Talk Cocktail

When we think about the iconography and the history of contemporary policing and urban criminal justice what comes to mind?  Sixty years ago it was Dragnet and Joe Friday. Later, everything from Adam 12 to the work of Joe Wambaugh.  Then their was the Rodney King beating and subsequent riots; the OJ trial, helicopters employed by police and chases, both high and slow speed.  What they all have in common is the City of Los Angeles.  A city that has been on the cutting edge of all that is right and wrong with urban policing.

Long time investigative journalist Joe Domanick writes about this checkered history in Blue: The LAPD and the Battle to Redeem American Policing

My conversation with Joe Dominick:  

Even today, fifteen months before Election Day, we are in full political campaign season.  And while we hear a lot of loose talk about issues, it’s easy to forget that politics is also about both the art of governing, and sometimes doing so in the real world of compromise and possibilities.

Even with all the problems of our healthcare system, Doctors usually go into medicine because that have calling; a desire to help people.  While it's’ hard to believe sometimes, many politicians also have a calling and go into it because they have a desire to use the levers of policy to make the world a better place.

For Missouri Senator Claire McCaskill, this is true.  Since Missouri became state, 194 years ago, she is the first woman to serve as its United States Senator and has just written her memoir Plenty Ladylike.

My conversation with Senator Claire McCaskill:

One of the ongoing conundrums in sports is whether it’s about the team or the individual?  Back in the early days of the NFL,  Pete Rozelle believed passionately, that in a game played only once a week, the team was the key to marketing.  In Basketball, former Commissioner David Stern saw the value of individual stars as the draw for fans.

For Baseball it’s been a mixed bag.  Even for iconic teams like the Dodgers or the Giants, the question of team vs. the individual is hotly debated.

For the Dodgers, at least the current team and its current ownership group, the answer is clear.  With players like Yasiel Puig, Clayton Kershaw, Hanley Ramirez, Adrian Gonzalez, Josh Beckett and Carl Crawford, stars outshine the team. The individual player is king, second only to the dollars that are being paid.

Looking at this team, a team that was in bankruptcy just three years ago, as a result of a a messy divorce, is my guest sports journalist and former ESPN reporter Molly Knight. She takes a hard look at this team in her new book The Best Team Money Can Buy: The Los Angeles Dodgers' Wild Struggle to Build a Baseball Powerhouse

My conversation with Molly Knight:

We have developed what amounts to an addiction/industrial complex.  Each year billions are spent, in both public and private dollars, to treat, cure, and mitigate addiction.  But is it working?  Are today’s so called “best practices,” having measurable, metric driven results?  If not, what might we be doing wrong?

Dr. Marc Lewis believes that the current approach of treating addiction as a disease, lies at the heart of our repeated failures and frustrations.  

In The Biology of Desire: Why Addiction Is Not a Disease, he walks us through the lives of five people, who have journeyed in and out of addiction and show what we might do differently.

My conversation with Dr. Marc Lewis: 

As we debate the ins and out of nuclear proliferation, on editorial pages and in the drawing rooms of Georgetown; in the halls of Congress and in the boiler room political operations of AIPAC, it's worth taking note, on this 70th anniversary of the dawn of the nuclear age, of the full impact of what we are actually talking about.

As powerful as the bomb on Hiroshima was, it was the second bomb, three days later,  on Nagasaki that was even more devastating.

Today, in the shadow of talks about other nations joining the nuclear club, we both note and remember the voices of atomic bomb survivors.

Susan Southard in  Nagasaki: Life After Nuclear War describes the events and the aftermath of August 9th, when a nuclear device, detonated over Nagasaki, changed life on Earth forever, even as U.S. policies at the time kept the suffering hidden.

My conversation with Susan Southard: 

As we debate immigration,  we still always look favorably on the “Dreamers.”  The young undocumented students thriving here in America.  It’s easy to romanticize that experience and even draw conclusion from the success of individuals.

The greater challenge is to look at those successes and see what real world lessons we might draw that can tell us more about success and failure and social mobility here in the U.S.

Dan-el Padilla Peralta is perhaps the penultimate success story.  Raised in New York's shelters, he would ultimately graduate from Princeton, Oxford and Stanford and is currently a Mellon Research Fellow at Columbia.

His memoir is Undocumented: A Dominican Boys Odyssey from a Homeless Shelter to the Ivy League.

My conversation with Dan-el Padilla Peralta:

Today when we think about the publishing industry, we usually think about the ways that it is changing to accommodate the digital world.  E-books, E-readers, cloud storage and white backgrounds dominate the conversation.

But believe it or not, there have been other times when the publishing industry has been rocked by fundamental change and when that change was met with fervent resistance.  One of those times was eighty years ago when an executive name Allen Lane, had this idea for something called “paperback books.”

Books that would be more accessible to the masses. Available not just in bookstores, but in train stations, newsstands and and even the corner grocer.

That fundamental idea by Lane, has been a part of all our lives and of our reading and learning experience.  It also became the basis for the company that he started,  Penguin Books.  One of the most iconic names in publishing today.  An imprint that today is the flagship of Penguin Random House and on this very day marks its eightieth anniversary.

Looking back and looking forward at the publishing industry is Patrick Nolan, VP, Editor in Chief and Associate Publisher at Penguin Books.

My conversation with Patrick Nolan:

I’m often the first to criticize the way in which we are too quick to put things in political terms.  Too often the rush to label “red” or “blue” America gets us into trouble.  But one aspect seems to hold.  We are bluer politically as we get closer to water.  Look at any map and coastal America seems to have a different mindset.  

Perhaps it is because water and proximity to water make a difference.  That it impacts us in profound ways that stem from our evolutionary biology and extend to health, happiness and a more holistic view of the world.

Wallace J. Nichols has devoted himself to understand man's connection to the water.  He explore it in Blue Mind: The Surprising Science That Shows How Being Near, In, On, or Under Water Can Make You Happier, Healthier, More Connected, and Better at What You Do.

My conversation with Wallace J. Nichols:  

We are told, almost from childhood, that we have a legal system and a government of laws and not of men.  Yet it is a system created by man and subject to the biases, frailties and inherent actions of human behavior.

Yet from such a system we often dispense the most draconian of punishments in the name of all of us.

At a time when even member of the Supreme Court of the United States talk of the Founders intent, and of originalism, a whole body of modern scientific evidence suggests that we need to be looking at our criminal justice system in whole news ways...

Law Professor Adam Benforado thinks we essentially need to bring “creative destruction” to one of the foundations of a free society. He outlines the problem and his plans in Unfair: The New Science of Criminal Injustice

My conversation with Adam Benforado:  

To about the same degree that Captain Renault was “shocked, just shocked” to find gambling going on Casablanca, that’s how shocked many of us are to find that politicians and business leaders lie to us.

Whether it’s the latest candidate promising to make the world a better place, or Coca Cola offering the Real Thing,  the idea of marketing and even misrepresentation has been around before spin doctors, and long before  Don Draper.

From the days on the Savanna when the caveman may have allowed his buddy to be eaten by a lion, because he coveted his woman, to the endless promise of the Apple Watch...we know we are often lied to.

But does matter?  Isn’t the idea of a free society the ability to allow us to have the information to be informed, to make our own decisions?  And today, with creative destruction everywhere, when buyers know more about the price of a car than the salesman, when transpiration can be ordered and altered with the click of a mouse, aren't we better off?

Talk radio host and author Ethan Bearman, whose new book is Liars & Whores: How Big Government and Big Business Are Working to Save Their Own Assets, Not Yours,

is not so sure.

My conversation with Ethan Bearman: 

We all remember Ben Franklin flying his kite, or Alexander Graham Bell calling for Watson, even Jonas Salk working quietly in his laboratory.

Today science, or at least big science, is a global effort. It involves governments, private enterprise, universities and vast institutional support.  Think about the International Space Station, the Large Hadron Collider, and even before all of that, the Manhattan Project and even the development of the Internet itself.

All are part of what Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Michael Hiltzik writes about in Big Science: Ernest Lawrence and the Invention that Launched the Military-Industrial Complex.

My conversation with Michael Hiltzik: 

As we hit the half way mark in the Baseball season, how many players are injured, how many are burnt out already?  Are we creating a softer group of players or is 162 games in 180 days, just too many games? Washington Baseball writer Barry Svrluga explores this in The Grind: Inside Baseball's Endless Season.

My conversation with Barry Svrluga:  

We have always studied other cultures so that perhaps we could better understand our own. The realm of cultural anthropology has provided us keen insights into our evolutionary nature and why we do the strange things we do, as human beings.

Wednesday Martin, has used the tools of cultural anthropology to zero in on one very narrow subgroup.  The tiny percentage of the “One Percent” that reside in and around Park Avenue, on the Upper East Side of New York.

Her book Primates of Park Avenue, has gotten a great deal of attention, both for its subject matter, its research and its authenticity.  But there is no question that broadly, it accurately reflects a time, a place and a culture that says something about our collective character in 2015.

My conversation with Wednesday Martin: 

Listen to any of the Republican candidates and it’s clear that the culture war issues that have driven so much political debates over the past 50+ years, are still going on.

Our political discourse is has polarized as ever.  Even to the point where we’ve come to accept that you are never going to change anyones mind about social issues.  So when we do talk, when we do try and debate, we simply talk past each other.  It’s as if complicated personal issues are being discussed in a boiler factory. For no other subject is this more true, than the subject of abortion.

My guest Aspen Baker, thinks there is a better way.  A way to discuss perhaps the most contentious of all issues, the the subject of abortion, and use that discussion as a model to discuss other contentious issues.  Her organization EXHALE has adopted Pro-Voice as its point of view.

My conversation with Aspen Baker: 

Most of us know the legendary story of the group of blind men  who touch an elephant to learn what it is like. Each one feels a different part, but only one part, such as the side or the tusk or the tail.. They then compare notes and learn that they are in complete disagreement about what they experienced

This is the story of Richard Nixon.  

So much has been written about Nixon. Much of it has come in waves.  There was the period after his resignation, of the bad Nixon.  Then after his death, the better Nixon. Now writers, journalists and historians are trying to tie all the threads together.

Perhaps Bill Clinton put it best in his eulogy for Nixon, when he said that “the day of judging President Nixon on anything less than his entire life and career must come to a close.”

Two very distinguished journalists, Evan Thomasand Tim Weiner, have, almost simultaneously, penned new books about Nixon.  

Evan Thomas has written and Tim Weiner One Man Against the World: The Tragedy of Richard NixonBeing Nixon: A Man Divided

I recently had the opportunity to speak with both of them.

My conversation with Evan Thomas

Most of us know the legendary story of the group of blind men  who touch an elephant to learn what it is like. Each one feels a different part, but only one part, such as the side or the tusk or the tail.. They then compare notes and learn that they are in complete disagreement about what they experienced

This is the story of Richard Nixon.  

So much has been written about Nixon. Much of it has come in waves.  There was the period after his resignation, of the bad Nixon.  Then after his death, the better Nixon. Now writers, journalists and historians are trying to tie all the threads together.

Perhaps Bill Clinton put it best in his eulogy for Nixon, when he said that “the day of judging President Nixon on anything less than his entire life and career must come to a close.”

Two very distinguished journalists, Evan Thomas and Tim Weiner, have, almost simultaneously, penned new books about Nixon.  

Evan Thomas has written and Tim Weiner One Man Against the World: The Tragedy of Richard NixonBeing Nixon: A Man Divided

I recently had the opportunity to speak with both of them.

My conversation with Tim Weiner

Long before Steve Jobs and Jony Ives bridged the divide between design and technology,  before Target began selling Michael Graves tea kettles, Charles and Ray Eames made the connection between design, public perception and function. They created designs for furniture, architecture, toys and film and in so doing set the stage for much of the way we view our world today.  

They were visionaries, who were deeply grounded in the history, who understood that modern was also rooted in the classic. 

Daniel Ostroff is a world authority on Charles and Ray Eames. His latest and perhaps seminal work is just out entitled An Eames Anthology: Articles, Film Scripts, Interviews, Letters, Notes, and Speeches.

My conversation with Dan Ostroff:  

We live today in what many consider the age of technology.  Everyday there are new apps, new ways in which incumbency is disrupted.  But very few of the creators or inventors of today, understand the long view, or the way they are changing the world.

Steve Jobs understood. Elon Musk understands.  Maybe even Mark Zuckerberg does.  Part of  that understanding come from education.  From seeing the world beyond themselves and their work, and seeing their place in world.

During another fertile period of innovation in America, as we moved from the 19th to the 20th Century, the same was true.  Sitting high atop the pantheon of those that would seek to change the world then, were Wilbur and Orville Wright.  With the support of their family, their bicycle shop was perhaps the ultimate tech startup of the time.

Wilbur and Orville Wright and their family are subject of a new biography The Wright Brothers, by multiple award winning historian David McCullough.  

My conversation with David McCullough: 

Today boys want to grow up to be professional athletes, or tech billionaires.  But there was time when being a secret agent seemed like just about the coolest thing to do. Whether it was the literary exploits of Bond or Bourne, or the real story Philby, or the moral twilight of le Carre, spycraft, particularly during the days of the Cold War, held a magical appeal. 

It certainly did for Naveed Jamali.  He dreamt of being in Naval Intelligence and it inspired him to become a real life double agent, albeit ending in the parking lot of Hooters.  His is both a very American story but also an international story  

Naveed tells his story along with Ellis Henican in their book How to Catch a Russian Spy: The True Story of an American Civilian Turned Double Agent.

My conversation with Navid Jamali and Ellis Henican: 

There is always someone that leads us into the future.  Someone whose vision and entrepreneurship combine to make the next big idea, the next big thing.

This has been true from Franklin, to Edison, from From Henry Ford to Thomas Watson, from Bill Gates to Steve Jobs and today  Elon Musk may very well be the inheritor of that mantel.

Electric cars, commercial space travel, high speed transportation and even new forms of education, are all part of the vision that Musk sees; and and his vision is on its way to become our reality.

Bloomberg's Ashlee Vance has written a new biograph,y Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future.

My conversation with Ashlee Vance: 

Many of you, I’m sure, think you’d love the idea of seeing your life portrayed in movies or television.  But imagine if you knew nothing about it.  If one day, you saw an ad for a TV show, and you, or at least your life, was the central character.  Would you be scared, shocked, angry, a little excited. Cleary Wolters experienced all of thee things.

As she saw her life in prison portrayed as Alex Vaus in ORANGE IS THE NEW BLACK.

Originally portrayed as Nora Jansen in Piper Kerman’s book,  her life would transform again as a result of her story becoming part of an entertainment and cultural juggernaut.

Now Cleary Wolters takes her star turn as a writer and tells her story in her memoir Out of Orange: A Memoir.

My conversation with Cleary Wolters: 

In the world of families, all eyes are on same sex marriage.  In the Courts, in Statehouses, and in the political arena.  But on the ground, in the households and families where people live, this is just one manifestation of the change in family structures and family relationships.

As such, the world of law and particularly family law, has changed. The way in which these new, creative and ever changing familial bonds are structured, and the complex feedback loop between the legal and loving nature of these relationships, creates whole new ways that we seek legal stability in the face of social and cultural change.

A the apex of this effort are people like my guest, Law Professor Martha Ertman, whose book  Love's Promises: How Formal and Informal Contracts Shape All Kinds of Families looks at the way the law is trying to stay one step ahead of the social change.

My conversation with Martha Ertman:  

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:

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:

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:

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:  

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:

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: 

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: 

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: 

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:

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: 

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: 

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:

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: 

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: 

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: 

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:  

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:

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