen in the blink of a Tweet. Jon Ronson has been studying this recent phenomenon and he writes about it in So You've Been Publicly Shamed. My conversation with Jon Ronson:
The rate of voter participation in America continues to decline. Yes, some of it is our politics today. But another part of it just may be a failure to embrace the true education for citizenship. And it’s no wonder. Some of the fundamental ideas of what it means to be a citizen; the ability to reason, to analyze, and to articulate those views, has gone into remission. In our education today, we are obsessed with what is call STEM. Science Technology, Engineering and Math. All very important. But Lost in this obsession is Writing, History, Rhetoric, and the Arts. State Governors are defunding liberal arts programs in state universities, the President is putting down Art History, and educational institutions from K-12 to our universities, are responding to the pressures. There seems to be no regard for the fact that today’s technology will be tomorrows nostalgia and the ability to learn, think and write is forever. Taking up this cause of liberal education is Fareed Zakaria in his new book In Defense of a Liberal Education. He is one of our premiere foreign policy analysts, the host of Fareed Zakaria GPS on CNN and a columnist for the Washington Post. My conversation with Fareed Zakaria:
Everyday we hear and read more about how life is changing. Probably while we were sleeping last night, someone came up with an app that will alter the way we work or play or interact. It’s not surprising then that all of this profoundly impacts the careers we choose, the work we do and and what that work might look like in five, ten or fifteen years. So where to begin. If you are a young person starting out, or a making a mid career change, where is that Roadmap to that future.
Roadmap: The Get-It-Together Guide for Figuring Out What to Do with Your Life is the latest book by RoadTrip Nation and my guest Nathan Gebhard. It is based on the wisdom of more than 300 leaders. My conversation with Nathan Gebhard:
One of the dangers of our celebrity culture today, is that we tend to look at those who've attained that status, regardless of their field of endeavor, as fully formed human beings, whose life began and ended with the achieve that catapulted them into iconic status. Nothing can be further from the truth. In looking at the stories or biographies of these celebrities, on the one hand we have case studies that zero in a particular moment in time, or hagiographies that only heighten misperception. This has tended to be the case with Steve Jobs. He wasn’t born as the iconic founder and savior of Apple. He evolved over time and his skills, talents and personality either acted as receptors or antagonists to the moment and issues at hand. In looking at his story, we see the full magnitude of humanity that was, in and of itself, a part of his success. Rick Tetzeli tells that story in Becoming Steve Jobs: The Evolution of a Reckless Upstart into a Visionary Leader My conversation with Rick Tetzeli:
Technological change and creative destruction is everywhere. It’s changed the way we work, the way we interact with each other, the foundation of education, and not surprisingly the nature of warfare. We’ve all seen the media images of drones giving us perfect images; the perfect eye in the sky for perfectly targeted air strikes. As least that’s how it looks on Homeland, and 24 and the images for Abbottabad. The reality however is somewhat different. Less than clear images, imperfect targeting that kills civilians, increasingly complex and overpriced equipment and on the other hand, lower barriers to entry with respect to some drones, that will soon make them available to nations, groups or individuals everywhere. Soon surveillance, and even "death from above," will be on a par with package delivery It’s a scary future, one that Washington keeps pretty hidden, and one that the Washington editor of Harpers, Andrew Cockburn talks about in Kill Chain: The Rise of the High-Tech Assassins My conversation with Andrew Cockburn:
Conventional wisdom has long held that evolution is something that takes place slowly and over centuries. Concurrently we know that technological changes, and changes in the human condition have speeded up at a hyper multiple pace. We have often thought that much of our anxiety and even some fundamental social problems stem from that dissonance, from that disconnect between our external and our internal change. However, what if we ourselves, as a species, as generic templates, were really changing at the same time, in real time. Imagine that all the plates are spinning at rapid speed and in different directions. It’s not surprising then that they may crash into each other, some may shatter, and some will survive even stronger and sturdier. In this way, we are rewriting life code. We are according to Juan Enriquez, Evolving Ourselves: How Unnatural Selection and Nonrandom Mutation are Changing Life on Earth. My conversation with Juan Enriquez:
It was Churchill who reminded us that history is written by the victors. Well this is as true of religious history as it is of military, political and geopolitical history. We’ve all been been told since childhood of the Christian foundation of America. That the history of America is John Winthrop's "Shining City on a Hill." That the Christian Village Green represented the apotheosis of America. The fact is, since before the time of Columbus, America has been a pluralistic society. An idea that Jefferson had to battle to prove, just as President Obama has in his recent speeches about religion. At a time when technology and globalization continue to draw us all closer together, we have a choice. We can either channel our heritage and embrace that religious diversity or pull up the proverbial drawbridge and defend the mythology. This is the world that Peter Manseau looks at in his new book One Nation, Under Gods: A New American History. My conversation with Peter Manseau:
Art theft is always a funny thing. The public is usually fascinated by the story, but can seldom feel the kind of empathy with the theft, they feel if their neighbors car were broken into. Art theft, at the highest level is a very special an almost elite kind of crime. Like reading the pages of Rob Report, it fascinates, but never engages. Perhaps that's why so many art thefts are never solved. Including the recent grandaddy of them all, the the theft of priceless painting from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, 25 years ago. Award winning Boston Globe journalist Stephen Kurkjian takes us inside Master Thieves: The Boston Gangsters Who Pulled Off the Worlds Greatest Art Heist. My conversation with Stephen Kurkjian:
Historians and journalists have devoted millions of pages to trying to understand the world. In fact, it may be a lot simpler than that. Just maybe it can be done by eating. We’ve all seen politicians in America, campaigning by eating the local foods and imitating local eating customs. Why isn’t the same true for geopolitics? If we can understand the culture of another country through its food, perhaps we’d better understand its people, its culture and its ideas. In so doing, the world just might be a happier, and more satisfied place. That’s what Graham Holliday has done in trying to appreciate first south Korea and then Viet Nam. A place that he takes us to in Eating Viet Nam: Dispatches from a Blue Plastic Table. My conversation with Graham Holliday:
Even back in the tumultuous 60’s we were enamored with the space program. The idea of man “slipping the surly bonds of earth,” captured the nation's attention at a time when so much other news was negative. Kids everywhere wanted to be astronaut. There even was an airline at the time that referred to itself as “the wings of man.” Our landing on the moon, in 1969, instead of being the beginning of a renewed interest to take us to the planets and beyond, was simply the capstone of our national interest in space. The Shuttle program and the International Space Station, never had the same kind of magnetic pull or a national obsession. However for the twin brothers, Scott and Mark Kelly, growing up in New Jersey, the pull never stopped. Mark Kelly, is a distinguished naval aviator, and astronaut who has flown four shuttle missions. He has logged almost one-hundred million miles and circled the plant almost a 1000 times. His brother Scott, also an astronaut, is embarking on man’s longest stay aboard the space station. And Mark is married to former Congresswoman Gabby Giffords, Mark is committed to instilling in young people a renewed interest in space and he’s written Astrotwins -- Project Blastoff My conversation with Mark Kelly:
If there is a single point of cognitive dissonance in our world today, it revolves around change. We love change. We think we like to embrace the new, and yet we fear change. We hang on to a the past, forgetting that the past, that feels oh so comfortable, is but a floating endpoint of much previous change. So to the Catholic Church. For the Church, constant change has been one of its most basic things. Most everything catholics think about dogma and doctrine in the church today, was once revolutionary. Clearly Pope Francis understands this, with his admonition that grace must overtake laws. That’s what distinguished historian Garry Wills writes about in The Future of the Catholic Church with Pope Francis My conversation with Gary Wills:
Our College and University system in America grew up in opposition to the old European model. Americans didn’t want to be locked in to specific training or apprenticeships. We believed that the goal of education was to engage the mind in the realities of the world and so liberal arts education grew up. It emphasized writing and speaking and creative endeavors in the pursuit of interests beyond the classroom. Out of this came our great research Universities and things like the California Master Plan for education became the model. Today, that process is about tests and admissions and loans and student aid and transfers and an insanely complex and arcane process that benefits the Sherpas that have to navigate us through it, but do little for the value of that education. Just has technology has disrupted so much else, it is now reaching deep into higher education. What it means is an open question, which we are now coming to grips with. Kevin Carey looks deeply into this moment, in his new book The End of College: Creating the Future of Learning and the University of Everywhere. My conversation with Kevin Carey:
Most of us remember the theme song from Mash, “Suicide is Painless:” Through early morning fog I seevisions of the things to bethe pains that are withheld for meI realize and I can see…
Philip Connors, through the suicide of his brother, would come to see many things. About his brother, about his own life and about the pain of loneliness and of childhood trauma. And most of all, about the need to connect with each other and the lifetime power of those connections. Connors, the acclaimed author of Fire Season, shares his pain and guilt in All the Wrong Places: A Life Lost and Found. My conversation with Philip Connors:
Few classes in law school are drier and more arcane than courses on patents and copyrights. And while the debate about intellectual property includes the worlds of entertainment, literature and technology, we don’t often make the connections between those arcane laws, the Constitution that laid down their predicate and the creativity that they seek to protect. But that is exactly what Elizabeth Wurtzel does in her new book Creatocracy: How the Constitution Invented Hollywood. My conversation with Elizabeth Wurtzel:
Our mission statement as a country tells us we are a government of laws, and not of men. Yet without great men, including Adams, who said this, we would not have the laws that have provided the framework for our greatness. Today, the laws that shape our contemporary society, civil rights, the environment, the social safety net, head start, and college loans, were in large measure the result of the Great Society and Lyndon Johnson. Hundreds of thousands of words have been written about Johnson. Recently the movie Selma reignited the debate about Johnson’s role in Civil Rights legislation. But Johnson, like all Presidents, was a flesh and blood human being. While we may understand and/or debate the history of his Presidency, Joseph Califano Jr. in his book The Triumph & Tragedy of Lyndon Johnson: The White House Years, gives us a look inside the man himself. My conversation with Joseph Califano:
As novels and movies have repeatedly shown us, when both partners in a relationship tell the story of that relationship, the images, the memories, the experience is generally profoundly different. Even in good or strong relationships, the perception is shaped by the stories and yes, even the lies we tell each other and ourselves, as a kind of lubrication for intimate interaction. Over time, the stories and lies build up, until truth is almost indistinguishable, from perception. Even the most innocent things, like appearance, cosmetics, clothing, and even pharmaceuticals, are there to mask our true selves,in the effort to make us taller, smarter, younger, or just happier. Clancy Martin takes on the story of these lies in Love and Lies: An Essay on Truthfulness, Deceit, and the Growth and Care of Erotic Love. My conversation with Clancy Martin:
As we watch presidential candidates, on both sides, putting together their respective teams for 2016, it reminds us that politics and public policy is indeed a team sport. Both sides draw from a deep bench of those that served in previous administrations and also bring up young and upcoming rookies, that then go on, if they win, to be the future veterans. Just as it’s true in campaigns and policy, it’s equally true in the legal world. Both parties have their farm teams from which to draw legal policy ideas and judges. On the left, it’s always been a kind of informal network of professors and legal scholars in our most elite universities and law schools. On the right, the Federalist Society has become both the back office and the bench for the conservative movement. Amanda Hollis-Brusky takes us inside the Federalist Society in Ideas with Consequences: The Federalist Society and the Conservative Counterrevolution. She examines how this is shaping our courts and our country. My conversation with Amanda Hollis-Brusky:
We’ve all heard the expression, “you are what you eat.” Yet when we think about some of the things we consume, the fast food, the junk food, the endless meals out, assembled with unknown ingredients, perhaps it’s no surprise that we have an obesity epidemic and that so many public health issues can be traced back to what we eat. On the other side of the table is a vast food/industrial complex, that understands food addiction, the impact of sugars and fats, and spends billions of dollars each years trying to get us hooked. But the news isn’t all bad. There are also foods that protect us from disease and really do improve our health. What all of this tells us, is that beyond that simple nutrition class you might have taken, a lesson in biology and chemistry might also be helpful. Or we can learn from our guest Dr. Gary Wenk and his new book Your Brain on Food: How Chemicals Control Your Thoughts and Feelings My conversation with Gary Wenk:
To the extent that we are all the sum total of our wider experience and our private moments, imagine how that might be magnified amidst the terror, turmoil, and violence of Middle East. A place where even the quiet moments of love, life and even pain are amplified by events in the present and memories of the past. Mai Al-Nakib’s stories in her collection The Hidden Light of Objects, takes us into the lives of people in the crucible of conflict who hang on to extraordinary memories. My conversation with Mai Al-Nakib:
It was Thoreau who said that “the masses of men lead lives of quiet desperation.” The characters at the center of Daniel Handler’s new adult novel We Are Pirates want very badly to avoid that fate. And yet, they find that sometimes the alternative is even more desperation. My conversation with Daniel Handler:
Fifty-five years ago Joseph Heller gave us the paradox of Catch 22. It came to mean a set of contradictory ideas and rules that conflicted with themselves. And while Catch 22 remains a cornerstone of American literature, it also just might be a cornerstone of the Obama Presidency. Barack Obama came to office on a wave of hope and change. He came to Washington to change it. Only to realize, that if you want to get stuff done to change Washington, you can’t change it, unless you work within it. It is n that paradox. in that Catch 22, through which we can perhaps best understand the past six years of the Obama presidency. Chuck Todd, host of NBC’s Meet the Press, as captured the essence of this dilemma in his examination of the first six year of the Obama presidency in The Stranger: Barack Obama in the White House. My conversation with Chuck Todd:
It’s been said that if you live to an old age, you give give up all the things that make you want to live to an old age. At a time when 10,000 boomers a day are reaching retirement age, when the generation that sought to change the world, is being changed by the ravages of age, when the cost of care for this huge generation of seniors could bankrupt us personally and as a nation, it’s time for a frank conversation to examine, if there is a better way forward. MacArthur “genius” grant recipient Ai Jen Poo plunges into the heart of this discussion, in her new book The Age of Dignity: Preparing for the Elder Boom in a Changing America. My conversation with Ai-Jen Poo:
Can you imagine if immediately after 9/11, filmmakers like Scorsese, Spielberg, Coppola, Fincher or Apatow would enlist in the military to make films about the war on terror? Films that would show America at war against its Taliban and Middle East enemies. Well with the exception of Clint Eastwood, that's pretty hard to imagine. Yet in WWII, that's exactly what happened. Filmmakers John Ford, William Wyler, Frank Capra, John Houston, and George Stevens would in various ways, join with the military in the war effort. The work that they did, the impact it had on them personally and on the country, would forever change the workings of Hollywood. It emphasized the importance of film as entertainment and as an art form, as well as how Americans viewed war. In that sense, those images still shape our perceptions today as they are a part of our cultural and political DNA. Mark Harris takes us though the war work of these great Directors in Five Came Back: A Story of Hollywood and the Second World War My conversation with Mark Harris:
How many times have you heard someone say that they were of two minds on a particular subject? What they were in fact reflecting and acknowledging, is the idea that we are literally of two minds. That the left and right hemispheres of the brain represent different and sometimes independent parts of the whole. Discovering this, understanding the foundations of cognitive neuroscience, how the brain works and how the two hemispheres communicate with each other, has been the work and crowning achievement of Michael Gazzaniga. Often call “the father of Cognitive Neuroscience,” Gazzaniga has written his memoir Tales from Both Sides of the Brain: A Life in Neuroscience. My conversation with Michael Gazzaniga:
How many of you have ever left the house, gotten half way to your destination and were convinced that you had left the oven on, or left the door open, even though the rational side of you knew you had not? The more you tried to think about it, the more you became obsessed. Until you had no choice but to turn back, go home and find that yes, the oven was off, or the door was closed. Then imagine this kind of obsession impacting every aspect of your life. Turned on 24/7, often about the same issues. That gives you just a glimpse into the life of someone with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD.) Science journalist, David Adam has been dealing with OCD, our fourth most common mental disorder, since he was a young student. In his book The Man Who Couldn't Stop: OCD and the True Story of a Life Lost in Thought, hegives us a glimpse of the illness, its causes and treatments. My conversation with David Adams:
For the ten million or so people that saw Fifty Shades of Grey this past weekend, or the many more millions who read the books, in a way what they were doing is trying to understand touch. The complex ways in which our bodies and our brains process pleasure and pain. Why childhood development is so crucial to that process and the ways in which touch shapes our sexuality, our cooperation, our well being and our own internal interaction between the physical and emotional world. Professor of neuroscience David Linden, examines this interface in his new book Touch: The Science of Hand, Heart, and Mind. My conversation with David J. Linden:
There is a principle in physics known as the uncertainty principle. the idea simplified is that it’s impossible to observe or measure certain phenomenon without having an impact on that which is being observed or measured. In many ways we might look for the same impacts among those that give us the images of war and disaster. What do these images tell us about sufferings of people in faraway places? Images that do more than report, that can inspire dissent, foster violence, or create sympathy or apathy. They often tell us about the nature of war and the obligations of conscience. Sometimes they even make us think or feel about a reality far beyond what any picture can convey? Few understand this better than Lynsey Addario. One of the greatest photo journalists of our time, her work has appeared regularly in the New York Times. She is recipient of a MacArthur Genius Grant and the Pulitzer Prize. Her memoir is It's What I Do: A Photographer's Life of Love and War My conversation with Lynsey Addario:
Back in the early 1960’s, in Fellini’s La Dolce Vita, the world took note of the decadence of life in the Italian capital of Rome. Inspired by two major political/sex scandals of the era, the film which would win the 1960 Palme d'or in Cannes, depicted a Rome that was ultra sophisticated, ultra modern, ultra decadent and ultra cool. Fifty plus years later, Rome is kind of antidote to America. There is less sexuality, less modernity, less sophistication and less decadence. However there is more chaos, corruption and insecurity. How did a nation that was so desired for so long, come to its current fate? John Hooper tries to give us some answers in The Italians. My conversation with John Hooper:
Short Stories, films ,novels and performance art. Over the years we’ve spoken to many guest that do some of these things, at the top of their profession. However, Miranda July has done them all and all of them exceedingly well Her collection of short stories, NO ONE BELONGS HERE MORE THAN YOU won numerous awards and has been published in 23 countries. Her film, ME AND YOU AND EVERYONE WE KNOW, was a winner of Camera d'or at the Cannes Film Festival and a special Jury prize at Sundance. If there truly is such thing as a renaissance woman, it is Miranda July. Her debut novel is The First Bad Man. My conversation with Miranda July:
We often throw terms around in our political and geopolitical debates like capitalist, and communist, and oligarch, and class divide. But very few who use these hot button terms truly understand the deep essence of what they really mean. One of those that does understand is Bill Browder. He rebelled against communism as a teenager, became of capitalist and then made millions in Putin’s Russia. What he didn’t know was just what kind of price he would pay for getting involved in the ever entangling web of Putin, oligarchs and a system 180 degrees from our own, a system of men and not of laws. The result was the brutal death of Browder’s lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky and Browder’s still ongoing quest for justice. The story is all told in his new book, Red Notice: A True Story of High Finance, Murder, and One Man's Fight for Justice. My conversation with Bill Browder:
It was Woody Allen who said that “marriage was the end of hope.” We know from the behavior of millennials today that while they strongly favor equality of marriage, they are not to keen on the institution for themselves. Arguably marriage today, like so much in our society, is undergoing a transition and even disruption. Marriage today is certainly not your parents marriage….but is it maybe your grandparents. Suppose we skip back not one, but two generations and look at marriage. Can we learn anything that is at all relevant to our 24/7 tech driven culture today? Karl Pillemer thinks so. He has taken the time to talk to hundreds of older retirees about their relationships and their marriages, in the hope that age might provide a little wisdom on one of the oldest subjects. The results are in 30 Lessons for Loving: Advice from the Wisest Americans on Love, Relationships, and Marriage. My conversation with Karl Pillemer:
If any one issue has dominated both our international and domestic dialogue it is the subject of energy. A developed and developing world, with every increasing energy needs and, in spite of the current glut, not an endless supply of oil. Enter alternative energy...wind, solar and the battery. If only we could prefect the later. With range anxiety for electric cars, computer anxiety on long flights, the need for a better battery might very well be the holy grail of the electronic and digital age. Steve Levine, who’s written about and covered the energy sector for years, now in The Powerhouse: Inside the Invention of a Battery to Save the World, turns his attention to the struggle to build that perfect battery. My conversation with Steve Levine:
It is often said that to name something is to understand it. If that’s true, than Scott Stossel has a greater understanding of anxiety than anyone else. In his book, My Age of Anxiety: Fear, Hope, Dread, and the Search for Peace of Mind, he takes us through the litany of his multiple anxieties and treatments. In so doing, we come away with a far greater understanding of and sympathy for the anxieties, that for Scott and many others, (far more than we know) plaque everyday life. In a more connected, complex, speeded up world, are these individual anxieties worse, and do they in fact create a kind of feedback loop into our collective and societal anxiety? A society in which we have the unique ability to turn even good news, into something to worry about. My conversation with Scott Stossel:
Why is it that certain cultural and/or ethnic groups tend to have successes, far in excess of their percentage of the population? Jews, Indians, Iranians, Chinese, Mormons, and a few others. These groups are simply more financially and academically successful than others in the US. And while hearing this, often sends powerful signals to our racial antenna, the fact is that if we can answer the question of why, then perhaps we can find a formula to lift up others. To truly find the holy grail of personal, economic and cultural fulfillment. Amy Chua and Jed Rubenfeld have been on this search. And while what they found makes a lot of people uncomfortable, the fact is The Triple Package: How Three Unlikely Traits Explain the Rise and Fall of Cultural Groups in America, may be a key to rebirthing the spirit that made America great. My conversation with Amy Chua and Jed Rubenfeld:
Today we have talking heads and pundits. But back in second half of the 20th century we had writers and public intellectuals, whose ideas, attitudes and personalities became a part of our public discourse. Gore Vidal was one of those. He wrote about history, about sex, about politics and sometimes all at once. He wrote non-fiction, novels, movies, and was the guest you wanted to have at a dinner party. But he was also one of the bad boys of American letter. His rapier wit and insults pushed away as many people as admired him. But like most complex figures, the public surfaces were only part of the story. To get deeper we have the work of my guest Michael Mewshaw . A long time friend of Vidal, he's just written Sympathy for the Devil: Four Decades of Friendship with Gore Vidal. My conversation with Michael Mewshaw:
The world is a dangerous place. We no longer have the moral clarity and security of the cold war, or of earlier wars where we knew precisely who our enemy were. Today, as non state actors battle nations and each other, the asymmetry of conflict has created new opportunities for paid armies, and for mercenaries on all sides. Just as we outsource call centers and the delivery of packages, today we outsource war. From the protection of the high seas to making our own national interests more palatable But at what cost, and what might be the human and global consequence of unleashing the paid dogs of war. This is the world that Sean McFate knows well and writes about in The Modern Mercenary: Private Armies and What They Mean for World Order. My conversation with Sean McFate:
It is one of the tragic ironies of the psychoanalytic age that we are attracted to people, particularly our partners, who often turn out to be the very ones that begin to repel us later in life. At first, its those once endearing and now annoying habits. And then, it becomes annoyance at their larger world view. Perhaps it's because in partnering, we seek to make up for those things that we are lacking. Perhaps its because we buy into to the old adage that opposites attract. Even though, contemporary research shows us that that is simply not true, that partners that are similar tend to do better. Today we seek and talk of authenticity, but is it possible to be authentic, while trying to compromise with anyone that is the opposite from who we are at core? Those are some of the central ideas running through Alexandra Fuller's memoir, Leaving Before the Rains Come. My conversation with Alexandra Fuller:
Imagine a machine that can rewire itself, finds its own way to work around non working circuits, heal its own bugs and viruses, find and adapt to new sources of energy and know when it needs repair and attention. No, it’s not the latest product from Silicon Valley, it is the human brain. The recent discoveries about the brains ability to adapt, its neuroplasticity, have truly redefined how we imagine the brain and how we treat it in the face of disease and trauma. Someday, it may also lead us full circle to better design and development of artificial intelligence and machines that might actually mimic the amazing abilities of the brain. At the cutting edge of all of this is the work of Dr. Norman Doidge, the author of The Brain's Way of Healing: Remarkable Discoveries and Recoveries from the Frontiers of Neuroplasticity My conversation with Dr. Norman Doidge:
Sometimes the reality of war is just too complex and absurd to be understood in real time. Perhaps that why books about war are so powerful and important. That’s why novels like Catch 22, Slaughterhouse 5, The Things they Carried, A Rumor of War, and The Yellow Birds, have been essential for our understating. Equally important to our understand is grasping the impact of PTSD on those who served or who, for whatever reasons, journeyed into the heart of darkness that is combat. While embedded with troops in Iraq, journalist David Morris almost died when a Humvee he was riding in encountered an IED. His book, explores his own trauma from that event, as well as the history and science of post-traumatic stress disorder.The Evil Hours: A Biography of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. My conversation with David J. Morris:
As music and the music business evolves today, the content of the music often plays second fiddle to the debate about economics. About digital royalties, performance royalties, Pandora, Spotify, etc. In many way the medium impacts the message, the songs we hear and what gets produced and what becomes popular. And why not? After all, it is the music business! In fact, it always has been a business, but one balanced precariously on the fulcrum of popular taste. Where those two ideas and trends intersect, is usually responsible for the kind of music we get. All of this went through a revolutionary shift in the post war years, another time of creative destruction in the business of music. The results of which, changed music forever. Professor and journalist Ben Yagoda examines this time in The B Side: The Death of Tin Pan Alley and the Rebirth of the Great American Song My conversation with Ben Yagoda:
Revolutions are hard AND exciting. They combine courage and new ideas and the excitement of once in a generation change. However what’s even harder, is what comes next. The way in which the apogee of a moment of revolutionary fervor sticks and is translated into changes in government and in bureaucratic institutions. And perhaps most importantly, the way in which the multilateral ideas of the divergent revolutionaries come together to shape it, accommodate and compromise. We know from our own American revolution how difficult that can be. Think about it. We are still impacted by mistakes or compromises made by our founders over a 139 years ago. Four years ago this month, the revolution in Tahrir Square began a tectonic shift. In Egypt and in the Middle East. How it happened, how it’s played out and the acts of individual action, courage and diversity lie at the heart of Thanassis Cambanis' new book Once Upon A Revolution: An Egyptian Story My conversation with Thanassia Cambanis:
F. Scott Fitzgerald, in The Great Gatsby, defines personality as “an unbroken series of successful gestures.” Certainly that is the outer manifestation. But science, brain research and cutting edge psychology tells us that it's all part of a much more complex overall system. A system that shapes our lives, our identities and our emotions. It's a system that determines that the way in which we understand ourselves and our own personalities, shapes how we view and interact with others. This is the work of John D. Mayer the renowned psychologist who co-developed the groundbreaking theory of emotional intelligence, and now looks even deeper into personality in Personal Intelligence: The Power of Personality and How It Shapes Our Lives. My conversation with John D. Mayer:
American political history is a complex and dynamic process. In that process, there have been periods of entropy and period of great progress and imagination. Both have been a function of a political system designed by our founders. But also, the temper and tenor of the times and the degree to which individual leaders have known how to work those levers of power has also shaped our political destiny. The period of the Johnson Presidency, post 1964, is one of those period. The Great Society, The Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, medicare and medicare, are all just a part of an agenda that reshaped America Today as we face congressional gridlock, as we mark the 50th anniversary of the apogee of the civil right movement, and as the president goes before Congress tonight. As we reassess our politics and institutions, its well worth the time to look at that unique and politically bountiful period of the Johnson Presidency. That is what historian Julian Zelizer does in his new book The Fierce Urgency of Now: Lyndon Johnson, Congress, and the Battle for the Great Society. My conversation with Julian Zelizer:
So many of the weaknesses of our media today are blamed on the digital revolution. Certainly the transition to digital has rendered change. But to a large extent those changes only magnify some of the fundamental flaws that afflicted American media as it evolved in the 20th century The weakening of regulation, the increased power of the free market to shape coverage of news and the increasing conflating of news and entertainment ALL added to the mix. Today, those forces, combined with the impact of technology has, for better or worse, created a landscape that some would argue, is antithetical to even the minimal requirements of a democratic society. This is the landscape that Professor Victor Pickard explores in America's Battle for Media Democracy: The Triumph of Corporate Libertarianism and the Future of Media Reform. My conversation with Victor Pickard:
Our nation was founded in opposition to dynasty. From the push back to George III, to our concerns about another Bush/Clinton Presidential race, Americans have always been suspicious of the dynastic impulse. Yet today, we seem to be smothered in a dynasty of the elites. Even while the politics of the fringes gets all the media attention, the centers of power in both political parties seem fixed to support candidates and policies that further the social and economic interest of the "one percent." Sitting astride this tendency for over fifty years has been the Bush family. The degree to which their influence and power has shaped events, is the subject of Russ Baker's book, Family of Secrets: The Bush Dynasty, America's Invisible Government, and the Hidden History of the Last Fifty Years My conversation with Russ Baker:
Just as we demand a lot from our political leaders today, we also demand a lot from CEOs. Even if they are not founders, they need to be telegenic, charismatic, visionary, have a detailed plan, and adept at working the politics of the boardroom. They need to be comfortable in being a part of the one percent, have media coaches and PR people and be on a short leash from quarter to quarter. Today, the CEOs that rise to that definition are few: Jamie Dimon, Tim Cook, Alan Mulally, Jeffrey Immelt and Marissa Mayer. Perhaps of all of these, Marissa Mayer came to her job with the least preparation and some of the highest expectations. Perhaps that is why, large parts of the public are fascinated by her every move, from fighting insurgent Yahoo shareholders, to gracing the pages of Vogue. Nicholas Carlson, chief correspondent for Business Insider has written Marissa Mayer and the Fight to Save Yahoo. The first in depth look at Mayer and her rise from the nerdy girl at science camp, to the CEO of a 30 billion company, by age 38. My conversation with Nicholas Carlson:
We live in an age in which everything has become politicized. The coffee we drink, the food we eat, the shows and movies we watch, and the cars we buy,all seem to convey some kind of political message. Where once these things represented class, or taste, or education, today it’s all about politics. Even in non-partisan races, political ideology becomes the central issue. So what impact does this have on our ability to teach politics, or citizenship or democracy or even science in the classroom? Paula McAvoy examines not only the impact, but a way into this discussion that can perhaps transcend or even co-opt our partisan divide. She details it in The Political Classroom: Evidence and Ethics in Democratic Education. My conversation with Paula McAvoy:
The industrial revolution changed the world. It changed the nature of work, it displaced workers, it ushered in the Gilded Age and created more inequality. It shrank the world, drove consumerism, and reshaped political ideology. The Internet revolution, 150 years later, has had startling similar effects. We worship at the altar of creative destruction, we fetishize technology and the freedom and democratization that the Internet had promised. But at what price? Simply, can the same technology and companies that fractured and reshaped the world, now be what we need to put it back together again? Andrew Keen, argues that The Internet Is Not the Answer. My conversation with Andrew Keen:
Long before radio, I spent years in Hollywood. This was just as the Word Processor and the high volume copy machine were taking hold. When those things came along, everyone joked that screenwriting software and easy access to copying machines would lower the quality of screenplays. Little did those jokesters know, that was just the beginning. Not only did the medium become the message, it subsumed the message. The medium, the technology, the process in fact became the creative endeavor. Today it’s Apps and coding and creative destruction. And yes, technology makes life better, cheaper, faster and sometimes does allow more time for creativity. But is there something we have lost in the process? Without getting stuck in the tired morass of, "the old days were better," is there some objective thing we have lost in our culture, in our selves or in our intellectual DNA? Former LA Times arts and culture reporter Scott Timberg takes up these issues and more in Culture Crash: The Killing of the Creative Class. My conversation with Scott Timberg:
It was Churchill who said that when the present sits in judgment of the past, we loose the future. Obviously not the attitude of memoirists. But also not the attitude of someone who looks back on the totality of one's life and tries to understand who they are and where they came from. Barbara Ehrenreich discovered, late in life, a journal she had kept during her tumultuous adolescence. She writes about a mystical experience, that to her rational and atheist self today, was nothing less than shattering. In Living with a Wild God: A Nonbeliever's Search for the Truth about Everything, she reconstructs her childhood, beginning with the perspective of a young girls obsession with important questions. My conversation with Barbara Ehrenreich:
When something goes wrong with a car or an appliance, or even the human body, the “instructions” for repair are often clear. However my guest argues that the manual that tries to define the parameters and terms of mental illness, is without that kind of scientific basis. He says that even an auto repair manual, much less a biology textbook, has more science than the DMS 5 Yet with the fifth volume of the DSM, and the concurrent explosion in psychotropic drugs, Doctors are relying on it, more than ever. In fact, it may actually be detrimental to taking care of our mental health. Leading the criticism of DSM 5, is Dr. Allen Francis, a man who was one of the purveyors of the previous DSM 4. Part of his criticism is that we are over diagnosing and sometimes making normal into something that needs to be treated. His book, recently out in paperback is Saving Normal: An Insider's Revolt against Out-of-Control Psychiatric Diagnosis, DSM-5, Big Pharma, and the Medicalization of Ordinary Life. My conversation, from earlier this year, with Dr. Allen Francis:
What might our knowledge of history be like if snapchat had been around in earlier centuries? The good news is that it wasn’t. In a time when people wrote letters, not texts or emails, those letters got saved and later curated. Letters that give us little glimpses into personalities, history and the human condition at another time, in another place. Shawn Usher, has devoted himself to being a curator of many such letters. He is the founder of the blog, Letters of Note and now that’s been turned into the book Letters of Note: An Eclectic Collection of Correspondence Deserving of a Wider Audience. My conversation with Shawn Usher:
Remembering the early days of the cell of phone, we all remember, “can you hear me now.” For most of us this was modern nuisance. But for some, those that are hearing impaired, or profoundly deaf, those words have far greater meaning. While much progress has been made in the technology, treatment and study of deafness, we are just beginning to understand the broader implications, with respect to brain development, literacy and the very ideas surrounding the acquisition of language. This is the world that Lydia Denworth became immersed in with her son Alex. She talks about that experience in I Can Hear You Whisper: An Intimate Journey through the Science of Sound and Language. My conversation with Lydia Denworth:
What would it take for you to give up your Western lifestyle, move to Ghana, live in a mud hut and commit yourself to helping thousands of lost children? You would think that this kind of thing only happens in the movies, or in literature. That real lives are generally not a kind of fairy tail. Not true. Lisa Lovatt-Smith did exactly that. She traded in her glamorous life in Paris and a glamorous life at Vogue for the experience of moving with her daughter to Ghana and trying to change the world. She’s shares her story in Who Knows Tomorrow: A Memoir of Finding Family among the Lost Children of Africa. My conversation with Lisa Lovatt-Smith:
To achieve proficiency in a new language late in life is near impossible. But suppose you didn’t just want to learn the language, you wanted total immersion. You wanted to learn the culture, the origins of the language, to become one with the language. That’s what my guest William Alexander set out to do with French. He wanted to be French and language was simply the vessel. But even with that kind of commitment, the effort almost broke his heart. He tells of that effort in Flirting with French: How a Language Charmed Me, Seduced Me, and Nearly Broke My Heart.
My conversation with William Alexander:
It used to be that the classroom prepared you for a career. Today your lifetime career is a classroom, where you must be continuously learning. In doing so, the horizons open up and opportunities abound. The traditional straightjacket of education and career have been, like most things, disrupted. In it’s place, possibility and creative destruction.. Along with this comes a whole new way of doing business. A place, not unlike sports, where the newcomer, the rookie has an important role to play. Without Joe Panik, the SF Giants don’t win a world series. In today business world, information isn’t siloed or hidden. It’s available for all, and it gives the rookie a more level playing field in which to work, bring new ideas and new ways of looking at the world. This is the back drop for Liz Wiseman's look at Rookie Smarts: Why Learning Beats Knowing in the New Game of Work. My conversation with Liz Wiseman:
One of the foundations of the changing nature of education, is the idea of deeper learning. Direct, hands on mastery of content, though solving real world problems in a collaborative way. This has created dramatic results in all academic areas. But it’s also something that can take place right at home. That’s what best selling author Mark Kurlansky did with his daughter Talia. They combined culture, geography, chemistry and all in the context of preparing delicious meals. Now they share their efforts in International Night: A Father and Daughter Cook Their Way Around the World. My conversation with Mark and Talia Kurlansky:
To dream the impossible dream has been the great engine of progress in the world. From the early explorers, to scientists and engineers, to man's quest to explore the planets. The story of exploration is the story of mankind. When John Kennedy laid down the predicate of reaching the moon by the end of a decade, he defined for the whole county that kind of clear goal that also drives individuals forward. The story of some of these individuals, along with his own quest, is what Chris Guillebeau writes about in The Happiness of Pursuit: Finding the Quest That Will Bring Purpose to Your Life. My conversation with Chris Guillebeau:
Conventional wisdom has long held that we live in a vast and indeed expanding universe, in which we humans are but a seemingly small and insignificant part. But in that classic view, are we not giving ourselves enough credit? Perhaps we are more unique than we think. Perhaps we are not all that ordinary, on a not so ordinary rock in the vast cosmos. Just maybe, that classic view, needs to be reexamined. That is what Caleb Scharf has done in his new book The Copernicus Complex: Our Cosmic Significance in a Universe of Planets and Probabilities. My conversation with Caleb Scharf:
Perhaps part of what plagues us when we think about most issues today, is that we tend to see them in very myopic ways. The world is a more and more complex place, and yet we do the opposite of what we should do. We too often silo information or categories, or problems. We don’t always see the connections and therefore we get frustrated, because we can’t seem to solve the problems. Environmental issues are no different. My guest, one of the fathers of the environmental movement, James "Gus" Speth, believes that when we talk about environmentalism, it’s more than the air, or the water, or the earth. That there is a holistic approach we need to take that is essential if we want to solve anything. He writes about this in the context of his own history in his memoir Angels by the River. My conversation with Gus Speth:
How often does a story leap off the pages of a magazine, to become a book, a documentary and a major motion picture? Very rarely. And when it does, it’s clear that the story it tells has touched a powerful nerve among readers and viewers. Such is the story that Wired Contributing Editor Joshua Davis tells, of four underdogs from the streets of Phoenix, who, using Spare Parts would take on the best High School and College students in the country, including MIT with the resources of Exxon/Mobil. My conversation with Joshua Davis:
We’ve recently seen year end lists of the best places to work. Free food, massage, pets, and a beautiful campus are all contributing factors. However, research, behavioral analysis and science can also tell us what make a workplace effective, productive, and more innovative. The famed management consultant Peter Drucker said that “culture eats strategy for lunch.” Affirming a long held conviction that the culture of a company, even more than its smarts or its products, drive its success or failure.Part of that culture, built into the DNA of every company, it the work environments it provides its people. That where my gust Social Psychologist Ron Friedman picks up the story in The Best Place to Work: The Art and Science of Creating an Extraordinary Workplace My conversation with Ron Friedman:
While the origins of the quote are sketchy, Harry Truman, frustrated by the problems he faced in the White House, is reported to have said that “if you want a friend in Washington, get a dog.” Today the same might be said of our pets in general, or in the politically correct parlance of the day, our companion animals. Be they dogs, or cats. With all the talk about the amount of money spend on our pets, it’s easy to lose sight of the real power of our relationships with them. Sometimes exalted, sometimes mocked, the fact is that in a society where alienation is common, where complexity often rules, where self absorption defines a whole generation, those human/animal connections can be transcendent. That’s the personal story and the connection that Lissa Warren writes about in The Good Luck Cat: How a Cat Saved a Family, and a Family Saved a Cat. My conversation with Lissa Warren:
Back in the 1940’s theologian Reinhold Niebuhr wrote the serenity prayer. You all know it. It tells us to accept those things that we can’t change and the courage to change those we can and the wisdom to know the difference. Over the years, it’s been adopted by AA and various other groups. But it might also be the coda for Cheryl Strayed's fantastically successful book Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail The story of her trek on the Pacific Crest Trail, it’s also the story of coming of age and Cheryl's journey out of her own heart of darkness. The book is out in paperback and it is now a major motion picture. My conversation with Cheryl Strayed:
During the recent Ebola scare, we were often reminded of the dozens of science fiction thrillers that set the stage for our fears. From the Andromeda Strain, to World War Z, The Stand and The Hot Zone, to name just a few. Today, the cutting edge of genetic manipulation, often provides the basis for similar fears. The brave new world of Bioengineering, plays upon our most primal instincts of what makes us human. Jamie Metzl a former member of the National Security Council, has added his new thriller to this long tradition. Set against the worlds of politics, finance and religion, Genesis Code, takes its place in fuelling our paranoia. My conversation with Jamie Metzl:
We live in an ironic age. The speed of modern communication, juxtaposed with the traditional entrenched problems we face, provides a disconnect that only humor can bridge. Think about it this way. How often has humor engaged us to better understand tragedy? How long after certain tragedies, do we hear the first joke? Not out of disrespect, but out of a way to get our arms around something that our brains have trouble comprehending. When David Letterman asked, after 9/11, if we would ever laugh again, he was going to the heart of the role humor and satire play in our society. From Mark Twain to Will Rogers, from Mort Sahl to Stephen Colbert, satire has been a translator of the American experience. Sophia McClennen dishes it up in Is Satire Saving Our Nation?: Mockery and American Politics. My conversation with Sophia McClennen:
Even amidst the concerns about the impact of cattle on global warming, the disgrace of industrialized farming and slaughterhouses, and the increased worldwide population that has sworn off beef, it’s still very much a part of our diet. And perhaps it should be. But is there a better, more sustainable, more humane way to process that beef and bring it to market? In what too often seems to be world of black and white thinking, can we find a middle ground? A way in which beef is healthy, sustainable, humane and actually good for us and the environment? Nicolette Hahn Niman thinks so. Her book about what she has discovered is Defending Beef: The Case for Sustainable Meat Production My conversation with Nicolette Hahn Niman:
John Wanamaker, the famous department store magnate, once said that he knew that at least half of his advertising budget was wasted. Problem was, he didn’t know which half. For anybody that’s in business today, you know how difficult it is making your product or service stand out among the competition and noise of today’s marketplace. It’s a lot tougher than it was for Don Draper. Advertising is everywhere. Television, radio, billboards, digital, banners, mobile, native advertising, telemarketing, and pop ups. It’s on everything that isn’t implanted into us….and that may be not that far away. So what works. What is, in the buzzword of the day, authentic, effective and creates real Return on Investment? One of the most powerful tools of the marketer has always been word of mouth. Social media and things like Yelp, have only amplified that power. But is word of mouth marketing just some random confluence of events, or can it be shaped, molded and directed in ways that are both authentic, and beneficial to both seller and buyer? This has been the work that Ted Wright talks about in Fizz: Harness the Power of Word of Mouth Marketing to Drive Brand Growth My conversation with Ted Wright:
I can’t even count the number of times that guests on this program have spoken about what’s become known as the Marshmallow Experiments. In conversations ranging from business, to public policy, to personal psychology, the impact of this experiment in determining self control, executive function, the predilection for addiction and even intelligence, has been profound. Walter Mischel started thinking about this experiment when he was in graduate school. Later, in the 60’s at Stanford, he devised what's become known as the Marshmallow Experiment, to assess the ability of children to delay gratification. Since then, 50 years of in depth research have both enhanced and expanded the scope and knowledge that began with this simple experiment. After all these years, Mischel has written about it in The Marshmallow Test: Mastering Self-Control. My conversation with Walter Mischel:
We live in an information age. The goal of virtually every App on our phone, and most websites, is perfect information; about the world, about our neighbors, about our friends and about ourselves. So how is it, that with all this information, the world is so much more dangerous. That secrets are sometimes so much deeper, that bad actors, and even good ones turned bad, can often outsmart, out run and out maneuver the CIA, the very agency designed to ferret out those secrets and keep us safe. Even as the very first tenants move into the new World Trade Center, we’ve come to appreciate the importance and value of human intelligence. But those that engage in it are often at risk both from their enemies and their friends. Few understand this better than former CIA operative Valerie Palme. Her life and career was derailed, in public view, as much by friends as by her enemies. Valerie Plame’s career continues through the work and efforts of her fictional alter ego Vanessa Pierson. Pierson made her debut in Blowback, and now she’s back in Burned. My conversation with Valerie Plame:
It was actually Winston Churchill, not Rahm Emanuel who said that we should never let a serious crisis go to waste. A crisis often creates a great opportunity to face, to talk about, and even sometimes to act on issues that had been previously frozen Or, as Donald Rumsfeld once inarticulately put it, “sometimes the only solution to an unsolvable problem, is to create a bigger problem.” But often these problems come out of the blue; in life and in business. When they do, when those pivotal moments happen, it’s the culture, the people, the mission, in short the underpinning of the organization itself, that must become its survival mechanism, as well as the jumping off point for its future. So just as we might prep for physical disasters, why not prepare and build an origination for the stress of those moments. That's one of the lessons from Malachi O'Connor and Barry Dornfeld in The Moment You Can't Ignore: When Big Trouble Leads to a Great Future. My conversation with Malachi O'Connor and Barry Dornfeld:
Someone once remarked that when they saw a snake and a vulture having sex in Washington, and thought it was just business as usual. Fitzgerald said that he rich were different, because they have more money. Politicians are different, usually because that they have more insecurities The fact is that most politicians and other high profile inhabitants of our nation's capital are just flesh and blood human beings. And yes, they may be different than you and I, they are certainly more caught up in their unbroken series of successful gestures, but most do care about their work. In fact, some care too much. As the late, great journalist Richard Ben Cramer once wrote, that feeling you can make a difference is like a drug. Also a great journalist, Mark Leibovich, has been been giving us great insights about the power players in Washington for the NY Times Magazine. Those profiles are part of his new book Citizens of the Green Room: Profiles in Courage and Self-Delusion. My conversation with Mark Leibovich:
Recently we spoke of the 50 Anniversary of Freedom Summer and the early flowering of the civil rights movement. Much has been written of the historical roots and narrative of those events. But now Jacqueline Woodson tells her personal story and the larger story of the journey of a movement from the Deep South, to urban core of America. The story of Brown Girl Dreaming is a story made all the more powerful by recent events that bring into focus the arc of that journey. A journey that ended short of its target. My conversation with Jacqueline Woodson:
When we do think about the state or origins of language, we often think about it as something based in the distant past. But language is very much a living thing, with a direct nexus to our cultural evolution. The choices we make about the words we use, reflect both our own place in the culture as well as the state of the culture itself. This is all part of the unique work of Princeton Professor Daniel Cloud in The Domestication of Language: Cultural Evolution and the Uniqueness of the Human Animal. My conversation with Professor Daniel Cloud:
As we listened to election results last week, the one thing we heard over and over again is the slicing and dicing of the electorate. Into generations, incomes, ethnicity, etc. Certainly we hear repeatedly about the complexity and challenges of today's multi- generational workplace. With all of this talk about division, it's perhaps worth looking at what might actually unite us. There is an answer we might find surprising, and that is technology. To paraphrase the old orange juice commercial; technology, it’s not just for Millennials anymore. In fact, the use and strategic advantage of technology may be the most unifying forces for all us. That's the conclusion reached by Thomas Koulopoulos and Dan Keldsen in The Gen Z Effect: The Six Forces Shaping the Future of Business. My conversation with Thomas Koulopoulos:
In a business environment as data driven as ours is today, it’s not surprising that we don’t view success through the lens that Fitzgerald used to describe Gatsby, who saw his success as “an unbroken series of successful gestures.” Still success to be sustainable and replicable, both personal and professional, has to be more than habit or behavior, or just data. In a world in which changes take place so quickly, in which workforce diversity both generational and ethnic, is so varied, the traditional solutions to problems are not always applicable. As we often hear said about the military, you can’t fight the next war with the lessons learned from the last one That’s why design and intentions are so important as tools for driving both leaders and their organizations. That's what Mindy Hall focuses on in Leading with Intention: Every Moment Is a Choice My conversation with Mindy Hall:
If the past 30 years of television has been about anything, it’s been about specialization. While ESPN was the leader and Granddaddy of specialty television programming, you can now watch nothing but Sci Fi, or old movies, or cartoons, and of course food. Food programming, like sports has had a cultural impact far beyond the screen. The Food Network, like ESPN, has both shaped our perceptions and married it with our culture in ways that gives us both celebrities and food. What better combination for 21st Century America. Allen Salkin looks at his history in From Scratch: The Uncensored History of the Food Network My conversation with Allen Salkin:
Throughout history, from Cesar thru Lincoln, from Archduke Ferdinand and Gandhi through the Kennedys and Malcolm X, a bullet has changed the world. But what’s different when assassination is not a random deranged act, but an instrument of policy. First, it’s the stuff of movies. Think about it; The Manchurian Candidate, Day of the Jackal, Executive Action, Parallax View, to name a few. Add to this list, Syriana, a story based on the life of former CIA operative Robert Baer. Baer has now codified his unique line of work in The Perfect Kill: 21 Laws for Assassins My conversation with Robert Baer:
We are in the midst of a great migration to cities. The number of farms and people engaged in agriculture continues to decline. Yet human ingenuity has produced abundant resources of food, through innovation and technology. Historically, when disaster has struck and we have been threatened as a species, we’ve always seemed to find a way out, particularly with respect to our food supply. This has resulted in increases in population, which then takes us to the next crises. This cycle is replicated throughout history. It is what MacArthur fellow and Columbia Professor, Ruth DeFries calls a cycle of Ratchets, Hatchets and Pivots. She explains in her book The Big Ratchet: How Humanity Thrives in the Face of Natural Crisis. My conversation with Ruth DeFries:
Todays workplace bears very little resemblance to that of our parents. It’s multi generational nature, its focus on employee empowerment and its reflection of broader changes in society, education and culture, all create a perfect storm that requires whole new skill sets from today’s leaders. These are the skills that Susan Fowler writes about in Why Motivating People Doesn't Work . . . and What Does: The New Science of Leading, Energizing, and Engaging My conversation with Susan Fowler:
Back in the early 1960’s the world took note of the decadence of life in the Italian capital of Rome, in Fellini’s La Dolce Vita. Inspired by two major political/sex scandals of the era, the film, which would win the 1960 Palme d'or in Cannes, depicted a Rome that was ultra sophisticated, ultra modern and ultra decadent. Fifty plus years later, Prof. Roger Friedland would decide to move to Rome with his wife and adolescent daughters, because he saw Rome as an antidote to America being awash in sexuality, modernity, sophistication and decadence. He writes about his experience in Amore: An American Father's Roman Holiday How have the tables switched so dramatically, and what does it say about the state of love, sex and popular culture in the 21st century. My conversation with Roger Friedland:
Almost no aspect of life has not been touched by the forward march of science and technology. The world of sports is no exception. When we watch a game, or even multiple games as in the Olympics, we want to see things we’ve never seen before. The narrative of human performance drives our love of any sport. And today, science is glad to oblige. As we learn more about the brain, the body, genetics and biological evolution itself, scientists and engineers find news ways to enhance innate athletic ability. It’s no accident that story abounded recently about how the newly minted World Champion SF Giants, had hired a sleep expert to advise them when it was best to travel. So what’s going on now, and where will it all lead? That's what Wired editor Mark Mcclusky set out to discover in his new book Faster, Higher, Stronger: How Sports Science Is Creating a New Generation of Superathletes--and What We Can Learn from Them. My conversation with Mark McClusky:
The Middle East is always ripe with stories. Unfortunately, few get to the heart of the absurdity of the human condition there. In much the way that Catch 22 or Mash did for our wartime military, The Hilltop, a new novel by esteemed Israeli writer Assaf Gavron, does for the settlements on the West Bank. My conversation with Assaf Gavron:
How many of you have been asked recently to name your favorite or most influential books? It’s a process that has been all the rage on social media. And while such lists have been around for a long time, perhaps what inspired this current flare up is New York Times Book Review Editor Pamela Paul’s weekly Q & A with authors and journalists in the BY THE BOOK feature in Sunday’s New York Times. The feature is an all access pass into the private world of authors, as they reflect on their work habits, reading preferences, inspirations, and recommendations. Now she brings together sixty-five of these exchanges, in their uncut and original form in By the Book: Writers on Literature and the Literary Life from The New York Times Book Review. My conversation with Pamela Paul:
The world of historical fiction always plays an interesting role. On the one hand, it's an entertaining way for us to understand, often from 30k feet, the broad historical sweeps of history. But beyond that, it’s an opportunity for us to see, up close and personal, how conflict, change, stress, fear and intimacy affects the human condition. To see how others act, and to better understand and appreciate the diversity of humanity in our current world. That's what Mark Fine has done in looking back at apartheid in South Africa in the late 1970's. He tells this story in The Zebra Affaire. My conversation with Mark Fine:
Although it doesn’t seem like it in today's world of images and 140 characters, words, stories and literature once moved people and nations and changed the world. In fact, even in our own nation, the act of reading was once even seen as subversive. Yet it fueled the quest for freedom, fired up our democracy, and launched a nation. Today that same nation and its discontents, seems to eschew literature as a form of creative engagement, of social discourse and as an element of citizenship. How we got here and what it might mean for the future is part of the backdrop of Azar Nafisi’s new work The Republic of Imagination: America in Three Books. My conversation with Azar Nafisi:
As we watch day after day, the government response to a potential Ebola crisis, we are reminded of so many mistakes that various government agencies have made in response to other disasters. It hardly fills us with confidence. Katrina, of course, remains in all our minds. And more recently Superstorm Sandy, exactly two years ago, where municipal response, particularly in N.Y. City, would have embarrassed even the Keystone Cops. Kathryn Miles, in Superstorm: Nine Days Inside Hurricane Sandy, dives deep into Sandy. What she tells us could, if we pay attention, save a lot of lives in the future. My conversation with Kathryn Miles:
There are many legacies of the 1960’s. The Civil Rights movement, the antiwar movement, and the efforts of women to have reproductive choice. Of these, arguably the reproductive freedom of women has had the most profound, lasting and global impact. Before the efforts of four mismatched anti establishment characters in the 1960’s, women had, since the days of ancient Egypt, sought to control their biological destiny. And while today, we look at The Pill and birth control as the norm, the efforts to develop and market it were anything but normal. In a time now when we think that an App on our phone can change the world, it’s worth looking back at something that truly did. That's what Jonathan Eig has done in The Birth of the Pill: How Four Crusaders Reinvented Sex and Launched a Revolution. My conversation with Jonathan Eig:
When we think about the Supreme Court, and its hushed, hallowed halls, and John Adams dictum that we are a nation of laws and not of men, words that do not often come to mind are passion, Salsa Dancing, ambition, and people skills. Yet all of these have been a part of the life and Supreme Court tenure of Sonia Sotomayor. Her story is not just a legal story, it’s the story of the rise of the Latino population in America and it’s ever larger and growing role in the politics of the nation. My guest Joan Biskupic tells that story in Breaking In: The Rise of Sonia Sotomayor and the Politics of Justice My conversation with Joan Biskupic:
Today, as we look around the world, it sometimes seems to be spinning out of control. It feels like a time, to quote Yates, when the falcon cannot hear the falconer, when the best lack all conviction and the worst seem full of passionate intensity. Does the fault lie in the vagaries of human nature, or in our leaders and institutions? The answer is that both are intimately linked in ways that, when fully understood, explain the essence of how the world works. This is the journey that Francis Fukuyama takes us on in his two volume masterwork on political order. He has just published the second volume, Political Order and Political Decay: From the Industrial Revolution to the Globalization of Democracy. My conversation with Francis Fukuyama:
For a while now technology has seemed to focus on only one aspect or another of information. Everything from Google to Facebook, to Instagram, to all aspects of the sharing economy are essentially all about trying to achieve perfect information. Slowly the emphasis is beginning to shift. Now voice recognition, robots, drones and a renewed interest in artificial intelligence are all pointing to a new technological direction. Just as we’ve had to readjust to the creative destruction and social shifting of the information economy, now the the automation or AI economy is upon us. What will it change? How will it reshape the social contract and perhaps most of all, how will it reshape the nature of work? Nicholas Carr, the best selling author of THE SHALLOWS, and THE BIG SWITCH turns his attention to this future in his new book The Glass Cage: Automation and Us My conversation with Nicholas Carr:
Although the origins of the quote are a bit murky, the idea that the only way to predict the future is to invent it, certainly seems true in the 21st century. In fact, that future is being invented right now. As technology moves from dedicated devices, to virtually everything, soon everything from our pens to our trash to our kitchens to our most intimate desires, will be connected to the each other and to us, in ways unimagined until now. Will that technology be more humane or more intrusive? David Rose is on the cutting edge of inventing that future and he details it in Enchanted Objects: Design, Human Desire, and the Internet of Things. My conversation with David Rose:
For those that study and write about politics, the holy grail is to find those seminal moments in the nation's public and political life that change everything. And while the antecedents of those events may be years in the making, they usually create a perfect storm that results in an event that is a kind of tipping point; one that marks a permanent tectonic shift in the political landscape. Sometimes we have to let time pass, before we appreciate or even understand those moments. The televised Nixon-Kennedy Debate, Watergate, the Nixon’s resignation and the Vietnam war piped into our living rooms are such event. And, according to longtime political journalist Matt Bai, the implosion of Gary Heart's presidential campaign in 1987, was also such a moment. One that Bai captures, in all its complexity, in All the Truth Is Out: The Week Politics Went Tabloid. It was a time when politics became a plotline, when the personal became both political and public, and when Who, What, Where and When became Gotcha. My conversation with Matt Bai:
It was actually Winston Churchill, not Rahm Emanuel, who said that we should never let a serious crisis go to waste. A crisis often creates a great opportunity to face, to talk about, and even sometimes to act upon issues that had been previously frozen Or, as Donald Rumsfeld once inarticulately put it, sometimes the only solution to an unsolvable problem, is to create a bigger problem. It could be said that climate change provides such an opportunity. That in seeking to address the issues of man made climate change, we will have to drill down into the very issues that caused it in the first place. That’s what Naomi Klein does in her new work This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate. My conversation with Naomi Klein:
Some of you may have seen the story recently that marriage is at an all time low in America. We also know that two out of three Americans are overweight, or obese. Is there a link between these two issues? Has our national physical decline and the rise of obesity changed the way we view love and sex, and if so, what are the broad social and economic impacts of that? That’s what Sarah Varney, senior health policy correspondent with Kaiser Health News, sets out to find out in XL Love: How the Obesity Crisis Is Complicating America's Love Life. My conversation with Sarah Varney
For decades, it seems, we've read and watched stories about suicide bombers in the Middle East. We process the information without emotion, as we do most news stories. Then 9/11 happened and suddenly suicide bombers took on a new meaning for most Americans. With that new understanding, award winning journalist Mike Kelly looks back at a story of a suicide bombing in Israel, that took place in 1996, years before 9/11. The story, fraught with the humanity and frustration of loss, would have, if we knew better than, presaged so much of what’s happened since….in Israel, in Palestine, and in America. Mike Kelly's story is Bus on Jaffa Road: A Story of Middle East Terrorism and the Search for Justice. My conversation with Mike Kelly:
Whether we are thinking about our smart phones, or HAL in Arthur C. Clarke's 2001, we are usually deeply conflicted about artificial intelligence. Will it be a panacea to enhance the already unique power of human intelligence or, like HAL, will its survival depend on usurping human control That balance informs both our fear and appreciation of machines and technology and what they both can do. This is the balance that Oxford Professor Nick Bostrom seeks to find in Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies My conversation with Nick Bostrom:
Revolutions are often exciting. The stir change, mobilize ideas, and are often at the cutting edge of excitement. Yet what happens after revolutions is often the work that matters. The problem is that it’s hard work. The cameras are off, the story has grown cold, but this is where the work gets done that can truly change the world. Arguably the women's movement is such an example. While dramatic changes once took place, arguably the hard work since has not been quite enough While the opportunities for elite women to “lean in,” have never been stronger, American women overall today, fare worse than men on virtually every major dimension of social status, financial well-being, and physical safety. Sexual violence is still condoned, and reproductive rights are by no means secure. Women assume disproportionate burdens in the home and pay a heavy price in the workplace. Yet these issues are not political priorities. Nor is there a consensus that it’s even a problem. This is the story that Stanford Law Professor Deborah Rhode tells in What Women Want: An Agenda for the Women's Movement. My conversation with Deborah L. Rhode:
The common portrayal of Millennials is as generation that is narcissistic, self absorbed, entitled and demanding. Yet they are almost 90 million strong and will soon be taking their place in leadership in business, in politics and in almost every other aspect of society. What will they be like in this new role? How will they be when they are the boss? That’s the situation that Lindsey Pollak looks at in Becoming the Boss: New Rules for the Next Generation of Leaders. My conversation with Lindsey Pollak:
Kierkegaard said that “life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forward.” Such is the powerful value of memoir and reflection Sometimes, though, that reflection takes in more than just the individual life, it becomes a way to reflect on a time, a place, and movement. Gail Sheehy’s life encompasses all of that. The mainstreaming of hippie culture, feminism, new journalism, publishing all exist side by side with the touchstones of love, loss and family. Her story is, in short, the story of the past fifty years. The proverbial grain of sand that captures the history of the time. Gail Sheehy shares her story in her new memoir Daring: My Passages: A Memoir My conversation with Gail Sheehy:
We often say that actions have consequence. So do ideas. And we don’t always know the full extent of those consequences. Just as the science of splitting the atom, changed the nature of geopolitics and may still reshaped civilization, so the ripple effects of certain inventions have consequences and impacts, far beyond what was originally thought or intended. As we worry about the spread of disease these days, it provides an interesting analogy. Essentially, if we think of certain inventions as Patient Zero, we then see how they spread over vast landscapes and change the world. It is through this lens that Steven Johnson views the world in How We Got to Now: Six Innovations That Made the Modern World. My conversation with Steven Johnson:
When we think and talk about the Middle East today, we look at it terms of the religious and ethnic strife and extremism that define today's conflicts. We also assume that these conflicts has been going on for centuries. That the holy wars and clash of civilizations of today have been the basis for the whole history of the region Middle East historian Brian Catlos has a different view. One that puts those conflicts in a more political and economic perspective. In fact, it was really a world of conflict about money and land and power, and where interfaith cooperation was possible and where globalization may have gotten its real start. Can understanding this helps us face today's challenges? I don’t know; but we do know that perhaps it’s the beginning of wisdom. Catlos explains it in Infidel Kings and Unholy Warriors: Faith, Power, and Violence in the Age of Crusade and Jihad. My conversation with Brian Catlos:
The recent suicide of Robin Williams puts into bold perspective that we really don’t know very much about the inner lives of the people that make us laugh. From Lenny Bruce to Richard Pryor, from Johnny Carson to Bill Cosby, the demons and private lives that drove these comedians were often anything but funny. Cosby was particularly unique in several ways. He broke the color barrier for television with I Spy. He appealed to predominantly white audiences, yet subtly advanced the civil rights agenda. He broke the rules, yet didn’t shout while he was doing it. The Cosby show has become a part of American iconography and some would argue paved the way for the election of Barack Obama. But what we know about his influential comedian has been mostly underwater. That is until journalist Mark Whitaker now pulls it all together in his new biography Cosby: His Life and Times My conversation with Mark Whitaker:
If you’ve ever borrowed money for anything, from a mortgage to a student loan, you’ve been impacted by LIBOR. The London Interbank Offered Rate. The global standard for interest rates. The problem is, like so many other recent aspects of our financial markets, we’ve now come to find that it’s been rigged. That a system built on trust, has been anything but trustworthy. That the gentlemanly system of the London bankers has joined the international movement toward greed, and dishonesty, at the expense of average citizens around the world. This story has been reported extensively by financial reporter Erin Arvedlund. Now she pulls it all together in her new book Open Secret: The Global Banking Conspiracy That Swindled Investors Out of Billions. My conversation with Erin Arvedlund:
When we talk about America's history of segregation, its not just about race and class, but also about geography. Even as the civil right movement would begin to take hold in the late 60’s and seventies, there were parts of America, particularly in the rural South, that we untouched by that progress. Places where slavery was not just a legacy to be overcome, but still in the fabric of the cultural DNA of place. It is into this landscape that a young boy grows up, prematurely comes of age due to familial sexual abuse and yet has the strength, courage, and intelligence to make it out. To become not just a pillar of the NY Times editorial page, but a man brave enough share his sometimes painful story. That man is Charles Blow. His new memoir is Fire Shut Up in My Bones. My conversation with Charles Blow:
Years ago, in Hollywood, someone once remarked that the amount of bad screenplay writing increased with the advent of the copy machine. The same claim was later made when word processing and screenwriting software came along. The fact is there is a lot of bad writing that goes on in many arenas. Today much of the blame gets heaped on email, or texting, or technology, or just “kids today.” The real issues are more nuanced, more complex, and not quite as rigid as some might wish. These are some of the conclusions of Harvard Professor Steven Pinker in his new book The Sense of Style: The Thinking Persons Guide to Writing in the 21st Century. My conversation with Steven Pinker:
The world is a crazy place. Everyday here we talk about all the forces that are impacting us, making life more complex, confusing and making so many people less sure of who they are, how they fit in, and whether the decisions they make lead them in the right direction. Sure, many people want to change their lives. But for others, it’s simply a matter of trying to find true north. Of seeing the guide posts or the modern day yellow brick road that will lead to a sense of certainty and security. For many that road is about Gratitude and Trust, the title of a new book by Paul Williams and Tracey Jackson. My conversation with Paul Williams and Tracey Jackson:
Socrates was worried about the rise of written text. He feared that it would change our habits of mind and not allow us to remember. The printing press would spark another revolution, as mass produced text would change the world. Not unlike our current digital revolution, the push back was fierce and loud. And because history does repeat itself, we can indeed learn a lot by looking back at the last great technological revolution in publishing. One that gave birth to the publishing industry itself, and that today, fights for its place in the digital tsunami. Journalist Alix Christie takes us back to this momentous time, 500+ years ago, in her debut historical novel Gutenberg's Apprentice. My conversation with Alix Christie:
We've all played the game of thinking about and listing the most important inventions in the progress of mankind. Certainly from the wheel, to the printing press to the transistor, there are plenty to choose from. But seldom do we think about philosophical revolutions. The invention of ideas and philosophies and habits of mind, that have also changed the world. Of these, there have been less. Perhaps, according to Luciano Floridi, only three that have truly shaped our conception of the world and who we are within it Oxford philosophy Professor Luciano Floridi argues that the technological and information revolution of today, has created a rare Fourth Revolution, from which we now view ourselves and our place in the world. A world in which we shape our reality and that reality in turn shapes us. My conversation with Luciano Floridi:
Once upon a time we got our international news through the relentless reporting of foreign correspondent. The Vietnam war may have brought war into our living rooms for the first time, but reporters still provided context. Citizens would come to understand events through the consistency of work from a reporter, though time and experience. Today, that foreign correspondent, satirized by Evelyn Waugh and celebrated by Hitchcock is an endangered species. Today the freelance reporter, dashing about and multitasking media, looking at events on a one off basis, may not have the same contextual understanding. As a result, we tend to look at distant events without the benefit of context or connection. The result is that our mistakes and failure appears untethered from each other and this, coupled with our short memories and even shorter attention spans, prevents the foreign correspondent from providing that first draft of history. HDS Greenway has been an eyewitness to some of the most profound events of our times, including the fall of Saigon, ethnic cleansing in the Balkans, and the horrors of both gulf wars. Now he shares his remarkable career as a Foreign Correspondent: A Memoir My conversation with HDS Greenway:
Few things ignite all of our senses to the degree that food does. Once simply a form of sustenance, food today, in restaurants or in markets, represents status, sexuality, politics, and education. Where all of this comes together, is not just in taste, or smell, or texture, but in the language that is used by purveyors of food, and the language that we all use, in talking about food. Stanford linguistics Professor and MacArther Fellow, Dan Jurafsky gives us a menu to interpret this in The Language of Food: A Linguist Reads the Menu. My conversation with Dan Jurafsky:
Like it or not, the nature of our society and of our culture today is focused inward. Walk down any urban street, vs. 40 years ago and instead of looking out, we’re look down or inward. At our phones, our images, at our own world. In a culture where self branding is celebrated, where selfies rule and Millennials are self absorbed, is it any wonder that narcissism seems rampant? But is this just a societal phase, resulting in the kind of prolonged adolescence that A.O. Scott talked about in his NY Times essay, or is it a clinical epidemic that needs more serious attention? Jeffrey Kluger examines these changes in The Narcissist Next Door: Understanding the Monster in Your Family, in Your Office, in Your Bed,in Your World. My conversation with Jeffrey Kluger:
It seems quaint now, but there was a time we had to rely on others for most of our needs. We had to rely on family for food, operators to place calls, travel agents to book travel, the post office to deliver mail, and large institutions to fulfill our needs. The technological revolution that began in the 70’s changed all that. As consumers, as individuals we become empowered. We could do our own thing, we could customize our lives. But this new found power was a little like an 18 year old going off to college. A new freedom that would often result in excess. That excess, for us as a society, has been the self absorption that it has engendered. But that’s changing. The millennial generation is both self absorbed AND one of most compassionate. It is arguably the bridge in a maturing culture that is coming to grips with this new found power. These are some of the core issues that Paul Roberts writes about in his new book, The Impulse Society: America in the Age of Instant Gratification My conversation with Paul Roberts:
If we were to listen to many of the Cassandras out there today, you would think that technology, information, and progress were all bad. They are the same people who would have objected to the printing press, the telephone, television and the automobile. They look at education and don't understand why memorization and rote learning are no longer worthy of attention and want to put the technology genie back in the bottle. Well, it's not going back in! In fact, much of what we have wrought as a society and as a civilization has made us better, smarter, and awakened whole new aspects of human potential. Journalist Clive Thompson makes the case in Smarter Than You Think: How Technology Is Changing Our Minds for the Better. My conversation with Clive Thompson:
It seems that every generation seeks to find fault with the adolescent generation coming of age. Just as the parents of boomers eschewed the 60’s, so today, we boomers are all too quick to criticize and disparage the state of Millennials. Perhaps if we better understood adolescence, the process that the brain goes through as it remodels itself, we’d better understand the young adults that are coming of age. And while we are quick to judge what seems to be the extension of adolescence today, new research shows that the extension of adolescence is actually the extension of the plasticity of the brain which allow it to continue to be enhanced and invigorated. Understand all of this has been the work of Dr. Laurence Steinberg in Age of Opportunity: Lessons from the New Science of Adolescence. My conversation with Dr. Laurence Steinberg:
Be it immigration, race or sexual orientation, we have an odd human tendency to expect that tolerance and integration to really mean sameness. The idea of a social, political and cultural melting pot is often seen as the primary metaphor for accepting difference, as opposed to … well just accepting and appreciating differences. Perhaps nowhere has this been more profound than for gays and lesbians. Once shunned, now we look to gay marriage, child rearing and fashion, as a kind of establishment model. In short, human beings love to co opt difference and seek sameness. But what impact does this have on individuals who may be different? Individuals whose ideas, values, creativity, and life style seek to really be different? That is one of the issues that Julie Bindel takes up in Straight Expectations My conversation with Julie Bindel:
Is there anyone that believes that we still have a measure of privacy? Not only are there cameras everywhere, not only is big data a part of almost every business, but the uses of the this data, not by the NSA, but by corporate America, are becoming ever more sophisticated. After all, it’s what we say we want. Better customer service, better consumer satisfaction and greater personalization. After all, when you look up something on Amazon or Google and then you see ads for that item within seconds, on every website you visit, maybe it seems to go a bit too far. No place is better at this, particularly in the bricks and mortar world, than Las Vegas. A place where money and service are as one, where loyalty still seems to matter and where the world of tech and the world of touch come together, as in few other places. This is the backdrop for an Adam Tanner's look at big data, in What Stays in Vegas: The World of Personal DataLifeblood of Big Business and the End of Privacy as We Know It. My conversation with Adam Tanner:
Think about some of the great themes and conflicts of our times. Freedom vs. Tyranny, the 1% vs the 99%, East Coast values. vs the Western ethos, team effort vs individual effort, the US vs Russia, the triumph of the Greatest Generation, craftsmanship vs mass production, and the moral as well as physical victory of America in the Second World War. All of these themes and more are part of the story that Daniel James Brown weaves together in his bestselling The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics. Reminding us that the story of Jesse Owens was not the only American triumph to emerge from the 1936 Olympics. The victory of the Boys in the Boat, the University of Washing crew team, would happen, right under Hitler’s watchful gaze. My conversation with Daniel James Brown:
As we approach this anniversary of 9/11, it's worth noting that the Afghan war has become the longest in American history. Also, to think about how many of the men and women who have served in that war, were motivated and inspired to act, by those events thirteen years ago. Michael Golembesky is one of those. He would go on to become one of the first members of the US Marines Special Operations Team, that was created in 2006. His story, his eight years of service, is a telling snapshot of both the good and bad of our efforts in Afghanistan. He shares the personal and military nuances of his story in his memoir Level Zero Heroes: The Story of U.S. Marine Special Operations in Bala Murghab, Afghanistan. My conversation with Michael Golembesky:
When we talk about success, be it on Wall Street, or Silicon Valley, or even the boom in natural gas, we always talk about it as “the new gold rush." In part because the Gold Rush represented the mobility, energy and adventure of Americans in pursuit of riches. But those riches, that began in California in 1849, were anything but easy. While many made fortunes, many of those fortunes came to those who took care of the hundreds of thousands who would come looking to change their lives.That’s the world that Edward Dolnick writes about in The Rush: America's Fevered Quest for Fortune, 1848-1853 My conversation with Edward Dolnick:
Election day 2014 is fast approaching. At the end of the process, we will have spent over three hundred million dollars to decide if Mitch McConnell or Harry Reid will have a two vote margin. While there are many social, political and psychological reasons for our current state of political gridlock and polarization, money is certainly at the core. The next Presidential election could well cost over one and a quarter billion dollars. It costs ten million, at the very least, to become a US Senator and even House races cost millions. We’ve long talked about the corrosive effect of money in politics, and Citizens United has only reinforced that. But both sides are raising and spending the money with equal alacrity, and the public shows no signs of being fed up enough, to do anything about it. If it continues, what does it really mean for democracy has we have known it, what kind of government will it give us, and will there ever come a tipping point for an angry and disaffected public? Those are some of the question that Tim Kuhner raises in Capitalism v. Democracy: Money in Politics and the Free Market Constitution. My conversation with Tim Kuhner:
Once upon a time, our national pastime had nine innings, a long season, a pastoral setting and the worship and appreciation of the Boys of Summer. Today, that pastime has been replaced by 60 minutes of intense violence. With words like blitz and gridiron. Where once stadiums had an ambulance standing by for fans that might have a medical emergency, today, the ambulance is there for the players whose concussions and broken bones and worse, are the norm. What’s worse, is that is also a game that children want to play. I guess we shouldn't’ be surprised that a culture that reveres “Bullets and Burgers” would turn to football as its new national pastime. Put more succinctly, is football driving the decay of our culture, or has our culture provided the perfect storm for the explosion of football's success? Former sports journalist Steve Almond, in Against Football: One Fan's Reluctant Manifesto,takes a look at the decay and corruption that is football today. A sport perhaps more in need of a warden than a commissioner. My conversation with Steve Almond:
We are deep in the heart of back to school season. Therefore, it's worth noting that while we have had dozens and dozens of conversations, on this program, about the improvement and mechanics of education, about its need to transform itself into a modern world, rarely have we ever stepped back to examine or even question the purpose of that education. In part, because the answer today, almost seems like a paraphrase of Bill Clinton,... It’s the career stupid! But should it be? Should there be a higher and more noble purpose, particularly for higher education? As education moves more and more toward modeling the work force, that is being about collaboration and problem solving, are we losing something? Has the worship of STEM and Wall Street, and the abandonment of the traditional Liberal Arts education left us in a lurch, whose implications have rippled out to impact almost every aspect of society. If that’s true... then there is no app for that. There is only the conversation started by William Deresiewicz in Excellent Sheep: The Miseducation of the American Elite and the Way to a Meaningful Life My conversation with William Deresiewicz:
While the world is changing around us, while creative destruction consumes so many areas, sometimes it seems like education stagnates. After all, many, if not most, of our schools still operate in a manner designed in an agrarian world; pre Internet, pre technology and long before we knew and understood how the brain was wired, how children or anyone else really learns. The good news is we are beginning to see progress. All across the country bold, persistent experiments are taking place that are creating schools that set the stage for the future of education. One such school is the Ron Clark Academy in Southeast Atlanta. It has been called one of the best schools in America. It’s co-founder Kim Bearden has taught over 2000 student and has been involved in virtually all aspects of education. Now she distills much of what she’s learned in her new book, Crash Course: The Life Lessons My Students Taught Me. My conversation with Kim Bearden:
Almost every aspect of our culture and economy has been touched by technology and creative destruction. Still, three areas have lagged behind, and all three are beginning to be addressed and changed. They are finance, healthcare and education. Although incumbents still rule in healthcare and finance, the ground is beginning to shift. But in education, less so. The very fact that we are still debating the merits and sanctity of practices that date to the agrarian age, is telling. But change is happening. Throughout the country small individual efforts are being made. Efforts that reexamine the questions at the very foundation of learning of understanding and putting knowledge to use. One thing that hasn’t changed, is that teachers are still on the front lines. For them too, it will be change or perish. Elizabeth Green takes a deep look into this change, in Building a Better Teacher: How Teaching Works. My conversation with Elizabeth Green:
So much of the way our brains and nervous system are hardwired, emerges as man did, from the primordial stew of life. Clearly, modern science tells us we are more suited to be hunter gatherers than we are multitasking and purveyors of Google Glass. Yet no matter how much some may desire it, we are not going back to a simpler time. Information will continue to pore in on us, multilateral demands on our time will increase, and to succeed at anything, work, play or home, we will have to adapt or perish. So the question becomes, do we try and shape this brave new world to fit the way we are, or do we move through life, knowing we are on the ramparts of the efforts to change human evolution? The answer is really both. This is where esteemed neuroscientist Daniel J. Levitin takes us in his new book The Organized Mind: Thinking Straight in the Age of Information Overload. My conversation with Daniel Levitin:
Ginger Roger once said, of her partnership with Fred Astaire, that she did everything he did, “but backwards and in high heels.” In many ways this gets to the heart of partnerships. Two people that have a similar mission, but see it perhaps in opposite and positively reinforcing ways. The examples are course legend. Jobs and Wozniak, Lennon & McCartney, Parker and Stone, Larry and Sergei, Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner, Crick and Watson, Joel and Ethan Coen, and Hewlett & Packard, to name just a few. When you look at the list, it becomes clear that there is something special about the power of two. Is it an accident, or something inherent in the creative process? That’s the focus of Joshua Wolf Shenk’s new book, Powers of Two: Finding the Essence of Innovation in Creative Pairs. My conversation with Joshua Wolf Shenk:
Across the country, fracking—the extraction of natural gas by hydraulic fracturing—is being touted as the nation’s answer to energy independence. Energy companies have repeatedly assured us that the process is safe, But is there a hidden cost, a hidden danger? What really is the process of fracking and what are its consequence on people, the environment and those that come in contact with it? Michelle Bamberger and Robert Oswald, combine their expertise in a new look at how contamination at drilling sites translates into ill health and heartbreak for both families and their pets. In The Real Cost of Fracking: How America's Shale Gas Boom Is Threatening Our Families, Pets, and Food, they give voice to the people at ground zero of the fracking debate, the authors illustrate what they believe to be the consequences of fracking, which In their view, poses a dire threat to the air we breathe, the water we drink, and even our food supply. My conversation with Michelle Bamberger and Robert Oswald:
We often think of the 60’s as a time when the left was in the ascendancy. When great social movements, like the women's movement, the antiwar movement and the civil rights movement were given their birth. In fact, arguably, the most lasting legacy of the 60’s maybe the rise of modern conservatism. The history of modern conservatism and of the current Republican party has its beginnings in the early 1960’s and continues into the confusion we see in the party today. Rick Perlstein has been one of our most astute chroniclers of that history, beginning with his examination of Barry Goldwater in Before the Storm, and through his look at the 60’s and 70’s in Nixonland. Now Pearlstein takes us to the next phase, in his examination of the handoff of the party from Nixon to Reagan in The Invisible Bridge: The Fall of Nixon and the Rise of Reagan.
But more than a political story, it’s the story of the transformation of America. A time when America suffered its first military defeat, was shocked by the oil crisis, the hostage crises, inflation, stagflation, a criminal Presidency, a rogue CIA, and more. But it also became a time when as a solution to our multiple problems, reality gave way to fantasy; when facts gave way to fiction, when like television or the movies, make believe would take us to the place we’d rather be. And leading that transformation was Ronald Reagan. My conversation with Rick Perlstein:
The world has changed. We can intimately and immediately know what's taking place in the far reaches of the world or across America. But we often don’t know what’s going on with our neighbors and in our own community. Today we are a part of many communities of interest, not necessarily communities of geography. And is it any surprise really? The natural human tendency is to associate with people like us. But as mobility and tolerance have allowed a diversity of communities, it has, in fact, atomized us in ways that we seek the similar, no matter where on the planet it might be. But what is the consequence of this? We were once a great and vast continental nation, that had to rely on community as a form of safety and self govemment. Today that’s not the case. The result has impacted our relationships, or politics, and the very way we govern ourselves. Where it’s going and how we got here is the subject The Vanishing Neighbor: The Transformation of American Community, a brilliant new book by Marc Dunkelman. My conversation with Marc Dunkelman:
There once was a time before the internet, before the automobile, before air conditioning, and television and radio and even before the printing press. All these inventions and many others, dramatically transformed the ways in which we live. At the time each was criticized for the ruinous impact it would have. The printing press was thought to be the end of religion, air conditioning would keep us inside, and not allow us to connect with others. The automobile would destroy community and television would pollute our brains. The fact is that each of these inventions changed us and changed the way we lived. And the result was not good or bad. It was just different. It was all part of the process of human evolution. Ever since man first emerged from the cave, we have been engaged in an ongoing effort to try and shape and define our man made environment, just as it continues to try shape and define us. Michael Harris thinks we need to reclaim some of that lost world. He details his ideas in The End of Absence: Reclaiming What Weve Lost in a World of Constant Connection. My conversation with Michael Harris:
Those that have been through it, say that the experience of being in a combat zone is like no other. It is all consuming. In so many ways it eliminates the real world of life and its mundane everyday chores and problems. Yet the men and women engaged in that effort, bring with them a life experience composed of precisely those problems. Sometimes the military is a means of escape, sometimes a training ground for life, frequently life changing. Yet most soldiers, men and women alike, must return to that real world. And when they do, everything changes once again. That’s the story that Helen Thorpe tells about three women in Soldier Girls: The Battles of Three Women at Home and at War. My conversation with Helen Thorpe:
Fifty years ago this summer, Americans, both black and white, gave their last full measure of devotion in an effort to register African American voters in Mississippi. The violence that resulted, the death of three civil rights workers, the beatings, the church bombings, and effort to prevent Americans from voting is a stain that shall forever be remembered. For those that have forgotten, or were not alive in that period, A new work by Matt Herron is a powerful reminder. Matt was the progenitor of an effort to chronicle those events and in so doing captured a pivotal moment in American history. The result, is Mississippi Eyes: The Story and Photography of the Southern Documentary Project My conversation with Matt Herron:
Perhaps it’s the state of the world today, but everywhere fantasy seems to be in ascendancy. The retelling of Narnia, Harry Potter, Game of Thrones and Lev Grossman’s The Magician series, all speak to what seems to be a compelling need. Lev Grossman has just published the third and final installment in his series, entitled The Magician's Land: A Novel. My conversation with Lev Grossman:
When Barack Obama was elected President, we heard lots of loose talk about this being a post racial society. It was as if a magic pill had taken the issue of race and identity out of our consciousness. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, arguably, we are further behind in erasing our racial legacy than other parts of the world. And part of that reason is that we have yet to achieve a shared truth about the American experience of slavery and bigotry. While we've done a good job of trying to move beyond that legacy, like a weed, not pulled out from the root, it comes back to haunt us, because of our difficulty in dealing with its true history. That’s the history that Chris Tomlinson takes on, with respect to his own family, in his book and in the documentary Tomlinson Hill: The Remarkable Story of Two Families who Share the Tomlinson Name - One White, One Black. My conversation with Chris Tomlinson:
For 40 years, the Focus of the conversations about Watergate has been what did the President know and when did he know it. The revelations from the release of and the listening to more and more of the 3700 hours of White House tapes, has pretty much now clarified that issues. What still remains very murky, perhaps because it exists in both the realms of psychology as well as fact, is why. Why did Nixon insist on the tapes, why didn’t he destroy them, and deeper still, why did a man whose entire life was devoted to the pursuit of the Presidency and his own place in history, destroy himself, by his own hand, his own actions and his own decisions? Few have gotten closer to answering these questions than John Dean. Nixon’s White House council, the man who first told Nixon that Watergate was a growing “cancer on the Presidency,” who himself has spent 40 years thinking and writing about these issues, now on the 40th anniversary of Nixon’s resignation, has written the definitive, The Nixon Defense: What He Knew and When He Knew It. My conversation with John Dean:
For 40 years, the Focus of the conversations about Watergate has been what did the President know and when did he know it. The revelations from the release of and the listening to more and more of the 3700 hours of White House tapes, has pretty much now clarified that issues. What still remains very murky, perhaps because it exists in both the realms of psychology as well as fact, is why. Why did Nixon insist on the tapes, why didn’t he destroy them, and deeper still, why did a man whose entire life was devoted to the pursuit of the Presidency and his own place in history, destroy himself, by his own hand, his own actions and his own decisions? Few have gotten closer to answering these questions than John Dean. Nixon’s White House council, the man who first told Nixon that Watergate was a growing “cancer on the Presidency,” who himself has spent 40 years thinking and writing about these issues, now on the 40th anniversary of Nixon’s resignation, has written the definitive, The Nixon Defense: What He Knew and When He Knew It. My conversation with John Dean:
For journalists, for historians, and for political junkies, Richard Nixon is the gift that keeps on giving. There are over 3700 hours of Nixon tapes and only a portion have been released and deconstructed. Even as we mark this 40th anniversary of Nixon's resignation, most of us have only heard a few minutes here or there. For Luke Nichter, a Professor at A & M University, and one of the preeminent experts on the Nixon tapes, it paints a picture of a cunning and controlling President, and sometimes a country astride the world. But mostly it captures the White House, America and the world, in a particular place and time that bears very little resemblance to the world today. The latest collection of Nixon tapes, assembled by Luke Nichter and Douglas Brinkley, is The Nixon Tapes: 1971-1972..My conversation with Luke Nichter:
From the undersea adventures of Jules Verne, to Peter Benchley’s The Deep to Jim Cameron’s The Abyss, we flock to movies and literature that takes place underwater. We are fascinated by, but know so little about, the undersea world. In fact, a recent review of James Nestor’s book, reminds us that if something disappears on Mars or the Moon, we’d have a better chance of finding it, than if it disappeared in the world’s oceans. This fascination has given rise to whole groups of people that seek to explore in new and different, and sometimes dangerous, ways. That's the backdrop of James Nestor's Deep: Freediving, Renegade Science, and What the Ocean Tells Us about Ourselves. My conversation with James Nestor:
In communities all across America debates rage about zoning, building, and development. In most cases, however, the debate is around the margins. Most places have long since evolved into what they are. New York City is perhaps the penultimate example. While arguments still do go on about height limits, shadows and railyards, the city has long since determined its destiny. For New York it has been, at least since the mid 18th century, a forward march to becoming the amazing city it is today. Ted Steinberg's Gotham Unbound: The Ecological History of Greater New York, gives us a detailed history of that urban evolution. My conversation with Ted Steinberg:
Think about the things that shape our world, our perceptions and our culture. For a large part of the population, the experience of America’s mistakes in Vietnam has long shaped our engagement in the world. The country's disrespect, at the time, for the service of those that served in Vietnam, in many ways positively shapes the way we respond to Veterans' needs today. As leaders today try and juggle the crisis of the world, and play a kind of geopolitical chess, they are always chastened by the scandal that was Iran/Contra, And as any magazine or look at popular culture today will tell you, we are obsessed with outward appearances, usually at the expense of depth and real understanding. All of these issues and ideas come into play in the life and struggles of Robert Timberg. Disfigured in a land mine explosion thirteen days before he was to leave Vietnam, his story, his struggles and his recovery in many ways parallels the story of the past half century. It’s what makes him so effective as a journalist and why his story, that he now tells us in his memoir Blue-Eyed Boy, is also a history lesson for us all. My conversation with Robert Timberg:
Every generation of parents wants their children to do better than themselves. It seems though that to accomplish that today, as NY Times columnist Tom Friedman and others have warned, "average is no longer good enough." So how do we reconcile this with the data that tells us seeing our children for who they are and focusing on their social and emotional needs, is every bit as important as their academic needs. How do we square that circle of success. Nancy Rose explains in Raise the Child You've Got - Not the One You Want: Why Everyone Thrives When Parents Lead with Acceptance. My conversation with Nancy Rose:
The student loan crisis has reached epic proportions. Beyond the basic fact that it could be the next financial cries, with debt exceeding one trillion dollars, its impact on higher education, at a time when that education is a prerequisite for today's employment market, makes the problem all the more profound and complicated. It also makes it a matter of urgent attention in the realm of public policy. Joel and Eric Best take a comprehensive look at the scope and history of the problem in The Student Loan Mess: How Good Intentions Created a Trillion-Dollar Problem. My conversation with Joel & Eric Best:
Suddenly talk of income equality and poverty has become more acceptable. Perhaps it’s the political season, or Thomas Pikitty’s book, or perhaps it’s just the reality of what we see all around us in America. But how does talk turn into action and what kind of action? We see in Silicon Valley and in tech, in general, that when a company succeeds, or is bought out, all of the employees, all of the stakeholders benefit. Why can’t that same idea apply to the rest of corporate America? This is part of the idea of the The Citizen's Share: Reducing Inequality in the 21st Century.A new book and a new way to look at these issues by Joesph Blasi. My conversation with Joseph Blasi:
It has been argued that more evil is committed in the name of banality, than purpose. Certainly a look at our current golden age of television, confirms that. Don Draper, Walter White, and Tony Soprano never really seem to make up their minds about being good or evil. So what’s the zeitgeist of our culture that separates hero from villain and what's different today than say in the 90’s or even the 50’s? Who better to ask than Chuck Klosterman, The Ethicist for the NY Times Magazine, and the bestselling author of seven previous books, including Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs no looks into our confusion about good and evil in I Wear the Black Hat: Grappling with Villains (Real and Imagined) My conversation with Chuck Klosterman:
When Hanna Rosin wrote The End of Men, did it also portend the end of fatherhood? There is no question that gender roles have been dramatically changed in the past 50 years. That in almost every measurable metric, women are not just pulling ahead of, but are surpassing men. Yet fifty years of change, is no match for almost two million years of human evolution. Where these two forces converge is the reality of modern fatherhood. The scientific, genetic and evolutionary influence of fathers is powerful and provable. Yet in many ways it runs headlong into popular culture, contemporary role models, and the reality of 21st century family life. Journalist Paul Raeburn describes the current revolution in research in Do Fathers Matter?: What Science Is Telling Us About the Parent We've Overlooked My conversation with Paul Raeburn:
Everyday we encounter jerks. Some have recently argued that the number of jerks has increased exponentially as we all experience greater stress and more frequent encounters, in denser urban environments. But when those jerks go to far, than they truly become assholes. But why so many, why now and what can we do about it? That's the question that Aaron James asks in Assholes: A Theory. My conversation with Aaron James:
Immigration has once again become the issue of the day. Children are pouring across the border. Misinformation is rampant and our national attitude has become mean spirited. We say we are a nation of immigrants, yet what we really mean by that seems very different than the current reality. We have a system that has grown inefficient, prejudicial and disconnected from the very human concerns of people seeking a better life. Aviva Chomsky has been active in Latin American solidarity and immigrants’ rights issues for over twenty-five years. She examines where we are today in Undocumented: How Immigration Became Illegal. My conversation with Aviva Chomsky:
It’s long been said that if you really want to get to know someone, travel with them. The corollary is that if you really want to get to know members of your family, go on a vacation with them. The crucible of that experience usually brings out both the best and worst of who they are. That’s the pressure cooker that the Post family is thrown into in Emma Straub's. new novel The Vacationers. It isn’t easy making it onto the New York Times bestseller list with your second novel, but Straub did it with The Vacationers — the perfect book to bring with you on your summer getaway. My conversation with Emma Straub:
America has more ocean and more coastline than any other nation. We produce more fresh seafood than other nations. Yet the amount of seafood extracted from those oceans, that we keep here in the US, is very small.
Why this disconnect? Why is our relationship to seafood so attenuated? And is there some connection or consistency between the decline of farming in America and the decline of domestically consumed seafood.
Paul Greenberg takes us inside seafood and aquaculture in American Catch: The Fight for Our Local Seafood.
My conversation with Paul Greenberg:
Technology is transforming the world. But so too are millions of young people throughout the Middle East, whose attitudes, desire for freedom and more cosmopolitan views, are transforming nations. When these forces combine, the results can be powerful. This is what we’ve seen in the Arab Spring and in the uprisings and youth movements in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya. University of Michigan Professor Juan Cole, one of our most distinguished Middle East experts, talks of a rising Arab Generation Y, in his new book The New Arabs: How the Millennial Generation is Changing the Middle East. My conversation with Juan Cole:
Living in the West, it's easy to forget that one-sixth of the world's population subsists without sustainable sources of food, medical care, or housing. More than a billion people around the world are believed to live on a dollar a day... or less. While the circumstances leading to that sort of poverty are varied and complicated, the situations faced by the planet's poorest are depressingly familiar. Now we get an on the ground look at that world, in a new work by Thomas A. Nazario. He is the founder of a nonprofit The Forgotten International, and the author of the vividly reported and beautifully photographed, Living on a Dollar a Day: The Lives and Faces of the World's Poor. My conversation with Thomas Nazario:
Few nations have as long a history of uninterrupted conflict and misunderstanding as the United States and Iran. The markers along that road are tall. The US coup that installed the Shah, the hostage crisis, Khobar towers, Lebanon, holocaust denial and the continually failed US efforts to seize opportunities when presented by Iran, have all contributed. The issue of US/Iranian relations have run through the center of American foreign policy for the past 60 years, through ten successive administrations, Republican and Democrat alike. Yet with each successive effort or treatment, the disease always threatens to burst out and become full blown. This is where we are once again, in the nuclear talks in Vienna, and in an effort to stabilize Iraq and Syria. Are we at a new critical point in this relationship or is it all just another failed effort at rapprochement? Long time Iranian diplomat and now a Professor at Princeton, Seyed Hossein Mousavian thinks there is reason for optimism. He makes his case in Iran and The United States: An Insider's View on the Failed Past and the Road to Peace. My conversation with Seyed Hossein Mousavian:
Several trends are shaping the world today. One is immigration and migration. The mass movement of peoples from rural to urban area and across borders, in search of a better life. Concurrently, globalization and cultural homogenization are confusing the very idea of national identity. As the recently concluded World Cup proved, we are deeply committed to our ethnic and geographic identity, and yet it’s all within the context of an increasingly borderless and global world Inherent in this contradiction lies many issues faced by multi racial Americans and particularly Chinese Americans, torn between two models of success Eric Liu’s story sits at the epicenter of these ideas. Ideas that form the basis of what we really should be discussing as part of our immigration conversation and what Eric talks about in A Chinaman's Chance: One Family's Journey and the Chinese American Dream. My conversation with Eric Liu:
For ten days in March 1971, the Rolling Stones traveled by train and bus to play two shows a night in many of the small theaters and town halls where their careers began. No backstage passes. No security. No sound checks or rehearsals. And only one journalist allowed. That journalist was Robert Greenfield and now, thirty-three years later, he gives us his first an account of this landmark event, which marked the end of the first chapter of the Stones’ extraordinary career.
Ain't It Time We Said Goodbye: The Rolling Stones on the Road to Exile is also the story of two artists on the precipice of mega stardom, power, and destruction. It was both the best of times and the worst of times for the music business and the end of innocence in music. My conversation with Robert Greenfield:
To paraphrase Shakespeare, that fault is not in our food, but in choices we make. Specifically about what we eat, where it comes from and the policy choices that surround it. There is no questions that we are meat eaters. But given the forces of big agriculture, and the fast food industry, we have to reassess not the practice of eating meat, but the kinds of meat we choose. Things like factory farming, antibiotics, and many of the practices of the food industry, seek to undermine those choices. Patrick Martins, one of the leaders of the sustainable food and slow food movement, sounds a clarion call to these issues in The Carnivore's Manifesto: Eating Well, Eating Responsibly, and Eating Meat My conversation with Patrick Martins:
Immigration seems the issue on everyone's mind today. Yet with all the thinking and all the talking, we forget half the story. It’s not just about how the receiving country deals with new immigrants, it’s also about the immigrant’s experience and how that experience, especially for young children, will shape their lives, and in turn their contribution to and role in, the greater society of which they become a part. When we look at the mass migration to America’s shores at the beginning of the 20th century, we get a glimpse of how that plays out. Alex Tizon, came to America from the Philippines. He would go on to become a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and the former Seattle bureau chief for the LA Times and currently teaches at the University of Oregon. His memoir of his immigrant experience is Big Little Man: In Search of My Asian Self My conversation with Alex Tizon:
It’s easy to forget that long before the intelligence failures of 9/11, the misinformation about Iraq's WMDs and what has become almost the militarization of the CIA, the agency had done well as the bulwark of American Intelligence efforts in the Cold War and in helping to define America's place in the world. Perhaps there is no better way to look back at that effort, than through the lens of the CIA’s most Zelig like character, Jack Devine. Devine served eleven Directors of the CIA. He was there when Allende fell in Chile, in the effort to aid the Mujahedeen against the Soviets in Afghanistan, in the morass of Iran/ Contra, in the hunt for Pablo Escobar, during the Haitian coup in 1991, and he ultimately served as leader of the Directorate of Operations, the nerve center of America’s covert operations worldwide. He tells his fascinating story in Good Hunting: An American Spymaster's Story My conversation with Jack Devine:
It’s easy to forget that long before the intelligence failures of 9/11, the misinformation about Iraq's WMDs and what has become almost the militarization of the CIA, the agency had done well as the bulwark of American Intelligence efforts in the Cold War and in helping to define America's place in the world. Perhaps there is no better way to look back at that effort, than through the lens of the CIA’s most Zelig like character, Jack Devine. Devine served eleven Directors of the CIA. He was there when Allende fell in Chile, in the effort to aid the Mujahedeen against the Soviets in Afghanistan, in the morass of Iran/ Contra, in the hunt for Pablo Escobar, during the Haitian coup in 1991, and he ultimately served as leader of the Directorate of Operations, the nerve center of America’s covert operations worldwide. He tells his fascinating story in Good Hunting: An American Spymaster's Story My conversation with Jack Devine:
We all know that our system of government is broken. Mostly we attribute it to bickering and bitter partisanship. But also, in part, it’s the fault of millions upon millions of pages of rules and regulations that seemingly govern every aspect of our lives. This is true on the local, state and national level. Many of these rules are well meaning. They were put in place to address a problem, or right a wrong or fix an imbalance, but the process has gotten out of hand and hardly kept pace with the progress of the world around them. What we have now, not only stifles innovation, it increases cost and runs counter to some of of our most cherished principles and ideas as to what our country is about. Philip K. Howard, the author of The Death of Common Sense, takes a look at all of these rules in The Rule of Nobody: Saving America from Dead Laws and Broken Government. My conversation with Philip K. Howard:
Back in the last 1960’s there was a very famous ad campaign that asked, What Becomes a Legend Most? In fact, the real answer to that question is not the fur coat that was advertised, but really, it’s for a real legend to have a good biographer. John Wayne certainly fits the role of a legend. Wayne's is a story filled with contradiction, misinformation and of course the conflating of fact and fiction. Today, 35 years after his death, Wayne is still a bit of a mystery, even while still one of America's favorite movie stars. What was it about Wayne, his image, his life and his movies, that interconnected so perfectly with his time and his country. Scott Eyman, who previously has written about John Ford, turns his focus to Wayne in a new biography John Wayne: The Life and Legend My conversation with Scott Eyman:
Whether you grew up in a big city or a small town, if you moved away and then went back to visit, years later, everything had probably changed. It probably triggered a kind of nostalgia that both made everything old new again, and at the same time reminded us that often the best way to go home again, is really in our imagination. For Avery Corman, returning to the Bronx was not just an exercise in nostalgia, it was also a look at how the world and all of us have changed over the past half century. Corman details he experiences in My Old Neighborhood Remembered: A Memoir My conversation with Avery Corman:
History is a funny thing. Time goes by, books are written and we think we know all there is to know about a particular time and place. Yet the complexity we sometimes feel about ourselves and about modern life, is no less true for history. The true interpretation of motives and events we thought we knew, is always evolving and surprising us. This it is certainly true with with respect to our own American revolution. As we try to understand other revolutions and the yearning for independence in other parts of the world, perhaps we can better understand, when we see more clearly, our own history. Thomas P. Slaughter has done this for the American Revolution in Independence: The Tangled Roots of the American Revolution My conversation with Thomas P Slaughter:
We eat candy bars, because it’s a tastier sugar delivery system than just eating sugar granules. Some smoke cigarettes, because it was once seen as a status form of nicotine delivery. Chewing tobacco just didn’t have same kind of image. In many respects, we drink vodka for the same reason. It’s a colorless, odorless, and some argue tasteless alcohol delivery system. Think of it as the alcohol equivalent of soy. It takes on the flavor of what’s added to it. Given this, why is it so popular and so lucrative? Why has it become America’s spirit.Journalist Victorino Matus looks deep into the bottle to try and find out how Vodka: How a Colorless, Odorless, Flavorless Spirit Conquered America. My conversation with Victorino Matus
A few days ago, The New York Times ran a story about how libraries in New York were helping to provide WiFi in parts of the city. Obviously the link between libraries and information is long standing. But imagine that in the 1930’s, long, long before the world wide wide was even a kernel in the mind of Tim Berners-Lee or others, the idea of interconnected information, of hyperlinks, of understanding the connections between information and ideas and then trying to pull them all together in a patchwork of analog technology. That’s what Paul Otlay envisioned, way head of his time. His story, long forgotten and ignored has now come back to life in the work of my guest Alex Wright in Cataloging the World: Paul Otlet and the Birth of the Information Age. My conversation with Alex Wright:
Already 2014 has been a huge year in the freedom to marry movement. Advocates have won 16 out of 16 federal and state court decisions across the country. Polls show support at an all time high of 59%. But, although it may seem that way, this didn’t happen overnight. For over 30 years many have been in the trenches carrying the fight. People like Evan Wolfson, and Bruce Bawer and Jonathan Rauch and Andrew Sullivan provided much of the early intellectual heft of the movement. And then, when it came time for the legal battles to escalate into the federal courts, one of the most unlikely partnerships in civil-rights history, David Boies and Ted Olson - two of Americas super lawyers, who squared off against each other in Bush v Gore, teamed up to fight California’s ban on same-sex marriage, Proposition 8, — all the way to the Supreme Court. A year after their victory the have chronicled it, in Redeeming the Dream: The Case for Marriage Equality My conversation with Ted Olson and David Boies:
The Supreme Court today is more influential than ever. From Citizens United to the rulings regarding Obamacare and gay marriage, privacy and free speech, the current Court, under Chief Justice John Roberts, has has had profound influence. Yet it remains a mysterious institution. Like Churchill said of the former Soviet Union, it is often a riddle wrapped in an enigma, inside a mystery. The motivations of the nine men and women who serve for life are often obscure and the internal influences inside the court, are even less transparent. What is clear, is that the Roberts’ Court, now almost 10 years old, is developing a personality of its own, even while its individual members very often defy the stereotypical roles that the public often assigns to them. Trying to make sense of this monolithic and opaque institution of men and woman and laws, is Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe in his book Uncertain Justice: The Roberts Court and the Constitution. My conversation with Laurence Tribe:
The American rate of juvenile incarceration is seven times that of Great Britain, and 18 times that of France. It costs, on average, $88,000 a year to keep a young person locked up — far more than the U.S. spends per child, on education. To examine that system requires a two fold understanding. One of the criminal justice system that sends so many young people into these facilities and secondly the nature of the facilities themselves and the public policy decisions that have allowed them to deteriorate to the point where it’s almost certain that young people sent to these facilities will have a dramatically greater chance of adult incarceration. How bad is the problem, can it be solved with the tools we have, and frankly, in spite of what we say, do we even care enough to do anything about it? Nell Bernstein has spent years up close and personal in the system. The story she tells in her new book, Burning Down the House: The End of Juvenile Prison, should make us all ashamed. My conversation with Nell Bernstein:
How often have we witnessed tragic events and then, not too long thereafter, heard jokes about those events. What this teaches us is not disrespect, but it continually reminds us that humor is often the only way we can grasp and understand tragedy. That humor and tragedy are, even as Shakespeare understood, two sides of the very same coin. In the ability to find the absurdity in life’s misfortune, we are helped to see the world as it is, not through the lens of a “reality distortion field.” Writer and artist Matt Freedman has applied this idea to his own life, his own battle with cancer and graphically details it in his book Relatively Indolent but Relentless: A Cancer Treatment Journal. My conversation with Matt Freedman:
Few phrases get used more today than “creative destruction.” What it really reflects though, is simply the way in which the world has changed. Our forefathers, along with the very founders of the country, couldn’t have imaged everyday things like air travel, the interstate highway system, telephones, automobiles or even indoor plumbing. Much less the internet, the splitting of the atom, or globalization. So how is it that members of the our third branch of government, the Supreme Court, actually hold contemporary debates about constitutional ideas, in the context of what the founders world was once like? The answer is Antonin Scalia. Appointed by Ronald Reagan in 1986, Scalia, has had a profound influence, far beyond his decisions and the world of Court conferences. His ideas about original intent and originalism have taken hold as a real principle of debate. And that fact alone, may well be his lasting legacy. As this current court term comes to an end, Law Professor Bruce Allen Murphy tries to understand Scalia in Scalia: A Court of One. My conversation with Bruce Allen Murphy:
For centuries theologians have argued about how the sins of the father might fall upon their children. Freud talked about the need for a father's protection of his children. And Geoffrey and Tobias Wolff showed us how a deceptive father can impact his sons. As children have to cope today, with so many fathers in prison, for crimes all the way up to murder, it’s almost a public policy concern how this plays out. But what if a child didn’t know, at least not until his 40’s, that his father was an infamous serial killer who had never been caught or brought to justice? That’s what Gary Stewart discovered about his father. Stewart came to believe his father was the infamous Zodiac Killer, who stalked Northern California in the late 60’s. That’s the story that Gary Stewart now shares with the public, in his book The Most Dangerous Animal of All: Searching for My Father . . . and Finding the Zodiac Killer. My conversation with Gary Stewart:
One of the overwhelming ideas of the 20th Century has been the struggle of people throughout the world, to achieve a middle class life. The Horatio Alger mythology of pulling oneself up by their bootstraps has informed most of the American experience, but not necessarily for Cesar Chavez. When we think of Chavez, we think of farm workers, the fields of Delano, or the organization of the UFW. The grape boycott of the late 60’s, the secondary boycott, which would give the farm workers their greatest success and the Chicano movement of which he would become a part. In fact, Chaves’ life and his legacy was far more complex. More than a union organizer, he saw himself as a community organizer. Perhaps a community organizer on steroids. He sought not just to lift up people, but to solve there problems. Where many wanted to move farm workers to the middle class, Chavez saw a kind of nobility in poverty which actually may have limited his success. Miriam Pawel has written the first full throated biography about The Crusades of Cesar Chavez: My conversation with Miriam Pawel:
When we think about building today, almost anywhere on the planet, be it a house or a gleaming glass, steel and concrete office building, we almost reflexively think about how the building was build and how green is that building? Market forces have made green building a premium to be desired and paid for. But this didn’t happen by magic. It happened primarily because one man saw the need to make this his life's work. He is David Gottfried. David Gottfried is the founder of the World Green Building Council (WorldGBC) and the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) and the CEO of Regenerative Ventures. His latest work is Explosion Green: One Man's Journey To Green The World's Largest Industry. My conversation with David Gottfried
Few products are more American than Bourbon. In fact some argue that the Kentucky spirit IS the American experience, distilled and sealed in a bottle. While the English have their Scotch, the Irish their Whisky, Latin America their rum, and Mexico it's cervezas, Kentucky Bourbon is our defining spirit. So what does this drink say about our character as a nation and how does that history apply to today's America? Dane Huckelbridge sought to find out and he shares it with us in Bourbon: A History of the American Spirit. My conversation with Dane Huckelbridge:
Imagine one of the strongest fibers on the planet, a potential energy sources, and something used by our founders, that is now illegal. That is the story of hemp. Sometime comic/journalist Doug Fine tells me how we all may be Hemp Bound: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the Next Agricultural Revolution. My conversation with Doug Fine:
If you are a Californian and especially if you went to school in California, its history and the remarkable life of Junipero Serra were an important part of that education. In the mid 1700’s Junipero Serra would leave Spain for the New World. The Catholic Church, Christianity and California would never be the same. Now in Journey to the Sun: Junipero Serra's Dream and the Founding of California, Gregory Orfalea gives us a fascinating narrative of the remarkable life of Junípero Serra. My conversation with Gregory Orfalea:
Think about the movies we remember. They are a little like old songs, or great books, or great meals. They are purveyors of a kind of double imagery, instantly making yesterdays events todays reality. But with movies there is something more, in the way they stay with us. The way the images play around in our heads and the memories, words and images become embodied in who we are. If you grew up watching and loving movies, like esteemed film critic Kenneth Turan, they take on an even more powerful meaning. Now Turan has taken a look in the rear view mirror at a a lifetime of film and chosen his fifty-four favorites, detailed in his new book Not to be Missed: Fifty-four Favorites from a Lifetime of Film. My conversation with Kenneth Turan:
If I said we were going to talk about a story that involved grand homes, yachts, priceless painting, messy romances, private investigators and armored limousines, you probably wouldn’t think it was the story of a family and a group of men who have been painted as the greatest political villains of the 21st Century. In fact it is. It is the story of the Koch brothers. Fred and Bill and David and Charles and their father Fred, who was one of the founders of the John Birch Society.
The question is not just how this political and economic dynasty has become so powerful, its how they have created such fear in their opponents, out of all proportion to their relatively limited political success. Also the membrane between the Koch’s libertarian ideas and the GOP’s and Tea Party's social agenda may be a sometime marriage of convenience, but one that may not be destined for the long haul. Like so many businessmen who think politics will bend to their will and money, they are often surprised. The first full scale look at the elusive Koch family is Daniel Schulman's Sons of Wichita: How the Koch Brothers Became America's Most Powerful and Private Dynasty. My conversation with Daniel Schulman: (We apologize for some static in the first five minutes)
Long before Xbox One and PlayStation 4 were battling it out on retail shelves, a small but nimble competitor very nearly unseated Nintendo as the top game maker of the 90’s. This history of that battle for video game market supremacy between Sega’s Genesis gaming system and Nintendo’s SNES console is the background of a new book by Blake Harris, Console Wars: Sega, Nintendo, and the Battle that Defined a Generation. It is also a history of how gaming become the huge business that it is today. My conversation with Blake Harris:
We mark the the 70th anniversary of D Day. Not only one of the most significant events of the 20th Century, but one of the most significant decisions ever made by a President to send men into harms way. In a world in which decision making has become an expertise on to itself, when Presidential leadership is reexamined almost every day, it serves us well from both a historical and a contemporary perspective, to understand what really went into making that fateful decision, 70 years ago. How it changed the war, how it changed our history and what it might teach us about navigating a dangerous world today.Nigel Hamilton examines all of this as he looks at FDR in The Mantle of Command: FDR at War, 1941-1942. My conversation with Nigel Hamilton:
In the 1960’s anger was a powerful motivator in civic discourse, as we protested, marched, fought and found new ways to understand relationships. In 1976 Howard Beale told us we had to get up, and get angry! in 1985, Dr. Harriet Lerner explained how anger was a signal, an early warning system about issues in our relationships, among woman, and arguably writ large. Today, anger is even more complex. Anger globally, domestically and still, anger intimately. As such, the solutions are also more difficult to achieve. Harriet Lerner who has since 1985 written extensively about fear, and intimacy and connection, now talks again about the issue of anger,The Dance of Anger: A Woman's Guide to Changing the Patterns of Intimate Relationships.with the reissue of her iconic book My conversation with Harriet Lerner:
Creative destruction, change, automation, the Internet of everything. These are all the issues that seem to impact every aspect of modern life. And whether you believe these things are good or bad, is not relevant. What is relevant is that they are happening everywhere, including in the context of American spycraft and diplomacy and in institutions like the CIA. In a world where quick and nimble and of course secrecy are often the objective best practices, spycraft today has gotten more mired in the institutional morass of every bigger bureaucracy. That’s the underlying backdrop for David Ignatius in his latest spy thriller, The Director.
My conversation with David Ignatius:
No question we are at the apogee of basketball playoffs. Today, almost as much attention gets focused on star coaches as on the star players. After all, who but stars can manage the egos of today’s NBA players? However, one man, who is not yet a star, but who gets these players to pay attention, is Idan Ravin. He’s been called “The Hoops Whisperer,” because of the positive impact he has been able to have on so many, already great, NBA players. He’s a trainer but so much and more. His success says a lot about what it takes to succeed in anything today. He shares his story in The Hoops Whisperer: On the Court and Inside the Heads of Basketball's Best Players. My conversation with Idan Ravin:
Ever since the war on drugs became a political and cultural issues in America, we have seemed to be unclear as to how to deal with the very human reality of dealing with those afflicted by addiction. Too often “just say no,” became a mantra, not just about use, but about treatment and politics. Addiction impacts 1 in 4 American families. Unfortunately, we’ve yet to fully comprehend what addiction is really about, or to develop a kinder and gentler and more scientifically modern way to deal with it. Dr. Jeffrey Foote stands at the forefront of the effort to change that. His latest work is Beyond Addiction: How Science and Kindness Help People Change. My conversation with Dr. Jeffrey Foote:
In spite of some interesting rhetoric and some self selecting experiments, like those done by Peter Thiel, along with the outlier careers of Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg, college is essential for success in today's workplace. Pew’s recent statistics show that for those with only a high school diploma, the unemployment rate is over 12%. For those with a four year degree, it is 4%. But how did we get to an environment that on the one hand makes college the central pillar of economic success, in a knowledge based economy, and yet because of costs, pushes it further and further out of the reach of middle and lower socioeconomic groups? Was this an accident of public policy, or a deliberate attempt to perpetuate the elite? Suzanne Mettler thinks both are true. She details her work in Degrees of Inequality: How the Politics of Higher Education Sabotaged the American Dream. My conversation with Suzanne Mettler:
Throughout time there have always been those trying to stop the forces of progress. Fear of the new and fear of technology, has been the stuff of both horror and science fiction and of many dystopian visions of the future. Today, too often in the name of good stewardship of our plant, there are those that believe we need a simpler world. One where we go back to the land, to the farm, to a kind of Thoreau like localism. The fact is the world is moving toward cities, technological progress is a force of nature that cannot be stopped and globalization is a genie that will not be put back into the proverbial bottle. So how do we accept all of this, and still see a future that is livable, sustainable, and provides for our needs and still protects our food, our air, our water and our climate? The answer lies in technology and in innovation that is, as Robert Bryce says, Smaller Faster Lighter Denser Cheaper. My conversation with Robert Bryce:
The war on terror, that began on 9/11/2001 still goes on. The war in Afghanistan that began shortly after, that was once dubbed “the good war,” is America's longest war. Sadly the landscape of that nation today, does not reflect the either the lives or treasure that Americans gave to it. War is always complicated. Once the battle is joined, the game plans often go out the window. Yet when one looks at the mistakes America made in Afghanistan, they were not so much about battle plans or strategy, they were a reflection of a fundamental misreading of history, culture, nuance and the reality of people being different than ourselves. In an interconnected and globalized world, this is and will continue to be a recipe for repeated disaster. Anand Gopal spent years covering the war, embedded with both American and Taliban forces. His reporting culminates in his debut book, No Good Men Among the Living: America, the Taliban, and the War through Afghan Eyes. My conversation with Anand Goapl:
Once upon a time protest mattered. People got angry at the actions of government and actually acted upon it. While the protests of today, like Tea Party rallies and Occupy Wall Street, often call attention to a problem, arguably they are not intended to do anything about it. Back in 60’s and 70’s it was a very different story. Protests on behalf of Civil Rights and against the Vietnam War would reach a fever pitch. Buildings were seized, protests were both huge and personal. Draft cards were burned and protesters didn’t just spend a night in jail, but sometimes they went to prison for a long time. What impact did it all have? Quite a bit. People and memoirs from both the Nixon and Johnson administrations show that the level of protest really did impact policy. One of those caught up in the times, in fact he is a Zelig like character throughout this period, is Bruce Dancis. Long after his protest days, Bruce had a long career as a pop culture critic and editor. including sixteen year as the arts and entertainment editor of the Sacramento Bee. Now he feels that enough time has gone by to tell his tory in Resister: A Story of Protest and Prison during the Vietnam War. My conversation with Bruce Dancis:
Fifty years ago the nation passed the Civil Rights Act. Six years ago we elected an African American as President of the United States. Yet contrary to the hopes of many, we do not live in a post racial society. While gay rights and gay marriage are often seen as the civil right issues of our time, and yes remarkable progress has been made, we are also far from a post gay or post gender world. The reality is, as racial differences have taught us, too much assimilation and tolerance are potential traps that can wipe out identity and water down the very differences that have been fought for. In short, is the battle for any civil right about viva la difference, or about homogenization? These are some of the questions that Suzanna Walters asks in The Tolerance Trap: How God, Genes, and Good Intentions are Sabotaging Gay Equality. My conversation with Suzanna Walters:
As the recent Jill Abramson kerfuffle at the New York Times, has shown, gender issues still impact the workplaces of even the most public and apparently tolerant of companies.Perhaps in seeing that, and so many other examples, we might realize that we are approaching these issues in the wrong way. Diversity is not just about numbers, or quotas and expecting everyone to be the same. Homogenization is not diversity. Being forced to Lean In, is not about recognizing one's strengths, but about mimicking the strengths of others.We still need to learn that while overall acceptance is important, diversity lies not in one size fits all, but in celebrating differences and taking full advantage of the different intelligences that different individuals and different genders bring to the workplace. These are the issues that Barbara Annis and Keith Merron take up in Gender Intelligence: Breakthrough Strategies for Increasing Diversity and Improving Your Bottom Line. My conversation with Barbara Annis and Keith Merron:
Understanding history can be a two edged sword. On the one hand it is imperative that we understand the forces that have shaped nations and peoples. On the other hand, often when the present spends too much time sitting in judgment of the past, the future can be lost. So, how can we understand the shared narrative of the past, while dispelling myths and embracing a kind of proactive historical consciousness? Nowhere is that more true than in Russia, and the nations of the former Soviet Union. It’s a place where the effort to reach escape velocity from the past seems forever limited by the gravitational pull of history, and a history that we are just beginning to understand. Helping us to try and understand this history is Russian expert Orlando Figes. His new book is Revolutionary Russia, 1891-1991: A History My conversation with Orlando Figes:
Today it is technology that brings “creative destruction” into our lives. Silicon Valley and its related communities sit at the epicenter of change. But in the 1960’s and 70’s it was very different. It was art and ideas and personalities that changed the world. In the art world, it was New York, the Museum of Modern Art and its Chief Curator Peter Selz, that sat at the epicenter of a changing cultural landscape Gabrielle Selz, grew up in that world. She watched how her father shaped the world and now she looks back at how that world shaped her in Unstill Life: A Daughter's Memoir of Art and Love in the Age of Abstraction. My conversation with Gabrielle Selz:
Perhaps it’s the idea of 1.3 billion people. Or that half a billion have moved out of poverty in such a short time. Perhaps it’s that China is has moved so rapidly to become the world's second largest economy. Or perhaps it’s the environmental degradation left in the wake of these accomplishments. Perhaps it’s all of these things and more, that often block our view of the humanity of China. Yet it is a nation of individuals. Individuals with personal stories, aspirations and ambitions. People who have learned to deal with the contradictions and disconnects, between a vibrant, 21st century economic system and a backwards, almost 19th century political system. Ironic, I suppose that it even sounds a little like the US. In the resolution of that disconnect, may lie the future of China, America and even the world as we know it. That the journey that Evan Osnos takes us on in Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China My conversation with Evan Osnos:
On the morning of August 7, 1974, forty years ago, Philippe Petit illegally strung a tightrope between the towers of New York's World Trade Center, then under construction. For 45 minutes, he performed a ballet in the sky, as he moved back and forth across the wire. He was more than 1300 feet above the ground – without a net. The story of this feat was captured in the Oscar-winning documentary "Man on Wire." However powerful that feat was, in its own right, it was also a metaphor for the rebellion, chaos, organization, faith and fearlessness that would animate Petit’s life and which, if looked at in the wider context of today’s world, animates all that is good and necessary about change and progress and fear. Now Petit has taken his fearlessness and applied it to creativity in Creativity: The Perfect Crime. My conversation with Philippe Petit:
Back in the 1960’s and 70’s we were deeply divided as a nation. Issues like Civil Rights, Vietnam and the Cold War created deep tensions. Yet in Washington, things did get done. The passage of the Civil Rights act, the creation of the EPA, and even public pressure to end the war in Vietnam, all impacted those who govern. Today, Washington appears more divided and gridlocked than ever. Yet among the people, there seems to be less real division. The citizens seem to be more in sync than ever, about issues of corporate power, civil liberties, environmental concerns, and unchecked militarism. So where is the disconnect, if the people have things in common, why are our leaders so divided? Perhaps the fault is not in our leaders but in ourselves and our unwillingness to engage in the exercise our own power. This is the premise of the latest from Ralph Nader, Unstoppable: The Emerging Left-Right Alliance to Dismantle the Corporate State My conversation with Ralph Nader:
For the majority of the boomer generation, and generations that preceded it, work was mostly an obligation. A way of earning one's way in the world, a way of paying for the perceived American dream. Today that’s changed. Today the work itself is often the object. For millennials, the work must have purpose. It must be fulfilling in its own right, and the efforts, even if it’s just a small part of the whole, must contribute to something bigger. Today, rather than the artificial construct of work/ life balance, work and life are merging into a seamless self actualized effort. This is not just a psychological observation. In fact, this direction coupled with the growing information economy, is changing the very fabric of economic exchange. It’s creating what Aaron Hurst calls The Purpose Economy. My conversation with Aaron Hurst:
Today we have an all volunteer military. When young men and woman join the Marine Corps, they do so to serve their country. They know full well they the work may put them in harms way. That a bullet, or a grenade, or an IED might cut their life short, at any time. What none of them expect is to be killed or maimed by drinking water. Yet that is exactly what has happened to Marines at the historic Camp Lejeune facility in North Carolina. As many as a million people connected with the base were exposed to highly toxic and contaminated well water. What the military and government has done about it, is truly a crime. Long time journalist Mike Magner takes us into the human tragedy of the government and Pentagon inaction in A Trust Betrayed: The Untold Story of Camp Lejeune and the Poisoning of Generations of Marines and Their Families. My conversation with Mike Magner:
Think about advertising for new cars. Better yet, think about looking at a new car in the showroom. That experience is all about possibilities and dreams. It’s about what that car can do for you, not just where it will take you geographically, but where it will take you emotionally. From the days of Mad Men, right up to today, that’s what the car dream has always been about. But usually, like the real disconnect between dreams and life, the car takes on a life of its own. It's often far removed from the ad or the showroom fantasy. Few cars have conjured up this iconography more than the 1957 Chevy. A car that personified our relationship to the automobile and the infinite possibilities that were postwar America. That's the world that Earl Swift captures in Auto Biography: A Classic Car, an Outlaw Motorhead, and 57 Years of the American Dream. My conversation with Earl Swift:
Particularly in the First World, it's amazing how fragile our world is. Remember how upset we get if our cell phones don't work, or our computers get glitchy? So imagine if the electrical grid collapsed, or the fuel or food supply was curtailed, only for a few days, much less, some far more devastating apocalyptic kind of event? We see it in natural disasters, like tsunamis, or earthquakes, or floods or tornadoes. We get a glimpse, but only a glimpse, of what might happen. But are we prepared for any of these kinds of disasters, or should we be? Were Katrina and New Orleans and Sandy only outliers or a harbinger? And if it is the later, what should we know about trying to survive in a post apocalyptic world? Oxford research scientist, Dr. Lewis Dartnell gives us that information in The Knowledge: How to Rebuild Our World from Scratch. My conversation with Lewis Dartnell:
When the nuclear age dawned, people spoke of being “present at the creation.” Man suddenly had the ability to completely remake the world anew, or even to destroy it. Today, we have that same power. The environmental crises we face, driven by the pillars of population growth, technology and short term thinking, also give us the power to destroy the world. In fact, much of the destruction may be underway already and it may even be too late to reverse some of it. We may be entering what Elizabeth Kolbert calls The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History My conversation with Elizabeth Kolbert:
Back in the 1980’s we thought Japan was not only the number one economic power, but we thought it was taking over the world. The Japanese bought iconic properties like Rockefeller Center, and Pebble Beach. We were looking at Japanese schooling and trying to emulate their educational and economic success. Just as we want our kids to learn Mandarin today, back then we wanted them to learn Japanese. All that has changed. Japan’s economy has spent twenty years in the doldrums. The Japanese population is aging, and it’s been anything but a dynamic society. How are all of these events related? How does the rise of China, the stagnation of Japan and the insecurities of the US all fit together? And how has Japan, especially since the multiple and overlapping tragedies of Fukushima, been able to cope with its place in the world? Is there something we can all learn from the way that Japan deals with its adversity? Journalist David Pilling thinks so, and he gives his views in Bending Adversity: Japan and the Art of Survival My conversation with David Pilling:
Few events truly define the complexity of the American experience. Yet the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, comes very close. At its core, it address the founding flaw in the American republic, in taking up the issue of race itself. It incorporates the moral underpinnings and power of religion, faith and morality in the American character. And further, its shows the best in the system of self government, designed by our founders, to allow conflict, and compromise and the better angels of our nature to foster action that may not be politically expedient. In this sense, our focus on this Act, fifty years ago, is not so much nostalgia, but perhaps longing for what we once were able to do. This is the zeitgeist that Todd Purdum captures in his new book An Idea Whose Time Has Come: Two Presidents, Two Parties, and the Battle for the Civil Rights Act of 1964. My conversation with Todd Purdum:
This is the season in which high school seniors start receiving college admissions, and begin the run up to High School graduation. Given that gallons and gallons of self esteem have been poured into these kids, every one of them thinks that they are special. David McCullough, Jr has a bit of a different idea. Those ideas were a part of a High School commencement speech that he gave back in 2012. The YouTube of that speech has been viewed over two and a half million times. David McCullough, Jr. has now turned that speech into You Are Not Special: ... And Other Encouragements My conversation with David McCullough, Jr.
When we hear the word, or hear about “non-profits,” we often think about organizations that seem like they are fighting the oncoming wave in order to try and do good. Often with noble purpose, sometimes the mission seems too big, the emotional pull too intense, or success too fleeting. Today all of that is changing. We have a whole new group of organizations, perhaps the Gates Foundation being the penultimate example, that look to the ideas and metrics of the for profit world. They realize the importance of scale, marketing, transparency and ways to measure real success. They are, as Adam Braun calls them, FOR PURPOSE organizations. Adam is the founder of one of those organizations, Pencils of Promise. He has now written about his experiences in The Promise of a Pencil: How an Ordinary Person Can Create Extraordinary Change. My conversation with Adam Braun:
For those who are regular viewers of sports, Olympic level or professional, extreme sports or even golf, you know that what human beings are capable of is constantly increasing. What we are learning, is that the extension of human performance is not just about higher, or stronger, or faster, it's also about the mental component. It's the mental performance we are able to achieve, that makes the physical possible. This has been called being in the zone, or flow. The idea of "flow" has been around and widely studied for many years. But today, with our new forms of peering into the brain and into the very idea of consciousness, we are finding both the internal insights and the far flung potential of human performance. Steven Kotler takes us to the edge in The Rise of Superman: Decoding the Science of Ultimate Human Performance. My conversation with Steven Kotler:
In the movie The Talented Mr. Ripley, Tom Ripley, played by Matt Damon, says that, “I always thought it would be better, to be a fake somebody... than a real nobody.” This insecurity, this lack of confidence in who we are, is such a critical part of life, that it has been immortalized repeatedly in movies and literature. But, beyond that, it has real life consequences that go beyond art and definitions in the DMS. For women in particular, this lack of confidence and yes, even our confidence genes, drive relationships, families and the workplace in ways that create a kind of confidence feedback loop. In this loop, lack of confined produces a fear, that in turn produces further lack of confidence. And while the issues is a particularly important one for woman, we all are part of that loop. This is where my guest Katty Kay and Claire Shipman begin The Confidence Code: The Science and Art of Self-Assurance---What Women Should Know. My conversation with Claire Shipman and Katty Kay:
Donald Sterling and Cliven Bundy notwithstanding, the past year has seen us engaged in a celebration of the passage of the Civil Rights Act, the March on Washington and Freedom Summer. All seminal events in the amazing history of the Civil Rights movement. But what we sometimes forget is that the movement itself, mostly because of its scope and inclusiveness, started a bigger revolution. One that took up opposition to Vietnam, the fight for social and economic justice and the movement beyond nonviolence, for more than just public accommodation, but the struggle for real political, social and economic power. Present at the creation of that effort was Stokely Carmichael. He was a bridge between the nonviolence of Dr. King, the anger of Malcolm X and the urban struggle for civil rights led by the Black Panthers. Carmichael has been somewhat forgotten in the pantheon of leaders from the period, that is until Peniel Joseph's new biography, Stokely: A Life My conversation with Peniel Joseph:
It’s always good when we are having legitimate debates about public policy. And when the subject is education, it’s even better. However, amidst all the debate, we should not forget that there are people deeply engaged, every day, in the effort. The children, the parents and the teachers have real experiences that often trump the ideas of policy makers. That’s why it’s so important to look deeply inside the system and see what’s really going on. This is what education consult and researcher Sam Chaltain has done in the context of his new book Our School: Searching for Community in the Era of Choice. My conversation with Sam Chaltain:
Except perhaps for brief periods of historical time, there have always been cultural divides in America and in the world. Sometimes it’s been about race, or about ethnicity. Sometimes about gender or status. Today, that divide is fueled by education, class and economic attainment. Is it any surprise then, that we have completely shuffled the deck on success and that modern marketing and media reinforce those ideas. Those with means, with college and postgraduate education, have similar goals, similar objectives and similar lifestyles. It matters far less what gender, or what race; what matters is education and income. That, coupled with the long standing idea of associative mating, has grown and reinforced an economic elite, where its members have far more in common with each other, than with others of their race, or even their gender. Sisterhood and brotherhood have given rise to what David Brooks might call bobohood. How this has impacted women and society, is the subject of The XX Factor: How the Rise of Working Women Has Created a Far Less Equal World by Alison Wolf. My conversation with Alison Wolf:
For many people, particularly in urban America, restaurants represent the place where they live life. Spending time with friends, memorable meals, socializing and simply being a third place, not home, not office, but an urban extension of their lives. For some, those third places become like songs or great books. Simply mention them and they become triggers of thought that short circuit time and make yesterday's events, today’s reality. That's what Colman Andrews has done with his memoir My Usual Table: A Life in Restaurants. It not only tells of Andrews’ life, but captures the zeitgeist of an era, specifically Los Angeles in the 70’s and 80’s. My conversation with Colman Andrews:
There once was a time when technology was sold just to business to help create new and “softer” consumer products. Today, we know there is a mass market for technology itself and it’s often sold directly to consumers. Given that new, particularly disruptive, technology usually begins with a blank page, an audience of zero for products that did not exist, how has the market for these products changed and what’s the nexus with our habits and adoption of the technology itself? Geoffrey Moore’s book Crossing the Chasm, has long been the bible for entrepreneurs bringing products to larger and larger markets...but what’s different today.? Moore is just out with a new and updated volume, Crossing the Chasm, 3rd Edition: Marketing and Selling Disruptive Products to Mainstream Customers. My conversation with Geoffrey Moore:
At this point in our history, it should come as no surprise that the adage “follow the money,” applies not just to tracking down criminal activity, but to virtually every aspect of our economic and political system. In a world where free markets are expanding, where economic and political stability are closely linked, where nations compete for the free flow of money around the globe, where bankers cozy up to leaders and leader cozy up to bankers, sometimes those relationships can be out of balance. To understand how, it’s worthwhile to see how we got here and look at the 100+ year relationship between Wall Street and the administrations of 18 Presidents, of all political persuasions. In her new book, All the Presidents' Bankers: The Hidden Alliances that Drive American Power, financial journalist Nomi Prins explores how a small number of bankers have played critical roles in shaping a century's worth of financial, foreign and domestic policy. She examines how these relationships have influenced events from the creation of the Federal Reserve, the response to the Great Depression, and the founding of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. My conversation with Nomi Prins:
When we talk about drugs, or see the myriad array of pharmaceutical ads, we usually hear about a whole range of unique side effects. These are not just side effects, they are real effects with real medical consequences. This is true not just for the complex, highly marketed drugs, but even from our most basic antibiotics. While we’ve come think of this class of drugs as almost free from consequence, the truth is they may have bigger and more far reaching consequences than the drugs that may cause individual problems. For these drugs, the side effects may be to our whole species and to the ancient human microbiome that makes up a large part of who we are as individuals and as a species. We may be seeing these consequences every day, in the increase in childhood asthma, autism, obesity, and certain types of cancers. This discovery has been the life's work of Dr. Martin Blaser. He examines this in Missing Microbes: How the Overuse of Antibiotics Is Fueling Our Modern Plagues My conversation with Dr. Martin Blaser:
In almost every way, today's workplace is very different than the world of Mad Men. Yet one thing seems to be consistent. The nexus between the culture of an organization and its performance, is direct and powerful. But what constitutes that culture, and how can it be changed? It’s ironic that corporate culture often seems both immutable and fragile. One jerk can seemingly ruin it, and yet CEO’s often spend whole careers trying to change it. How can both be true? We look inside organizational culture, not in a Dilbertesque way, but through the eyes of dozens of leaders and CEO that have talked with Adam Bryant, the creator of the “Corner Office” feature in The New York Times and the author of Quick and Nimble: Lessons from Leading CEOs on How to Create a Culture of Innovation. My conversation with Adam Bryant:
Progressive and social activists are too often portrayed as latte drinking, sushi eating, Volvo driving, arugula eating, white wine sipping, Birkenstock wearing, NPR listening, New York Times reading, tofu eating…etc. You get the idea. This isn’t just another ordinary line of attack, because what it does, what it means to do, is to drive a wedge between classes. Class groups that often have common goals, shared values, and a true desire to solve real problems. But the attacks often work because sometimes the leaders of social movements themselves, forget that while goals may be shared, many groups and different classes bring very different experiences and approaches along with different worldviews to solve similar problems. So how can this circle be squared? How can these groups not work against their self interest in a “What’s the Matter with Kansas,” kind of way? Betsy Leondar-Wright gets to the core of the problem and potential solutions in her new book Missing Class: How Seeing Class Cultures Can Strengthen Social Movement Groups. My conversation with Betsy Leondar-Wright:
The task of bearing witness to war and terror, even for a journalist, is not to reduce events to our own understanding, but by acknowledging and reporting them, to serve both the dead and the living. Thierry Cruvellier has done this as one of the only journalists to have attended the trials of all of our contemporary international war crimes tribunals. Yet few such trials are more powerful than that of a mild mannered math teacher who was one of the principal executioners of the Killing Fields of the Khmer Rouge and the Pol Pot regime in Cambodia in the 70’s. He tells that story in his new book The Master of Confessions: The Making of a Khmer Rouge Torturer. My conversation with Thierry Cruvellier:
Few things are more ubiquitous than money. Yet what seems so simple, can often become so complex. Money is far more than just the notes and coins we carry in our pockets. It’s part of a complex system of debits and credits and clearing. Just look at the workings of Bitcoin and you start to see how those notes and coins are really just tokens and symbols that represent a much larger and more complex world of money. That's the world that Felix Martin ushers us into in Money: The Unauthorized Biography. My conversation with Felix Martin:
During what was once considered the “golden age of radio," from roughly the late 1920s until the late 1940s, advertising agencies were the most important source of radio entertainment. Most nationally broadcast programs, on network radio, were created, produced, written, and/or managed by advertising agencies. For those old enough, you might remember something like Kraft Music Hall, or Maxwell House Showboat. When television came along, again it was the advertising agencies that produced and drove the entertainment decisions and production. If you’ve been watching Mad Men, you’ve seen the evolution of this. It’s funny how today, in some ways, we seem to be coming back full circle, to this old notion of “branded programming.” Cynthia Meyers, takes us back, to this time gone by, in her new book A Word from Our Sponsor: Admen, Advertising, and the Golden Age of Radio. My conversation with Cynthia Meyers:
From High School biology class, to treating the most complex diseases, evolution lies at the core of our existence. Whether we’re trying to figure out world conflict, medical breakthroughs or even what might happen if we encounter alien beings, evolution provides the foundation. Today, with the world moving so rapidly, with technology so much a part of shaping that world, it seems more important than ever, that we all, especially young people, understand our roots, where we came from and what it might mean for our future. Few do this better than UCLA Professor, and Pulitzer Prize winning author of Gun, Germs and Steel, Jared Diamond. In his latest book, The Third Chimpanzee for Young People: On the Evolution and Future of the Human Animal, he brings young people deeply into the discussion. My conversation with Jared Diamond
Think for a moment about how much has changed about life, just in our own lifetime. Everyday there are new ideas or new products that disrupt existing paradigms. Is it any wonder then that parenthood today is very different than in our parents or grandparents time? Where once children were looked at as economic units to the family, today we live in a child centered society, where the rules, the expectations and the impact on parents have all changed. Are we better off? Are we having more fun, are children more rewarding? The answer is, it depends. That’s the landscape that Jennifer Senior enters into in her wide ranging looking at parenthood, All Joy and No Fun: The Paradox of Modern Parenthood. My conversation with Jennifer Senior:
Bogie reminded us “that we’ll always have Paris.” Indeed, we will. Paris defines what a city should be. Beyond it’s being a City of Lights, a Moveable Feast, and so many other things, it is a model, the model for what urban life should be. And that’s how it grew up. From a desolate, war torn landscape to one of the first cities to embrace street life, to welcome pedestrians, to be lit at night, to have public gardens and where, as Joni Mitchell said, “they kiss on main street.” Joan DeJean celebrates this history and explains How Paris Became Paris: The Invention of the Modern City. My conversation with Joan DeJean:
Today, digital privacy is on everyone's mind. We know that every time we search, use an App, make an online purchase, or even go to the doctor, more and more information is being collected about us. The degree to which we can do anything about it, or even care in this digital age, is an open question. However, what if we ourselves could access and use this information? Not to make us better consumers, but to actually make us happier. If we understand our digital footprint, will it make us better able to understand ourselves, and would this have value? Can all of this aggregated, quantified information create a kind of digital psychoanalysis, that we can use to improve our lives? That's the premise of John Havens' book Hacking Happiness: Why Your Personal Data Counts and How Tracking it Can Change the World My conversation with John Havens:
From the discovery of x rays at the turn of the century, to the tragedy of Fukushima, we’ve had 120 years of the nuclear age. Yet something that was once so modern, so cutting edge, filled with so much promise, is now viewed as a scourge upon mankind. While nuclear medicine makes life saving procedures possible, nuclear proliferation still drives international concern. While the physics of the atom tries to give us a better understanding of our past, the fear is still pervasive that the same physics could be the end of that history. The contradictions and emotions of splitting the atom still haunt us. It's a remarkable and complex history, told by Craig Nelson, in The Age of Radiance: The Epic Rise and Dramatic Fall of the Atomic Era. My conversation with Craig Nelson:
In Heart of Darkness, Conrad spoke of exploring up river with a “general sense of vague and oppressive wonder. Like a weary pilgrimage amongst hints of nightmare.” Paul Rosolie made a journey into his own heart of darkness, as he engaged in an extraordinary adventure into the uncharted tributaries of the Western Amazon. He writes about his experiences in Mother of God: An Extraordinary Journey into the Uncharted Tributaries of the Western Amazon. Paraphrasing Conrad, Rosolie conveys the life-sensation of his existence--that which gives his story its truth, its meaning--its subtle and penetrating essence. My conversation with Paul Rololie:
Who among us is not multitasking? The idea of watching or working multiple screens is now a term of art. But are the pressures, demands and distractions producing an anxiety that has some long term consequences? Simply viewed, has the evolution of our brain and our central nervous system kept pace with our needs, our desires and our technology? For millennials and digital natives, it may be getting closer. For the rest of us, not so much. So is the answer to seek digital hibernation, or to find a way to reconcile the competing demands on our time, our brain and our body. ABC news anchor Dan Harris thinks he has found a way to deal with modernity. He shares it with us in 10% Happier: How I Tamed the Voice in My Head, Reduced Stress Without Losing My Edge, and Found Self-Help That Actually Works--A True Story. My conversation with Dan Harris:
Back in 1999, almost fifteen years ago, Sun Microsystems then Gadfly-in-Chief Scott McNealy made his infamous statement that “you have zero privacy anyway, get over, it.” There was a kerfuffle at the time, mostly that he had the nerve to say such a thing. Imagine, someone telling the truth. The fact is he was right then, and all the debate from time to time, about terms of service for Google or Facebook, has resulted in very little change in the private sector, with respect to online privacy. In the public realm, the Snowden revelations really only confirmed what many have suspected for a long. We have not privacy. So the question now is, should we just get over it, or actually try to do something about and if so what? Will some people opt to become a digital recluse, or is all of this just the price of progress? Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Julia Angwin looks inside the world of privacy today in Dragnet Nation: A Quest for Privacy, Security, and Freedom in a World of Relentless Surveillance. My conversation with Julia Angwin:
On of the strongest arguments for globalization and free trade, is that nations that do business together don’t go to war. The corollary of that is that continued economic growth depends upon no major wars. In other words, global prosperity depends on politics. But can the two be separated. Politics impacts economic growth and in many ways, as peoples of the world seek a higher or better standard of living, economics impacts politics. We’ve created a kind of global feedback loop. The result is that the chain of globalized growth and prosperity is only as strong as its weakest link. These ideas are part of The Road to Global Prosperity, a new book by Johns Hopkins University Professor, Michael Mandelbaum. My conversation with Michael Mandelbaum:
In the Netflix series House of Cards, Vice President Frank Underwood, a man dealing with and plotting the the fate of of the world, takes time out to work with his hands and craft, lay out and paint Civil War figurines. He says it's a form of relaxation. For many people, even those in high profile, high stress jobs, working with their hands, doing crafts and even cooking, fulfill a primal and important need. In a world where nothing ever seems to conclude, when the days and responsibilities and the technology seems to be both endless and seamless, the art of craft has, for many a very special place and a powerful fulfillment. Peter Korn examines this in Why We Make Things and Why It Matters: The Education of a Craftsman. My conversation with Peter Korn:
When it comes to Hollywood, William Goldman certainly may have been right when he said that, “nobody knows anything.” Certainly the forces that drive Hollywood have always been somewhat mysterious. Why and how pictures get made, why some get to be hits and others misses. How some generate buzz and some actors and movies get hot, all sometimes seemsto be the stuff of movie magic. And all of this was before the digital age. Before Netflix, and Amazon and Hulu and Pirate Bay and digital prints: Before on demand and binge watching were everyday words. Today, the nuances of the film “business” are such, that it sometimes stretches the credibility of the word business. Yet even amidst all of these changes, 2012 was a banner year. After two previous declining years, 2012 generated over 11 billion dollars at the box office and even gave us some decent movies like Argo, Silver Linings Playbook, Life of Pi, Lincoln, Django Unchained and Zero Dark Thirty. What did this year of 2012 mean in the new paradigm of Hollywood? Longtime film journalist Anne Thompson takes us through the year in The $11 Billion Year: From Sundance to the Oscars, an Inside Look at the Changing Hollywood System. My conversation with Anne Thompson:
T.S. Eliot may have had the best take on trying to understand the world when he said that, “we shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.” Perhaps that is even more true today, as some places in the world are ever changing and that with each visit we need to see and understand them anew. Haroon Ullah is a Pakistani American scholar and diplomat. In The Bargain from the Bazaar: A Family's Day of Reckoning in Lahore, he gives us a picture of a slice of Pakistan today. A county both a key part of and deeply removed from the world. In fact in that contradiction lies the very reason we need to understand Pakistan. It has the power to upend the world even while it and its people try desperately to find a place in it. My conversation with Haroon Ullah:
Years ago I was having dinner with a friend and a friend of hers, who was a member of the Joffrey Ballet. I asked this young woman, how is was that she became a professional ballerina? Her answer still sticks with me. She said that she started at six taking ballet classes, like every other young girl. The difference is, she never stopped. What stuck with me is the idea, and we see it in so many endeavors, that at six or seven, we already embody the passions that will guide us, the rest of our lives. Jenifer Ringer knew at the age of ten that her destiny was the Ballet. At twelve, she entered the Washington School of Ballet in DC. At fourteen, she entered the School of American Ballet in New York and became a member of the NYC ballet at sixteen. After a long and complex career, she rose to become the principal dancer of the NYC ballet and recently retired from that company. She tells her story of grit, determination and cultural images and her expectations in Dancing Through It: My Journey in the Ballet. My conversation with Jenifer Ringer:
William James talked about “the bitch goddess success,” and the strange sacrifices that it takes from us. Today, the same might be said of the pursuit of fame. Whether it’s thousands of “Likes” on Facebook, millions of Twitter followers, ones own reality show, or simply 24/7 adulation, today fame is both the holy grail and the ultimate aphrodisiac. But think how sad it would be to achieve fame, only after you're gone. The idea of posthumous success is what drives Richard Vetere new novel The Writers Afterlife My conversation with Richard Vetere:
Ever since the Iranian hostage crisis in November of 1979, political and diplomatic relations between the US and Iran have been irreparably ruptured. Thirty years later, three young Americans would be hiking near the Iraq / Iran border. They would be captured, accused of espionage, transferred to Iran's most notorious prison and held, sometimes for long periods in solitary confinement. Their story is a cautionary reminder of the complexities of politics in the Middle East and most importantly of the human face of news stories from the region that have, after 30+ years, and all that has transpired during that time, had an almost numbing effect. But there is nothing numbing about the story of Shane Bauer, Joshua Fattal & Sarah Shourd. They tell their full story, for the first time in A Sliver of Light: Three Americans Imprisoned in Iran My conversation with Shane Bauer, Joshua Fattal & Sarah Shourd:
We all know the equation E=MC2. We’ve all read about Einstein's theory of general relativity. But how many of us know what it means, how it came to be and how relevant it might be today, one-hundred years after it was put forth. Much has been written about Einstein, but Pedro Ferreira in The Perfect Theory: A Century of Geniuses and the Battle over General Relativity gives us a real biography of general relativity and explains why we should still care. My conversation with Pedro Ferreira:
Today, virtually everything in society has become atomized by the left/right, red/blue debate. Whether it’s culture, entertainment, politics, sports, science and health, all are shaped by how we see the liberal vs. conservative divide. But rarely do we stop to try and understand the roots of all of this. Where did these terms come from, who were their intellectual fathers and how has their meaning morphed over decades and even centuries? Conservative political analyst, and journalist Yuval Levin puts all of this in far greater perspective, in his new book The Great Debate: Edmund Burke, Thomas Paine, and the Birth of Right and Left. My conversation with Yuval Levin:
We all intuitively know that the greatest gift we can get today, is the gift of time. We just don’t have enough. The pressures and stresses of work, parenthood, family and personal commitments pull us in multiple directions, all the time. The technology that was supposed to free us up and make us more efficient, has become a kind of parolee ankle bracelet tying us down even more. Societal expectations of what it means to be a good parent or to lean in at work, add yet another layer to the demands. Public policy doesn't necessarily help and sometimes it appears that our whole operating system of work and play, was designed for a mid 20th century world, when we are having to operate in the 21st century. The result is that often times we just, not unlike our computers, time out. But how did we get here and what do we do about it? That’s the lens that Washington Post reporter Brigid Schulte looks though in her new book Overwhelmed: Work, Love, and Play When No One Has the Time. My conversation with Brigid Schulte:
We spend a lot of time talking about technological change. The impact that everything from our phones and the Internet to self driving cars are having on the way we live. The fact is, the single greatest factor in changing the way we live, may be the demographic changes shifting right in our neighborhoods and workplaces. Boomers are, not so gracefully, aging out and retiring. Millennials are trying to find and take their place in the world and, as many of the ads during the Superbowl showed us, we look different as a nation; our values and what constitutes a family are all changing rapidly. This would all be just very interesting were it not for the fact that policy makers are literally ignoring these changes. Be it entitlements, transportation, education, or health care, leaders in Washington and in Statehouse often act like these changes just aren't happening, or somehow they will just go away. They won't. Business knows it. We know it. The question is what do we need to do? Pew Research, Executive Vice President, Paul Taylor gives us a look into The Next America: Boomers, Millennials, and the Looming Generational Showdown. My conversation with Paul Taylor:
Someone once referred to advice, as sanctioned nagging. It’s cute, but the fact is that we get advice all the time. Some of it is valuable, much of it useless. But do we miss the value of the good advice by our defensiveness, by our pre programmed fight or flight response and simply our reflexive shutting down in the face of criticism? Performance reviews, student conferences, even the old standby the report card, are all part of our feedback loop. It’s all around us. Those giving the feedback are often told that it’s a skill, that there is an art and science to giving good advice. But is the opposite true? Is there also an art and skill in getting feedback? Can we all make the process a whole lot more worthwhile by understanding how to maximize being on the receiving end? Doug Stone and Sheila Heen think so and they make their case in Thanks for the Feedback: The Science and Art of Receiving Feedback Well. My conversation with Doug Stone & Sheila Heen:
In this age of startups, creative destruction, public companies and activist investors, it's hard to imagine the idea of creating a huge industrial empire, run by successive generations of family Few empires exemplify this better than the history of Anheuser-Busch. From its Germanic roots in St. Louis, it’s a story of all that is American culture, good and bad. Ambition, philandering divorce, substance abuse, violence, family feuds, all washed down with a beer. It’s a saga of an American family and an American beer, told by longtime LA Times reporter William Knoedelseder in Bitter Brew: The Rise and Fall of Anheuser-Busch and America's Kings of Beer. My conversation with William Knoedelseder:
Winston Churchill one refereed to the former Soviet Union as an enigma, wrapped in "a riddle, surrounded by mystery." Much the same might be said about the Vatican. A large bureaucracy, competing political interests, the potential and reality of scandal and cover up. John Thavis, has spent almost 30 years covering the Vatican. He walked the hallowed halls, was one of the "boys on the bus" on the papal plane and understands both the human and spiritual side of this seemingly monolithic and often flawed institution. Now free of daily reporting, he allows himself to look back in The Vatican Diaries: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Power, Personalities, and Politics at the Heart of the Catholic Church. My conversation with John Thavis:
As a 26 year old reporter covering the Nixon campaign in l968, Joe McGinniss would go on to write one of the seminal works of political reporting. The Selling of the President 1968 would portray the next level of media in politics. If the televised Nixon/Kennedy debate set the stage, the 1968 Nixon campaign and the work of a young Roger Ailes, as reported by McGinniss', would be main event. McGinness would go on to write about many other controversial characters, both in the annals of politics and true crime. His reporting on Jeffery McDonald and his battles with Janet Malcolm would put him at the center of a media and literary storm. His last political work, a look deep inside the shallowness of Sarah Palin, would be fitting capstone for his political reporting. Over the years, I spoke to McGinniss several times. Here are the two most recent. His look at Palin and his story Never Enough that captured the dark heart of modern family greed and averse.
Never Enough11/2/2007
The Rogue: Searching for the Real Sarah Palin10/10/2011
Just like in The Wizard of Oz, sometimes it seems that events, coincides and serendipitous good fortune happen as part of a grand plan. Later we think that it’s the the result of a great and powerful force pulling the ropes and levers. Only much later do we discover that events happen on their own, and it’s only in a dream, driven by our penchant to find order and connection, that the events are tied together. For many of us this happens all the time. Thinking about an old friend who suddenly shows up or gets in touch, or a near miss of an accident that feels like an invisible hand saved us, or finding something from the distant past at precisely the moment we need it. All of these are examples of the The Improbability Principle: Why Coincidences, Miracles, and Rare Events Happen Every Day. And now, thanks to David J. Hand, we have a new and much clearer understanding of why it works. My conversation with David Hand:
Some people have jobs that are often very disconnected from everyday life. But Daniel Jones’ job is a form of daily life incarnate. As the long time editor of the Modern Love column in The Sunday New York Times Magazine, since 2004 Jones is perhaps the reigning expert on love, relationships and why we all “need the eggs.” If hundreds of years from now, an alien civilizations wanted to find out about the mating habits of humans, they could do no better than to look at Jones new book Love Illuminated: Exploring Life's Most Mystifying Subject (with the Help of 50,000 Strangers). My conversation with Daniel Jones:
I think we can all stipulate that we continue to witness growing income inequality in America. Class mobility is at an all time low and if we don’t begin to address the problem, the consequences for American democracy will be severe. But even if we embrace the problem, how to we begin to solve it? Programs, including taxes to create any kind of redistributive fairness, are a non starter in Washington and in Statehouses everywhere. So where do we begin? UC Irvine Professor Greg Duncan and Harvard economist Richard Murnane argue in their book Restoring Opportunity: The Crisis of Inequality and the Challenge for American Education,that the answer actually may be right in our schools. That only education can level the economic playing field. My conversation with Greg Duncan & Richard Murnane:
Most of you know that the mad prophet the airwaves was Howard Beale. The very idea that we can listen to a clip from Network, made 38 years ago, and its sounds as relevant as if it were written yesterday, speaks to the genius of Paddy Chayefsky's script, and the serendipity of the movie and its production. The movie was at once spot on in its portrayal of its moment in time and prescient about something as big and hard to hold on to as the television and the media landscape. It is truly a movie for the ages. Not to put down other efforts, but look at Network in the context of the simplicity and gloss of contemporary movies, and you begin to understand why we are still talking about Network today.We’re also talking about it because Dave Itzkoff, culture reporter at the New York Times, has written the definitive behind the scenes story of this iconic film, Mad as Hell: The Making of Network and the Fateful Vision of the Angriest Man in Movies. My conversation with Dave Itzkoff
When we think about the cutting edge of technology, our thoughts usually turn to Silicon Valley, or to other tech centers around the world. When we think about technology and government, we tend to think about failure. The inability of the government to make a simple website work, or the fact that it was a big deal for the current President to get a Blackberry when he came to office, or that most government agencies, including the IRS, don’t function with email. In a funny kind of way, it should make us feel better about the NSA story. Knowing that when it comes to technology, the government is usually the gang that couldn’t shoot straight. However, what if all that changed? If the best and the brightest of technology came to Washington with the intent of controlling or subverting technology? With the resources and power that they have, they could do some real damage. And so begins the world that Daniel Suarez portrays in his new techno thriller Influx. My conversation with Daniel Suarez:
The recent debate and court challenge to the Voting Rights Act of 1965 reminds us of what was the once and future fragility of registering black voters in the south. Back in 1966, a year after the passage of the Voting Rights Act, James Meredith, who became the first African American student at University of Mississippi, set out on an almost solitary march from Memphis to Jackson Mississippi to register black voters. At the end of that march, which started on June 5 1966, the civil rights movement would be forever transformed. The movement's twin goals of the dream of integration and of nonviolence, would be replaced by black power and impatience. It's a story that's not as famous as the Selma to Montgomery march a year earlier, but its impact was everlasting and its tensions still relevant today. This is the story that Aram Goudsouzian tells in Down to the Crossroads: Civil Rights, Black Power, and the Meredith March Against Fear. My conversation with Aram Goudsouzian:
Years ago the Wall Street Journal ran an ad campaign referring to itself as the “Daily Diary of the American Dream.” Today, we might say that the barrage of statistical information we get about the economy is that kind of diary. Just this morning, we probably all heard the latest GDP numbers. But what does it mean and what problem is it solving? Sometimes it seems there is a kind of “uncertainty principle” at work. In that the process of trying to measure every aspect of the economy and even our politics, actually changes those numbers because it changes the way we see the world. And since perception is often reality, the daily recitation of these numbers from Washington and Wall Street actually creates its own unreal reality. Zachary Karabell in his new book The Leading Indicators: A Short History of the Numbers That Rule Our World gives us a random walk though these numbers that often rule our lives, but mean very little. My conversation with Zachery Karabell:
Amid the violence and upheaval in the Ukraine and the Russian response, a debate has broken out in Washington about the relevance of Cold War strategy. Whether it still should be relevant to viewing Russian actions and geopolitics? It would be interesting to know what George Kennan might think about it. He was after all, the architect of America's cold war policy of containment and perhaps our greatest political and diplomatic strategist with respect to the Russia and the former Soviet Empire. He was both a man of letters and a man of action. But his views, on domestic politics, and on modernity were far less prescient and far out of step with the changes taking place in America. In short, he was a complex man, the likes of which we seldom see in public life today. He also kept a diary for almost 90 of this 101 years. University of Connecticut historian Frank Costigliola has edited those diaries into The Kennan Diaries. My conversation with Frank Costigliola:
As sports stories go, the legendary rivalry between the Giants and Dodgers, is one of the best and most enduring. Yet it’s a rivalry that has had it’s had its dark and ugly moments. One of the those moments came a couple of years ago as Giants fan Bryan Stow was attacked and beaten in the parking lot at Dodger Stadium. A sad incident that perhaps reflects the mean spiritedness of our times. Another ugly incident happened back in 1965. It had a better outcome. One where the rivals, Juan Marichal of the SF Giants and John Roseboro of the Dodgers, would turn to violence. A violence that reflected the tensions of the time. Yet it would also turn to forgiveness and redemption. That’s the story that John Rosengren tell in The Fight of Their Lives: How Juan Marichal and John Roseboro Turned Baseball's Ugliest Brawl into a Story of Forgiveness and Redemption
My conversation with John Rosengren:
We know that there are powerful demographic trends taking place in the US. That the economic divide in America is widening at an almost geometric pace. That certain groups repeatedly, in spite of powerful evidence to the contrary, vote against their own economic self interest. We’ve seen and continue to see examples of the ways in which Big Data and the vast amount of individual information available today, make it easier to define the electors. Back in 1964, journalist Eugene Burdick first took up this issue in a seminal novel entitled The 480. A story where computers could slice and dice the electorate to give one candidate an electoral advantage. Today, that’s no longer fiction Tony Fairfax. a demographic consultant and CEO of CensusChannel LLC, has been looking at these trends for decades and he’s come to some interesting new conclusions in The Presidential Trend. My conversation with Tony Fairfax:
For those that didn’t live through the 50’s and early 60’s, Mad Men has given us a clearer idea of so many of the changes that were impacting the nation and the culture. The post war period freed up Americans. We were no longer bound by the needs of the war and the depression that preceded it. Television, labor saving appliances, medical breakthroughs and a new sense of tolerance would begin to change America. George Marsden, in his new work The Twilight of the American Enlightenment: The 1950s and the Crisis of Liberal Belief, argues that the 1950’s marked the end of an era. That we became a much more pluralistic culture and that the ways in which the political and social leaders of the time approached these changes, hasgiven rise to many of the problems and divisions we face today. My conversation with George Marsden:
Jane Jacobs, writing about the life and death of cities, reminds us that people living in vigorous cultures typically treasure those cultures and resist any threat to them. So how and why, she wonders, can a people so totally discard a formerly vital culture, so that it becomes virtually lost. The city of Detroit was such a culture. Once the heartland of industrial America, now it sits as an urban corpse. What does it say about America, about Detroit, but more importantly about the people that built it and watched it crumble? Few understand Detroit better than reporter Charlie LeDuff, whose Detroit: An American Autopsy, is a cautionary tale for cities everywhere. My conversation with Charlie LeDuff
When we hear talk of the reinvention of our lives, I think re reflexively think this is something we do in our 30’s or 40’s or even 50’s. Today though, men and woman are both reinventing themselves into their 60’s and beyond. Sometime it’s to pursue new dimensions of ourselves as we get older and wiser, sometimes, it’s because of death or divorce, and sometimes, as we live longer, its because we face new financial imperatives. That’s the journey for Rebecca Winter in Anna Quindlen's’ new novel Still Life with Bread Crumbs. Anna Quindlen, in addition to writing seven novels, winning a Pulitzer Prize, being a successful journalist and being only the third woman to write a regular column for the New York Times, has been for the past 30 years a cartographer of our daily life experience, always providing a kind of decatur projection of our contemporary existence. My conversation with Anna Quindlen:
Twenty two years ago a relatively unknown Governor of Arkansas was on the ropes in his presidential campaign. He had been accused of marital infidelity and with his wife by his side, went on 60 Minutes to plead his case to the American people. His wife, was even less known to the American people, so her comments in that interview with Steve Kroft, had particular resonance. Today, that woman, Hillary Rodham Clinton, has served eight years as First Lady, as a United States Senator from New York, in the seat once held by Bobby Kennedy and for four years as Secretary of State. She came just a few cracks in the glass ceiling short of the Democratic presidential nomination. It’s a remarkable story, by any political standard. Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes tell the story of Hillary from the 2008 campaign forward, in their new book HRC: State Secrets and the Rebirth of Hillary Clinton. My conversation with Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes:
Few questions occupy us more today than what do we need to know and when do we do we need to know it, with respect to what our government is doing. How much should we know, particularly in times of war and what might really jeopardize national security? These questions haunt us today, but they are nothing new. In the closing days of WWII America recruited scores of German scientists that became the bulwark of our space effort. These scientists had shady pasts and were far more connected to the Third Reich than we were ever told. If we knew, might the nation have objected, and if so, might the Soviets have beaten us in the space race and to the moon? And what broader implications might that have had for the cold war and for global geopolitics? Annie Jacobsen is a journalist and author, and uncoverer of secrets. She’s the author the NYT bestseller Area 51 and now she turns her attention to the story Operation Paperclip: The Secret Intelligence Program that Brought Nazi Scientists to America. My conversation with Annie Jacobsen:
Years from now, we will look back on the way we treat cancer today, with poisons and chemo and radiation, and we’ll look at it exactly the same way we view leaching and snake oil. Today, many look for alternative cutting edge cures, they may be the precursors of future medicine. Back in the 19th century as patients looked to avoid leaching and bleeding and things like induced vomiting, their search gave way to a host of alternative practices that have become some of our most fundamental practices of health and medicine today. Erika Janik takes us through the history in Marketplace of the Marvelous: The Strange Origins of Modern Medicine. My conversation with Erika Janik:
When we deconstruct the essential elements of our culture today, celebrity culture, the privilege of wealth, the importance of popular culture in shaping the broad national conversation, even our obsession with the automobile, we find it all had its roots in the 1920’s. Perhaps the endurance of Gatsby, is that it represents a time that was a kind of line of demarcation for the country. One world before the early 1920's and another after. This is the world that Sarah Churchwell takes us into in her book Careless People: Murder, Mayhem, and the Invention of The Great Gatsby. A story about a story, it captures the ethos of the 20’s, the origin of the times and the great American novel that still defines it. My conversation with Sarah Churchwell:
How many of us have taken great leaps out of fear? How often has a failure, or being fired, or jilted resulted in being forced to take actions that turned out to be positively life changing? Often in our personal journey, when we get lost in the wilderness, that is what finally brings us home. As Bill Gates, unquestionably one of our most successful entrepreneurs has said, “it’s fine to celebrate success, but more important are the lessons of failure.” In the startup world, entrepreneurs are taught to fail quickly, learn and move on. We all get advice, but it’s life experience and usually failure that teaches us the bigger lessons. Journalist Megan McArdle explains in The Up Side of Down: Why Failing Well Is the Key to Success. My conversation with Megan McArdle:
We are often quick to use the term “cultural phenomenon.” Through the back lens of history though, few things truly are. Yet fifty years ago we experienced something that lives up to that idea. By now we’ve all been regaled by memories of the Beatles' appearance on the Ed Sullivan show fifty year ago last week. But with that as the backdrop, what is the larger cultural significance? Perhaps it's fair to say that the Beatles transformed music, pop culture, fashion, and movies. They also created something we rarely see today. A cultural experience that brought the entire nation together in one shared set of emotions. Penelope Rowlands was there, literally on the barricades. Now in The Beatles Are Here!: 50 Years after the Band Arrived in America, Writers, Musicians & Other Fans Remember, she’s culled some of the most interesting retrospective thoughts of today, trying to examine Beatlemania then, and even what it might mean for us 2014. My conversation with Penelope Rowlands:
Great powers ebb and flow. A random walk through history shows the Turks, the Germans, the British, the Japanese, the Spanish have all, at one time, shaped geopolitics. For most of the past century, America has stood atop the world. Now China, after three amazing decades of internal growth, is looking to secure its place in the world. But is geopolitics a zero sum game? Does American influence have to wane in order for China to expand? Can China effectively shape and use its economic growth to expand its sphere of influence in Asia and Africa and as it does, how should the US respond? Geoff Dyer, a veteran journalist who’s covered China for years for the Financial Times, examines all of this in The Contest of the Century: The New Era of Competition with China--and How America Can Win. My conversation with Geoff Dyer:
When FDR became president in 1933 he called for “bold, persistent experimentation.” He believed that it was essential to do something! This was a far cry from Warren Harding, who said in 1920, “that any experimentation will add to the confusion. Our best hope lies in the administration of our proven system.” Upon assuming the office of President in 1923 Calvin Coolidge world take these works very seriously. He would actually and literally carry out the policies that Harding and Coolidge were elected on. A policy of NO and of austerity. It was a far cry from the politics of action what characterizes our modern presidency. What it wrought for the nation is still being debated today. Amity Shlaes gives us a new take on all of it, in her new biography of Coolidge
My conversation with Amity Shlaes:
America has long gotten itself involved in civil wars around the world. In Korea, Vietnam, Spain, on the African continent and more recently in Afghanistan, Egypt, Iraq and Syria. It should not be surprising then to realize that other nations were engaged in the outcome of America's Civil War and that it provided Lincoln ample opportunity to engage in foreign affairs. We think of Lincoln as our domestic president. Lincoln saving the union so that this nation would not perish. But he also straddled the world during what might be called America's first age of globalization. Kevin Peraino, a veteran Newsweek journalist looks at this side of Lincoln in Lincoln in the World: The Making of a Statesman and the Dawn of American Power. My conversation with Kevin Peraino:
We look to technology as the panacea to solve so many of today's problems. Yet we fear technology. When it goes wrong, like stealing our credit card information, or not allowing easy access to a government website, we get angry. Clearly, our emotional nexus with technology is out of balance with our intellectual understanding of it. The price we pay is fear, alienation, confusion and a degree of appropriate paranoia. Few understand this better than bestselling novelist Dr. Robin Cook. He has used this imbalance to scare the bejesus out of us in his books like Coma, Cure, and Fever. Now in his latest work, Cell, he once again walks us through the cost benefit analysis of medical technology falling into the wrong hands. My conversation with Robin Cook:
Even in the world of physics, celebrity culture often rules. We’ve all heard about the search for the so called God particle, the Higgs Boson and the large Hadron Collider. Yet those in the know, in the astrophysics community, have had their eyes focused on another subatomic particle, the Neutrino. These may really possess the secrets to the inner workings of the planet and the universe. Ray Jayawardhana is one of our leading astrophysicist and in Neutrino Hunters: he looks into this ghostly particle to unlock the secrets of the universe. My conversation with Ray Jayawardhana:
In just days the Winter Olympics begin in Russia. In some respects the world comes to a nation that may be even more repressive than the Moscow of the 1980 Summer Olympics. While President Putin has released some political prisoners, including two members of the group Pussy Riot, the release itself was a kind of de facto acknowledgement of the corruption and repressiveness of its political and justice system. Masha Gessen has been a long time activist journalist in Russia and recently moved to the US in light of Russia’s ongoing crackdown on the LGBT community. In Words Will Break Cement: The Passion of Pussy Riot, she gives us an up close view of what’s really going on inside Russia. My conversation with Masha Gessen:
From the founding of the republic and the debates over slavery, until the passage of the Civil Right act in l964, took nearly 200 years. With respect to the civil right issues of our time, from the Stonewall Riots in 1969, to the President of the United States supporting same sex marriages, took 43 tumultuous years. During that time, three generations would engage in the struggle. A plague would descend upon and become part of the struggle and take the lives of many in the movement. Public opinion would go from shock and horror to love and acceptance. As the saying goes, oh what a strange trip it was. Sean Strub has been a kind of Zelig of gay rights movement. He was there at all the key moments, with all the key players. He was on the ramparts, in the living rooms and hospital rooms and courtrooms along the way. He now gives us a memoir of his life and of the times we’ve all shared, in his new book Body Counts: A Memoir of Politics, Sex, AIDS, and Survival. My conversation with Sean Strub:
John Lennon who wrote that “life is what happens while we're busy making other plans.” Or as the old Yiddish proverb goes, “man plans and god laughs.” Artis Henderson experienced this in the most complex, profound and sorrowful way. After altering her own life plan, by surprisingly falling in love with a young soldier, her life would be shattered as his life would be taken in a helicopter crash in Iraq, shortly after they were married. She would become what in military parlance is an Unremarried Widow. My conversation with Artis Henderson:
What are the forces that cause us to continue eating when we know we should stop? Why has the quality of food that most Americans eat, deteriorated even while more and more healthy choices are available? Why are our children experiencing an epidemic of obesity, and what role does the food industry play in this? And why, when controlling healthcare costs is supposedly job one, we allow the epidemic of obesity in America to account for no less than 10% of all of our health care costs? Is the fault in our food our in ourselves? Dr. Robert Lustig, whose work has focused on the effects of sugar on the central nervous system, shows what's really going on with the food choices we make, in Fat Chance: Beating the Odds Against Sugar, Processed Food, Obesity, and Disease. My conversation with Dr. Robert Lustig:
While the United States has, since it founding, prided itself on the idea of justice for all, those principles have seldom found expression in the international realm, until relatively recently. Former Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson, who would prosecute crimes at Nuremberg, would lay out the case for equal international justice, when he said in his opening statement “that the record on which we judge these defendants today is the record on which history will judge us tomorrow. To pass these defendants a poisoned chalice is to put it to our own lips as well.” Given this, the idea that the US would ever participate in any kind of international tribunal has always seemed remote. Yet ten years ago, the International Criminal Court would come to be. And for all its struggles and limitations, it has started to gain its footing. American University Professor David Bosco, takes us through the history in Rough Justice: The International Criminal Court in a World of Power Politics My conversation with David Bosco:
We pretty well understand how evolution impacts living organisms. But is it possible that there is a similar kind of survival of the fittest at play with respect to culture, ideas or even to language? If so, with no DNA trail, how do we determine its history and what relevance does it have to creating a contemporaneous understanding of our culture and language? The answer actually lies in our use of what’s come to be called Big Data. Erez Aiden and Jean-Baptiste Michel, have detailed this in Uncharted: Big Data as a Lens on Human Culture. My conversation with Erez Aiden and Jean-Baptiste Michel:
From the highest levels of international and governmental affairs, to the most personal and intimate relationships, secrets and lies are often at the heart of so many narratives. We embrace privacy, yet we want truth. As individuals and as a society we spend enormous resources covering up unpleasant truths, only to find, as we seem to never learn, that the cover up is always tougher than the lie. Is there something in human nature or human psychology itself that makes transparency so difficult? Yet sometimes judging from Facebook, we have a whole younger generation that shares everything. How do we square this circle and begin to understand the real power of secrets and lies? That's what author and long time publishing executive Jane Isay set out to discover in Secrets and Lies: Surviving the Truths That Change Our Lives. My conversation with Jane Isay:
We have all had the experience of hearing a familiar and likable piece of music from a long time ago. Suddenly the music short circuits time and makes yesterdays events, today’s reality. It’s as if that song triggers primal changes within us, that allows us to transcend both space and time. Now imagine if that was more than just our fond memories playing tricks on us. Image that the music had actually become part of us, of our DNA. This notion is a small part of the brilliant blending of science, art, and literature, that is Richard Powers' new novel Orfeo. My conversation with Richard Powers:
Everyday most of us battle our own demons. These Demons often prevent us from doing perhaps the hardest thing there is, that is initiating and adapting to personal change. With the New Year, I’m sure we’ve all made resolutions. By now most are long forgotten. Change is hard. Personal change is even harder. One wonders how anyone ever does it. Perhaps we can do it by a kind of personal mental jujitsu that manipulates the force of our resistance to change, against itself. This might work a lot better than confronting it with sheer force of will. And what if we did this in small incremental steps? It just might be that in that situation, resistance will give way to success. It is in these “Microresolutions” that Caroline Arnold has found the sweet spot of change. She details it in Small Move, Big Change: Using Microresolutions to Transform Your Life Permanently. My conversation with Caroline L. Arnold:
SLR cameras, pagers, paper maps, travel agents, home telephones, answering machines, transistor radios; all quaint reminders of days gone by. Today whole new industries are taking over from the old. The way we find places to stay when we travel, transportation, even the nature of money itself, is changing. Back in the 90’s we heard about the “Innovators Dilemma.” About how cheap products would flood the market, before other manufactures could create products with higher value. Perhaps Sony and other Japanese companies were the penultimate example. Today, new products enter the marketplace full blown. They are cheaper and more efficient and receive instant acceptance. How do traditional incumbents defend against this? They don’t. They either innovate on today’s terms, or they go the way of Blockbuster, or Blackberry or Kodak, or Garmin. These are just some of the ideas put forth by Larry Downes in his new book, Big Bang Disruption: Strategy in the Age of Devastating Innovation..My conversation with Larry Downes:
Someone once wrote that happiness is serious business. But should happiness be a goal in and of itself, or is it simply a construct for achieving what we really desire, and helping us in finding our place in the world? Woody Allen in Annie Hall saw the world divided only into the “horrible,” and the “miserable.” What kind of a construct is that? Gretchen Rubin has looked at happiness from all sides now. She is the author of the NY Times bestseller THE HAPPINESS PROJECT, she is a former law clerk on the Supreme Court and now the author of Happier at Home: Kiss More, Jump More, Abandon Self-Control, and My Other Experiments in Everyday Life. My conversation with Gretchen Rubin:
The reporting of and understanding of sports always seems to be a balancing act between the importance of teams vs. the primacy of an individual player. Certainly in basketball, the decision was made a long time ago, that individuals stars would drive the NBA. Certainly many have over the years. But as much as any one player, one coach has stood atop the sport. With eleven championships, Phil Jackson is the master. But what got him there? Was it luck, timing, sheer basketball smarts, or a unique ability, almost like a film director in his prime, to manage huge egos and diverse personalities and consistently get the best out of them? Long time sports journalist Peter Richmond, tries in Phil Jackson: Lord of the Rings,to pin down who Phil Jackson is and what has made him so successful. My conversation with Peter Richmond:
A young Johnny, played by Marlon Brando in THE WILD ONES, is asked what he’s rebelling against? He answers “what have you got?” Rebellion and the youthful the desire to shapes one's identity, have long been a part of the adolescent experience. Today however we know so much more about it. About what goes on inside the brain that shapes that rebellion and the quest for identity. What we also understand, but perhaps as parents we don’t always practice, is the the kind of virtuous circle, or feedback loop that results when parents react to adolescent behavior. What we know is that the behavior isn’t fixed. That it’s profoundly influenced by action and reaction....in ways that have a lifetime impact. Few understand this better than UCLA clinical professor of psychiatry and Mindsight Institute Executive Director, Dr. Daniel Siegel. He's also the author of Brainstorm: The Power and Purpose of the Teenage Brain. My conversation with Dr. Daniel Siegel:
The recent controversy surrounding Bill Keller’s column about Lisa Adams, and subject of illness and dying in general, brings into bold relief just how personal the subject is. Dealing with death is little like marriage and fingerprints. No two are ever alike. We celebrate and mark weddings and deaths. But what what are we marking, what we celebrating, really. These are moments in time, the background and history, joy and sorrow of which, may have gone on for years before, or may come years after. Clearly to understand death, we must first understand the fullness life. In some ways its counter intuitive. It runs counter to our uniquely American notion of being in the moment. Few understand all of as well as David Dow. David is a death penalty appeals lawyer in the State of Texas. As such, he has dealt with death on a regular basis. He has also dealt with his own personal experiences which he shares with me in talking about his memoir, Things I've Learned from Dying: A Book About Life. My conversation with David Dow:
To live a full life is to make mistakes. Unlike Fitzgerald’s suggestion of "personality as an unbroken series of successful gestures," for most of us life is messy, complicated and often filled with regret and anger. When we look back we realize we are, in some strange and mysterious way, the sum total of all that we have done. The meals we’ve eaten, the books we’ve read and the people that we have touched and have touched us. Together it forms kind of life mosaic, unique and often compelling. Such has been the life of Daniel Manaker. Through the hallowed halls of the New Yorker, where he worked for twenty-six years, to the pinnacle of power in publishing at Random House and Harper Collins, through the death of a mother, a brother and his own battle with cancer, he now shares his unique mosaic with us in his new memoir My Mistake My conversation with Daniel Menaker:
Back in the dark days of the Cold War, John le Carre published The Spy Who Came In From The Cold. It cast a light, as only fiction sometimes can, on covert actions that are not a clear choice between good and evil, but one where the methods that western intelligence would use, disturbingly resembled those used by their opponents. The distance between us and them became blurred. It exposed the Cold War not as a battle between light and darkness, but a place where both sides meandered in the twilight of moral ambiguity. In the days following 9/11 we as a nation, our policies and our intelligence service, the CIA, would again begin to blur those lines. At the same time, the actions that the President would arguably take, were reminiscent of Richard Nixon's comments in his famous interview with the late David Frost where he said, talking about Watergate at the time, "if the President does it, it means it's not illegal." John Rizzo as, CIA General Council was at the center as that post 9/11 storm, as he was at the center of everything the CIA did for 34 years. He takes us through the history in Company Man: Thirty Years of Controversy and Crisis in the CIA. My conversation with John Rizzo:
As we continue to debate health care in America, as more people come into the system, the single most significant effort is now to figure out ways to reduce cost. Perhaps the best place to start, is with the one epidemic that accounts for no less than 10% of all health care costs. That epidemic is obesity. It is our number one public health issue. Its causes go to the limits of self control and human nature, but most of all to the reality and excess of our current food environment. Dr. Deborah Cohen, in her book A Big Fat Crisis: The Hidden Forces Behind the Obesity Epidemic and How We Can End It, argues that public policy, targeted at the food industry, is more important than any kind of personal responsibility. My conversation with Deborah Cohen:
Richard Pryor would become be the single most influential performer of the second half of the Twentieth Century, and certainly he was the most successful black comedian ever. Controversial always and enigmatic throughout his lifetime, Pryor’s performances opened up a new world of possibilities, merging fantasy with angry reality in a way that wasn’t just new—it was heretofore unthinkable. David and Joe Henry have captured the essence of Pryor in their new book Furious Cool: Richard Pryor and the World That Made Him My conversation with Joe and David Henry:
Long, long after the death of LIFE and LOOK, we once again live in a world of images. Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest all cater to that proverbial idea that a picture is worth a thousand words. Yet perhaps it's because we have too many images, or that they are coming at us to fast, few truly capture the essence of any particular moment or ethos. However when we look back at the work of famed photographer Dorothea Lange, it’s different. Her striking black and white images taken during the depression years and depicting those on the margins of society, are a kind o tabula rosa for understanding a place, a time, a way of life. Dorothea Lange will soon be the subject of a PBS documentary on the American Masters series, and Chronicle Books has just released a career spanning collection of her work entitled Dorothea Lange: Grab a Hunk of Lightning. It is the companion book to the PBS documentary. The new volume is written and curated by her goddaughter acclaimed biographer Elizabeth Partridge. My conversation with Elizabeth Partridge:
Alan Turing, the great British mathematician who cracked Nazi codes, set the stage for our digital age and later killed himself after the government chemically castrated him for being gay, received a posthumous royal pardon last week, 61 years after his conviction on the "gross indecency" laws of the time. Turing's life will soon be the basis for the film The Imitation Game, starring Benedict Cumberbatch. Last year I spoke with technology historian George Dyson about his book Turing's Cathedral: The Origins of the Digital Universe. My conversation with George Dyson:
Recently reports proliferated that in the House of Representatives, during the government shutdown, while meeting late into the night, the smell of booze was rampant. Perhaps if they had been smoking pot, instead of drinking alcohol, the government would never have been shut down and there might be a whiff more bipartisanship. Sound ridiculous? Well if it had been the Colorado or Washington legislature, it might very well be the case. In fact the legalization of marijuana seems to be an idea whose time has come. Recent votes in Colorado and Washington, coupled with the twenty states already allowing medical marijuana, and the decision by the Justice Department to rescind prosecutions, are all key sign posts along the way. A key player in this effort, who was also instrumental in Colorado's recent decision to legalize even recreational use, is Paul Armentano. He's the co-author of Marijuana is Safer: So Why Are We Driving People to Drink? My conversation with Paul Armentano:
Recently you’ve probably heard that the American College of Cardiology and the American Heart Association are seeking to expand the use of statins. Cholesterol lowering drugs, that some have said should be put in our water supply. But really how safe are these drugs? Are their benefits all they are cracked up to be and what’s the nexus with the fact that they also happen to be the worlds best selling drug and the biggest tool in enhancing big pharma's profits? Why have doctors, even those that don’t stand to benefit from those profits, been so smitten with this class of drugs; drugs that have been linked to severe muscle pain, neuropathy, diabetes, memory loss, sexual dysfunction and even Lou Gehrig's disease? Dr. Barbara Roberts, an associate clinical professor at the Alpert Medical School of Brown University, has been trying to put put her finger in the dam of big pharma and trying and bring some reason to the debate. She does so in her book The Truth About Statins: Risks and Alternatives to Cholesterol-Lowering Drugs. My conversation with Dr. Barbara Roberts:
We often hear career counselors and teachers talking to young people about following their passion. Obviously good advice. But for some, that passion comes with a price. For esteemed war correspondent Marie Colvin, that passion, her desire to bear witness to the horrors of war would cost her her life. The same is true for British reporter and photographer Paul Conroy. He was with Colvin in Syria in early 2012 when they would come under fire in the city of Homs A rocket would kill Colvin and seriously wound Conroy. As Syrian ground forces closed in on his position, Conroy was forced to make a terrifying last-ditch attempt to escape from a regime that appeared determined to murder him. He did escape, and has written Under the Wire: Marie Colvin's Final Assignment. My conversation with Paul Conroy:
Why is it that the pain of rejection in High School often stays with us for life? Not being asked to the prom, not making the team, or that first broken heart. All seem to imprint us in ways that scar us for life. And what is the connection between those experiences and our seeming insatiable appetite for social networks? As we look at the evolution of technology, from cave paintings to the printing press to the telephone to Facebook and Twitter, all are advancing the effort to connect. Maybe, we need to reassess Maslow's hierarchy of needs, in a way that makes social connection as important to our well being as food, clothing and shelter? Neuroscientist Matthew Liberman has been studying this and in Social: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Connect has come to some very powerful conclusions. My conversation with Matthew Liberman:
Today it seems that every piece of evidence supports kinder and gentler parenting, a more cooperative workplace and a stress free education that supports deeper learning. Tiger moms, and Tiger teachers and the excessively tough boss seem to be interesting, but outliers. But are we missing something? Does it have to be a zero sum game? Can the tough taskmaster, the dispenser of tough love teach out something about persistence, character, and resiliency that will serve us well later in life? Joanne Lipman thinks so. The former editor and chief of Portfolio Magazine, and former Deputy Managing Editor of the Wall Street Journal, is the co-author of Strings Attached: One Tough Teacher and the Gift of Great Expectations. My conversation with Joanne Lipman:
Audiences flock to see them. What’s the appeal? When we hear about real life heroes like Sully Sullenberger, or Wesley Autrey, who who jumped onto NY subway tracks to save man from an oncoming train, we are captivated. Perhaps our fascination is because we can’t ever imagine ourselves exercising such a degree of selflessness. We might fantasize about being hero, but don't think we have the right stuff. Today science, genetics, and social psychology tells us we all, under the right circumstances and with the right experience, have what it takes. Elizabeth Svoboda, in What Makes a Hero?: The Surprising Science of Selflessness, examines how biology, upbringing and external influences all converge to produce altruistic and heroic behavior. My conversation with Elizabeth Svoboda:
The unemployment rate still sits at a around 7%. Million of Americans, blue and white collar workers, have experienced long term unemployment. But the 2008/2009 recession didn’t just impact the US. Unemployment in many other Western nations is even higher. What’s different, is how unemployment and job seeking varies from country to country. Who the unemployed blame for their problems, the self help industry that continues to grow and a different approach by employers, are all areas of extreme differences around the world. MIT sociologist Ofer Sharone, in his new book Flawed System/Flawed Self: Job Searching and Unemployment Experiences, looks at the personal impacts of these different approaches to unemployment and to job hunting. My conversation with Ofer Sharone:
Each day life gets more complex. There are more pressures on our time, we are pulled in more and more directions. To ground us, we look for the universal in everyday life. Those things that create order out of the chaos and cynicism of daily existence. We seek comfort in the memories of loved ones, in routines we used to appreciate, like that regular weekly phone call, perhaps from a child away at school or to an aging parent. Often, even if we are not at all religious, we look for a a belief in something that transcends us. These are some of themes in Mitch Albom’s newest book, The First Phone Call from Heaven. The author of Tuesdays with Morrie, explores the search for human connection and for something larger than ourselves and even how technologies may be getting in the way. My conversation with Mitch Albom:
There is an old saying about popular culture, that if it’s popular, it can be good. This philosophy has at various times permeated music, film, literature, and especially the world of art. Sometimes it's no doubt true. But there are also profound exceptions. In the world of art, maybe the most unique exception is the work of Peter Max. Few artists can be considered more American than Max. His work, often referred to a pop or psychedelic art, has come be respected for its optimism, its boldness of color and celebration of the icons of success in all aspect of American life. A story that parallels Peter Max's own success story Peter Max, now at the age of 76 is out with his own multimedia autobiography entitled The Universe of Peter Max. My conversation with Peter Max:
With the execution of an uncle of Kim Jong Un, we saw another example of the brutality of the North Korean regime. Perhaps more than any other nation, North Korea is disconnected from the norms of civilization. This has been the case for some time, and it’s why most efforts to bridge the divide have failed. This was the case all the way back in 1968 when the USS Pueblo, a rag tag American spy ship set out to find radar stations along the coast of North Korea. On a January morning the Pueblo was attacked and its crew shot at and captured. The incident remains one of the seminal dramas of American foreign policy in the 60’s, of the cold war, and once again of the efforts of an American President to avert war on the Korean peninsula. Long time Los Angeles Times political reporter Jack Cheevers takes us back to this Act of War. My conversation with Jack Cheevers:
It’s amazing sometimes how simple ideas get lost in the big picture. Back in 1923, President Warren Harding proposed a federal department to look after the nation's health, education and welfare. The department was finally created by Eisenhower in 1953. In 1979, Education was spun off and we created the department of Health AND Human Services. Clearly as a nation, we’ve long understood the connection between health and human services. Yet the way our health care system has evolved, preventive care, and human services have been almost abandoned as part of the health care enterprise. Today we spend more money, per capita, on health care than any other nation. Yet our outcomes, are near the bottom. How did this happen, especially when we seemed to understand all along that there was a connection? Is the fault in our government, our doctors, in our philosophy or in ourselves? Elizabeth Bradley and Lauren Taylor set out to try and find out. The result is their book The American Health Care Paradox: Why Spending More is Getting Us Less My conversation with Elizabeth Bradley and Lauren Taylor:
Even looking at the broad sweep and scope of history and change in the 20th century, it’s arguable that the dynamics of Israel, its relationship to its neighbors and the meaning of the Zionist project remain one of the most vexing and truly complex issues of our time. For events that began at the end of the 19th Century, clearly and directly link to the issues being talked about and dealt with this very day in Tel Aviv, Tehran and Washington. But how did it all get this way? How did the desire for a homeland, a base for the Jewish diaspora, become so complex and lead to a statistically improbable number of foreign policy mistakes, on all sides? And finally, can this huge ship, carrying the burdens of this history, be turned around in time to avoid crashing into the rocks ahead. Israeli Journalist Ari Shavit has written what has been called the least tendentious book about Israel. A non doctrinaire examination of Israel’s past, present and future, My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel, is a book we’ve all need for quite some time. My conversation with Ari Shavit:
Back in 1996 welfare as we knew it was forever changed by President Clinton. But while public policy can address issues like food stamps, child care, Medicaid, and many other aspects, it can never address issues of trust. We know from Civil Rights legislation that no matter what the policy prescriptions, you can’t address what’s in the human heart. In the panoply of issues surrounding welfare you might not think that trust was paramount. In fact, Temple University Professor Judith Levine, in Ain't No Trust: How Bosses, Boyfriends, and Bureaucrats Fail Low-Income Mothers and Why It Matters, finds that it is one of the defining issues for low income women. That it has an ongoing corrosive and paralyzing effect in the lives of these women and that even public policy cannot fully address it. My conversation with Judith Levine:
Perhaps it's our popular culture, but the business of selling has gotten a terrible reputation. Whether it’s Willy Loman trying to be “well liked,” or Harold Hill hoodwinking people from town to town, or Alec Baldwin's character of Blake in David Mamet's’ Glengarry Glen Ross, we've seen selling portrayed as as one of the least trustworthy endeavors. Even lower on the scale than members of congress. Selling in the 21st century is very different. No longer is it about sleaze and closing. Today it’s about science, persuasion and information. Selling is something we all do in our personal lives, and in our professional lives; even if we are not in the business of sales. Best selling author Daniel Pink, takes us inside this reality in To Sell Is Human: The Surprising Truth About Moving Others. My conversation with Daniel Pink:
The number of angry white men in America is on the decline, just as talk radio, that panders to and inspires them, is also aging and declining. Yet their continued presence tells us a lot about change in America and the divides that separate race, gender and class. Perhaps it all started back in 1969 when Richard Nixon tried to obscure the difference between working class and affluent voters, particular men, by portraying them all as a part of a silent majority. He portrayed them as both heroes and victims of the tumultuousness of the period. Reagan continued with similar themes to capture what came to be called “Reagan Democrats.” All of this was before and really a precursor to the profound impacts of feminism, civil rights, gay rights, globalization, growing income disparity, more women in the workplace, the loss of manufacturing, Sex in the City, outsourcing, the technological revolution, the US attacked on 9/11, the great recession, legalized marijuana, same sex marriage and the election of a black President. It’s enough to disorient anyone. But most notably its greatest impact was on those most threatened; the standard bearers of the old status quo, white men. Men who had stood on the wall trying to defend an old way of life, a cultural paradigm that was crumbling beneath their feet. Stony Brook University Professor Michael Kimmel examines this phenomenon in Angry White Men: American Masculinity at the End of an Era. My conversation with Michael Kimmel:
Nelson Mandela stands as one of our greatest symbols of the struggle for freedom. His shadow will always infuse the politics and culture of South Africa. Yet almost one half the county is under 25 and doesn’t know or remember their nation in anything but it’s post apartheid period. How does and will this disconnect shape the future of the country? How can it deal with its historical context and at the same time, the seemingly mundane issues health, welfare, justice and jobs. Douglas Foster, a long time South Africa watcher, former head of the Journalism School at U.C. Berkley and currently Professor at Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism writes about After Mandela: The Struggle for Freedom in Post-Apartheid South Africa. My conversation with Douglas Foster:
Most of us, over a certain age, remember when getting on a transcontinental or international flight was glamorous. We dressed to travel. Strong pilots and beautiful stewardess framed the wonders of the journey. The glamour of air travel imbued us with a sense of freedom and possibility. How many women were inspired by the glamour of the Charlie Girl commercial to believe that having it all was possible and the holy grail? During the depression and war years, the glamour of Joan Crawford inspired a generation to believe in social mobility. And of course, as we just re experienced, the glamour of the Kennedy’s and Camelot, has remained frozen in time, in our collective consciousness. All are examples of the power of glamour to shape society, define the culture and motivate each of us.Virginia Postrel in The Power of Glamour: Longing and the Art of Visual Persuasion, goes to the core value of glamour as a powerful aspirational force and a very real part of our our social language. My conversation with Virginia Postrel:
Whenever we see or hear great art, we are usually inclined to wonder about the forces that created it. What constitutes the artistic life? What influences, combined with what DNA creates the perfect storm of artistic temperament, vision and creation? Long time music critic and editor for the LA Times, Robert Hilburn, has made trying to understand this, his life's work. He has reported extensively about many of pop music’s legends, including Dylan, Springsteen, U2, Elton John and John Lennon. Now he turns to the life and legend of Johnny Cash. Cash spent a good part of his career fighting both his own demons and walking the line between being a credible artists and trying do good in the world Hilburn capture his essence in Johnny Cash: The Life My conversation with Robert Hilburn:
Five years ago, on the evening of Nov. 26, 2008, heavily armed Pakistani terrorists raced to infiltrate the five-star Taj Mahal Palace Hotel. At the same time, as part of a coordinated attack, other tourist sites in Mumbai were also attacked. Throughout Mumbai more than 160 people were killed in the two day siege. The Indian commission charged with studying what happened and why, did a remarkably poor job of gathering and reporting the facts. Now we have perhaps the best and most official account yet in The Siege: 68 Hours Inside the Taj Hotel. A new book by two British journalists, Adrian Levy and Cathy Scott-Clark. What's particularly significant about this story, is that when we look at the trajectory of more recent terrorist attacks, including the mall in Kenya, we see this attack on the Taj, as representing the beginning of a new wave in the future of terrorism. My conversation with Adrian Levy and Cathy Scott-Clark:
When we look at the immigrant history of America, it can perhaps best be told through great food. As neighborhoods emerged and changed, so did the restaurants. This is just as true today. Roy Choi is one of the founders of the food truck movement. But more than that, his food, his trucks and his four restaurants, represent the melting pot that is Los Angeles today. By blending American, Asian, Caribbean and Mexican influences, Roy Choi sits at the cutting edge of our emerging culture. He tells his delicious story in his memoir, L.A. Son: My Life, My City, My Food. My conversation with Roy Choi:
We’ve all heard that men are from Mars and women are from Venus. The notion that men and woman are different is deeply inculcated in our culture. Yet today science, our growing understanding of the human genome and the interaction of culture and genetics, are giving us a far greater understanding of those differences. Harvard Professor of the History of Science and Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality, Sarah Richardson, in Sex Itself: The Search for Male and Female in the Human Genome, offers a compelling argument for the importance of an ongoing critical dialogue on how cultural conceptions both pre-judge, but also shape our evolving gender roles. Yet, like almost everything else in the realm of modern scientific discovery, different groups are happy and unhappy with the results of the science. My conversation with Sarah Richardson:
Let's face it, our attention spans have been decapitated by modernity. Our knowledge, criticism and even entertainment now comes to us in 140 neat characters. We ourselves can be critics, just by clicking on a “thumbs up.” Today, serious commentary and serious criticism is in short supply. It's not gone..but it's in remission. One place it still survives is in the presence of James Wolcott and and his work, primarily today, on the pages of Vanity Fair. His just published collection of work and essays Critical Mass: Four Decades of Essays, Reviews, Hand Grenades, and Hurrahs, reminds us of what it was like, not that long ago, when ideas seemed to matter. When we thought as well at felt, and when the moral power of language made us sit up and take notice. My conversation with James Wolcott:
For over thirty years, and through over thirty books Anne Rice has captivated us with her imaginative fiction. She has become one of the most beloved novelists of our time. With each new book or series, she not only reinvents herself, but reinvents whole new arenas of fiction. From the Vampire Chronicles, to her Christ the Lord books, to the world of angels. Now she continues her move into the realm of werewolves. Where she still brings her own quite unique perspective. During a time of when we all face real dangers each day, she gives us a reason to escape into another world, but at the same time stay connected to our own. The Wolves of Midwinter: The Wolf Gift Chronicles is her latest. My conversation with Anne Rice:
When Bill Clinton ran for President in 1992, and came in second in the New Hampshire primary, he dubbed himself “the comeback kid.” The idea being that , Americans loved and admired the story of resurgence. The ability and the character to come back from seeming defeat. Perhaps no President's story embodies that more than FDR. Struck down with polio at age thirty-eight, his polio not only further shaped his character, and honed what Oliver Wendell Holmes called “his first class temperament.” but perhaps it also taught him skills that he would need as he taught the nation to deal with and recover from the twin crises of war and depression. James Tobin captures this essence of Roosevelt in The Man He Became: How FDR Defied Polio to Win the Presidency My conversation with James Tobin:
Like almost everything else in our globalized world, education is now competitive. We are long past the time when American kids could stand on the ramparts and look down at the rest of the world. Even some of our most prestigious and wealthiest communities can’t compete with the “average” kids in places like Korea or Finland or Poland. As is normal when we are under attack, our knee jerk reaction is to come up with excuses. We are more diverse, we are larger, we focus on different things and different values. Problem is, they are excuses. When the pencils are down, we fail. We fall far, far behind. But why? We often ask what we are doing wrong, but instead, Atlantic and Time journalist Amanda Ripley, asks and explores what are others are doing right. That is the core of her reporting in The Smartest Kids in the World: And How They Got That Way.Amanda Ripley spent one year following American teenagers living in Finland, South Korea and Poland. Her stories, reveal startling transformation. These countries got smarter not by spending more money or creating more tests, and they are not like Lake Wobegon, where all the children are above average. My Conversation with Amanda Ripley:
If the assassination of a President took place today, we’d all know about it in a matter of seconds. Alerts, tweets, the Internet. We’d all have the same facts, literally in an instant. In a way that microsecond information impacts the way we process the news itself. 50 years ago, upon the assassination of JFK, this was not the case. The information came out slowly. Even on the streets of Dallas, news traveled by word of mouth, from person to person. Bit by bit, drop by drop we lived the story over four remarkable days. The events, the images, the sounds had time to be absorbed into our pores, in a way that made it a part of our fabric, of the DNA of the American experience. Perhaps that’s why those events, 50 years ago, still resonate so powerfully today. Now bestselling author James Swanson turns a laser like focus on the minute by minute events of the final days of our 35th president in End of Days: The Assassination of John F. Kennedy My conversation with James Swanson:
kennedy-everett.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;">Fifty years ago this week, the nation experienced one of the seminal moments of the 20th century. Along with two world wars, the dawning of the nuclear age, and the landing of men on the moon, the assassination of JFK was one of the century’s tentpoles. As such, it never ceases to fascinate us. What other event of the 20th century still conjures up as many unanswered questions? Is there anyone who still believes that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone and that the Warren Commission is accurate? I’d say probably the same number that believes Elvis is still alive. Author and legal analyst Mark Shaw postulates a new theory of case. One that has as it progenitor the callus and politically expedient actions of the Kennedy patriarch Joseph P. Kennedy. He makes his case in The Poison Patriarch: How the Betrayals of Joseph P. Kennedy Caused the Assassination of JFK.
My conversation with Mark Shaw:
In the private sector, when corporations get into trouble they replace the CEO. When sports teams repeatedly have a losing season, invariably they replace the coach. If sales are down, managers are replaced. Yet in the military today, it's very rare that generals are replaced. Even in the wake of catastrophic failure. Esteemed military journalist Thomas Ricks argues in The Generals: American Military Command from World War II to Today, that failures in America's recent wars can be directly traced to failures of those in command. Ricks examines U.S. military leadership from World War Two to the present day, and concludes that the mistakes in Iraq and Afghanistan can be traced to the Army's inability to come to terms with all the lessons of Vietnam and how that continued lack of accountability has shaped the military. My conversation with Tom Ricks:
Woody Allen, in Annie Hall, said that he felt that life was divided into the horrible and the miserable. The horrible he thought were terminal cases, and blind people, and those with severe disabilities. He said, “I don't know how they get through life.” Yet many don't have that choice. Particularly for parents of children with severe disabilities. It appears on the surface that horrible is what they have to deal with every day. However for many of them, it’s not horrible at all. It is difficult, it’s often painful, but it’s also a powerful lesson about unconditional love, about finding strength in broken places and about redefining one's identity. Often by entering an alien world, that sometimes turns out to be a place of love, and safety and enrichment. This is the world that National Book Award winner Andrew Solomon lays out for us in Far From the Tree: Parents, Children and the Search for Identity. My conversation with Andrew Solomon:
For years people have referred to Hollywood as being like High school with money. Well, Hollywood has matured a lot. But today the same might be said about the tech world. Nowhere is that more apparent than in the story of the rise and rise of Twitter. Started by four young guys looking to change the world, the drama of their story would rival anything in the world of high school mean girls. Now, coinciding with the Twitter IPO, NY Times reporter Nick Bilton gives us Hatching Twitter: A True Story of Money, Power, Friendship, and Betrayal. It takes us inside the remarkable story of the company and the four men who stated it. It’s a story of money, loneliness, bitterness, technology and personal growth; all driven by a grand vision to change how we communicate. My conversation with Nick Bilton:
Even if you are not a football fan, you’ve all seen the diagrams of plays with all those X’s and O’s. It makes you think, and even sometimes makes the players and coaches think, that they have it all figured out. If you just follow the pattern, you will have success and that it will be a winning play. Problem is, it’s not true. There are dozens of factors that enter into the equation. The weather, the turf, memory, mental ability, the agility to pull it off and of course the plans and mindset of the opposing team. In many ways the same is true for the human brain and human behavior. We might have brain patterns, genetics and chemistry that tells us that we should or will develop a certain way. The problem is there is also environment, parents, and many other factors that make us who we are. That's the backdrop for neuroscientist Dr. James Fallon’s look at psychopathology in his book The Psychopath Inside: A Neuroscientist's Personal Journey into the Dark Side of the Brain My conversation with James Fallon:
When we look at the emergence of the diaspora of any ethnic group, we realize how important immigration is. To the Jews of the 20th century it was everything. Some would migrate to America and become pillars of both capitalism and communism. Some would migrate to Palestine and birth the state of Israel out of the desert. Others would be left behind in Europe and suffer the last full measures of the holocaust. They to would impact history, both by their courage and even by what they might have accomplished. David Laskin, has written The Family: Three Journeys into the Heart of the Twentieth Century. It'sabout his own family, but it's also a history that incorporate all the strands of this journey and the history of the Jewish diaspora in the 20th Century. My conversation with David Laskin:
We know that genes help make us what and who we are. But, of the 25,000 genes we possess, a relatively few are significantly different from person to person. Some of those genes are often referred to as the Compatibility Genes. Genes that both impact our relationships and determine how we responded to infection and disease. Daniel Davis, in his new book, The Compatibility Gene: How Our Bodies Fight Disease, Attract Others, and Define Our Selves, cuts through the complexities of modern genetics to reveal much about the most important selection of genes, the ones that define what it means to be human. My conversation with Daniel Davis:
Imagine if decisions in Washington, or at any level of government for that matter, were really made on the basis of policy. If careful analysis could win out over politics. Certainly the current health care debate would be very different. But so would our discussions about economic policy. If our discussion of the 2008 financial meltdown had been about analysis of what happened, as opposed to who's to blame, perhaps we’ve have learned a lot more from it. Wesleyan Professor of Economics, Richard Grossman takes a long view of several economic crises and what we got WRONG: Nine Economic Policy Disasters and What We Can Learn from Them. My conversation with Richard Grossman:
If I said that this conversation was about authoritarian politics, the religious right, the rise of Christianist fundamentalism, a demographic crisis facing one political party, and the continued rise of military power, you would easily assume we would be talking about the US. In fact, these same forces are at play in greater Israel, and they are constantly reinforced here, by perhaps the most powerful political lobby in the United States. The complexity of Israeli politics, its relationship with the US, and its impact on our own politics are all issues that exist not just in the abstract world of policy wonks. Each and every day they impact the lives of thousands of people on the ground in Israel, Gaza and the Middle East. Max Blumenthal takes a brave and controversial look at this in Goliath: Life and Loathing in Greater Israel. My conversation with Max Blumenthal:
We all know, or have heard about life in Silicon Valley. The perks, the collegiality, the PowerPoint, the team ethos. In fact, perhaps the most successful company to master the Internet is none of those things. It engages in predatory pricing, it is fiercely competitive, it eschews both PowerPoint and perks. Its leader was Time Magazine’s Person of the Year in 1999 and and yet, is just now 14 years later, reaching the zenith of his power. The company is Amazon and its leader and founder Jeff Bezos. Clearly the company is doing something different and doing it very, very well. Now we have the very best picture of Bezos and Amazon in Brad Stone's fascinating new book The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon. My conversation with Brad Stone:
- Mark Helprin, whose novels include Winter's Tale, A Soldier of the Great War and Freddy and Fredericka, is a senior fellow of the Claremont Institute. Helprin holds degrees from Harvard College and Harvard's Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, and did postgraduate work at the University of Oxford. He served in the British Merchant Navy, the Israeli infantry, and the Israeli Air Force. In his latest novel, In Sunlight and in Shadow, he take us to New York in the post war years. Helprin, who wrote speeches for Bob Dole when he was a Presidential candidate, gives us what some might consider to be an idealize version of the times. In a wide ranging conversation, Helprin and I discuss Mad Men, The Greatest Generation, irony, sex in the workplace and the power of love and counter culture. My conversation with Mark Helprin:
Higher education, like so much else in education is beginning to change. While the American higher education system is the envy of the word, it still needs some modernization. Just like other form of education, it has remained pretty much the same throughout the 20th Century and into the 21st. Think about it. 100+ years of creative destruction has impacted virtually every aspect of society, but University education has not fully adapted. It has started to. First by addressing that we live in confusing times. Our personal connections and our world is becoming both more bifurcated and more interdependent, both a the same time. We need to understand each other better, but we also need to understand the wider world much better. So what kind of higher education do we need to try and square this circle? Former US Senator and former head The New School, Bob Kerrey, is a key part of the new Minerva School at KGI. My conversation with Senator Bob Kerrey:
Back in the days of the former Soviet Union, we use to look to any public clue to try and understand what went on behind those Kremlin walls. It gave rise to a whole group of people who were referred to as Kremlinologist. Today, it seems we look at the Supreme Court in much the same way. At a time when the other branches of government talk about transparency and are exposed by leaks, when we often know too much about Members of Congress and the White House, the court often remains that enigma wrapped in a mystery. Harvard law professor Mark Tushnet helps us shed some light on the current court with, In the Balance: Law and Politics on the Roberts Court. My conversation with Mark Tushnet:
This week marks the official start of candy season. The bags of Halloween candy, followed by chocolate turkeys, chocolate gifts, the Chanukah chocolate, endless Christmas candy, all portend to a season of secret consumption by adults, a watchful eyes on kids and endless candy guilt. Plus the requisites articles about how sugar is more addictive than cocaine and seemingly every disease studied by the CDC, amplified by sugar. In fact, the story of candy is a story of American industrialization, sensuality, the beginnings of artificial food, the seduction and independence of children, as they first use candy to control their own pleasure. It’s a story told by Rutgers University professor Samira Kawash in Candy: A Century of Panic and Pleasure. My conversation with Samira Kawash:
At the Harvard Business School, which George W. Bush attended, there are many case studies about business partnerships. One of the recurring themes is that in tough times partnerships are easy. When everyone is struggling for a common goal, unity is always easier. But when a business starts to succeed, the partnership is always a lot tougher. Political partnerships are different, but still similar. There is no bottom line to worry about, but when one partner starts to succeed politically, ahead of the other, usually there is trouble and strain on the relationship. The Bush/Cheney partnership is a good example. It seems that every modern Presidential aspirant, when he picks a Vice-Presidential nominee, says that it’s going to be a unique and special partnership. The Bush /Cheney partnership was certainly true to that, especially given the events of 9/11 and the impact that the partnership had on the nation, in ways that we’ll be living with for decades to come. That’s why New York Times, Chief White House correspondent, Peter Baker's new book, Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House is so important and so central to understanding the history of the Bush administration. My conversation with Peter Baker:
The "one percent," "occupy," "income inequality," are all ideas and phrases that have become part of our national political conversation and all born of the movement that started in Zuccotti Park, in lower Manhattan, two years ago. The degree to which politics, from President Obama to New York mayoral candidate Bill de Blasio are talking about these issues, should be a sign of success. But is it? Does this two year old movement feel like it has succeeded and if not, what’s left to accomplish? Recently Bill Ayers talked to me about how movements should eschew ordinary political success in favor of organizing in communities, in neighborhoods, in school and in the workplace. So what’s the legacy of Occupy Wall Street? Nathan Schneider was present at the creation and he takes us back in Thank You, Anarchy: Notes from the Occupy Apocalypse. My conversation with Nathan Schneider:
Usually when we all have conversations about race and poverty, it's usually in a very abstract way. We often loose sight of how these realities impact peoples lives. Not in a political or policy sense, but simply with respect to what life is like in the poor and rural parts of the American South. Few have a better ear or better understanding of this reality than National Book Award winner and Stegner Fellow Jesmyn Ward. Now she looks back at the loss of five men that she grew up with in her memoir, Men We Reaped: My conversation with Jesmyn Ward:
During the government shut down, many commented that the radical elements of the Republican party were acting like terrorists. Even if we might have disagreed with their goals, the Tea Party ideas of direct action, grassroots organizing and commitment to their ideas of social change, were very reminiscent, in the minds of some, to the efforts of many groups in the 1960’s. However, most didn't like the analogy. In fact Sarah Palin commented that the Tea Party groups were specifically not like Bill Ayers and the "terrorists" that the President "palled around with." Well, Bill Ayers, who became Public Enemy number one in the eyes of Republicans in 2008, is still deeply committed to social change. The President doesn't pal around with him or take his advice, anymore than he does with Ted Cruz. But Bill Ayers has now written a second memoir, picking up where his last, FUGITIVE DAYS, left off. My conversation with Bill Ayers:
We worry about too big to fail. Yet bank losses pale in comparison to the degree to which the National Football League, has been too big to tell the truth. Its denials have seemingly directly resulted in the death of NFL players. Even worse, it has created untold dangers to young kids playing football, because their parents believed the leagues denials about the risk of brain injury coming from concussion and repetitive head trauma. When seen in its totality, it’s hard to deny that this ten billion dollar Park Avenue business, that is the NFL, does not have blood on its hands. We’ve all heard the debate questioning the impacts of repeated concussions and head trauma on NFL players. But the facts are are not up for debate. This is not a case where the cover up is worse than the crime. For the NFL, the cover up is the crime. Two of the top investigative journalists, Mark Fainaru-Wada and Steve Fainaru look inside twenty years of denial on the part of the NFL in their book and Frontline documentary League of Denial: The NFL, Concussions and the Battle for Truth. My conversation with Mark Fainaru-Wada & Steve Fainaru:
We look at social media today, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, as if it’s something new that could revolutionize the world. In fact, the antecedents of social media define the very evolution of civilization. It is the mass media, newspapers, broadcasting and the one way dissemination of information, of the past two hundred years, that is the exception, not the rule. Today, the sum of all of our technology actually takes us back to our roots, as a more social and interconnected society. Tom Standage, the digital editor of the Economist gives us historical context for social media and shows how it perfectly echoes past centuries, in his new book Writing on the Wall: Social Media - The First 2,000 Years. My conversation with Tom Standage:
We all remember, or have learned about, FDR telling the nation that “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” In fact, it along with a clip from The Kings Speech is being used in a commercial for a new technology that might help us overcome, what is considered everyone's worst fear, that of public speaking. Perhaps we remember Woody Allen fearing that the universe was expanding, and how that seemed like a good enough reason to skip school, in 50’s era Brooklyn. The country is on the brink of disaster because we have elected officials who are afraid of voters, and most of all, afraid of not being reelected. The bottom line is that in a macro world view, or in the intimacy of our personal lives, fear is a powerful motivator. But what would happen, how would the world change, how would we change, if we could mitigate or eliminate that fear. That's what Patty Chang Anchor set out to find in Some Nerve: Lessons Learned While Becoming Brave My conversation with Patty Chang Anker:
Edwidge Danticat's new novel, Claire of the Sea Light is set in a small seaside town in Haiti where a little girl, the daughter of a fisherman, has gone missing. Claire's mother died in childbirth, and her father wonders if he should give away his young daughter to a local shopkeeper who could give Claire a better life. Before he can make his decision, she disappears. Every hour of every day, parents and children separate so that the child might have a better life. It’s not a concept that comes easy to understanding in the West. Edwidge Danticat, gives us a strong understanding that love means sometimes having to say goodbye. My conversation with Edwedge Danticat:
In 1982, at the height of the feminist movement, Helen Gurley Brown, published a book entitled Having It All, love, success, sex and money. A popular TV movie of the time, was also entitled Having it All and had Dyan Cannon with a high powered job on both coasts. Oprah has said that women can have it all, but not all at once. And now 31 years after Helen Gurley Brown's book, the debate still rages on. Sheryl Sandberg has recently talked about the efforts of woman in the workplace, and now Debora Spar, the President of Barnard College, in her book Wonder Women: Sex, Power, and the Quest for Perfection, takes a fresh look of what is possible and and not for the woman of the 21st century. My conversation with Debora Spar:
While talk of sex is all around us, the fact is that the origins of our reproductive lives are still a mystery. And while 50 years ago Masters and Johnson set out to try and find the science of sex, much has transpired since in our understanding of science, and evolutionary biology. In his new book How We Do It: The Evolution and Future of Human Reproduction Field Museum of Natural History curator Robert Martin draws on 40 years of research in biological anthropology to locate the roots of everything from our sex cells to the way we care for newborns. He examines the procreative history of humans, as well as that of our primate kin. His findings are a constant surprise. My conversation with Robert Martin:
Although the provenance is somewhat sketchy, it has often been said that show business is High School with money. The point being that the battles, the cliques, the backstabbing, and yes even the deal making that consume Hollywood, are often the same skill sets that are required for a successful High School career. Journalist Michael Sokolove has found another more important link: A group of High School students and a remarkable teacher who turns it all around and brings the positive things of show business to High School. A sense of participation, an appreciation for narrative and story, a kinship in a bigger cause and a need to reach deep inside ourselves to do good work. If only we all had that teacher.Michael Sokolove did! And he returned to his High School in Levittown, PA to tell us the story of Drama High: The Incredible True Story of a Brilliant Teacher, a Struggling Town, and the Magic of Theater. My conversation with Michael Sokolove:
Spies and covert agents are, by their very nature required to live lives of secrecy. So when some spies, for whatever complicated reasons, become household names like Aldrich Ames, Kim Philby, or Robert Hanssen, it's a big deal. In 2003, the outing of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame, by columnist Robert Novak, brought an end of her CIA career. But it also brought all of us, in ways not seen since the Cold War, into better harmony with the symbiotic relationship that exists between politics, espionage, and government bureaucracy. The outing of Plame triggered a political scandal that would truly make her, the spy who came in from the cold. Now 10 years later, Valerie Plame is back, but this times masquerading as Vanessa Pierson, in her novel Blowback My conversation with Valerie Plame:
Our founding fathers created a system of government that respected opposing points of view and was designed to work even across differences. Throughout most of American history it has worked. One time it did not was in 1861, when Abraham Lincoln, said the following: “What is our present condition? We have just carried an election on principles fairly stated to the people. Now we are told in advance, the government shall be broken up, unless we surrender to those we have beaten, before we take the offices. In this they are either attempting to play upon us, or they are in dead earnest. Either way, if we surrender, it is the end of us, and of the government. They will repeat the experiment upon us ad libitum." After the Civil War and for 150 years the system worked. Today we are in danger of what Lincoln called “the end of us.” Perhaps it is ideal to look into contemporary history for what was perhaps the last time that our system of government worked as it was intended. That would be in the 1980’s. It was in part the personalities of people like Ronald Reagan and Tip O’Neil and it was also a different time and a different context. Chris Matthews is one of our keenest political observers. He sorts through it all in his new book Tip and the Gipper: When Politics Worked My conversation with Chris Matthews:
From the days of Caligula, right on through to the Clinton's, the role of First Ladies has always been complex, political and sometimes exotic. What’s interesting is how often we ignore the role of First Ladies, in nations other than our own. In fact, they have often played a key roles in determining US foreign policy. Perhaps nowhere has this been more true than in Vietnam in the early 1960's. There, Madame Nhu, the young and glamours First Lady of South Vietnam, would play a key role in one of the darkest chapters of American history. Her perception has the Dragon Lady only added to the US decision to support the coup that would topple the South Vietnamese government, in 1963. Her husband and brother in law were murdered and the war in Vietnam would be forever escalated. For years no one really knew had happened to Madame Nhu. That is, until Monique Brinson Demery would dedicated herself to Finding the Dragon Lady: The Mystery of Vietnam's Madame Nhu My conversation with Monique Brinson Demery:
Jane Jacobs, in writing about the rise and fall of great cities, talks about a quality even meaner than urban ugliness or disorder. That is, the idea of “pretend order,” achieved she says by ignoring or suppressing the real order that is struggling to exist and to be served. This real order “is what make cities flourish and diversity sprout and makes them strange and unpredictable.” This, as Jacobs explains, is not a drawback, it is the point of cites. A city that for a long time embodied this ethos, is Calcutta. And while it may be changing and homogenizing today, esteemed author Amit Chaudhuri, captures its essence in his newest work Calcutta: Two Years in the City My conversation with Amit Chauduri:
Last week, during the Emmys, we heard a lot of talk about this being a golden age of television. Certainly with shows like Mad Men, Breaking Bad, The Wire and Newsroom, who could argue? However for children's television, the golden age may very well have been 25 years ago. Then, Nickelodeon changed the landscape of kid’s programming. From the Adventures of Pete and Pete and Clarissa Explains it All to Ren and Stimpy, Nickelodeon became the go to channel for kids from early morning to Nick at Nite. Today we have a whole generation that grew up on that programming. Now, to better understand it all, Matthew Klickstein gives us Slimed!: An Oral History of Nickelodeon's Golden Age. My conversation with Matthew Klickstein:
When we look at a tragedy like 9/11, we think of who and what we lost at that moment. We forget that a future is also lost. That many of those killed that day may have changed and reshaped the future. Certainly Danny Lewin, who was on AA flight 11, the first plane to hit the towers, had the potential to do just that. During his brief 31 years, Danny was a father, a soldier, a brilliant mathematician and an entrepreneur. Along with his MIT professor, Tom Leighton, he would reshape the Internet into the robust system that was able to withstand the traffic and news of 9/11 itself. What else he might have accomplished in his lifetime is a loss not just to his family, but to all of us. Molly Knight Raskin lets us all share Danny's story in No Better Time: The Brief, Remarkable Life of Danny Lewin, the Genius Who Transformed the Internet My conversation with Molly Knight Raskin:
Throughout all of the second half of the 20th century and into the 21st, right up until this moment, many have worked hard to institute some measure of affordable health care and health care reform in America. A country that, prior to the passage of the Affordable Care Act, was the only modern Western nation not to have done so. It's no wonder that the forces allied against were powerful, well financed and prepared to do anything and say anything. Those who would attack the law did so in the absence of political success. Instead, they would try and use the courts, the very courts that they always derided as activist. Except now they wanted to actively seek to overturn by judicial fiat, that which they could not do through political means. Law Professor Josh Blackman takes a broad look at the Constitutional and legal challenges to the Affordable Care Act and finds the case Unprecedented. My conversation with Josh Blackman:
In 1977, a 13 year old aspiring actress was invited to do a photoshoot with a famous film director. What happened that day, still makes headlines around the world: Director Roman Polanski, then 43, gave Samantha Gailey then 13, a hefty helping of Champagne and Quaaludes, then raped her at the home of Jack Nicholson. After pleading guilty to unlawful sex with a minor, Polanski fled the country before his court date and made a home in France. Samantha Geimer, Now 50, and 36 years after the fact, has written a memoir of her experiences. The Girl: A Life in the Shadow of Roman Polanski. Lawrence Silver was Samantha’s lawyer, from the very beginning and now talks about the case. The facts remain the same, but the context has changed dramatically in the past 36 years. My conversation with Lawrence Silver:
This has been an amazing week for sailing, for Oracle team USA, for it’s crew and for Larry Ellison. In many ways Ellison is the true manifestation of what creative destruction and Silicon Valley is all about….dreams, passion, vision, innovation and the ability to execute on all of it. Many successful entrepreneurs possess some measure of these qualities. But often the purpose and the playing field is small; an app, a piece of software, a new design. All things of value. But Larry Ellison wanted to play on a much grander scale. He wasn't happy to just nudge the world, he wanted to change it, to shift it on it’s axis...just a bit. Yesterday’s victory was the culmination of that effort in the world of sailing. It’s a story that is powerful and complex, and involved people like Norbert Bajurin and Jimmy Spithill, who would share and complement and expand on Ellison's vision and passion. It’s a story told with equal passion by Julian Guthrie. Julian’s book The Billionaire and the Mechanic: How Larry Ellison and a Car Mechanic Teamed Up to Win Sailing's Greatest Race, The America's Cup, sets the stage for all that came before yesterday’s race. My conversation with Julian Guthrie:
Scott Fitzgerald wrote of Gatsby, “that if personality is an unbroken series of successful gestures, then there was something gorgeous about him, some heightened sensitivity to the promise of life, as if he were related to one of those intricate machines that register earthquakes ten thousand miles away. This responsiveness had nothing to do with that flabby impressionability which is dignified under the name of the 'creative temperament'--it was an extraordinary gift for hope, a romantic readiness such as I have never found in any other person.” What is it that gives someone those qualities? Is it their bearing, their dress, the way they hold their hands or the words they use? Clearly some people have it, and others don’t . But can it be learned? Matthew Kohut explains how people can find power and influence beyond just their KLOUT score. That we can find that something that makes us into Compelling People: The Hidden Qualities That Make Us Influential. My conversation with Matthew Kohut:
When we look at the vast expanse of history, we find that their are periods when the world seemingly shifted on its axis: When change is dramatic, when our whole way of looking at and understanding events changes. Perhaps the 60’s was such a period, perhaps we are in such a period today. The impact of technology, globalization, deindustrialization social, cultural and economic change. Only history will be able to give us that answer. What we are learning though, is that the period of time leading up to the Civil War, the war itself, and the reconstruction that followed, was such a period. It gave rise to events that created tectonic shifts, and was populated by characters whose special quality secures their place in history. This is the period written about by Brenda Wineapple in Ecstatic Nation: Confidence, Crisis, and Compromise, 1848-1877. My conversation with Brenda Wineapple:
Since the dawn of the age of nuclear weapons we have only imagined the complexity of systems that are involved in the use of those weapons. Those of us that grew up during the cold war are all too familiar with the nuclear football that follows the President, launch codes, the hotline, fail safe mechanisms, and even the eccentricity of Col. Jack Ripper.
All have seemingly kept us safe. But today the cold war is over, US and Russian nuclear stockpiles have gone from over 60k weapons to less than 5k. It all sounds pretty good.
But as we worry anew about nuclear proliferation, about weapons in the hands of terrorists, it bring into bold relief that idea that these weapons are among the most complex machines built by man. As such they can fail; accidents can happen, and weapons on a hair trigger alert are subject to technical failure.
Is it pure dumb luck that we have not had an accident involving nuclear weapons? In fact we have had many such accidents, perhaps over 1200 of them… the worst of which happened in Damascus, Arkansas, 33 years ago.
Now investigative reporter Eric Schlosser, the author of Fast Food Nation and Reefer Madness, takes us inside our system of Command and Control.
My conversation with Eric Schlosser:
It’s been almost 50 years since Lyndon Johnson declared "war on poverty." It’s been more than 50 years since JFK was moved by the poverty of Appalachia and Bobby Kennedy by the poverty of the South Bronx. Today's poverty may not be as dark or desperate, but it is more insidious. While we focus on the growing gap between the one percent and the middle class, we often ignore those that have fallen out of the middle class, and sunk below the poverty level. That group is growing exponentially and it’s a blight on our nation. Certainly it’s not a part of the American exceptionalism the President spoke of last week.
As the House is voting to drastically cut Food Stamps, journalist Sasha Abramsky delves deep into the issue in The American Way of Poverty: How the Other Half Still Lives. My conversation with Sasha Abramsky
Many of us remember the 1978 movie Midnight Express, where Billy Hayes is held and tortured by his Turkish captors, as attempts are made to extract ransom. Well imagine today, a young woman caught in a similar situation, kidnaped and held by brutal captors, not because of an attempt to smuggle drugs, but because she was trying to tell a story as a young and struggling and aspiring journalist. The location was not Turkey, but Mogadishu, Somalia, considered by some, one of the most dangerous places on earth. What brought Amanda Lindhout to this place, and what in her background gave her the strength and grace to survive a devastating 460 day ordeal? Her story A House in the Sky, tells us a great deal about her, and also about the indomitable resiliency of the human spirit. My conversation with Amanda Lindhout:
Look at any campaign, for student body President to the President of the United States and we see some key ingredients. The clarity and strength of the message, the quality of political organization, the discipline of the candidate, the get out the vote effort and resonance of the broader issues. As President Obama entered his reelection campaign, a full two years before election day, by any objective standard, these things were in flux and not always for the better. To paraphrase his opposition, the hope and change thing wasn’t going so well. And yet Obama would become the first president, since Ike, to be re elected with over 50% of the vote. What they did, right and wrong is the subject of Richard Wolffe’s, 2012 campaign biography The Message: The Reselling of President Obama. My conversation with Richard Wolffe:
Even though our culture is dripping with sex, topics of sexuality don’t always come easily to our understanding or to our conversation. It has taken generations for gays and lesbians to begin to achieve their full measure of acceptance, and there is still work to be done. Same sex marriage is finally beginning to gather a majority constituency. But clearly, the world of transgender people is yet to achieve anything near equality or understanding. Yet as we understand more about it, as we begin to see it up close and personal, inside our own families and friends, perhaps the understanding and acceptance will evolve. There is no more powerful example of this than the story that esteemed film critic Molly Haskell tells about the transformation of her own brother in her memoir My Brother My Sister: Story of a Transformation. My conversation with Molly Haskell:
Last week President Obama, in addressing the issue of Syria, talked about America's unique role in the world. Russian President Putin would go on to criticize the idea of American exceptionalism. The fact is that Obama's commitment to and Putin's criticism of America's place in the world, has its roots in the ideas of our 28th President, Woodrow Wilson. Inaugurated 100 years ago. In urging Congress to enter WWI, Wilson talked about the need to make the world "safe for democracy." In so doing, he perhaps inadvertently laid the predicate for the next century of US foreign policy and an idealism that often went beyond America's direct national interests. He would come to define the modern activist Presidency, and would lay the groundwork for a broader role for the federal government. He did it all coming to office with a minimum of political experience, accusations of elitism, racism and a disregard for civil liberties. Still, he ranks as one of our great Presidents. The how and why of this is embedded in A. Scott Berg's sweeping biography Wilson, thirteen years in the making. A Scott Berg is a best selling biographer, a winner of the NationalBook Award and the Pulitzer Prize. My conversation with Scott Berg:
We are all familiar with the words of Nietzsche who said, "that which doesn't kill us, makes us stronger." It has become a kind of mantra for a society in which everyone seems under siege, or faces some kind of adversity. But is it true? We’re told that we learn from our mistakes, but is there an easier way? Does the willingness to lean into to adversity, make it more likely? Do those who deny adversity’s benefits, have less of it? And how does the value of learning from adversity get weaker, often closed down, by the power of positive thinking which is often so much a part of our happy talk culture? These are some of the ideas dealt with by Dr. Norman Rosenthal in The Gift of Adversity: The Unexpected Benefits of Life's Difficulties, Setbacks, and Imperfections. Rosenthal is a psychiatrist and the scientist who in the 1980s first described winter depression or seasonal affective disorder (SAD). He spent 20 years as a researcher at the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) where he studied disorders of mood, sleep, and biological rhythms. My conversation with Dr. Norman Rosenthal:
When we speak of death and sickness, it is often as if we are engaged in the language of war. We are battling, fighting, staving off. Perhaps we'd be better to think of it in language from the 17th Century poet John Donne, in “Death Be Not Proud.” That might help us to understand a different language of death, but it was all before the advent of the medical/industrial complex. The ways in which the forces of medicine stand in the way of a “meaningful death.” That’s the world that journalist Katie Butler writes about in Knocking on Heaven's Door: The Path to a Better Way of Death. Her story, in the NY Times Magazine, about her father's death, was one of the most commented upon articles in the history of the Magazine. My conversation with Katie Butler:
On 9/11 of last year the US Mission in Benghazi, Libya, an isolated ad hoc outpost, was attacked. The small security team from the diplomatic security service, was no match for large numbers of jihadist forces that would attack, in what has been called “a perfect worst case scenario.” This was the first time that a US diplomat had been killed since 1988, in Pakistan. Perhaps in another time it would have brought respect for the heroics of the men who valiantly fought back to save the mission and the Ambassador. Perhaps it would have brought a legitimate investigation of what happened and how we might learn from such attacks. Instead, like almost everything else today, it’s simply been a catalyst for bitter partisanship, for political opportunism and the continuing efforts of some, to find anything to attack the President and the administration. In that haze we’ve lost sight of what really happened and why it still matters. Two national security experts, Fred Burton and Samuel Katz, provide the first full scale account in their book Under Fire: The Untold Story of the Attack in Benghazi.
My conversation with Burton and Katz:
Today we are a culture steeped in Sex. It’s part of almost every aspect of our politics, our culture, and our economy. It’s about selling cars, and also the dispensing of medical care. But just 60 years ago, it was a subject that was all but taboo. We not only didn’t speak its name in polite company, but we knew very little about it and how it worked, both physiologically and psychologically. Then William Masters came along and with his partner Virginia Johnson, changed all that. They not only medicalized the discussion and understanding of sex, but unleashed the power of female sexuality in ways that would forever change society. Few have studied and understood their work better than Thomas Maier. His book Masters of Sex: The Life and Times of William Masters and Virginia Johnson, the Couple Who Taught America How to Love has just be re released and the Showtime series, based on the book, premiers later this month. My conversation with Thomas Maier:
It used to be that we had a somewhat standard expectations as to what it means to be a grown up. It they weren’t norms really, at least they were a general set of expectations: College, marriage, a house, a car, kids...all the accouterments of the American dream. It’s interesting, that even amid the turmoil and social and cultural transitions of the 60’s and 70’s, these stars remained pretty fixed in our imagination. Yet the broader economic transitions of globalization, economic disparity and deindustrialization, have had a far greater impact. One that has tilted these expectation off their axis and may be creating a generation where coming of age, where adulthood, means something entirely different. In fact, it may be the entirety of the reason for the stagnation of the middle-class. Jennifer Silva, a Postdoctoral Fellow at Harvard's Kennedy School, take a look at what's happening in Coming Up Short: Working-Class Adulthood in an Age of Uncertainty. My conversation with Jennifer Silva:
Few subjects get as much attention as education. Yet in many ways it’s like the weather. We talk a lot about it, but sometimes it seems we can do very little. Perhaps the most important thing we can do is focus on teachers. For they are at the ramparts of the battle. They are not just a piece of the puzzle, arguably they are the largest piece. Yet how many of us, even the most active parents, really understand what it’s like in the classroom, day after day. What it really means to be a teacher. Few are more distinguished or more successful than Rafe Esquith. He has taught at Hobart Elementary School in Los Angeles for twenty-four years. He is the only teacher to have been awarded the president's National Medal of the Arts and his new book is Real Talk for Real Teachers: Advice for Teachers from Rookies to Veterans: "No Retreat, No Surrender!" My conversation with Rafe Esquith:
The Bay Area is, in many ways, defined by its bridges. Once famous for their architectural beauty and cutting edge design, the new span of the Bay Bridge may be equally famous for its faulty construction, inflated costs and mismanagement. While its engineering, politics and construction may have many issues, few can quarrel with it's design. That design is the work of Donald McDonald, an icon of bridge building throughout the world. McDonald has over 30 years experience in architectural design, historic rehabilitation, planning, contract administration, and construction management of complex projects. He and his firm are responsible for the design of the just opened Eastern Span of the San FranciscoBay Bridge. My conversation with Donald McDonald:
Whenever there are lists of the greatest and most profound inventions of all time, we almost always hear, among other things, about air conditioning, the internal combustion engine and electric light. This last one, electric light, has seen to it that vast tracts of human population have never had to experience anything like total darkness. What impact has that had. As technology moves so much more rapidly than evolutionary biology, how has that impacted our species. We’ve all seen the aerial views of the world at at night. Vast population centers stretching for hundreds of miles, all brightly lit. At the same time, our migration to cities continues to create a nighttime culture that is very different than what our ancestors experienced. That's the world that Paul Bogard takes us to in The End of Night: Searching for Natural Darkness in an Age of Artificial Light. My conversation with Paul Bogard:
Throughout history we have always looked at technology as a tool to make life easier. Whether it was a wheel, a shovel, a pencil or today, our smartphones. Our current technology was in many ways designed and sold to make us more creative. Instead, in many ways it has made us more fractured and distracted. But the fault is not in the zeros and ones, but in ourselves. Dr. Alex Pang, a futurist and thought leader in the field of contemplative computing, believes we have the power to change our relationship to our technology. He’s written about it in The Distraction Addiction: Getting the Information You Need and the Communication You Want, Without Enraging Your Family, Annoying Your Colleagues, and Destroying Your Soul. My conversation with Alex Pang:
History and great historical sweeps are generally not just a series of unfortunate events. Rather, they are part of long connected progression of events, that circle around and become knotted in each other and that have far reaching consequences that last years, decades and sometimes centuries. It often seems that, because we seldom learn from such events, that these historical events don’t have a normal half life. Nowhere is this more obvious than in today’s Middle East. A place where today's troubles are often the result of yesterday folly. Might it have been different, if a century ago the British had listened to T.E. Lawrence, the man popularized in the 1962 film Lawrence of Arabia. Journalist and author Scott Anderson, lays out the reality of those events that might have changed the world, in his book Lawrence in Arabia: War, Deceit, Imperial Folly and the Making of the Modern Middle East. My conversation with Scott Anderson:
Given all the accolades that come to San Francisco, from its role in shaping our culture, and its inspiration for Tony Bennett, it’s often hard to believe that there are conflicting views. Recently, the co-founder of a start-up, credit card processing company, who was forced to move to San Francisco by his financiers, took to Medium with a different view. He said, “San Francisco! It's the worst. The weather, the people, the cyclists, the dreary architecture and glum landscape... just ugh--why would any sane person want to live in this urine-scented homeless wasteland? Without the skrillions of available venture funding dollar and generous tech tax breaks, it's obvious San Franawful would drift off into an ocean of irrelevance.” This is not the view held by Gary Kamiya, a Bay Area native, and a founder of Salon, who has just written Cool Gray City of Love: 49 Views of San Francisco. My conversation with Gary Kamiya:
It has been said, although the origin is uncertain, that there are no atheists in foxholes. The same might be said of prisons. Particularly prisons in America; a country that has both a high regard for religion and and an even higher regard for mass incarceration. Joshua Dubler, in his new book Down in the Chapel: Religious Life in an American Prison, takes a look at how these ideas might be related and what his microcosm of prison and religion might say, not only about the men he talks to, but about our society at large. My conversation with Joshua Dubler:
Because there is no preparation for the burdens and responsibly of the Presidency, it would take JFK, almost nine-hundred of his thousand days to reach his apogee. With the death of his infant son Patrick, as a catalyst, the final 100 days of the Kennedy presidency, which began 50 years ago this month, would become the capstone of Camelot and the defining time of a promised unfulfilled. Kennedy historian Thurston Clark, in JFK's Last Hundred Days: The Transformation of a Man and the Emergence of a Great President, takes us deep inside those final 100 days. My conversation with Thurston Clarke:
From the police logs in local newspapers to the Metro sections of major metropolitan dailies, from the pablum of TV drama, to pulp fiction, crime always sells. But few dramatized it better than Elmore Leonard. He was the author of 45 crime novels including Cat Chaser, Fifty Two Pickup, Be Cool, Get Shorty, Maximum Bob, Rum Punch, Cuba Libre, Glitz and Tishomingo Blues. He was an American original, who was one of the earliest to understand the heroes needn't be perfect. Long before Breaking Bad, or Tony Soprano, he created a series of stories and characters, that blurred the lines between “good” and “bad.” I had the privilege of talking to Leonard several times over the years, the last time in 2004. Here is compendium of some of those conversation:
Who hasn’t sat in endless brainstorming sessions, trying to be creative. We’re told to think outside the box, to magically conjure up new and different ways of doing things. Often without structure. Yet when we look at the history of innovation, we find that there are clearly patterns and techniques that do make a difference. We find that product after product, innovation after innovation shows very clear methods as to how they were developed. Marketing and innovation professor Drew Boyd has broken these down in a way that essentially enables us to think Inside the Box, to develop a Proven System of Creativity for Breakthrough Results. My conversation with Drew Boyd:
A magical cave, a piece a cheese, a 260 lb man, a modern journey into a time past, and a new, old understanding of food and life. Just a few of the elements of Michael Paterniti's new literary work of nonfiction, The Telling Room: A Tale of Love, Betrayal, Revenge, and the World's Greatest Piece of Cheese Beginning in 1991 in a famed deli in Ann Arbor, Michigan, it’s a story, that like Robert Louis Stevensons’ s definition of wine as “bottled poetry,” resonates with the history and passion that some foods carries with them. My conversation with Michael Paterniti:
Often times through fictional characters we are able to capture an entire ethos. Certainly Jay Gatsby defines a certain era, as does Don Draper, as does Woody Allen’s Zelig. It’s a rare thing when a real life characters does this. But such is the case with Charles Manson. The Tate/LaBianca murders took place 44 years ago this week, and still Charles Manson resonates with us. The media has often defined him as a product of the 60’s, but in many ways he also defines the 40’s and 50’s. He was, according to award winning investigative journalist Jeff Guinn, the wrong person in the right place at the right time. With all that has been written about Manson, Guinn’s book, Manson: The Life and Times of Charles Manson, is the first full account of who Charles Manson really is. My conversation with Jeff Guinn:
We are coming up next year, on the 20th anniversary of NAFTA. It has created tens of millions jobs, more integrated a continent, and dramatically increased trade. Yet, for politically expedient reasons, we constantly seem to be re litigating these issues. Arguably we should be looking at the success of NAFTA as a jumping off point for greater geopolitical and economic integration of the North American continent. The World is changing. With technology growing and business becoming ever more global, the future economic and national security of the US will be dependent on cooperation with our neighbors to the North and South. National security and Latin American expert, Dr. Robert Pastor makes the case for this future in his new book, The North American Idea: A Vision of a Continental Future. The world is changing he argues and we can't go forward and make progress as human beings, while being held back by arbitrary political borders and nostalgia for archaic ideas such as isolationism and opposition to globalization. My conversation with Dr. Robert Pastor:
It’s hard to believe today, but there once was a glass ceiling in Rock 'n Roll. That is, before the teenage members of the Runaways in the mid 70’s released four albums for a major label, toured the world and broke down barriers that would open the way for girl bands and female rockers to follow. Their rise and fall is documented by Evelyn McDonnell in her new book Queens of Noise: The Real Story of the Runaways. My conversation with Evelyn McDonnell:
He was almost like a character out of The Front Page. He loved newspapers, he loved reporting and most of the time, he loved politics. In 2000 though he stopped writing his nationally syndicated column because he was fed up with what our political system had become. He wrote a book about it, Fat Man Fed Up: How American Politics Went Bad. In July of 2004, Jack Germond and I talked, as we had many times before, about the state of politics and how it was so disappointing to him. He pulled no punches as he talked about things that would only get worse during his final eight years. They don't make reporters like Jack Germond anymore. Here is part of our conversation from July of 2004:
Reporting on presidential campaigns has become a kind of quadrennial ritual in which, after the election is long over, we get to go behind the scenes to understand what made the campaigns tick; what mistakes were made by the looser and what was done right by the winning team. The really good ones though, take us behind the scenes of the electorate itself. They examine not just how power passes, but how the nature of the country changes every four years. For Presidential votes are different than other kinds of elections. They are a kind of national gut check of the mood, temper, culture and divisions of the time. They tell us about the candidates, but more importantly, the really good reporting also give us a snapshot of ourselves. That's what Washington Post Chief Correspondent Dan Balz has done in Collision 2012: Obama vs. Romney and the Future of Elections in America My conversation with Dan Balz:
Kay Redfield Jamison, in her class book about depression, The Unquiet Mind, says that "manic-depression distorts moods and thoughts, incites dreadful behaviors, destroys the basis of rational thought, and too often erodes the desire and will to live. It is an illness that is biological in its origins, yet one that feels psychological in the experience of it, an illness that is unique in conferring advantage and pleasure, yet one that brings in its wake almost unendurable suffering." But imagine if no one knows what your illness is, or if it is mistreated by the medical community. How much worse is it, when treatment is possible, but it is prevented or delayed by ignorance. That's the story that Melody Moezzi tells in Haldol and Hyacinths: A Bipolar Life My conversation with Melody Moezzi:
Look at most people that have achieved great success and you’ll probably find a great coach or a great mentor. As a culture steeped in the ethos of success, its surprising really that we don't’ put more emphasis on and greater value for coaching and mentoring. Think about some examples: Dr. Martin Luther King, mentored by Benjamin E. Mays. Warren Buffett mentored by Benjamin Graham. Bill Gates who would later be mentored by Warren Buffett. We marvel at the success of Steve Jobs, who had several mentors, including Robert Friedland and Andy Grove. Jobs himself would become a mentor to Mark Benioff. These relationships were not about just teaching. They were about inspiring. As the great poet Robert Frost said of his work, “I am not a teacher, I'm an awakener.” Mentors are about awakening us to be, as the slogan goes, all that we can be. Few do this job better than renowned mentor David C.M. Carter, who now shares some of his secrets in Breakthrough. My conversation with David Carter.
In this age in which news is often conflated with entertainment and job hopping is de rigueur, John Palmer was the anomaly. He reported for NBC for over 40 years. He covered the White House, the Middle East and reported on some of the most important stories of our time. Back in March of 1997, John visited the Napa Valley and we had the chance to chat a bit about Washington in the Clinton years. John was appalled by the way money had taken over politics, as well as the insular nature of Washington. He was a great reporter, who always defined the best of broadcast journalism. Here is seven minutes of that conversation from 16 years ago.
We are all connected. In a macro sense the Internet and technology connects us all. But think about all of our individual networks. Our social networks, on and off line, our business networks, our networks as customers, as consumers and as family members. And like a complex venn diagram, these networks get stronger and denser and smarter as they all interconnect with each other. But is there a point where it’s too much. Where the density or even the brittleness of these networks, affect our thoughts, our emotions and potentially, like an autoimmune disease, collapse in on themselves by reaching a kind of break point? That's the jumping off point for brain scientist and entrepreneur Jeff Stibel's book Breakpoint: Why the Web will Implode, Search will be Obsolete, and Everything Else you Need to Know about Technology is in Your Brain. My conversation with Jeff Stibel:
We know that real success demands strange sacrifices of those who worship at its alter. But do those willing to make those sacrifices possess of a unique kind of obsessiveness, the proverbial fire in the belly, that is often only fueled by youthful pain and determination? In short, is greatness a kind of OCD run amuck, a kind of mental illness, that in the right mind achieves magnificent feats? That's the idea behind Joshua Kendall's America's Obsessives: The Compulsive Energy That Built a Nation. My conversation with Joshua Kendall:
We know that for individuals, youthful pain, psychological trauma, and shame can have profound effects. It can be a driver to depression, or an engine of great achievement. Just as the high school nerd or scapegoat may spend his whole life trying to gain respect, achieve success or get the girl, the same can be true for nations and cultures. For China, humiliated by the British in the mid 19th century and then by the Japanese, its modern history has been an effort to find a way to gain respect, to fill the psychological void left by its previous shame and humiliation. In the case of China, it’s been particularly difficult because of its size. To be weak is shameful, to be big and weak, hurts even more. This idea provides the framework for China scholars Orville Schell and John Delury’s look as China's modern efforts to achieve Wealth and Power and China's Long March to the Twenty-first Century. My conversation with Orville Schell and John Delury:
It is the job of historians and scholars to take new and contemporary information and give context and connection to events far beyond the time in which they happened. This is as true for wars, as it is for the story of Jesus. Thus it is no accident that for over 2000 years, every word every written about Jesus was written by people that did not know him when he was alive. It’s significant to note that this was as true in the twenty years after his death, as it is today. Only today we have a broader compendium of knowledge from which to draw on and a keener understanding of the historical context. With respect to the Jesus story, this makes it easier in some ways to separate out the religious Jesus from the historical Jesus and in so doing, better understand the origins of Christianity, in its birth time, and as it has evolved for over 2000 years. Few do this better than writer and scholar Reza Aslan. The internationally acclaimed author of No God But God, has now written Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth. My conversation with Reza Aslan:
As we watch events unfold in the Middle East, particularly in Egypt, one thing should become very clear. Revolutions are very difficult. To change the direction and fate of nations does not come without much pain and sacrifice and in fact it usually does not work out. That’s why when we look at own American Revolution, we should realize what an usually success it was and that it was not inevitable, even with the very special men we had in its cause. Pulitzer Prize winning historian Joseph Ellis, in Revolutionary Summer: The Birth of American Independence, takes us deep inside the politics and strategy of that summer of 1776. We won that war so that we should never have to care about a Royal baby..... My conversation with Joseph Ellis
The economy and Wall Street are once again front and center. President Obama is engaged in a series of major policy addresses about the economy. Elizabeth Warren and CNBC are engaged in a kabuki dance about the future of Wall Street. Larry Summers, part of the team that created our modern economy, may become the next Fed Chairman, and SAC, one of the most powerful hedge funds of the era, is engaged in an effort to keep its leader Steve Cohen and its employees, out of federal prison. All of this brings us to Les Leopold’s How to Make a Million Dollars an Hour: Why Hedge Funds Get Away with Siphoning Off America's Wealth. A behind the scenes look at the world of hedge funds and what it means for ensuring domestic prosperity. My conversation with Les Leopold:
When we try and conjure up a place that is all about power, ego, success, money, hard work, personal baggage and branding, most of us would think first of Hollywood. As Orson Wells said of Hollywood, "Hollywood is Hollywood. There’s nothing you can say about it that isn’t true, good or bad. And if you get into it, you have no right to be bitter — you’re the one who sat down, and joined the game." Much the same might be said of Washington D.C. The difference is that we mistakenly think Washington should be a place of sober reflection on policy and ideas. But was it ever? Is the Washington of today any different than it has ever been; from the preening and egos of our Founding Fathers to the cronyism of FDR’s advisers, to the highfalutin schmoozing of Camelot? It was the wise and sagacious Marilyn Monroe who said, “I don't know if high society is different in other cities, but in Hollywood, important people can't stand to be invited someplace that isn't full of other important people.” That's the beginning and the backdrop for NY Times magazine's chief national correspondent, Mark Leibovich's new book This Town: Two Parties and a Funeral-Plus, Plenty of Valet Parking!-in America's Gilded Capital. In it, he fully pulls back the curtain on the great and powerful Oz, that is our nations capital. My conversation with Mark Leibovich:
Today, we are in what some consider the third golden age of television. Many programs are the talk of National Public Radio and of the most elite dinner parties. They have become a significant part of our cultural conversation. So what changed? Was it the long tail of cable television, the need for men to find a place reassert themselves into the national conversation, or simply a natural home for adult storytelling at a time when the movies have ceded this territory. GQ correspondent Brett Martin takes a deep look in Difficult Men: Behind the Scenes of a Creative Revolution: From The Sopranos and The Wire to Mad Men and Breaking Bad. My conversation with Brett Martin:
Old songs like old photographs are the purveyors of a kind of double imagery. They are short circuits in time that make yesterdays events, today’s reality. One such song, is "DANCING IN THE STREET" by Martha and the Vandellas. Almost a work of art, it conveys and captures an entire ethos in its 2 minutes and 36 seconds. It was recorded in the summer of l964. The beginning of the Vietnam War, and the Berkeley Free Speech Movement. It was the Mississippi Freedom Summer; we’d see the passage of the Civil Rights Bill and it was a time when serious and ironic was becoming the meme of the day. Yet this pop song would become the anthem for changing America. It’s the subject of best selling author Mark Kurlansky’s Ready For a Brand New Beat: How "Dancing in the Street" Became the Anthem for a Changing America.
My conversation with Mark Kurlansky:
After 9/11 and the onset of the war on terror, it became clear that we might be in a permanent state of war. What we forgot, was that war does not exist in a vacuum. It brings out the best and worst within us. It forces us to face a moral paradox that we might not have to face, in times of peace. This was certainly true in WWII. These are some of the elements that provide the backdrop for Chris Bohjalian’s new novel The Light in the Ruins It is a love story and thriller set in Florence and Tuscany in the waning days of World War II, as well as in the 1950s. But in many ways, it’s also a cautionary tale about the compromises we make during war. My recent conversation with Chris Bohjalian:
One of the great values of art is that it gives us a unique window on the world. It forces us to be present and in the moment and allows us to channel our own feelings and thoughts into the work of another. In many ways animals, particularly our companion animals. do the same thing. Perhaps it's why so many of us have them, why we spend so much on them. It’s also why we often introduce young children to animals at the zoo. For those young minds, it’s often their first connection to and understanding of a world beyond themselves. Veterinarian Dr. Vint Virga has set as his mission to give all of us greater awareness and sensitivity towards our companion animals and use them to better understand ourselves and to enrich our appreciation of life. He explains it The Soul of All Living Creatures: What Animals Can Teach Us About Being Human. My conversation with Dr. Vint Virga:
If I asked you to look at a viciously competitive company, in a market where the tastes change rapidly, where you have to redesign your product every year or two and where you were dominating the market because of your ability to innovate; where there was a cult like devotion to your product, yet it once faced bankruptcy until one of the most successful transitions in business history... most of you would immediately think of Apple. Well that’s true. But it’s also true of LEGO. Yes that humble plastic brick has within it a story that is both a metaphor for and cautionary tale about innovation in the world of business and technology. David Robertson, a former McKinsey consultant and now Professor at the Wharton School, provides a detailed case study of LEGO in Brick by Brick: How LEGO Rewrote the Rules of Innovation and Conquered the Global Toy Industry. My conversation with David Robertson:
Some college kids start whole business out of their dorm rooms. Think Mark Zuckerberg and Michael Dell. Some other students, at the University of Montana, started a business that would be raided by the US Department of Justice and would lead one of its founders to be a fugitive in Antigua, with millions of dollars It’s only fitting that Ben Mezrich, the man who told Mark Zuckerberg’s story, in The Accidental Billionaires, would now tell this story in Straight Flush: The True Story of Six College Friends Who Dealt Their Way to a Billion-Dollar Online Poker Empire--and How It All Came Crashing Down . . . My conversation with Ben Mezrich:
As with the family of Trayvon Martin, sometimes a verdict is even more devastating than the crime. This is what happened to the family of noted trial lawyer David Berg, after his brother was killed in cold blood, in a hit set up by actor Woody Harrelson’s father. Like two diverging paths in the woods, the lives of family members often go off in very different directions. For some the road taken leads to success and the good life, for others that road leads to a very different kind of life. This is the recurring irony of all sides of this story This is the story of David and Alan Berg, as told by David in his memoir Run, Brother, Run: A Memoir of a Murder in My Family. One brother would become one of our nation's most respected trial lawyers, the other murdered at a young age, by a notorious hit man, hired by Charles Harrelson. My conversation with David Berg:
Most of us remember the joyful song about teaching the world to sing, in perfect harmony. It was later used as an incredibly popular Coke commercial. Some of you may have seen the contestant on American idol with a serious stutter, that disappeared when he sang. Both are testaments to the power of song, and of singing with others. In fact, over 40 million Americans participate in some kind of group singing. But why? What's the appeal and what’s the impact? Bestselling author ;and commentator Stacy Horn takes a look at his in Imperfect Harmony: Finding Happiness Singing with Others My conversation with Stacy Horn:
Day after day we see further evidence of what appears to be America's economic decline. European economies seem mired in a kind of economic quicksand. But suppose instead of seeking individual isolationist solutions, that the U.S. and Europe could create a kind of transatlantic economic union? Clausewitz said that diplomacy was simply war by other means. Today it might be fair to say the same of international trade. As both America and Europe asses their roles in the 21st century, it's important that we access every aspect of of power, including as both a marketplace for and a purveyor of goods. Imagine if at America s birth, the 13 colonies had decided to go it alone. For all the criticism of the EU and NAFTA today, arguably the world is a better place because of them. These are a few of the ideas that spring from Richard Rosecrance in The Resurgence of the West: How a Transatlantic Union Can Prevent War and Restore the United States and Europe. Richard Rosecrance is senior fellow, adjunct professor, and director of the U.S.-China Relations Project at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the John F. Kennedy School of Government. He is also Distinguished Research Professor, UCLA, where he was the former director of the Burkle Center for International Relations. My conversation with Richard Rosecrance:
As we once again debate America's role in the world, this time in the Middle East, it’s worth noting that there is most assuredly a deep strain of isolationism that courses throughout American history. Perhaps nowhere was this more apparent than in the run up to the Second World War. Even as Hitler invaded Poland in 1939, only one in forty Americans thought America should get involved. This was the world that FDR faced as he tried to reshape America's vision and it’s place in the world. He reminded the country that it had a “rendezvous with destiny.” He would succeed in persuading America. How he did it, is the the subject of Rendezvous with Destiny: How Franklin D. Roosevelt and Five Extraordinary Men Took America into the War and into the World by Michael Fullilove. My conversation with Michael Fullilove:
Imagine a nation at war, a financial crisis, congress divided, bitter partisanship, battles over taxation and the role of banks and corporations. Members of government who believed in trickle down economics and who thought that business interests should be preeminent and that we had to show America’s strength. You’d think we were talking about America today. In fact it was also the America of its birth. A time when the quest for independence ran headlong into political reality. This is the reality that David Lefer takes us into in The Founding Conservatives: How a Group of Unsung Heroes Saved the American Revolution. My conversation with David Lefer:
Seven years ago Jeannette Walls reminded us of the resiliency and precociousness of youth, as she took us through her own troubled upbringing in THE GLASS CASTLE. Now she turns to fiction and is able to share with us and show us once again how young people can make their way in the world; but more importantly, the raw innocence with which they view their surroundings. In The Silver Star we get to see how these raw edges get knocked off and how, for better or worse, fully formed adults emerge. My conversation with Jeannette Walls:
It’s hard to imagine today, but there was a golden age of hijacking. Over a five-year period, starting in 1968, commercial jets we hijacked nearly once a week, using guns, bombs, and jars of acid. Some hijackers wished to escape to Cuba, or Saigon. Many, imagined being hailed as heroes; others aimed to swap hostages for sacks of cash. Their exploits mesmerized the country. But perhaps the the story that captures the nation's attention on many levels was the the young lovers at the heart of Brendan I. Koerner’s story of this period told in his his book The Skies Belong to Us: Love and Terror in the Golden Age of Hijacking. My conversation with Brendan Koerner:
Just recently we heard about tens of millions of dollars in cash being laundered in the Vatican. Clearly the Vatican and the Catholic Church are still imperial institutions, very much disconnected from the real world. Nowhere has this been more evident than in the almost twenty year history of sex abuse in the Catholic Church. We often think about these stories on a very human, very tragic case by case basis. But from thirty thousand feet, the numbers are staggering. 500+ priests sent to prison, over 3 billion paid in settlements, single priests that have abused more than 200 children and these are just a few statistics. How did this happen? How did horror and human degradation become so institutionalized, covered up and almost accepted from the Pope on down? This is the story that Pulitzer Prize winning reporter Michael D’Antonio tells in his new book Mortal Sins: Sex, Crime, and the Era of Catholic Scandal. My conversation with Michael D'Antonio:
Today we mark the 150th anniversary of the battle of Gettysburg. One of the great battles of any war and one of the most significant in US history. Yet, even a century and half since the Civil War, we are still learning new historical facts, new insights and developing new understandings of what really happened and why. Two recent books, highlight this: In A Disease in the Public Mind: A New Understanding of Why We Fought the Civil War, historian Thomas Fleming reminds us that we need appreciate that we might have avoided the war altogether, had not the rhetoric and passions and hatreds of the times lead to what he calls “a collective and incurable disease in the public mind.” Civil War historian and Gettysburg College history professor Allen Guelzo, in Gettysburg: The Last Invasion, takes a look, for the first time, at the raw politics of the war. How political and sometimes petty decisions, that were little noted at the time, will be long remembered for their impact on the war, the lives of men and their families and the course of history. My conversation with Allen Guelzo:
There are always those people who seem to be on the cutting edge of whatever the public meme might be. Psychologist Mary Pipher is one of those. Before anyone else, she saw the need to empower our daughters and changed the landscape of girls around the world. She later anticipated the “sandwich generation” that would cause so many baby boomers to take care of their aging parents, and she long ago was prescient about the trials and tribulation of immigrants in America. Now she turns her attention to our environment. And while the issues have been around awhile, you get that sense that Mary’s decision to take it on, means we’ve reached some kind of tipping point in our public consciousness. Mary Piper is the best selling author of Reviving Ophelia, The Middle of Everywhere and Another Country, now she takes us on the journey of The Green Boat: Reviving Ourselves in Our Capsized Culture. My conversation with Mary Pipher
There are but a few places on the planet that conjure up whole images, thoughts and emotions. Regardless of whether you’ve been there or not. London, New York, Ireland and Paris, to name a few. All are the subjects of sweeping novels by internationally bestselling author Edward Rutherfurd. He was last on this program to talk about his novel, New York. Now he turns his talents to Paris: The Novel and gives us a dazzling historical portrait of the City of Light. My conversation with Edward Rutherfurd:
Ours is an age which we consciously pursues health, and yet often only believe in the reality of sickness. Susan Sontag, understood this when she said in Illness as a Metaphor that "any important disease whose causality is murky, and for which treatment is ineffectual, tends to be awash in significance. Often because it overwhelms us." Because in an age in which we are all focused on health, it is often the reality of sickness that changes our world and our world view. This was the experience of journalist and author Nora Gallagher, as she traveled into the nation of helath care, only to hit landfall at the Mayo Clinic. She tells her story in The Moonlight Sonata at the Mayo Clinic. My conversation with Nora Gallagher:
Medicine and hospitals have long been a great source of drama. From Marcus Welby and Dr. Kildare to General Hospital and Grey’s Anatomy and House, medical drama has kept us riveted. Perhaps never better than in Paddy Chayefsky's The Hospital. There, the Chief of Medicine's wife has left him, his children don’t talk him, he fears he suffers from impotence and his hospital is falling apart. Yet..he soldiers on treating patients. Ironically in spite of all of this, we somehow think that Doctors are above allowing emotions to impact their work, that somehow they all took that class in medical school in Detachment 101. Nothing could be further from the truth. Now Dr. Danielle Ofri, Associate Professor of Medicine at NYU School of Medicine and long time doctor at New York's Bellevue Hospital, takes a look at the connection between how doctors treat patients and how they feel. My conversation with Dr. Danielle Ofri about What Doctors Feel: How Emotions Affect the Practice of Medicine.
The Mexico / U.S. relationship is front and center today in the US Congress. But how much do you think members of Congress know about what’s really happening in Mexico? If you were to think about a country that has made remarkable economic progress; a nation whose once closed economy has become one of the most open in the world; a country that has a growing middle class, a thriving multi party, competitive democracy and a growing skilled workforce that is helping to restore manufacturing; most likely you would not think of Mexico. Rather, when we think of Mexico we often think of one of the most dangerous nations. A place were over 70,000 people have been killed in criminal violence and whose law enforcement and judicial system has broken down. The fact is that all of these things are true of Mexico. It’s complexity and it’s future are open questions for the 21st century. Few understand this better than Shannon K. O’Neil. She is a senior fellow for Latin American studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. She has degrees from Yale and Harvard and is the author of Two Nations Indivisible: Mexico, the United States, and the Road Ahead. My conversation with Shannon K. O'Neil:
Certainly the subject of spying and secrets is front and center today. For Scott Johnson it almost always was. It has been written that the sins of the father shall be visited upon their sons. In a broader sense it's clear that often, as we try to reach escape velocity from our fathers, we end up becoming just like them. Journalist and long time Newsweek foreign correspondent Scott Johnson tells such a story in his memoir The Wolf and the Watchman: A Father, a Son, and the CIA. My conversation with Scott Johnson:var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www.");document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E")); try {var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-6296941-2");pageTracker._trackPageview();} catch(err) {}
It’s no surprise that the world financial markets are shrouded in secrecy. We don’t need a whistleblower to tell us that. But in an age in which what happens in Greece or China or Singapore can have ripple effects in financial markets around the world, often in seconds, it is certainly important to understand where the worlds levers of financial power really are.
As Paul Krugman pointed out this weekend, they are no longer just in big banks, or big governments, but like so much of globalization, they rest in multinational organizations. Often far, far removed from the people they impact. One such organization is Bank for International Settlements. It meets every other month in Basel, Switzerland and it’s work is often hidden, while its impact is not. Adam Lebore, in his new book Tower of Basel: The Shadowy History of the Secret Bank that Runs the World pulls back the curtain. My conversation with Adam Lebore:
It has often been said that to name something is to own it, or at least give it meaning. This is generally true as a marketing concept, but we would think perhaps it’s less true in an exacting field such as medicine. However that has been the underlying idea of the American Psychiatric Association in creating and fostering the DSM since 1952. A volume that tries to define the parameters and terms of mental illness, is without the kind of scientific reliance used even for an auto repair manual. Yet the fifth volume of this work has just been completed. We’ve all heard of it, Doctors rely on it, and it may in fact be detrimental to our mental health...that is if we could define it. Psychotherapist Gary Greenberg explains in The Book of Woe: The DSM and the Unmaking of Psychiatry. My conversation with Gary Greenberg:var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www.");document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E"));try {var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-6296941-2");pageTracker._trackPageview();} catch(err) {}
Edmund Burke wrote "that the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil, is for good men to do nothing." But what happens when good men do take action, and the net result of their efforts is to, in some way, fuel the evil and worst of all, become impacted by it in ways that taint their goodness.
In many ways, history is filled with such examples, certainly the history of Middle East over the past ten years is perhaps the penultimate example. And this is the framework of Nadeem Aslam's new novel of grace under pressure, The Blind Man's Garden.try {var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-6296941-2");pageTracker._trackPageview();} catch(err) {}
My conversation with Nadeem Aslam:
If we were to look at and try to understand the vast panoply of how people live their lives, how we connect with each other, hurt each other and help each other, we’d see that we would look first at families. Not just because, as Woody Allen says, "we need the eggs," but because they are a kind of living laboratory of human emotion, human strength, and human frailty.
Perhaps that’s why literature has so often focused on the family as a centerpiece or fulcrum of stories? Such is the case with Khaled Hosseini.
He is the multiple bestselling author of THE KITE RUNNER and A THOUSAND SPLENDID SUNS. His new novel, looking deep into the lives of family, is And the Mountains Echoed.
My conversation with Khaled Hosseini:
It is that rare event that happens when a life and a time come together in a way that better enables us to understand both. Alysia Abbott has lead such a life.
Her father, poet, writer and literary figure Steve Abbott was one of the early leaders of the gay rights movement, first in Atlanta and then in San Francisco. Alysia’s mother would die in a car accident when she was two, and she would be raised by her gay father in 70’s San Francisco. Long before being a gay parent would become mainstream.
Shortly after his death from AIDS, in 1992, Alysia would find her father's journals. Now she tells her story and his, in her memoir Fairyland: A Memoir of My Father.
My conversation with Alysia Abbott:
Few people understand president Obama better than Jonathan Alter. He has covered Obama since his days in Chicago. He wrote an early Newsweek cover story that help bring Obama to national prominence and has been one of the preeminent chroniclers of Obama's campaigns and more importantly, it’s connection to the Obama Presidency.
Over the years there have been several books central to changing our view of politics. Theodore White’s, Making of the President, F. Clifton White’s Suite 3505, Joe McGinniss’ Selling of the President 1968, and Hunter Thompson’s Fear and Loathing on the 1972 campaign. Now Jonathan Alter, award winning reporter, columnist, former senior for Newsweek, adds his new book The Center Holds: Obama and His Enemies to that list.
My conversation with Jonathan Alter:
var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www."); document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E"));
try { var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-6296941-2"); pageTracker._trackPageview(); } catch(err) {}
Earlier in the week I spoke with British MP, Jesse Norman about Edmund Burke and the old idea of Conservatism as a way to address social order and care for the needs of generations past and future. After reading George Packer's new book The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America, it makes you think that perhaps we need some of that institutional conservatism today.
Packer deconstructs the past thirty years of "progress" in America and in so doing brilliantly gives narrative drive to the changes in almost every aspect of American life. You come a way with the realization that we are no longer held together by trusted institutions, but by individual brands, all competing in the marketplace. The questions is, is this any way to run a Democracy?
My conversation with George Packer:
var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www."); document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E"));
try { var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-6296941-2"); pageTracker._trackPageview(); } catch(err) {}
We see demographic statistics that in the next 20 years more than 65% of the world will live in cities. We seem to be moving further and further from the land. In spite of it’s current romanticism, the number of family farms continues to shrink, at the same time that science and technology promises that we may soon be able to create food from 3D printers.
While urban Farmers Markets grow, as perhaps the last vestige of our evolutionary roots to the land, one wonders how this shift will really impact us?Can we move so far away from our biological heritage, and still be truly healthy?
Daphne Miller, MD is a family physician,and Associate Professor in the Department of Family Medicine at the University of California San Francisco and she looks at all of this in Farmacology: What Innovative Family Farming Can Teach Us About Health and Healing.
My conversation with Daphne Miller:
Conservatism was a once great political idea. However, in the US today, it bears little resemblance to its roots. Edmund Burke, often referred to as the first conservative, saw the purpose of politics as being not to satisfy the interests of individuals living now: but to preserve a social order and address the needs of generations past, present and future. Hardly something conservative political leaders in the US are thinking about. In fact, most of the neocons and theocons of today's Conservative movement have no idea about the roots of their so called "philosophy."
Jesse Norman is one of the rising stars of the British House of Commons. A Tory member of Parliament, he was educated at Oxford and University College London and has now renewed our acquaintance with Burke in Edmund Burke: The First Conservative.
My conversation with The Hon. Jesse Norman:
As is the case with most of our political debates in this country, we never seem to understand context. As immigration reform is once again front and center, the debate about immigration, particularly from Mexico, should be about more than just numbers and citizenship.
We are in fact dealing with a nation going through transition. And while it has been widely reported that Mexico is changing, that it is sprouting greater economic prosperity, greater democracy and less violence, it’s blood soaked tide is still very powerful and still pulls many into to it’s wake One of those has Alfredo Corchado.
Carchado is the Mexico bureau chief for the Dallas Morning News, and his new book is Midnight in Mexico: A Reporter's Journey Through a Country's Descent into Darkness.
My conversation with Alfredo Cochado:
TS Eliot wrote, in 1934, “Where is the life we have lost in living? Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?”
He might well have written those words yesterday. Certainly we’ve never had more knowledge, more information and seemingly less wisdom than we do today. What is the connection? How is it, that the more we know, the less we seem to understand and the less we seem to able to clearly and logically process it? The answer it seems is part evolution, part science and part human behavior. It’s part of what Rolf Dobelli examines in his bestselling book.The Art of Thinking Clearly.
My conversation with Rolf Dobelli:
Samantha Power is brilliant and President Obama’s pick to be the newest member of his cabinet and our new United Nations Ambassador. Her views have often been controversial, but always with a deep moral grounding.
Part of this comes from her study of and admiration for the late UN diplomat Sergio Vieira de Mello. de Mello was killed in Iraq in 2003, engaged in the ongoing struggle to balance morality with the practical nature of diplomacy.
Back in 2008, upon the publication of her book on de Mello, Chasing the Flame: One Man's Fight to Save the World, I spoke with Samantha Power. Listening to that conversation today, we get some very real insights var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www."); document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E"));
try { var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-6296941-2"); pageTracker._trackPageview(); } catch(err) {}
into the education of Samantha Power.
Imagine the world of today's high technology, but instead of sleek Apple like design, it is all powered by steam, driven by gears and could actually be taken apart and fixed. That’s the world of Steampunk.
Brian David Johnson is a futurist at Intel and sees both the appreciation of and cultural irony in Steampunk. He writes about it inVintage Tomorrows: A Historian And A Futurist Journey Through Steampunk Into The Future of Technology.
My conversation with Brian David Johnson
Throughout the history of America, and its federalist system, different states have personified, both politically and economically, the ethos of a particular era.
New York would came to represent the economic boom of the 20’s and Chicago with its big shoulders, the apotheosis of industrialization. California would represent post war America and the dreams of the golden land with its promise of freedom and education. Today many would argue that Silicon Valley represents the future. But my guest Erica Grieder thinks we need to look toward the Lone Star State.
That a place many of us instinctively turn away from, may be closer than we think to representing the future of America. It's a place that Erica Grieder says is Big, Hot, Cheap, and Right: What America Can Learn from the Strange Genius of Texas. var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www."); document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E"));
try { var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-6296941-2"); pageTracker._trackPageview(); } catch(err) {}
My conversation with Erica Grieder:
We are creatures of exploration. Today with so much information available to us, and travel so easy, we might be like Alexander the Great with no more places left to conquer. But perhaps the one great mystery, the one great area still left for exploration, is the workings of the human mind.
We see it day in and day out with how kids learn, how we process information and how all of our styles of learning are so different.
Temple Grandin has been an explorer extraordinaire on this journey. In her previous works, Thinking in Pictures and Animals in Translation, she gave us great insight into the human side and scale of autism. Now in her new book, The Autistic Brain: Thinking Across the Spectrum, she literally takes us inside the brain, to give all of us an affirmative understating of autism itself.
My conversation with Temple Grandin:
When we think about the future, and the vast array of dangers that we face as a society and a species, how big do we think? Is our future measured in days, weeks, hours or perhaps millennia? For Alvy Singer, the Woody Allen stand-in in Annie Hall, the future was far, far away as the young man worried about the “universe expanding” while sitting in Brooklyn.
The fact is that Alvy was thinking in species time, and history tells us that species do go extinct; that our day will come to an end and that maybe it is something we should be thinking about.
Science writer and blogger Annalee Newitz, has certainly been thinking about it, and she lays it out in Scatter, Adapt, and Remember: How Humans Will Survive a Mass Extinction. My conversation with Annalee Newitz:
Eric Fischl is one of America's most celebrated and accomplished artists. At a time in the 80’s when painting was declared to be dead, he and others of his generation prevailed and gave new life to art.
Through the years Fischl sought to bring his work and life into harmony and in so doing has constantly strived to reinvent himself and his work in order to remain relevant. His newly published autobiography, Bad Boy: My Life On and Off the Canvas, proves he has succeeded.
My conversation with Eric Fischl:
The New York Times in their obituary called him a "Priest, Author, Scholar, Scold." Andrew Greeley was all of these. “A Roman Catholic priest and writer whose outpouring of sociological research, contemporary theology, sexually frank novels and newspaper columns challenged reigning assumptions about American Catholicism.”
He was a true maverick who was willing take on all sides in any debate. He was not a fan of what the institutional Catholic Church had become, but was just as harsh on what he saw as "secular intellectuals."
I had the chance to speak with him, just once, back in 1999 on the publication of the second volume of his memoirs Furthermore! Memories of a Parish Priest. So much of what he said thirteen years ago still has relevance, and yet he was so wrong about the pace of progress in the Vatican, and in Latin America.
Here is that conversation.
var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www."); document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E"));
try { var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-6296941-2"); pageTracker._trackPageview(); } catch(err) {}
Few controversial issues in contemporary American life have seen the kind of rapid sea change in public opinion that we’ve witnessed on the subject of gay marriage. In fact, recent polls show almost 60% of the American public, in support or acceptance of same-sex marriage. Even members of the GOP, like Sen Rob Portman and numerous party operatives, have expressed support.
The gay magazine The Advocate had a recent cover saying that “gay is the new black.” But is this debate really similar to race, or does the issue have its own politics, tied to broader themes of sexuality? And if so, how will this current debate impact these broader issues of sex and sexuality and might it perhaps move us beyond American puritanism.
Standing for years on the ramparts of all of these issues is prominent sex advice columnist Dan Savage, most recently the American Savage: Insights, Slights, and Fights on Faith, Sex, Love, and Politics.
author of
My conversation with Dan Savage:
var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www."); document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E"));
try { var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-6296941-2"); pageTracker._trackPageview(); } catch(err) {}
Imagine if you could say things and interact with people unrestricted by conscience. If you had an unfettered capacity for risk, engaged in irresponsible behavior, and felt it unnecessary to conform to social norms. For this to happen one of two things is usually true, either you are a politician a or a sociopath....or maybe even a trial lawyer.
And then imagine if these things could be combined? Then you would have M.E. Thomas. She’s a trial lawyer, a law professor and an admitted sociopath.
In her just published memoir Confessions of a Sociopath: A Life Spent Hiding in Plain Sight, she shows us that all sociopaths are not Hannibal Lecter, but they do have many of the same traits.
My conversation with M.E. Thomas
var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www."); document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E"));
try { var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-6296941-2"); pageTracker._trackPageview(); } catch(err) {}
Even amidst all of the domestic and international policy issues that come and go with each administration, perhaps the one that has the greatest staying power, is the environment. The roots and reasons go back almost thirty-five years.
Originally conceived in September of 1969 as a nationwide environmental teach-in, the first Earth Day was a call to action that inspired thousands of events across the country.
Becoming larger than the biggest civil rights and anti war demonstrations of the 60’s, roughly 1,500 colleges and 10,000 schools held teach-ins. Activities that took place in hundreds of churches and temples, in city parks and commercial and government buildings, it created a lasting “eco infrastructure.” And that first Earth Day in 1970 would give rise to the first green generation.
University of Delaware Professor Adam Rome looks back in his book The Genius of Earth Day: How a 1970 Teach-In Unexpectedly Made the First Green Generation.
My conversation with Adam Rome:
var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www."); document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E"));
try { var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-6296941-2"); pageTracker._trackPageview(); } catch(err) {}
It’s hard to imagine that for young people growing up today, seeing the Middle East as the center of American military and foreign policy concerns, that for over fifty years and eight Presidents, Cuba had been at the center of American concerns.
Ninety miles off America's shores, for the entirety of the cold war, it represented the penultimate point where Americans and Soviets were eyeball to eyeball.
Today when celebrities travel to Cuba and some try to make an issue of it, most people wonder what all the fuss is about? Is that progress, has Cuba really changed or is it a kind of collective Cuba fatigue or amnesia?
Julia Sweig is one of our nations reigning experts on Cuba and has just completed her second edition of Cuba: What Everyone Needs to Know.
My conversation with Julia Sweig:
Look around at our culture today. Oddity is all around us. Reality television takes us to the fringes of human behavior. The Supermarket tabloids provide a freak show we secretly devour, while waiting in line. We seem to seek comfort, or perhaps reinforce our own sense of normalcy, by seeing the extremes of others.
Perhaps the first to understand this was not a psychologist or psychiatrist, but a man named Robert Ripley. We know him as the man who created Ripley’s Believe It or Not. In fact, in understanding Ripley, we understand a little bit more about America.
Acclaimed biographer Neal Thompson, has written a compelling biography A Curious Man: The Strange and Brilliant Life of Robert "Believe It or Not!" Ripley.
My conversation with Neal Thompson:
The recent events in Boston once again raise questions about the place of Islam in modern American society. The impacts for muslims trying to live and practice their faith in the US, is that they often run headlong into popular misconceptions about the faith.
One of the places taking on this challenge is Zaytuna College, the first Muslim four year undergraduate liberal arts college founded in Berkeley in 2008
Scott Korb, who teaches writing at New York University and the New School, spent time with the College's inaugural class and writes about the first year of Zaytuna College in his new book Light without Fire: The Making of America's First Muslim College.
My conversation with Scott Korb:
One of the central tenants in the debate about religion, is that some claim it provides the only construct for understanding moral behavior. In fact, science, research and even our own pets should tell us clearly that empathy, cooperation, fairness and reciprocity are all traits we see in animal behavior. This is particularly true of the primates.
And just as the monstrous instinct exists in all of us, including animals, so to do the traits of social cooperation. It’s simply the other side of the same coin.
No one has done a better job of explaining this than Frans De Waal in his new work The Bonobo and the Atheist: In Search of Humanism Among the Primates.
My conversation with Frans De Waal:
var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www."); document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E"));
try { var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-6296941-2"); pageTracker._trackPageview(); } catch(err) {}
We would all like the ability to see the future. Unfortunately, few of us have the appropriate psychic powers. What we can do however, is invent the future, at least our own. For we each have our own unique path, our own unique story that is evolving right here and right now, even as we listen to this.
Unfortunately, too often we lose our place in that story. We’re told, often as young people, to abandon it in favor of some standardized norm of education, business and career.
The fact is that conformity does not work. It’s the enemy not only of creativity, but of an authentic life. Trying once again to find our place in our own story is what best selling author and thought leader, Sir Ken Robinson is trying to teach us in Finding Your Element: How to Discover Your Talents and Passions and Transform Your Life.
My conversation with Sir Ken Robinson:
Adoption today is a far cry from the idyllic portral we imagined and maybe have even witnessed, years ago. It has become engaged in international politics, domestic politics, and the abortion debate. Add to this, the current complexity of the process, the expanding landscape of open adoptions and you have a space that is no longer just about the love of a child, but an emotional minefield that prospective parents have to learn how to navigate.
That’s the backdrop for The Mothers,a new novel that provides a powerful portrayal of modern adoption by Jennifer Gilmore.
My conversation with Jennifer Gilmore:
var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www."); document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E"));
try { var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-6296941-2"); pageTracker._trackPageview(); } catch(err) {}
In the world of international adoption, market forces have always played a key role. The issues of supply and demand impact both policy and outcomes. But the adoption business, which has long been the province of religious and secular agencies, has lately been overtaken by evangelical advocacy.
Evangelical organizations and churches, which have been build upon the cultural practices which they oppose, like abortion and gay marriage, now seem to have found a cause they can champion....but what are its consequences for the children?
Kathryn Joyce had plowed deep into this world in The Child Catchers: Rescue, Trafficking, and the New Gospel of Adoption.My conversation with Kathryn Joyce:
Often it seems as if there is a hopelessness with respect to personal progress. That it is our ultimate destiny not to go forever forward, but at some points to be pushed back or stuck in our past.
It would seem that this is almost a part of our DNA as a species, or at least as Americans.
But does it have to be so? Investigative journalist Bob Sullivan thinks not. He believes we can overcome what he calls The Plateau Effect.
My conversation with Bob Sullivan:
Someday, perhaps 20 or 30 years from now, or maybe even sooner, we will look back at the way we treat most cancers today and be shocked at the barbarism of it all. The surgery, the killer chemicals of chemo, all will be looked at the way we view the leaching of the middle ages.
At the forefront of this transition is a discovery made in 1959. A chromosomal mutation dubbed the Philadelphia Chromosome, that caused a deadly form of leukemia. Ultimately a drug would be developed that stopped the cancer at it’s source.
Science journalist Jessica Wapner has written The Philadelphia Chromosome: A Mutant Gene and the Quest to Cure Cancer at the Genetic Level. It is both the story of 50 years of the march of science on cancer and also a mystery thriller that lifts the veil on how drugs get developed and make it to the marketplace. My conversation with Jessica Wapner:
We face a vast array of global problems. Not the least of which is our environment and the way in which the expanding western industrial model of abundance, seems certain to geometrically grow these problems.
Many think that somewhere, in some abstract way, technology will help of solve these problems. But perhaps the same industrial system that created the problems, is not the place to start looking for solutions. In short, it seems we can’t fix the problems of industrial technology with the same tools that created them.
That’s where the work of K. Eric Drexler comes in. In his new book Radical Abundance: How a Revolution in Nanotechnology Will Change Civilization, he shows us how the world of nanotechnology and Atomic Precise Manufacturing may hold the answers.
My conversation with K. Eric Drexler:
var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www."); document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E"));
try { var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-6296941-2"); pageTracker._trackPageview(); } catch(err) {}
On the surface, it seems that the men of Mad Men have it all. Great jobs, lots of money, smart attractives wives and families, even more attractive mistresses and, as long as the paychecks keep coming, unlimited freedom.
But is it possible these men represented the one percent of their day? And that the paradigm and expectations they set up, men with power and money, created a set of responsibilities that made it hard for other men to live up to? And how did this play out against the rising tide of 60’s feminism? Was the landscape for men portrayed by Matthew Weiner and Richard Yates and Cheever and Updike, one that, in the long run, had a very negative impact on the men of the Greatest Generation?
These are just some of the questions and ideas taken up by author and cultural seer Susan Jacoby. The author of The Age of American Unreason, Freethinkers as well as books about Alger Hiss and Robert Ingersoll, she has now written a new ebook entitled The Last Men on Top.
My conversation with Susan Jacoby:
How many of us think about what you wanted to be as a child? A time when the world was filled with possibility. When your parents told you that you could do or be anything. When you would sit with your friends for hours, talking about what kind of glamours life you were going to have. Sometimes those youthful ambitions would come to define us for the rest of our lives, both in terms of what we achieved and what we didn't achieve.
I knew a woman once who was a world renowned ballerina. I once asked her how she achieved that. She said she just did what every little girl does, she dressed up, and got her mom to take her to ballet classes; except , she said, that she never stopped going. How much of her success was family, luck or talent? Who knows?
These are just some of the ideas inside Meg Wolitzer sweeping new novel The Interestings. The story of six teenagers coming of age in the 70’s and the 40 years that would follow.
My conversation with Meg Wolitzer:
We all grew up with our own impressions of what covert actions were all about. John le Carre talked about the moral twilight in which these activities operated. But never has that line between military, espionage and covert actions been more blurred than it is today. From 9/11 to the bin Laden raid, the CIA has been front and center as the agency of first resort, to carry out difficult and controversial missions.
Now Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Mark Mazzetti lays bear much of this activity in The Way of the Knife: The CIA, a Secret Army, and a War at the Ends of the Earth.My conversation with Mark Mazzetti:
For the past several week all eyes have been on Boston. In some ways it’s a good reminder of the important role that city has played in our nation's history. Boston is the fulcrum from which the revolution was launched.
Now, bestselling author Nathaniel Philbrick, author of In The Heart of the Sea and Mayflower, tells the story of Bunker Hill: A City, a Siege, a Revolution.
My conversation with Nathaniel Philbrick:
Suppose we found out that most of what we know about history and what shapes it, is wrong. That the traditional manichean world view, that history only marched forward on the feet of soldiers, is not the whole story.
In fact we didn’t get to our globalized, 21st century world via the battlefield, but through cooperation and a sense of our shared humanity. This is the view of distinguished historian David Cannadine, as laid out in his new work, The Undivided Past: Humanity Beyond Our Differences.
My conversation with David Cannadine:
