August 28th, 2014
Almost every aspect of our culture and economy has been touched by technology and creative destruction. Still, three areas have lagged behind, and all three are beginning to be addressed and changed. They are finance, healthcare and education.
Although incumbents still rule in healthcare and finance, the ground is beginning to shift. But in education, less so. The very fact that we are still debating the merits and sanctity of practices that date to the agrarian age, is telling.
But change is happening. Throughout the country small individual efforts are being made. Efforts that reexamine the questions at the very foundation of learning of understanding and putting knowledge to use.
One thing that hasn’t changed, is that teachers are still on the front lines. For them too, it will be change or perish.
My conversation with Elizabeth Green:
August 24th, 2014
So much of the way our brains and nervous system are hardwired, emerges as man did, from the primordial stew of life. Clearly, modern science tells us we are more suited to be hunter gatherers than we are multitasking and purveyors of Google Glass.
Yet no matter how much some may desire it, we are not going back to a simpler time. Information will continue to pore in on us, multilateral demands on our time will increase, and to succeed at anything, work, play or home, we will have to adapt or perish.
So the question becomes, do we try and shape this brave new world to fit the way we are, or do we move through life, knowing we are on the ramparts of the efforts to change human evolution?
My conversation with Daniel Levitin:
August 23rd, 2014
Ginger Roger once said, of her partnership with Fred Astaire, that she did everything he did, “but backwards and in high heels.” In many ways this gets to the heart of partnerships. Two people that have a similar mission, but see it perhaps in opposite and positively reinforcing ways.
The examples are course legend. Jobs and Wozniak, Lennon & McCartney, Parker and Stone, Larry and Sergei, Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner, Crick and Watson, Joel and Ethan Coen, and Hewlett & Packard, to name just a few.
My conversation with Joshua Wolf Shenk:
August 23rd, 2014
Across the country, fracking—the extraction of natural gas by hydraulic fracturing—is being touted as the nation’s answer to energy independence. Energy companies have repeatedly assured us that the process is safe,
But is there a hidden cost, a hidden danger? What really is the process of fracking and what are its consequence on people, the environment and those that come in contact with it?
Michelle Bamberger and Robert Oswald, combine their expertise in a new look at how contamination at drilling sites translates into ill health and heartbreak for both families and their pets.
My conversation with Michelle Bamberger and Robert Oswald:
August 20th, 2014
We often think of the 60’s as a time when the left was in the ascendancy. When great social movements, like the women's movement, the antiwar movement and the civil rights movement were given their birth. In fact, arguably, the most lasting legacy of the 60’s maybe the rise of modern conservatism.
The history of modern conservatism and of the current Republican party has its beginnings in the early 1960’s and continues into the confusion we see in the party today.
Rick Perlstein has been one of our most astute chroniclers of that history, beginning with his examination of Barry Goldwater in Before the Storm, and through his look at the 60’s and 70’s in Nixonland.
But more than a political story, it’s the story of the transformation of America. A time when America suffered its first military defeat, was shocked by the oil crisis, the hostage crises, inflation, stagflation, a criminal Presidency, a rogue CIA, and more. But it also became a time when as a solution to our multiple problems, reality gave way to fantasy; when facts gave way to fiction, when like television or the movies, make believe would take us to the place we’d rather be. And leading that transformation was Ronald Reagan.
My conversation with Rick Perlstein:
August 18th, 2014
The world has changed. We can intimately and immediately know what's taking place in the far reaches of the world or across America. But we often don’t know what’s going on with our neighbors and in our own community.
Today we are a part of many communities of interest, not necessarily communities of geography. And is it any surprise really? The natural human tendency is to associate with people like us. But as mobility and tolerance have allowed a diversity of communities, it has, in fact, atomized us in ways that we seek the similar, no matter where on the planet it might be.
But what is the consequence of this? We were once a great and vast continental nation, that had to rely on community as a form of safety and self govemment. Today that’s not the case. The result has impacted our relationships, or politics, and the very way we govern ourselves.
My conversation with Marc Dunkelman:
August 17th, 2014
.jpeg)
There once was a time before the internet, before the automobile, before air conditioning, and television and radio and even before the printing press. All these inventions and many others, dramatically transformed the ways in which we live. At the time each was criticized for the ruinous impact it would have. The printing press was thought to be the end of religion, air conditioning would keep us inside, and not allow us to connect with others. The automobile would destroy community and television would pollute our brains.
The fact is that each of these inventions changed us and changed the way we lived. And the result was not good or bad. It was just different. It was all part of the process of human evolution. Ever since man first emerged from the cave, we have been engaged in an ongoing effort to try and shape and define our man made environment, just as it continues to try shape and define us.
My conversation with Michael Harris:
August 14th, 2014
Those that have been through it, say that the experience of being in a combat zone is like no other. It is all consuming. In so many ways it eliminates the real world of life and its mundane everyday chores and problems.
Yet the men and women engaged in that effort, bring with them a life experience composed of precisely those problems. Sometimes the military is a means of escape, sometimes a training ground for life, frequently life changing. Yet most soldiers, men and women alike, must return to that real world. And when they do, everything changes once again.
My conversation with Helen Thorpe:
August 13th, 2014
Fifty years ago this summer, Americans, both black and white, gave their last full measure of devotion in an effort to register African American voters in Mississippi.
The violence that resulted, the death of three civil rights workers, the beatings, the church bombings, and effort to prevent Americans from voting is a stain that shall forever be remembered.
My conversation with Matt Herron:
August 11th, 2014
Perhaps it’s the state of the world today, but everywhere fantasy seems to be in ascendancy. The retelling of Narnia, Harry Potter, Game of Thrones and Lev Grossman’s The Magician series, all speak to what seems to be a compelling need.
My conversation with Lev Grossman:
August 10th, 2014
When Barack Obama was elected President, we heard lots of loose talk about this being a post racial society. It was as if a magic pill had taken the issue of race and identity out of our consciousness.
Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, arguably, we are further behind in erasing our racial legacy than other parts of the world. And part of that reason is that we have yet to achieve a shared truth about the American experience of slavery and bigotry.
While we've done a good job of trying to move beyond that legacy, like a weed, not pulled out from the root, it comes back to haunt us, because of our difficulty in dealing with its true history.
My conversation with Chris Tomlinson:
August 10th, 2014
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-9LyMyifBmuk/U-hfQ6eDOxI/AAAAAAAAFqk/kuBC6NZblDA/s1600/Screen-shot-2013-06-04-at-1.31.42-PM-640x274.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-9LyMyifBmuk/U-hfQ6eDOxI/AAAAAAAAFqk/kuBC6NZblDA/s1600/Screen-shot-2013-06-04-at-1.31.42-PM-640x274.png" height="137" width="320" /></a>When Barack Obama was elected President, we heard lots of loose talk about this being a post racial society. It was as if a magic pill had taken the issue of race and identity out of our consciousness.
Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, arguably, we are further behind in erasing our racial legacy than other parts of the world. And part of that reason is that we have yet to achieve a shared truth about the American experience of slavery and bigotry.
While we've done a good job of trying to move beyond that legacy, like a weed, not pulled out from the root, it comes back to haunt us, because of our difficulty in dealing with its true history.
That’s the history that <b><span style="color: #6fa8dc;">Chris Tomlinson</span></b> takes on, with respect to his own family, in his book and in the documentary <b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1250005477/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=1250005477&linkCode=as2&tag=jeffschechtma-20">Tomlinson Hill: The Remarkable Story of Two Families who Share the Tomlinson Name - One White, One Black</a><img alt="" border="0" src="http://ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?t=jeffschechtma-20&l=as2&o=1&a=1250005477" height="1" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important;" width="1" />.</b>
My conversation with Chris Tomlinson:
August 7th, 2014
For 40 years, the Focus of the conversations about Watergate has been what did the President know and when did he know it. The revelations from the release of and the listening to more and more of the 3700 hours of White House tapes, has pretty much now clarified that issues.
What still remains very murky, perhaps because it exists in both the realms of psychology as well as fact, is why. Why did Nixon insist on the tapes, why didn’t he destroy them, and deeper still, why did a man whose entire life was devoted to the pursuit of the Presidency and his own place in history, destroy himself, by his own hand, his own actions and his own decisions?
Few have gotten closer to answering these questions than John Dean. Nixon’s White House council, the man who first told Nixon that Watergate was a growing “cancer on the Presidency,” who himself has spent 40 years thinking and writing about these issues, now on the 40th anniversary of Nixon’s resignation, has written the definitive, The Nixon Defense: What He Knew and When He Knew It
.
My conversation with John Dean:
August 7th, 2014
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-66jWWk39lWc/U-RZOT2V2EI/AAAAAAAAFqU/ecsoa-BybXs/s1600/john_dean.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-66jWWk39lWc/U-RZOT2V2EI/AAAAAAAAFqU/ecsoa-BybXs/s1600/john_dean.jpg" height="211" width="320" /></a>For 40 years, the Focus of the conversations about Watergate has been what did the President know and when did he know it. The revelations from the release of and the listening to more and more of the 3700 hours of White House tapes, has pretty much now clarified that issues.
What still remains very murky, perhaps because it exists in both the realms of psychology as well as fact, is why. Why did Nixon insist on the tapes, why didn’t he destroy them, and deeper still, why did a man whose entire life was devoted to the pursuit of the Presidency and his own place in history, destroy himself, by his own hand, his own actions and his own decisions?
Few have gotten closer to answering these questions than <b><span style="color: #6fa8dc;">John Dean</span></b>. Nixon’s White House council, the man who first told Nixon that Watergate was a growing “cancer on the Presidency,” who himself has spent 40 years thinking and writing about these issues, now on the 40th anniversary of Nixon’s resignation, has written the definitive, <b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0670025364/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0670025364&linkCode=as2&tag=jeffschechtma-20&linkId=RYLVAN2M5LMFPOTF">The Nixon Defense: What He Knew and When He Knew It</a><img alt="" border="0" src="http://ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?t=jeffschechtma-20&l=as2&o=1&a=0670025364" height="1" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important;" width="1" />.</b>
<b>
</b> My conversation with John Dean:
August 6th, 2014
For journalists, for historians, and for political junkies, Richard Nixon is the gift that keeps on giving. There are over 3700 hours of Nixon tapes and only a portion have been released and deconstructed.
Even as we mark this 40th anniversary of Nixon's resignation, most of us have only heard a few minutes here or there. For Luke Nichter, a Professor at A & M University, and one of the preeminent experts on the Nixon tapes, it paints a picture of a cunning and controlling President, and sometimes a country astride the world. But mostly it captures the White House, America and the world, in a particular place and time that bears very little resemblance to the world today.
.
My conversation with Luke Nichter:
August 5th, 2014
From the undersea adventures of Jules Verne, to Peter Benchley’s The Deep to Jim Cameron’s The Abyss, we flock to movies and literature that takes place underwater. We are fascinated by, but know so little about, the undersea world.
In fact, a recent review of James Nestor’s book, reminds us that if something disappears on Mars or the Moon, we’d have a better chance of finding it, than if it disappeared in the world’s oceans.
This fascination has given rise to whole groups of people that seek to explore in new and different, and sometimes dangerous, ways.
My conversation with James Nestor:
August 5th, 2014
In communities all across America debates rage about zoning, building, and development. In most cases, however, the debate is around the margins. Most places have long since evolved into what they are. New York City is perhaps the penultimate example.
While arguments still do go on about height limits, shadows and railyards, the city has long since determined its destiny. For New York it has been, at least since the mid 18th century, a forward march to becoming the amazing city it is today.
My conversation with Ted Steinberg:
August 3rd, 2014
Think about the things that shape our world, our perceptions and our culture. For a large part of the population, the experience of America’s mistakes in Vietnam has long shaped our engagement in the world. The country's disrespect, at the time, for the service of those that served in Vietnam, in many ways positively shapes the way we respond to Veterans' needs today.
As leaders today try and juggle the crisis of the world, and play a kind of geopolitical chess, they are always chastened by the scandal that was Iran/Contra,
And as any magazine or look at popular culture today will tell you, we are obsessed with outward appearances, usually at the expense of depth and real understanding.
All of these issues and ideas come into play in the life and struggles of Robert Timberg.
Disfigured in a land mine explosion thirteen days before he was to leave Vietnam, his story, his struggles and his recovery in many ways parallels the story of the past half century.
It’s what makes him so effective as a journalist and why his story, that he now tells us in his memoir Blue-Eyed Boy
, is also a history lesson for us all.
My conversation with Robert Timberg:
.
they give voice to the people at ground zero of the fracking debate, the authors illustrate what they believe to be the consequences of fracking, which In their view, poses a dire threat to the air we breathe, the water we drink, and even our food supply.
.
, a brilliant new book by 
.
.
.
.
.
