Conversations with Charlie Dyer

It is often at our darkest moments that we humans assemble our hopes for brighter days and imagine a more compassionate and sustainable future. Our guest, Martin Schoenhals, draws on research from anthropology, biology, history and psychology and introduces us to a Utopia where money is no longer king, joy is central, life’s necessities are universally guaranteed, work is optional, learning is pleasurable, nation states are dismantled, and media is a means of promoting equality and community instead of feeding the cult of celebrity. He not only offers policy points from which to begin the discussion of how such measures could be achieved, but invites each of us to join him in creating a future we might wish for our children.

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Work, Love, and Learning in Utopia: Equality Reimagined

In 2018, an impressive third of Americans reported spending two hours or more per day on political activity. But, four out of five of those people reported that none of that time was spent on real political work – rather, we feel engaged and satisfied when we consume political news, engage on social media, and complain with friends and family. In short, what many of us are doing is political hobbyism – not making real change. Our guest, Eitan Hersh, tells the stories of several normal-people-turned-activists and how they became involved in their communities – approaching change on a local level and advocating for political candidates in face-to-face interactions. 

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POLITICS IS FOR POWER: How to Move Beyond Political Hobbyism, Take Action, and Make Real Change

More than 60 years later, the Academy Award-winning movie Giant still feels as fresh as it did during the Eisenhower years with it’s exploration of big progressive themes of race, gender, class, money and power. Our guest, Don Graham, tells us everything old is new again as we continue to wrangle with many of the same issues today.  

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GIANT: Elizabeth Taylor, Rock Hudson, James Dean, Edna Ferber, and the Making of a Legendary American Film

With the passage of the Immigration Act in 1924, the United States closed the door at Ellis Island. We went from allowing more or less unlimited immigration to a harsh country-by-country quota drastically cutting the number of Jews, Italians, Greeks, and Eastern Europeans that could enter the country and banned East Asian immigration completely for the next 40 years. Our guest. Daniel Okrent, says it was the end of a decades long campaign eugenics movement using a junk science that claimed certain races and ethnicities were morally and genetically superior to others — all to keep America from being overrun by nonwhite people. Sound familiar?  

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THE GUARDED GATE: Patricians, Eugenicists, and the Crusade to Keep Jews, Italians, and Other Immigrants Out of America

Mindfulness has exploded in popularity in recent years, but someone’s interest in mindfulness does not necessarily translate into that person becoming a mindful leader. Understanding mindfulness can be challenging; even more difficult is making it a regular practice in your everyday life. These ancient practices were not developed in order to improve business. They are meant to shift our consciousness and way of being in the world. Yet our Marc Lesser says these practices are essential to mindful leadership and to creating the type of supportive organizational culture that allows business and people to thrive.  

We’re taught that compromise is a necessary part of growing up. “Selling out,” on the other hand, is stepping over a line. To be a “sell out” is to be greedy, uncaring, selfish, maybe even traitorous in some way, like the politician who leaves campaign promises unfulfilled after meeting with deep-pocketed lobbyists, or a musician who turns his back on his roots after signing a big record deal. But what if “selling out” isn’t necessarily such a moral failure? And what if we could actually learn to sell out “ethically”? Our guest Lily Zheng offers her “sell-out story” and argues for a more expansive context for the ethical challenges we’re all faced with in our daily lives. 

There are no accidents. That’s the conclusion of Jonathan Karmel as he traveled around the country talking to injured workers and surviving family members in many different occupations, including store clerks, hotel housekeepers, miners, nurses, grain handlers, and others about unsafe working conditions. He ultimately concluded that “all of these deaths and injuries were preventable,” and he wants you to understand that the stories he collected in his new book are “the tip of the proverbial iceberg” in terms of the deadly hazards that workers face across the country every day.

Edward Hess warns that the Smart Machine Age will lead to tremendous unemployment and under- employment and that we as a society are ill prepared for the social and economic disruptions that will follow.  As he observes Smart Machines are creeping into more and more of our public and private lives. He has come to believe that nothing less than a revamping of Capitalism will allow us to thrive.

There are no accidents. That’s the conclusion of Dr. Sunita Puri as he traveled around the country talking to injured workers and surviving family members in many different occupations, including store clerks, hotel housekeepers, miners, nurses, grain handlers, and others about unsafe working conditions. He ultimately concluded that “all of these deaths and injuries were preventable,” and he wants you to understand that the stories he collected in his new book are “the tip of the proverbial iceberg” in terms of the deadly hazards that workers face across the country every day.

In his previous book, Alejandro Frid explored how to maintain optimism in the face of the irrevocable changes that humans are forcing upon Earth—everything from climate change to the loss of ancient forests to the extinction of large predators, and more... Now, in his new book, he continues to explore coming to terms with changes that continue to threaten our earth—looking to indigenous cultures for inspiration, resource management, and ultimately how to tell a different story—one of co-existence with our shared resources, and not depletion.