Talk Cocktail

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:  

Dead laws and broken government

We all know that our system of government is broken.  Mostly we attribute it to bickering and bitter partisanship.  But also, in part, it’s the fault of millions upon millions of pages of rules and regulations that seemingly govern every aspect of our lives. This is true on the local, state and national level.

Many of these rules are well meaning.  They were put in place to address a problem, or right a wrong or fix an imbalance, but the process has gotten out of hand and hardly kept pace with the progress of the world around them.  What we have now, not only stifles innovation, it increases cost and runs counter to some of of our most cherished principles and ideas as to what our country is about. Philip K. Howard, the author of The Death of Common Sense, takes a look at all of these rules in The Rule of Nobody: Saving America from Dead Laws and Broken Government.

My conversation with Philip K. Howard:

Why John Wayne still matters

Back in the last 1960’s there was a very famous ad campaign that asked, What Becomes a Legend Most?  In fact, the real answer to that question is not the fur coat that was advertised, but really, it’s for a real legend to have a good biographer.

John Wayne certainly fits the role of a legend.  Wayne's is a story filled with contradiction, misinformation and of course the conflating of fact and fiction.  Today, 35 years after his death, Wayne is still a bit of a mystery, even while still one of America's favorite movie stars.

What was it about Wayne, his image, his life and his movies, that interconnected so perfectly with his time and his country.

Scott Eyman, who previously has written about John Ford, turns his focus to Wayne in a new biography John Wayne: The Life and Legend

My conversation with Scott Eyman: 

The Bronx is calling

Whether you grew up in a big city or a small town, if you moved away and then went back to visit, years later, everything had probably changed.  

It probably triggered a kind of nostalgia that both made everything old new again, and at the same time reminded us that often the best way to go home again, is really in our imagination.

For Avery Corman, returning to the Bronx was not just an exercise in nostalgia, it was also a look at how the world and all of us have changed over the past half century. Corman details he experiences in My Old Neighborhood Remembered: A Memoir

My conversation with Avery Corman: 

The tangled roots of American independence

History is a funny thing.  Time goes by, books are written  and we think we know all there is to know about a particular time and place.  Yet the complexity we sometimes feel about ourselves and about modern life, is no less true for history.

The true interpretation of motives and events we thought we knew, is always evolving and surprising us.  This it is certainly true with with respect to our own American revolution.  

As we try to understand other revolutions and the yearning for independence in other parts of the world, perhaps we can better understand, when we see more clearly, our own history.

Thomas P. Slaughter has done this for the American Revolution in Independence: The Tangled Roots of the American Revolution

My conversation with Thomas P Slaughter:

Why we love our Vodka

We eat candy bars, because it’s a tastier sugar delivery system than just eating sugar granules.  Some smoke cigarettes, because it was once seen as a status form of nicotine delivery.  Chewing tobacco just didn’t have same kind of image.

In many respects, we drink vodka for the same reason. It’s a colorless, odorless, and some argue tasteless alcohol delivery system. Think of it as the alcohol equivalent of soy.  It takes on the flavor of what’s added to it.

Given this, why is it so popular and so lucrative? Why has it become America’s spirit.

Journalist Victorino Matus looks deep into the bottle to try and find out how Vodka: How a Colorless, Odorless, Flavorless Spirit Conquered America.

My conversation with Victorino Matus

The information age, long before the internet

A few days ago, The New York Times ran a story about how libraries in New York were helping to provide WiFi in parts of the city.  Obviously the link between libraries and information is long standing. 

But imagine that in the 1930’s, long, long before the world wide wide was even a kernel in the mind of Tim Berners-Lee or others, the idea of interconnected information, of hyperlinks, of understanding the connections between information and ideas and then trying to pull them all together in a patchwork of analog technology.  

That’s what Paul Otlay envisioned, way head of his time.  His story, long forgotten and ignored has now come back to life in the work of my guest Alex Wright in Cataloging the World: Paul Otlet and the Birth of the Information Age.

My conversation with Alex Wright: 

David Boies & Ted Olson and The Legal Case for Marriage Equality

Already 2014 has been a huge year in the freedom to marry movement. Advocates have won 16 out of 16 federal and state court decisions across the country.  Polls show support at an all time high of 59%.  But, although it may seem that way,  this didn’t happen overnight. 

For over 30 years many have been in the trenches carrying the fight.  People like Evan Wolfson, and Bruce Bawer and Jonathan Rauch and Andrew Sullivan provided much of the early intellectual heft of the movement.  And then, when it came time for the legal battles to escalate into the federal courts,  one of the most unlikely partnerships in civil-rights history, David Boies and Ted Olson - two of Americas super lawyers, who squared off against each other in Bush v Gore, teamed up to fight California’s ban on same-sex marriage, Proposition 8, — all the way to the Supreme Court.

A year after their victory the have chronicled it, in Redeeming the Dream: The Case for Marriage Equality

My conversation with Ted Olson and David Boies:

Laurence Tribe on The Roberts Court and the Constitution

The Supreme Court today is more influential than ever. From Citizens United to the rulings regarding Obamacare and gay marriage, privacy and free speech, the current Court, under Chief Justice John Roberts, has has had profound influence.   Yet it remains a mysterious institution. Like Churchill said of the former Soviet Union, it is often a riddle wrapped in an enigma, inside a mystery.

The motivations of the nine men and women who serve for life are often obscure and the internal influences inside the court, are even less transparent. 

What is clear, is that the Roberts’ Court, now almost 10 years old, is developing a personality of its own, even while its individual members very often defy the stereotypical roles that the 

public often assigns to them. 

Trying to make sense of this monolithic and opaque  institution of men and woman and laws, is Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe in his book Uncertain Justice: The Roberts Court and the Constitution.

My conversation with Laurence Tribe:

The shame of juvenile prison in America

The American rate of juvenile incarceration is seven times that of Great Britain, and 18 times that of France. It costs, on average, $88,000 a year to keep a young person locked up — far more than the U.S. spends per child, on education.

To examine that system requires a two fold understanding.  One of the criminal justice system that sends so many young people into these facilities and secondly the nature of the facilities themselves and the public policy decisions that have allowed them to deteriorate to the point where it’s almost certain that young people sent to these facilities will have a dramatically greater chance of adult incarceration.

How bad is the problem, can it be solved with the tools we have, and frankly, in spite of what we say, do we even care enough to do anything about it?

Nell Bernstein has spent years up close and personal in the system.  The story she tells in her new book, Burning Down the House: The End of Juvenile Prison, should make us all ashamed.

My conversation with Nell Bernstein:

Why how we approach cancer treatment matters.

How often have we witnessed tragic events and then, not too long thereafter, heard jokes about those events.  What this teaches us is not disrespect, but it continually reminds us that humor is often the only way we can grasp and understand tragedy.  That humor and tragedy are, even as Shakespeare understood, two sides of the very same coin.

In the ability to find the absurdity in life’s misfortune,  we are helped to see the world as it is, not through the lens of a “reality distortion field.”   

Writer and artist Matt Freedman has applied this idea to his own life, his own battle with cancer and graphically details it in his book Relatively Indolent but Relentless: A Cancer Treatment Journal.

My conversation with Matt Freedman: 

Why is anyone listening to Antonin Scalia?

Few phrases get used more today than “creative destruction.”  What it really reflects though, is simply the way in which the world has changed.  Our forefathers, along with the very founders of the country, couldn’t have imaged everyday things like air travel, the interstate highway system, telephones, automobiles or even indoor plumbing.  Much less the internet, the splitting of the atom, or globalization.

So how is it that members of the our third branch of government, the Supreme Court, actually hold contemporary debates about constitutional ideas, in the context of what the founders world was once like?

The answer is Antonin Scalia.  Appointed by Ronald Reagan in 1986, Scalia, has had a profound influence, far beyond his decisions and the world of Court conferences.  His ideas about original intent and originalism have taken hold as a real principle of debate.  And that fact alone, may well be his lasting legacy.

As this current court term comes to an end, Law Professor Bruce Allen Murphy tries to understand Scalia in Scalia: A Court of One.

My conversation with Bruce Allen Murphy:

What if you discovered your father was a notorious serial killer?

For centuries theologians have argued about how the sins of the father might fall upon their children.  Freud talked about the need for a father's protection of his children. And Geoffrey and Tobias Wolff showed us how a deceptive father can impact his sons.

As children have to cope today, with so many fathers in prison, for crimes all the way up to murder, it’s almost a public policy concern how this plays out.

But what if a child didn’t know, at least not until his 40’s, that his father was an infamous serial killer who had never been caught or brought to justice?

That’s what Gary Stewart discovered about his father. Stewart came to believe his father was the infamous Zodiac Killer, who stalked Northern California in the late 60’s.

That’s the story that Gary Stewart now shares with the public, in his book The Most Dangerous Animal of All: Searching for My Father . . . and Finding the Zodiac Killer.

My conversation with Gary Stewart:

Ceasar Chavez and the nobility of poverty

One of the overwhelming ideas of the 20th Century has been the struggle of people throughout the world, to achieve a middle class life. The Horatio Alger mythology of pulling oneself up by their bootstraps has informed most of the American experience, but not necessarily for Cesar Chavez.

When we think of Chavez, we think of farm workers, the fields of Delano, or the organization of the UFW.  The grape boycott of the late 60’s, the secondary boycott, which would give the farm workers their greatest success and  the Chicano movement of which he would become a part. In fact, Chaves’ life and his legacy was far more complex.

More than a union organizer, he saw himself as a community organizer. Perhaps a community organizer on steroids.  He sought not just to lift up people, but to solve there problems.  Where many wanted to move farm workers to the middle class, Chavez saw a kind of nobility in poverty which actually may have limited his success.

Miriam Pawel has written the first full throated biography about The Crusades of Cesar Chavez:

My conversation with Miriam Pawel:

Why is Green Building Exploding?

When we think about building today, almost anywhere on the planet, be it a house or a gleaming glass, steel and concrete office building, we almost reflexively think about how the building was build and how green is that building?

Market forces have made green building a premium to be desired and paid for.  But this didn’t happen by magic.  It happened primarily because one man saw the need to make this his life's work. He is David Gottfried.

David Gottfried is the founder of the World Green Building Council (WorldGBC) and the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) and the CEO of Regenerative Ventures. His latest work is Explosion Green: One Man's Journey To Green The World's Largest Industry.

My conversation with David Gottfried

THE American Spirit

Few products are more American than Bourbon.  In fact some argue that the Kentucky spirit IS the American experience, distilled and sealed in a bottle.

While the English have their Scotch, the Irish their Whisky, Latin America their rum, and Mexico it's cervezas, Kentucky Bourbon is our defining spirit.  So what does this drink say about our character as a nation and how does that history apply to today's America?

Dane Huckelbridge sought to find out and he shares it with us in Bourbon: A History of the American Spirit.

My conversation with Dane Huckelbridge:

Is Hemp the coming disruptive Agricultural Revolution?

Imagine one of the strongest fibers on the planet, a potential energy sources, and something used by our founders, that is now illegal. That is the story of hemp. Sometime comic/journalist Doug Fine tells me how we all may be  Hemp Bound: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the Next Agricultural Revolution.

My conversation with Doug Fine:

Junipero Serra's mission and the Founding of California

If you are a Californian and especially if you went to school in California, its history and the remarkable life of Junipero Serra were an important part of that education. 

In the mid 1700’s Junipero Serra would leave Spain for the New World.  The Catholic Church, Christianity and California would never be the same. Now in Journey to the Sun: Junipero Serra's Dream and the Founding of California, Gregory Orfalea gives us a fascinating narrative of the remarkable life of Junípero Serra.

My conversation with Gregory Orfalea:

Films Not to be MIssed

Think about the movies we remember.  They are a little like old songs, or great books, or great meals.  They are purveyors of a kind of double imagery, instantly making yesterdays events todays reality.  

But with movies there is something more, in the way they stay with us.  The way the images play around in our heads and the memories, words and images become embodied in who we are.  

If you grew up watching and loving  movies, like esteemed film critic Kenneth Turan, they take on an even more powerful meaning.

Now Turan has taken a look in the rear view mirror at a a lifetime of film and chosen his fifty-four favorites,  detailed in his new book  Not to be Missed: Fifty-four Favorites from a Lifetime of Film.

My conversation with Kenneth Turan:

Are the Koch Brothers really as bad as they seem?

If I said we were going to talk about a story that involved grand homes, yachts, priceless painting, messy romances, private investigators and armored limousines, you probably wouldn’t  think it was the story of a family and a group of men who have been painted as the greatest political villains of the 21st Century.

In fact it is.  It is the story of the Koch brothers.  Fred and Bill and David and Charles and their father Fred, who was one of the founders of the John Birch Society.

The question is not just how this political and economic dynasty has become so powerful, its how they have created such fear in their opponents, out of all proportion to their relatively limited political success.

Also the membrane between the Koch’s libertarian ideas and the GOP’s and Tea Party's social agenda may be a sometime marriage of convenience, but one that may not be destined for the long haul. Like so many businessmen who think politics will bend to their will and money, they are often surprised.

The first full scale look at the elusive Koch family is Daniel Schulman's  Sons of Wichita: How the Koch Brothers Became America's Most Powerful and Private Dynasty.

My conversation with Daniel Schulman:  (We apologize for some static in the first five minutes) 

Console Wars

Long before Xbox One and PlayStation 4 were battling it out on retail shelves, a small but nimble competitor very nearly unseated Nintendo as the top game maker of the 90’s.

This history of that battle for video game market supremacy between Sega’s Genesis gaming system and Nintendo’s SNES console is the background of a new book by Blake Harris, Console Wars: Sega, Nintendo, and the Battle that Defined a Generation.  It is also a history of how gaming become the huge business that it is today.

My conversation with Blake Harris:

D Day and The Mantle of Command

We mark the the 70th anniversary of D Day.  Not only one of the most significant events of the 20th Century, but one of the most significant decisions ever made by a President to send men into harms way. 

In a world in which decision making has become an expertise on to itself, when Presidential leadership is reexamined almost every day, it serves us well from both a historical and a contemporary perspective, to understand what really went into making that fateful decision, 70 years ago.  How it changed the war, how it changed our history and what it might teach us about navigating a dangerous world today.

Nigel Hamilton examines all of this as he looks at FDR in The Mantle of Command: FDR at War, 1941-1942.

My conversation with Nigel Hamilton:  

The ongoing Dance of Anger

In the 1960’s anger was a powerful motivator in civic discourse, as we protested, marched, fought and found new ways to understand relationships. In 1976 Howard Beale told us we had to get up, and get angry!  

in 1985, Dr. Harriet Lerner explained  how anger was a signal, an early warning system about issues in our relationships, among woman, and arguably writ large.

Today, anger is even more complex.  Anger globally, domestically and still, anger intimately.   

As such, the solutions are also more difficult to achieve.  Harriet Lerner who has since 1985 written extensively about fear, and intimacy and connection, now talks again about the issue of anger,The Dance of Anger: A Woman's Guide to Changing the Patterns of Intimate Relationships.

with the reissue of her iconic book 

My conversation with Harriet Lerner:

Tinker, Tailor, Hacker, Spy

Creative destruction, change, automation, the Internet of everything.  These are all the issues that seem to impact every aspect of modern life. And whether you believe these things are good or bad, is not relevant.  What is relevant is that they are happening everywhere, including in the context of American spycraft and diplomacy and in institutions like the CIA.

In a world where quick and nimble and of course secrecy are often the objective best practices, spycraft today has gotten more mired in the institutional morass of every bigger bureaucracy.

That’s the underlying backdrop for David Ignatius in his latest spy thriller, The Director.

My conversation with David Ignatius:

The Hoops Whisperer: Inside the Heads of Basketball's Best Players

No question we are at the apogee of  basketball playoffs.  Today, almost as much attention gets focused on star coaches as on the star players.  After all, who but stars can manage the egos of today’s NBA players?

However, one man, who is not yet a star, but who gets these players to pay attention, is Idan Ravin.  He’s been called “The Hoops Whisperer,” because of the positive impact he has been able to have on so many, already great,  NBA players.   

He’s a trainer but so much and more. His success says a lot about what it takes to succeed in anything today. He shares his story in The Hoops Whisperer: On the Court and Inside the Heads of Basketball's Best Players.

My conversation with Idan Ravin:  

How only science and kindness help people with addiction

Ever since the war on drugs became a political and cultural issues in America, we have seemed to be unclear as to how to deal with the very human reality of dealing with those afflicted by addiction.

Too often “just say no,”  became a mantra, not just about use, but about treatment and politics.

Addiction impacts 1 in 4 American families. Unfortunately, we’ve yet to fully comprehend what addiction is really about, or to develop a kinder and gentler and more scientifically modern way to deal with it.

Dr. Jeffrey Foote stands at the forefront of the effort to change that.  His latest work is Beyond Addiction: How Science and Kindness Help People Change.

My conversation with Dr. Jeffrey Foote:

The Sabotaging of the American Dream

In spite of some interesting rhetoric and some self selecting experiments, like those done by Peter Thiel, along with the outlier careers of Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg, college is essential for success in today's workplace.

Pew’s recent statistics show that for those with only a high school diploma, the unemployment rate is over 12%. For those with a four year degree, it is 4%.  But how did we get to an environment that on the one hand makes college the central pillar of economic success, in a knowledge based economy, and yet because of costs, pushes it further and further out of the reach of middle and lower socioeconomic groups? 

Was this an accident of public policy, or a deliberate attempt to perpetuate the elite? Suzanne Mettler thinks both are true.  She details her work in  Degrees of Inequality: How the Politics of Higher Education Sabotaged the American Dream.

My conversation with Suzanne Mettler:

How innovation keeps proving the catastrophists wrong!

Throughout time there have always been those trying to stop the forces of progress.  Fear of the new and fear of technology, has been the stuff of both horror and science fiction and of many dystopian visions of the future.

Today, too often in the name of good stewardship of our plant, there are those that believe we need a simpler world.  One where we go back to the land, to the farm, to a kind of Thoreau like localism.  The fact is the world is moving toward cities, technological progress is a force of nature that cannot be stopped and globalization is a genie that will not be put back into the proverbial bottle.

So how do we accept all of this, and still see a future that is livable, sustainable, and provides for our needs and still protects our food, our air, our water and our climate?  The answer lies in technology  and in innovation that is, as Robert Bryce says, Smaller Faster Lighter Denser Cheaper.

My conversation with Robert Bryce: 

The War Through Afghan Eyes

The war on terror, that began on 9/11/2001 still goes on.  The war in Afghanistan that began shortly after, that was once dubbed “the good war,” is America's longest war.  Sadly the landscape of that nation today, does not reflect the either the lives or treasure that Americans gave to it. 

War is always complicated.  Once the battle is joined, the game plans often go out the window.  Yet when one looks at the mistakes America made in Afghanistan, they were not so much about battle plans or strategy, they were a reflection of a fundamental misreading of history, culture, nuance and the reality of people being different than ourselves.  In an interconnected and globalized world, this is and will continue to be a recipe for repeated disaster.

Anand Gopal spent years covering the war, embedded with both American and Taliban forces.  His reporting culminates in his debut book,  No Good Men Among the Living: America, the Taliban, and the War through Afghan Eyes.

My conversation with Anand Goapl: 

Once upon a time, protest really did make a difference

Once upon a time protest mattered.  People got angry at the actions of government and actually acted upon it.  While the protests of today, like Tea Party rallies and Occupy Wall Street, often call attention to a problem, arguably they are not intended to do anything about it.

Back in 60’s and 70’s it was a very different story.  Protests on behalf of  Civil Rights and against the Vietnam War would reach a fever pitch. Buildings were seized, protests were both huge and personal. Draft cards were burned and protesters didn’t just spend a night in jail, but sometimes they went to prison for a long time.

What impact did it all have?  Quite a bit.  People and memoirs from both the Nixon and Johnson administrations show that the level of protest really did impact policy. One of those caught up in the times, in fact he is a Zelig like character throughout this period, is Bruce Dancis.

Long after his protest days, Bruce had a long career as a pop culture critic and editor. including sixteen year as the arts and entertainment editor of the Sacramento Bee. Now he feels that enough time has gone by to tell his tory in Resister: A Story of Protest and Prison during the Vietnam War.

My conversation with Bruce Dancis:  

The Tolerance Trap

Fifty years ago the nation passed the Civil Rights Act.  Six years ago we elected an African American as President of the United States.  Yet contrary to the hopes of many, we do not live in a post racial society.  

While gay rights and gay marriage are often seen as the civil right issues of our time, and yes remarkable progress has been made, we are also far from a post gay or post gender world.

The reality is, as racial differences have taught us, too much  assimilation and tolerance are potential traps that can wipe out identity and water down the very differences that have been fought for.

In short, is the battle for any civil right about viva la difference, or about homogenization? These are some of the questions that Suzanna Walters asks in The Tolerance Trap: How God, Genes, and Good Intentions are Sabotaging Gay Equality.

My conversation with Suzanna Walters: 

Gender Intelligence in the workplace

As the recent Jill Abramson kerfuffle at the New York Times, has shown, gender issues still impact the workplaces of even the most public and apparently tolerant of companies.

Perhaps in seeing that, and so many other examples, we might realize that we are approaching these issues in the wrong way.  Diversity is not just about numbers, or quotas and expecting everyone to be the same. Homogenization is not diversity.  Being forced to Lean In, is not about recognizing one's strengths, but about mimicking the strengths of others.

We still need to learn that while overall acceptance is important, diversity lies not in one size fits all, but in celebrating differences and taking full advantage of the different intelligences that different individuals and different genders bring to the workplace.  These are the issues that Barbara Annis and Keith Merron take up in Gender Intelligence: Breakthrough Strategies for Increasing Diversity and Improving Your Bottom Line.

My conversation with Barbara Annis and Keith Merron: 

How the Russian Revolution is still impacting all of us today!

Understanding history can be a two edged sword.  On the one hand it is imperative that we understand the forces that have shaped nations and peoples.  On the other hand, often when the present spends too much time sitting in judgment of the past, the future can be lost.   So, how can we understand the shared narrative of the past, while dispelling myths and embracing a kind of proactive historical consciousness? 

Nowhere is that more true than in Russia, and the nations of the former Soviet Union. It’s a place where the effort to reach escape velocity from the past seems forever limited by the gravitational pull of history, and a history that we are just beginning to understand.  Helping us to try and understand this history is Russian expert Orlando Figes.  His new book is Revolutionary Russia, 1891-1991: A History

My conversation with Orlando Figes:

Art and Love in the Age of Abstraction

Today it is technology that brings “creative destruction” into our lives. Silicon Valley and its related communities sit at the epicenter of change.  But in the 1960’s and 70’s it was very different.  It was art and ideas and personalities that changed the world.  In the art world, it was New York, the Museum of Modern Art and its Chief Curator Peter Selz, that sat at the epicenter of a changing cultural landscape

Gabrielle Selz, grew up in that world. She watched how her father shaped the world and now she looks back at how that world shaped her in Unstill Life: A Daughter's Memoir of Art and Love in the Age of Abstraction.

My conversation with Gabrielle Selz:

The Chinese vs. The American Dream

Perhaps it’s the idea of 1.3 billion people. Or that half a billion have moved out of poverty in such a short time.  Perhaps it’s that China is has moved so rapidly to become the world's second largest economy.  Or perhaps it’s the environmental degradation left in the wake of these accomplishments.  

Perhaps it’s all of these things and more, that often block our view of the humanity of China.  Yet it is a nation of individuals. Individuals with personal stories, aspirations and ambitions.  People who have learned to deal with the contradictions and disconnects, between a vibrant, 21st century economic system and a backwards, almost 19th century political system.  Ironic, I suppose that it even sounds a little like the US.

In the resolution of that disconnect, may lie the future of China, America and even the world as we know it. That the journey that Evan Osnos takes us on in Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China

My conversation with Evan Osnos:

Creativity: The Perfect Crime

On the morning of August 7, 1974, forty years ago,  Philippe Petit illegally strung a tightrope between the towers of New York's World Trade Center, then under construction. For 45 minutes, he performed a ballet in the sky, as he moved back and forth across the wire. He was more than 1300 feet above the ground – without a net. The story of this feat was captured in the Oscar-winning documentary "Man on Wire."

However powerful that feat was, in its own right, it was also a metaphor for the rebellion, chaos, organization, faith and fearlessness that would animate Petit’s life and which, if looked at in the wider context of today’s world, animates all that is good and necessary about change and progress and fear. Now Petit has taken his fearlessness and applied it to creativity in Creativity: The Perfect Crime.

My conversation with Philippe Petit:

Ralph Nader's Emerging Left-Right Alliance

Back in the 1960’s and 70’s we were deeply divided as a nation.  Issues like Civil Rights, Vietnam and the Cold War created deep tensions.  Yet in Washington, things did get done.  The passage of the Civil Rights act, the creation of the EPA, and even public pressure to end the war in Vietnam, all impacted those who govern.

Today, Washington appears more divided and gridlocked than ever.  Yet among the people, there seems to be less real division. The citizens seem to be more in sync than ever, about issues of corporate power, civil liberties, environmental concerns, and unchecked militarism.  

So where is the disconnect, if the people have things in common, why are our leaders so divided?  Perhaps the fault is not in our leaders but in ourselves and our unwillingness to engage in the exercise our own power.

This is the premise of the latest from Ralph Nader, Unstoppable: The Emerging Left-Right Alliance to Dismantle the Corporate State

My conversation with Ralph Nader: 

The Purpose Economy

For the majority of the  boomer generation, and generations that preceded it, work was mostly an obligation. A way of earning one's way in the world, a way of  paying for the perceived American dream.  

Today that’s changed. Today the work itself is often the object.  For millennials, the work must have purpose.  It must be fulfilling in its own right, and the efforts, even if it’s just a  small part of the whole,  must contribute to something bigger.  Today, rather than the artificial construct of work/ life balance, work and life are merging into a seamless self actualized effort.

This is not just a psychological observation.  In fact, this direction coupled with the growing  information economy, is changing the very fabric of economic exchange.  It’s creating what Aaron Hurst calls The Purpose Economy.

My conversation with Aaron Hurst: 

If you thought the current VA scandal was bad...listen to this!

Today we have an all volunteer military.  When young men and woman join the Marine Corps, they do so to serve their country.  They know full well they the work may put them in harms way.  That a bullet, or a grenade, or an IED might cut their life short, at any time.  What none of them expect is to be killed or maimed by drinking water.

Yet that is exactly what has happened to Marines at the historic Camp Lejeune facility in North Carolina.  As many as a million people connected with the base were exposed to highly toxic and contaminated well water.  What the military and government has done about it, is truly a crime.

Long time journalist Mike Magner takes us into the human tragedy of the government and Pentagon inaction in A Trust Betrayed: The Untold Story of Camp Lejeune and the Poisoning of Generations of Marines and Their Families.

My conversation with Mike Magner: 

Where could this car take you?

Think about advertising for new cars. Better yet, think about looking at a new car in the showroom.  That experience is all about possibilities and dreams. It’s about  what that car can do for you, not just where it will take you geographically, but where it will take you emotionally.

From the days of Mad Men, right up to today, that’s what the car dream has always been about.  But usually, like the real disconnect between dreams and life, the car takes on a life of its own. It's often far removed from the ad or the showroom fantasy.

Few cars have conjured up this iconography more than the 1957 Chevy. A car that personified our relationship to the automobile and the infinite possibilities that were postwar America. That's the world that Earl Swift captures in Auto Biography: A Classic Car, an Outlaw Motorhead, and 57 Years of the American Dream.

My conversation with Earl Swift: