Talk Cocktail

Today, as we look around the world, it sometimes seems to be spinning out of control. It feels like a time, to quote Yates, when the falcon cannot hear the falconer, when the best lack all conviction and the worst seem full of passionate intensity. Does the fault lie in the vagaries of human nature, or in our leaders and institutions?  The answer is that both are intimately linked in ways that, wh...

For a while now technology has seemed to focus on only one aspect or another of  information.  Everything from Google to Facebook, to Instagram, to all aspects of the sharing economy are essentially all about trying to achieve perfect information. Slowly the emphasis is beginning to shift.  Now voice recognition,  robots, drones and a renewed interest in artificial intelligence are all pointing to...

Although the origins of the quote are a bit murky, the idea that the only way to predict the future is to invent it, certainly seems true in the 21st century. In fact, that future is being invented right now.  As technology moves from dedicated devices, to virtually everything, soon everything from our pens to our trash to our kitchens to our most intimate desires, will be connected to the each ot...

For those that study and write about politics, the holy grail is to find those seminal moments in the nation's public and political life that change everything.  And while the antecedents of those events may be years in the making, they usually create a perfect storm that results in an event that is a kind of tipping point;  one that marks a permanent tectonic shift in the political landscape.  So...

It was actually Winston Churchill, not Rahm Emanuel, who said that we should never let a serious crisis go to waste. A crisis often creates a great opportunity to face, to talk about, and even sometimes to act upon issues that had been previously frozen Or, as Donald Rumsfeld once inarticulately put it, sometimes the only solution to an unsolvable problem, is to create a bigger problem. It could b...

Some of you may have seen the story recently that marriage is at an all time low in America.  We also know that two out of three Americans are overweight, or obese.  Is there a link between these two issues? Has our national physical decline and the rise of obesity changed the way we view love and sex, and if so, what are the broad social and economic impacts of that? That’s what Sarah Varney, sen...

For decades, it seems, we've read and watched stories about suicide bombers in the Middle East. We process the information without emotion, as we do most news stories.  Then 9/11 happened and suddenly suicide bombers took on a new meaning for most Americans.   With that new understanding, award winning journalist Mike Kelly looks back at a story of a suicide bombing in Israel, that took place in 1...

Whether we are thinking about our smart phones, or HAL in Arthur C. Clarke's 2001, we are usually deeply conflicted about artificial intelligence.  Will it be a panacea to enhance the already unique power of human intelligence or, like HAL, will its survival depend on usurping human control That balance informs both our fear and appreciation of machines and technology and what they both can do. Th...

Revolutions are often exciting.  The stir change, mobilize ideas, and are often at the cutting edge of excitement.  Yet what happens after revolutions is often the work that matters.  The problem is that it’s hard work.  The cameras are off, the story has grown cold, but this is where the work gets done that can truly change the world. Arguably the women's movement is such an example.  While drama...

The common portrayal of Millennials is as generation that is narcissistic, self absorbed, entitled and demanding.  Yet they are almost 90 million strong and will soon be taking their place in leadership in business, in politics and in almost every other aspect of society. What will they be like in this new role?  How will they be when they are the boss?  That’s the situation that Lindsey Pollak lo...

Kierkegaard said that “life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forward.”  Such is the powerful value of memoir and reflection Sometimes, though, that reflection takes in more than just the individual life, it becomes a way to reflect on a time, a place, and movement.  Gail Sheehy’s life encompasses all of that.  The mainstreaming of hippie culture, feminism, new journalism, pub...

We often say that actions have consequence. So do ideas. And we don’t always know the full extent of those consequences. Just as the science of splitting the atom, changed the nature of geopolitics and may still reshaped civilization, so the ripple effects of certain inventions have consequences and impacts, far beyond what was originally thought or intended. As we worry about the spread of diseas...

When we think and talk about the Middle East today, we look at it terms of the religious and ethnic strife and extremism that define today's conflicts. We also assume that these conflicts has been going on for centuries.  That the holy wars and clash of civilizations of today have been the basis for the whole history of the region Middle East historian Brian Catlos has a different view. One that p...

The recent suicide of Robin Williams puts into bold perspective that we really don’t know very much about the inner lives of the people that make us laugh. From Lenny Bruce to Richard Pryor, from Johnny Carson to Bill Cosby, the demons and private lives that drove these comedians were often anything but funny. Cosby was particularly unique in several ways.  He broke the color barrier for televisio...

If you’ve ever borrowed money for anything, from a mortgage to a student loan, you’ve been impacted by LIBOR.  The London Interbank Offered Rate.  The global standard for interest rates. The problem is, like so many other recent aspects of our financial markets, we’ve now come to find that it’s been rigged.  That a system built on trust, has been anything but trustworthy. That the gentlemanly syst...

When we talk about America's history of segregation, its not just about race and class, but also about geography.  Even as the civil right movement would begin to take hold in the late 60’s and seventies, there were parts of America, particularly in the rural South, that we untouched by that progress.  Places where slavery was not just a legacy to be overcome, but still in the fabric of the cultur...

Years ago, in Hollywood, someone once remarked that the amount of bad screenplay writing increased with the advent of the copy machine.  The same claim was later made when word processing and screenwriting software came along. The fact is there is a lot of bad writing that goes on in many arenas.  Today much of the blame gets heaped on email, or texting, or technology, or just “kids today.”   The...

The world is a crazy place.  Everyday here we talk about all the forces that are impacting us, making life more complex, confusing and making so many people less sure of who they are, how they fit in, and whether the decisions they make lead them in the right direction. Sure, many people want to change their lives.  But for others, it’s simply a matter of trying to find true north.  Of seeing the...

Socrates was worried about the rise of written text. He feared that it would change our habits of mind and not allow us to remember. The printing press would spark another revolution, as mass produced text would change the world.  Not unlike our current digital revolution, the push back was fierce and loud. And because history does repeat itself, we can indeed learn a lot by looking back at the la...

We've all played the game of thinking about and listing the most important inventions in the progress of mankind.  Certainly from the wheel, to the printing press to the transistor, there are plenty to choose from. But seldom do we think about philosophical revolutions.  The invention of ideas and philosophies and habits of mind, that have also changed the world. Of these, there have been less. Pe...

Once upon a time we got our international news through the relentless reporting of foreign correspondent.   The Vietnam war may have brought war into our living rooms for the first time,  but reporters still provided context.  Citizens would come to understand events through the consistency of work from a reporter, though time and experience. Today, that foreign correspondent, satirized by Evelyn...

Few things ignite all of our senses to the degree that food does.  Once simply a form of sustenance, food today, in restaurants or in markets, represents status, sexuality, politics, and education. Where all of this comes together, is not just in taste, or smell, or texture, but in the language that is used by purveyors of food, and the language that we all use, in talking about food.  Stanford li...

Like it or not, the nature of our society and of our culture today is focused inward.  Walk down any urban street, vs. 40 years ago and instead of looking out, we’re look down or inward.  At our phones, our images, at our own world.   In a culture where self branding is celebrated, where selfies rule and Millennials are self absorbed, is it any wonder that narcissism seems rampant?  But is this ju...

It seems quaint now, but there was a time we had to rely on others for most of our needs.  We had to rely on family for food, operators to place calls, travel agents to book travel, the post office to deliver mail, and large institutions to fulfill our needs. The technological revolution that began in the 70’s changed all that.  As consumers, as individuals we become empowered.  We could do our ow...

If we were to listen to many of the Cassandras out there today, you would think that technology, information, and progress were all bad. They are the same people who would have objected to the printing press, the telephone, television and the automobile. They look at education and don't understand why memorization and rote learning are no longer worthy of attention and want to put the technology g...