Episodes
Wednesday Jun 29, 2011
Where to now?
Wednesday Jun 29, 2011
Wednesday Jun 29, 2011
The first decade of this new millennium has been marked by unprecedented change. Today we are arguably at the apogee of that change. How we understand, cope and manage this change will pretty much determine the fate of the world for at least the 21st century. The editors of the Gallup Management Journal have looked back at the past 10 years, through the ideas of some of our most prominent leaders and thinkers. This collection gives us a fascinating insight into how these leaders have navigated this most perilous period and in so doing, they act as scouts, leading us into an even more uncertain future. The editor of this collection entitled Decade of Change: Managing in Times of Uncertainty is Geoffrey Brewer. My conversation with Geoffrey Brewer:
Tuesday Jun 28, 2011
Mortuary Affairs Unit in Iraq
Tuesday Jun 28, 2011
Tuesday Jun 28, 2011
Every once in a while a conversation comes along that really does surprise as much as enlighten. Jessica Goodell graduated from high school in 2001. She enlisted in the Marine Corp to serve her country in a time of war. In 2004 she volunteered to serve in the Marine Corps' Mortuary Affairs unit in Iraq. The unit's mission was to recover and process the remains of dead soldiers and Iraqi civilians. Nothing could have prepared for what was to follow. My conversation with Jess Goodell about her experience and her memoir SHADE IT BLACK: Death and After in Iraq
Monday Jun 27, 2011
Why Success Always Starts with Failure
Monday Jun 27, 2011
Monday Jun 27, 2011
Friday Jun 24, 2011
Pete Hamill's Tabloid City
Friday Jun 24, 2011
Friday Jun 24, 2011
Journalism is often referred to as a first draft of history. But more than that, newspapers, especially tabloids, have traditionally been the narrative, the connective tissues that binds diverse and disparate communities. They have explained community to the newcomers and explained the newcomers to the community. Through that local tabloid narrative, we've witnessed and tried to understand the conflicts and follies of daily life. And from that, we form our own understanding of the world. Tabloids in short are the raw material that drives our own op ed view of the world; a kind of Rosetta Stone for understanding life. This is the context of tabloid journalism that no one understand better than Pete Hamill. Part of a generation that defined newspapermen, he has been the Editor of two great NY tabloids, he’s the author of over twenty books along with his heartfelt memoir A Drinking Life: A Memoir. My conversation with Pete Hamil about his latest, Tabloid City
Thursday Jun 23, 2011
Those Guys Have All The Fun
Thursday Jun 23, 2011
Thursday Jun 23, 2011
Media companies today have become giant, often nameless and faceless corporate enterprises. When we watch TV, we don’t seek out a show just because it’s on Fox or NBC. We don't go to a movie because it was financed or distributed by Universal or Paramount. One of the rare exceptions to all of this is ESPN. It has become not only the dominant player in sports journalism, but one of the most singularly powerful brands in the media landscape. Its on air personalities have become almost as well know at the people they cover. It has grown so large and powerful, like the business it covers, that the barriers to entry for any competitors are almost insurmountable. How did this happen? What were the moments, who were the players that created this media, social, cultural and journalistic phenomenon? In his oral history Those Guys Have All the Fun: Inside the World of ESPN, James Andrew Miller takes us inside the history of this culture bending company. My conversation with James Miller:
Thursday Jun 23, 2011
Those Guys Had All The Fun
Thursday Jun 23, 2011
Thursday Jun 23, 2011
Media companies today have become giant, often nameless and faceless corporate enterprises. We don’t seek out a TV shows just because they are on Fox or NBC. We don't go to a movies because they were financed or distributed by Universal or Paramount. One of the rare exceptions to all of this is ESPN. It has become not only the dominant player in sports journalism, but one of the most singularly powerful brands in the media today. Its on air personalities have become almost as well know at the people they cover. It has grown so large and powerful, like the business it covers, that the barriers to entry for any competitors are almost insurmountable. How did this happen? What were the moments, who were the players that created this media, social, cultural and journalistic phenomenon? The answers lie in a new oral history of ESPN, getting huge attention coauthored by James Andrew Miller. The book is Those Guys Have All the Fun: Inside the World of ESPN. Here's my conversation with James Andrew Miller:
Tuesday Jun 21, 2011
Is Greed really good?
Tuesday Jun 21, 2011
Tuesday Jun 21, 2011
25 years ago, Gordon Gekko told us that greed was good. That it was the essence, not only capitalism, but of every aspect of our society. When we look back at that movie moment, we see that it fell almost halfway between the beginning of what economist Jeff Madrick calls the Age of Greed and the crash and recession of 2008/2009. How did we get to the economic landscape we face today? Are there common threads and specific personalities that have forever changed our financial markets? If so, can we trace them to the crises we face today and will it better enable us to understand how to move forward? Economist and journalist Jeff Madrick thinks so and he's laid out the proposition in his new book Age of Greed: The Triumph of Finance and the Decline of America, 1970 to the Present. My conversation with Jeff Madrick:
Monday Jun 20, 2011
The lessons of the last war....
Monday Jun 20, 2011
Monday Jun 20, 2011
At the moment we are a nation engaged in three wars, in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya. We have now been in Iraq and Afghanistan almost twice as long as the American effort in WWII. As we seek an exit strategy, much of the discussion now centers on what might constitute success or victory. In this age of insurgency and counter insurgency, how do we know if we are in fact. winning a war? Since what is past is prologue, it's perhaps noteworthy to look back at America's experience in Vietnam. A war where the wiz kids at the Pentagon quantified everything, but knew the value of nothing, Col. Gregory Daddis gives us an up close and personal look at the lessons of history in No Sure Victory: Measuring U.S. Army Effectiveness and Progress in the Vietnam War. My conversation with Gregory Daddis:
Friday Jun 17, 2011
Not your parent's marriage
Friday Jun 17, 2011
Friday Jun 17, 2011
I've always liked the notion that marriages are like fingerprints. No two are alike. We see the friends who have the prefect marriage, suddenly split asunder. The couple in a high conflict marriage who have been together for years. We seek soul mates, partners, friends and lovers. We go into marriage with the highest expectations and then often stay in them with a kind of low level ambivalence. All of this is accentuated by the needs, pressures, speed and reality of life in the 21st century. Pamela Haag in Marriage Confidential talks about all the permutations of marriage today and why it's not at all like Mad Men. My conversation with Pamela Haag:
Thursday Jun 16, 2011
What if our technology turns on us?
Thursday Jun 16, 2011
Thursday Jun 16, 2011
Since the dawn of the industrial age, the core of science fiction has been the delicate dance between man and machine. From the primitive fears generated by Frankenstein to the precociousness of HAL to the Cyberdyne Systems Model 101 in Terminator, these stories have touched our most primal fears. Today the machines are all around us; our phones, cars, ipods, all ubiquitous, connected, and laden with physics we don’t understand. We talk a great deal about how much information about each of us exists within these machines. What if at a precise moment, all of these machines suddenly turned against us. This is Daniel Wilson's scenario in Robopocalypse: A Novel. Soon to be a major motion picture directed by Steven Spielberg. My conversation with Daniel Wilson:
Wednesday Jun 15, 2011
A fair food system
Wednesday Jun 15, 2011
Wednesday Jun 15, 2011
Our population is growing exponentially. The need to feed that ever growing population has created new pressures on our food system. However the current system, designed to bring abundant food at low cost, is now broken. It’s consequences, in terms of our environment, our health and our economy, needs to be addressed. This is not just a question of eating locally, but requires a redesigning of our entire food system. Dr. Oran Hesterman takes up the challenge of what this new system might look like in his new book Fair Food: Growing a Healthy, Sustainable Food System for All My conversation with Dr. Oran Hesterman:
Tuesday Jun 14, 2011
Climate Capitalism
Tuesday Jun 14, 2011
Tuesday Jun 14, 2011
It’s fair to say that the world as we currently know it, is unsustainable: The increasing demand for water, oil and other natural resources will continue to grow. The economics of taking care of aging populations in the US and China, - the two largest economies in the world - the impact of climate change and the unpredictability of geopolitics, are just a few of the reasons to think that The Future is not possible. However, it’s equally fair to say that there may be a way out. Not by trying to predict or presage the future, but by making the business case for inventing it. No one makes this case better than Hunter Lovins who, in her new book Climate Capitalism: Capitalism in the Age of Climate Change, makes the case for saving the planet while creating jobs and improving the economy. This book needs to be on the reading list of every politician and CEO. My conversation with H. Hunter Lovins:
Monday Jun 13, 2011
A real sporting life
Monday Jun 13, 2011
Monday Jun 13, 2011
Long long before Title 9, before Billy Jean King, or Brandi Chastain, at a time during the first half of the 20th century, when women athletes were not expected to achieve much in sports, where woman athlete were even considered unfeminine, one woman, Babe Didrikson Zaharias, was breaking records in golf, basketball and track. Even though her life ended at the young age of 45, she is still considered on of the greatest athletes, male or female, of the 20th century. In our current era, where hype is often more important than talent, New York Times Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Don Van Natta Jr. looks back at Wonder Girl: The Magnificent Sporting Life of Babe Didrikson Zaharias. My conversation with Don Van Natta Jr.
Thursday Jun 09, 2011
Mexico & Mexicans
Thursday Jun 09, 2011
Thursday Jun 09, 2011
Regardless of where we are on the issue of immigration, legal or illegal, our relationship with Mexico and our understanding of the Mexican people must be a central pillar of American foreign and domestic policy for decades to come. How we manage that relationship will depend in large measure on the degree to which we understand our southern neighbor. That understanding should include an awareness that is cultural, political and human. Without it, both nations, economically co-dependent, will face tougher times. No one gets this idea better than one of Mexico's best know public intellectuals, Jorge Castaneda. A former Mexico Foreign Minister under Vincente Fox, now Global Distinguished Professor of Politics and Latin American Studies at NYU, his new book Manana Forever?: Mexico and the Mexicans lays out the predicate for that future understanding. My conversation with Jorge Castaneda:
Wednesday Jun 08, 2011
It's the sex, stupid
Wednesday Jun 08, 2011
Wednesday Jun 08, 2011
Tuesday Jun 07, 2011
They all lie!
Tuesday Jun 07, 2011
Tuesday Jun 07, 2011
From Anthony Weiner to Martha Stewart to Scooter Libby to Barry Bonds...they all lie. Do we have an epidemic of perjury today? Pulitzer Prize winning journalist James B. Stewart thinks we do. Further he thinks that without the truth, and without a mechanism to compel the truth, the links in our judicial chain are fragile indeed. Have we simply lost respect for the public, our courts and our judicial system? Stewart looks at all of this in Tangled Webs: How False Statements are Undermining America: From Martha Stewart to Bernie Madoff. My conversation with James B. Stewart:
Monday Jun 06, 2011
What if your brain was hacked?
Monday Jun 06, 2011
Monday Jun 06, 2011
Along with all the other social divisions we face today, we live in a bifurcated society with respect to technology. On the one hand, we rightly continue to run headlong into a future where a younger generation finds new ways to use technology, to multitask, and to reshape their brains around that technology. On the other hand we have an aging population, whose memories are often fading, who don't understand, or at least resist all of this technology. What happens when these forces collide is the basis of a new novel, Devil's Plaything, by the NY Times Pulitzer Prize winning technology journalist Matt Richtel. My conversation with Matt Richtel:
Friday Jun 03, 2011
An Internet Just for You
Friday Jun 03, 2011
Friday Jun 03, 2011
For a lot of you it may feel very special to know that Amazon, and Netflix and Apple and Gilt and Google tailor their results just for you. The idea and power of customization is currently the holy grail of the web. The reasons these sites tell us they need to aggregate so much information about us, is so that they can better server us. Lucky us! But what happens when the same principals, the same algorithms apply to our searches for information, our news sources? In this way essentially our algorithms shape how we view the world. This is not science future. This is happening right now. And its net effect is both frightening and corrosive. Rather than expanding our world, which was the original promise of the Internet, it is arguably shrinking our world. MoveOn.org found Eli Pariser takes us inside this world of The Filter Bubble. My conversation with Eli Pariser:
Wednesday Jun 01, 2011
Portraits of Power
Wednesday Jun 01, 2011
Wednesday Jun 01, 2011
Tuesday May 31, 2011
Solving the impossible
Tuesday May 31, 2011
Tuesday May 31, 2011
Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld used to say that the best solution to an intractable problem, was to create a bigger problem. That didn't work out very well for him, or the Country. In fact, fully 5 percent of all conflicts end in a stalemate - not just the big ones that we read about every day, but also disputes and arguments in our everyday lives. How do we get beyond this, or do we? Dr. Peter Coleman of Columbia University, in his new work The Five Percent: Finding Solutions to Seemingly Impossible Conflicts argues that there are very real ways to break through even some of the most heated and critical issues of the day. My conversation with Dr. Peter T. Coleman: