July 31st, 2014
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-jRq34zvxJdE/U9swpKckZuI/AAAAAAAAFpA/aOKhSN65piM/s1600/2013-01-20-girloncomputer2_shutterstock.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-jRq34zvxJdE/U9swpKckZuI/AAAAAAAAFpA/aOKhSN65piM/s1600/2013-01-20-girloncomputer2_shutterstock.jpg" height="188" width="200" /></a>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. <b><span style="color: #6fa8dc;">Nancy Rose </span></b>explains in <b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0988903806/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0988903806&linkCode=as2&tag=jeffschechtma-20&linkId=U665N4LVS6BEQ3FS">Raise the Child You've Got - Not the One You Want: Why Everyone Thrives When Parents Lead with Acceptance</a>.<img alt="" border="0" src="http://ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?t=jeffschechtma-20&l=as2&o=1&a=0988903806" height="1" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important;" width="1" /></b>
My conversation with Nancy Rose:
July 30th, 2014
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.
My conversation with Joel & Eric Best:
July 28th, 2014
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?
A new book and a new way to look at these issues by Joesph Blasi.
My conversation with Joseph Blasi:
July 27th, 2014
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?
My conversation with Chuck Klosterman:
July 23rd, 2014
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.
My conversation with Paul Raeburn:
July 23rd, 2014
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
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My conversation with Aaron James:
July 22nd, 2014
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
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My conversation with Aviva Chomsky:
July 21st, 2014
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:
July 20th, 2014
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:
July 17th, 2014
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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.
My conversation with Juan Cole:
July 16th, 2014
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.
My conversation with Thomas Nazario:
July 15th, 2014
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.
My conversation with Seyed Hossein Mousavian:
July 14th, 2014
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
My conversation with Eric Liu:
July 13th, 2014
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.
My conversation with Robert Greenfield:
July 12th, 2014
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.
My conversation with Patrick Martins:
July 11th, 2014
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.
My conversation with Alex Tizon:
July 10th, 2014
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:
July 10th, 2014
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Mid91OxO9lU/U74UqlAXa4I/AAAAAAAAFk0/6v2Uc-Z6R94/s1600/DiP_Good_Hunting_med.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Mid91OxO9lU/U74UqlAXa4I/AAAAAAAAFk0/6v2Uc-Z6R94/s1600/DiP_Good_Hunting_med.jpg" height="172" width="320" /></a></div>
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, <b><span style="color: #6fa8dc;">Jack Devine</span></b>.
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 <b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0374130329/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0374130329&linkCode=as2&tag=jeffschechtma-20&linkId=S5MXWZHZHWABDKDY">Good Hunting: An American Spymaster's Story</a><img alt="" border="0" src="http://ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?t=jeffschechtma-20&l=as2&o=1&a=0374130329" height="1" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important;" width="1" /></b>
My conversation with Jack Devine:
July 8th, 2014
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
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My conversation with Philip K. Howard:
July 7th, 2014
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.
My conversation with Scott Eyman:
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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.
