Talk Cocktail

Buckley and Mailer: The Difficult Friendship

Today we have talking heads and pundits.  But back in the second half of the 20th Century we had writers and public intellectuals, whose ideas, attitudes and personalities became a part of our public discourse.

Two of those that were the touchstones of the times were William F.Buckley and Norman Mailer.  Both wrote about history, about sex, about politics and sometimes all at once.  They were the guests you wanted to have at any dinner party.

They were also, each in his own way, bad boys of American letter.  Buckley with his rapier wit and insults, pushed away as many people as admired him.  Mailer with his pugilistic persona, further showed that with complex figures, the public surfaces were only part of the story.

Kevin Schultz gives us a kind of conjoined biography of the two in Buckley and Mailer: The Difficult Friendship That Shaped the Sixties.

My conversation with Kevin Schultz:

Who cares what Jefferson would do?

If we have problems in America, the solution is usually simple, check with the Founding Fathers.  Can’t figure out modern health care, check with the Founders.  Can’t deal with modern weaponry on America's streets, check in with the nation's Founders.  Need to improve education for our kids..maybe a trip to Mt. Rushmore will solve it?  Need to fix our airports, increase cancer and genetic research, or fund manned space travel..no problem. Just check in with Jefferson and Hamilton. 

Obviously a laughable idea.... but in fact this is exactly what we seem to do!! First of all our Founders, wise as they were, did not speak with a single voice, and they lived in a world that is barely recognizable from our own.  So why are they relevant to every debate in America?  Mostly because it’s a way for politicians to gain political traction, without having to marshall real debate or real solutions.

This is the confusion that David Sehat explains in The Jefferson Rule: How the Founding Fathers Became Infallible and Our Politics Inflexible.

My conversation with David Sehat:

The fall of CrackBerry

Many years ago, Harvard Business School perfected something called the “case study method.”   A new educational innovation that presented the challenges confronting companies, nonprofits, and government organizations—complete with the constraints and incomplete information found in real business issues.

Students learned that through the process of exchanging perspectives, countering and defending points, and building on each other's ideas, they became adept at analyzing issues, exercising judgment, and making difficult decisions.

Business journalist Sean Silcoff,  in his new book,  Losing the Signal: The Untold Story Behind the Extraordinary Rise and Spectacular Fall of BlackBerry, conducts his own case study.

He reminds us that in real business situations, unlike business school, there are no simple solutions; personalities matter and, and he shows how easy it is to go from leader to irrelevance in an economy that values creative destruction far more than the status quo.

My conversation with Sean Silcoff:

One Nation Under God...and Corporation

It was Churchill who reminded us that history is written by the victors.  Well this is as true of religious history as it is of military, political and geopolitical history. 

Do you ever wonder how our religious and political divides of today came to be?  How it is that the Republican party became a vehicle for the notion of America as a Christian nation?

We’ve all been feed the story that it’s somehow part of originalism.   We’ve all been been told that America, as conceived by our founders, was John Winthrop’s  Shining City on the Hill.  Even our leaders today seem to succumb to that mythology.  But the fact is that the idea of America as Christian nation is a relatively recent construct.  One that came both out of the Cold War and of business opposition to Roosevelt and the New Deal.  

This unholy alliance between Christianity and the Chamber of Commerce would continue to shape our politics and our government right up until today.

Now Princeton Professor Kevin Kruse tells the story in One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America.

My conversation with Kevin Kruse:  

The Brain and the Gut...together again

We all remember the youthful spiritual song Dem Bones, about the angle bone being connected to the shin bone, the thigh bone being connected to the hip bone, etc.  What the song didn’t include is the connection between the stomach and the brain.  And it’s not just about what you eat.  It's about the vast array of bacteria and microorganism that live in your gut, and the impact they have on how your brain works.  

Dr. David Perlmutter, the author of the bestselling GRAIN BRAIN, now takes us inside this interplay between intestinal microbes and the brain in Brain Maker: The Power of Gut Microbes to Heal and Protect Your Brain for Life.

My conversation with Dr. David Perlmutter:

Can a Well-Tuned Brain keep up with the modern world?

Everyday it seem the world speeds up.    The advances of technology, the need to make faster decisions, multitasking and a sometimes dizzying array of options, are all part of the creative destruction that is making the world a more efficient an  in many ways, a better and freer place.

On the other hand human evolution is a slow, deliberate process. So, to what extent have our brains evolutionary ability kept pace with 21st century life? To what extent is this true cognitive dissonance acting as a kind of governor on our ability to do our best in this modern world and in turn what impact is it having on how we treat the world around us.

These are some of the ideas explored by the Director of the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at UCLA, Dr. Peter Whybrow, in his new book The Well-Tuned Brain: Neuroscience and the Life Well Lived.

My conversation with Dr. Peter Whybrow: 

There once was a time in Washington when negotiation and compromise were not dirty words

In talking to someone recently about my guest, former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell, they went into a bit of tirade of criticism of him, saying that he was “just one of those Democrats they trot out to make things go away, to sweep things under rug.”  My friend went on to say, “it proves that it's all just one big party.”

Well the other side of that same coin is that Senator George Mitchell, through his skill as a negotiator and a listener, can find ways for people of opposing views to get along.  That rather than the polarization of today, or a political world where everyone is an outlier, there are still ways to find common ground.  That often, when no one is entirely happy, that’s exactly when we know the best compromise solution has been reached.

Yes,  compromise. Something that’s become a dirty word today, but used to represent the highest and best accomplishment of a skilled negotiator.

Amidst the clanging of a political system that sounds more like a boiler factory, Senator Mitchell has written a memoir The Negotiator, that reminds us of both of a time gone by and a vision for what still might be.

My conversation with Senator George Mitchell: 

Project Based Learning for the Military and Business

It has often been conventional wisdom that the military is always fighting current wars, based on lessons learned from the last war.  That’s why we used centralized WW2 tactics in Vietnam, and then turned around and used the lessons of Vietnam in Iraq. 

But the fact is that today there is a whole new breed to military tacticians and strategists whose ideas come not from the last war, but from the creative destruction of places like  Silicon Valley and and our most advanced and cutting edge business schools. Ideas that eschew top down, large organizational  command and control and instead respond to the need to collaborate, be nimble, and embrace a team oriented approach to management.

In today's military much of the movement in this direction has come from General Stanley McChrystal and his team.  As the leader of the Joint Special Operation Command,  this new approach was essential in fighting an enemy who itself was decentralized. But It was an approach that had to first break down traditional silos, rethink the link between communications and command, create a flatter organization amidst a culture that was build on top down thinking, and bring flexibility to an institution that revered tradition.

All of these are ideas also apply to business.  Now General McChrystal and his team at CrossLead, including co-founder David Silverman,  have combined these ideas and are applying them everyday. They share them in   Team of Teams: New Rules of Engagement for a Complex World

My conversation with Co-Author David Silverman: 

Why Peter Pan is the model of our Infantile Age

We are a culture obsessed with youth.  We are told that youth is wasted on the young, but we do everything in our power to stay young.

Growing up is seen as giving up.  We are told that with each passing year, doors close behind and head of us.  

In short, youth is and has been the foundational cultural idea of the West for almost half a century.  From the 60’s mantra of “never trust anyone over 30,” to to today when boomers are being pushed out by millennials.

Given the negative light cast on maturity, why would anyone every want to to defy Peter Pan, and ever grow up. These are some of the questions that philosopher Susan Neiman asks in Why Grow Up?: Subversive Thoughts for an Infantile Age

My conversation with Susan Neiman:

Every generation has its own disease that moves from doomed to hopeful

It sometimes seem that every generation has its disease.  In earlier generations it was Tuberculosis, in the 40’s and 50’s the fear and the scourge of Polio gripped the nation.

In the 80’s and 90’s, the fear and reality of AIDS overwhelmed the national consciousness.

When we look at these diseases...the death tolls from them, the way they were perceived, the medical mystery, the research, the treatment and the movement towards a cure...we learn a great deal, not just about the march of medicine, but about the culture of the particular time. We see how disease evolves and what it says about our collective character.

That’s the world that my Dr. Susan Ball writes about in  Voices in the Band: A Doctor, Her Patients, and How the Outlook on AIDS Care Changed from Doomed to Hopeful

My conversation with Dr. Susan Ball: 

A Philosophy of Happiness

Someone once wrote that happiness is serious business. But should happiness be a goal in and of itself, or is it simply a construct for achieving 

what we really desire, and helping us in finding our pace in the world? 

Woody Allen in Annie Hall, saw the world divided only into the “horrible,” and the “miserable.”  What kind of a construct is that? Certainly not the one laid out by philosopher Frederic Lenoir in Happiness: A Philosopher's Guide.

My conversation with Frederic Lenoir: 

Why we are all stronger in broken places

Nietzsche said “that which doesn't kill us, makes us stronger.”  Little did anyone know at the time that those words have a powerful psychological basis.  

Everyday we hear about trauma.  About people surviving horrible tragedy to themselves and to their loved ones. And we all wonder how do they go forward.  We know for example that the incidence of divorce, after the death of a child, is well over 50%.  

We know that the trauma of war and combat can take years, if not decades, to come to grips with.  We see the horrors of genocide, tragedies like 9/11 and Oklahoma City and we wonder how to people cope and why, even in the face of such horror, so some people thrive and come out stronger.

Or in the words of Hemingway, “the world breaks everyone, and afterwards some are stronger in broken places.”

This is the phenomenon that my guest David Feldman and Lee Daniel Kravetz look at in their new book Supersurvivors: The Surprising Link Between Suffering and Success.

My conversation with David Feldman & Lee Daniel Kravetz:

Ken Robinson on Creative Schools

For years now, Sir Ken Robinson has been tirelessly explaining  that conformity in education does not work.  That it is the enemy not only of creativity, but of an authentic life.  

But understanding the problem, even articulating it as brilliantly as Sir Ken Robinson has, in his Ted Talk, viewed over 32 million times, his book The Element, and in his other books and lectures, is only half the battle.  The other half is to define and design the kind of 21st Century schools that can achieve this.

In his new work Creative Schools: The Grassroots Revolution That's Transforming Education, he argues for an end to our outmoded industrial educational system and proposes a highly personalized, organic approach that draws on today’s technological and professional resources to engage all students, develop their innate curiosity and love of learning, and enable them to face the real challenges ahead and feel at home in the world they will inherit.

My conversation with Sir Ken Robinson: 

How simplicity can thrive in a complex world

Earlier this month most of you completed your taxes.  Probably either you had someone else do it, or you spent hours navigating the complexity of the Federal tax code.  Perhaps that tax code is the apotheosis of complexity...with the possible exception of booking air travel. 

On the other hand, if we look at Silicon Valley, it’s filled with examples of companies that have figured out how to do a limited number of things, do them well and create minimal rules around it.

In between is the vast landscape of culture and business which is continuously tilting from one side or the other.  Always trying to find a footing that, in an increasingly complex world, makes their product or service or idea, simpler. Standing on the bridge of simplicity, particularly in the world of business has been Stanford Professor Kathleen Eisenhardt.  Her new book is Simple Rules: How to Thrive in a Complex World

My conversation with Kathleen Eisenhardt: 

Our Kids

Back in 1995, Robert Putnam argued in his bestselling book, Bowling Alone, that  civic life in America was declining. That we had reached a kind of apogee from things like the closing of the American mind, our culture of narcissism and the ideas of people like Ayn Rand. The payoff from increased suburbanization also added to the general shift away from engaging with people, that were not exactly like us.

Since then, for the past twenty years, we’ve added technology, changes in the nature of work, globalization, the influence of money and political polarization.  

Today, the proverbial chickens have come home to roost.  We are more socially and class divided, more likely only to send time with people like ourselves, and money and economics are the ultimate determinant of success.

At the turn of the last Century, as we moved from an agrarian to an industrial society, we saw a major shift in values, as we realized that shared values and shared success benefited everyone.

Today, at the turn of this Century, as industrialization gave way to our brain powered economy, exactly the opposite seems to be happening. Our kids today seem to be more siloed than ever. Their future and upward mobility more predetermined than ever before.  

This is the world that Robert Putnam looks at in his remarkable new book Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis'

My conversation with Robert Putnam: 

The new white, middle class, suburban heroin addict

For years we’ve had just one image of the drug wars.  Images conjured up from movies like the Godfather or Scarface, or reading about the LA battles between the Bloods and the Crips.

But drugs, like everything else, are subject to the pressures and demands of the free market. And creative destruction in the drug business has meant a drug dealer that is kinder and gentler.  A dealer that appreciates the value of customer service, that understands that many drug users, particularly of painkillers and heroin, are respectable middle class citizens. 

According to the CDC, everyday 44 people in the United States die from an overdose of prescription painkillers, with many more addicts being created everyday. Together the unlikely combination of Doctors, all to eager and  willing to prescribe and the boys of Xalisco, Mexico have created a perfect storm of addiction. Sam Quinones takes us to an Ohio town that is ground zero for the new heroin addiction, in Dreamland: The True Tale of America's Opiate Epidemic.

My conversation with Sam Quinones:  

Why men fight and why we love to watch

Hundred of years ago if men wanted to settle a personal matter, even a political one, they picked up swords or guns and dueled their way to resolution.  We all remember everything from d'Artagnan to the Gunfight at the OK Corral.

Today there are many that seem to long for a return to those days.  And while they are hardly condoned by respectable public standards, they still percolate within the heart of many men, for whom testosterone laden violence is still deeply programmed into their DNA.  

Jonathan Gottschall, a mild mannered English Professor, decides, like Kurtz to journey into the heart of darkness to understand  what makes men, our society and our culture so prone to embracing violence

If the first rule of Fight Club is not to talk about Fight Club, Jonathan Gottschall breaks that rule with The Professor in the Cage: Why Men Fight and Why We Like to Watch.

My conversation with Jonathan Gottschall:

Water in all the wrong places

Those of us in California know all too well what’s its like to be living in the midst of a drought.  Gov. Jerry Brown recently put in place restrictions demanding that urban water use be cut by 25%.  Already the push back is coming.  In a state where agriculture uses well over 50% of the state’s water, and only contributes 3% to the state’s economy, urban water users are becoming angry.

There is much talk about pipelines, about desalination, and new technology to bring water to the parched desert that is much of California. 

All of this echoes a battle of an earlier time.  A time, at the turn of the last century, when a man named William Mulholland would devise a plan to make the desert that was Los Angeles bloom and allow it to become the world class, cutting edge metropolis that it is today.

Perhaps in these dry times, its instructive to look back to that previous period and see what we might learn.

My conversation with Les Standiford about his book Water to the Angels: William Mulholland, His Monumental Aqueduct, and the Rise of Los Angeles

Barney Frank

One of the big things missing in politics today is historical and institutional memory.  The sense of collegiality, of institutional respect and the positive value of public policy, seem to have been replaced by gotcha politics, partisan positioning and the effort to achieve petty political advantage.  

Former Congressman Barney Frank has born witness to this change and he’s seen it from all sides. He helped usher in our renewed respect and acceptance for gays and lesbians in public life and fought in the civil right issue of our time, for gay marriage. He used the best of the public policy apparatus to bring forth financial reform, but he’s also seen the ways in which our political process has become mired and disconnected from the realities of 21st century life.

He understands that principals must be part of politics and that “to legislate” is not a dirty word.

He shares some of that life experience in his new memoir Frank: A Life in Politics from the Great Society to Same-Sex Marriage

My conversation with Barney Frank:  

The capital of 20th century urbanism

Sometimes, even the most interesting of subjects are presented to us in more or less predictable or at least accepted ways.  It’s rare that a work of ideas come to us in an truly imaginative form. But that is exactly what David Kishik has done with The Manhattan Project: A Theory of a City

As cities are becoming ever more important, as most of America and the world moves into urban spaces, understanding cities and their relationship to people is every more important.

David Kishik is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the Institute for Liberal Arts and Interdisciplinary Studies at Emerson College 

My conversation with David Kishik:

We are in the Golden Age of Public Shaming

There once was a time, back in the 18th and 19th centuries, when public shaming was the norm.  The stockades, corporal punishment, torture marks and even the famed Scarlet Letter, all represented ways in which society could express it’s scorn.

Today, with the power and reach of the Internet and social media, we are in a golden age of shaming.  Monica Lewinsky’s recent Ted Talk on the subject has been viewed over 3 million times.

But has this new age of shaming made us better?  Has it reined in indecent behavior?  Has it made us more just or just more paranoid?  The long time radio host Don Imus used to say he’d like to ask guests, especially public figures, very tough questions in the hope that the answers just might ruin their careers.   Today that can happen in the blink of a Tweet.

Jon Ronson  has been studying this recent phenomenon and he writes about it in So You've Been Publicly Shamed.

My conversation with Jon Ronson:

In Defense of Liberal Education

The rate of voter participation in America continues to decline.  Yes, some of it is our politics today. But another part of it just may be a failure to embrace the true education for citizenship.

And it’s no wonder. Some of the fundamental ideas of what it means to be a citizen; the ability to reason, to analyze, and to articulate those views, has gone into remission.

In our education today, we are obsessed with what is call STEM.  Science Technology, Engineering and Math.  All very important. But Lost in this obsession is Writing, History, Rhetoric, and the Arts.  

State Governors are defunding liberal arts programs in state universities, the President is putting down Art History, and educational institutions from K-12 to our universities, are responding to the pressures.

There seems to be no regard for the fact that today’s technology will be tomorrows nostalgia and the ability to learn, think and write is forever.

Taking up this cause of liberal education is Fareed Zakaria in his new book In Defense of a Liberal Education.

He is one of our premiere foreign policy analysts, the host of Fareed Zakaria GPS on CNN and a columnist for the Washington Post.

My conversation with Fareed Zakaria:

RoadTrip Nation's ROADMAP

Everyday we hear and read more about how life is changing.  Probably while we were sleeping last night, someone came up with an app that will alter the way we work or play or interact.

It’s not surprising then that all of this profoundly impacts the careers we choose, the work we do and and what that work might look like in five, ten or fifteen years.

So where to begin.  If you are a young person starting out, or a making a mid career change, where is that Roadmap to that future.

Roadmap: The Get-It-Together Guide for Figuring Out What to Do with Your Life is the latest book by RoadTrip Nation and my guest Nathan Gebhard. It is based on the wisdom of more than 300 leaders.

My conversation with Nathan Gebhard: 

The real evolution of Steve Jobs

One of the dangers of our celebrity culture today, is that we tend to look at those who've attained that status, regardless of their field of endeavor, as fully formed human beings, whose life began and ended with the achieve that catapulted them into iconic status. 

Nothing can be further from the truth.  In looking at the stories or biographies of these celebrities, on the one hand we have case studies that zero in a particular moment in time, or hagiographies that only heighten misperception.

This has t

ended to be the case with Steve Jobs.  He wasn’t born as the  iconic founder and savior of Apple.  He evolved over time and his skills, talents and personality either acted as receptors or antagonists to the moment and issues at hand.

In looking at his story, we see the full magnitude of humanity that was, in and of itself, a part of his success.

Rick Tetzeli tells that story in Becoming Steve Jobs: The Evolution of a Reckless Upstart into a Visionary Leader

My conversation with Rick Tetzeli:  

Creative Destruction comes to Warfare

Technological change and creative destruction is everywhere.  It’s changed the way we work, the way we interact with each other, the foundation of education, and not surprisingly the nature of warfare.

We’ve all seen the media images of drones giving us perfect images; the perfect eye in the sky for perfectly targeted air strikes.  As least that’s how it looks on Homeland, and 24 and the images for Abbottabad.

The reality however is somewhat different.  Less than clear images, imperfect targeting that kills civilians, increasingly complex and overpriced equipment and on the other hand, lower barriers to entry with respect to some drones, that will soon make them available to nations, groups or individuals everywhere.  Soon surveillance, and even "death from above," will be on a par with package delivery

It’s a scary future, one that Washington keeps pretty hidden,  and one that the Washington editor of Harpers,  Andrew Cockburn talks about in Kill Chain: The Rise of the High-Tech Assassins

My conversation with Andrew Cockburn: 

Editing life code

Conventional wisdom has long held that evolution is something that takes place slowly and  over centuries.  Concurrently we know that technological changes, and changes in the human condition have speeded up at a hyper multiple pace.  We have often thought that much of our anxiety and even some fundamental social problems stem from that dissonance, from that disconnect between our external and our internal change.

However, what if we ourselves, as a species, as generic templates, were really changing at the same time, in real time.  Imagine that all the plates are spinning at rapid speed and in different directions.  It’s not surprising then that they may crash into each other, some may shatter, and some will survive even stronger and sturdier.

In this way, we are rewriting life code. We are according to Juan Enriquez, Evolving Ourselves: How Unnatural Selection and Nonrandom Mutation are Changing Life on Earth.

My conversation with Juan Enriquez: 

The Myth of America as a "Christian Nation"

It was Churchill who reminded us that history is written by the victors.  Well this is as true of religious history as it is of military, political and geopolitical history. 

We’ve all been been told since childhood of the Christian foundation of America.  That the history of America is John Winthrop's "Shining City on a Hill."  That the Christian Village Green represented the apotheosis of America. 

The fact is, since before the time of Columbus, America has been a pluralistic society.  An idea that Jefferson had to battle to prove, just as President Obama has in his recent speeches about religion.

At a time when technology and globalization continue to draw us all closer together, we have a choice. We can either channel our heritage and embrace that religious diversity or pull up the proverbial drawbridge and defend the mythology.

This is the world that Peter Manseau looks at in his new book One Nation, Under Gods: A New American History.

My conversation with Peter Manseau:

Boston's other unsolved crime

Art theft is always a funny thing.  The public is usually fascinated by the story, but can seldom feel the kind of empathy with the theft, they feel if their neighbors car were broken into.

Art theft, at the highest level is a very special an almost elite kind of crime.  Like reading the pages of Rob Report, it fascinates, but never engages. 

Perhaps that's why so many art thefts are never solved. Including the recent grandaddy of them all, the the theft of priceless painting from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, 25 years ago. Award winning Boston Globe journalist Stephen Kurkjian takes us inside  Master Thieves: The Boston Gangsters Who Pulled Off the Worlds Greatest Art Heist.

My conversation with Stephen Kurkjian: 

Eating Viet Nam

Historians and journalists have devoted millions of pages to trying to understand the world. In fact, it may be a lot simpler than that.  Just maybe it can be done by eating.

We’ve all seen politicians in America, campaigning by eating the local foods and imitating local eating customs.  Why isn’t the same true for geopolitics?

If we can understand the culture of another country through its food, perhaps we’d better understand its people, its culture and its ideas.  In so doing, the world just might be a happier, and more satisfied place.

That’s what Graham Holliday has done in trying to appreciate first south Korea and then Viet Nam.  A place that he takes us to in Eating Viet Nam: Dispatches from a Blue Plastic Table.

My conversation with Graham Holliday: 

Space is a family business

Even back in the tumultuous 60’s  we were enamored with the space program.  The idea of man “slipping the surly bonds of earth,” captured the nation's attention at a time when so much other news was negative.  Kids everywhere wanted to be astronaut. There even was an airline at the time that referred to itself as “the wings of man.”

Our landing on the moon, in 1969, instead of being the beginning of a renewed interest to take us to the planets and beyond, was simply the capstone of our national interest in space. The Shuttle program and the International Space Station, never had the same kind of magnetic pull or a national obsession.

However for the twin brothers, Scott and Mark Kelly,  growing up in New Jersey, the pull never stopped.

Mark Kelly, is a distinguished naval aviator, and astronaut who has flown four shuttle missions.  He has logged almost one-hundred million miles  and circled the plant almost a 1000 times.

His brother Scott, also an astronaut,  is embarking on man’s longest stay aboard the space station. 

And Mark is married to former Congresswoman Gabby Giffords, 

Mark is committed to instilling in young people a renewed interest in space and he’s written Astrotwins -- Project Blastoff

My conversation with Mark Kelly:  

Gary Wills on The Future of the Catholic Church

If there is a single point of cognitive dissonance in our world today, it revolves around change.  We love change.  We think we like to embrace the new, and yet we fear change.  We hang on to a the past, forgetting that the past, that feels oh so comfortable, is but a floating endpoint of much previous change.

So to the Catholic Church. For the Church, constant change has been one of its most basic things. Most everything catholics think about dogma and doctrine in the church today, was once revolutionary.

Clearly Pope Francis understands this, with his admonition that grace must overtake laws.  That’s what distinguished historian Garry Wills writes  about in The Future of the Catholic Church with Pope Francis

My conversation with Gary Wills: 

The End of College

Our College and University system in America grew up in opposition to the old European model.  Americans didn’t want to be locked in to specific training or apprenticeships.  We believed that the goal of education was to engage the mind in the realities of the world and so liberal arts education grew up. It  emphasized writing and speaking and creative endeavors in the pursuit of interests beyond the classroom.

Out of this came our great research Universities and things like the California Master Plan for education became the model.

Today, that process is about tests and admissions and loans and student aid and transfers and an insanely complex and arcane process that benefits the Sherpas that have to navigate us through it, but do little for the value of that education.

Just has technology has disrupted so much else, it is now reaching deep into higher education.  What it means is an open question, which we are now coming to grips with.  

Kevin Carey looks deeply into this moment, in his new book  The End of College: Creating the Future of Learning and the University of Everywhere.

My conversation with Kevin Carey:  

Suicide is not Painless

Most of us remember the theme song from Mash, “Suicide is Painless:”

Through early morning fog I see

visions of the things to be

the pains that are withheld for me

I realize and I can see…

Philip Connors, through the suicide of his brother, would come to see many things. About his brother, about his own life and about the pain of loneliness and of childhood trauma.  And most of all, about the need to connect with each other and the lifetime power of those connections. Connors, the acclaimed author of Fire Season, shares his pain and guilt in All the Wrong Places: A Life Lost and Found.

My conversation with Philip Connors:

How the Constitution Invented Hollywood and Silicon Valley

Few classes in law school are drier and more arcane than courses on patents and copyrights.  And while the debate about intellectual property includes the worlds of entertainment, literature and technology, we don’t often make the connections between those arcane laws, the Constitution that laid down their predicate and the creativity that they seek to protect.  But that is exactly what Elizabeth Wurtzel does in her new book Creatocracy: How the Constitution Invented Hollywood.

My conversation with Elizabeth Wurtzel:  

LBJ, Selma and the Great Society

Our mission statement as a country tells us we are a government of laws, and not of men.  Yet without great men, including Adams, who said this, we would not have the laws that have provided the framework for our greatness.

Today, the laws that shape our contemporary society, civil rights, the environment, the social safety net, head start, and college loans, were in large measure the result of the Great Society and Lyndon Johnson.  

Hundreds of thousands of words have been written about Johnson.  Recently the movie Selma reignited the debate about Johnson’s role in Civil Rights legislation.  

But Johnson, like all Presidents, was a flesh and blood human being.  While we may understand and/or debate the history of his Presidency,   Joseph Califano Jr. in his book The Triumph & Tragedy of Lyndon Johnson: The White House Years, gives us a look inside the man himself.

My conversation with Joseph Califano:

Lies, Damned Lies and Love

As novels and movies have repeatedly shown us, when both partners in a relationship tell the story of that relationship, the images, the memories, the experience is generally profoundly different.

Even in good or strong relationships, the perception is shaped by the stories and yes, even the lies we tell each other and ourselves, as a kind of lubrication for intimate interaction.

Over time, the stories and lies build up, until truth is almost indistinguishable, from perception.  

Even the most innocent things, like appearance, cosmetics, clothing, and even pharmaceuticals, are there to mask our true selves,in the effort to make us taller, smarter, younger, or just happier.

Clancy Martin takes on the story of these lies in Love and Lies: An Essay on Truthfulness, Deceit, and the Growth and Care of Erotic Love.

My conversation with Clancy Martin: 

The Federalist Society and the conservative Revolution

As we watch presidential candidates, on both sides, putting together their respective teams for 2016, it reminds us that politics and public policy is indeed a team sport.

Both sides draw from a deep bench of those that served in previous administrations and also bring up young and upcoming rookies,  that then go on, if they win, to be the future veterans.

Just as it’s true in campaigns and policy, it’s equally true in the legal world.  Both parties have their farm teams from which to draw legal policy ideas and judges.

On the left, it’s always been a kind of informal network of professors and legal scholars in our most elite universities and law schools.  On the right, the Federalist Society has become both the back office and the bench for the conservative movement. Amanda Hollis-Brusky takes us inside the Federalist Society in Ideas with Consequences: The Federalist Society and the Conservative Counterrevolution.  She examines how this is shaping our courts and our country.

My conversation with Amanda Hollis-Brusky:

This is your Brain on Food

We’ve all heard the expression, “you are what you eat.” Yet when we think about some of the things we consume, the fast food, the junk food, the endless meals out, assembled with unknown ingredients, perhaps it’s no surprise that we have an obesity epidemic and that so many public health issues can be traced back to what we eat.

On the other side of the table is a vast food/industrial complex, that understands food addiction, the impact of sugars and fats, and spends billions of dollars each years trying to get us hooked.  

But the news isn’t all bad.  There are also foods that protect us from disease and really do improve our health. 

What all of this tells us, is that beyond that simple nutrition class you might have taken, a lesson in biology and chemistry might also be helpful.  Or we can learn from our guest Dr. Gary Wenk and his new book Your Brain on Food: How Chemicals Control Your Thoughts and Feelings

My conversation with Gary Wenk: 

What we don't see about the Middle East

To the extent that we are all the sum total of our wider experience and our private moments, imagine how that might be magnified amidst the terror, turmoil, and violence of Middle East.

A place where even the quiet moments of love, life and even pain are amplified by events in the present and memories of the past.

Mai Al-Nakib’s stories in her collection The Hidden Light of Objects, takes us into the lives of people in the crucible of conflict who hang on to extraordinary memories.

My conversation with Mai Al-Nakib:

Lemony Snicket vs. The Pirates

It was Thoreau who said that “the masses of men lead lives of quiet desperation.” The characters at the center of Daniel Handler’s new adult novel  We Are Pirates want very badly to avoid that fate.  And yet, they find that sometimes the alternative is even more desperation.

My conversation with Daniel Handler: