Talk Cocktail

Iran on the brink. On a recent WhoWhatWhy podcast I spoke with Shay Khatiri who insists that the real question isn’t what happened on January 8 and 9 — it’s what comes next. Because this wasn’t an economic protest that got out of hand. This was the maximum force Iranian civil society can muster on its own. And it wasn’t enough. Khatiri — a leading Iran scholar expalins that every previous uprising...

While America now fully abandons climate action, the world races ahead—and watches in dismay. A look at the cost of US denial and how good things happening without us. Mads Christensen , the executive director of Greenpeace International, has spent three decades on the front lines of environmental activism. In my conversation with him on a recent WhoWhatWhy podcast, he brings a perspective that cu...

The numbers coming out of Iran stop you cold: 12,000 to 20,000 dead in 48 hours. Not across months of civil war or years of grinding conflict, but concentrated into two January nights of systematic slaughter. My guest on this recent WhoWhatWhy podcast, Shay Khatiri , insists we’re focusing on the wrong horror. The real question isn’t what happened on January 8 and 9 — it’s what comes next. Because...

Diversity has become a political weapon—but what if it was never meant to be political at all? UC Berkeley law professor David Oppenheimer argues in our conversation that diversity is an intellectual principle, not a moral slogan or corporate checkbox. Drawing on history, law, and hard science, he explains why diverse perspectives drive better thinking—and how the idea got lost along the way. Get...

Daniella Mestyanek Young escaped a notorious sex cult, then joined the Army where she studied terrorists—and recognized the same coercive tactics everywhere. The author of The Culting of America , she reveals in our podcast how cult dynamics pervade American life, from MAGA's authoritarian tribalism to corporate culture. We're obsessed with AI threats, she argues, while missing the real danger: hu...

On this recent California Sun Podcast, I spoke with Los Angeles-based artist Laurie Lipton about creating massive political works in chaotic times, her obsessive cross-hatching technique learned from Dutch Masters, and returning to the US after 36 years abroad to find America rolled back to 1955. A relentlessly productive artist, Lipton described drawing as an almost physiological need. “I use my...

It started with Rodney King—eighty-two seconds of video that should have changed everything but didn't. Thirty-four years later, after George Floyd and now events unfolding in Minneapolis, we're still asking: what happens after the cameras capture undeniable truth? Danny Goldberg was there in 1991 when an unlikely Los Angeles coalition fought to hold the LAPD accountable. His book Liberals with At...

Esther Mobley, the senior wine critic for the San Francisco Chronicle, joins me on the California Sun podcast to talk about California and the world’s wine industry crisis — In California alone, nearly 5,000 wineries competing for declining demand, 38,000 vineyard acres removed in 2025, mounting closures. She discusses why younger generations aren’t drinking wine, what happens to tourism-dependent...

Two garbage trucks of plastic hit the ocean every minute. Microplastics are in your brain. Recycling doesn’t work. What the plastic industry never told you. In this WhoWhatWhy podcast , former EPA Regional Administrator Judith Enck pulls back the curtain on an industry built on deception. Her new book, The Problem with Plastic , connects dots most people miss — between fracking booms and plastic f...

Last week, MTV officially shut down, ending an era that revolutionized music, video, and shaped California’s youth culture. Tom Freston co-founded the television channel 44 years ago, building a creative empire on principles that seem impossible today: hiring people with no experience, protecting creatives from corporate pressure, valuing disorientation over data, and treating loyalty as strategy....

Why is America uniquely terrified of AI while the world races ahead? The arguments driving that fear often collapse under scrutiny—real concerns go unaddressed. In this Talk Cocktail podcast, economist and author of the Noahopinion Substack, Noah Smith helps us understand what happened to American optimism—and why our fear may be built on foundations far shakier than we realize. Somewhere between...

Eleven federal workers reveal what it felt like to be fired by Musk’s DOGE — the emails, the trauma, and the institutional destruction we’ve never heard about. On this recent WhoWhatWhy podcast I talked with journalist Sasha Abramsky, the author of American Carnage: How Trump, Musk and DOGE Butchered the US Government. Abramsky spent six months embedded with 11 fired federal workers from eight dif...

We’re not one nation split by politics — we’re 11 regional cultures that have been at war since the colonies. And now the divisions are life and death. What if the America we think we know has never actually existed? The divisions tearing us apart aren’t new — they’re four centuries old, rooted in the very founding of this country. And now there’s data proving it. On this recent WhoWhatWhy podcast...

When billionaires mock the Pope with memes and fund “cheating apps,” something’s gone seriously wrong. The collapse of tech idealism; betting takes its place. Silicon Valley used to sell itself as the future. Today it often feels more like a funhouse mirror of the culture — loud, aggrieved, addicted to posting, increasingly divorced from any notion of social purpose. In this WhoWhatWhy podcast I t...

Arkansas legally whipped prisoners until 1968. Today, U.S. officials celebrate images from El Salvador’s concentration camp-style prisons while federal courts abandon “evolving standards of decency” for 1790s baselines. Yale Law Professor Judith Resnik , author of book Impermissible Punishments , talks to me about how prisons maintain structural ties to plantations and argues democratic government...

On this recent California Sun podcast Roddy Bottum , a founder of the alternative metal band Faith No More, talks with me about 1980s and ’90s San Francisco — a dark, overlooked era between the Summer of Love and the tech boom. His memoir, “ The Royal We ” recalls a vanished city of bicycle messengers and punk rock in the shadow of the AIDS crisis. It’s a poetic testament to community, loss, and t...

In this recent California Sun podcast I talk with Dina Gilio-Whitaker , author of the new book “ Who Gets to Be Indian ? “ She explores how California became ground zero for Native American identity fraud — from Hollywood’s early film lots to today’s casino capitalism and tribal disenrollment crisis. All of it created the perfect conditions for “Indianness” to become commodified, challenging authe...

Families who voted for Trump now carry passports to prove they belong here. Inside the fear, resistance, and betrayal reshaping Latino communities. Something remarkable is unfolding in American politics, and most people are missing it. The Latino voters who handed Donald Trump a historic victory less than a year ago are now turning against him in numbers that should terrify the Republican Party. B...

When the world’s richest men decide democracy is optional, we all pay the price. They once championed marriage equality and promised to make the world more open and connected. Now Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Marc Andreessen, and a tight network of Silicon Valley billionaires are bankrolling authoritarian politics, questioning democracy itself, and leveraging their control of our communication infrastr...

Can capitalism have a conscience? Yvonne Chouinard built Patagonia into a billion-dollar empire while trying to save the planet—then gave it all away rather than be called a billionaire. My guest NYT reporter David Gellis expalins how in an age of Musk and Bezos, Chouinard’s story reveals both the promise and paradox of doing well by doing good. A half-century journey led by a French-Canadian dirt...

Luigi Mangione became a folk hero after allegedly killing a healthcare CEO. “Free Luigi” merchandise. Hacked highway signs. But he’s not alone. In a recent WhoWhatWhy podcast I spoke with journalist John Richardson who reveals how Ted Kaczynski’s ideology radicalized Mangione and is appealing to alienated young men who’ve reached a dark conclusion: the system won’t change without violence. Get ful...

San Francisco’s underground robot fight clubs: humanoid machines in steel cages, VR pilots, roaring crowds. China builds the hardware, America stages the spectacle, AI makes them lethal. I talk with journalist and filmmaker Ashlee Vance on my latest California Sun Podcast. He expalins how the technology is advancing at breakneck speed — raising questions about entertainment, military applications,...

On this recent California Sun podcast I talk with Todd S. Purdum, veteran journalist and author of “ Desi Arnaz: The Man Who Invented Television .” Purdum expalins how a Cuban refugee revolutionized Hollywood. He invented the three-camera sitcom format, shifted television production from New York to LA, and created the business model that sustained the industry and TV production for seven decades—...

Political violence isn’t an aberration in American democracy — it’s a defining trait. From the Boston Tea Party to January 6, it’s how we settle our differences. My guest on this WhoWhatWhy podcast is professor Matthew Dallek of George Washington University. The author of numerous books and papers on political violence, including the definitive history of the John Birch Society. Dallek argues we’r...

On this latest California Sun podcast, John Freeman , author of “ California Rewritten: A Journey Through the Golden State’s New Literature ,” talks to me about how California has become America’s new literary center, challenging New York’s dominance. He discusses the pandemic book club that sparked his journey, the state’s evolving mythology, and how diverse voices are redefining what it means to...