Episodes
Wednesday Mar 30, 2011
BOOMBUSTOLOGY
Wednesday Mar 30, 2011
Wednesday Mar 30, 2011
Monday Mar 28, 2011
Oh Jerusalem
Monday Mar 28, 2011
Monday Mar 28, 2011
Normally great cities change. Even Paris and New York have gone through radical transformations. Jerusalem it seems, has remained true to its roots, troubled and seeped in violence though it may be. Perhaps, it is because the city has become a kind of religious and philosophical Rorschach test, on to which we projects so many of our dreams fears and hopes? Is there really some special power to Jerusalem, as that "shinning city on the hill," or is it simply its historical context that gives it its unique power? James Carroll, the brilliant former Catholic Priest, former chaplain at Boston University, and author of Constantine's Sword, An American Requiem and House of War, reaches deep into the history of Jerusalem to give us both the real and the fantasy City. My conversation with James Carroll:
Monday Mar 28, 2011
Play Ball
Monday Mar 28, 2011
Monday Mar 28, 2011
Friday Mar 25, 2011
Mad as Hell
Friday Mar 25, 2011
Friday Mar 25, 2011
The laws of physics tell us that for every action there is a reaction of equal or greater force. The progress of the 60’s, the Great Society, the awakening of women, gays and the Civil Rights movement, all would prompt a reaction in the 70's that would create a backlash to be exploited by angry populists. Combine this fear of "progress" with bad economics, the oil shortages, energy cutbacks and Jimmy Carter's malaise and you have one of the dreariest decades in the 20th Century. Couple all of this with our loss of confidence in basic institutions, Watergate, Iran, a dramatic increase in crime, our failures during the cold war and the impotency of the Carter Presidency, and it’s no wonder people ended the decade Mad as Hell. Historian Dominic Sandbrook, in his book Mad as Hell: The Crisis of the 1970s and the Rise of the Populist Right takes us inside this seminal decade. My conversation with Dominic Sandbrook:
Friday Mar 25, 2011
The Largest Migration in the History of the World
Friday Mar 25, 2011
Friday Mar 25, 2011
With respect to China, we have talked frequently about the great migration of people from the rural areas to the cities. The fact is, this is being played out around the world. At least one-third of the worlds population is currently, or about to be, on the move from rural areas to the world's cities. They are headed to what journalist Doug Saunders calls Arrival City. In a pattern that has played out throughout history, urbanization is exploding. Just as Europe and North America experienced this great migration in the 19th Century, the rest of the world is now joining the efforts for jobs and for hope. How this plays out, how the world, East and West, deals with this, could very well determine the success or failure of the 21st Century. My conversation with Doug Saunders:
Wednesday Mar 23, 2011
We'll always have Paris
Wednesday Mar 23, 2011
Wednesday Mar 23, 2011
Tuesday Mar 22, 2011
You made a mistake!
Tuesday Mar 22, 2011
Tuesday Mar 22, 2011
For many of us, men especially, being right is the most important thing. We live in a society that praises perfection, that rewards certainty. Countless stories have been told and written about the importance of kids getting it right in order to get into the right college, choose the right career and the right spouse. After all, isn't getting it right what Tiger moms would want? Given the proliferation of choices we face today, can we ever get it right that often or, is the baseball metaphor more apt, that if we only hit 300, we're doing pretty well? Couple this with the conflicting messages we get as kids, that making mistakes helps us to learn, and helps us to make better choices in order to get it right the next time. Author, journalist and N.Y. Times columnist Alina Tugend tries to sort out all of these conflicting messages in her new book Better by Mistake: The Unexpected Benefits of Being Wrong. My conversation with Alina Tugend:
Monday Mar 21, 2011
The Social Animal
Monday Mar 21, 2011
Monday Mar 21, 2011
For almost 50 years we’ve talked about and often admired the best and the brightest in our government, our businesses and in our political and economic institutions. Yet during this same period, we've seen colossal failure. We have some of the most socially adept politicians, and we are accused of living in a therapeutic culture, yet when confronted with the reality of quality public policy, we get it wrong. Where is the disconnect? How can so many smart people be so wrong, so often? Clearly it’s not a failure of intelligence, but perhaps a failure of imagination, of vocabulary, or more specifically a failure to fully take into account our social nature and the duality between emotions, ideas and reason in a rapidly changing world. This is a central premise of the new book by N.Y. Times columnist David Brooks entitled The Social Animal: The Hidden Sources of Love, Character, and Achievement. Told as a kind of allegorical tale, Brooks takes us inside the cutting edge neuroscience of the day and in so doing redefines how we see the world and our place in it. My conversation with David Brooks:
Friday Mar 18, 2011
Men into Boys
Friday Mar 18, 2011
Friday Mar 18, 2011
Yesterday we talked about pitching star Tim Lincecum and how this 26 year old, 13 million dollar a year star spent his off season, hanging with his buddies and playing video games. In so many ways he is simply reflective of young men today who see themselves not on any kind of scripted path to adulthood, but rather stuck in a conflicting state of both success and financial independence on the one hand and extended adolescence on the other. Is it simply the fact that we are living longer that allows these young men to delay the onset of adulthood, or is it some more profound cultural shift? As women become more independent, as the number of women graduating from college, medical school and law school exceed the numbers for men, as women earn more in some cities; are these men simply finding themselves increasingly threatened, insecure for even irrelevant? How is it that Don Draper been replaced by Owen Wilson and does it matter? Author and journalist Kay Hymowitz, in her new book Manning Up: How the Rise of Women Has Turned Men into Boys, has stirred up quite a controversy on this this topic. My conversation with Kay Hymowitz:
Thursday Mar 17, 2011
Lincecum
Thursday Mar 17, 2011
Thursday Mar 17, 2011
Thursday Mar 17, 2011
Art and Madmen
Thursday Mar 17, 2011
Thursday Mar 17, 2011
Tuesday Mar 15, 2011
The Celestine Insight
Tuesday Mar 15, 2011
Tuesday Mar 15, 2011
Most writers and thinkers are lucky if their work touches or impacts thousands of people. For the greats, it might be even more. But for James Redfield, author of the mega bestseller THE CELESTINE PROPHESY and its subsequent installments, he has impacted millions. What nerve has he continued to touch for 17 years? In an age of religious extremism he has found the sweet spot that he calls "authentic spirituality." In so doing he not only co-opts, but incorporates all of the world's great belief systems. Now, in his first book in twelve years, he brings us the forth installment of the Celestine series, The Twelfth Insight. My conversation with James Redfield:
Monday Mar 14, 2011
The Moral Underground
Monday Mar 14, 2011
Monday Mar 14, 2011
While the media is quick to give us lifestyles of the rich and famous, and anxious to point out the good deeds of wealthy philanthropists and the importance of a market driven culture, most of the middle class today are leading lives of quiet desperation. For many though, being “quiet” means taking small progressive steps to try and make the system more equitable. Sometimes those steps are outside the boundaries of what is right, but well within the bounds of what is moral. That is the focus of Lisa Dodson book The Moral Underground: How Ordinary Americans Subvert an Unfair Economy. My conversation with Lisa Dodson:
Friday Mar 11, 2011
A Visit From The Goon Squad
Friday Mar 11, 2011
Friday Mar 11, 2011
The way that music short circuits time and makes yesterday's events, todays reality; the state of the music business today and pushing the boundaries of the literary from, are all part of A Visit from the Goon Squad. Jennifer Egan's fascinating novel, that's this years winner of the National Book Critics Circle award for Fiction. My conversation with Jennifer Egan:
Friday Mar 11, 2011
5 ideas for putting Kids First
Friday Mar 11, 2011
Friday Mar 11, 2011
In much of our debate about education policy today, it seems we leave out the kids. The kids sometimes seem like fungible chess pieces that we move around some kind of public policy Monopoly board. To often, to many of these kids go directly to jail, without ever passing go! A good example of our misguided policy priority is how little we fund the Head Start program. It's efficacy should be a settled issue. The statistics are clear that those kids with quality, early education are more likely to graduate from high school, go to college, stay healthy and earn 35% more. Economists calculate the benefit to cost ratio at an amazing seventeen-to-one. Yet today's N.Y. Times has a story about how Republicans still want to severely cut the funding for Head Start. Education policy expert David Kirp strongly disagrees. David Kirp thinks we need a new kind of policy. A simple one really. One that puts kids at the center of the discussion. Starting with 5 simple ideas, he seeks to reshape America's failing approach to our kids and outlines it in his book Kids First: Five Big Ideas for Transforming Children's Lives and America's Future. My conversation with David Kirp:
Wednesday Mar 09, 2011
The Other Eighties
Wednesday Mar 09, 2011
Wednesday Mar 09, 2011
Much as we might like it to be otherwise, our times are often defined by our leaders. Certainly in contemporary times, we remember the post war 50’s, reflected by Ike. The country moving forward again under Kennedy. The chaos of the Great Society and Vietnam under Johnson and then Nixon. We've talked a lot recently of the prosperity of the 90’s under Bill Clinton, and certainly the nation's shift to the right under Reagan in many ways, even more then disco, defined the 80’s. Even though history is already kind to the Reagan legacy, perhaps because he seems so moderate by the Republican standards of today, it’s important to remember the impact of Reagan on the nation and more importantly of his polarizing presence and the opposition that Reagan gave rise to. An opposition that sought to consolidate the progressive gains of the 60’s and 70’s, even as the nation was lurching rightward. It truly was the political equivalent of the irresistible force vs. the immovable object. That’s the social and political backdrop of Bradford Martin's look at the Reagan years, The Other Eighties: A Secret History of America in the Age of Reagan. My conversation with Bradford Martin:
Tuesday Mar 08, 2011
King of the Hackers
Tuesday Mar 08, 2011
Tuesday Mar 08, 2011
We tend to think of hackers as misanthrope teenagers locked in the back bedroom. In fact hacking, or at least the modern variant of it, is part of a sophisticated international crime network, that stretches from the Bay Area to the furthest reaches of the world. Fueled by the easy and international movement of money in a globalized economy, stolen data is turned into billions of illegal dollars. Kevin Poulsen, once a hacker himself, now the senior editor of Wired.com, in his book Kingpin: How One Hacker Took Over the Billion-Dollar Cybercrime Underground, takes us through the story of Max Butler, a hacker extraordinaire who would ultimately receive the longest prison sentence ever handed out to a hacker. My conversation with Kevin Poulsen:
Monday Mar 07, 2011
The Science of Immortality
Monday Mar 07, 2011
Monday Mar 07, 2011
Yesterday's New York Times Magazine had a story about business tycoon David Murdock and his quest to live until 125. The fact is, there are scientists today who think we could live forever! Pulitzer Prize and National Book Critics Circle Award winner Johnathan Weiner, in his new book Long for This World: The Strange Science of Immortality, takes us inside the science of aging and introduces us to the some of the leading minds in the field. Is the modern Fountain of Youth possible, can our deterioration be stopped and what would be the consequences of us all living beyond 100? Weiner tells us about the cutting edge research and the social and political consequences. My conversation with Jonathan Weiner:
Thursday Mar 03, 2011
The Silicon Valley Startup
Thursday Mar 03, 2011
Thursday Mar 03, 2011
Some people try and predict the future, others simply invent it and still others make those inventions possible. If it’s true that it is entrepreneurs that drive the future, then there are no more important players then the men who coach, invest and are the allies of those entrepreneurs. One of the stars and pioneers of this field is William H. Draper III. For more than forty years he has been a linchpin of the Silicon Valley, where he has turned others entrepreneurial vision, into tomorrow's reality. In this new book The Startup Game: Inside the Partnership between Venture Capitalists and Entrepreneurs, he takes an insightful look at how innovation, investment and individuals truly change the world. My conversation with William H. Draper III:
Thursday Mar 03, 2011
Marshalling Justice
Thursday Mar 03, 2011
Thursday Mar 03, 2011
Long before Martin Luther King efforts, before the Civil Rights Act, or Brown vs. Board of Education, much of the intellectual heft of the effort to achieve racial equality was carried by one man. An aggressive young attorney for the NAACP who fought tirelessly to combat racism, who evolved in his own views and upon whose shoulders rested much of the legal bedrock of the Civil Rights movement. Look before he moved to the Supreme Court, Thurgood Marshall would seek to find a legal as well as a moral reason for justice. Professor Michael G. Long, gives us a unique insight into this amazing man in Marshalling Justice: The Early Civil Rights Letters of Thurgood Marshall/ My conversation with Michael Long:
Tuesday Mar 01, 2011
The Wrong War
Tuesday Mar 01, 2011
Tuesday Mar 01, 2011
The war in Afghanistan is now America's longest war. The 2014 completion of mission still remains years into the future. Yet after all of this, there still seems to be a lack of clarity about our objectives and and about how we might achieve them. We seemed to have broken the momentum of the Taliban. The people don’t seem to want to live under Taliban rule, but neither do they want American rule. There seems to be no "what’s next." We say we don’t want to “nation build”, bet we’re supporting and helping to build up a corrupt and irrelevant central government. Like Vietnam, we say we want to win the hearts and minds of the people, yet what price does this objective have on the warrior ethos we expect of our military? In short, how do we exit Afghanistan, with clear goals, honestly obtained and most of all what can we learn that really can help us fight the next war? Bing West, a former Marine combat veteran, a former assistant Secretary of Defense and brilliant chronicler of war, shares his insights into Afghanistan in The Wrong War: Grit, Strategy, and the Way Out of Afghanistan. My conversation with Bing West:
Tuesday Mar 01, 2011
Chris Christie
Tuesday Mar 01, 2011
Tuesday Mar 01, 2011
We know from watching Wisconsin and the events in neighboring states, that public sector unions have become political whipping posts for Republican politicians, especially Governors. But where Wisconsin’s Gov. Walker may have overreached and seems politically tone deaf and Arnold Schwarzenegger was to timid here in California; New Jersey’s Governor Chris Christie may have found the sweat spot, as the pitch perfect spokesmen to an electorate fed up with the rising salaries and perks of public employees and their unions. In so doing, he may actually have a chance to move his state forward, reduce deficits, and engage in endless bloody battles, while becoming more popular in the process. Is he a model for other politicians, or just a big bully who knows how to craft a message? All of this is part of the Cover Story in this past Sunday's N.Y Times Magazine, by one of the best political reporters in America, Matt Bai. Matt is the new Chief Political Correspondent for The Magazine. My conversation with Matt Bai about Gov. Chris Christie: