Episodes
Saturday Mar 30, 2013
Creative Intelligence
Saturday Mar 30, 2013
Saturday Mar 30, 2013
No one questions that we are going through a period of dramatic change. The world, the nature of work and relationships are changing faster than at any other time in human history. Succeeding and managing in this environment, will require a degree of nimbleness and creativity in order to sustain or create any economic value.
But how creative are we, and do the old paradigms of education, work and leisure allow us to foster and bring out that creativity? Bruce Nussbaum, a Professor of Innovation and Design at Parsons The New School of Design in New York City, and a former Managing Editor at BusinessWeek thinks we have to reset our approach to creativity. He outlines it in Creative Intelligence: Harnessing the Power to Create, Connect, and Inspire.
My conversation with Bruce Nussbaum:
Wednesday Mar 27, 2013
Why do we always get it wrong?
Wednesday Mar 27, 2013
Wednesday Mar 27, 2013
Thursday Mar 21, 2013
The Fog of 10 Years of War
Thursday Mar 21, 2013
Thursday Mar 21, 2013
All the talk about drones lately seems to miss the larger point. What compels us, what disturbs us, is the sanitized way in which we conduct warfare today. The disconnect from death, violence and the human suffering that is war.
Kurtz understood war by journeying into its Heart of Darkness. Today, it’s from 30,000 feet. It’s a different view of war. It’s also a metaphor for how we as Americans have witnessed the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. In neat, pre-packaged sound bites. Disconnected from combat, body counts and the horror.
Now, ten years after the start of these wars, were beginning to hear the real stories of what went on, from the men and women who were there.
Matt Gallagher and Roy Scranton, two veterans of the wars, have written for and edited a new collection of stories entitled Fire and Forget: Short Stories from the Long War.
My conversation with Roy Scranton and Matt Gallagher:
Tuesday Mar 19, 2013
Wall Street, Gambling and Baseball
Tuesday Mar 19, 2013
Tuesday Mar 19, 2013
Tuesday Mar 19, 2013
The Myth of Christian Martyrdom
Tuesday Mar 19, 2013
Tuesday Mar 19, 2013
We live in a culture where victimhood is too often embraced. Usually, because we seem to lack internal motivation, we look to it to galvanize our actions. Buy why is this culture of victimhood so pervasive now?
Perhaps it springs from the early Christian myth of martyrdom, and the degree to which that Christian mythology and those who subscribe to it, are trying to shape our politics and our culture. This is the heart of a provocative new book, The Myth of Persecution: How Early Christians Invented a Story of Martyrdom,by Notre Dame Professor Candida Moss.
My conversation with Candida Moss:
Saturday Mar 16, 2013
Big Data
Saturday Mar 16, 2013
Saturday Mar 16, 2013
We know that companies like Amazon have vast amounts of data on our purchases and that they use it in order to recommend other products to us; just as Netflix can recommend our movies. But imagine aggregating millions of pieces of medical data, all with their genomic information, so that our generic profile can, with a high degree of probability, tell us what diseases we might get and how to treat them. Think about how Google was able to head off a worldwide flu pandemic by aggregating vast amount of search data about flu. This is the kind of data that can tell when we will be sick, even before we know it; or when our car will need service, even before it breaks down. Or, as in the movie Minority Report, data that can predict who will be a criminal, even before the crime is committed. These are just a few of thing we should be thinking about with respect to what’s referred to today as big data. Ken Cukier is the data editor of the Economist and takes a look at these issues in Big Data: A Revolution That Will Transform How We Live, Work, and Think. My conversation with Ken Cukier:
Friday Mar 15, 2013
Baseball as a Road to God?
Friday Mar 15, 2013
Friday Mar 15, 2013
This past week saw the pageantry of religion in the selection of a new Pope. Next month we will experience a different kind of pageantry, as the baseball season opens and for many it will be a kind of religious experience in its own right.
Long the national pastime, baseball has a special place in the pantheon of sports and entertainment. But with all of the competition these days, does baseball still have the same kind of appeal? Has it’s superstitions, streaks, luck, and it’s sense of “you gotta believe," been flattened by metrics? Has William James been replaced by Bill James, and has the inspiration fostered by a father and son praying at the altar of driveway catch, given way to Nate Silver and Billy Bean?
This is part of the story told by controversial NYU President John Sexton in Baseball as a Road to God: Seeing Beyond the Game. A book based on his wildly popular class at NYU.
My conversation with John Sexton:
Thursday Mar 14, 2013
Song Without Words
Thursday Mar 14, 2013
Thursday Mar 14, 2013
Remember, as a kid, playing the old game of telephone? Someone says something, and passes it on. After it goes through 5, 6 or more people, it often comes out very different on the other end. Well imagine if everything you heard had to go through that kind of process.
That’s just part of what Gerald Shea went though; dealing with partial deafness since he was six. He still managed to sing, play football and get through Andover, Yale and Columbia Law.
Gerald Shea has written about his experience in Song Without Words: Discovering My Deafness Halfway through Life.
My conversation with Gerald Shea:
Wednesday Mar 13, 2013
Raising Oenophilia
Wednesday Mar 13, 2013
Wednesday Mar 13, 2013
Tuesday Mar 12, 2013
Oh, the places you can go....
Tuesday Mar 12, 2013
Tuesday Mar 12, 2013
Vietnam, Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, South Africa, Burma are just some of the places in the world that have seen the profound violation of human rights and social justice. Beyond that, what they all have in common are the efforts of one woman, Nobel Peace Prize winner Jody Williams, to to seek justice, to fight for those being persecuted and to never fear speaking truth to power. Today this Nobel Peace Prize winner for the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, has joined forces with six other women Nobel laureates to form the Nobel Women's Initiative and still continues to bring her considerable power and skills to bear in the fight against war, personal violence and injustice. She shares a bit of how she got here, in her memoir My Name Is Jody Williams: A Vermont Girl's Winding Path to the Nobel Peace Prize. My conversation with Jody Williams:
Sunday Mar 10, 2013
Defeating the culture of bullying
Sunday Mar 10, 2013
Sunday Mar 10, 2013
Many us have powerful and painful memories of High School and Middle School. Sometimes, if we were not the most popular kid, something happened that we still remember as if it happened yesterday. The scar tissue of those years is even tougher if we were the victims of bullying. And For others it may be the guilt of being the one doing the bullying, or of not standing up for our friends.
Now Slate's Emily Bazelon looks at this in Sticks and Stones: Defeating the Culture of Bullying and Rediscovering the Power of Character and Empathy
My conversation with Emily Bazelon:
Friday Mar 08, 2013
Should technology save the world?
Friday Mar 08, 2013
Friday Mar 08, 2013
Imagine a "connected" car that when the check engine light comes on, it diagnoses the problem, contacts the appropriate repair place and makes the first available appointment for you, all without you having to do anything. Effortless, frictionless and some would argue, antithetical to the human need to have more control over our environment. There is no question that the geeks and entrepreneurs of Silicon Valley want to change the world. That they want digital solutions to all the worlds problems. The problem might be argued is that they also want to define those problems and in that way, may be trying to transform human nature in ways that may not be in its long term best interests. These are some of the ideas of technology contrarian Evgeny Morozov. He lays all of this out in his new work, To Save Everything, Click Here: The Folly of Technological Solutionism. My conversation with Evgeny Morozov:
Thursday Mar 07, 2013
The House that Herring Built
Thursday Mar 07, 2013
Thursday Mar 07, 2013
It sometimes seems like everything is going through change. Yet there are some institutions that, the more they change, the more they remain exactly the same. This is true for an appetizing store on Manhattan's lower East Side, that from its pushcart beginnings in 1907, to the new family members running it today, has remained a beacon of smoked salmon, herring, chopped liver and caviar, But more importantly, it's the story of how one family persevered and grew a business, around all the change of 20th century New York. Mark Russ Federman took over running Russ and Daughters in 1978 and a couple of years ago turned it over to the fourth generation. He tells his appetizing story in Russ & Daughters: Reflections and Recipes from the House That Herring Built.
Monday Mar 04, 2013
Monday Mar 04, 2013
India and The Middle East
Monday Mar 04, 2013
Monday Mar 04, 2013
One of the central tenants of fiction has always been to tell stories of human scale and human frailty, set against the backdrop of powerful and uncontrollable events in places of mystery and beauty. Two new novels, one by esteemed author Manil Suri (The City of Devi) and the other by Bay Area author Michael Lavigne (The Wanting) brilliantly capture all of these ideas. One set amidst the excitement of Mumbai and the other in Middle East; both tell dramatic stories woven into a sense of place. My conversation with Mainl Suri: My conversation with Micahel Lavigne:
Saturday Mar 02, 2013
The price of ignorance
Saturday Mar 02, 2013
Saturday Mar 02, 2013
As the movie Lincoln reminds us, sometimes crass politics has noble ends. But even crass politics, must be guided by truth, by facts and by evidence. Today in our politics, facts, information and empirical data have simply given way to what’s become the holy grail of opinion.
Whether it's the influence of talk radio, the impact of money and special interests, or one political parties disconnect from reality, it seems we have dumbed down our discourse to the point where no good public policy can emerge. And as bad as that is today, its consequences down the road could be even more devastating.
David Schultz takes us through the problem in American Politics in the Age of Ignorance: Why Lawmakers Choose Belief Over Research.
My conversation with David Schultz: