Talk Cocktail

We think we know a lot about American history. About the events that shaped the formation of the republic. And while that knowledge might get you an audition for Jeopardy, at its roots sometimes, it's also true that everything we think we know is wrong.   Essentially what that means, and maybe it's even a factor in what’s gone so wrong today, is that we tend to know only surface.  That when we dri...

It used to be, during the dark days of the Cold War, watching the Kremlin and trying to read meaning into every nuance, tea leaf and coming and going, was elevated to an art form. Today, it’s the same for the Fed.  Every meeting, every utterance of the Fed Chair and Fed Governors is parsed and analyzed and poured over for some hint of what the Fed will do and what it might mean for the markets, fo...

We’ve seen that different cities often emerge as the the center of their times.  This has been true from the Greek city states, through the Roman Empire and right up until the present, here in America. It seems that every major cultural, social and political movement of the modern era seems to be anchored in its own place. New York became a kind of capital of the 50’s.  In the 60’s places like San...

Everything starts somewhere.  Even very bad things. Many of the tremors we face today had their roots in the Ottoman Empire, in the run up to the First World War.  In what’s come to be called the Armenian genocide.  There we began to see the rise of Muslim extremism, the battle for post WWI borders in the Middle East, the plight of refugees, the competition between national and corporate interests...

This Sunday over 50,000 people will run in the NYC Marathon. For many participants, part of the appeal is to be part of something larger and more personal than a Facebook group.  For others it’s about achieving a personal best.  But for a much smaller group of elite marathon runners, it’s about what once seemed the impossible dream...breaking the two hour mark for the 26 miles through the streets...

Most of us will go into the hospital at some point. When we do, we might be subject to anesthesia, even for a minor procedures.  What goes on while we're asleep is, at least to the patient, a complete mystery.  At the same time, we look to the technology of medicine as the panacea to solve so many of our health problems.  Yet when it goes wrong we get angry.  Clearly, our emotional nexus with tech...

In the movie Broadcast News, William Hurt asks his colleague, as written by James L Brooks.     “what do you do when your real life exceeds your dreams?” Aaron Altman, played by Albert Brooks tells him, “keep it to yourself.” Bestselling author Frederick Forsyth, has had a life that has far exceeded his own expectations.  But instead of keeping it to himself, he has used it as the basis for fiftee...

In the desire to go to war, there is always the effort to sanitize warfare.  Shock and Awe, Death from Above, are all about disconnecting man from the faces on the ground. It’s also about how the decisions are made to go to war. It's always easier when it's less about committing blood and treasure and more about technological prowess. Drones or Remote Piloted Aircraft are perhaps the ultimate mani...

Before Dick Cheney, before Homeland Security, even before the Cold War itself, there existed forces within the US Government bent on shaping their own agenda for personal political gain, financial gain and perhaps worst of all, out of a self serving righteous belief in privilege and its exercise of power. During the dark days of WWII, Allen Dulles would would begin building, a national security ap...

The US seems to be giving up on training Syrian rebels.  The Russians continue the bombing of ISIS targets, even while some of their missiles land in Iran.  Refugees continue to flee from Syria.  All while ISIS continues on the march, Palestinian protests turn more violent. The cauldron that is the Middle East continues to bubble. For a real and contemporaneous perspective we turn to author, journ...

As a nation we have often faced existential crisis.  The Civil War, the onset of the industrial revolution, the robber barons, the great depression, McCarthyism, the struggle for racial equality, assassination and the changes of the 60’s   Each time, polarization and the depth of the crisis has led many to believe that the country would not survive in it’s current form. And yet it has. Today we fa...

Every great city has it’s defining era.  Not always good, but certainly one that shapes its fortunes and reinforces its place in the urban pantheon.  For New York it was perhaps the 50s, for Paris the mid 1920s, for San Francisco the ‘60s and for Hollywood, certainly the 1930s. For Detroit, the eighteen months from the fall of 1962, through the spring 1964 marked perhaps the apogee and the beginni...

The lyrics say that “nobody walks in L.A.”  That certainly has been true, in a city whose inhabitants were long hermetically sealed inside their cars...as if in a pneumatic tube shuttling from place to pace.  L.A. was for a long time, a place where as John Didion said, “the entire quality of life  accentuates it impermanence and unreliability.” Today’s Los Angeles is a vastly different place.  A c...

We all know the old bromide, you can’t fight City Hall.  Well imagine how tough it must be to take on the US Navy.   Especially if the cause is about the condition of whales, and those who are fighting are an environmental lawyer and a Navy whistleblower.   Many of you have probably heard parts of this story, in news reports, and on 60 Minutes.  But now Joshua Horwitz, in his book War of the Whale...

Hollywood is a like sports or politics.  Each generation gives us stars and personalities that both reflect the culture and tenor of the times and also transcend it in ways that pave the way for the next generation. By the 1970’s Hollywood had seen a lot of agents.  Names that you’ve seldom hear of. Men like Lew Wasserman, Myron Selznick, Swifty Lazer and Abe Lastfogel shaped the lives and careers...

The world today is a dangerous, unstable and violent place.  And while Stephen Pinker tells us that today is less violent than at any other time in human history, images from Africa and the Middle East would seem to belie that. But when we look at places that have improved, in Africa, in Latin America and even in the West, we see that woman and the empowerment of women have played a key role in th...

We see today in the debate regarding immigration, a little bit about the the ways that falsehood and mass hysteria, mixed with doses of fear and change, can create a movement. Back in the 1980’s a combination of delayed reaction to the 60’s, to the rise of woman, to the offshoots of feminism, coupled with the rise of the Christian Right and the changing American family, gave us a suburban fear tha...

For reasons that are both complicated and simplistic, immigration has become the issues of our time.  Fifty years ago the passage of the Immigration and Naturalization Act put in place the system we have today.  That system has helped make us a nation of of immigrants and set the stage for the diverse Asian/American population in the US today. Erika Lee takes us through the history of that populat...

Imagine one movement the combines every contemporary progressive social issue; race, immigration, Civil Rights, the labor movement, gender discrimination.  It may sound on the surface like the ultimate impossibility.  In fact, they all did converge in the movement for the rights of Domestic Workers. From the 1950’s to today, the movement in support of workers who are the most invisible, whom labor...

In spite of a rough stock market and a bumpy economy there is one business, not a tech company, that has grown revenues from $229 million in 1999 to over 800 million today.  That is the business that is the ten largest programs in College football.  It’s a business where the CEO’s, the coaches, are mostly part of the one percent. They earn millions annually and even worse than most big businesses,...

I’ve often told the story of a newly minted teacher considering her first job.  She had several offers, but in the end there were two that were intriguing to her.  One in a difficult and struggling inner city school district; the other in a very wealthy, upper middle class suburban enclave.  She said that she felt like it was a decision between difficult students or difficult parents. In that choi...

Through the efforts of both critics and audiences, we’ve come to understand that “genre films,” are just as significant as mainstream films.  Few mastered the genre of horror and suspense to the degree that Wes Craven did.  From his first, LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT (1972) to the 1984 classic NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET, Craven infused intelligence into all of his work. Back in 1999 I spoke to Craven abou...

How do we navigate the world in spite of change?  It's one of the central tenants of modern society. Over and over again, Oliver Sacks used the experience and metaphor of debilitating conditions to explain the amazing resilience of the human mind. A resiliency he himself exhibited right up until the end of his life. I had many chances to talk with Sacks over the years, the last was in November of...

The phrase “The Perfect Storm” has come to mean a lot of things.  Most notably the unique and singular coming together of disparate forces to mark a disaster.  In that context the City of New Orleans experienced the perfect storm not just from the meteorological confluence of isobars that would create hurricane Katrina, but in the impact and aftermath of a city torn by racial strife, economic divi...

When we think about the iconography and the history of contemporary policing and urban criminal justice what comes to mind?  Sixty years ago it was Dragnet and Joe Friday. Later, everything from Adam 12 to the work of Joe Wambaugh.  Then their was the Rodney King beating and subsequent riots; the OJ trial, helicopters employed by police and chases, both high and slow speed.  What they all have in...