Talk Cocktail

The 9/11 generation

As we approach this anniversary of 9/11, it's worth noting that the Afghan war has become the longest in American history. Also, to think about how many of the men and women who have served in that war, were motivated and inspired to act, by those events thirteen years ago.

Michael Golembesky is one of those.  He would go on to become one of the first members of the US Marines Special Operations Team, that was created in 2006.

His story, his eight years of service, is a telling snapshot of both the good and bad of our efforts in Afghanistan.

He shares the personal and military nuances of his story in his memoir Level Zero Heroes: The Story of U.S. Marine Special Operations in Bala Murghab, Afghanistan.

My conversation with Michael Golembesky:

The Gold Rush...then and now

When we talk about success, be it on Wall Street, or Silicon Valley, or even the boom in natural gas, we always talk about it as “the new gold rush."  In part because the Gold Rush represented the mobility, energy and adventure of Americans in pursuit of riches.

But those riches, that began in California in 1849, were anything but easy.  While many made fortunes, many of those fortunes came to those who took care of the hundreds of thousands who would come looking to change their lives.

That’s the world that Edward Dolnick writes about in The Rush: America's Fevered Quest for Fortune, 1848-1853

My conversation with Edward Dolnick:  

Do we need a constitutional amendment to take money out of politics?

Election day 2014 is fast approaching.  At the end of the process, we will have spent over three hundred million dollars to decide if Mitch McConnell or Harry Reid will have a two vote margin.

While there are many social, political and psychological reasons for our current state of political gridlock and polarization, money is certainly at the core.

The next Presidential election could well cost over one and a quarter billion dollars. It costs ten million, at the very least, to become a US Senator and even House races cost millions.

We’ve long talked about the corrosive effect of money in politics, and Citizens United has only reinforced that.  But both sides are raising and spending the money with equal alacrity, and the public shows no signs of being fed up enough, to do anything about it.

If it continues, what does it really mean for democracy has we have known it, what kind of government will it give us, and will there ever come a tipping point for an angry and disaffected public?  Those are some of the question that Tim Kuhner raises in Capitalism v. Democracy: Money in Politics and the Free Market Constitution.

My conversation with Tim Kuhner: 

Don't watch another Football game, until you listen to this!

Once upon a time, our national pastime had nine innings, a long season, a pastoral setting and the worship and appreciation of the Boys of Summer.

Today, that pastime has been replaced by 60 minutes of intense violence.  With words like blitz and gridiron.  Where once stadiums had an ambulance standing by for fans that might have a medical emergency, today, the ambulance is there for the players whose concussions and broken bones and worse, are the norm. What’s worse, is that is also a game that children want to play.

I guess we shouldn't’ be surprised that a culture that reveres “Bullets and Burgers” would turn to football as its new national pastime.  Put more succinctly, is football driving the decay of our culture, or has our culture provided the perfect storm for the explosion of football's success?

Former sports journalist Steve Almond, in Against Football: One Fan's Reluctant Manifesto,

takes a look at the decay and corruption that is football today. A sport perhaps more in need of a warden than a commissioner. 

My conversation with Steve Almond:

The Miseducation of the American Elite and the Way to a Meaningful Life

We are deep in the heart of back to school season. Therefore, it's worth noting that while we have had dozens and dozens of conversations, on this program, about the improvement and mechanics of education, about its need to transform itself into a modern world, rarely have we ever stepped back to examine or even question the purpose of that education.  In part, because the answer today, almost seems like a paraphrase of Bill Clinton,... It’s the career  stupid!

But should it be?  Should there be a higher and more noble purpose, particularly for higher education?  As education moves more and more toward modeling the work force, that is being about collaboration and problem solving, are we losing something?

Has the worship of STEM and Wall Street, and the abandonment of the traditional Liberal Arts education left us in a lurch, whose implications have rippled out to impact almost every aspect of society.

If that’s true... then there is no app for that.  There is only the conversation started by William Deresiewicz in Excellent Sheep: The Miseducation of the American Elite and the Way to a Meaningful Life

My conversation with William Deresiewicz:

What deeper learning is all about

While the world is changing around us, while creative destruction consumes so many areas, sometimes it seems like education stagnates.  After all, many, if not most, of our schools still operate in a manner designed in an agrarian world; pre Internet, pre technology and long before we knew and understood how the brain was wired, how children or anyone else really learns.

The good news is we are beginning to see progress.  All across the country bold, persistent experiments are taking place that are creating schools that set the stage for the future of education.

One such school is the Ron Clark Academy in Southeast Atlanta. It has been called one of the best schools in America.

It’s co-founder Kim Bearden has taught over 2000 student and has been involved in virtually all aspects of education.  Now she distills much of what she’s learned in her new book, Crash Course: The Life Lessons My Students Taught Me.

My conversation with Kim Bearden:

Change or perish in education...How to build a better teacher

Almost every aspect of our culture and economy has been touched by technology and creative destruction. Still, three areas have lagged behind, and all three are beginning to be addressed and changed.  They are finance, healthcare and education.

Although incumbents still rule in healthcare and finance, the ground is beginning to shift.  But in education, less so.  The very fact that we are still debating the merits and sanctity of practices that date to the agrarian age, is telling.

But change is happening.  Throughout the country small individual efforts are being made.  Efforts that reexamine the questions at the very foundation of learning of understanding and putting knowledge to use. 

One thing that hasn’t changed, is that teachers are still on the front lines.  For them too, it will be change or perish.   

Elizabeth Green takes a deep look into this change, in Building a Better Teacher: How Teaching Works.

My conversation with Elizabeth Green:

Information....adapt or perish

So much of the way our brains and nervous system are hardwired, emerges as man did, from the primordial stew of life. Clearly, modern science tells us we are more suited to be hunter gatherers than we are multitasking and purveyors of Google Glass.

Yet no matter how much some may desire it, we are not going back to a simpler time.  Information will continue to pore in on us, multilateral demands on our time will increase, and to succeed at anything, work, play or home, we will have to adapt or perish.

So the question becomes, do we try and shape this brave new world to fit the way we are, or do we move through life, knowing we are on the ramparts of the efforts to change human evolution?

The answer is really both.  This is where esteemed neuroscientist Daniel J. Levitin takes us in his new book The Organized Mind: Thinking Straight in the Age of Information Overload.

My conversation with Daniel Levitin: 

The Power of Creative Pairs - The Powers of Two

Ginger Roger once said, of her partnership with Fred Astaire, that she did everything he did, “but backwards and in high heels.”  In many ways this gets to the heart of partnerships.  Two people that have a similar mission, but see it perhaps in opposite and positively reinforcing ways.

The examples are course legend.  Jobs and Wozniak, Lennon & McCartney, Parker and Stone, Larry and Sergei, Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner, Crick and Watson, Joel and Ethan Coen, and Hewlett & Packard, to name just a few.

When you look at the list, it becomes clear that there is something special about the power of two. Is it an accident, or something inherent in the creative process?  That’s the focus of Joshua Wolf Shenk’s new book, Powers of Two: Finding the Essence of Innovation in Creative Pairs.

My conversation with Joshua Wolf Shenk:

The Real Cost of Fracking

Across the country, fracking—the extraction of natural gas by hydraulic fracturing—is being touted as the nation’s answer to energy independence.  Energy companies have repeatedly assured us that the process is safe,

But is there a hidden cost, a hidden danger?  What really is the process of fracking and what are its consequence on people, the environment and those that come in contact with it?

Michelle Bamberger and Robert Oswald, combine their expertise in a new look at how contamination at drilling sites translates into ill health and heartbreak for both families and their pets. 

In The Real Cost of Fracking: How America's Shale Gas Boom Is Threatening Our Families, Pets, and Food, they give voice to the people at ground zero of the fracking debate, the authors illustrate what they believe to be the consequences of fracking, which In their view,  poses a dire threat to the air we breathe, the water we drink, and even our food supply.

My conversation with Michelle Bamberger and Robert Oswald:

The fall of Nixon and the rise of Reagan

We often think of the 60’s as a time when the left was in the ascendancy. When great social movements, like the women's movement, the antiwar movement and the civil rights movement were given their birth.  In fact, arguably, the most lasting legacy of the 60’s maybe the rise of modern conservatism.

The history of modern conservatism and of the current Republican party has its beginnings in the early 1960’s and continues into the confusion we see in the party today.

Rick Perlstein has been one of our most astute chroniclers of that history,  beginning with his examination of Barry Goldwater in Before the Storm, and through his look at the 60’s and 70’s in Nixonland.

Now Pearlstein takes us to the next phase, in his examination of the handoff of the party from Nixon to Reagan in The Invisible Bridge: The Fall of Nixon and the Rise of Reagan.

But more than a political story, it’s the story of the transformation of America. A time when America suffered its first military defeat, was shocked by the oil crisis, the hostage crises, inflation, stagflation, a criminal Presidency, a rogue CIA, and more.  But it also became a time when as a solution to our multiple problems, reality gave way to fantasy; when facts gave way to fiction, when like television or the movies, make believe would take us to the place we’d rather be. And leading that transformation was Ronald Reagan.

My conversation with Rick Perlstein:

Have we reached the end of American community?

The world has changed.  We can intimately and immediately know what's taking place in the far reaches of the world or across America. But we often don’t know what’s going on with our neighbors and in our own community.

Today we are a part of many communities of interest, not necessarily communities of geography. And is it any surprise really?  The natural human tendency is to associate with people like us. But  as mobility and tolerance have allowed a diversity of communities, it has, in fact, atomized us in ways that we seek the similar, no matter where on the planet it might be.

But what is the consequence of this?  We were once a great and vast continental nation, that had to rely on community as a form of safety and self govemment.  Today that’s not the case.  The result has impacted our relationships, or politics, and the very way we govern ourselves.

Where it’s going and how we got here is the subject The Vanishing Neighbor: The Transformation of American Community, a brilliant new book by Marc Dunkelman.

My conversation with Marc Dunkelman:

Have we reached The End of Absence?

There once was a time before the internet, before the automobile, before air conditioning, and television and radio and even before the printing press.  All these inventions and many others, dramatically transformed the ways in which we live.  At the time each was criticized for the ruinous impact it would have.  The printing press was thought to be the end of religion, air conditioning would keep us inside, and not allow us to connect with others. The automobile would destroy community and  television would pollute our brains.

The fact is that each of these inventions changed us and changed the way we lived.  And the result was not good or bad.  It was just different.  It was all part of the process of human evolution.  Ever since man first emerged from the cave, we have been engaged in an ongoing effort to try and shape and define  our man made environment, just  as it continues to try shape and define us.  

Michael Harris thinks we need to reclaim some of that lost world. He details his ideas in The End of Absence: Reclaiming What Weve Lost in a World of Constant Connection.

My conversation with Michael Harris:

Three Women at Home and at War

Those that have been through it, say that the experience of being in a combat zone is like no other. It is all consuming.  In so many ways it eliminates the real world of life and its mundane everyday chores and problems.  

Yet the men and women engaged in that effort, bring with them a life experience composed of precisely those problems.  Sometimes the military is a means of escape, sometimes a training ground for life, frequently life changing.  Yet most soldiers, men and women alike, must return to that real world. And when they do, everything changes once again.

That’s the story that Helen Thorpe tells about three women in Soldier Girls: The Battles of Three Women at Home and at War.

My conversation with Helen Thorpe:

Looking at Feguson through the eyes of the South in 1964

Fifty years ago this summer, Americans, both black and white, gave their last full measure of devotion in an effort to register African American voters in Mississippi.

The violence that resulted, the death of three civil rights workers, the beatings, the church bombings, and effort to prevent Americans from voting is a stain that shall forever be remembered.

For those that have forgotten, or were not alive in that period, A new work by Matt Herron is a powerful reminder.  Matt was the progenitor of an effort to chronicle those events and in so doing captured a pivotal moment in American history.  The result, is Mississippi Eyes: The Story and Photography of the Southern Documentary Project

My conversation with Matt Herron: 

Do you believe in magic?

Perhaps it’s the state of the world today, but everywhere fantasy seems to be in ascendancy.  The retelling of Narnia, Harry Potter, Game of Thrones and Lev Grossman’s The Magician series, all speak to what seems to be a compelling need.  

Lev Grossman has just published the third and final installment in his series, entitled The Magician's Land: A Novel.

My conversation with Lev Grossman: 

Can we ever achieve a shared truth about the legacy of slavery?

When Barack Obama was elected President, we heard lots of loose talk about this being a post racial society.  It was as if a magic pill had taken the issue of race and identity out of our consciousness.

Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, arguably, we are further behind in erasing our racial legacy than other parts of the world. And part of that reason is that we have yet to achieve a shared truth about the American experience of slavery and bigotry.

While we've done a good job of trying to move beyond that legacy, like a weed, not pulled out from the root, it comes back to haunt us, because of our difficulty in dealing with its true history.

That’s the history that Chris Tomlinson takes on, with respect to his own family, in his book and in the documentary Tomlinson Hill: The Remarkable Story of Two Families who Share the Tomlinson Name - One White, One Black.

My conversation with Chris Tomlinson: 

What did he know and when did he know it....is a Nixon defense even possible?

For  40 years, the Focus of the conversations about Watergate has been what did the President know and when did he know it.  The revelations from the release of and the listening to more and more of the 3700 hours of White House tapes, has pretty much now clarified that issues.

What still remains very murky, perhaps because it exists in both the realms of psychology as well as fact, is why.  Why did Nixon insist on the tapes, why didn’t he destroy them, and deeper still, why did a man whose entire life was devoted to the pursuit of the Presidency and his own place in history, destroy himself, by his own hand, his own actions and his own decisions?

Few have gotten closer to answering these questions than John Dean.  Nixon’s White House council,  the man who first told Nixon that Watergate was a growing “cancer on the Presidency,” who himself  has spent 40 years thinking and writing about these issues, now on the 40th anniversary of Nixon’s resignation, has written the definitive, The Nixon Defense: What He Knew and When He Knew It.

My conversation with John Dean: 

What did he know and when did he know it....is a Nixon defense even possible?

For  40 years, the Focus of the conversations about Watergate has been what did the President know and when did he know it.  The revelations from the release of and the listening to more and more of the 3700 hours of White House tapes, has pretty much now clarified that issues.

What still remains very murky, perhaps because it exists in both the realms of psychology as well as fact, is why.  Why did Nixon insist on the tapes, why didn’t he destroy them, and deeper still, why did a man whose entire life was devoted to the pursuit of the Presidency and his own place in history, destroy himself, by his own hand, his own actions and his own decisions?

Few have gotten closer to answering these questions than John Dean.  Nixon’s White House council,  the man who first told Nixon that Watergate was a growing “cancer on the Presidency,” who himself  has spent 40 years thinking and writing about these issues, now on the 40th anniversary of Nixon’s resignation, has written the definitive, The Nixon Defense: What He Knew and When He Knew It.

My conversation with John Dean: 

Is our long national nightmare over yet?

For journalists, for historians, and for political junkies, Richard Nixon is the gift that keeps on giving.  There are over 3700 hours of Nixon tapes and only a portion have been released and deconstructed.  

Even as we mark this 40th anniversary of Nixon's resignation,  most of us have only heard a few minutes here or there.  For Luke Nichter, a Professor at A & M University, and one of the preeminent experts on the Nixon tapes, it paints a picture of a cunning and controlling President, and sometimes a country astride the world. But mostly it captures the White House, America and the world, in a particular place and time that bears very little resemblance to the world today.

The latest collection of Nixon tapes, assembled by Luke Nichter and Douglas Brinkley, is The Nixon Tapes: 1971-1972.

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My conversation with Luke Nichter: 

The deep trouble of exploration

From the undersea adventures of Jules Verne, to Peter Benchley’s The Deep to Jim Cameron’s The Abyss, we flock to movies and literature that takes place underwater.  We are fascinated by, but know so little about, the undersea world.  

In fact, a recent review of  James Nestor’s book, reminds us that if something disappears on Mars or the Moon, we’d have a better chance of finding it, than if it disappeared in the world’s oceans.

This fascination has given rise to whole groups of people that seek to explore in new and different, and sometimes dangerous, ways.  

That's the backdrop of James Nestor's Deep: Freediving, Renegade Science, and What the Ocean Tells Us about Ourselves.

My conversation with James Nestor: 

The ecological history of greater New York

In communities all across America debates rage about zoning, building, and development.  In most cases, however, the debate is around the margins.  Most places have long since evolved into what they are.  New York City is perhaps the penultimate example. 

While arguments still do go on about height limits, shadows and railyards, the city has long since determined its destiny. For New York it has been, at least since the mid 18th century, a forward march to becoming the amazing city it is today.

Ted Steinberg's Gotham Unbound: The Ecological History of Greater New York, gives us a detailed history of that urban evolution.

My conversation with Ted Steinberg:

Why Vietnam still matters

Think about the things that shape our world, our perceptions and our culture.  For a large part of the population, the experience of America’s mistakes in Vietnam has long shaped our engagement in the world.  The country's disrespect, at the time, for the service of those that served in Vietnam, in many ways positively shapes the way we respond to Veterans' needs today.

As leaders today try and juggle the crisis of the world, and play a kind of geopolitical chess, they are always chastened by the scandal that was Iran/Contra,

And as any magazine or look at popular culture today will tell you, we are obsessed with outward appearances, usually at the expense of depth and real understanding.

All of these issues and ideas come into play in the life and struggles of Robert Timberg.  

Disfigured in a land mine explosion thirteen days before he was to leave Vietnam, his story, his struggles and his recovery in many ways parallels the story of the past half century.

It’s what makes him so effective as a journalist and why his story, that he now tells us in his memoir Blue-Eyed Boy, is also a history lesson for us all.

My conversation with Robert Timberg:

Parenting 101 - Lead with Acceptance

Every generation of parents wants their children to do better than themselves.  It seems though that to accomplish that today, as NY Times columnist Tom Friedman and others have warned, "average is no longer good enough."

So how do we reconcile this with the data that tells us seeing our children for who they are and focusing on their social and emotional needs, is every bit as important as their academic needs.

How do we square that circle of success.  Nancy Rose explains in Raise the Child You've Got - Not the One You Want: Why Everyone Thrives When Parents Lead with Acceptance.

My conversation with Nancy Rose:

How good intentions created the student loan crisis

The student loan crisis has reached epic proportions. Beyond the basic fact that it could be the next financial cries, with debt exceeding one trillion dollars, its impact on higher education, at a time when that education is a prerequisite for today's employment market, makes the problem all the more profound and complicated.  It also makes it a matter of urgent attention in the realm of public policy.

Joel and Eric Best take a comprehensive look at the scope and history of the problem in The Student Loan Mess: How Good Intentions Created a Trillion-Dollar Problem.

My conversation with Joel & Eric Best:

Reducing Inequality in the 21st Century

Suddenly talk of income equality and poverty has become more acceptable.  Perhaps it’s the political season, or Thomas Pikitty’s book, or perhaps it’s just the reality of what we see all around us in America.

But how does talk turn into action and what kind of action?  We see in Silicon Valley and in tech, in general, that when a company succeeds, or is bought out, all of the employees, all of the stakeholders benefit.  Why can’t that same idea apply to the rest of corporate America?

This is part of the idea of the The Citizen's Share: Reducing Inequality in the 21st Century.

A new book and a new way to look at these issues by Joesph Blasi.  

My conversation with Joseph Blasi:

Good...Evil...Indifferent

It has been argued that more evil is committed in the name of banality, than purpose.  Certainly a look at our current golden age of television, confirms that. Don Draper,  Walter White, and Tony Soprano never really seem to make up their minds about being good or evil.

So what’s the zeitgeist of our culture that separates hero from villain and what's different today than say in the 90’s or even the 50’s?

Who better to ask than Chuck Klosterman, The Ethicist for the NY Times Magazine, and the bestselling author of seven previous books, including Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs no looks into our confusion about good and evil in I Wear the Black Hat: Grappling with Villains (Real and Imagined)

My conversation with Chuck Klosterman: 

Do Fathers Matter?

When Hanna Rosin wrote The End of Men, did it also portend the end of fatherhood?  There is no question that gender roles have been dramatically changed in the past 50 years.  That in almost every measurable metric, women are not just pulling ahead of, but are surpassing men.

Yet fifty years of change, is no match for almost two million years of human evolution.  Where these two forces converge is the reality of modern fatherhood.

The scientific, genetic and evolutionary influence of fathers is powerful and provable.  Yet in many ways it runs headlong into popular culture, contemporary role models, and the reality of 21st century family life.

Journalist Paul Raeburn describes the current revolution in research in Do Fathers Matter?: What Science Is Telling Us About the Parent We've Overlooked

My conversation with Paul Raeburn:

Does the US have more A*holes today?

Everyday we encounter jerks.  Some have recently argued that the number of jerks has increased exponentially as we all experience greater stress and more frequent encounters, in denser urban environments.  But when those jerks go to far, than they truly become assholes.

But why so many, why now and what can we do about it?  That's the question that Aaron James asks in Assholes: A Theory.

My conversation with Aaron James:

How Immigration became illegal

Immigration has once again become the issue of the day.  Children are pouring across the border. Misinformation is rampant and our national attitude has become mean spirited.  We say we are a nation of immigrants, yet what we really mean by that seems very different than the current reality.  

We have a system that has grown inefficient, prejudicial and disconnected from the very human concerns of people seeking a better life. Aviva Chomsky has been active in Latin American solidarity and immigrants’ rights issues for over twenty-five years.  She examines where we are today in  Undocumented: How Immigration Became Illegal.

My conversation with Aviva Chomsky: 

The Vacationers

It’s long been said that if you really want to get to know someone, travel with them. The corollary is that if you really want to get to know members of your family, go on a vacation with them.  The crucible of that experience usually brings out both the best and worst of who they are.  

That’s the pressure cooker that the Post family is thrown into in Emma Straub's. new novel The Vacationers.

It isn’t easy making it onto the New York Times bestseller list with your second novel, but Straub did it with The Vacationers — the perfect book to bring with you on your summer getaway.

My conversation with Emma Straub:

What happened to good seafood at a good price?

America has more ocean and more coastline than any other nation. We produce more fresh seafood than other nations. Yet the amount of seafood extracted from those oceans, that we keep here in the US, is very small. Why this disconnect? Why is our relationship to seafood so attenuated? And is there some connection or consistency between the decline of farming in America and the decline of domestically consumed seafood. Paul Greenberg takes us inside seafood and aquaculture in American Catch: The Fight for Our Local Seafood. My conversation with Paul Greenberg:

How Millennials are changing the Middle East

Technology is transforming the world.  But so too are millions of young people throughout the Middle East, whose attitudes, desire for freedom and more cosmopolitan views, are transforming nations. When these forces combine, the results can be powerful.  This is what we’ve seen in the Arab Spring and in the uprisings and youth movements in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya.

University of Michigan Professor Juan Cole, one of our most distinguished Middle East experts, talks of a rising Arab Generation Y, in his new book The New Arabs: How the Millennial Generation is Changing the Middle East.

My conversation with Juan Cole:

The Lives and Faces of the World's Poor

Living in the West, it's easy to forget that one-sixth of the world's population subsists without sustainable sources of food, medical care, or housing. 

More than a billion people around the world are believed to live on a dollar a day... or  less. While the circumstances leading to that sort of poverty are varied and complicated, the situations faced by the planet's poorest are depressingly familiar. 

Now we get an on the ground look at that world, in a new work by Thomas A. Nazario. He is the founder of a nonprofit The Forgotten International, and the author of the vividly reported and beautifully photographed, Living on a Dollar a Day: The Lives and Faces of the World's Poor.

My conversation with Thomas Nazario:

Is there any hope for the US / Iranian relationship?

Few nations have as long a history of uninterrupted conflict and misunderstanding as the United States and Iran.  The markers along that road are tall.  The US coup that installed the Shah, the hostage crisis, Khobar towers, Lebanon, holocaust denial and the continually failed US efforts to seize opportunities when presented by Iran, have all contributed.

The issue of US/Iranian relations have run through the center of American foreign policy for the past 60 years, through ten successive administrations, Republican and Democrat alike.

Yet with each successive effort or treatment, the disease always threatens to burst out and become full blown. This is where we are once again, in the nuclear talks in Vienna, and in an effort to stabilize Iraq and Syria.  

Are we at a new critical point in this relationship or is it all just another failed effort at rapprochement? Long time Iranian diplomat and now a Professor at Princeton, Seyed Hossein Mousavian thinks there is reason for optimism. He makes his case in Iran and The United States: An Insider's View on the Failed Past and the Road to Peace.

My conversation with Seyed Hossein Mousavian:  

The real Chinese American experience

Several trends are shaping the world today.  One is immigration and migration.  The mass movement of peoples from rural to urban area and across borders, in search of a better life.

Concurrently, globalization and cultural homogenization are confusing the very idea of national identity.  As the recently concluded World Cup proved, we are deeply committed to our ethnic and geographic identity, and yet it’s all within the context of an increasingly borderless and global world

Inherent in this contradiction lies many issues faced by multi racial Americans and particularly Chinese Americans, torn between two models of success

Eric Liu’s story sits at the epicenter of these ideas. Ideas that form the basis of what we really should be discussing as part of our immigration conversation and what Eric talks about in A Chinaman's Chance: One Family's Journey and the Chinese American Dream.

My conversation with Eric Liu:

The beginning of an era and the end of innocence

For ten days in March 1971, the Rolling Stones traveled by train and bus to play two shows a night in many of the small theaters and town halls where their careers began. No backstage passes. No security. No sound checks or rehearsals. And only one journalist allowed. That journalist was Robert Greenfield and now, thirty-three years later,  he gives us his first an account of this landmark event, which marked the end of the first chapter of the Stones’ extraordinary career.

Ain't It Time We Said Goodbye: The Rolling Stones on the Road to Exile is also the story of two artists on the precipice of mega stardom, power, and destruction. It was both the best of times and the worst of times for the music business and the end of innocence in music.

My conversation with Robert Greenfield: 

Where's the beef?

To paraphrase Shakespeare, that fault is not in our food, but in choices we make. Specifically about what we eat, where it comes from and the policy choices that surround it.

There is no questions that we are meat eaters.  But given the forces of big agriculture, and the fast food industry, we have to reassess not the practice of eating meat, but the kinds of meat we choose.  Things like factory farming, antibiotics, and many of the practices of the food industry, seek to undermine those choices.

Patrick Martins, one of the leaders of the sustainable food and slow food movement, sounds a clarion call to these issues in The Carnivore's Manifesto: Eating Well, Eating Responsibly, and Eating Meat

My conversation with Patrick Martins: 

How the immigrant feels

Immigration seems the issue on everyone's mind today.  Yet with all the thinking and all the talking, we forget half the story.  It’s not just about how the receiving country deals with new immigrants, it’s also about the immigrant’s experience and how that experience, especially for young children, will shape their lives, and in turn their contribution to and role in, the greater society of which they become a part.  

When we look at the mass migration to America’s shores at the beginning of the 20th century, we get a glimpse of how that plays out.  

Alex Tizon, came to America from the Philippines.  He would go on to become a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and the former Seattle bureau chief for the LA Times and currently teaches at the University of Oregon.  

His memoir of his immigrant experience is Big Little Man: In Search of My Asian Self

My conversation with Alex Tizon: 

A Spymaster's Story

It’s easy to forget that long before the intelligence failures of 9/11, the misinformation about Iraq's WMDs and what has become almost the militarization of the CIA,  the agency had done well as the bulwark of American Intelligence efforts in the Cold War and in helping to define America's place in the world.  

Perhaps there is no better way to look back at that effort, than through the lens of the CIA’s most Zelig like character, Jack Devine.

Devine served eleven Directors of the CIA.  He was there when Allende fell in Chile,  in the effort to aid the Mujahedeen against the Soviets in Afghanistan, in the morass of Iran/ Contra, in the hunt for Pablo Escobar, during the Haitian coup in 1991, and he ultimately served as leader of the Directorate of Operations, the nerve center of America’s covert operations worldwide.  He tells his fascinating story in Good Hunting: An American Spymaster's Story

My conversation with Jack Devine: