Talk Cocktail

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...

When Barack Obama was elected President, we heard lots of loose talk about this being a post racial society.  It was as if a magic pill had taken the issue of race and identity out of our consciousness. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, arguably, we are further behind in erasing our racial legacy than other parts of the world. And part of that reason is that we have yet to achieve...

For  40 years, the Focus of the conversations about Watergate has been what did the President know and when did he know it.  The revelations from the release of and the listening to more and more of the 3700 hours of White House tapes, has pretty much now clarified that issues. What still remains very murky, perhaps because it exists in both the realms of psychology as well as fact, is why.  Why d...

For  40 years, the Focus of the conversations about Watergate has been what did the President know and when did he know it.  The revelations from the release of and the listening to more and more of the 3700 hours of White House tapes, has pretty much now clarified that issues. What still remains very murky, perhaps because it exists in both the realms of psychology as well as fact, is why.  Why d...

For journalists, for historians, and for political junkies, Richard Nixon is the gift that keeps on giving.  There are over 3700 hours of Nixon tapes and only a portion have been released and deconstructed.   Even as we mark this 40th anniversary of Nixon's resignation,  most of us have only heard a few minutes here or there.  For Luke Nichter, a Professor at A & M University, and one of the preem...

From the undersea adventures of Jules Verne, to Peter Benchley’s The Deep to Jim Cameron’s The Abyss, we flock to movies and literature that takes place underwater.  We are fascinated by, but know so little about, the undersea world.   In fact, a recent review of  James Nestor’s book, reminds us that if something disappears on Mars or the Moon, we’d have a better chance of finding it, than if it d...