Talk Cocktail

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 training ground for life, frequently life changing.  Yet most soldiers, men and women alike, must return to that real world. And when they do, everything changes once again.
That’s the story that Helen Thorpe tells about three women in Soldier Girls: The Battles of Three Women at Home and at War.
My conversation with Helen Thorpe:

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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 not alive in that period, A new work by Matt Herron is a powerful reminder.  Matt was the progenitor of an effort to chronicle those events and in so doing captured a pivotal moment in American history.  The result, is Mississippi Eyes: The Story and Photography of the Southern Documentary Project
My conversation with Matt Herron:

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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:

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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 a shared truth about the American experience of slavery and bigotry.
While we've done a good job of trying to move beyond that legacy, like a weed, not pulled out from the root, it comes back to haunt us, because of our difficulty in dealing with its true history.
That’s the history that Chris Tomlinson takes on, with respect to his own family, in his book and in the documentary Tomlinson Hill: The Remarkable Story of Two Families who Share the Tomlinson Name - One White, One Black.
My conversation with Chris Tomlinson:

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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 did Nixon insist on the tapes, why didn’t he destroy them, and deeper still, why did a man whose entire life was devoted to the pursuit of the Presidency and his own place in history, destroy himself, by his own hand, his own actions and his own decisions?
Few have gotten closer to answering these questions than John Dean.  Nixon’s White House council,  the man who first told Nixon that Watergate was a growing “cancer on the Presidency,” who himself  has spent 40 years thinking and writing about these issues, now on the 40th anniversary of Nixon’s resignation, has written the definitive, The Nixon Defense: What He Knew and When He Knew It.
My conversation with John Dean:

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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 did Nixon insist on the tapes, why didn’t he destroy them, and deeper still, why did a man whose entire life was devoted to the pursuit of the Presidency and his own place in history, destroy himself, by his own hand, his own actions and his own decisions?
Few have gotten closer to answering these questions than John Dean.  Nixon’s White House council,  the man who first told Nixon that Watergate was a growing “cancer on the Presidency,” who himself  has spent 40 years thinking and writing about these issues, now on the 40th anniversary of Nixon’s resignation, has written the definitive, The Nixon Defense: What He Knew and When He Knew It. My conversation with John Dean:

Get full access to Talk Cocktail Podcast at jeffschechtman.substack.com/subscribe

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 preeminent experts on the Nixon tapes, it paints a picture of a cunning and controlling President, and sometimes a country astride the world. But mostly it captures the White House, America and the world, in a particular place and time that bears very little resemblance to the world today.
The latest collection of Nixon tapes, assembled by Luke Nichter and Douglas Brinkley, is The Nixon Tapes: 1971-1972..My conversation with Luke Nichter:

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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 disappeared in the world’s oceans.
This fascination has given rise to whole groups of people that seek to explore in new and different, and sometimes dangerous, ways.  
That's the backdrop of James Nestor's Deep: Freediving, Renegade Science, and What the Ocean Tells Us about Ourselves.
My conversation with James Nestor:

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In communities all across America debates rage about zoning, building, and development.  In most cases, however, the debate is around the margins.  Most places have long since evolved into what they are.  New York City is perhaps the penultimate example. 
While arguments still do go on about height limits, shadows and railyards, the city has long since determined its destiny. For New York it has been, at least since the mid 18th century, a forward march to becoming the amazing city it is today.
Ted Steinberg's Gotham Unbound: The Ecological History of Greater New York, gives us a detailed history of that urban evolution.
My conversation with Ted Steinberg:

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Think about the things that shape our world, our perceptions and our culture.  For a large part of the population, the experience of America’s mistakes in Vietnam has long shaped our engagement in the world.  The country's disrespect, at the time, for the service of those that served in Vietnam, in many ways positively shapes the way we respond to Veterans' needs today.
As leaders today try and juggle the crisis of the world, and play a kind of geopolitical chess, they are always chastened by the scandal that was Iran/Contra,
And as any magazine or look at popular culture today will tell you, we are obsessed with outward appearances, usually at the expense of depth and real understanding.
All of these issues and ideas come into play in the life and struggles of Robert Timberg.  Disfigured in a land mine explosion thirteen days before he was to leave Vietnam, his story, his struggles and his recovery in many ways parallels the story of the past half century.
It’s what makes him so effective as a journalist and why his story, that he now tells us in his memoir Blue-Eyed Boy, is also a history lesson for us all.
My conversation with Robert Timberg:

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