Talk Cocktail

What might our knowledge of history be like if snapchat had been around in earlier centuries?
The good news is that it wasn’t.  In a time when people wrote letters, not texts or emails, those letters got saved and later curated.  Letters that give us little glimpses into personalities, history and the human condition at another time, in another place.
Shawn Usher, has devoted himself to being a curator of many such letters.  He is the founder of the blog, Letters of Note and now that’s been turned into the book  Letters of Note: An Eclectic Collection of Correspondence Deserving of a Wider Audience.
My conversation with Shawn Usher:

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Remembering the early days of the cell of phone, we all remember, “can you hear me now.”  For most of us this was modern nuisance.  But for some, those that are hearing impaired, or profoundly deaf, those words have far greater meaning.  
While much progress has been made in the technology, treatment and study of deafness, we are just beginning to understand the broader implications, with respect to brain development, literacy and the very ideas surrounding the acquisition of language.
This is the world that Lydia Denworth became immersed in with her son Alex.  She talks about that experience in I Can Hear You Whisper: An Intimate Journey through the Science of Sound and Language.
My conversation with Lydia Denworth:

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What would it take for you to give up your Western lifestyle, move to Ghana, live in a mud hut and commit yourself to helping thousands of lost children?
You would think that this kind of thing only happens in the movies, or in literature. That real lives are generally not a kind of fairy tail.
Not true.  Lisa Lovatt-Smith did exactly that.  She traded in her glamorous life in Paris and a glamorous life at Vogue for the experience of moving with her daughter to Ghana and trying to change the world. 
She’s shares her story in Who Knows Tomorrow: A Memoir of Finding Family among the Lost Children of Africa.
My conversation with Lisa Lovatt-Smith:

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To achieve proficiency in a new language late in life is near impossible.  But suppose you didn’t just want to learn the language, you wanted total immersion.  You wanted to learn the culture, the origins of the language, to become one with the language.  That’s what my guest William Alexander set out to do with French.
He wanted to be French and language was simply the vessel. But even with that kind of commitment, the effort almost broke his heart. He tells of that effort in Flirting with French: How a Language Charmed Me, Seduced Me, and Nearly Broke My Heart.

My conversation with William Alexander:

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It used to be that the classroom prepared you for a career.  Today your lifetime career is a classroom, where you must be continuously learning.  In doing so, the horizons open up and opportunities abound.
The traditional straightjacket of education and career have been, like most things, disrupted. In it’s place, possibility and creative destruction..
Along with this comes a whole new way of doing business.  A place, not unlike sports, where the newcomer, the rookie has an important role to play.  Without Joe Panik, the SF Giants don’t win a world series.  
In today business world, information isn’t siloed or hidden.  It’s available for all, and it gives the rookie a more level playing field in which to work, bring new ideas and new ways of looking at the world.
This is the back drop for Liz Wiseman's look at    Rookie Smarts: Why Learning Beats Knowing in the New Game of Work.
My conversation with Liz Wiseman:

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One of the foundations of the changing nature of education, is the idea of deeper learning.  Direct, hands on mastery of content, though solving real world problems in a collaborative way. This has created dramatic results in all academic areas.
But it’s also something that can take place right at home.  That’s what best selling author Mark Kurlansky did with his daughter Talia.  They combined culture, geography, chemistry and all in the context of preparing  delicious meals.  
Now they share their efforts in  International Night: A Father and Daughter Cook Their Way Around the World.
My conversation with Mark and Talia Kurlansky:

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To dream the impossible dream has been the great engine of progress in the world.  From the early explorers, to scientists and engineers, to man's quest to explore the planets.  The story of exploration is the story of mankind.  
When John Kennedy laid down the predicate of reaching the moon by the end of a decade, he defined for the whole county that kind of clear goal that also drives individuals forward.  
The story of some of these individuals, along with his own quest,  is what Chris Guillebeau writes about in The Happiness of Pursuit: Finding the Quest That Will Bring Purpose to Your Life.
My conversation with Chris Guillebeau:

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Conventional wisdom has long held that we live in a vast and indeed expanding universe, in which we humans are but a seemingly small and insignificant part.  
But in that classic view, are we not giving ourselves enough credit? Perhaps we are more unique than we think.  Perhaps we are not all that ordinary, on a not so ordinary rock in the vast cosmos.  
Just maybe, that classic view, needs to be reexamined.  That is what Caleb Scharf has done in his new book The Copernicus Complex: Our Cosmic Significance in a Universe of Planets and Probabilities.
My conversation with Caleb Scharf:

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Perhaps part of what plagues us when we think about most issues today, is that we tend to see them in very myopic ways.  The world is a more and more complex place, and yet we do the opposite of what we should do.  We too often silo information or categories, or problems.  
We don’t always see the connections and therefore we get frustrated, because we can’t seem to solve the problems.  
Environmental issues are no different.  My guest, one of the fathers of the environmental movement,  James "Gus" Speth, believes that when we talk about environmentalism, it’s more than the air, or the water, or the earth.  That there is a holistic approach we need to take that is  essential if we want to solve anything.
He writes about this in the context of his own history in his memoir Angels by the River.
My conversation with Gus Speth:

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How often does a story leap off the pages of a magazine, to become a book, a documentary and a major motion picture?  Very rarely. And when it does, it’s clear that the story it tells has touched a powerful nerve among readers and viewers.  
Such is the story that Wired  Contributing Editor Joshua Davis tells, of four underdogs from the streets of Phoenix, who, using Spare Parts would take on the best High School and College students in the country, including MIT with the resources of Exxon/Mobil.
My conversation with Joshua Davis:

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