There is an old saying about popular culture, that if it’s popular, it can be good. This philosophy has at various times permeated music, film, literature, and especially the world of art.  Sometimes it's no doubt true.  But there are also profound exceptions.  

In the world of art, maybe the most unique exception is the work of Peter Max.  Few artists can be considered more American than Max.  His work, often referred to a pop or psychedelic art, has come be respected for its optimism, its boldness of color and celebration of the icons of success in all aspect of American life.  A story that parallels Peter Max's own success story

Peter Max, now at the age of 76 is out with his own multimedia autobiography entitled  The Universe of Peter Max.

My conversation with Peter Max:

With the execution of an uncle of Kim Jong Un, we saw another example of the brutality of the North Korean regime.  Perhaps more than any other nation, North Korea is disconnected from the norms of civilization.

This has been the case for some time, and it’s why most efforts to bridge the divide have failed.  This was the case all the way back in 1968 when the USS Pueblo, a rag tag American spy ship set out to find radar stations along the coast of North Korea.  

On a January morning the Pueblo was attacked and its crew shot at and captured. The incident remains one of the seminal dramas of American foreign policy in the 60’s, of the cold war, and once again of the efforts of an American President to avert war on the Korean peninsula. Long time Los Angeles Times political reporter Jack Cheevers takes us back to this Act of War.

My conversation with Jack Cheevers:

It’s amazing sometimes how simple ideas get lost in the big picture.  Back in 1923, President Warren Harding proposed a federal department to look after the nation's health, education and welfare.  The department was finally created by Eisenhower in 1953.  In 1979, Education was spun off and we created the department of Health AND Human Services.

Clearly as a nation, we’ve long understood the connection between health and human services.  Yet the way our health care system has evolved, preventive care, and human services have been almost abandoned as part of the health care enterprise.

Today we spend more money, per capita, on health care than any other nation.  Yet our outcomes, are near the bottom.  How did this happen, especially when we seemed to understand all along that there was a connection?

Is the fault in our government, our doctors, in our philosophy or in ourselves?  Elizabeth Bradley and Lauren Taylor set out to try and find out.  The result is their book The American Health Care Paradox: Why Spending More is Getting Us Less

My conversation with Elizabeth Bradley and Lauren Taylor:

Even looking at the broad sweep and scope of history and change in the 20th century, it’s arguable that the dynamics of Israel, its relationship to its neighbors and the meaning of the Zionist project remain one of the most vexing and truly complex issues of our time.

For events that began at the end of the 19th Century, clearly and directly link to the issues being talked about and dealt with this very day in Tel Aviv, Tehran and Washington.

But how did it all get this way?  How did the desire for a homeland, a base for the Jewish diaspora, become so complex and lead to a statistically improbable number of foreign policy mistakes, on all sides?

And finally, can this huge ship, carrying the burdens of this history, be turned around in time to avoid crashing into the rocks ahead.

Israeli Journalist Ari Shavit has written what has been called the least tendentious book about Israel.  A non doctrinaire examination of Israel’s past, present and future, My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel, is a book we’ve all need for quite some time.

My conversation with Ari Shavit:

Back in 1996 welfare as we knew it was forever changed by President Clinton.  But while public policy can address issues like food stamps, child care, Medicaid, and many other aspects, it can never address issues of trust.  We know from Civil Rights legislation that no matter what the policy prescriptions, you can’t address what’s in the human heart.

In the panoply of issues surrounding welfare you might not think that trust was paramount.  In fact, Temple University Professor Judith Levine, in Ain't No Trust: How Bosses, Boyfriends, and Bureaucrats Fail Low-Income Mothers and Why It Matters, finds that it is one of the defining issues for low income women.  That it has an ongoing corrosive and paralyzing effect in the lives of these women and that even public policy cannot fully address it.

My conversation with Judith Levine:

Perhaps it's our popular culture, but the business of selling has gotten a terrible reputation.  Whether it’s Willy Loman trying to be “well liked,” or Harold Hill hoodwinking people from town to town, or Alec Baldwin's character of Blake in David Mamet's’ Glengarry Glen Ross, we've seen selling portrayed as as one of the least trustworthy endeavors. Even lower on the scale than members of congress. 

Selling in the 21st century is very different.  No longer is it about sleaze and closing.  Today it’s about science, persuasion and information. Selling is something we all do in our personal lives, and in our professional lives; even if we are not in the business of sales. Best selling author Daniel Pink, takes us inside this reality in To Sell Is Human: The Surprising Truth About Moving Others.

My conversation with Daniel Pink:

The number of angry white men in America is on the decline, just as talk radio, that panders to and inspires them, is also aging and declining. Yet their continued presence tells us a lot about change in America and the divides that separate race, gender and class.

Perhaps it all started back in 1969 when Richard Nixon tried to obscure the difference between working class and affluent voters, particular men, by portraying them all as a part of a silent majority.  He portrayed them as both heroes and victims of the tumultuousness of the period.   Reagan continued  with similar themes to capture what came to be called “Reagan Democrats.”  

All of this was before and really a precursor to the profound impacts of  feminism, civil rights, gay rights, globalization, growing income disparity, more women in the workplace, the loss of manufacturing, Sex in the City, outsourcing, the technological revolution, the US attacked on 9/11, the great recession, legalized marijuana, same sex marriage and the election of a black President.

It’s enough to disorient anyone.  But most notably its greatest  impact was on those most threatened; the standard bearers of the old status quo, white men.  Men who had stood on the wall  trying to defend an old way of life, a cultural paradigm that was crumbling beneath their feet. Stony Brook University Professor Michael Kimmel examines this phenomenon in Angry White Men: American Masculinity at the End of an Era.

My conversation with Michael Kimmel:

Nelson Mandela stands as one of our greatest symbols of the struggle for freedom.  His shadow will always infuse the politics and culture of South Africa.  Yet almost one half the county is under 25 and doesn’t know or remember their nation in anything but it’s post apartheid period.  

How does and will this disconnect shape the future of the country?  How can it deal with its historical context and at the same time, the seemingly mundane issues health, welfare, justice and jobs.

Douglas Foster, a long time South Africa watcher, former head of the Journalism School at U.C. Berkley and currently Professor at Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism writes about After Mandela: The Struggle for Freedom in Post-Apartheid South Africa. My conversation with Douglas Foster:

Most of us, over a certain age, remember when getting on a transcontinental or international flight was glamorous.  We dressed to travel.  Strong pilots and beautiful stewardess framed the wonders of the journey.  The glamour of air travel imbued us with a sense of freedom and possibility. 

How many women were inspired by the glamour of the Charlie Girl commercial to believe that having it all was possible and the holy grail?

During the depression and war years, the glamour of Joan Crawford inspired a generation to believe in social mobility.

And of course, as we just re experienced, the glamour of the Kennedy’s and Camelot, has remained frozen in time, in our collective consciousness. 

All are examples of the power of glamour to shape society, define the culture and motivate each of us.Virginia Postrel in The Power of Glamour: Longing and the Art of Visual Persuasion, goes to the core value of glamour as a powerful aspirational force and a very real part of our our social language.

My conversation with Virginia Postrel:

Whenever we see or hear great art, we are usually inclined to wonder about the forces that created it.  What constitutes the artistic life?  What influences, combined with what DNA creates the perfect storm of artistic temperament, vision and creation?

Long time music critic and editor for the LA Times, Robert Hilburn, has made trying to understand this, his life's work.  He has reported extensively about many of pop music’s legends, including Dylan, Springsteen, U2, Elton John and John Lennon.

Now he turns to the life and legend of Johnny Cash.  Cash spent a good part of his career fighting both his own demons and walking the line between being a credible artists and trying do good in the world Hilburn capture his essence in Johnny Cash: The Life

My conversation with Robert Hilburn: