Talk Cocktail

In communities all across America debates rage about zoning, building, and development.  In most cases, however, the debate is around the margins.  Most places have long since evolved into what they are.  New York City is perhaps the penultimate example.  While arguments still do go on about height limits, shadows and railyards, the city has long since determined its destiny. For New York it has b...

Think about the things that shape our world, our perceptions and our culture.  For a large part of the population, the experience of America’s mistakes in Vietnam has long shaped our engagement in the world.  The country's disrespect, at the time, for the service of those that served in Vietnam, in many ways positively shapes the way we respond to Veterans' needs today. As leaders today try and ju...

Every generation of parents wants their children to do better than themselves.  It seems though that to accomplish that today, as NY Times columnist Tom Friedman and others have warned, "average is no longer good enough." So how do we reconcile this with the data that tells us seeing our children for who they are and focusing on their social and emotional needs, is every bit as important as their...

The student loan crisis has reached epic proportions. Beyond the basic fact that it could be the next financial cries, with debt exceeding one trillion dollars, its impact on higher education, at a time when that education is a prerequisite for today's employment market, makes the problem all the more profound and complicated.  It also makes it a matter of urgent attention in the realm of public p...

Suddenly talk of income equality and poverty has become more acceptable.  Perhaps it’s the political season, or Thomas Pikitty’s book, or perhaps it’s just the reality of what we see all around us in America. But how does talk turn into action and what kind of action?  We see in Silicon Valley and in tech, in general, that when a company succeeds, or is bought out, all of the employees, all of the...

It has been argued that more evil is committed in the name of banality, than purpose.  Certainly a look at our current golden age of television, confirms that. Don Draper,  Walter White, and Tony Soprano never really seem to make up their minds about being good or evil. So what’s the zeitgeist of our culture that separates hero from villain and what's different today than say in the 90’s or even t...

When Hanna Rosin wrote The End of Men, did it also portend the end of fatherhood?  There is no question that gender roles have been dramatically changed in the past 50 years.  That in almost every measurable metric, women are not just pulling ahead of, but are surpassing men. Yet fifty years of change, is no match for almost two million years of human evolution.  Where these two forces converge is...

Everyday we encounter jerks.  Some have recently argued that the number of jerks has increased exponentially as we all experience greater stress and more frequent encounters, in denser urban environments.  But when those jerks go to far, than they truly become a******s. But why so many, why now and what can we do about it?  That's the question that Aaron James asks in A******s: A Theory . My conve...

Immigration has once again become the issue of the day.  Children are pouring across the border. Misinformation is rampant and our national attitude has become mean spirited.  We say we are a nation of immigrants, yet what we really mean by that seems very different than the current reality.   We have a system that has grown inefficient, prejudicial and disconnected from the very human concerns of...

It’s long been said that if you really want to get to know someone, travel with them. The corollary is that if you really want to get to know members of your family, go on a vacation with them.  The crucible of that experience usually brings out both the best and worst of who they are.   That’s the pressure cooker that the Post family is thrown into in Emma Straub's. new novel The Vacationers . It...

America has more ocean and more coastline than any other nation. We produce more fresh seafood than other nations. Yet the amount of seafood extracted from those oceans, that we keep here in the US, is very small. Why this disconnect? Why is our relationship to seafood so attenuated? And is there some connection or consistency between the decline of farming in America and the decline of domestical...

Technology is transforming the world.  But so too are millions of young people throughout the Middle East, whose attitudes, desire for freedom and more cosmopolitan views, are transforming nations. When these forces combine, the results can be powerful.  This is what we’ve seen in the Arab Spring and in the uprisings and youth movements in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya. University of Michigan Professor...

Living in the West, it's easy to forget that one-sixth of the world's population subsists without sustainable sources of food, medical care, or housing.  More than a billion people around the world are believed to live on a dollar a day... or  less. While the circumstances leading to that sort of poverty are varied and complicated, the situations faced by the planet's poorest are depressingly fami...

Few nations have as long a history of uninterrupted conflict and misunderstanding as the United States and Iran.  The markers along that road are tall.  The US coup that installed the Shah, the hostage crisis, Khobar towers, Lebanon, holocaust denial and the continually failed US efforts to seize opportunities when presented by Iran, have all contributed. The issue of US/Iranian relations have run...

Several trends are shaping the world today.  One is immigration and migration.  The mass movement of peoples from rural to urban area and across borders, in search of a better life. Concurrently, globalization and cultural homogenization are confusing the very idea of national identity.  As the recently concluded World Cup proved, we are deeply committed to our ethnic and geographic identity, and...

For ten days in March 1971, the Rolling Stones traveled by train and bus to play two shows a night in many of the small theaters and town halls where their careers began. No backstage passes. No security. No sound checks or rehearsals. And only one journalist allowed. That journalist was Robert Greenfield and now, thirty-three years later,  he gives us his first an account of this landmark event,...

To paraphrase Shakespeare, that fault is not in our food, but in choices we make. Specifically about what we eat, where it comes from and the policy choices that surround it. There is no questions that we are meat eaters.  But given the forces of big agriculture, and the fast food industry, we have to reassess not the practice of eating meat, but the kinds of meat we choose.  Things like factory f...

Immigration seems the issue on everyone's mind today.  Yet with all the thinking and all the talking, we forget half the story.  It’s not just about how the receiving country deals with new immigrants, it’s also about the immigrant’s experience and how that experience, especially for young children, will shape their lives, and in turn their contribution to and role in, the greater society of which...

It’s easy to forget that long before the intelligence failures of 9/11, the misinformation about Iraq's WMDs and what has become almost the militarization of the CIA,  the agency had done well as the bulwark of American Intelligence efforts in the Cold War and in helping to define America's place in the world.   Perhaps there is no better way to look back at that effort, than through the lens of t...

It’s easy to forget that long before the intelligence failures of 9/11, the misinformation about Iraq's WMDs and what has become almost the militarization of the CIA,  the agency had done well as the bulwark of American Intelligence efforts in the Cold War and in helping to define America's place in the world.   Perhaps there is no better way to look back at that effort, than through the lens of t...