Shaping Opinion

Anthony Shore is one of the few people in the world who makes a living at naming things like companies, brands, products or services. He joins Tim to talk about the magic in a name, and the work that goes into creating the right name so that the right brand identity can become a household name. Anthony is an expert in naming products, branding, services and organizations. For the past 30 years, he’s introduced more than 250 product and company names to the world. Many are well-known to this day.

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Most people don’t even think about it. Where did the name of that company or product they love so much come from?

Marketers and business owners know, however, that the right name can mean everything. It can mean the difference between success and failure. The wrong name can quickly put a company or a brand out of business.

Today, hundreds of thousands of businesses launch each month, and each one needs a name, not to mention names for certain products and services.

I’ve been involved in a few projects where we had to create the right name for an organization, a product or a service. While there is a process for that, the key is to start with a deep understanding of that product or service, the problems it solves, the solutions it provides, and most importantly, the emotional connection between your targeted audience and the problem itself.

Once you understand that, you can then start to consider the right language that communicates that, quickly, effectively, and almost instinctively.

That’s what I know. But I’m not the expert on naming. One of the leading experts on brand names is Anthony Shore.
Links

Operative Words
The Weird Science of Naming New Products, New York Times Magazine
Anthony Shore's Naming Partner is a Neural Network, How Brands Are Built
Anthony Shore - The Man Behind Some of the Biggest Brand Names in the World, WeTransfer.com

About this Episode’s Guest Anthony Shore
Anthony Shore is the Chief Operative of Operative Words. Over 30 years, he has introduced more than 250 product and company names to the world. Trained as a linguist at UC Santa Cruz, his BA thesis received the Chancellor’s Award and Linguistics degree Honors. As Global Director of Naming and Writing for Landor Associates, he led naming, nomenclature and brand strategy projects for Global 500 companies for 13 years. A year at Lexicon Branding and prior jobs as a photomechanical typesetter, software marketer, product manager, copywriter and door-to-door fundraiser have shaped his real-world and holistic perspective on brand naming. In 2009, he started his agency, Operative Words, to focus exclusively on what he’s good at: “Six words or fewer.”

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.shapingopinion.com

Former FBI profiler James R. Fitzgerald joins Tim to talk about his key role in cracking one of the most notorious serial killer cases in American history – the Unabomber.  James was involved in the pioneering of something called forensic linguistics. The FBI used this profiling approach to identify and capture one of the most notorious serial killers in American history, Ted Kaczynski, otherwise known as the Unabomber.

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One of the most notorious serial killers in American history was someone who terrorized the country in his own way over 17 years, starting in the late 1970s.

The mysterious killer became known as the Unabomber because his targets were mostly people associated with universities or airlines.  The UN in Unabomber stood for university. The A stood for airlines.

The killer’s mode of operation was to send mail bombs to his targets, who were academics, business people and others.

Over the course of those 17 years – in 16 separate bombings - the Unabomber killed three and injured 23 others.

The killer was meticulous, leaving no forensic evidence that could be traced back to him in the packages he sent. No DNA evidence, no fingerprints, nothing.

The FBI created a task force based in San Francisco. They called it the UNABOM Task Force or UTF. An army of FBI specialists and operatives worked in the UTF, working to identify and capture the Unabomber.

Their approach was mostly traditional criminal investigation work. Use what forensic evidence they thought they had to create a profile of the killer. And then pursue leads.

Much of the initial profile was based on assumptions and conjecture that may have been consistent with other FBI cases over the years. But the case was going nowhere.

Then in 1995, the FBI decided to focus on the language.

If the Unabomber made one mistake it was his propensity to write. He sent a series of letters to major newspapers and magazines, including one 35,000-word manifesto that he sent to the New York Times and four other publications. That document the killer titled “Industrial Society and Its Future.”

James R. Fitzgerald and his team at the FBI focused on that manifesto and the Unabomber’s other writings to create a profile based on the clues they could find in the writings themselves.  This new approach would be called, “forensic linguistics.”

Through a rapid series of events, the FBI made significant headway in the case, which culminated in the capture and arrest of Ted Kaczynski on April 3, 1996. This thanks in large part to Fitzgerald and his team, and their use of forensic linguistics to unlock Kaczynski’s writings.
Links

JamesRFitzgerald.com
The Fitz Files - Manhunt: Unabomber, by James R. Fitzgerald (Amazon)
A Journey to the Center of the Mind, by James R. Fitzgerald (Amazon)
Manhunt: Unabomber, Netflix
Text of Unabomber Manifesto, New York Times (archives)
Unabomber Case, FBI
The True Story of John Douglas, People Magazine

About this Episode’s Guest James R. Fitzgerald
James R. Fitzgerald is an American criminal profiler, forensic linguist and author. He is a retired FBI agent and best known for his role in the UNABOM investigation, which resulted in the arrest and conviction of Ted Kaczynski. 

Fitzgerald's law enforcement career began in 1976 as a police officer in Bensalem Township, Pennsylvania. In 1987, after eleven years of local police work culminating in his promotion to the rank of sergeant, he was recruited by the FBI. Fitzgerald was assigned to the New York Field Division's Joint Bank Robbery Task Force. In 1995, Fitzgerald was promoted to Criminal Profiler at the National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime, which later became the FBI's Behavioral Analysis Unit, or BAU.

Fitzgerald has remained active in the fields of criminal profiling and forensic linguistics since retiring from the FBI in 2007,

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.shapingopinion.com

Attorney Aaron Mackey joins Tim to talk about how intelligence agencies, law enforcement and private companies are buying your data as part of larger surveillance operations. Is this against the spirit of the Fourth Amendment rights to privacy?  Aaron works for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, or the EFF. The foundation is the leading nonprofit organization defending civil liberties in the digital world. It champions user privacy, free expression, and innovation. In this episode, Aaron talks about your privacy. How much you have, who’s invading it, how they’re doing it. And most importantly, what they’re doing with your personal information.

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You probably already know that you don’t have much privacy. When you leave your house, cameras are watching. You have cameras throughout the city, sending images back to some central security hub. Then you have cameras homeowners install to watch their own property. In the process, you can’t walk down any street without the possibility that you’re being watched and recorded.

But it’s not just cameras.

That smartphone in your pocket may be the most prolific source of your private data. The cloud knows where you are, where you were, how long you spent there, and in some cases, where you’re going.

It knows what you’re thinking about based on what it hears you saying through the microphone and the search engine in the device itself.

Did you use a social media app like Facebook, Twitter or Instagram? It’s not just each of those sites that know what you’re saying and doing. It’s the network that the phone itself is connected to.  They know…and they share.

They share your information, and you don’t know who’s seeing it, and what they’re doing with it. You don’t know how you’re being judged.

Aaron Mackey is a senior attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation. I mentioned all of this to him, but I asked him the big question on my mind. We know these companies have our information, but is it all harmless?
Links

The Electronic Frontier Foundation
Big Brother Watching? Government agencies buying cell phone, internet data to track Americans, Just the News
Carpenter v. United States (2018) Supreme Court Case, National Constitution Center

About this Episode’s Guest Aaron Mackey
Aaron Mackey is a senior attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). He works on free speech, anonymity, privacy, government surveillance and transparency. Before joining EFF in 2015, Aaron was in Washington, D.C. where he worked on speech, privacy, and freedom of information issues at the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press and the Institute for Public Representation at Georgetown Law. Aaron graduated from Berkeley Law in 2012, where he worked for EFF while a student in the Samuelson Law, Technology & Public Policy Clinic. He also holds an LLM from Georgetown Law. Prior to law school, Aaron was a journalist at the Arizona Daily Star in Tucson, Arizona. He received his undergraduate degree in journalism and English from the University of Arizona in 2006, where he met his amazing wife, Ashley. They have two young children.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.shapingopinion.com

U.S. Marine veteran Worth Parker joins Tim to talk about an unprecedented story that centers on the shadow evacuation of Afghanistan in 2021. The operation was conducted by veterans and others from throughout all of the U.S. military branches to evacuate civilians caught in the chaos of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.  Worth is a retired United States Marine turned writer, who tells us about his role in what we’ve dubbed, “Escape from Afghanistan.”

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In April of 2021, President Biden announced he would proceed with a full withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan.

He announced a deadline of September 11th. Not coincidentally it was the 20-year anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on America.

By this point, 2,325 American soldiers had sacrificed their lives in the war on terror. By 2021, 50,000 Afghan civilians had died.

When Biden made his announcement, there were about 2,500 U.S. troops still in Afghanistan, but it wasn’t that simple. There were also several thousand American civilians and contractors on the ground in that country. And that doesn’t include all of the Afghanistan citizens who served as interpreters and in other roles for the U.S. government.

Reports were that over 81,000 Afghans had worked with the U.S. military during the war and had pending applications for Special Immigrant Visas.

By early Summer, Biden set an official evacuation deadline for August 31st. But it didn’t appear the government had a plan, and it was unclear just how many Americans and American allies were still in the country. Things were moving fast, and it was getting confusing.

On August 15th, the Taliban was taking control of Afghanistan as the United States was pulling out. The capital city, Kabul, was being overrun by the Taliban.

Worth Parker, a retired Marine Lieutenant Colonel, was in his bed in Wilmington, North Carolina after 11 p.m. that night when his phone pinged. He had left his Facebook app on, and a private message got his attention.

One of the interpreters he had worked with in Afghanistan needed Worth’s help.  That interpreter was now a Marine reservist in Houston, but he had family in Kabul. He was worried what might happen to them once the Taliban was in charge.

This set off a series of events that would pull Worth Parker back into service, if not officially, but instead for those who had served America during the Afghanistan conflict.
Links

Aways Faithful, By Thomas Schueman and Zainullah  Zaki (Amazon)
Russell Worth Parker Website
Inside the Shadow Evacuation of Kabul, Wired

About this Episode's Guest Worth Parker
Worth Parker, Photo Credit: Brian Hueske
Russell Worth Parker is a retired United States Marine turned writer. He lives in Wilmington, NC with his wife and daughter. Worth can find the soul in your story, put muscle on it, and let it walk around for a while. Give him a holler at the “Contact” page. He isn’t hard to find. He’s also far less self-satisfied than he might appear in that picture above. It’s just that he rarely takes a good picture so he’s getting maximum mileage out of this one. It was the Christmas card for the last three years.
Worth writes for a wide array of publications including The New York Times, Garden and Gun Magazine, The Bitter Southerner, Backcountry Journal, Shooting Sportsman Magazine, Salt Magazine, and websites such as SOFLETE.com, DieLiving.Com, and a number of commercial and non-profit websites.

When not contemplating the complexities of arranging the same twenty-six letters in ways that will matter to other people, Worth reads, runs ultra-marathons, and seeks reasons to be outside. He is a graduate of the University of Colorado, The Florida State University College of Law, and the University of North Carolina at Wilmington Masters in Conflict Management and Resolution Program.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.shapingopinion.com

Football legend Larry Csonka joins Tim to talk about his life and what football has done for his life. Larry’s a former fullback with the Miami Dolphins and the New York Giants. He was a Super Bowl MVP. He’s an NFL Hall of Famer and a College Football Hall of Famer. He’s a two-time Super Bowl Champion – a cornerstone of the NFL’s only undefeated team – with the Miami Dolphins. And he’s the author of a new book called, “Larry Csonka: Head On: A Memoir.”

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Photo credits: Larry Csonka Personal Collection

Larry Csonka reached the peak of his playing career as a football full back just as the game itself was reaching a peak of its own in the 1970s.  The best analogy might be to think of yourself as a mountain climber, and just as you are the one to get to the top of the tallest mountain, the mountain itself gets that much taller.

That’s where Larry Csonka was, at the top of his game in a sport that had just taken its place atop all other sports in America.

In 1987, Larry Csonka was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. His Miami Dolphins Coach Don Shula presented Larry that day, and here’s what he had to say about the Dolphins, their championships, their undefeated season, and Larry Csonka:

“Behind all this success was Larry Csonka. He as simply the best fullback of his time. On first down, his average was 4.5 a carry. And when it got tough on third and short, everyone knew number 39 would get the ball….

Shula went on…

“Larry played his best in the biggest games. He had three straight 1,000-yard seasons in 1971, ’72 and ’73. We went to the Super Bowl in each of these years…”

"What separates Larry from some of the game’s other greats is his superior competitive instincts and his love of playing football the old-fashioned way. It was blood and guts. Dirt all over him. Never leaving the game."

And then Shula finished, “A five-time All-Pro choice, he had the respect of his peers. There was a lot of intelligence and talent on our Super Bowl teams. But I know where the heart was. Number 39. Larry Csonka."
Links

Head On: A Memoir, By Larry Csonka (Amazon)
Larry Csonka's Official Website
Larry Csonka Pro Football Reference
Larry Csonka, 'heart of the Dolphins glory days' on his life of adventure, and perfection, Miami Herald
Don Shula, Pro Football Hall of Fame

About this Episode's Guest Larry Csonka (After Football)
Larry Csonka and Audrey Bradshaw. Photo Credit: Larry Csonka Personal Collection

Larry has continued to work in the “public eye” through national commercial ads including the popular Miller Lite commercials of the late '80s, numerous celebrity guest appearances on outdoor shows and host of the original popular competition series, American Gladiators from 1990-1993.

After residing several years in Anchorage, he and longtime partner, Audrey Bradshaw, maintain homes in Florida and North Carolina, and a farm in Ohio.

For 16 seasons, he and Audrey Bradshaw, hosted and produced the outdoor adventure/travelogue series, “NAPA’s North to Alaska.” This top-rated, nationally televised program aired on NBCSN showcasing adventures in the Last Frontier, its people, culture, wildlife, rich history and Larry’s enthusiasm for outdoor sports and conservation. (1998 – 2013)

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.shapingopinion.com

Former covert CIA intelligence officer and U.S. Air Force combat veteran Andrew Bustamante joins Tim to talk about his life as a CIA operative, the lessons he’s learned, and we get some insights into the world of the CIA. Today, Andrew is a Fortune 10 corporate advisor, and he’s the man behind the EveryDay Spy self-improvement program, and the host of the EveryDay Espionage podcast.

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Before we talk to our guest, you need to know some things about America’s intelligence infrastructure.

The United States of America has a vast intelligence community. To manage it all, the United States Intelligence Community, or IC, is an actual group of organizations that work separately and collectively to conduct intelligence activities that are supposed to support the nation’s foreign policy and national security interests.

Member organizations include the intelligence agencies, military intelligence, civilian intelligence, and analysis offices within federal executive departments.

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence oversees the Intelligence Community. That director reports directly to the President of the United States, who as commander in chief is also the chief of all intelligence operations.

The list of member organizations is a familiar one. The Department of Homeland Security, the National Security Agency or NSA, and of course, the Central Intelligence Agency or the CIA.

One of the more common points of confusion when it comes to the intelligence community is where the CIA’s responsibilities end, and where the FBI’s begin. And vice versa.

The FBI is part of the Department of Justice. It is the domestic intelligence and security service of the United States. It is the federal government’s principal law enforcement agency.  As part of the Department of Justice, the FBI reports to the Attorney General of the United States and the Director of National Intelligence. Again, the FBI’s focus is domestic.

The CIA is a civilian foreign intelligence service. It was created by President Harry Truman right after World War II. It is charged with gathering, processing, and analyzing information relevant to national security. That information can come from around the world. The CIA is not responsible for spying on American citizens. Though should American citizens be involved with any potential foreign threat, they could find themselves under the microscope of the CIA.

Unlike the FBI, which is focused on domestic security, the CIA has no law enforcement function and is officially mainly focused on overseas intelligence gathering.

The mysteries surrounding the work of the CIA has been the stuff of books, of Hollywood movies and TV shows. In the news media, it’s been the stuff of legend. You never know what’s really true or not.  That question was my starting point when I had the chance to sit down with former CIA operative Andrew Bustamante.
Links

EveryDay Spy (website)
EveryDay Espionage Podcast (Apple)
Why Nations Go to War, by John Stoessinger (Amazon)
Sun Tzu's Art of War (Amazon)
Former CIA Agent Explains How He Made Targets Fall For Him, Lad Bible

About this Episode’s Guest Andrew Bustamante
Andrew is a self-declared “improvement junkie; a former covert CIA intelligence officer, US Air Force combat veteran, and Fortune 10 corporate advisor.”  He is the man behind the EveryDay Spy program for self-development. It’s an integrated education and training platform that teaches international espionage tactics that benefit everyday life. He’s also the creator and host of the EveryDay Spy podcast.

The mental, physical, and social spy skills CIA gave me have helped me accomplish everything I’ve set my mind to achieve,” he says. “The same can be true for you if you are willing to listen, learn and train with me. I believe all people can learn to master their mind,

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.shapingopinion.com

Author, doctor and college professor John Abramson joins Tim to talk about his book called, “Sickening: How Big Pharma Broke American Health Care and How We can Repair It.” John has been on the faculty of Harvard Medical School for over 25 years, and prior to that spent many years in private practice. In this episode, John about America’s healthcare system, which often traces its roots to how drugs are approved for use and marketed to both doctors and consumers.

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Prior to the pandemic, most Americans knew much less, or even cared about how drugs were approved. Vaccines, drugs, medicines and other medical treatments are approved by the Food and Drug Administration, the FDA.  Before the pandemic, most Americans assumed that the FDA and the federal government had their best interests at heart, and that anything approved by the FDA was good for them.

When TV viewers watched ads for pharmaceuticals, they assumed that these new drugs had to pass the test of innovation, of efficacy, and that in the end, the new drugs were improvements over the old drugs.

The pandemic changed all of that for some, not because of lost trust in the mission of the FDA or other regulatory bodies. And not because of lack of faith in the ability for pharmaceutical companies to provide lifesaving and health-improving treatments. Or their ability to be innovative.

What has happened is that America has gotten a peak behind the curtain, and it’s not sure it likes what it sees.

That’s exactly what our guest in this episode has spent much of his life doing. John Abramson is a medical doctor. He’s a former expert witness in numerous legal proceedings over the questionable practices of some pharmaceutical companies or executives. Like so many, he entered the medical profession to help people get better or stay healthy. Then he got his own glimpse behind the curtain.
Links

Sickening: How Big Pharma Broke American Health Care and How We Can Repair It, by John Abramson (Harper Collins' website)
Overdo$ed America, by John Abramson (Harper Collins' website)
Comparison of Upper Gastrointestinal Toxicity of Rofecoxib and Naproxen in Patients with Rheumatoid Arthritis, New England Journal of Medicine (November 23, 2000)
Risk of cardiovascular events associated with selective COX-2 inhibitors, Journal of the American Medical Association (August 2001)
Vioxx Lawsuits, Drugwatch.com
Health Technology Assessment, PubMed.gov
E-Mails Suggest Merck Knew Vioxx's Dangers at Early Stage, Wall Street Journal (November 1, 2004)
Withheld Study on Vioxx Published This Week in Lancet, Kaiser Health News (June 11, 2009)
Diabetes Prevention Program New England Journal Of Medicine 2002, DiabetesTalk.net

About this Episode’s Guest John Abramson
John Abramson MD, MS, has served as a family physician for 22 years. He was twice voted “best doctor” in his area by readers of the local newspapers and three times selected by his peers as one of a handful of best family practitioners in Massachusetts. He has been on the faculty at Harvard Medical School for 16 years, where he has taught primary care and currently teaches health care policy. He currently consults as an expert in litigation involving the pharmaceutical industry and has served as an unpaid consultant to the FBI and Department of Justice. Dr. Abramson has appeared on more than 65 national television shows, including two appearances on the Today Show, and more recently on the Dr. Oz Show. He was written op-ed pieces in the New York Times LA Times and others. In addition to his book, Sickening, He is the author of the national best-selling book Overdo$ed America.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.shapingopinion.com

Wall Street Journal Deputy Bureau Chief for China and author Josh Chin joins Tim to talk about his new book he co-authored with fellow WSJ journalist Liza Lin. It’s called “Surveillance State: Inside China’s Quest to Launch a New Era of Social Control.” Josh tells about how China has led the way into a new era of mass surveillance on a scale the world has never seen. And it’s not limited to China.

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The idea of an authoritarian state spying on its citizens is nothing new. Many are alive today who can still remember the secret police of East Germany and their middle of the night raids. There are even a few who still remember the Nazis. And of course, the Soviet Union had its KGB.

In these countries, spies could be anywhere, and on top of that, you could never be entirely sure you could completely trust some friends or family. But the difference between totalitarian governments of the past and the ones emerging today centers on people. You just don’t need as many, or sometimes any, if you’re a totalitarian regime who wants to spy on your people to control them.

You don’t need as many of those secret police or snitches to get the information you want.

Today, the difference is, in a word, technology. And nowhere is this more evident than in China.

Josh Chin wrote a book that we will talk about today, and in it, he says that by the start of 2020 – by the start of the pandemic – there were almost 350 million cameras installed on Chinese streets, in public squares, in subway stations and around buildings. There were more than 840 million smartphones throughout the country in the purses and pockets of individuals. Each collecting and transmitting data on its user back to a central database. Organizing it to create a profile on the behaviors of each person.

In China, mobile payment systems log millions of transactions every day, and send that data back into the system, further completing the state’s picture of each individual.

For Chinese citizens, where you go, what you do, what you buy, the questions you ask search engines, all of it paints a mosaic of you for the authoritarian government. That profile is so full of data, so full of analysis, that the artificial intelligence platforms that follow you, may know you better than you know yourself in some respects. And perhaps even more chilling, the predictive analytics built into these platforms are quite effective at predicting what you will do next.

Machines that learn, not shadowy spies, can now listen, see and even think on an entirely new level. Harvesting data. And judging you.

Imagine the power that would give an authoritarian government. Well, you don’t have to, it’s here. It’s the power of Big Brother from George Orwell’s prescient book, “1984.” But Josh Chin thinks there’s another book that may have been even more prophetic. It was written in Russia just over 100 years ago, and it’s called simply, “We.”
Links

Surveillance State: Inside China's Quest to Launch a New Era of Social Control, by Josh Chin and Liza Lin (Barnes & Noble)
Two Faces of China's Surveillance State, Wall Street Journal
Josh Chin's Website

About this Episode’s Guest Josh Chin
Josh Chin is an award-winning journalist and author who has spent almost two decades documenting the rise of China, mostly for The Wall Street Journal.

Josh was hired by the Journal to cover the Beijing Olympics as a freelance video journalist in 2008. He later joined the paper full time to run its China blog, China Real Time, which covered the country's development in every facet, from the delightful to the deadly serious. He switched to reporting on Chinese politics in 2013, covering Xi Jinping's crackdown on dissent, the activities of Chinese military hackers, and China's race to build technologies of the future.

In 2017, Josh teamed up with fellow Journal reporter Liza Lin and other colleagu...

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.shapingopinion.com

Author Mike Mariani joins Tim to talk about what he learned about how people move on in their lives after enduring a life-changing trauma or catastrophe. He’s the author of the new book called, “What Doesn’t Kill Us Makes Us: Who we become after tragedy and trauma.” In this episode, Mike uses the famous saying that inspired the title of his book as a launching point to tell a story that doesn’t sugar-coat how people respond to adversity, while providing hope and inspiration.

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Friedrich Nietzsche was a late 19th Century German philosopher who had a great deal of influence on society at a pivotal time in history. His writings and his voice came along at a time when society itself was undergoing a transformation in both Europe and America, relying less on the agrarian economies of nations, and increasingly on an emerging industrial economy.

Leaders and peoples were starting to question the status quo, and Nietzsche offered up some of the answers.  Yet there is one quote of his that has embedded itself into our culture, particularly in America, that is so ubiquitous that it is almost never questioned even to this day.  Nietzsche is the one who said, “What doesn’t kill me makes me stronger.”

This saying was the inspiration for a new book by Mike Mariani that states, “What doesn’t kill us makes us,” but he doesn’t finish the sentence. Does he believe it or not?

Actually, it’s not that simple.

Mike has had his own share of troubles in life, things that didn’t kill him, and for the longest time, he lived by that mantra, “What doesn’t kill me makes me stronger.”

But in the past ten years – Mike is only 36 years old now – he sensed that life isn’t so black and white. Maybe the issue isn’t whether something that doesn’t kill us should make us stronger or weaker, just different.

That was the starting point for his research and his book. If tragedy and trauma don’t make us stronger, for better or worse, how they change us?

To imagine the kinds of trauma Mike was thinking of, think of someone who lost the ability to walk, or someone who has been sent to prison for a long time and lost their freedom, or someone with a condition that prevents them from living the life they once knew.

Mike asks, how does a person go about reconstructing their existence in the wake of calamity after much of that existence has been irretrievably lost? What do those whose lives have been knocked off their orbits have in common? How do we make sense of and find meaning in a life where suffering and misfortune go uncompensated?

Before we talked about the stories or the themes of the book, I wanted to know how he researched it. Who did he talk to? How does he know?
Links

What Doesn’t Kill Us Makes Us: Who we become after tragedy and trauma, by Mike Mariani (Penguin/Random House)
Mike Mariani Website
Review: 'What Doesn't Kill Us Makes Us,' Wall Street Journal
The Curious Afterlife of a Brain Trauma Survivor, Wired Magazine

About this Episode’s Guest Mike Mariani
Mike Mariani, Photo Credit: Diana Jahns

Since graduating with his MA in literature, Mike Mariani has worked as an English professor and freelance journalist, writing feature articles for The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Guardian, T: The New York Times Style Magazine, Newsweek, GQ, Vanity Fair, Mother Jones, and The Atavist and essays for The Believer, Slate, The Los Angeles Review of Books, Pacific Standard, The Nation, and Hazlitt. Some of the topics Mariani has written about include the history of medical gaslighting, criminal cases involving mental illness, the opioid crisis, and the neuroscience of inequality. Mariani currently resides with his wife in Northern California.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.shapingopinion.com

Best-selling author Dr. Warren Farrell joins Tim to talk about America’s boy crisis. Warren has written books that have sold around the world, and was named by the Financial Times as one of the world’s 100 top thought leaders.  In this episode he talks about his book called, “The Boy Crisis: Why our boys are struggling and what we can do about it.” We dig into the challenges boys face now and how parents and others can help them become the men everyone wants them to be.

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Over the past couple of decades, there has been a gradual shift in the way society has approached issues affecting both boys and girls. One of the more surprising tends that has come out of this are many indicators that boys have suffered.

In all 63 of the most developed nations, boys are falling behind.  They’re falling behind in school with scores dropping in reading and writing. Boys are more likely to drop out of high school and college than girls. They are more likely to die from an opioid overdose.

Boys and young men are more prone to depression and suicides than girls and young women. Once in their 20s, men are five times more likely to commit suicide than women. There has been a noticeable drop in the average IQ for boys.

These are just some of the indicators that Warren Farrell cites in his landmark book called, “The Boy Crisis.”

Warren has written many books about men and family over the years. He’s done an extensive amount of original research on men’s issues in society. As a result, he’s gained insights into how those issues start to take shape long before boys become men.
Links

WarrenFarrell.com
The Boy Crisis: Why Our Boys Are Struggling and What We Can Do About It, by Dr. Warren Farrell, Amazon
Attention Must Be Paid: Warren Farrell and the Boy Crisis, Psychology Today
Warren Farrell: Boys are in crisis. Fatherlessness is the reason, Associated Press

About this Episode’s Guest Dr. Warren Farrell
Dr. Warren Farrell has been chosen by The Financial Times of London as one of the world’s top 100 thought leaders, and by the Center for World Spirituality as one of the world’s spiritual leaders.

Dr. Farrell’s books are published in more than 50 countries, and in 19 languages. His most recent, The Boy Crisis, (co-author, John Gray), was a finalist for the Indie book publishing award.

His other books include The New York Times best seller, Why Men Are the Way They Are, plus the international best seller, The Myth of Male Power. A book on couples’ communication, Women Can’t Hear What Men Don’t Say, was a selection of the Book-of-the-Month Club. And Why Men Earn More: The Startling Truth Behind the Pay Gap–and What Women Can Do About It was selected by U.S. News and World Report in 2006 as one of the top four books on careers.

Dr. Farrell has taught at the university level in five disciplines, and appeared on more than 1,000 TV shows, being interviewed repeatedly by Oprah and Barbara Walters, as well as by Peter Jennings, Charlie Rose, and Larry King. He has been featured repeatedly in Forbes, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal.

Warren Farrell is the only man ever elected three times to the Board of the National Organization for Women in NYC. And currently, as Chair of the Coalition to Create a White House Council on Boys and Men, he is working with the White House to create such a Council.

Dr. Farrell teaches couples’ communication courses around the country, and speaks internationally on the global boy crisis, its causes, and solutions.

Warren has two daughters, and lives with his wife in Mill Valley, California, and virtually at www.warrenfarrell.com.

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