Talk Cocktail

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:  

A Biography of PTSD

Sometimes the reality of war is just too complex and absurd to be understood in real time.  Perhaps that why books about war are so powerful and important.  That’s why novels like  Catch 22, Slaughterhouse 5, The Things they Carried, A Rumor of War, and The Yellow Birds, have been essential for our understating.

Equally important to our understand is grasping the impact of PTSD on those who served or who, for whatever reasons, journeyed into the heart of darkness that is combat.  

While embedded with troops in Iraq, journalist David Morris almost died when a Humvee he was riding in encountered an IED. His book, explores his own trauma from that event, as well as the history and science of post-traumatic stress disorder.The Evil Hours: A Biography of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.

My conversation with David J. Morris:

The last time the music business died

As music and the music business evolves today, the content of the music often plays second fiddle to the debate about economics.   About digital royalties, performance royalties, Pandora, Spotify, etc.  In many way the medium impacts the message, the songs we hear and what gets produced and what becomes popular.

And why not?  After all, it is the music business!  In fact, it always has been a business, but one balanced precariously on the fulcrum of popular taste.

Where those two ideas and trends intersect, is usually responsible for the kind of music we get.

All of this went through a revolutionary shift in the post war years, another time of creative destruction in the business of music. The results of which, changed music forever.

Professor and journalist Ben Yagoda examines this time in The B Side: The Death of Tin Pan Alley and the Rebirth of the Great American Song

My conversation with Ben Yagoda: 

The Legacy of Tahrir Square...Four years later

Revolutions are hard AND exciting. They combine courage and new ideas and the excitement of once in a generation change. However what’s even harder, is what comes next. The way in which the apogee of a moment of revolutionary fervor sticks and is translated into changes in government and in bureaucratic institutions. And perhaps most importantly, the way in which the multilateral ideas of the divergent revolutionaries come together to shape it, accommodate and compromise.

We know from our own American revolution how difficult that can be. Think about it. We are still impacted by mistakes or compromises made by our founders over a 139 years ago.

Four years ago this month, the revolution in Tahrir Square began a tectonic shift. In Egypt and in the Middle East. How it happened, how it’s played out and the acts of individual action, courage and diversity lie at the heart of Thanassis Cambanis' new book Once Upon A Revolution: An Egyptian Story

My conversation with Thanassia Cambanis: 

Personality and temperament determine everything!

F. Scott Fitzgerald, in The Great Gatsby, defines personality as “an unbroken series of successful gestures.”  Certainly that is the outer manifestation.  But science, brain research and  cutting edge psychology tells us that it's all part of a much more complex overall system.  A system that shapes our lives, our identities and our emotions.  It's a system that determines that the way in which we understand ourselves and our own personalities, shapes how we view and interact with others.

This is the work of John D. Mayer  the renowned psychologist who co-developed the groundbreaking theory of emotional intelligence, and now looks even deeper into personality in Personal Intelligence: The Power of Personality and How It Shapes Our Lives.

My conversation with John D. Mayer:

Congress then and now....Lyndon Johnson and the Battle for the Great Socieity

American political history is a complex and dynamic process.  In that process, there have been periods of entropy and period of great progress and imagination.  Both have been a function of a political system designed by our founders. 

But also, the temper and tenor of the times and the degree to which individual leaders have known how to work those levers of power has also shaped our political destiny.

The period of the Johnson Presidency, post 1964, is one of those period.  The Great Society, The Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, medicare and medicare, are all just a part of an agenda that reshaped America

Today as we face congressional gridlock, as we mark the 50th anniversary of the apogee of the civil right movement, and as the president goes before Congress tonight. As we reassess our politics and institutions, its well worth the time to look at that unique and politically bountiful period of the Johnson Presidency.

That is what historian Julian Zelizer does in his new book The Fierce Urgency of Now: Lyndon Johnson, Congress, and the Battle for the Great Society.

My conversation with Julian Zelizer: 

The media history that must be the context for the Net Neutrality debate

So many of the weaknesses of our media today are blamed on the digital revolution.  Certainly the transition to digital has rendered change.  But to a large extent those changes only magnify some of the fundamental flaws that afflicted American media as it evolved in the 20th century

The weakening of regulation, the increased power of the free market to shape coverage of news and the increasing conflating of news and entertainment ALL added to the mix.  Today, those forces, combined with the impact of technology has, for better or worse, created a landscape that some would argue, is antithetical to even the minimal requirements of a democratic society.

This is the landscape that Professor Victor Pickard explores in America's Battle for Media Democracy: The Triumph of Corporate Libertarianism and the Future of Media Reform.

My conversation with Victor Pickard:

The Bush Dynasty, America's Invisible Government, and the Hidden History of the Last Fifty Years

Our nation was founded in opposition to dynasty.  

From the push back to George III, to our concerns about another Bush/Clinton Presidential race, Americans have always been suspicious of the dynastic impulse.

Yet today, we seem to be smothered in a dynasty of the elites.  Even while the politics of the fringes gets all the media attention, the centers of power in both political parties seem fixed to support candidates and policies that further the social and economic interest of the "one percent."

Sitting astride this tendency for over fifty years has been the Bush family.  The degree to which their influence and power has shaped events, is the subject of Russ Baker's book, Family of Secrets: The Bush Dynasty, America's Invisible Government, and the Hidden History of the Last Fifty Years

My conversation with Russ Baker: 

Can anybody save Yahoo?

Just as we demand a lot from our political leaders today, we also demand a lot from CEOs. Even if they are not founders,  they need to be telegenic, charismatic, visionary, have a detailed plan, and adept at working the politics of the boardroom.   They need to be comfortable in being a part of the one percent, have media coaches and PR people and be on a short leash from  quarter to quarter.

Today, the CEOs that rise to that definition are few: Jamie Dimon, Tim Cook, Alan Mulally, Jeffrey Immelt and Marissa Mayer.  Perhaps of all of these, Marissa Mayer came to her job with the least preparation and some of the highest expectations.  Perhaps that is why, large parts of the public are fascinated by her every move, from fighting insurgent Yahoo shareholders, to gracing the pages of Vogue.

Nicholas Carlson, chief correspondent for Business Insider has written  Marissa Mayer and the Fight to Save Yahoo. The first in depth look at Mayer and her rise from the nerdy girl at science camp, to the CEO of a 30 billion company, by age 38.

My conversation with Nicholas Carlson:

The Political Classroom or can we ever teach citizenship again?

We live in an age in which everything has become politicized.  The coffee we drink, the food we eat, the shows and movies we watch, and the cars we buy,

all seem to convey some kind of political message.

Where once these things represented class, or taste, or education, today it’s all about politics.  Even in non-partisan races, political ideology becomes the central issue.

So what impact does this have on our ability to teach politics, or citizenship or democracy or even science in the classroom? Paula McAvoy examines not only the impact, but a way into this discussion that can perhaps transcend or even co-opt our partisan divide.  She details it in The Political Classroom: Evidence and Ethics in Democratic Education.

My conversation with Paula McAvoy: 

The Internet is Not the Answer

The industrial revolution changed the world.  It changed the nature of work, it displaced workers, it ushered in the Gilded Age and created more inequality.  It shrank the world, drove consumerism, and reshaped political ideology.

The Internet revolution, 150 years later, has had  startling  similar effects.  We worship at the altar of creative destruction, we fetishize technology and the freedom and democratization that the Internet had promised.  But at what price?  

Simply, can the same technology and companies that fractured and reshaped the world, now be what we need to put it back together again?

Andrew Keen, argues that The Internet Is Not the Answer.

My conversation with Andrew Keen: 

The Killing of the Creative Class

Long before radio, I spent years in Hollywood.  This was just as the Word Processor and the high volume copy machine were taking hold.  When those things came along, everyone joked that screenwriting software and easy access to copying machines would lower the quality of screenplays.  Little did those jokesters know, that was just the beginning.

Not only did the medium become the message, it subsumed the message.  The medium, the technology, the process in fact became the creative endeavor.  Today it’s Apps and coding and creative destruction.  

And yes, technology makes life better, cheaper, faster and sometimes does allow more time for creativity.  But is there something we have lost in the process?

Without getting stuck in the tired morass of, "the old days were better," is there some objective thing we have lost in our culture, in our selves or  in our intellectual DNA?

Former LA Times arts and culture reporter Scott Timberg takes up these issues and more in Culture Crash: The Killing of the Creative Class.

My conversation with Scott Timberg:  

Close Encounters of the mystical kind

It was Churchill who said that when the present sits in judgment of the past, we loose the future.  Obviously not the attitude of memoirists.

But also not the attitude of someone who looks back on the totality of one's life and tries to understand who they are and where they came from.  

Barbara Ehrenreich discovered, late in life, a journal she had kept during her tumultuous adolescence. She writes about a mystical experience, that to her rational and atheist self today, was nothing less than shattering.  In Living with a Wild God: A Nonbeliever's Search for the Truth about Everything, she reconstructs her childhood, beginning with the perspective of a young girls obsession with important questions.

My conversation with Barbara Ehrenreich:

The Medicalization of Ordinary Life

When something goes wrong with a car or an appliance, or even the human body, the “instructions” for repair are often clear. However my guest argues that the manual that tries to define the parameters and terms of mental illness, is without that kind of scientific basis. He says that even an auto repair manual, much less a biology textbook, has more science than the DMS 5

Yet with the fifth volume of the DSM, and the concurrent explosion in psychotropic drugs, Doctors are relying on it, more than ever. In fact, it may actually be detrimental to taking care of our mental health.

Leading the criticism of DSM 5, is Dr. Allen Francis, a man who was one of the purveyors of the previous DSM 4.  Part of his criticism is that we are over diagnosing and sometimes making normal into something that needs to be treated. 

His book, recently out in paperback is Saving Normal: An Insider's Revolt against Out-of-Control Psychiatric Diagnosis, DSM-5, Big Pharma, and the Medicalization of Ordinary Life.

My conversation, from earlier this year, with Dr. Allen Francis:  

Sit right down and write myself a letter

What might our knowledge of history be like if snapchat had been around in earlier centuries?

The good news is that it wasn’t.  In a time when people wrote letters, not texts or emails, those letters got saved and later curated.  Letters that give us little glimpses into personalities, history and the human condition at another time, in another place.

Shawn Usher, has devoted himself to being a curator of many such letters.  He is the founder of the blog, Letters of Note and now that’s been turned into the book  Letters of Note: An Eclectic Collection of Correspondence Deserving of a Wider Audience.

My conversation with Shawn Usher: 

The Sounds of Silence...Deaf Culture and what it means to hear

Remembering the early days of the cell of phone, we all remember, “can you hear me now.”  For most of us this was modern nuisance.  But for some, those that are hearing impaired, or profoundly deaf, those words have far greater meaning.  

While much progress has been made in the technology, treatment and study of deafness, we are just beginning to understand the broader implications, with respect to brain development, literacy and the very ideas surrounding the acquisition of language.

This is the world that Lydia Denworth became immersed in with her son Alex.  She talks about that experience in I Can Hear You Whisper: An Intimate Journey through the Science of Sound and Language.

My conversation with Lydia Denworth: 

What caring and service really means

What would it take for you to give up your Western lifestyle, move to Ghana, live in a mud hut and commit yourself to helping thousands of lost children?

You would think that this kind of thing only happens in the movies, or in literature. That real lives are generally not a kind of fairy tail.

Not true.  Lisa Lovatt-Smith did exactly that.  She traded in her glamorous life in Paris and a glamorous life at Vogue for the experience of moving with her daughter to Ghana and trying to change the world. 

She’s shares her story in Who Knows Tomorrow: A Memoir of Finding Family among the Lost Children of Africa.

My conversation with Lisa Lovatt-Smith: 

Language is Culture, Culture is Language

To achieve proficiency in a new language late in life is near impossible.  But suppose you didn’t just want to learn the language, you wanted total immersion.  You wanted to learn the culture, the origins of the language, to become one with the language.  That’s what my guest William Alexander set out to do with French.

He wanted to be French and language was simply the vessel. But even with that kind of commitment, the effort almost broke his heart. He tells of that effort in Flirting with French: How a Language Charmed Me, Seduced Me, and Nearly Broke My Heart.

My conversation with William Alexander: 

Why Learning Beats Knowing

It used to be that the classroom prepared you for a career.  Today your lifetime career is a classroom, where you must be continuously learning.  In doing so, the horizons open up and opportunities abound.

The traditional straightjacket of education and career have been, like most things, disrupted. In it’s place, possibility and creative destruction..

Along with this comes a whole new way of doing business.  A place, not unlike sports, where the newcomer, the rookie has an important role to play.  Without Joe Panik, the SF Giants don’t win a world series.  

In today business world, information isn’t siloed or hidden.  It’s available for all, and it gives the rookie a more level playing field in which to work, bring new ideas and new ways of looking at the world.

This is the back drop for Liz Wiseman's look at    Rookie Smarts: Why Learning Beats Knowing in the New Game of Work.

My conversation with Liz Wiseman: 

A Father and Daughter Cook Their Way Around the World

One of the foundations of the changing nature of education, is the idea of deeper learning.  Direct, hands on mastery of content, though solving real world problems in a collaborative way. This has created dramatic results in all academic areas.

But it’s also something that can take place right at home.  That’s what best selling author Mark Kurlansky did with his daughter Talia.  They combined culture, geography, chemistry and all in the context of preparing  delicious meals.  

Now they share their efforts in  International Night: A Father and Daughter Cook Their Way Around the World.

My conversation with Mark and Talia Kurlansky: 

The quest driven life

To dream the impossible dream has been the great engine of progress in the world.  From the early explorers, to scientists and engineers, to man's quest to explore the planets.  The story of exploration is the story of mankind.  

When John Kennedy laid down the predicate of reaching the moon by the end of a decade, he defined for the whole county that kind of clear goal that also drives individuals forward.  

The story of some of these individuals, along with his own quest,  is what Chris Guillebeau writes about in The Happiness of Pursuit: Finding the Quest That Will Bring Purpose to Your Life.

My conversation with Chris Guillebeau: 

We may be an insignificant and fleeting moment in time...and we know it

Conventional wisdom has long held that we live in a vast and indeed expanding universe, in which we humans are but a seemingly small and insignificant part.  

But in that classic view, are we not giving ourselves enough credit? Perhaps we are more unique than we think.  Perhaps we are not all that ordinary, on a not so ordinary rock in the vast cosmos.  

Just maybe, that classic view, needs to be reexamined.  That is what Caleb Scharf has done in his new book The Copernicus Complex: Our Cosmic Significance in a Universe of Planets and Probabilities.

My conversation with Caleb Scharf:

Gus Speth explains why the Environmental Movement still matters

Perhaps part of what plagues us when we think about most issues today, is that we tend to see them in very myopic ways.  The world is a more and more complex place, and yet we do the opposite of what we should do.  We too often silo information or categories, or problems.  

We don’t always see the connections and therefore we get frustrated, because we can’t seem to solve the problems.  

Environmental issues are no different.  My guest, one of the fathers of the environmental movement,  James "Gus" Speth, believes that when we talk about environmentalism, it’s more than the air, or the water, or the earth.  That there is a holistic approach we need to take that is  essential if we want to solve anything.

He writes about this in the context of his own history in his memoir Angels by the River.

My conversation with Gus Speth: