Shows
Talk CocktailMyth, Religion, Fascism… The Recipe for Right-Wing Politics: My conversation with Jeff Sharlet
My WhoWhatWhy conversation with Jeff Sharlet about “The Undertow.” He explores the complex relationship between religion, religious nationalism, right-wing politics, and how these forces have intertwined with Trumpism and are fueling a slow civil war
My WhoWhatWhy conversation with Jeff Sharlet:
2023-05-0131 min
Talk CocktailAmazon, Bezos and a Global EmpireBack in 1953, it was reported that Charlie Wilson, the then head of General Motors, said that what’s good for General Motors was good for America. While that quote is a bit apocryphal, the idea was real. The notion that the success of any particular business was inextricably tied up with the success of the nation.
Perhaps in the 70’s it might have been said of Exxon. Today it might very well be said about Amazon.
The company has changed the way we shop...not insignificant in a nation where retail accounts for 6% of our GDP and...2021-06-3026 min
Talk CocktailWhy The Exploration Of Space Should Still MatterOnce it was the moon. Today Mars is the holy grail of space exploration. In the coming months three missions, one from the US, one from Taiwan and one from the UAE will be approaching and/or landing on Mars. Next year Russia, Japan, and India have missions planned. It could get crowded up there!
And while NASA, the President and Congress may be less enamored by space than by that latest social media site, there is amazing work being done at NASA. Also the private sector, in the form of wayfarers such as Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and Richard B...2021-02-0830 min
Talk CocktailNixon and The Dawn of the White Working-Class RevolutionOver the 200 plus year history of political parties in the US, something our founders advised against, the same parties have, at different times, stood for different sets of ideas. The Federalists, the Whigs, the national Republican Party, the Democrats and others all have been made up of different coalitions at different times
We all know for example that Lincoln and his Republicans were once the anti-slavery party. Oh how that’s changed.
The modern Democratic party really emerged with the New Deal coalition beginning with FDR in 1933. It was an amalgam that was considered the co...2020-08-1336 min
Talk CocktailPete Hamill in His Own Words...and VoiceI had the distinct pleasure of speaking with and interviewing Pete Hamill six times since 1997. There was no subject that he could not hold forth on. Our discussions involved subjects ranging from immigration to tabloids, the lexicon of news to urban America, and even Frank Sinatra.
This podcast includes some lengthy excerpts from three of those conversations. First, in a conversation from June 2011, we talked about tabloids, the state of news today, and the way in which tabloids stitched communities together.
Our next conversation is great fun as Hamill talks about his book Why Sinatra Mat...2020-08-0852 min
Talk CocktailMarilyn58 years ago today, the world awoke to the death of Marilyn Monroe. At her death, she was already one of the most well known Americans of the twentieth century. In death she would become even more famous, steeped in mythology and contradiction, she would become a symbol of her times. The lens of her own dysfunction gave her a unique ken on post-war American. Today, looking at her life gives each of us a unique perspective on how far we’ve traveled in those 58 years.
This is the story that Charles Casillo tells in Marilyn Monroe: The Priva...2020-08-0520 min
Talk CocktailWhy Are White Evangelicals Primed For Trump’s Fear-Mongering?Why do self-described evangelicals overwhelmingly support an irreligious commander-in-chief? Why do megachurches demand to stay open in a pandemic, and why is the pro-life act of wearing a mask seen as antithetical to masculinity?
In this WhoWhatWhy podcast I talk with Calvin University scholar Kristin Du Mez, who sheds light on how white evangelicals gave America Donald Trump (81 percent voted for him in 2016).
Du Mez, the author of Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation, argues that it is not the intellectual forebearers of Christianity who mobilize the faith...2020-08-0526 min
Talk CocktailCan Local Journalism Rewire Democracy?For journalism, it may be the best of times and the worst of times. The national media seems more vibrant than ever. The New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, as well as the cable news networks are thriving For these outlets the transition to digital was painful, but somewhat successful.
For local news, the story of what happing in your neighborhood, your school board, your city council, is a very different story. Thousands of local newspapers and local radio stations have shut down. The economics of the enterprise has proven to be unsustainable...2020-07-3125 min
Talk CocktailDo We Have The Strength and Wisdom to BEGIN AGAIN?It’s rare that the laws of physics and our ideas of race and politics find common ground.Newton’s third law of motion says that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. The American story of the struggle for racial equality seems to be subject to that law.
As the Founding gave way to the Civil War, and reconstruction to Jim Crow and segregation, and the civil rights struggle of the ’60s gave way to law and order and Richard Nixon, the election of our first black president would give us Donald Trump and wh...2020-07-2624 min
Talk CocktailThe High Cost of Free SpeechWe seem to be facing a time when the speech police are everywhere, a time when even the majority of progressive people simply seem to be losing faith in the value of free speech, all the while seeming to want to narrow the words that we can use.
“Don’t you see,” George Orwell wrote in 1984, “the whole of newspeak is to narrow the range of thought. In the end,” he says, “We shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible because there will be no words in which to express it.” Just what does free speech mean? Is it under threat to...2020-07-2426 min
Talk CocktailChristopher Dickey: A RemembranceChristopher Dickey reported from war zones and published many books, including a powerful memoir about growing up with his father, the poet, and author James Dickey.
I had the opportunity to speak with Dickey several times over the years, usually about geopolitical hotspots around the world. Places where his unique reporting skills enabled him to see not only the politics but the cultural heart of what he was reporting on. His reports and books were more than just words and analyses.
However, our most memorable conversation and one I share here was about his memoir S...2020-07-2021 min
Talk CocktailThe Unexpected Role of Feminism in Mass IncarcerationWe regularly go through paroxysms of demanding law and order. It's a form of political rhetoric that while it has roots all the way back in the 16th century, is with us once again today.
In our contemporary history we watched Nixon in 1968, New York in the 70s and then were was 1994. A time when the law and order obsession seemed to reach some kind of peak
Rudy Giuliani had become Mayor of New York, the Simpson case shined an arc-light on domestic violence, California passed “three strikes,” and Congress passed the Violence Against Women Act...2020-07-1636 min
Talk CocktailWithout Newt there is no Trump: How we Got Here.Donald Trump’s presidency was not an immaculate conception. Rather, the result of 30 years of increased hyper-partisanship, the reshaping of the Republican party, the rise of Rush Limbaugh and talk radio, Robert Ailes and Fox Television, and Newt Gingrich. They all contributed to the pugilistic style of American politics. But perhaps Gingrich did the most damage.
It’s arguable that if Gingrich hadn’t come along, others would have picked up the mantle of this style that lead us directly to where we are today. But Gingrich was uniquely suited to the moment.Julian Zelizer tries to answer...2020-07-1227 min
Talk CocktailIs It 1968 All Over Again?Then, as now, there was pent-up frustration, which boiled over, particularly in many poor black neighborhoods setting off riots that rampaged out of control. At the time, many Americans blamed the riots on what they saw as misplaced black rage and often vague outside agitators.
But in March 1968, the Kerner Commission Report turned those assumptions on their head. It declared that white racism, not black anger, was at the root of American turmoil. It talked about bad policing practices, a flawed justice system, unscrupulous consumer credit practices, poor or inadequate housing, high unemployment, voter suppression and other...2020-07-1022 min
Talk CocktailThe Microbiome is Revolutionizing Medicine and Yes, Probiotics MatterBeyond the virus we fear most, we are also surrounded by bacteria, viruses, fungi and parasites. But wait, no need to reach for the Purell every time. In fact, these things represent what is called our microbiome. It accounts for as much as 90% of our cells, and its positive impact on our health is immeasurable.
However, as a result of antibiotics, the food we eat, urbanization and other wonders of modern world, we have done things in the name of “do no harm,” which just might be making us sicker.
Today, it’s as if this l...2020-06-3024 min
Talk CocktailThe Genetic Superiority of WomenIn the current pandemic, we have seen men succumb to COVID 19 at far greater rates than women. A lot of theories have been expounded as to why. And many theories have to do with the disease itself and its inherent impact on the human body.
In fact, the reasons may be much more fundamental. They may be reasons that transcend the disease and may be directly related to deeper biological differences between men and women.
Differences that have applications in the treatment of virtually every disease, from colds to cancer. Clearly differences in chromosome may...2020-06-2926 min
Talk CocktailLincoln Almost Never Made It To The White HouseEarly in his political career, before he ever became president, Lincoln said referring to America, that “a house divided against itself cannot stand.” Little did Lincoln know at the time that he would one day stand at the fulcrum of that division. And that he might become crushed by the weight of it. Not only metaphorically, or ultimately in Ford’s Theater, but before he ever became president.
With Americans so angry today, with tempers, and temperatures so high we admirer the great job that the secret service does of protecting Presidents of both parties.
For Lin...2020-06-2526 min
Talk CocktailMaybe There Were Some Smart People in OklahomaAlong with the ideological divisions that are part of our political and social life today there are also the geographical divisions that essentially, at least as far as conventional wisdom goes, mirror those same divisions.
Those of us on the East and West coast, have a kind of bond that would make you think that the Atlantic and Pacific are one. That the sun rises on one coast and sets on the other and nothing much else seems to matter.
After all, it’s just “flyover country.” It’s all the same, right? Flat, backward, disconne...2020-06-2226 min
Talk CocktailAccepting Science is Actually a Test of CharacterIt was George Orwell who said that “to see what is in front of one’s nose needs constant struggle.”
Sometimes we are all trapped in our inability to see what is in front of us. However in the realm of science sometimes the facts should simply speak for themselves...and yet there have been those through history that have denied science. Mostly because it didn’t comport with their agenda. Sometimes they were blinded by the obvious and sometimes it was antithetical to the false gods of religion for the expediency of politics.
Yet the abili...2020-06-1517 min
Talk CocktailIt's Economic Dignity, StupidI’m sure you all remember when Bill Clinton ran for President in 1992, James Carville’s precinct slogan, “it’s the economy stupid” was a fundamental foundation of the campaign.
It was effective because it captured, in perhaps a more innocent time, the essence of the economy that personally impacted every single American.
Today, almost 30 years and a political chasm latter it seems there are many economies. The Wall Street economy, the economy of the one-percent, the middle class, those struggling to make ends meet, and those totally left behind. The “economy” is no longer a catchword th...2020-06-0917 min
Talk CocktailNot Your Father's CIAWhen looking at the world of the CIA, spycraft, and espionage, it fair to say that the images of both WWII and particularly the Cold War, shape our vision. Unfortunately, it does not always allow us to understand the reinvented world of 21st-century coverts action and government secrecy.
Joining me to explore this, as he has done in his nine previous books about the CIA, is Washington Post global affairs columnist David Ignatius. His new book The Paladin: he takes us inside today's very different world of spycraft.
My conversation with David Ignatius:
2020-06-0427 min
Talk CocktailIt Is A Small World After AllMost of you have heard about the Butterfly Effect. The butterfly flapping its wings in New Mexico can cause a hurricane in China. It may take a very long time, but the connection is real. If the butterfly had not flapped its wings at just the right point in space/time, the hurricane would not have happened. It’s how the world works today. Except with modern communications, it happens at warp speed. Coronavirus and terrorism are just two of many examples
Even for those that try and eschew globalization, the protest is futile. The world, its pe...2020-05-2818 min
Talk CocktailA True Story of Piracy, Power, and History's First Global ManhuntWho knew that 17th-century pirates were both the original terrorists and the original globalists. We mark seminal events that we are living through and decide which ones are important and which re not. Yet often time and history tell a different story. Sometimes it’s the small events, tiny inflection, or hinge points in history that seep into all the tentacles going out into the future.
Steven Johnson, in his new book Enemy of All Mankind: A True Story of Piracy, Power, and History's First Global Manhunt finds one of those points and gives us the recipes of h...2020-05-2417 min
Talk CocktailWhere Did 24/7 News Come From?When we say, almost without much thought today, that we live in an era of 24/7 news and information, we don’t often think about the attribution of this state of affairs. No, it didn’t come from Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook, or Jack Dorsey and Twitter. In fact, it wasn’t the internet at all. It was Ted Turner, a guy who in the 1970s was hustling billboards and promoting a UHF TV station in Atlanta. Until he went ahead with the crazy idea of launching a 24/7 news channel in the form of CNN and that, as they say, change...2020-05-2019 min
Talk CocktailThe Truth About America's "Deep State"Ever since the post-war years both fear and complexity have increased. Fear of the bomb, of communists, war, political assassination, and 9/11. Fear of technology, of the growth and concentration of business, and the growing increase in the size and power of government. Ideas that are often impossible to get one’s head around and to fully understand.
Much of our division today is about how we have navigated those fears and traumas. What has emerged it seems is two central narratives that have their origins early in the mid 20th century and are still evolving today. One th...2020-05-1228 min
Talk CocktailChina and Its Ongoing Industrial EspionageThere are so many stories today about the economic competition between China and the US. Competition in technology, in 5G in AI, and every other trendy high tech endeavor. However, the same competition exists in many other areas of industry, including the staid world of agriculture.
In fact, it is this world of genetically modified agriculture that may, more than the trendy tech, shape the future of the peoples of both China and the US.
It’s no wonder then that industrial espionage is rampant in this area and its national security implications go way be...2020-05-0620 min
Talk Cocktail"When Someone Tells You Who They Are, Believe Them"People often talk about certain groups of immigrants that have come to America and wonder why some groups are so successful.
One of the reasons is that it is a self-selecting population. To escape one’s country, whether it was fleeing Germany in the 1940s or Cambodia or Vietnam in the 1960s or Central America today, takes a remarkable degree of perseverance and courage. It’s often a high-wire act, that requires a do or die mentality.
But it has a dark side. What happens when that same drive is carried too far? When bending the r...2020-04-2829 min
Talk CocktailOur Evolution Is A Graveyard of Ancient Viruses.Perhaps at no single moment in modern time have we been more self-aware about the human body and human anatomy. I suspect that all of you have a new understanding of how viruses work, how RNA duplicates, how generic material plays a role in the evolution of disease.
Therefore it becomes the perfect time to zoom out from that personal insight to look at the broad evolutionary perspective of how we got here to this time and palace. How did our vulnerable lungs and respiratory systems evolve and what does that evolution tell us about life now...2020-04-1615 min
Talk CocktailWhen We Come Back, Every Business Could Be A Startup: Here Are Some RulesWhen we do come back from the current crisis, in some ways every business will be a startup. Sadly, some business will not make it through. Others will struggle to come back. And in some cases innovation will prevail. That is, new problems will result in new business opportunities. Disruption, innovation, and the desire and the will to succeed will drive entrepreneurs to imagine whole new companies and whole new ways of relaunching old ones. And some will be wildly successful and maybe even become household words.
It makes you wonder, is there a formula for start up...2020-04-0725 min
Talk CocktailA Look At What Real Leadership Skills Might Look LikeIf you go into any bookstore and go to the section with business books, you will find enough books on leadership to fill its own library.
The problem with most of them is that they focus on how to get followers to follow the orders of the leader. To enact in real life, the old kids game of follow-the-leader.
It’s often about trying to get inside the head of followers to understand what makes them tick and how to motivate them. But suppose, the real power of the leader was not to try and mo...2020-03-2724 min
Talk CocktailCan Journalism Be Saved: A Conversation with Nicholas LemannOne of the seemingly consistent things about creative destruction, particularly as a result of technology, is that we have a short memory for what came before the change. We remember just immediately preceding a dramatic shift in some vital element of our lives, but we forget what came before. It has the patina of making us nostalgic for the remembered past, even though we forget the long history.
This certainly seems to be true of journalism. We look at the landscape of what venture capitalist Jason Calacanis calls “late-stage journalism” and we see a world that is cert...2020-03-2129 min
Talk CocktailDavid Plouffe on Beating Donald TrumpEven if you are not a political junkie, even if you only pay attention occasionally, the one thing you should have learned is that campaigns matters. And while this is true at the most local level, it is true in bold relief in our national presidential campaigns.
It seems that in the modern political era, presidential cycles each layer on new accessories to the campaign process.
In 1960 it was the televised debate. In l964 it was an insurgent winning primaries and the nomination. In 1968, it was the beginning of the politics of division a...2020-03-1924 min
Talk CocktailA Bank Behind Every Crime: Dark Towers: Deutsche Bank, Donald Trump, and an Epic Trail of DestructionUsually attributed to Balzac is the observation that behind every great fortune is a great crime. In this day and age, It might be paraphrased as that behind every great financial crime is a great bank.
In the case of many such crimes in the 20th and 21st century lies Deutsche Bank. In its efforts to
grow it did away with all traditional ideas of risk management. In its pursuit of fees and earnings, bank executives got into business with some of the world’s most shady and financially needy characters. Russian oligarchs, the Trumps, th...2020-03-0928 min
Talk CocktailWhen Will The Boomers Leave the Stage?We are living through what is perhaps the last hurrah of boomer leaders. It’s hard to believe that it was only 28 years ago that we elected, in Bill Clinton, the first of only three boomer presidents, after having eight presidents, from Ike to George H.W. Bush, who represented the Greatest Generation.
Today we have a cadre of boomers, all septuagenarians, trying to make one last attempt in a world moving and changing faster than ever, trying to keep alive the aging boomer legacy.
As they do, a whole new generation is waiting in th...2020-03-0323 min
Talk CocktailHong Kong on the BrinkTrade Wars, intellectual property, public health, the global economy and democracy vs. authoritarianism. All are major parts of our public dialogues and all pertain to the state of China today. No other nation on the planet presents such an enormous footprint of the future. Perhaps even more so than the US.
That’s why the protests and events of the past year or so in Hong Kong are so important. Not just to the people of Hong Kong, but as a symbol of the face that China decides it’s comfortable putting forth to the world.
Je...2020-02-2628 min
Talk CocktailYou Say You Want A RevolutionWe look at our political and cultural divide today and think that it can’t get much worse. What we forget is that it has been worse. Not just when policy matters were settled by a duel or literally pitted brother against brother, but even in the 1960s and 1970s when students where shot at Kent State. Law enforcement was murdered in politically motivated robberies, and even the bombing of the US Capitol was part of our contemporary political history and division.
A powerful example of this period is a group of left wing women fresh from the...2020-02-2529 min
Talk CocktailNicholas Kristoff & Sheryl WuDunn: Tightrope: Americans Reaching for HopeBack in 1962, sociologist and political activist Michael Harrington published a book entitled The Other America. In it, he argued that a full twenty-five percent of Americans were living in poverty. The book had a profound impact on both Jack and Bobby Kennedy and some said it was responsible for Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty.
Forty-one years later in 2003, John Edwards spoke of “two Americas.” A nation divided by race, and by poverty.
And today, a full 58 years after Harrington’s look at poverty, the homeless crises is worse than ever, the streets of cities, large and...2020-02-1318 min
Talk CocktailCan We Distance Ourselves From the Sins of Our Parents? A Conversation with the Daughter of George WallaceIt’s hard to make the point in our 24/7 information-saturated culture, but all of us, politicians included, are a lot more than the worst or even the best thing that we have ever done.
Couple that with the fact that times change so quickly, values change, norms change and what might have been acceptable in 1962 certainly would get you fired today. This is perhaps most true with respect to the subject of race, the singular stain of our founders that we have worked 240 + years to try and redress.
The story of race is a long co...2020-02-1124 min
Talk CocktailIf You Spend Hours Watching Cable News, You Are Just A Political HobbyistPartly as a result of 24/7 cable news and its unending political coverage, politics today is simply another form of entertainment. A spectator sport at best.
We know the names of all the players. Nate silver homogenizes sports and election statistics as if we all had political bookies. We’re angry and we want purity tests for our candidates.
What we’ve lost sight of in all of this is what politics is actually for. It is, at its core, only about the wielding of power to accomplish something. Success comes not from shouting, or self-righteousness, or t...2020-02-0622 min
Talk CocktailHow Can We Avoid A New Generation of Brett Kavanaughs and Harvey WeinsteinsWhen an event truly captivates the nation, it’s usually because it touches on something that we’re not very good at talking about. Such was the case with the Brett Kavanaugh hearing.
Reactions to Christine Blasey Ford personified a complex contradiction in our society. While many, particularly some men, respected her appearance and professionalism, they were way too quick to identify with and accept Brett Kavanaugh’s college sexual entitlement as some kind of norm. In doing that one wonders what message we are sending to boys and young men.
This disconnect between changing cultur...2020-01-3127 min
Talk CocktailAustralia's Climate Apocalypse: Up Close and PersonalBy now, we’ve all seen the pictures and footage of Australia-on-fire. In many ways it’s equivalent to those Rover pictures of Mars. They make us sit up and take notice, but we have no real feel for what it’s like and how life can survive, or even if it can. For that we can only appreciate firsthand accounts of what may very well be the first great climate apocalypse of the 21st century.
Some of you may have read Judith Crispin’s harrowing account of the fires in a recent story in WhoWhatWhy. Now amidst the...2020-01-2922 min
Talk CocktailSilicon Valley and the Quest for ImmortalityThe not so subtle joke has always been that the two things that are inevitable are death and taxes. And while efforts are always front and center to conquer disease and extend our life span, the inevitability of death has always loomed large.
Even efforts to regenerate life and the fascination with cryogenics still acknowledged death.
Now a whole new group of scientists are trying to defy the evolutionary idea of death. The funny thing is it’s not happening in the great halls of medicine. Not at NIH or Cleveland or Mayo Clinic or at...2020-01-2829 min
Talk CocktailSaving America From Trump, and Democrats From ThemselvesLast Sunday the venerable NY Times got it all wrong. They said, and I’m quoting, “On the Democratic side, an essential debate is underway between two visions that may define the future of the party and perhaps the nation.” Not so.
The only thing that will really define the future of either party and of the nation is the defeat of Donald Trump. And anything that stops short of focusing on that and that alone is a failure of imagination.
The times went on to say, and again I’m quoting, “with a crowded field and...2020-01-2225 min
Talk CocktailIt's Ok To Compromise and Maybe Even to Sellout SometimesIn our current political and social climate, when polarization is so extreme, when purity tests are often required by your tribe, the idea of compromise and what some call “selling out,” takes on added weight and significance.
But because positions and even sometimes values are often so extreme does compromise and selling out even mean what it used to? And if not, can we actually square the circle of compromise, selling out and ethics.
That's the question that Inge Hansen asks in The Ethical Sellout: Maintaining Your Integrity in the Age of Compromise.
My conv...2020-01-2022 min
Talk CocktailHuman Nature Always Finds A WayMost of you know the story of the scorpion and the frog and what it tells us about human nature.
It’s no surprise than that our everyday encounters, at work, at home, and on the street are driven by our innate nature. Wouldn’t it be easier if there were a set of immutable laws by which to understand that nature? Law that really might have been helped that frog?
These are the rules laid down by bestselling author Robert Greene. Greene, the author of The 48 Laws of Power and the Art of Seduction, now lays ou...2020-01-1421 min
Talk CocktailCan the Generational Divide Lead Us Out Of Division?We see endlessly how we are siloed with respect to politics, race, and geography. Add to this the generational silos that we all seem to live in.
Reams have been written about intergenerational conflict, particularly in the workplace. But might this be the one area where the imaginary lines of divisions can be crossed? Can the improvement of intergenerational relationships in the workplace be a kind of Rosetta Stone for better understanding of all the other issues that divide us? Issues that are fed by speed, modernity, technology, and popular culture. This is the exploration that Hayim H...2020-01-0822 min
Talk CocktailDo You Need Further Reminders that This Is Not Your Father's WorkplaceThe Harvey Weinstein trial, which begins this week, while perhaps extreme in its nature, reminds us of the realities of today’s work place.
Today it’s not enough to just stay on top of one's career and professional knowledge and development. There is also the changing dynamics and culture of the workplace itself. Multi-generational, multi-gender, multi-age, and the seemingly increased sensitivity and scrutiny.
The irony is that it is this very diversity, that carries within it the seeds and the power, to help us understand and to strive to function frictionlessly within it. In fact...2020-01-0621 min
Talk CocktailWhy Most Health Care is Barking Up the Wrong TreeSome of you may have seen the story that owning a dog gave you a 27% chance of living longer. Some of that was related to the exercise of walking the dog, some to the companionship, and the basic human-dog bond.
But suppose the reality was much deeper than that. Suppose dogs could be diagnosticians and even healers and protect us from the onset of symptoms. They can and many already do.
This is the world that Maria Goodavage, veteran journalist and New York Times bestselling author of Soldier Dogs, takes us into in her latest Do...2019-12-3122 min
Talk CocktailWilliam Greider R.I.P.William Greider always knew that the chickens would come home to roost. Over many conversations, since 1997, he seemed to know and report the truth of that old adage "that if things were going to stay the same, a lot of things had to change." My conversation with Greider in March of 2010. RIP William Greider
2019-12-2724 min
Talk CocktailSomething to Think About As You Eat that Holiday Steak........It’s long been an adage that what we eat, defines who we are. That’s never been truer than in our polarized world today and beef and its mass production has long been at the center of this definition.
From the mid 19th century, the history of beef parallels, and often reflects social, cultural and economic changes. From the great plains in the 1850s to the slaughterhouses of the midwest, to the first McDonalds in San Bernardino in 1940, “where’s the beef,” has often told us who we are.
Joshua Specht tells us more in Red Mea...2019-12-2423 min
Talk CocktailCan America's Military Ever Recover?We all know that whether it’s a child’s toy or a powerful institution if something is built solid, misuse or the infliction of damage will not usually break it. How many times have you dropped your phone and it’s been fine? On the other hand, that which is weak or frayed will unravel with the least amount of stress.
In many ways, we can say that about America’s foreign policy and military establishment. Weakened over the years by uncertainly, hesitation partisanship, bad decisions and an exaggerated admiration that acted like a kind of superglu...2019-12-1925 min
Talk CocktailFrom Useful Idiot to Working AssetPerhaps our greatest spy novelist of the cold war, John le Carré, talks about what he sees as the appetite for superpower, that still exists in the U.S. and Russia. He says that what’s shared is the desire for oligarchy, the dismissal of truth, the contempt actually for the electorate, and for the democratic system. That’s common to both of them.
While the U.S. has certainly made mistakes, and was not always been pure in its motives and actions, today under Donald Trump something is different. What is it, and how did we get he...2019-12-1830 min
Talk CocktailThe Model For Taking It To The StreetsJust as we saw in America in the 1960s, as we saw when the Berlin Wall fell, as we witnessed in the Middle East, during the Arab Spring, and as we are witnessing today in Hong Kong, young people are always at the ramparts of change and revolution. This was equally true in France in the run-up to WWII and in the resistance to the German occupation.
On a day when people, mostly young, are taking to the streets, it’s worth talking to Ronald Rosbottom, about Sudden Courage: Youth in France Confront the Germans, 1940-1945
My...2019-12-1721 min
Talk CocktailWhy Quantum Mechanics Matter and Why You Should Care: A Conversation with Sean CarrollThe great screenwriter William Goldman once said of Hollywood that nobody knows anything. The physicist Richard Feynman once said that no one understands quantum mechanics.
And yet random as knowledge sometimes might be, it safe to say that the entire technological infrastructure of modern society, all of Silicon Valley, is built on top of the reliable functioning quantum mechanics.
Quantum Mechanics has been around since 1927. It is so ubiquitous in some ways that it’s been a little like being able to tell time and use that value of the information while not having any un...2019-12-1319 min
Talk CocktailWhat Happens to Ancestry Testing DNA?It’s no surprise that many fear technology is out of control. AI, facial recognition and robotics are the stuff of science fear. But it’s biotechnology and the understanding of what makes us tick that may be the ultimate frontier to both human understanding and human abuse by those that are malevolent.
Few understand this better than bestselling novelist Dr. Robin Cook. He has used his insights into the future to scare the bejesus out of us in his books like Coma, Cure, and Fever. Now in his latest work, Genesis he walks us through the cost-benefi...2019-12-0918 min
Talk CocktailThe Best and the Brightest of America's DiplomatsClausewitz said that politics or diplomacy was “war by other means.”
Churchill put it more colorfully when he said that “diplomacy is the art of telling people to go to hell in such a way that they ask for directions.”
The Impeachment hearings have pulled back the cover on the work, the integrity, and the quality of America’s diplomats. Perhaps it’s their self effacing, sometimes quiet professionalism that makes them targets for the more malevolent unprofessional forces in government. This was as true with respect to the attacks on the State Department During the dark day...2019-12-0225 min
Talk CocktailKickstarting a Better WorldThe great playwright Arthur Miller once wrote that too often “we know the price of everything and the value of nothing.” Perhaps nowhere is that truer than today. In a world where profit maximization and transactional value often seems to dominate, and the current push back to that could have unintended consequences, how do we find our equilibrium? How do we create a world of money and value, a world of profit and purpose, unbridled ambition and deeper meaning?
Yancey Strickler, a co-founder and former CEO of Kickstarter, now looks beyond the narrow focus of Silicon Valley into a...2019-11-2627 min
Talk CocktailFake is Sometimes RealArtificial flavors, fake news, authentic copies, and real replicas. They all sound like oxymoronic gibberish at worst, overzealous marketing at best.
And so it is that sometimes the fake is indeed real. Today we can appreciate and even learn or feel something by looking at a replica piece of art or liking an artificial version of our favorite food flavor or enjoying fake meat, But how about owning a Chinese made Louie Vuitton bag, Rolex or Mont Blanc pen?
The danger of course, on every level, is that we may have so blurred the lines...2019-11-1815 min
Talk CocktailOnly Whistleblowers Can Save DemocracyEdward Snowden, Chelsea Manning, Coleen Rowley, and the whistleblower who let us know about the Ukraine call, are just a few whose actions sparked international dialogue and their names may be universally recognized. But brave though they were, their courage isn’t universally revered.
Back in 2002 TIME magazine named three whistleblowers as people of the year and famed whistleblowers such as Frank Serpico, Jeffrey Wigand, and Karen Silkwood have been the subject of major films. Yet vitriol continues against individuals willing to speak out when they see crimes being committed.
Why are those who dare to...2019-11-1224 min
Talk CocktailWhy is Science Under Assault?Even when we don’t realize it, science is part of our lives. Physics, chemistry, biology...it’s all essential to our survival. So why is the general subject so confusing these days? Why do laymen think they know better than scientists?
And perhaps more importantly, at a time when everything else is advancing, when the cutting edge of
science impacts us all, how have the methodologies of science kept pace with modernity? Perhaps we’re all too stuck in the mindset of high school science class, and maybe that’s why we can’t progress i...2019-11-1222 min
Talk CocktailThe Battle of Mosul - The Last Great Battle Against IsisWhile many of you can recite the great battles of WW I and II and even the Civil War, the more recent battle that have been fought in the Middle East against ISIS are already forgotten. Certainly, the battle for Mosul was one of those
Beyond that, there is the relevance to events taking place today. The battle for Mosul, which helped take down ISIS in 2017, had as a major component, the forces of the autonomous region of Kurdistan. 40,000 Kurds that were part of the joint military effort in a battle every bit as important and as...2019-11-0530 min
Talk CocktailHe is a Being Made of TelevisionThere is not a morning that goes by without some story about the impact of social media. The power of Facebook or Twitter, or Instagram. With all of that, it’s easy to forget the power of television. Its impact on our lives growing up, its power today and what it has wrought. It’s given us Ronald Regan, Josiah Bartlet, and Donald Trump.
Howard Beal laid it out for us in Network, but James Poniewozik gives us the contemporary context in his new book Audience of One: Donald Trump, Television, and the Fracturing of America
My co...2019-10-2929 min
Talk CocktailThe Science of Kindness Is RealIn many communities you often see people wearing a button that says Be Kind. In an ever competitive
and sometimes selfish world that’s not always easy to do. Our political dialogue makes it even more difficult. Add to that our economic and personal pressures and the acceleration that we all face, and kindness often gets left way behind.
But suppose we found out that kindness is not just something we can do to make us feel better, suppose we discovered that kindness can really help us live longer and healthier lives. Not in some myst...2019-10-2721 min
Talk CocktailWhy Health Care Is Broken, and How to Fix It...Hint..Medicare for All is Not the AnswerImagine if you went to buy a car and rather than one price for the car, you had to essentially buy it ala carte. You had to negotiate a separate price for the wheels, for the engine, for the paint, for seats, all separate. All from different suppliers and all with hidden fees. Sound ridiculous? But that is essentially how we pay for health care in America.
It’s no wonder that there is no more polarizing issues than the delivery and the cost of health care. It’s why it’s front and center in our politi...2019-10-2428 min
Talk CocktailDeep State: Trump, the FBI, and the Rule of Law: A conversation with James B. StewartThe world is a complex place. The news comes at us at hyper-speed and 24/7. All while we have to deal with family, work and life.
Therefore more than ever, it’s critical that there are those among us, journalists mostly, whose job it is to distill and explain events to us. Not to tell us how or what to think, but to present the big stories in-depth and in a narrative that allows us to be smarter about the world, and refine how we are to live in it.
Few do this better than James B. S...2019-10-2229 min
Talk CocktailHarold Bloom 1930 - 2019Harold Bloom, who died last week at the age of 89, was one of our great teachers and literary critics. Often out of sync with contemporary literary fashion, he defended the “Western canon” and fought against what he called “the School of Resentment,” multiculturalists and those whom he argued betrayed what he saw as literature’s essential purpose.
I had the opportunity to know Professor Bloom as a student, and later in life, I had the opportunity to interview him. Most recently in 2000 upon the publication of his book How to Read and Why
Here is that conversa...2019-10-1718 min
Talk CocktailA Conversation with the Recipients of This Years Nobel Prize in economics: Esther Duflo and Abhijit BanerjeeBeyond the common denominator of poverty what are aspects of the poor that we just don't understand?
We've learned that poverty itself creates a different life, a different view of the world. A view that arguably accounts for the fundamental failures of so many well-meaning programs. Why this is, what works and why has it been so hard to find the magic bullet. Trying to answer this has been the work of the winners of this year's Nobel Prize in economics, Esther Duflo and Abhijit Banerjee.
My conversation with Esther Duflo and Abhijit Banerjee:
2019-10-1527 min
Talk CocktailThe End of America's Cultural HegemonyA look at the news any day reminds us that America is no longer the singular dominant power in the world. This is true vis a vis soft power, moral persuasion, and now cultural power.
American movies, music, and art no longer are the single option for global entertainment. Perhaps not since the British invasion of the ‘60s have we seen so much art and entertainment coming from outside of the U.S. This time form India, South Korea, and even Turkey. This is the world that Fatima Bhutto takes us into in New Kings of the World...2019-10-1420 min
Talk CocktailThe Tyranny of Virtue: Political Correctness Run Amuck on Our CampusesOnce upon a time, we didn’t have to think about political correctness. And we survived as a culture! We self-corrected, we became more sensitive to others, we learned to accept and appreciate diversity. It was sometimes difficult, even painful. But a lot of it was organic. Often we slipped up. We fell backward, and sometimes it even took appropriate legislation to provide better guardrails for our behavior. Such was the forward march of mankind.
But today, the bludgeon of political correctness hangs over all of us. And nowhere worse than on our college campuses. The fear of...2019-10-1325 min
Talk CocktailJust Who is Brett Kavanaugh?Most of us remember being transfixed, just one year ago, to the hearings from now Supreme Court Justice Brent Kavanaugh. This week, as the court begins its new term, Justice Kavanaugh will be part of a court deciding on some of the most fundamental cases that affect our politics, our culture, and our freedoms. All in an atmosphere that, if even possible, is even more polarized than it was a year ago.
So who is Brett Kavanaugh? Certainly the one week FBI investigation and the televised circus that was his hearing may not have told the whole...2019-10-0922 min
Talk CocktailWhy Understanding Silicon Valley History is Necessary To Deal With Today's Tech IssuesSo much of what passes for history today is one dimensional. We see the events, the names, the places the timeline and the heroes and the villains. But there is often another dimension. Not so much a secret history, but almost like the moon, it has a dark side, hidden from us. It’s there, we just don’t see it and therefore we don't’ appreciate it and its broader impact.
So it is with Silicon Valley. Literally, millions of words have been written about it. In fact, with the exception of politics and Washington, no place gets m...2019-10-0325 min
Talk CocktailTrump's War on the FBI
Today Trump's war is against Congress and the intelligence community. Previously he went to war with the FBI with the same mob boss approach that resulted in the firing of Jim Comey and Andrew McCabe and the repeated attacks on the integrity of the FBI
What can that recent history tell us about where we are now? About the strength and/or fragility of our fundamental law enforcement and intelligence institutions and the long term consequences to individuals and to the country?
To put it all in some kind of up-close perspective is C...2019-09-3021 min
Talk CocktailWe are All Cult Members Now!As a nation we’ve certainly gone through difficult times, times that as Thomas Paine said, try men’s souls. We’ve been divided as during the Cold War and the Civil War. But rarely have we been as tribal as we are today. Rarely have we been as willing to throw off facts, science, and reality, in the service of a cause. It’s almost like we’ve all joined cults. Little by little we’ve been encouraged to issue our faith in institutions and believe in nothing, which makes us more vulnerable to be made to believe anything.2019-09-2631 min
Talk CocktailIs Clothing the New Plastic?No matter who we are, we are touched by food, shelter, and clothing. Of the three perhaps clothing is one we most take for granted. Unlike our food, we don’t usually think about where it comes from, unlike shelter, it’s in abundance and unlike these other necessities, the price keeps falling while style keeps improving.
It’s almost too good to be true. And maybe it is. Maybe there is a darker side, a steeper price for this proliferation of fashion. Dana Thomas explains this in Fashionopolis: The Price of Fast Fashion and the Future of Clothe...2019-09-2523 min
Talk CocktailThe CIA in the Post 9/11 WorldOur attention span grows shorter while the events creating a whirlwind around the world, increase. N. Korea, Iran, China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, plus domestic turmoil is everywhere. In all of this, it’s easy to forget, just 18 short years after 9/11.
I often wonder how we’ll see this period that we are living through from the perspective of 50 years. But with respect to 9/11, the rearview mirror is starting to come into focus, as the objects are closer than they appear.
How the world and the US intelligence has transformed as a result of those events impa...2019-09-2229 min
Talk CocktailA 1998 conversation with Cokie RobertsOver the many years of doing this program, I'm sorry to say I only had one opportunity to talk with Cokie Roberts. We talked back in 1998 upon the publication of her book about mothers and daughters, and the changing role of women. It was a long time before Me Too, but she was prescient about so many of the issues that would evolve over the next 20 years.
I share that 1998 conversation.
2019-09-1814 min
Talk CocktailShe SaidIn All the President's Men, as reported by Woodward and Bernstein, Deep Throat says to Woodward, in the bowls of a garage, “it leads everywhere, get your notebook, there’s more.”
And so there was. Just as there was with the story of Harvey Weinstein. But on a larger canvas, it was the story of men behaving badly for a long time and getting away with it.
Fortunately, journalism is more than the first draft of history. Sometimes, facts, especially if they are an agreed-upon set of facts that are exposed, can change the course of his...2019-09-1724 min
Talk CocktailCharles and David Koch Are Not Who You Think They Are!Silent Cal Coolidge is reported to have said “that the business of America is business.” Correct or not, it’s fair to say that by looking at only American business over the past 60 years, we can see the full arc of our contemporary history.
Think of all of the things that have been front and center in our politics and our culture that have sprung from business, going all the way back to the 60’s. Conglomerates, the free movement of money around the world, manufacturing changes, management and blue-collar workers, government control and union membership. Private equity, derivati...2019-09-1627 minTalk CocktailThe Other Scandal: The College Dropout ScandalIn most places around the country, school is beginning. This includes the nation's colleges and universities where about 2 million high school graduates will soon start college.
Yet 40% of those incoming freshmen will drop out before graduating. Many with debt, limited job prospects, and shattered confidence.
Why is this number so high? Why are some colleges succeeding in keeping kids engaged and others failing so miserably? Are there best practices? Is this simply another reflection of the economic divide in America? Is it happening at elite universities? Can we test for it, and what are the...2019-09-0922 min
Talk CocktailHow Women are Changing American PoliticsOur founders devised a political system that was inherently difficult to change. They saw almost every aspect of the desire for change as needing to be cooled before even the most white-hot desire for progress could be codified. With respect to race and gender, it’s been even more difficult. Those were the prejudices and stereotypes baked into the founding documents themselves.
This is certainly one of the reasons it has taken so long for people of color and for women to be a full part of the political process.
Hillary Clinton talked about those te...2019-09-0422 min
Talk CocktailTrump Even Screws Up Conspiracy TheoriesLong before the Internet, in the early days of talk radio, the all-night hosts were the progenitors of modern-day conspiracy theory. Hosts spent hours talking about crop circles, animal mutilation, Area 51, the Kennedy assassination and all manner of events and evidence that could be used to construct a hidden narrative.
The idea was that strange things were happening, that evidence in plain sight could be interpreted in ways that evolved to different conclusions. The narrative was always about the interpretation of evidence that was in plain sight. We were told that we just didn’t understand the fu...2019-08-2323 min
Talk CocktailTo Live and Work In HollywoodHollywood is a place where the assets go home each night. Not just the Stars, but the hard-working men and women who make magic happen. Who each play a singular and unique role in telling cinematic stories. Each is a piece of a large puzzle and without each individual piece, the picture never comes together.
Sure Hollywood is a business and billions are dollars are always at stake. But without the experience, the craft and the talents of those behind the camera, none of it happens.
These are the “gig workers” that writer-producer Bruce Ferber gets t...2019-08-1423 min
Talk CocktailThe GOP's Strategy To Embrace RacismOnce upon a time the South was a solid Democratic block of votes. Many of those segregationist senators that Joe Biden recently talked about were in fact Democrats. Republicans just didn't get elected from there. And then things changed. The civil rights movement, the voting rights Act, the trailing impact of demographic change from the great migration, and broader cultural changes, including the rise of feminism, all provided an opportunity for Republicans in the South to exploit racial, social and cultural divides.
Today we are living with arguably the apogee that effort.
These divisions have...2019-08-0727 min
Talk CocktailThe Most Heinous Serial Killer You've Never Heard OfI know someone who is absolutely fascinated by true crime stories. She says that Silence of the Lambs is her Star Wars. And why not? Crime stories, especially true crime stories about the likes of Ted Bundy, John Wayne Gacy, or Jeffrey Dalmer, fascinate us, as it takes our thinking to the edges of human behavior. Understanding what makes these people tick stretches the human imagination.
That is exactly what investigative journalist Maureen Callahan does for us in her new book American Predator: The Hunt for the Most Meticulous Serial Killer of the 21st Century In it, she intr...2019-07-3020 min
Talk CocktailA 2019 Way To Look At and Talk To Kids About RaceIt’s clear that like it or not, race will once again be the issue of our time. You’d think by now, we would at least the the language right. But maybe that’s the very problem. We’re still talking about it precisely because we’re having the wrong discussion.
Almost as long as anyone can remember, we’ve sincerely directed our efforts to eradicate racism by talking about a color-blind society. The goal has been to make race and difference disappear essentially to homogenize the culture. When that hasn’t worked, we perceive that we have failed...2019-07-2521 min
Talk Cocktail20 Years Ago Today, the Death of JFK, Jr., Extinguished the Last Flames of CamelotFrom the moment that Jackie Kennedy branded the Kennedy presidency as Camelot, in an interview with author and historian Theodore White, royalty was suddenly bestowed upon the survivors.
The recoil effect from that simple phrase on Ted and Bobby and the rest of the family was impactful. But at least they were able to understand and process it. For John F. Kennedy Jr. he would immediately become a prince without any say in the matter
As he came of age emotionally, physically and politically, he was permanently marked by the mythology. It shaped every aspect...2019-07-1720 min
Talk CocktailThe Welfare Queen and Political MythologyWe all remember that Al Capone was ultimately busted on tax fraud, even though he had a long, violent and ugly criminal career. We see it play out in politics where someone is charged with one crime that the government is able to prove, while it is really reflective of a career of many crimes.
So it is with the mythology of Linda Taylor. Busted in 1974 for welfare fraud, Taylor had a long history of criminal behavior and is even potentially linked to three suspicious deaths in the 70’s and 80’s
But is was ultimately her...2019-07-1022 min
Talk CocktailThe False Mythology of Roger AilesMany of you may have started watching the Showtime series, THE LOUDEST VOICE IN THE ROOM, about Fox News founder Roger Ailes. The problem with it is, that with respect to what Ailes did, what he is credited with accomplishing at Fox, very little of it is true.
Sure Ailes understood television and politics. But at core what he did was to take the world of talk radio, combined it with a bit of “blondification” and transferred it to television. When Fox new went on the air in 1996, Limbaugh had already been on the air for almost ten ye...2019-07-0228 min
Talk CocktailThe Loudest Voice in the Room
My 2014 conversation with Gabe Sherman on his then just-published book, THE LOUDEST VOICE IN THE ROOM. It's a great preview for the Showtime series that begins on Sunday
The Loudest Voice in the Room: How the Brilliant, Bombastic Roger Ailes Built Fox News--and Divided a Country
2019-06-2922 min
Talk CocktailWar Today: We Pay and They ServeOnce upon a time war had structure. There was a kind of narrative arc to war. A beginning, a middle and clear end. In the modern era, certainly since Vietnam, they have become what Clausewitz called “protracted conflict.” Even the efforts to find resolution are nothing more than wars by other means.
Most have heard the biblical quote, that “you will hear of wars and rumors of wars, but be not alarmed. These things must happen, but the end is still to come.”
With respect to America's efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan the end has still no...2019-06-2124 min
Talk CocktailCities Represent the Ultimate Achievement of MankindToday, more than one-half of the world's population lives in cities. In every corner of the world, people are moving to cities at a rapid and geometric pace. The urban migration taking place today is both historic and inevitable. Our cities represent the ultimate triumph and organizing principle of humanity. They are more than either the concrete jungle portrayed by Billy Wilder in the Lost Weekend, or the human zoo, that Desmond Morris claimed.
The great San Francisco columnist, Herb Caen, one said of cities, “that they should not be judged just by their length and width, bu...2019-06-1820 minTalk CocktailProfessor Ed Hess talks about Saving CapitalismNever before in human history has so much change been so rapidly foisted on human beings. Not during the Renaissance, the Enlightenment or the Industrial Revolution.
Today, technology in all of its forms; from smart machines to robotics, from AI to VR to 3D manufacturing, to genetic and biomedical engineering, will make sure we are never the same
It's estimated by some that almost eighty million jobs could be gone in our lifetime. Certainly, the psychological and political consequences of this change, as we are already seeing, could be devastating. But so will the economic...2019-06-0523 min
Talk CocktailImagine If We All Could Have Esther Wojcicki As A ParentThe evidence is overwhelming that in our schools today, the successful curriculums are those that are directed toward deeper learning, project-based learning, and social and emotional learning.
Learners that feel empowered and hands-on, that collaborate and learn empathy are the ones who excel academically.
So why shouldn't the same be true of parenting? The recent cheating scandal certainly shows the other extreme. What happens amidst helicopter parenting run amuck, of parents not having faith in the innate abilities and independence of their kids.
Maybe you don’t have to let your 11 or 12-year-old fl...2019-05-2829 minTalk CocktailWe Are Not Descended From Fearful Men: David Maraniss and "A Good American Family"Mark Twain is reported to have said that history does not really repeat itself, but it often rhymes. Today we live in a climate, not unlike the late ’40s and early ’50s, where fear is weaponized, and where suspicion of the other is exploited as a salve for change.
Yet there always seem to be brave men and women trying to rise above. As Ed Murrow said in his takedown of Senator Joe McCarthy,” we were not descended from fearful men. They were not men who feared to write or to speak,” who, again in Murrow’s words, “did...2019-05-2325 min
Talk CocktailWe All Have A Role To Play In the Biggest Story of 2019We think that politics might actually change the world for better or for worse. It probably won't. It's certainly more likely that climate change, weather, and rising sea levels will have a far more profound impact. The recent UN report on climate indicated that we could be facing existential risks within 20 years. So what is the world to do?
Jeff Goodell, a contributing editor at Rolling Stone, takes us deep into not the debate but the story of the particle reality in The Water Will Come: Rising Seas, Sinking Cities, and the Remaking of the Civilized World...2019-01-0121 min
NAPAbroadcastingJeff DoddJeff Dodd by Jeff Schechtman2018-09-2524 min
Talk CocktailCan The Behavior of School Shooters Be Profiled and Shootings Averted?There is no question that the easy availability of guns, especially assault weapons, has contributed in some way to the rash of school shootings. However, we would be naïve to think that this is the totality of the problem. Beyond guns, the broader questions always should be how these shootings can be averted. How can we understand and interpret the data from so many past events in ways that help us to prevent the next? In a world where big data is becoming the holy grail, can this data be used to keep our students safe?
J...2018-03-2024 min
Radio Archives - Edward ConardIs America’s Scarcest Resource Ultra-High-Skilled Workers? on The Jeff Schechtman ShowEd Conard discusses how America has produced more with fewer high-skilled workers on The Jeff Schechtman Show.
The post Is America’s Scarcest Resource Ultra-High-Skilled Workers? on The Jeff Schechtman Show appeared first on Edward Conard.2016-10-2700 min
Talk CocktailAn American Heiress in a Time Far More Violent Than Our Own
There are many defining markers of particular eras in American history. One of them is notorious crimes.
Think about it. Sacco and Vanzetti , the Lindbergh kidnapping, Jeff McDonald, Charles Manson, Ted Bundy, O.J. Simpson and the kidnapping of Patty Hearst. All are indelibly etched into the American psyche and each represents a set of fears and cultural markers.
Today, when domestic terrorism is on all of our minds, the story of Patty Hearst, the Symbionese Liberation army and its rag tag affiliates were a time when literally thousand of bombing were taking place on US streets. It’s a ti...2016-08-1019 min
NAPAbroadcastingJeff Schechtman CommentaryJeff Schechtman Commentary by Jeff Schechtman2015-03-1205 min