Talk Cocktail

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...

It seems that every generation seeks to find fault with the adolescent generation coming of age.  Just as the parents of boomers eschewed the 60’s, so today, we boomers are all too quick to criticize and disparage the state of Millennials. Perhaps if we better understood adolescence, the process that the brain goes through as it remodels itself, we’d better understand the young adults that are com...

Be it immigration, race or sexual orientation, we have an odd human tendency to expect that tolerance and integration to really mean sameness. The idea of a social, political and cultural melting pot is often seen as the primary metaphor for accepting difference, as opposed to … well just accepting and appreciating differences. Perhaps nowhere has this been more profound than for gays and lesbians...

Is there anyone that believes that we still have a measure of privacy?  Not only are there cameras everywhere, not only is big data a part of almost every business, but the uses of the this data, not by the NSA, but by corporate America, are becoming ever more sophisticated. After all, it’s what we say we want.  Better customer service, better consumer satisfaction and greater personalization. Aft...

Think about some of the great themes and conflicts of our times.  Freedom vs. Tyranny, the 1% vs the 99%, East Coast values. vs the Western ethos, team effort vs individual effort, the US vs Russia, the triumph of the Greatest Generation, craftsmanship vs mass production, and the moral as well as physical victory of America in the Second World War. All of these themes and more are part of the stor...

As we approach this anniversary of 9/11, it's worth noting that the Afghan war has become the longest in American history. Also, to think about how many of the men and women who have served in that war, were motivated and inspired to act, by those events thirteen years ago. Michael Golembesky is one of those.  He would go on to become one of the first members of the US Marines Special Operations T...

When we talk about success, be it on Wall Street, or Silicon Valley, or even the boom in natural gas, we always talk about it as “the new gold rush."  In part because the Gold Rush represented the mobility, energy and adventure of Americans in pursuit of riches. But those riches, that began in California in 1849, were anything but easy.  While many made fortunes, many of those fortunes came to tho...

Election day 2014 is fast approaching.  At the end of the process, we will have spent over three hundred million dollars to decide if Mitch McConnell or Harry Reid will have a two vote margin. While there are many social, political and psychological reasons for our current state of political gridlock and polarization, money is certainly at the core. The next Presidential election could well cost o...

Once upon a time, our national pastime had nine innings, a long season, a pastoral setting and the worship and appreciation of the Boys of Summer. Today, that pastime has been replaced by 60 minutes of intense violence.  With words like blitz and gridiron.  Where once stadiums had an ambulance standing by for fans that might have a medical emergency, today, the ambulance is there for the players w...

We are deep in the heart of back to school season. Therefore, it's worth noting that while we have had dozens and dozens of conversations, on this program, about the improvement and mechanics of education, about its need to transform itself into a modern world, rarely have we ever stepped back to examine or even question the purpose of that education.  In part, because the answer today, almost see...

While the world is changing around us, while creative destruction consumes so many areas, sometimes it seems like education stagnates.  After all, many, if not most, of our schools still operate in a manner designed in an agrarian world; pre Internet, pre technology and long before we knew and understood how the brain was wired, how children or anyone else really learns. The good news is we are be...

Almost every aspect of our culture and economy has been touched by technology and creative destruction. Still, three areas have lagged behind, and all three are beginning to be addressed and changed.  They are finance, healthcare and education. Although incumbents still rule in healthcare and finance, the ground is beginning to shift.  But in education, less so.  The very fact that we are still de...

So much of the way our brains and nervous system are hardwired, emerges as man did, from the primordial stew of life. Clearly, modern science tells us we are more suited to be hunter gatherers than we are multitasking and purveyors of Google Glass. Yet no matter how much some may desire it, we are not going back to a simpler time.  Information will continue to pore in on us, multilateral demands o...

Ginger Roger once said, of her partnership with Fred Astaire, that she did everything he did, “but backwards and in high heels.”  In many ways this gets to the heart of partnerships.  Two people that have a similar mission, but see it perhaps in opposite and positively reinforcing ways. The examples are course legend.  Jobs and Wozniak, Lennon & McCartney, Parker and Stone, Larry and Sergei, Mel B...

Across the country, fracking—the extraction of natural gas by hydraulic fracturing—is being touted as the nation’s answer to energy independence.  Energy companies have repeatedly assured us that the process is safe, But is there a hidden cost, a hidden danger?  What really is the process of fracking and what are its consequence on people, the environment and those that come in contact with it? Mi...

We often think of the 60’s as a time when the left was in the ascendancy. When great social movements, like the women's movement, the antiwar movement and the civil rights movement were given their birth.  In fact, arguably, the most lasting legacy of the 60’s maybe the rise of modern conservatism. The history of modern conservatism and of the current Republican party has its beginnings in the ear...

The world has changed.  We can intimately and immediately know what's taking place in the far reaches of the world or across America. But we often don’t know what’s going on with our neighbors and in our own community. Today we are a part of many communities of interest, not necessarily communities of geography. And is it any surprise really?  The natural human tendency is to associate with people...

There once was a time before the internet, before the automobile, before air conditioning, and television and radio and even before the printing press.  All these inventions and many others, dramatically transformed the ways in which we live.  At the time each was criticized for the ruinous impact it would have.  The printing press was thought to be the end of religion, air conditioning would keep...

Those that have been through it, say that the experience of being in a combat zone is like no other. It is all consuming.  In so many ways it eliminates the real world of life and its mundane everyday chores and problems.   Yet the men and women engaged in that effort, bring with them a life experience composed of precisely those problems.  Sometimes the military is a means of escape, sometimes a...

Fifty years ago this summer, Americans, both black and white, gave their last full measure of devotion in an effort to register African American voters in Mississippi. The violence that resulted, the death of three civil rights workers, the beatings, the church bombings, and effort to prevent Americans from voting is a stain that shall forever be remembered. For those that have forgotten, or were...

Perhaps it’s the state of the world today, but everywhere fantasy seems to be in ascendancy.  The retelling of Narnia, Harry Potter, Game of Thrones and Lev Grossman’s The Magician series, all speak to what seems to be a compelling need.   Lev Grossman has just published the third and final installment in his series, entitled The Magician's Land: A Novel . My conversation with Lev Grossman: Get fu...