Talk Cocktail

Can we rethink civilization

In An Inconvenient Truth, warned us of a "planetary emergency" as a worst case scenario.   According to Dianne Dumanoski, award winning author and long time environmental journalist, ecological catastrophe is no longer a worst case scenario--it is inevitable.  In her environmental history, The End of the Long Summer: Why We Must Remake Our Civilization to Survive on a Volatile Earth, Dumanoski provides a dismal forecast for the future based on vast quantities of scientific data, which indicates that the ideal climate which has allowed life to flourish on earth for thousands of years is overdue for a seismic change, with or without the help of humanity.

Julia Child

My conversation, from November 2001, with Julia Child.

St. Helena... Again

More talk about the St. Helena School Board recall.  St Helena Councilman Eric Sklar fills in for me and talks with former school board member Jim Haslip.

Why we need to look at the French helath care system

In Differential Diagnoses, Paul V. Dutton Associate Professor of History at Northern Arizona University and a Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, debunks a common misconception among Americans that European health care systems are essentially similar to each other and vastly different from U.S. health care. In fact, the Americans and the French both distrust "socialized medicine." Both peoples cherish patient choice, independent physicians, medical practice freedoms, and private insurers in a qualitatively different way than the Canadians, the British, and many others.  My conversation with Paul Dutton.

Robert Wright talks about THE EVOLUTION OF GOD

Acclaimed author Robert Wright talks to me about his new book The Evolution of God.

Immigration, Islam & The West

Christopher Caldwell talks with Jeff Schechtman about the impact of Islamic immigration in Europe.

Voices from the Moon

Andrew Chaikin tells of mans exploration of the moon as told by the words of 23 of the Apollo Astronauts.

Dangerous & Necessary

He was a violin prodigy as a child and then a successful stand up comic Paul Krassner calls himself an investigative satirist. People magazine called him the Father of the underground press. He founded the Realist magazine in 1958 and published it through 2001. For years his style of personal journalism blurred the line between observer and participant, even while he helped define the modern modality for free speech. He covered the antiwar movement, then co-founded the Yippies with Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin. He published material on the psychedelic revolution then took LSD with Timothy Leary Ram Dass and Ken Kesey As a stand up comic he was mentored by Lenny Bruce, then edited Lenny Bruce’s autobiography. His articles have appeared in Rolling Stone, Spin, Playboy, Penthouse, Mother Jones, the Nation, New York, N.Y. Press, National Lampoon, Utne Reader, the Village Voice, the San Francisco Examiner, the Los Angeles Times and the L.A. Weekly. He writes a monthly column for High Times, “Brain Damage Control,” and he contributes to The Huffington Post. His autobiography, Confessions of a Raving, Unconfined Nut: Misadventures in the Counter-Culture, was published by Simon & Schuster. His newest book is Who's to Say What's Obscene?: Politics, Culture, and Comedy in America Today In the end, George Carlin was right when he said of Paul Krassner, “This man is dangerous--and funny; and necessary.”  My conversation with Paul Krassner.

Blog this.

What started as an internal means of communication, not unlike "Watson, come here I need you," has become a cultural, political and economic phenomenon.  The Blog has become the visual soundtrack of the 21st Century.  It is a new kind of public square in which millions participate and millions more observe.  How did it start?  Who are its stars and what is its future?  This is the subject Scott Rosenberg tackles in Say Everything: How Blogging Began, What It's Becoming, and Why It Matters. My conversation with Scott Rosenberg.

The begining of history

Twenty Years ago, this November, the Berlin Wall came down and with it the end of the Cold War.  For the next twelve years, we entered what some called "the end of history."  Then on September 11th, 2001 all of that changed. How did the events of those twelve years lead to 9/11 and how did it shape the world we live in today?  James Goldgeier, professor at The George Washington University and senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations explains, in his new book America Between the Wars: From 11/9 to 9/11, what happened and why.  My conversation with James Goldgeier:

The business of FREE

We get much of our music on line, for free; but it has devastated the music business.  We've seen classified ads on Craigslist undermine the economics of newspapers and journalism.  With You Tube, free is jeopardizing the very fabric of the movie and television business.  How can the free business model of the Internet coexist with our desire for new, better and quality content? This discussion is at the center of a new book by Chris Anderson, editor in chief of Wired Magazine and the author of the international bestseller The Long Tail.  Now in his new book Free: The Future of a Radical Price he compels to think in new ways, as Internet users and consumers.  My conversation with Chris Anderson.

Failures of the FBI and CIA on the road to 9/11

Investigative journalist Peter Lance, in his new book Triple Cross once again reveals the failures of the FBI, Federal Prosecutors, and the CIA  on the road to 9/11.  He uncovers the story of how Ali Mohamed, a master spy for Osama bin Laden manged to infiltrate the deepest levels of the U.S. intelligence community and how the FBI's elite bin Laden squad failed to stop him. Check out his web site at peterlance.com and my conversation with Peter.

MS-13 - America's most violent Gang

It is the fastest growing and most violent gang in the country.  Formed by Salvadorian immigrants on the streets of Los Angeles in the l980's, the Mara Salvatrucha has now grown to more than 60,000 members worldwide.  It combines the best organizational elements of La Cosa Nostra and Al-Qaeda.  The FBI has created a special task force to curb its expansion.  None the less, it continues to grow, seeping deeper into the neighborhoods of America and bringing with it extreme violence, extortion, fear and crime. Investigative journalist Samuel Logan has spent the past five years, reporting on gang activity across the US, Mexico and Central America.  His book  This Is for the Mara Salvatrucha: Inside the MS-13, America's Most Violent Gang tells the brutal tale.  My conversation with Sam Logan.

Cheap, cheap......

What is the economic, political, environmental and psychic cost of our penchant for demanding goods as cheap as possible? Low price is so alluring, we forget that we were once suspicious of them. Now we have elevated convenience over service and discounts over quality and craftsmanship. Atlantic Magazine correspondent Ellen Shell details the high cost of discount culture in her new book CHEAP. My conversation with Ellen Ruppel Shell.

California Nightmare

Previously we talked to California's preeminent historian, Kevin Starr about the '50s and the golden age of abundance in California.  Today we have a state whose economy is in shambles, and still people want to be the Governor of California.  It's a little like asking to captain of the Titanic?  New York Times Washington Correspondent Mark Leibovich, in his NY Times Magazine cover story last week, looks at Newsom, Brown, Campbell, Whitman and Poizner and their quest to replace Arnold.   Here is my conversation with Mark Leibovich:

California Deraming

Joan Didion wrote of California, that "the dream was always teaching the dreamers how to live."  Never was that California Dream more evolved than during the '50's.  It was a time when the Golden State's population doubled.  It was a time when California's Freeways, Disneyland, Water Projects and Universities were the envy of the world.  It was a time of unfettered abundance. But was it sustainable?  Arguably from what we are seeing today, maybe not.   The distinguished California historian Dr. Kevin Starr, in his eighth volume of California history,  Golden Dreams: California in an Age of Abundance, 1950-1963, looks at this dynamic period from 1950 to 1963.  My conversation with Kevin Starr.

Death Watch

Dr. Michael Baden is one of the worlds leading forensic pathologists. He  has been there to examine the forensic evidence for some of the most sensational cases of our time, including JFK,  O.J., Van Bulow, John Belushi, and Phil Spector.  He is the host of HBO's AUTOPSY and a best selling author.  Recently we talked about the science of forensics and the publics overwhelming fascination with crime & death and his new book Skeleton Justice.

Middle East gonzo journalism

James Hider Middle Bureau Chief for The Times of London and author The Spiders of Allah: Travels of an Unbeliever on the Frontline of Holy War, takes us into the Heart of Darkness in the Middle East.  If Hunter Thompson were writing about Iraq, Israel and Palestine, it might look something like Hider's book.   From hardcore Zionist settlers still fighting ancient Biblical battles to Shiite death squads; whether it's the misappropriation and martyrdom of Mickey Mouse by Gaza's Islamists, or a US president acting on God's orders, Hider sees the hallucinatory effect of what he calls the 'crack cocaine of fanatical fundamentalism' all around him. He wonders how can people not only believe in this madness, but die and kill for it too?  My conversation with James Hider.

Local JW

Local, Local

On the other side of the border

When we do talk about the issue of immigration, it's usually thorough the prism of preconception, politics and polemics. There is another side.  The human side.  A side with sociological complexities, real people, and even sometimes humor. This is the backdrop for Louis Alberto Urrea's new novel Into the Beautiful North.  Through it, we see all of these issues in a way that debates, or news stories or hearsay cannot capture.  My conversation with Luis Alberto Urrea.

RIGHTEOUS DOPEFIEND

Philippe Bourgois and Jeff Schonberg, in their book Righteous Dopefiend, take us up close and personal into the world of homelessness and drug addiction in urban America. For more than two decades they followed two dozen heroin injectors and crack smokers in their scramble for survival on the streets of San Francisco. Most importantly, more than just painting a bleak landscape, they conclude with proposals for policy changes and interventions, and look at how and why the U.S. has produced this shelterless population, condemned to lives of distress and suffering.

Leonard Bernstein - The political Life

From his conducting debut in 1943 until his death in 1990, Leonard Bernstein's star blazed brilliantly.  But always twinkling within that star were the yearnings of a true progressive.  In his new biography Leonard Bernstein: The Political Life of an American Musician, Barry Seldes, links Bernstein's real musical and theatrical achievements and some of his real setbacks, to to his involvement with progressive politics.   We see the nexus between Bernstein's career and some of the twentieth century's most momentous events. His life shows us the unique intersection of American culture and political power.   My conversation with Barry Seldes.

What's really going on inside Iran

Events in Iran are moving quickly, and any attempt by Westerners to fully understand the complexity and the dizzying array of actors and institutions is often met with frustration.  One who does understand however, is Middle East and South Asia Expert JUAN COLE.  The author of the blog INFORMED COMMENT Professor of History at the University of Michigan and author of Engaging the Muslim World,  provides some keen insights into what twitter, the blogs and a little of the MSM is bringing us.  My conversation this morning with Juan Cole.

The hidden side of hunger in America

Amidst the housing meltdown, rising energy costs and an increasingly dysfunctional health care system, America's poor are also battling hunger. Outside of the media sight-lines, all types of communities are struggling to put any type of food on the table. SASHA ABRAMSKY, a senior fellow at the New York think tank Demos, in his new book Breadline USA: The Hidden Scandal of American Hunger and How to Fix It sounds the alarm.  My conversation with Sasha Abramsky:

The post feminist paradigm for woman in the workplace

Woman are earning more college degrees and more graduate degrees.  Research has repeatedly shown that those companies that employ more woman in the upper echelons of management make more  money.  How are these facts, coupled with new technology, re-framing our old ideas about the workplace?  As women are still a great untapped lever for companies around the world, how do companies and woman find new solutions and opportunities and achieve a better balance in business and in life. This is the work that Claire Shipman of Good Morning America and ABC News and Katty Kay of the BBC take on in their new book Womenomics. My conversation with Claire Shipman and Katty Kay:

The good mother redefined as the Bad Mother

Four years ago Ayelet Waldman sparked a controversy, and was forced to defend herself, when she wrote in a N.Y. Times essay that "she loved her husband more than her children."  Now in her new memoir Bad Mother: A Chronicle of Maternal Crimes, Minor Calamities, and Occasional Moments of Grace, Waldman details the fall-out from that essay, as well as what she call "the perils and joys of trying to be a decent mother in a world intent on marking you feel like a bad one." My conversation with Ayelet Waldman.

Who is Hugo Chavez and why does he hate us?

The rise of Venezuela's left-wing President, Hugo Chavez, is a lesson in what can happen when the U.S. disses an entire continent.  Who is Chavez, and what role has he played in the fact that U.S. influence in Latin America is perhaps at its lowest ebb.  Brian Nelson, in his book The Silence and the Scorpion: The Coup Against Chavez and the Making of Modern Venezuela, shows why  the U.S., especially under the Bush administration has failed in our Latin American policy and why the most resource rich country in the region is also the most corrupt.

Bill Clinton's emeritus years

For almost twenty years Bill Clinton has been a part of the American political landscape.  Now in his emeritus years, its a bittersweet story of a man, who after reaching the pinnacle of political power, is still trying to shape his destiny, still searching to define his place in the world.  This story is admirably told by Peter Baker of the N.Y. Times in a cover story in the N.Y. Times Magazine this past Sunday.  My conversation with Peter Baker:

To live or die in Pakistan

If Pakistan is the central front in the war on terror, why don't we know more about it? For years we have read and listened to reporting from Iraq and Afghanistan, but arguably not enough about Pakistan;  a country with nuclear weapons, an unstable government and a military with questionable allegiances. Nicholas Schmidle, an accomplished journalist, spent two years studying and reporting from Pakistan and understands the reality on the ground as few others do. In his new book To Live or to Perish Forever: Two Tumultuous Years in Pakistan, Nick Schmidle takes us inside his two years in a nation always on the bring of chaos.

Friday golf with JOHN FEINSTEIN

The 2008 US Open produced one of the most unexpected and dramatic showdowns not only in Golf but in sports history.  Tiger Woods the champ vs. Rocco Mediate, the aging and likable challenger.  It had all the drama of a movie.  However, it was the real this.  Perhaps the most dramatic sports event of the still young 21st century.  John Feinstein, in his new book Are You Kidding Me?: The Story of Rocco Mediate's Extraordinary Battle with Tiger Woods at the US Open,chronicles the event.  My conversation with John Feinstein:

Sleeping with the enemy...

Again, a marriage becomes the template to examine the socio-political storms swirling around the society. While previously we looked at marriages of the 60's and 70's, now Sophia Raday, in her new book,  Love in Condition Yellow: A Memoir of an Unlikely Marriage, writes of a marriage, her own, that's a template for a kind of 21st Century point/counterpoint.  My conversation with Sophia Raday.

The times they are a changing...and most politicians missed it.

Matt Bai, one of the country's most astute political observers and reporters talks, in his recent N.Y. Time magazine piece, about how politicians missed the generational shift on the gay marriage issue. It's an interesting look at how American values and culture are indeed changing. My conversation with Matt Bai:

Scenes from a Marriage: 1968 (part II)

Robert Greenfield, whose books, articles, profiles and stories have made him one of the most informed and insightful voices of the '60's, tells of the tumultuous lives of  another   young couple, this one in Swinging London in the late 60's and early 70's.  His new book A Day in the Life: One Family, the Beautiful People, and the End of the Sixties is also a very emotional and person story, one that mirrors societies transformation from the psychedelic 60's to the reality of the '70's.  Greenfield writes a kind of "rock and roll, Tender is the Night" amidst the backdrop of glamorous lifestyles and very famous icons of the time.

Scenes from a marriage: 1968

Danzy Senna in her book Where Did You Sleep Last Night?: A Personal History tells of her parents who married in 1968, as they merged two complicated strains of American heritage: Boston blue blood traceable to the Mayflower and Southern African American with a cross strain of Mexican–Native American. Her parents seemed poised to defy history. They were two brilliant young American writers. Married in 1968, a year that seemed to separate the past from the present; together, these two would snub the histories that divided them and embrace the radical future of the time.

DR. SHERWIN NULAND explains that bedside manner matters.

To often our health care reform conversations don't involve the real lives of Doctors and the real dynamics of the Doctor/Patient relationship. Over the course of his career, both as a practicing surgeon and as a clinical professor at Yale, Dr. Sherwin Nuland has had the chance to work with a host of exceptionally talented doctors in a range of specialties. For "The Soul of Medicine," he has asked 16 of them to tell the story of their most memorable patient and, with two of his own additions, cobbled them together into a modern-day version of "The Canterbury Tales." My conversation with Dr. Sherwin Nuland.

MICHAEL GURIAN talks of lost boys

Today we saw the statistics that the biggest victims of the recession were Blue Collar men. This, coupled with the crises our boys are facing in education, is a socially dangerous combination. The increasing majority of graduates from our top Universities, Law Schools, Medical Schools and even Business Schools are young woman. Boys and young men are falling further and further behind. Many have sounded the alarm. But few with as many specific solutions as Michael Gurian. A long time advocate for boys, his new book THE PURPOSE OF BOYS offers really insightful solutions to the problems of so many millennial boys. My conversation with Michael Gurian

M.J. SOUPIOUS explains the Greek idea of the good life and their 10 Golden Rules

Mike Soupious, PhD, professor at Long Island University examines the idea that living the good life doesn't require a lot of money or even any faith. The Ten Golden Rules condenses the wisdom of the ancient Greeks into 10 memorable and easy-to-understand rules that, if lived by, can enable modern readers to have rich, meaningful lives.

BARRY STRAUSS explains what Spartacus might teach us about warfare in places like Afghanistan

The Spartacus War is the extraordinary story of the most famous slave rebellion in the ancient world, the fascinating true story behind a legend that has been the inspiration for novelists, filmmakers, and revolutionaries for 2,000 years. Starting with only seventy-four men, a gladiator named Spartacus incited a rebellion that threatened Rome itself. With his fellow gladiators, Spartacus built an army of 60,000 soldiers and controlled the southern Italian countryside. A charismatic leader, he used religion to win support.

ERIC BOGOSIAN talks to me about memory, identity and reinvention

David Brooks recently wrote about a 60 year longitudinal study launched at Harvard in 1944. The same study and it's search for the holy grail of "happiness" was also the basis of a story in current Atlantic. The idea that we change as we age, that we lead many lives, that memory both plays tricks on us and defines us, is also a core idea behind Eric Bogosian's new novel PERFORATED HEART. It's the story of two men who inhabit one individual at home in both the landscape of '70 New York and the more staid and grown up world of 2007.