Episodes
Thursday Jul 29, 2010
Friend or Foe
Thursday Jul 29, 2010
Thursday Jul 29, 2010
Wednesday Jul 28, 2010
The War Logs
Wednesday Jul 28, 2010
Wednesday Jul 28, 2010
Tuesday Jul 27, 2010
Once bitten
Tuesday Jul 27, 2010
Tuesday Jul 27, 2010
Imagine, a disease we've known how to prevent and cure for over a century that still infects five-hundred million people every year, killing nearly one million of them. In recent years, malaria has made headlines as the cause-celebe of a wide range of luminaries and philanthropists. But the reality is that millions of dollars are going toward mosquito bed nets that will never be used, funding wars are compromising the work of leading researchers, and many people in the worlds most malarious countries still view the disease as a benign affliction like the common cold or flu. These are the questions that journalist Sonia Shah sets out to tackle in The Fever: How Malaria Has Ruled Humankind for 500,000 Years, her look at malaria and its effect on human lives. My conversation with Sonia Shah:
Monday Jul 26, 2010
Morning Miracle
Monday Jul 26, 2010
Monday Jul 26, 2010
When we talk about newspapers today as entities, as brands, as institutions that need to change to reflect new economic and technological realities, we sometimes forget that at core they are and need to continue to be platforms for reporters and great reporting. One such institution that has been such a platform is the venerable Washington Post. Journalist Dave Kindred, in his new book Morning Miracle: Inside the Washington Post A Great Newspaper Fights for Its Life, gives us an up close and personal look at today's 21st century newsroom. My conversation with Dave Kindred:
Monday Jul 19, 2010
The Last Gasp
Monday Jul 19, 2010
Monday Jul 19, 2010
Monday Jul 19, 2010
Not one of us
Monday Jul 19, 2010
Monday Jul 19, 2010
Thursday Jul 15, 2010
Is altruism possible?
Thursday Jul 15, 2010
Thursday Jul 15, 2010
How do we reconcile the fundamental idea of evolution, survival of the fittest, with the idea of altruism? We know that throughout nature, living things often pass up advantages and make sacrifices to help fellow members of their species. Such behavior is however, counter to evolutionary ideas and leads us to wonder if pure selflessness really can and ever exist. Oren Harman, Chair in the Program of Science, Technology and Society at Bar Ilan University in Israel weaves together, in his new work The Price of Altruism: George Price and the Search for the Origins of Kindness, theses mysteries in the context of the story of one man committed to truth and sacrifice. My conversation with Oren Harman:
Wednesday Jul 14, 2010
Welcome to Utopia?
Wednesday Jul 14, 2010
Wednesday Jul 14, 2010
For those of us who grew up in and around big cities, the idea of small town America is often alien and perplexing. Yet, if we scratch beneath the surface there a poignancy in looking at places still untouched by the ethos of popular culture. Such a place is Utopia, Texas. A town ninety miles west of San Antonio, it has no movie theaters or bookstore and only recently has it gotten internet and cable television. Entertainment Weekly senior writer Karen Valby in her new book Welcome to Utopia: Notes from a Small Town takes us deep inside this place of cowboys and farmers and shows us what happens when the old tensions of small-town life confront a new reality of creative destruction. My conversation with Karen Valby:
Tuesday Jul 13, 2010
Steinbrenner
Tuesday Jul 13, 2010
Tuesday Jul 13, 2010
George Steinbrenner redefined he fundamental relationship between an owner and his team. He was perhaps the best know owner in modern sport. He was twice suspended from the game and yet he was the longest running Yankees owner and also the most financially successful, having turned his original personal investment of just $168,00 into a multi-billion dollar behemoth. Bill Madden, who covered the Yankees for over 30 years as the national baseball correspondent for the New York Daily News, was the first person that the Steinbrenner family allowed to report on George and his controversial and colorful life in his book Steinbrenner: The Last Lion of Baseball. My conversation with Bill Madden:
Tuesday Jul 13, 2010
Ayelet Waldman's Red Hook Road
Tuesday Jul 13, 2010
Tuesday Jul 13, 2010
Five years ago Ayelet Waldman ignited a controversy when she wrote in an essay that she loved her husband more then her children. In her subsequent memoir Bad Mother, which has just been released in paperback, she details the fallout of that essay as well as the reality of trying to be a good mother amidst the judgmental juggernaut of her "friends" Now, in her new novel Red Hook Road, she once again delves into the reality of family, along side the issues of class, music and the pain of loosing a child; and how our sense of place and ritual work to help us heal. My conversation with Ayelet Waldman:
Sunday Jul 11, 2010
The Life of George Carlin
Sunday Jul 11, 2010
Sunday Jul 11, 2010
Friday Jul 09, 2010
America's Greatest Bridge
Friday Jul 09, 2010
Friday Jul 09, 2010
Thursday Jul 08, 2010
Declaration of politics
Thursday Jul 08, 2010
Thursday Jul 08, 2010
Tuesday Jul 06, 2010
Marriages are like fingerprints
Tuesday Jul 06, 2010
Tuesday Jul 06, 2010
Thursday Jul 01, 2010
Capitalism 4.0
Thursday Jul 01, 2010
Thursday Jul 01, 2010
When the Chinese write the word crisis they combine two symbols; one stands for danger, the other opportunity. What if the recent and arguably ongoing financial crisis gave us the opportunity to look at our market system in a whole new way? Not only because we have to, but because the times demand it. Perhaps we have moved beyond the early laissez-faire capitalism of the industrial revolution, beyond the post war, post new deal Keynesian religion and now, even beyond the ideas of totally unfettered, deregulated markets. What would that economic world look like? Anatole Kaletsky, editor-at-large for The Times of London and one of the leading lights of economics journalism and analysis, proposes the idea of Capitalism 4.0: The Birth of a New Economy in the Aftermath of Crisis. My conversation with Anatole Kaletsky: