Talk Cocktail

What it means to be human

We know that genes help make us what and who we are. But, of the 25,000 genes we possess, a relatively few are significantly different from person to person.  Some of those genes are often referred to as the Compatibility Genes. Genes that both impact our relationships and determine how we responded to infection and disease.

Daniel Davis, in his new book, The Compatibility Gene: How Our Bodies Fight Disease, Attract Others, and Define Our Selves, cuts through the complexities of modern genetics to reveal much about the most important selection of genes, the ones that define what it means to be human.

My conversation with Daniel Davis:

Nine Economic Policy Disasters and What We Can Learn from Them

Imagine if decisions in Washington, or at any level of government for that matter, were really made on the basis of policy.  If careful analysis could win out over politics.  Certainly the current health care debate would be very different.  But so would our discussions about economic policy.  If our discussion of the 2008 financial meltdown had been about analysis of what happened, as opposed to who's to blame, perhaps we’ve have learned a lot more from it.  

Wesleyan Professor of Economics, Richard Grossman takes a long view of  several economic crises and what we got WRONG: Nine Economic Policy Disasters and What We Can Learn from Them.

My conversation with Richard Grossman:

A beacon of democracy or an apartheid state?

If I said that this conversation was about authoritarian politics, the religious right,  the rise of Christianist fundamentalism, a demographic crisis facing one political party, and the continued rise of military power, you would easily assume we would be talking about the US.  In fact, these same forces are at play in greater Israel, and they are constantly reinforced here, by perhaps the most powerful political lobby in the United States.

The complexity of Israeli politics, its relationship with the US, and its impact on our own politics are all issues that exist not just in the abstract world of policy wonks.  Each and every day they impact the lives of thousands of people on the ground in Israel, Gaza and the Middle East.

Max Blumenthal takes a brave and controversial look at this in Goliath: Life and Loathing in Greater Israel.

My conversation with Max Blumenthal: 

The Everything Store

We all know, or have heard about life in Silicon Valley.  The perks, the collegiality, the PowerPoint, the team ethos.  In fact, perhaps the most successful company to master the Internet is none of those things.  It engages in predatory pricing, it is fiercely competitive, it eschews both PowerPoint and perks.  Its leader was Time Magazine’s Person of the Year in 1999 and and yet, is just now 14 years later, reaching the zenith of his power.  The company is Amazon and its leader and founder Jeff Bezos.  Clearly the company is doing something different and doing it very, very well. Now we have the very best picture of Bezos and Amazon in Brad Stone's fascinating new book The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon.

My conversation with Brad Stone: 

New York as a metaphor for America in the 50's

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Mark Helprin, whose novels include Winter's Tale, A Soldier of the Great War and Freddy and Fredericka, is a senior fellow of the Claremont Institute.

Helprin holds degrees from Harvard College and Harvard's Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, and did postgraduate work at the University of Oxford. He served in the British Merchant Navy, the Israeli infantry, and the Israeli Air Force.

In his latest novel, In Sunlight and in Shadow,  he take us to New York in the post war years.  Helprin, who wrote speeches for Bob Dole when he was a Presidential candidate, gives us what some might consider to be an idealize version of the times.

In a wide ranging conversation, Helprin and I discuss Mad Men,  The Greatest Generation, irony, sex in the workplace and the power of love and counter culture.

My conversation with Mark Helprin:

Minerva Schools at KGI

Higher education, like so much else in education is beginning to change.  While the American higher education system is the envy of the word, it still needs some modernization. 

Just like other form of education, it has remained pretty much the same throughout the 20th Century and into the 21st.   Think about it.  100+ years of creative destruction has impacted virtually every aspect of society, but University education has not fully adapted.

It has started to. First by addressing that we live in confusing times.  Our personal connections and our world is becoming both more bifurcated and more interdependent, both a the same time.  We need to understand each other better, but we also need to understand the wider world much better. So what kind of higher education do we need to try and square this circle?

Former US Senator and former head The New School, Bob Kerrey, is a key part of the new Minerva School at KGI.  

My conversation with Senator Bob Kerrey:

"A riddle wrapped in an enigma, inside of a mystery."

Back in the days of the former Soviet Union, we use to look to any public clue to try and understand what went on behind those Kremlin walls.  It gave rise to a whole group of people who were referred to as Kremlinologist.

Today, it seems we look at the Supreme Court in much the same way.  At a time when the other branches of government talk about transparency and are exposed by leaks, when we often know too much about Members of Congress and the White House, the court often remains that enigma wrapped in a mystery.

Harvard law professor Mark Tushnet helps us shed some light on the current court with, In the Balance: Law and Politics on the Roberts Court.

My conversation with Mark Tushnet: 

The panic, pleasure and history of CANDY, in one bite

This week marks the official start of candy season.  The bags of Halloween candy, followed by chocolate turkeys, chocolate gifts,  the Chanukah chocolate, endless Christmas candy, all portend to a season of secret consumption by adults, a watchful eyes on kids and endless candy guilt.  Plus the requisites articles about how sugar is more addictive than cocaine and seemingly every disease studied by the CDC, amplified by sugar.  

In fact, the story of candy is a story of American industrialization, sensuality, the beginnings of artificial food, the seduction and independence of children, as they first use candy to control their own pleasure. It’s a story told by Rutgers University professor Samira Kawash in Candy: A Century of Panic and Pleasure.

My conversation with Samira Kawash:

Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House

At the Harvard Business School, which George W. Bush attended, there are many case studies about business partnerships.  One of the recurring themes is that in tough times partnerships are easy. When everyone is struggling for a common goal, unity is always easier.  But when a business starts to succeed, the partnership is always a lot tougher.

Political partnerships are different, but still similar.  There is no bottom line to worry about, but when one partner starts to succeed politically,  ahead of the other, usually there is trouble and strain on the relationship. The Bush/Cheney partnership is a good example.

It seems that every modern Presidential aspirant, when he picks a Vice-Presidential nominee, says that it’s going to be a unique and special partnership.  The Bush /Cheney partnership was certainly true to that, especially given the events of 9/11 and the impact that the partnership had on the nation, in ways that we’ll be living with for decades to come.  

That’s why New York Times, Chief White House correspondent, Peter Baker's new book, Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House is so important and so central to understanding the history of the Bush administration.

My conversation with Peter Baker:

Occupy Wall Street...two years later

The "one percent," "occupy," "income inequality," are all ideas and phrases that have become part of our national political conversation and all born of the movement that started in Zuccotti Park, in lower Manhattan, two years ago.  The degree to which politics, from President Obama to New York mayoral candidate Bill de Blasio are talking about these issues, should be a sign of success.  But is it? Does this two year old movement feel like it has succeeded and if not, what’s left to accomplish?

Recently Bill Ayers talked to me about how movements should eschew ordinary political success in favor of organizing in communities, in neighborhoods, in school and in the workplace.  So what’s the legacy of Occupy Wall Street?  Nathan Schneider was present at the creation and he takes us back in Thank You, Anarchy: Notes from the Occupy Apocalypse.

My conversation with Nathan Schneider: 

Where They Were From

Usually when we all have conversations about race and poverty, it's usually in a very abstract way. We often loose sight of how these realities impact peoples lives. Not in a political or policy sense, but simply with respect to what life is like in the poor and rural parts of the American South.

Few have a better ear or better understanding of this reality than National Book Award winner and Stegner Fellow Jesmyn Ward. Now she looks back at the loss of five men that she grew up with in her memoir, Men We Reaped:

My conversation with Jesmyn Ward:  

Palling around with Bill Ayers

During the government shut down, many commented that the radical elements of the Republican party were acting like terrorists.  Even if we might have disagreed with their goals, the Tea Party ideas of direct action, grassroots organizing and commitment to their ideas of social change, were very reminiscent, in the minds of some, to the efforts of many groups in the 1960’s. However, most didn't like the analogy. In fact Sarah Palin commented that the Tea Party groups were specifically not like Bill Ayers and the "terrorists" that the President "palled around with."

Well, Bill Ayers, who became Public Enemy number one in the eyes of Republicans in 2008, is still deeply committed to social change.  The President doesn't pal around with him or take his advice, anymore than he does with Ted Cruz.  But Bill Ayers has now written a  second memoir, picking up where his last, FUGITIVE DAYS, left off.

My conversation with Bill Ayers: 

League of Denial

We worry about too big to fail.  Yet bank losses pale in comparison to the degree to which the National Football League, has been too big to tell the truth.  Its denials have seemingly directly resulted in the death of NFL players.  Even worse, it has created untold dangers to young kids playing football, because their parents believed the leagues denials about the risk of brain injury coming from concussion and repetitive head trauma.  When seen in its totality, it’s  hard to deny that this ten billion dollar Park Avenue business, that is the NFL, does not have blood on its hands.

We’ve all heard the debate questioning the impacts of repeated concussions and head trauma on NFL players. But the facts are are not up for debate.  This is not a case where the cover up is worse than the crime.  For the NFL, the cover up is the crime.

Two of the top investigative journalists, Mark Fainaru-Wada and Steve Fainaru look inside twenty years of denial on the part of the NFL in their book and Frontline documentary League of Denial: The NFL, Concussions and the Battle for Truth.

My conversation with Mark Fainaru-Wada & Steve Fainaru:

Why Social Media is the norm and why mass media was the fad

We look at social media today, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, as if it’s something new that could revolutionize the world. In fact, the antecedents of social media define the very evolution of civilization. It is the mass media, newspapers, broadcasting and the one way dissemination of information, of the past two hundred years, that is the exception, not the rule. Today, the sum of all of our technology actually takes us back to our roots, as a more social and interconnected society.

Tom Standage, the digital editor of the Economist gives us historical context for social media and shows how it perfectly echoes past centuries, in his new book Writing on the Wall: Social Media - The First 2,000 Years.

My conversation with Tom Standage:

Fear of pain and other stories

We all remember, or have learned about, FDR telling the nation that “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”  In fact, it along with a clip from The Kings Speech is being used in a commercial for a new technology that might help us overcome, what is considered everyone's worst fear, that of public speaking.  

Perhaps we remember Woody Allen fearing that the universe was expanding, and how that seemed  like a good enough reason to skip school, in 50’s era Brooklyn.

The country is on the brink of disaster because we have elected officials who are afraid of voters, and most of all, afraid of not being reelected.

The bottom line is that in a macro world view, or in the intimacy of our personal lives, fear is a powerful motivator. But what would happen, how would the world change, how would we change, if we could mitigate or eliminate that fear.

That's what  Patty Chang Anchor set out to find in Some Nerve: Lessons Learned While Becoming Brave

My conversation with Patty Chang Anker:

It really does take a village

Edwidge Danticat's new novel, Claire of the Sea Light is set in a small seaside town in Haiti where a little girl, the daughter of a fisherman, has gone missing. Claire's  mother died in childbirth, and her father wonders if he should give away his young daughter to a local shopkeeper who could give Claire a better life. Before he can make his decision, she disappears.

Every hour of every day, parents and children separate so that the child might have a better life.  It’s not a concept that comes easy to understanding in the West.  Edwidge Danticat, gives us a strong understanding that love means sometimes having to say goodbye.

My conversation with Edwedge Danticat:  

Having it all in 2013

In 1982, at the height of the feminist movement, Helen Gurley Brown, published a book entitled Having It All, love, success, sex and money.  A popular TV movie of the time, was also entitled Having  it All and had Dyan Cannon  with a high powered job on both coasts. 

Oprah has said that women can have it all, but not all at once.  And now 31 years after Helen Gurley Brown's book, the debate still rages on.  Sheryl Sandberg has recently talked about the efforts of woman in the workplace, and now Debora Spar, the President of Barnard College, in her book Wonder Women: Sex, Power, and the Quest for Perfection, takes a fresh look of what is possible and and not for the woman of the 21st century.

My conversation with Debora Spar:

How we think we do it!

While talk of sex is all around us, the fact is that  the origins of our reproductive lives are still a mystery.  And while 50 years ago Masters and Johnson set out to try and find the science of sex, much has transpired since in our understanding of science, and evolutionary biology.

In his new book  How We Do It: The Evolution and Future of Human Reproduction Field Museum of Natural History curator Robert Martin draws on 40 years of research in biological anthropology to locate the roots of everything from our sex cells to the way we care for newborns. He examines the procreative history of humans, as well as that of our primate kin. His findings are a constant surprise.

My conversation with Robert Martin:

Proof that Hollywood or Broadway is really High School with money

Although the provenance is somewhat sketchy, it has often been said that show business is High School with money.  The point being that the battles, the cliques, the backstabbing, and yes even the deal making that consume Hollywood, are often the same skill sets that are required for a successful High School career.

Journalist Michael Sokolove has found another more important link:  A group of High School students and a remarkable teacher who turns it all around and brings the positive things of show business to High School.  A sense of participation, an appreciation for narrative and story, a kinship in a bigger cause and a need to reach deep inside ourselves to do good work.  If only we all had that teacher.

Michael Sokolove did!  And he returned to his High School in Levittown, PA to tell us the story of Drama High: The Incredible True Story of a Brilliant Teacher, a Struggling Town, and the Magic of Theater.

My conversation with Michael Sokolove:

The spy who was forced in from the cold

Spies and covert agents are, by their very nature required to live lives of secrecy.  So when some spies, for whatever complicated reasons, become household names like Aldrich Ames, Kim Philby, or Robert Hanssen, it's a big deal. 

In 2003, the outing of  covert CIA operative Valerie Plame, by columnist Robert Novak, brought an end of her CIA career. But it also brought all of us, in ways not seen since the Cold War,  into better harmony with the symbiotic relationship that exists between politics, espionage, and government bureaucracy.

The outing of Plame triggered a political scandal that would truly make her, the spy who came in from the cold. Now 10 years later, Valerie Plame is back, but this times masquerading as Vanessa Pierson, in her novel Blowback

My conversation with Valerie Plame: 

When Politics Worked

Our founding fathers created a system of government that respected opposing points of view and was designed to work even across differences. Throughout most of American history it has worked.  One time it did not was in 1861, when Abraham Lincoln, said the following: 

“What is our present condition? We have just carried an election on principles fairly stated to the people. Now we are told in advance, the government shall be broken up, unless we surrender to those we have beaten, before we take the offices. In this they are either attempting to play upon us, or they are in dead earnest. Either way, if we surrender, it is the end of us, and of the government. They will repeat the experiment upon us ad libitum." 

After the Civil War and for 150 years the system worked.  Today we are in danger of what Lincoln called “the end of us.”

Perhaps it is ideal to look into contemporary history for what was perhaps the last time that our system of government worked as it was intended.  That would be in the 1980’s.  It was in part the personalities of people like Ronald Reagan and Tip O’Neil and it was also a different time and a different context.  Chris Matthews is one of our keenest political observers. He sorts through it all in his new book Tip and the Gipper: When Politics Worked

My conversation with Chris Matthews: 

Vietnam 1963...Finding Madame Nhu

From the days of Caligula, right on through to the Clinton's, the role of First Ladies has always been complex, political and sometimes exotic.  What’s interesting is how often we ignore the role of First Ladies, in nations other than our own. In fact, they have often played a key roles in determining US foreign policy.

Perhaps nowhere has this been more true than in Vietnam in the early 1960's.  There, Madame Nhu, the young and glamours First Lady of South Vietnam, would play a key role in one of the darkest chapters of American history. Her perception has the Dragon Lady  only added to the US decision to support the coup that would topple the South Vietnamese government, in 1963.  Her husband and brother in law were murdered and the war in Vietnam would be forever escalated.

For years no one really knew had happened to Madame Nhu. That is, until Monique Brinson Demery would dedicated herself to Finding the Dragon Lady: The Mystery of Vietnam's Madame Nhu

My conversation with Monique Brinson Demery:

Calcutta

Jane Jacobs, in writing about the rise and fall of great cities, talks about a quality even meaner than urban ugliness or disorder.  That is, the idea of “pretend order,” achieved she says by ignoring or suppressing the real order that is struggling to exist and to be served.  This real order “is what make cities flourish and diversity sprout and makes them strange and unpredictable.” This, as Jacobs explains, is not a drawback, it is the point of cites.  

A city that for a long time embodied this ethos, is Calcutta.  And while it may be changing and homogenizing today, esteemed author Amit Chaudhuri, captures its essence in his newest work Calcutta: Two Years in the City

My conversation with Amit Chauduri:  

The Golden Age of Children's Programming

Last week, during the Emmys, we heard a lot of talk about this being a golden age of television. Certainly with shows like Mad Men, Breaking Bad, The Wire and Newsroom, who could argue? However for children's television, the golden age may very well have been 25 years ago.

Then, Nickelodeon changed the landscape of kid’s programming. From the Adventures of Pete and Pete and Clarissa Explains it All to Ren and Stimpy, Nickelodeon became the go to channel for kids from early morning to Nick at Nite. Today we have a whole generation that grew up on that programming.  Now, to better understand it all, Matthew Klickstein  gives us Slimed!: An Oral History of Nickelodeon's Golden Age.

My conversation with Matthew Klickstein:

The first casualty, of the first war of the 21st Century.

When we look at a tragedy like 9/11, we think of who and what we lost at that moment.  We forget that a future is also lost. That many of those killed that day may have changed and reshaped the future. Certainly Danny Lewin, who was on AA flight 11, the first plane to hit the towers, had the potential to do just that.  

During his brief 31 years, Danny was a father, a soldier, a brilliant mathematician and an entrepreneur.  Along with his MIT professor, Tom Leighton, he would reshape the Internet into the robust system that was able to withstand the traffic and news of 9/11 itself.  What else he might have accomplished in his lifetime is a loss not just to his family, but to all of us.

Molly Knight Raskin lets us all share Danny's story in No Better Time: The Brief, Remarkable Life of Danny Lewin, the Genius Who Transformed the Internet

My conversation with Molly Knight Raskin: 

Why has the debate over the Affordable Care Act been so UNPRECEDENTED?

Throughout all of the second half of the 20th century and into the 21st, right up until this moment, many have worked hard to institute some measure of affordable health care and health care reform in America.  A country that, prior to the passage of the Affordable Care Act, was the only modern Western nation not to have done so.  

It's no wonder that the forces allied against were powerful, well financed and prepared to do anything and say anything.  Those who would attack the law did so in the absence of political success. Instead, they would try and use the courts, the very courts that they always derided as activist. Except now they wanted to actively seek to overturn by judicial fiat, that which they could not do through political means.

Law Professor Josh Blackman takes a broad look at the Constitutional and legal challenges to the Affordable Care Act and finds the case Unprecedented.

My conversation with Josh Blackman:

"The Girl" speaks about Roman Polanski and what happened 36 years ago

In 1977, a 13 year old aspiring actress was invited to do a photoshoot with a famous film director.  

What happened that day, still makes headlines around the world: Director Roman Polanski, then 43, gave Samantha Gailey then 13, a hefty helping of Champagne and Quaaludes, then raped her at the home of Jack Nicholson.

After pleading guilty to unlawful sex with a minor, Polanski fled the country before his court date and made a home in France. Samantha Geimer, Now 50, and 36 years after the fact, has written a memoir of her experiences. The Girl: A Life in the Shadow of Roman Polanski.

Lawrence Silver was Samantha’s lawyer, from the very beginning and now talks about the case. The facts remain the same, but the context has changed dramatically in the past 36 years.

My conversation with Lawrence Silver:

The America's Cup will never be the same

This has been an  amazing week for sailing,  for Oracle team USA, for it’s crew and for Larry Ellison.

In many ways Ellison is the true manifestation of what creative destruction and Silicon Valley is all about….dreams, passion, vision, innovation and the ability to execute on all of it.

Many successful entrepreneurs possess some measure of these qualities.  But often the purpose and the playing field is small; an app, a piece of software, a new design.  All things of value.  But Larry Ellison wanted to play on a much grander scale.  He wasn't happy to just nudge the world, he wanted to change it, to shift it on it’s axis...just a bit.

Yesterday’s victory was the culmination of that effort in the world of sailing.  It’s a story that is powerful and complex, and involved people like  Norbert Bajurin and Jimmy Spithill, who would share and complement and expand on Ellison's vision and passion.  It’s a story told with equal passion by Julian Guthrie.  Julian’s book The Billionaire and the Mechanic: How Larry Ellison and a Car Mechanic Teamed Up to Win Sailing's Greatest Race, The America's Cup, sets the stage for all that came before yesterday’s race.

My conversation with Julian Guthrie:  

"An unbroken series of successful gestures."

Scott Fitzgerald wrote of Gatsby, “that if personality is an unbroken series of successful gestures, then there was something gorgeous about him, some heightened sensitivity to the promise of life, as if he were related to one of those intricate machines that register earthquakes ten thousand miles away. This responsiveness had nothing to do with that flabby impressionability which is dignified under the name of the 'creative temperament'--it was an extraordinary gift for hope, a romantic readiness such as I have never found in any other person.” 

What is it that gives someone those qualities?  Is it their bearing, their dress, the way they hold their hands or the words they use?  Clearly some people have it, and others don’t .  But can it be learned?

Matthew Kohut explains how people can find power and influence beyond just their KLOUT score. That we can find that something that makes us into Compelling People: The Hidden Qualities That Make Us Influential.

My conversation with Matthew Kohut:

Ecstatic Nation

When we look at the vast expanse of history, we find that their are periods when the world seemingly shifted on its axis: When change is dramatic, when our whole way of looking at and understanding events changes.  Perhaps the 60’s was such a period, perhaps we are in such a period today.  The impact of technology, globalization, deindustrialization social, cultural and economic change.  Only history will be able to give us that answer.

What we are learning though, is that the period of time leading up to the Civil War, the war itself, and the reconstruction that followed, was such a period.  It gave rise to events that created tectonic shifts, and was populated by characters whose special quality secures their place in history.

This is the period written about by Brenda Wineapple in Ecstatic Nation: Confidence, Crisis, and Compromise, 1848-1877.

My conversation with Brenda Wineapple:

Nuclear Weapons and the Illusion of Safety

Since the dawn of the  age of nuclear weapons we have only imagined the complexity of systems that are involved in the use of those weapons.  Those of us that grew up during the cold war are all too familiar with the nuclear football that follows the President, launch codes, the hotline, fail safe mechanisms, and even the eccentricity of Col.  Jack Ripper.  

All have seemingly kept us safe. But today the cold war is over, US and Russian nuclear stockpiles have gone from over 60k weapons to less than 5k.  It all sounds pretty good.  

But as we worry anew about nuclear proliferation, about weapons in the hands of terrorists, it bring into bold relief that idea that these weapons are among the most complex machines built by man.  As such they can fail; accidents can happen, and weapons on a hair trigger alert are subject to technical failure.  

Is it pure dumb luck that we have not had an accident involving nuclear weapons?  In fact we have had many such accidents, perhaps over 1200 of them… the worst of which happened in Damascus, Arkansas, 33 years ago. 

Now investigative reporter Eric Schlosser, the author of Fast Food Nation and Reefer Madness, takes us inside our system of Command and Control.

My conversation with Eric Schlosser:

Do we need a new war on poverty?

It’s been almost 50 years since Lyndon Johnson declared "war on poverty."  It’s been more than 50 years since JFK was moved by the poverty of Appalachia and Bobby Kennedy by the poverty of the South Bronx.

Today's poverty may not be as dark or desperate, but it is more insidious.  While we focus on the growing gap between the one percent and the middle class, we often ignore those that have fallen out of the middle class, and sunk below the poverty level. That group is growing exponentially and it’s a blight on our nation. Certainly it’s not a part of the American exceptionalism the President spoke of last week.

As the House is voting to drastically cut Food Stamps, journalist Sasha Abramsky delves deep into the issue in The American Way of Poverty: How the Other Half Still Lives.

My conversation with Sasha Abramsky

Held hostage for 460 days

Many of us remember the 1978 movie Midnight Express, where Billy Hayes is held and tortured by his Turkish captors, as  attempts are made to extract ransom.

Well imagine today, a young woman caught in a similar situation,  kidnaped and held by brutal captors, not because of an attempt to smuggle drugs, but because she was trying to tell a story as a young and struggling and aspiring journalist.  The location was not Turkey, but Mogadishu, Somalia, considered by some, one of the most dangerous places on earth.  What brought Amanda Lindhout to this place, and what in her background gave her the strength and grace to survive a devastating 460 day ordeal?  Her story   A House in the Sky,  tells us a great deal about her, and also about the indomitable resiliency of the human spirit.

My conversation with Amanda Lindhout:

The reselling of the Presdient

Look at any campaign, for student body President to the President of the United States and we see some key ingredients. The clarity and strength of the message, the quality of political organization, the discipline of the candidate, the get out the vote effort and resonance of the broader issues.

As President Obama entered his reelection campaign, a full two years before election day, by any objective standard, these things were in flux and not always for the better. 

To paraphrase his opposition, the hope and change thing wasn’t going so well.  And yet Obama would become the first president, since Ike, to be re elected with over 50% of the vote. What they did, right and wrong is the subject of Richard Wolffe’s, 2012 campaign biography The Message: The Reselling of President Obama.

My conversation with Richard Wolffe:

My Brother, My Sister

Even though our culture is dripping with sex, topics of sexuality don’t always come easily to our understanding or to our conversation.  It has taken generations for gays and lesbians to begin to achieve their full measure of acceptance, and there is still work to be done.  Same sex marriage is finally beginning to gather a majority constituency.

But clearly, the world of transgender people is yet to achieve anything near equality or understanding.

Yet as we understand more about it, as we begin to see it up close and personal, inside our own families and friends, perhaps the understanding and acceptance will evolve.

There is no more powerful example of this than the story that esteemed film critic Molly Haskell tells about the transformation of her own brother in her memoir My Brother My Sister: Story of a Transformation.

My conversation with Molly Haskell:

Why Wilson matters

Last week President Obama, in addressing the issue of Syria, talked about America's unique role in the world.  Russian President Putin would go on to criticize the idea of American exceptionalism.  The fact is that Obama's commitment to and Putin's criticism of America's place in the world, has its roots in the ideas of our 28th President, Woodrow Wilson.  Inaugurated 100 years ago. 

In urging Congress to enter WWI, Wilson talked about the need to make the world "safe for democracy."  In so doing, he perhaps inadvertently laid the predicate for the next century of US foreign policy and an idealism that often went beyond America's direct national interests.

He would come to define the modern activist Presidency, and would lay the groundwork for a broader role for the federal government.

He did it all coming to office with a minimum of political experience, accusations of elitism, racism and a disregard for civil liberties.  Still, he ranks as one of our great Presidents. The how and why of this is embedded in A. Scott Berg's sweeping biography Wilson, thirteen years in the making.

A Scott Berg is a best selling biographer, a winner of the NationalBook Award and the Pulitzer Prize.

My conversation with Scott Berg:

Why we should welcome adversity

We are all familiar with the words of Nietzsche who said, "that which doesn't kill us, makes us stronger."  It has become a kind of mantra for a society in which everyone seems under siege, or faces some kind of adversity.  But is it true?

We’re told that we learn from our mistakes, but is there an easier way?  Does the willingness to lean into to adversity, make it more likely?  Do those who deny adversity’s benefits, have less of it?  And how does the value of learning from adversity get weaker,  often closed down, by the power of positive thinking which is often so much a part of our happy talk culture?

These are some of the ideas dealt with by Dr. Norman Rosenthal in  The Gift of Adversity: The Unexpected Benefits of Life's Difficulties, Setbacks, and Imperfections.  Rosenthal is a psychiatrist and the scientist who in the 1980s first described winter depression or seasonal affective disorder (SAD). He spent 20 years as a researcher at the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) where he studied disorders of mood, sleep, and biological rhythms.

My conversation with Dr. Norman Rosenthal:

A Better Way of Death

When we speak of death and sickness, it is often as if we are engaged in the language of war.  We are battling, fighting, staving off.  Perhaps we'd be better to think of it in language from the 17th Century poet John Donne, in “Death Be Not Proud.” 

That might help us to understand a different language of death, but it was all before the advent of the medical/industrial complex. The ways in which the forces of medicine stand in the way of a “meaningful death.”

That’s the world that journalist Katie Butler writes about in Knocking on Heaven's Door: The Path to a Better Way of Death.  Her story, in the NY Times Magazine, about her father's death, was one of the most commented upon articles in the history of the Magazine.

My conversation with Katie Butler: 

9/11/2012 - Benghazi, Libya...just the facts

On 9/11 of last year the US Mission in Benghazi, Libya, an isolated ad hoc outpost, was attacked.  The small security team from the diplomatic security service, was no match for large numbers of jihadist forces that would attack, in what has been called “a perfect worst case scenario.”

This was the first time that a US diplomat had been killed since 1988, in Pakistan. Perhaps in another time it would have brought respect for the heroics of the men who valiantly fought back to save the mission and the Ambassador.  Perhaps it would have brought a legitimate investigation of what happened and how we might learn from such attacks.

Instead, like almost everything else today, it’s simply been a catalyst for bitter partisanship, for political opportunism and the continuing efforts of some, to find anything to attack the President and the administration.

In that haze we’ve lost sight of what really happened and why it still matters. Two national security experts, Fred Burton and Samuel Katz, provide the first full scale account in their book Under Fire: The Untold Story of the Attack in Benghazi.

My conversation with Burton and Katz: 

Masters and Johnson

Today we are a culture steeped in Sex. It’s part of almost every aspect of our politics, our culture, and our economy. It’s about selling cars, and also the dispensing of medical care.

But just 60 years ago, it was a subject that was all but taboo.  We not only didn’t speak its name in polite company, but we knew very little about it and how it worked, both physiologically and psychologically.  

Then William Masters came along and with his partner Virginia Johnson, changed all that. They not only medicalized the discussion and understanding of sex, but unleashed the power of female sexuality in ways that would forever change society.

Few have studied and understood their work better than Thomas Maier. His book Masters of Sex: The Life and Times of William Masters and Virginia Johnson, the Couple Who Taught America How to Love  has just be re released and the Showtime series, based on the book, premiers later this month.

My conversation with Thomas Maier: