Talk Cocktail

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  The sense of collegiality, of institutional respect and the positive value of public policy, seem to have been replaced by gotcha politics, partisan positioning and the effort to achieve petty political advantage.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: 

Chuck Todd captures the Catch 22 of the Obama Presidency

Fifty-five years ago Joseph Heller gave us the paradox of Catch 22.  It came to mean a set of contradictory ideas and rules that conflicted with themselves. And while Catch 22 remains a cornerstone of American literature, it also just might be a cornerstone of the Obama Presidency.

Barack Obama came to office on a wave of hope and change.  He came to Washington to change it.  Only to realize, that if you want to get stuff done to change Washington, you can’t change it, unless you work within it.  

It is n that paradox. in that Catch 22, through which we can perhaps best understand the past six years of the Obama presidency. 

Chuck Todd, host of NBC’s Meet the Press, as captured the essence of this dilemma in his examination of the first six year of the Obama presidency in  The Stranger: Barack Obama in the White House.

My conversation with Chuck Todd:

Can Boomers afford to age with dignity?

It’s been said that if you live to an old age, you give give up all the things that make you want to live to an old age.  At a time when 10,000 boomers a day are reaching retirement age, when the generation that sought to change the world, is being changed by the ravages of age, when the cost of care for this huge generation of seniors could bankrupt us personally and as a nation, it’s time for a frank conversation to examine, if there is a better way forward.

MacArthur “genius” grant recipient Ai Jen Poo plunges into the heart of this discussion, in her new book  The Age of Dignity: Preparing for the Elder Boom in a Changing America.

My conversation with Ai-Jen Poo:

Filmmaking that truly stands the test of time

Can you imagine if immediately after 9/11, filmmakers like Scorsese, Spielberg, Coppola, Fincher or Apatow would enlist in the military to make films about the war on terror?  Films that would show America at war against its Taliban and Middle East enemies.  Well with  the exception of Clint Eastwood, that's pretty hard to imagine.

Yet in WWII, that's exactly what happened.  Filmmakers John Ford, William Wyler, Frank Capra, John Houston, and George Stevens would in various ways, join with the military in the war effort.  

The work that they did, the impact it had on them personally and on the country, would forever change the workings of Hollywood. It emphasized the importance of film as entertainment and as an art form, as well as how Americans viewed war.  In that sense, those images still shape our perceptions today as they are a part of our cultural and political DNA.

Mark Harris takes us though the war work of these great Directors in Five Came Back: A Story of Hollywood and the Second World War

My conversation with Mark Harris:  

Tales from Both Sides of the Brain

How many times have you heard someone say that they were of two minds on a particular subject?  What they were in fact reflecting and acknowledging, is the idea that we are literally of two minds. That the left and right hemispheres of the brain represent different and sometimes independent parts of the whole.  Discovering this, understanding the foundations of cognitive neuroscience, how the brain works and how the two hemispheres communicate with each other, has been the work and crowning achievement of Michael Gazzaniga.  

Often call “the father of Cognitive Neuroscience,” Gazzaniga has written his memoir Tales from Both Sides of the Brain: A Life in Neuroscience.

My conversation with Michael Gazzaniga:

The Man Who Couldn't Stop......The Man Who Couldn't Stop......

How many of you have ever left the house, gotten half way to your destination and were convinced that you had left the oven on, or left the door open, even though the rational side of you knew you had not?  The more you tried to think about it, the more you became obsessed. Until you had no choice but to turn back, go home and find that yes, the oven was off, or the door was closed. 

Then imagine this kind of obsession impacting every aspect of your life. Turned on 24/7, often about the same issues.  That gives you just a glimpse into the life of someone with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD.)  

Science journalist,  David Adam has been dealing with OCD, our fourth most common mental disorder, since he was a young student.  

In his book The Man Who Couldn't Stop: OCD and the True Story of a Life Lost in Thought, he

gives us a glimpse of the illness, its causes and treatments.

My conversation with David Adams:

The Science behind Touch, Pleasure and Pain

For the ten million or so people that saw Fifty Shades of Grey this past weekend, or the many more millions who read the books, in a way what they were doing is trying to understand touch.  The complex ways in which our bodies and our brains process pleasure and pain. Why childhood development is so crucial to that process and the ways in which touch shapes our sexuality,  our cooperation, our well being and our own internal interaction between the physical and emotional world.   

Professor of neuroscience David Linden, examines this interface in his new book  Touch: The Science of Hand, Heart, and Mind.

My conversation with David J. Linden: 

Lynsey Addario: A Photographer's Life of Love and War

There is a principle in physics known as the uncertainty principle.  the idea simplified is that it’s impossible to observe or measure certain phenomenon without having an impact on that which is being observed or measured.

In many ways we might look for the same impacts among those that give us the images of war and disaster. What do these images tell us about sufferings of people in faraway places? Images that do more than report,  that can inspire dissent, foster violence, or create sympathy or apathy. They often tell us about the nature of war and the obligations of conscience.  Sometimes they even make us think or feel about a reality far beyond what any picture can convey?

Few understand this better than Lynsey Addario.  One of the greatest photo journalists of our time, her work has appeared regularly in the New York Times. She is  recipient of a MacArthur Genius Grant and the Pulitzer Prize. Her memoir is It's What I Do: A Photographer's Life of Love and War

My conversation with Lynsey Addario: 

Has Italy always been falling apart?

Back in the early 1960’s, in Fellini’s La Dolce Vita, the world took note of the decadence of life in the Italian capital of Rome.  Inspired by two major political/sex scandals of the era, the film which would win the 1960 Palme d'or in Cannes, depicted a Rome that was ultra sophisticated, ultra modern, ultra decadent and ultra cool.

Fifty plus years later,  Rome is kind of  antidote to America.  There is less sexuality, less modernity, less sophistication and less decadence. 

However there is more chaos, corruption and insecurity.   How did a nation that was so desired for so long, come to its current fate? John Hooper tries to give us some answers in The Italians.

My conversation with John Hooper: 

Miranda July

Short Stories, films ,novels and performance art.  Over the years we’ve spoken to many guest that do some of these things, at the top of their profession.  However,  Miranda July has done them all and all of them exceedingly well 

Her collection of short stories, NO ONE BELONGS HERE MORE THAN YOU won numerous awards and has been published in 23 countries. Her film,  ME AND YOU AND EVERYONE WE KNOW, was a winner of Camera d'or at the Cannes Film Festival and a special Jury prize at Sundance.  

If there truly is such thing as a renaissance woman, it is Miranda July.  Her debut novel is The First Bad Man.

My conversation with Miranda July: 

Just how dangerous is Vladimir Putin? Ask Bill Browder!

We often throw terms around in our political and geopolitical debates like capitalist, and communist, and oligarch, and class divide.  But very few who use these hot button terms truly understand the deep essence of what they really mean.

One of those that does understand is Bill Browder. He rebelled against communism as a teenager, became of capitalist and then made millions in Putin’s Russia.  What he didn’t know was just what kind of price he would pay for getting involved in the ever entangling web of Putin, oligarchs and a system 180 degrees from our own, a system of men and not of laws. 

The result was the brutal death of Browder’s lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky and Browder’s still ongoing quest for justice.  

The story is all told in his new book, Red Notice: A True Story of High Finance, Murder, and One Man's Fight for Justice.

My conversation with Bill Browder: 

Marriage today is not your parents marriage...but it just might be your grandparents

It was Woody Allen who said that “marriage was the end of hope.”  We know from the behavior of millennials today that while they strongly favor equality of marriage, they are not to keen on the institution for themselves.

Arguably marriage today, like so much in our society, is undergoing a transition and even disruption.  Marriage today is certainly not your parents marriage….but is it maybe your grandparents.

Suppose we skip back not one, but two generations and look at marriage. Can we learn anything that is at all relevant to our 24/7 tech driven culture today?

Karl Pillemer thinks so.  He has taken the time to talk to hundreds of older retirees about their relationships and their marriages, in the hope that age might provide a little wisdom on one of the oldest subjects. The results are in 30 Lessons for Loving: Advice from the Wisest Americans on Love, Relationships, and Marriage.

My conversation with Karl Pillemer:  

Is the perfect Battery the holy grail of the electronic age?

If any one issue has dominated both our international and domestic dialogue it is the subject of energy.  A developed and developing world, with every increasing energy needs and, in spite of the current glut, not an endless supply of oil.

Enter alternative energy...wind, solar and the battery.  If only we could prefect the later. With range anxiety for electric cars, computer anxiety on long flights, the need for a better battery might very well be the holy grail of the electronic and digital age.

Steve Levine, who’s  written about and covered the energy sector for years, now in The Powerhouse: Inside the Invention of a Battery to Save the World, turns his attention to the struggle to build that perfect battery.

My conversation with Steve Levine: 

Fear, Hope and Dread

It is often said that to name something is to understand it.  If that’s true, than Scott Stossel has a greater understanding of anxiety than anyone else.  In his book, My Age of Anxiety: Fear, Hope, Dread, and the Search for Peace of Mind, he takes us through the litany of his multiple anxieties and treatments.  In so doing, we come away with a far greater understanding of and sympathy for the anxieties, that for Scott and many others, (far more than we know) plaque everyday life.

In a more connected, complex, speeded up world, are these individual anxieties worse, and do they in fact create a kind of feedback loop into our collective and societal anxiety?  A society in which we have the unique ability to turn even good news, into something to worry about.

My conversation with Scott Stossel: 

Three Unlikely Traits Explain the Rise and Fall of Cultural Groups in America

Why is it that certain cultural and/or ethnic groups tend to have successes, far in excess of their percentage of the population?  Jews, Indians, Iranians, Chinese, Mormons, and a few others.

These groups are simply more financially and academically successful than others in the US. And while hearing this, often sends powerful signals to our racial antenna, the fact is that if we can answer the question of why,  then perhaps we can find a formula to lift up others.  To truly find the holy grail of personal, economic and cultural fulfillment.

Amy Chua and Jed Rubenfeld have been on this search.  And while what they found makes a lot of people uncomfortable, the fact is The Triple Package: How Three Unlikely Traits Explain the Rise and Fall of Cultural Groups in America, may be a key to rebirthing the spirit that made America great.

My conversation with Amy Chua and Jed Rubenfeld: 

Vidal

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

Gore Vidal was one of those.  He wrote about history, about sex, about politics and sometimes all at once.  He wrote non-fiction, novels, movies, and was the guest you wanted to have at a dinner party.

But he was also one of the bad boys of American letter.  His rapier wit and insults pushed away as many people as admired him.  But like most complex figures, the public surfaces were only part of the story.

To get deeper we have the work of my guest Michael Mewshaw .  A long time friend of Vidal, he's just written Sympathy for the Devil: Four Decades of Friendship with Gore Vidal.

My conversation with Michael Mewshaw: 

The paid dogs of war

The world is a dangerous place.  We no longer have the moral clarity and security of the cold war, or of earlier wars where we knew precisely who our enemy were.  Today, as non state actors battle nations and each other, the asymmetry of conflict has created new opportunities for paid armies, and for mercenaries on all sides.

Just as we outsource call centers and the delivery of packages, today we outsource war.  From the protection of the high seas to making our own national interests more palatable 

But at what cost, and what might be the human and global consequence of unleashing the paid dogs of war.

This is the world that Sean McFate knows well and writes about in The Modern Mercenary: Private Armies and What They Mean for World Order.

My conversation with Sean McFate: 

Alexandra Fuller

It is one of the tragic ironies of the psychoanalytic age that we are attracted to people, particularly our partners, who often turn out to be the very ones that begin to repel us later in life.

At first, its those once endearing and now annoying habits. And then, it becomes annoyance at their larger world view.

Perhaps it's because in partnering, we seek to make up for those things that we are lacking.  Perhaps its because we buy into to the old adage that opposites attract. Even though, contemporary research shows us that that is simply not true, that partners that are similar tend to do better.  

Today we seek and talk of authenticity, but is it possible  to be authentic, while trying to compromise with anyone that is the opposite from who we are at core?

Those are some of the central ideas running through Alexandra Fuller's memoir, Leaving Before the Rains Come.

My conversation with Alexandra Fuller: 

The Brain's Way

Imagine a machine that can rewire itself, finds its own way to work around non working circuits, heal its own bugs and viruses, find and adapt to new sources of energy and know when it needs repair and attention.

No, it’s not the latest product from Silicon Valley, it is the human brain.  The recent discoveries about the brains ability to adapt,  its neuroplasticity, have truly redefined how we imagine the brain and how we treat it in the face of disease and trauma.

Someday, it may also lead us full circle to better design and development of artificial intelligence and machines that might actually mimic the amazing abilities of the brain.

At the cutting edge of all of this is the work of Dr. Norman Doidge, the author of The Brain's Way of Healing: Remarkable Discoveries and Recoveries from the Frontiers of Neuroplasticity

My conversation with Dr. Norman Doidge: