Talk Cocktail

Back in 2004, a full fourteen years ago, Thomas Frank published a book entitled What’s The Matter with Kansas? In it, he looked at how a segment of the population was consistently voting against their own economic self interests. He argued that so called “culture war” issues, played to emotions that overrode economic concerns. Twelve years later that trend reached its apogee with the election of D...

When we talk about change, about creative disruption, about all the ways that the world, both local and global is different, it all seems to have it’s genesis in Silicon Valley. The games, the apps, the communication and the nature of life and work itself. But these changes were not the result of some kind technological immaculate conception. Sure they were engineered, and 0s and 1s and transistor...

Be it the troubled minds, young and old, that commit mass shootings, the incredible and successful talents that commit suicide, or those that seek solace in alcohol or opiates, mental illness is all around us. What’s encouraging is that we are finally talking about it. Not enough and not openly enough. But remember back in the 50’s there was a reluctance to even talk about cancer. Times change. An...

We hear over and over, that we are a nation of immigrants. Unfortunately, we’re hearing it in a boiler factory. We are hearing it over the cacophony of noise about race, about change and about security and raw politics. What’s lost is the reality of the very personal immigrant experience. What it’s like to be a stranger in a strange land. To straddle two nations, appreciate both, and not look at n...

Fifty years ago, during the last great social and political upheaval in America, young people lead the way. The mantra of the day, of not trusting anyone over 30, defined the generational and political divide. Today we face an altogether different, but equally powerful social and political dislocation. Except that this time we wonder, where are the young people. Where are the millennials, where is...

Groucho Marx famously said, upon resigning the Friars club, that he would “never want to belong to any club that would have him as a member.” That line has been used since by those that are afraid of not belonging. What better way to prevent being excluded than saying, or convincing yourself, that you don’t want to join? The facts, and our world today, tell us something entirely different. Not onl...

The founders were wise enough that they made freedom of the press first among equals, as a constitutional guarantee. They also even understood fake news in the form of the pamphleteers of the day. But they never could have imagined bots and trolls and social media, as a way for that fake news to be disseminated at light speed. We’ve seen how lies beak from the gate quickly, and the truth can seldo...

There's an old axiom with respect to quality and culture that says if something is popular, it can't be very good. Certainly that's true for fast-food, overhyped action movies and maybe even some crummy literature. However, there's a way that creativity can be combined with commercial success that brings out the best of both. What's more, creativity in this regard, is not something that's limited...

A few weeks ago , the press reported aggressively on the fact that Kim Kardashian had visited the White House. Just as it had the visits of Kid Rock and Ted Nugent before her. With homage toDr. Seuss, Oh, how far we have fallen. On April 29, 1962, John F. Kennedy welcomed a group of Nobel Prize winners to the White House. Other guests included William Styron, James Baldwin, Mary Welsh Hemingway, E...

By now we are all familiar with crimes and criminals on Wall Street. Bernie Madoff, Enron, Ivan Boesky, Barry Minkow and many others that have become household names. On the West Coast, the startup world of Silicon Valley had been somewhat spared from this taint. The world of “insanely great products,” “do no evil,” and “bringing friends together,” has, at least until recently, kept it’s patina. Y...

I assume that most of you believe that the state of America has seldom been worse. Racial progress, America as a melting pot, the global alliance that has seen us through the past 75 years, character, civility, and liberal democracy itself, all seem to be under siege. While this is all true, it's also true is that we’ve been here before. There have been many dark moment in American history. Maybe...

Everyday we get another glimpse of just how divided America is. The racial training at Starbucks, the horrendous tweets from Roseanne Barr, and the ongoing collection of psychotic hate filled lies from the president, are just some recent manifestations. To try and understand it all, Charlie LeDuff takes the journalistic admonition to “go here,” and puts it on steroids. Charlie is part of the great...

Since last weeks tragic news, many have spoken of the multiple talents of Anthony Bourdain.  Over the years I had the privilege of learning about Bourdain, in his own words.  Beginning all the way back in 2002, I had the opportunity to speak with him several times. We talked about foods around the world, the lure of the restaurant business, the depressing state of food culture in America, how he g...

The great songwriter Johnny Mandel wrote in the theme song for MASH, that “Suicide is Painless.” It’s not. The emotional pain and depression that often leads to it is anything but. Moreover the pain for the survivors is unfathomable. Yet we have witnessing an epidemic of suicide among some of best and brightest young people today. Suicide is now the second leading cause of death among college stud...

There are many that believe that solution of our fractured politics is simply for individuals to take power from the grassroots. That bottom up organizing is the antidote to the wave of authoritarianism that is sweeping the world. The counter to that argument is that even with committed grass roots efforts, charismatic and effective leadership is essential. The 60’s represented the end of consensu...

            How did our culture, politics and economy get where we are today? Just how bad is it and is it fixable? By comparison, 50 years ago, the country was truly coming apart. War, assassination and riots undermined the very fabric of America. All of this came just twenty years after the Greatest Generation won the the war, and five years after Camelot. Out of this cauldron came of age a new...

In trying to understand what makes us tick, people still debate the old nature vs. nurture argument. Yet modern science, medicine, psychology and biology all tell us it’s far more complex. In fact it’s a little like a variation of the uncertainty principle in physics. The very act of trying to understand our behaviors or the behavior of others, tell us more about the observers and sometimes the wa...

We hear over and over in our domestic political debates about the need to improve America’s infrastructure, that to do so is good for business and in the big picture, good for the economy and a projection of America as a global leader. Certainly, LaGuardia Airport and the 45 years it took to build the Second Avenue Subway in New York are not good indications. On the other side of the world, few co...

Someone once said of actors that they have their emotions much closer to the surface than the rest of us, in order to make them more easily accessible. If this is true, than it might be said that for some comedians their emotions are not just close to the surface, but raw and fully exposed. In the case of Robin Williams this certainly seems to have been the case. With Williams you always had the f...

Historians have long written about inflection points in history. In American history, events surrounding the Revolution, the War of 1812, the Civil War & Reconstruction, the Industrial Revolution, the Great Depression, and WWII, are all such points. It’s arguable that we may very well be living though another one right now. But clearly the last great historical inflection point came exactly fi...

The debate over Gina Haspel running the CIA has, like most things, devolved into a partisan political debate: The usual tribes, the usual sides, and the usual arguments. But if we can only step back a bit, we see that it’s so much more. It goes to the heart of who we are as a nation, as a moral society, and whether we can ever again be that shining city on a hill. As the nomination becomes closer...

Look at any days news output, and its getting harder and harder to separate fact from fiction. Not because of fake news, but because the real news and the actions of so many cross the bounds of credible behavior. As someone recently pointed out, after a few recent days of the usual craziness, if someone had submitted the days real events has a script or story idea for West Wing, or Homeland or eve...

It’s become a cliche, but the fact is that in just the past 10 years, almost everything we do has changed. From the way we drive, take pictures, communicate, shop, to the way we seek relationships. What hasn’t changed is the fundamental underlying idea of human relationships. Connecting, relating and maybe even falling in love. It’s probably a good thing that evolutionary biology is not subject to...

Trump, Brexit, and the worldwide populist revolution are not causes, but symptoms. Symptoms of a wider systemic plague of fear of change, anxiety, and a feeling by people of being part of a world they no longer can control or even understand. Technology today, rather than being a cause, is merely the host that carries the fear. Not unlike the Industrial Revolution a century ago, disruptive change...

In his book Profiles in Courage, JFK writes that courage exists “when a man does what he must — in spite of personal consequences, in spite of obstacles and dangers, and pressures — and that is the basis of all human morality.” It’s hard to even think about this in the realm of pubic life in 2018. A time when courage is in short supply, reality is subjective and facts are not the “stubborn things”...