Talk Cocktail

Even today, fifteen months before Election Day, we are in full political campaign season.  And while we hear a lot of loose talk about issues, it’s easy to forget that politics is also about both the art of governing, and sometimes doing so in the real world of compromise and possibilities. Even with all the problems of our healthcare system, Doctors usually go into medicine because that have call...

One of the ongoing conundrums in sports is whether it’s about the team or the individual?  Back in the early days of the NFL,  Pete Rozelle believed passionately, that in a game played only once a week, the team was the key to marketing.  In Basketball, former Commissioner David Stern saw the value of individual stars as the draw for fans. For Baseball it’s been a mixed bag.  Even for iconic teams...

We have developed what amounts to an addiction/industrial complex.  Each year billions are spent, in both public and private dollars, to treat, cure, and mitigate addiction.  But is it working?  Are today’s so called “best practices,” having measurable, metric driven results?  If not, what might we be doing wrong? Dr. Marc Lewis believes that the current approach of treating addiction as a disease...

As we debate the ins and out of nuclear proliferation, on editorial pages and in the drawing rooms of Georgetown; in the halls of Congress and in the boiler room political operations of AIPAC, it's worth taking note, on this 70th anniversary of the dawn of the nuclear age, of the full impact of what we are actually talking about. As powerful as the bomb on Hiroshima was, it was the second bomb, th...

As we debate immigration,  we still always look favorably on the “Dreamers.”  The young undocumented students thriving here in America.  It’s easy to romanticize that experience and even draw conclusion from the success of individuals. The greater challenge is to look at those successes and see what real world lessons we might draw that can tell us more about success and failure and social mobilit...

Today when we think about the publishing industry, we usually think about the ways that it is changing to accommodate the digital world.  E-books, E-readers, cloud storage and white backgrounds dominate the conversation. But believe it or not, there have been other times when the publishing industry has been rocked by fundamental change and when that change was met with fervent resistance.  One of...

I’m often the first to criticize the way in which we are too quick to put things in political terms.  Too often the rush to label “red” or “blue” America gets us into trouble.  But one aspect seems to hold.  We are bluer politically as we get closer to water.  Look at any map and coastal America seems to have a different mindset.   Perhaps it is because water and proximity to water make a differen...

We are told, almost from childhood, that we have a legal system and a government of laws and not of men.  Yet it is a system created by man and subject to the biases, frailties and inherent actions of human behavior. Yet from such a system we often dispense the most draconian of punishments in the name of all of us. At a time when even member of the Supreme Court of the United States talk of the F...

To about the same degree that Captain Renault was “shocked, just shocked” to find gambling going on Casablanca, that’s how shocked many of us are to find that politicians and business leaders lie to us. Whether it’s the latest candidate promising to make the world a better place, or Coca Cola offering the Real Thing,  the idea of marketing and even misrepresentation has been around before spin doc...

We all remember Ben Franklin flying his kite, or Alexander Graham Bell calling for Watson, even Jonas Salk working quietly in his laboratory. Today science, or at least big science, is a global effort. It involves governments, private enterprise, universities and vast institutional support.  Think about the International Space Station, the Large Hadron Collider, and even before all of that, the Ma...

As we hit the half way mark in the Baseball season, how many players are injured, how many are burnt out already?  Are we creating a softer group of players or is 162 games in 180 days, just too many games? Washington Baseball writer Barry Svrluga explores this in  The Grind: Inside Baseball's Endless Season . My conversation with Barry Svrluga: Get full access to Talk Cocktail Podcast at jeffsche...

We have always studied other cultures so that perhaps we could better understand our own. The realm of cultural anthropology has provided us keen insights into our evolutionary nature and why we do the strange things we do, as human beings. Wednesday Martin, has used the tools of cultural anthropology to zero in on one very narrow subgroup.  The tiny percentage of the “One Percent” that reside in...

Listen to any of the Republican candidates and it’s clear that the culture war issues that have driven so much political debates over the past 50+ years, are still going on. Our political discourse is has polarized as ever.  Even to the point where we’ve come to accept that you are never going to change anyones mind about social issues.  So when we do talk, when we do try and debate, we simply tal...

Most of us know the legendary story of the group of blind men  who touch an elephant to learn what it is like. Each one feels a different part, but only one part, such as the side or the tusk or the tail.. They then compare notes and learn that they are in complete disagreement about what they experienced This is the story of Richard Nixon.   So much has been written about Nixon. Much of it has co...

Most of us know the legendary story of the group of blind men  who touch an elephant to learn what it is like. Each one feels a different part, but only one part, such as the side or the tusk or the tail.. They then compare notes and learn that they are in complete disagreement about what they experienced This is the story of Richard Nixon.   So much has been written about Nixon. Much of it has co...

Long before Steve Jobs and Jony Ives bridged the divide between design and technology,  before Target began selling Michael Graves tea kettles, Charles and Ray Eames made the connection between design, public perception and function. They created designs for furniture, architecture, toys and film and in so doing set the stage for much of the way we view our world today.   They were visionaries, wh...

We live today in what many consider the age of technology.  Everyday there are new apps, new ways in which incumbency is disrupted.  But very few of the creators or inventors of today, understand the long view, or the way they are changing the world. Steve Jobs understood. Elon Musk understands.  Maybe even Mark Zuckerberg does.  Part of  that understanding come from education.  From seeing the wo...

Today boys want to grow up to be professional athletes, or tech billionaires.  But there was time when being a secret agent seemed like just about the coolest thing to do. Whether it was the literary exploits of Bond or Bourne, or the real story Philby, or the moral twilight of le Carre, spycraft, particularly during the days of the Cold War, held a magical appeal.  It certainly did for Naveed Jam...

There is always someone that leads us into the future.  Someone whose vision and entrepreneurship combine to make the next big idea, the next big thing. This has been true from Franklin, to Edison, from From Henry Ford to Thomas Watson, from Bill Gates to Steve Jobs and today  Elon Musk may very well be the inheritor of that mantel. Electric cars, commercial space travel, high speed transportation...

Many of you, I’m sure, think you’d love the idea of seeing your life portrayed in movies or television.  But imagine if you knew nothing about it.  If one day, you saw an ad for a TV show, and you, or at least your life, was the central character.  Would you be scared, shocked, angry, a little excited. Cleary Wolters experienced all of thee things. As she saw her life in prison portrayed as Alex V...

In the world of families, all eyes are on same sex marriage.  In the Courts, in Statehouses, and in the political arena.  But on the ground, in the households and families where people live, this is just one manifestation of the change in family structures and family relationships. As such, the world of law and particularly family law, has changed. The way in which these new, creative and ever cha...

Today we have talking heads and pundits.  But back in the second half of the 20th Century we had writers and public intellectuals, whose ideas, attitudes and personalities became a part of our public discourse. Two of those that were the touchstones of the times were William F.Buckley and Norman Mailer.  Both wrote about history, about sex, about politics and sometimes all at once.  They were the...

If we have problems in America, the solution is usually simple, check with the Founding Fathers.  Can’t figure out modern health care, check with the Founders.  Can’t deal with modern weaponry on America's streets, check in with the nation's Founders.  Need to improve education for our kids..maybe a trip to Mt. Rushmore will solve it?  Need to fix our airports, increase cancer and genetic research...

Many years ago, Harvard Business School perfected something called the “case study method.”   A new educational innovation that presented the challenges confronting companies, nonprofits, and government organizations—complete with the constraints and incomplete information found in real business issues. Students learned that through the process of exchanging perspectives, countering and defending...

It was Churchill who reminded us that history is written by the victors.  Well this is as true of religious history as it is of military, political and geopolitical history.  Do you ever wonder how our religious and political divides of today came to be?  How it is that the Republican party became a vehicle for the notion of America as a Christian nation? We’ve all been feed the story that it’s so...