Talk Cocktail

Think for a moment about how much has changed about life, just in our own lifetime.  Everyday there are new ideas or new products that disrupt existing paradigms.  Is it any wonder then that parenthood today is very different than in our parents or grandparents time?

Where once children were looked at as economic units to the family, today we live in a child centered society, where the rules, the expectations and the impact on parents have all changed.

Are we better off?  Are we having more fun, are children more rewarding?  The answer is, it depends.

That’s the landscape that Jennifer Senior enters into in her wide ranging looking at parenthood, All Joy and No Fun: The Paradox of Modern Parenthood.

My conversation with Jennifer Senior:

Bogie reminded us “that we’ll always have Paris.”  Indeed, we will. Paris defines what a city should be.  Beyond it’s being a City of Lights, a Moveable Feast, and so many other things, it is a model, the model for what urban life should be.  And that’s how it grew up.  From a desolate, war torn landscape to one of the first cities to embrace street life, to welcome pedestrians, to be lit at night, to have public gardens and where, as Joni Mitchell said, “they kiss on main street.”

Joan DeJean celebrates this history and explains How Paris Became Paris: The Invention of the Modern City.

My conversation with Joan DeJean:

Today, digital privacy is on everyone's mind.  We know that every time we search, use an App, make an online purchase, or even go to the doctor, more and more information is being collected about us.  

The degree to which we can do anything about it, or even care in this digital age, is an open question.  However, what if we ourselves could access and use this information?  Not to make us better consumers, but to actually make us happier.  If we understand our digital footprint, will it make us better able to understand ourselves, and would this have value?  Can all of this aggregated, quantified information create a kind of digital psychoanalysis, that we can use to improve our lives?  That's the premise of John Havens' book Hacking Happiness: Why Your Personal Data Counts and How Tracking it Can Change the World

My conversation with John Havens:

From the discovery of x rays at the turn of the century, to the tragedy of Fukushima, we’ve had 120 years of the nuclear age.  Yet something that was once so modern, so cutting edge, filled with so much promise, is now viewed as a scourge upon mankind.

While nuclear medicine makes life saving procedures possible, nuclear proliferation still drives international concern.  While the physics of the atom tries to give us a better understanding of our past, the fear is still pervasive that the same physics could be the end of that history. The contradictions and emotions of splitting the atom still haunt us. 

It's a remarkable and complex history, told by Craig Nelson, in    The Age of Radiance: The Epic Rise and Dramatic Fall of the Atomic Era. My conversation with Craig Nelson:

In Heart of Darkness, Conrad spoke of exploring up river with a “general sense of vague and oppressive wonder.  Like a weary pilgrimage amongst hints of nightmare.”

Paul Rosolie made a journey into his own heart of darkness, as he engaged in an extraordinary adventure into the uncharted tributaries of the Western Amazon.  

He writes about his experiences in  Mother of God: An Extraordinary Journey into the Uncharted Tributaries of the Western Amazon.  Paraphrasing Conrad, Rosolie conveys the life-sensation of his  existence--that which gives his story its truth, its meaning--its subtle and penetrating essence.

My conversation with Paul Rololie:

Who among us is not multitasking?  The idea of watching or working multiple screens is now a term of art.  But are the pressures, demands and distractions producing an anxiety that has some long term consequences?

Simply viewed, has the evolution of our brain and our central nervous system kept pace with our needs, our desires and our technology?  For millennials and digital natives, it may be getting closer.  For the rest of us, not so much.

So is the answer to seek  digital hibernation, or  to find a way to reconcile the competing demands on our time, our brain and our body.

ABC news anchor Dan Harris thinks he has found a way to deal with modernity. He shares it with us in 10% Happier: How I Tamed the Voice in My Head, Reduced Stress Without Losing My Edge, and Found Self-Help That Actually Works--A True Story.

My conversation with Dan Harris:

Back in 1999, almost fifteen years ago, Sun Microsystems then Gadfly-in-Chief Scott McNealy made his infamous statement that “you have zero privacy anyway, get over, it.”  There was a kerfuffle at the time, mostly that he had the nerve to say such a thing.  Imagine, someone telling the truth.  

The fact is he was right then, and all the debate from time to time, about terms of service for Google or Facebook, has resulted in very little change in the private sector, with respect to online privacy.  In the public realm, the Snowden revelations really only confirmed what many have suspected for a long. We have not privacy.  

So the question now is, should we just get over it, or actually try to do something about and if so what?  Will some people opt to become a digital recluse, or is all of this  just the price of progress?

Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Julia Angwin looks inside the world of privacy today in Dragnet Nation: A Quest for Privacy, Security, and Freedom in a World of Relentless Surveillance.

My conversation with Julia Angwin:

On of the strongest arguments for globalization and free trade, is that nations that do business together don’t go to war. The corollary of that is that  continued economic growth depends upon no major wars.  In other words,  global prosperity depends on politics. 

But can the two be separated.  Politics impacts economic growth and in many ways, as peoples of the world seek a higher or better standard of living, economics impacts politics.  We’ve created a kind of global feedback loop.  The result is that the chain of globalized growth and prosperity is only as strong as its weakest link. These ideas are part of The Road to Global Prosperity, a    new book by Johns Hopkins University Professor, Michael Mandelbaum.

My conversation with Michael Mandelbaum:

In the Netflix series House of Cards, Vice President Frank Underwood, a man dealing with and plotting the the fate of  of the world, takes time out to work with his hands and craft, lay out and paint Civil War figurines.   He says it's a form of relaxation.

For many people, even those in high profile, high stress jobs, working with their hands, doing crafts and even cooking, fulfill a primal and important need.  In a world where nothing ever seems to conclude, when the days and responsibilities and the technology seems to be both endless and seamless, the art of craft has, for many a very special place and a powerful fulfillment.

Peter Korn examines this in Why We Make Things and Why It Matters: The Education of a Craftsman.

My conversation with Peter Korn:

When it comes to Hollywood, William Goldman certainly may have been right when he said that, “nobody knows anything.”  Certainly the forces that drive Hollywood have always been somewhat mysterious.  Why and how pictures get made, why some get to be hits and others misses.  How some generate buzz and some actors and movies get hot, all sometimes seemsto be the stuff of movie magic.  

And all of this was before the digital age.  Before Netflix, and Amazon and Hulu and Pirate Bay and digital prints:  Before on demand and binge watching were everyday words.  

Today, the nuances of the film “business” are such, that it sometimes stretches the credibility of the word business.  Yet even amidst all of these changes, 2012 was a banner year.  After two previous declining years, 2012 generated over 11 billion dollars at the box office and even gave us some decent movies like Argo, Silver Linings Playbook, Life of Pi, Lincoln, Django Unchained and Zero Dark Thirty.

What did this year of 2012 mean in the new paradigm of Hollywood?  Longtime film journalist Anne Thompson takes us through the year in The $11 Billion Year: From Sundance to the Oscars, an Inside Look at the Changing Hollywood System.

My conversation with Anne Thompson: