Give and Take

My guest is Will Dowd. As unpredictable as its subject, _Areas of Fog _combines wit and poetry with humor and erudition. A fun, breezy, and discursive read, it is an intellectual game that exposes the artificiality of genres.

Will Dowd is a writer and artist based outside Boston. He earned an MFA in Creative Writing from New York University, as a Jacob K. Javits Fellowship; an MS from MIT, as a John Lyons Fellow; and a BA from Boston College, as a Presidential Scholar.

Special Guest: Will Dowd.

My guest is Todd McGowan. He teaches courses in film theory, history, and genre at the University of Vermont. His areas of interest include Hegel, psychoanalysis, and existentialism, and the intersection of these lines of thought with the cinema. He's the author of numerous books, including most recently Only a Joke Can Save Us: A Theory of Comedy.

Special Guest: Todd McGowan.

What country makes the best chocolate? Most people would answer "Switzerland," or, if they're discerning, "Belgium" or "France." But, how many cocoa trees grow in Zurich? Lyon? Antwerp? Shouldn't the country known for growing the best cocoa beans be the one that makes the best chocolate? So, captivated by theories of international trade but with precious little knowledge of cocoa or chocolate, Steven Wallace set out to build the Omanhene Cocoa Bean Company in Ghana―a country renowned for its cocoa and where Wallace spent part of his youth―in a quest to produce the world's first export-ready, single-origin chocolate bar. What followed would be the true story of an obroni―white person―from Wisconsin taking on the ultimate entrepreneurial challenge.

Written with sensitivity and devastating self-awareness, _Obroni and the Chocolate Factory _is Steven's chaotic, fascinating, and bemusing journey to create a successful international business that aspired to do a bit of good in the world. This book is at once a penetrating business memoir and a story about imagining globalism done right. Wallace's picaresque journey takes him to Ghana's residence for the head of state, to the Amsterdam offices of a secretive international cocoa conglomerate, and face-to-face with key figures in the sharp-elbowed world of global trade and geopolitics. Along the way he'll be forced to deal with bureaucratic roadblocks, a legacy of colonialism, corporate intrigue, inscrutable international politics, a Bond-esque villain nemesis, and constant uncertainty about whether he'll actually pull it off. This rollicking love letter to both Ghana and the world of business is a rare glimpse into the mind of an unusually literate and articulate entrepreneur.

Special Guest: Steven C. Wallace .

In the wake of so many sexual harassment and sexual misconduct allegations, we here concerns of "sex panic" and McCarthyism from some cultural critics. Many of them are actual on the cultural left. Jocelyn Olcott and I talk about this and a host of related issues in this episode of Give and Take.

Jocelyn Olcott is Associate Professor of History and Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies at Duke University. Mexico. Her first book, Revolutionary Women in Postrevolutionary Mexico, explores questions of gender and citizenship in the 1930s. Her second book, International Women’s Year: The Greatest Consciousness-Raising Event in History considers the history and legacies of the United Nation’s first world conference on women in 1975 in Mexico City (Oxford University Press, forthcoming Spring 2017). Her current project, a biography of the activist and folksinger Concha Michel, a one-time Communist who became an icon of maternalist feminism and a vocal advocate for recognizing the economic importance of subsistence labors, is under contract with Duke University Press. The book follows Michel's life story from the late nineteenth century to the late twentieth to examine the ways that the concept, labor, and policies surrounding “motherhood” articulated with major shifts in political-economic thought — from late-nineteenth-century liberalism to revolutionary nationalism, populism, modernization theory, dependency theory, and neoliberalism.

Special Guest: Jocelyn Olcott.

My guest is Jennifer Briney. She's the creator and host of the wildly popular "Congressional Dish" podcast. It's like C-Span meets Comedy Central, resisting the corporate takeover of the world. We discuss the upcoming FCC decision concerning Net Neutrality and the impact it could have on consumers.

Jennifer's podcast is The Congressional Dish. It's fantastic.

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Special Guest: Jennifer Briney.

My guest is David French. David is a senior writer for National Review, a senior fellow at the National Review Institute, an attorney (concentrating his practice in constitutional law and the law of armed conflict), and a veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom. We discuss a recent piece he wrote entitled "The Enduring Appeal Of Creepy Christianity." It deals with the recent Roy Moore senate controversy.

David is the author or co-author of several books including, most recently, the No. 1 New York Times bestselling Rise of ISIS: A Threat We Can’t Ignore. He is a graduate of Harvard Law School, the past president of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), and a former lecturer at Cornell Law School. He has served as a senior counsel for the American Center for Law and Justice and the Alliance Defending Freedom. David is a former major in the United States Army Reserve (IRR). In 2007, he deployed to Iraq, serving in Diyala Province as Squadron Judge Advocate for the 2nd Squadron, 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, where he was awarded the Bronze Star. He lives and works in Columbia, Tennessee, with his wife, Nancy (who is also a New York Times bestselling author), and three children.

Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/author/david-french

Special Guest: David French.

My guest is Johanna Hartelius. She is a professor at the University of Pittsburgh. Her research focuses on rhetorical theory and criticism with an emphasis on expertise, public memory, and digital rhetoric. She studies the cultural and political implications of experts’ and laypersons’ rhetorical constructions of knowledge and experience, particularly as these constitute points of entry into public discourse, traditional and virtual. She is currently developing a book on experts and the digital commons.

Special Guest: Johanna Hartelius .

David Clary is a news editor at The San Diego Union-Tribune and the author of “Gangsters to Governors: The New Bosses of Gambling in America,” published by Rutgers University Press on Oct. 30, 2017. The book explores how and why states have encouraged and promoted the expansion of legalized gambling in America. It is his first book.

Before joining the Union-Tribune in 2002, he worked in a variety of editing and design roles at The Plain Dealer in Cleveland. Clary is a native of Central New York, and is a graduate of Syracuse University with degrees in newspaper journalism and political science. He lives in La Mesa, Calif., with his wife, Jackie, and their two children.

Special Guest: David Clary.

Babette’s Feast tells the story of how a refugee transforms a closed religious community by sacrificing all she has to throw a lavish dinner party. Through her radical hospitality, this mysterious woman converts her guests’ deeply held notions of scarcity and judgment and opens them up to give and receive abundant grace. My guests, Julia Beardsley O'Brien and Abigail Kileen, have adapted the story for the stage. This adaptation re-imagines the story you thought you knew about Babette’s singular feast: deep, funny, dangerous, sensual, and beautiful.

Special Guests: Abigail Kileen and Julia Beardsley O'brien.

My guest is Nathaniel Popkin.

Why is Philadelphia the “Hidden City?” What makes it distinctive in the landscape of American cities? And why does it matter? These are the questions Hidden City Daily co-founders Peter Woodall and Nathaniel Popkin and Hidden City Festival photographer Joseph E.B. Elliott seek to answer in the new book, Philadelphia: Finding the Hidden City, just recently published by Temple University Press.

As the authors examine the historic reasons Philadelphia is the Hidden City, their essay and Elliott’s 110 photographs draw the reader inside, to discover the complexities and contradictions of Philadelphia’s sometimes misunderstood nature. Elliott’s photographs reveal the essence of 33 places around the city, including some hidden in plain sight. Take a journey to the Hidden City!

Special Guest: Nathaniel Popkin.