Talk Cocktail

From education to recreation, from shopping to reading, no aspect of our lives is untouched by the virtual world. Yet, perhaps we don't yet fully understand the social and personal implications of this change. Certainly each new transformative medium has altered our perception and has been criticized. Radio, television, even sound movies, all had their critics and Cassandras. Is the internet the same? Or, does it have more far reaching consequences? This is the focus of Nicholas Carr's new book The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains. He argues that the internet is rerouting our neural pathways, replacing our literary brain with one that is over distracted in ways that sacrifice both knowledge, wisdom and creativity.  My conversation with Nicholas Carr:

In the 1920's Los Angeles was the fastest growing city in the world! It was caught up in oil fever, get rich quick schemes, it already had its share of celebrity scandals and was ripe with organized crime. In his new look at LA, A Bright and Guilty Place: Murder, Corruption, and L.A.'s Scandalous Coming of Age, LA's premier chronicler Richard Rayner, takes us inside theses transformative years that forever shaped the destiny of the one of the world great and most important cities. My conversation with Richard Rayner:

There is no one right now who is doing a better job of covering politics and world affairs than Peter Beinart. He is the senior political writer for The Daily Beast, a former editor of The New Republic and an associate professor of journalism and political science at the City University of New York. His new book The Icarus Syndrome: A History of American Hubris and his June 10th article about "The Failure of the American Jewish Establishment," in the New York Review of Book, have garnered wide and enthusiastic attention. My conversation with Peter Beinart:

The post war rise of Manhattan as a modern world city and its later decline into crisis, had "urban renewal" at the heart to both its cultural and physical transformation. These policies even laid the groundwork for what we view today as gentrification. Samuel Zipp, a Professor of Urban Studies at Brown University, in his new book Manhattan Projects: The Rise and Fall of Urban Renewal in Cold War New York, captures the complex world of forgotten stories and characters that make up urban renewal's promise and tragedies. My conversation with Samuel Zipp:

President Obama came to office with less experience then most of our contemporary Presidents. His was an improbable and unlikely victory. He inherited a country on the brink of depression, engaged in two wars, an ongoing threat of international terrorism, increased partisan gridlock and extremism, growing unemployment and the increased power of big business. And if that wasn't enough, his first big goal was to try and expand healthcare coverage, something that had beguiled Presidents since Teddy Roosevelt. All of this was in year one! Newsweek senior editor and NBC correspondent Jonathan Alter's new book The Promise: President Obama, Year One, is the first definitive account of Obama's first year in office. My conversation with Jonathan Alter:

Choosing parenthood in the best of circumstances is a complex and daunting journey with no guarantees of success. But when you have to adopt your own child, when you have to show up at the hospital with a thick folder of legal documents to justify your being there, it's even more difficult. The number of children being raised by gay parents is growing each year. Yet the challenges are growing as well. Amie Klempnauer Miller, in her memoir She Looks Just Like You: A Memoir of (Nonbiological Lesbian) Motherhood, tells about her 12 year, often darkly comic, journey to the doorstep of motherhood. My conversation with Amie Klempnauer Miller:

A rare optimistic post. Even amidst all the problems we face, economic, environmental, political and global; history teaches us that progress is inevitable. While there are certainly winners and losers, overall mankind has, since the stone age, marched forward toward a brighter day. While we see more and more fear about change, we even see a kind of pathological nostalgia in some quarters, the fact is, by every objective measure, the world is getting better. That's the focus of Matt Ridley's new book The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves. My conversation with Matt Ridley:

After graduating from Smith College, Piper Kerman fell in with a bad relationship and a hard-partying, drug dealing crowd. Ten years after she left it all behind, her past came back to haunt her. In her memoir Orange Is the New Black: My Year in a Women's Prison, she tells the powerful, heartfelt story of her 15 months in federal prison, of the women she met and befriended and of the idea and power of community, even behind bars. My conversation with Piper Kerman:

How many of you are energized about going to work each day? If you are not, you are in the company of 75% of employees around the world who feel disengaged at work. As the recession has increased pressures for productivity, as twelve and fourteen hour days become the norm, as technology tethers us to work 24/7, it's no wonder that job satisfaction is waning. Yet, if we are to stay competitive, if we are to provide the creative energy to solves tomorrows problems, something has to change. Tony Schwartz, founder of The Energy Project and long time journalist, in his new book The Way We're Working Isn't Working: The Four Forgotten Needs That Energize Great Performance,gives us a primer on what we can do to take back control of our work life and at the same time increase job satisfaction and performance. My conversation with Tony Schwartz:

For most of us, being plugged in 24/7 has become the norm. Blackberrys, iphones and ipads have now been layered on to the computer, email, video games and the good old fashion phone. The idea was that all of this technology was supposed to make us more productive and more efficient. In fact, it has made us addicted, distracted, a little bit crazy and a lot less efficient. This is the story that appeared in the N.Y. Times this past Monday, by NY Times, Pulitzer Prize winning reporter Matt Richtel. It has garnered world wide attention, and has been e-mailed to Blackberrys and iphones everywhere.  My conversation with Matt Richtel:

The election of Barack Obama in 2008 could not have happened without the events 44 years before in the summer of 1964. That summer, we witnessed real grassroots community organizing, as some 700 college students, from all over the country, descended on segregated Mississippi to register black voters. At the beginning of that summer, three of the organizers, Andrew Goodman, James Cheney and Michael Schwerner were hunted down and killed by the Klan. It would not be until 2005 that the perpetrators of those murders would be brought to justice.  But their death was not in vain, as Freedom Summer would be a major impetus for the Vote Rights Act of 1965. Journalist Bruce Watson new book Freedom Summer: The Savage Season That Made Mississippi Burn and Made America a Democracy details the link between those events and the election of 2008. My conversation with Bruce Watson

Even before the recent economic crises, the decline of America's economic hegemony had begun. The rise of China and other fast rising economies have changed the global landscape. Some of this seems inevitable. History certainly tells us that no great power stays in the same position forever. But how will this impact our standard of living, our currency, our military strength? And perhaps most importantly, should we care? If we do, then what can be done about it? These are some of the issues covered by former U.S. Trade Negotiator, and White House advisor Clyde Prestowitz in his new book The Betrayal of American Prosperity: Free Market Delusions, America's Decline, and How We Must Compete in the Post-Dollar Era. My conversation with Clyde Prestowitz:

Is the world really as clear as what we see in front of our face? If you are sitting and watching a Basketball game and a gorilla walks into the room, would you notice? What if what we see, what we believe, is but a distorted reflection of reality. That our angle of vision in fact, determines our reality. This is the foundational idea of cognitive psychologist Daniel Simons, articulated in his new work The Invisible Gorilla: And Other Ways Our Intuitions Deceive Us. My conversation with Daniel Simons:

Even with respect to our most benign domestic issues, it seems impossible for most people to see both sides of an issue. With respect to perhaps the world's most contentious issue, the conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians, the ability to see both sides is near impossible and has been so for over 60 years. Journalist and historian Kai Bird has done the rare thing of not only seeing both sides, but living on both sides in the Middle East. Kai Bird came of age amidst the Arab/Israeli conflict. He thought he fully understood the catastrophe and plight of the Palestinians until he married a Jewish woman, whose parents were holocaust survivors. In his book Crossing Mandelbaum Gate: Coming of Age Between the Arabs and Israelis, 1956-1978, he tries to make sense of the intersection of the catastrophes of two cultures, in a region that never seems to miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity. My conversation with Kai Bird:

Over the weekend we read in the New York Times, how New York City and maybe other levels of government we're thinking of finding ways to ban or at least get us to cut back on salt consumption. It should remind us that ninety years ago government, with the willing support of vast swatches of the American people, decided that we should no longer consume alcohol and the 13th amendment was born. While prohibition certainly changed behavior, it also carried with it many, many unintended consequences. In his new book Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition, former New York Times public editor Daniel Okrent examines how a perfect storm of political and social trends lead to prohibition, what were some of those unintended consequences and why and how something similar could happen again. My conversation with Daniel Okrent:

As we enter middle age one of the things we fear most is loosing some of our cognitive powers, as we forget names, forget where we put the keys and where we parked the car. It all seems to signal that we are on the glide path to old age. In fact science is now telling us something very different. N.Y. Times deputy science editor Barbara Strauch, in her new book The Secret Life of the Grown-up Brain: The Surprising Talents of the Middle-Aged Mind, tells us that we may be just reaching our peak of mental abilities in so many areas. It seems that something as simple as education, or working, may be the key to building and enhancing the brain for a lifetime. My conversation with Barbara Strauch:

Much of the debate and conflict in the Middle East is cast as the battle between tradition and modernity; what's still refereed to as a "clash of civilizations." But what if looking at the world this way is precisely what is causing its problems? What if understanding the unity between tradition and modernity could, in fact, bring about a whole new paradigm for finding peace? This notion, along with the increasing empowerment of woman, is the core idea of the work being done by Isobel Coleman, of the Council on Foreign Relations and outlined in her book Paradise Beneath Her Feet: How Women Are Transforming the Middle East. My conversation with Isobel Coleman.

We all want "green energy." However separating the rhetoric from the reality is not so simple. In his new book Power Hungry: The Myths of "Green" Energy and the Real Fuels of the Future, Robert Bryce gives a counter intuitive assessment of the $5 trillion per year global energy industry and what really fuels the world economy. Much to the chagrin of many, he rebukes the conventional wisdom about energy. He shows the reality that the US has built the world's largest economy by relying on hydrocarbons and we cannot and will not stop using carbon based fuels for a long time to come. He makes a compelling case that our real clean energy future must be natural gas and nuclear. My conversation with Robert Bryce:

Nassim Nicholas Taleb has redefined how we see the world. An options trader and scholar turned philosopher, he is one of the very people who predicted the financial crisis. In doing so, he devised the concept of "Black Swan Events" to describe unexpected shocks to our collective system. In his new, paperback version of The Black Swan, he outlines what's still wrong with our economic system, why we are unequipped to handle the world's problems and why many of our experts, in his view, know less than cab drivers. Taleb's is an iconoclastic, provocative, idiosyncratic view of our world. But it's one we can't afford to ignore. My conversation with Nassim Nicholas Taleb:

And when ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars, be ye not troubled: for such things must needs be; but the end shall not be yet.

Sometimes in America, there is a desperate need for war, an atavistic desire for violence. This trend has repeated itself thought our history. In 1890 there was clearly this need for war. Teddy Roosevelt embodied that need. He was ready to go to war against Spain, but according to his letters, any nation would do. He felt the need to cope with  much change and reaffirm a nation that some argued was going soft. Sound familiar? Newsweek editor-at-large Evan Thomas, in this new book The War Lovers: Roosevelt, Lodge, Hearst, and the Rush to Empire, 1898 spent years researching what happened in the 1890's and what lessons we might learn today. My conversation with Evan Thomas:

Most political races, or at least the ideal ones, are between two candidates with different views, but with equal ability to articulate those views to the voters. Sometimes though, there are races which are like mismatched prizefights and a referee should shop them in the second round. Here in Napa we have such a race. It's a race for County Supervisor that pits a dynamic former police chief, with good, sound ideas, against a twelve year incumbent who serves only by virtue of  Forrest Gump like likeability and the special interests he serves.  For a good shock to the political system listen as these two answer a few questions at a recent forum.

Every day we make choices. Sometimes those choices; the friends, the mentors and the teachers, shape our lives in ways we may not realize for years to come. Wes Moore escaped a  rough and tumble childhood on the streets of Baltimore, to become a model of achievement. He is a decorated combat veteran, White House Fellow and business leader. In 2000, just after he'd been awarded a Rhodes Scholarship, he learned about another Wes Moore. That Wes Moore would soon be sentenced to life in prison for killing a police officer. Wes Moore, in his new book The Other Wes Moore: One Name, Two Fates truly embodies the words of Robert Frost: "Two roads diverged in a wood, and I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference." My conversation with Wes Moore:

The assassination forty-two years ago of Martin Luther King, marked the second in a trip-tic of political assassinations and tragedies that bookended the '60s and brought into bold relief a strain of racism, hatred and extremism that unfortunately seems all to alive today. All three assassinations, JFK, MLK and RFK have been cloaked in conspiracy theory. The assassination of King, by James Earl Ray and the international manhunt that apprehend him, makes it perhaps the most clearcut of all. It is against this backdrop that historian Hampton Sides, in his new book Hellhound on His Trail: The Stalking of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the International Hunt for His Assassin,tells the story of the stalking of King and the search for his assassin. My conversation with Hampton Sides:

Intense, idiosyncratic, diverse, elusive. These are just a few of the words that have been used to describe singer/songwriter Van Morrison. One our our most astute cultural critics, Greil Marcus, in his new book When That Rough God Goes Riding: Listening to Van Morrison examines Morrison's particular and peculiar genius. Marcus says that Morrison willfully resists simple categorization; that his greatest songs are at one moment his own, at another covers of those by others. My conversation with Greil Marcus about listening to Van Morrison:

Ours is a materialistic culture with an insatiable appetite for stuff, but at what point does that appetite cross the line and reach unhealthy levels? Researchers estimate that more than six million hoarders live in the United States. And whether we're savers, collectors, or compulsive cleaners, none of us is free of the impulses that drive hoarders to extremes. But exactly how, when, and why do these otherwise normal impulses and experiences develop into hoarding? Dr. Randy Frost in his new book Stuff: Compulsive Hoarding and the Meaning of Things explains. My conversation with Dr. Randy Frost:

Enormous benefits are gained when when social ventures are teamed with business principles. The results are efforts like the Grameen Bank and its founder Muhammad Yunus, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006. The use of entrepreneurial principles to organize, create and manage social change is transforming the world. David Bornstein, author of the internationally acclaimed book How to Change the World, explains in his new book Social Entrepreneurship: What Everyone Needs to Know, who social entrepreneurs are, how they organize and succeed and what challenges they face in the world today. My conversation with David Bornstein:

John Lennon said that "life is what happens while were busy making other plans." History tells us that things are the way they are, until they're not. Pulitzer prize winning journalist and bestselling author Anna Quindlen's new novel Every Last One, takes this idea into the heart of the American family. People often think that family protects them from the omnipresent danger of the outside world. But what happens when the violence comes from within? Anna Quindlen gives us a new way to look at family and perhaps a metaphor for our larger American family. My conversation with Anna Quindlen:

As Michael Lewis explained to us yesterday, there is no question we've just been through the worst economic crises since the great depression. As we begin to recover, we all wonder what will be different? What lessons will we take away? It should be clear by now that enough has changed that we can't solve everything just by regulating Wall Street. We will each have to find ways to reform ourselves and our values to reflect the changing economy, strained resources and a new emphasis on what constitutes real value. All of this is what bestselling author, public intellectual and economic development expert Richard Florida calls The Great Reset. My conversation with Richard Florida:

It was John Adams who said "Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence." What Adams missed is that facts can be interpreted differently by different people. Bias, fed by money, greed, delusion and even by too much information, can cloud and shape those facts. In many ways that's what happened in the recent collapse of the sub-prime mortgage market and of Wall Street itself. Twenty one years ago Michael Lewis wrote about the wreckage of Wall Street in his memoir Liar's Poker. Little did he know then that he was writing about the beginning of an era that may now finally be ending. In his new look at Wall Street and the recent financial crisis The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine,he paints a powerful narrative of smart and fearless men, some of whom see things as they are and ask why, and others who never ask why not. My conversation with Michael Lewis:

There was time when we looked to and trusted science to provide answers to the most pressing questions facing mankind. Today, science like so much else in America, has become politicized and ignorance has been elevated as a political philosophy. Dr. Burton Richter, a Nobel Prize winning American physicist, who lead the Stanford Linear Accelerator and is one of the leaders of the revolution in particle physics, takes on the huge task of trying to educate us about climate change and energy. His book Beyond Smoke and Mirrors: Climate Change and Energy in the 21st Century provides an understandable explanation of the situation, including realistic and actionable approaches to addressing the problems. Sometimes it takes a great mind to give us the simplicity we need to understand complex topics. My conversation with Dr. Burton Richter:

Usually we look at how great writers influence our language and culture. Emily Dickenson turned this notion upside down. It was in fact her household staff that influenced her writing and altered her sensibility. Just as cultural diversity shaped Dickenson, as we find more and more cultural and ethnic diversity in our society, it's worth wondering how this multiculturalism will influence contemporary writers? Also, as more technology and and a growing service sector give writers more time to write, what impact will that have? Aife Murray, in her new book Maid as Muse: How Servants Changed Emily Dickinson's Life and Language gives us stories about 19th century literary and social history that just might have some parallels in the 21st. My conversation with Aife Murray:

The 2012 presidential election is still 30 months away. But Republican challengers to the President already think that holding public office may be a liability. Are we heading into a campaign that's not at all about policy, or ideas or governing, but about anger at a changing society, played out in a multilayered media landscape. Matt Bai, contributing editor to the The New York Times Magazine, and one of our most astute political observers, thinks this might be happening.  My conversation with Matt Bai about his article in The Magazine this Sunday:

Some argue that reality television represents the perigee of western civilization. Yet for many, it's a harmless guilty pleasure that also defines, for better or worse, the celebrity drenched, voyeuristic culture we are immersed in. Anna David, in a new book Reality Matters: 19 Writers Come Clean About the Shows We Can't Stop Watching, has assembled 19 serious writers, including L'enfant terrible James Frey, to give their views on this genre that seems to have such a hold on so many. My conversation with Anna David:

Sometimes it is through art and literature that we are better able to understand the complex issues of our time. Perhaps nowhere is this more true than in the Middle East, where reality, truth and history are often blurred beyond distinction. A place where over sixty years of conflict have brutalized the human condition. Susan Abulhawa, the founder of Playgrounds for Palestine, and herself the daughter of Palestinian refugees, tells us, in her new novel Mornings in Jenin, the story of one Palestinian family's struggle for survival. It's a story shaped by loss, by fear and ultimately forgiveness.  My conversation with Susan Abulhawa

Perhaps only now are we coming to realize that the election of Barack Obama was, to quote Joe Biden "a big F...ing deal." Not only did we elect an African-American President, but for only the second time in the nations history we elected a non Protestant to occupy the office. How did this happen? What nerve did Obama touch in the American psyche. Today, although it might not have been the intent of the Founders, Presidents represent a kind of national Rorschach test, on whom we project our dreams, our fears and our hopes. In our media driven culture, the individual narrative of the candidate becomes the central arc of our politics. David Remnick, the Pulitzer Prize winning editor of The New Yorker, in his new book The Bridge: The Life and Rise of Barack Obama, has deconstructed the Obama narrative and given us a new narrative of the man and the President. My conversation with David Remnick:

It was probably best that the still ongoing debate about healthcare does not focus on the great advances in science and genetics that really are at the cutting edge of medicine. If we really look for where the future of medicine is, it's in understanding the way in which genes will be manipulated and even created in order to create life saving cures. Even today, the promise of preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) and in vitro fertilization are being used to created perfect genetic matches, so called "savior siblings." Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Beth Whitehouse in her new book The Match: "Savior Siblings" and One Family's Battle to Heal their Daughter tells the story of one Long Island couple thrust into this uncharted biomedical territory. It's riveting story, with a happy, but cautionary ending.  My converation with Beth Whitehouse:

Are we so walled off that we look at personal exploration and the search for self as an act to be suspicious of? There was a time when students traveled to exotic parts of the world as a way to do what young people do, that is to explore and find themselves. Today, imagine a middle class kid who travels to the Middle East on a spiritual quest and winds up there on the eve of 9/11. This is the backdrop of Pearl Abraham's new novel American Taliban: A Novel. My conversation with Pearl Abraham:

Former Gourmet Magazine editor and LA and NY Times Restaurant critic Ruth Reichl has spent time, in many of her memoirs, telling amusing anecdotes about her mother. In her newest memoir For You Mom, Finally, she comes to realize that her mother was part of a generation of post-war woman whose frustration and unhappiness provided the predicate for the woman's movement and whose contribution still shapes us today. Like Betty Draper in "Mad Men" and April Wheeler in "Revolutionary Road," Reichl's mother came of age at the worst possible time for woman: They were educated, they had time on their hands, but no place to direct their talents. Reichl's mother wanted to make sure that her daughter had a very different life.  Ruth Reichl tells me more about her mother's story:

It's hard to imagine today that there was a time when the steel industry was booming. When steel workers could comfortably support a family, buy a boat and embrace the American Dream. A time when American icons like the Golden Gate Bridge and Madison Square Garden were proudly built with American steel. Those days are long gone. But what's left is a legacy of stories, of hard work, broken promises and anger, which still impacts our culture and our politics today. Science writer Deborah Rudacille, who grew up in a steel town outside Baltimore, gives us a powerful look inside this boom and bust world, in her new book Roots of Steel: Boom and Bust in an American Mill Town. My conversation with Deborah Rudacille:

Of all of the traditional institutions of America that have come under siege of late, perhaps none has held up better than the our great American research universities. However, even they have suffered. The economic crisis, a political culture that often embraces ignorance, international competition and a lack of understanding of their role in our society are all taking aim at The Great American University. Perhaps because of all of this, because we need to nurture this unappreciated national resource, it's more important than ever to embrace and examine these issues. This is what Jonathan R. Cole, the former provost of Columbia University does in his book The Great American University: Its Rise to Preeminence, Its Indispensable National Role, Why It Must Be Protected.  My conversation with Jonathan R. Cole: