Talk Cocktail

While the United States has, since it founding, prided itself on the idea of justice for all, those principles have seldom found expression in the international realm, until relatively recently.

Former Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson, who would prosecute crimes at Nuremberg, would lay out the case for equal international justice, when he said in his opening statement “that the record on which we judge these defendants today is the record on which history will judge us tomorrow.  To pass these defendants a poisoned chalice is to put it to our own lips as well.”

Given this, the idea that the US would ever participate in any kind of international tribunal has always seemed remote.  Yet ten years ago, the International Criminal Court would come to be. And for all its struggles and limitations, it has started to gain its footing. American University Professor David Bosco, takes us through the history in Rough Justice: The International Criminal Court in a World of Power Politics

My conversation with David Bosco:

We pretty well understand how evolution impacts living organisms. But is it possible that there is a similar kind of survival of the fittest at play with respect to culture, ideas or even to language?

If so, with no DNA trail, how do we determine its history and what relevance does it have to creating a contemporaneous understanding of our culture and language?

The answer actually lies in our use of what’s come to be called Big Data. Erez Aiden and Jean-Baptiste Michel, have detailed this in Uncharted: Big Data as a Lens on Human Culture.

My conversation with Erez Aiden and Jean-Baptiste Michel:

From  the highest levels of international and governmental affairs, to the most personal and intimate relationships, secrets and lies are often at the heart of so many narratives.  

We embrace privacy, yet we want truth.  As individuals and as a society we spend enormous resources covering up unpleasant truths, only to find, as we seem to never learn, that the cover up is always tougher than the lie.  

Is there something in human nature or human psychology itself that makes transparency so difficult?  Yet sometimes judging  from Facebook, we have a whole younger generation that shares everything.  How do we square this circle and begin to understand the real power of secrets and lies?

That's what author and long time publishing executive Jane Isay set out to discover in Secrets and Lies: Surviving the Truths That Change Our Lives.

My conversation with Jane Isay:

We have all had the experience of hearing a familiar and likable piece of music from a long time ago. Suddenly the music short circuits time and makes yesterdays events, today’s reality.  It’s as if that song triggers primal changes within us, that allows us to transcend both space and time.

Now imagine if that was more than just our fond memories playing tricks on us. Image that the music had actually become part of us, of our DNA.  This notion is a small part of the brilliant blending of science, art, and literature, that is Richard Powers' new novel Orfeo. My conversation with Richard Powers:

Everyday most of us battle our own demons.  These Demons often prevent us from doing perhaps the hardest thing there is, that is initiating and adapting to personal change.

With the New Year, I’m sure we’ve all made resolutions.  By now most are long forgotten.   Change is hard. Personal change is even harder.  One wonders how anyone ever does it.  

Perhaps we can do it by a kind of personal mental jujitsu that manipulates the force of our resistance to change, against itself.  This might work a lot better than confronting it with sheer force of will.  And what if we did this in small incremental steps?  It just might be that in that situation, resistance will give way to success.

It is in these “Microresolutions” that Caroline Arnold has found the sweet spot of change.  She details it in Small Move, Big Change: Using Microresolutions to Transform Your Life Permanently. My conversation with Caroline L. Arnold:

SLR cameras, pagers, paper maps, travel agents, home telephones, answering machines, transistor radios;  all quaint reminders of days gone by. Today whole new industries are taking over from the old.  The way we find places to stay when we travel, transportation, even the nature of money itself, is changing.

Back in the 90’s we heard about the “Innovators Dilemma.”  About how cheap products would flood the market, before other manufactures could create products with higher value. Perhaps Sony and other Japanese companies were the penultimate example.

Today, new products enter the marketplace full blown. They are cheaper and more efficient and receive instant acceptance.  How do traditional incumbents defend against this?  They don’t. They either innovate on today’s terms, or they go the way of Blockbuster, or Blackberry or Kodak, or Garmin.

These are just some of the ideas put forth by Larry Downes in his new book, Big Bang Disruption: Strategy in the Age of Devastating Innovation..My conversation with Larry Downes:

Someone once wrote that happiness is serious business. But should happiness be a goal in and of itself, or is it simply a construct for achieving what we really desire, and helping us in finding our place in the world? Woody Allen in Annie Hall saw the world divided only into the “horrible,” and the “miserable.”  What kind of a construct is that?

Gretchen Rubin has looked at happiness from all sides now.  She is the author of the NY Times bestseller THE HAPPINESS PROJECT, she is a former law clerk on the Supreme Court and now the author of Happier at Home: Kiss More, Jump More, Abandon Self-Control, and My Other Experiments in Everyday Life.

My conversation with Gretchen Rubin:

The reporting of and understanding of sports always seems to be a balancing act between the importance of teams vs. the primacy of an individual player.

Certainly in basketball, the decision was made a long time ago, that individuals stars  would drive the NBA.  Certainly many have over the years.  But as much as any one player, one coach has stood atop the sport.  With eleven championships, Phil Jackson is the master.

But what got him there?  Was it luck, timing, sheer basketball smarts, or a unique ability, almost like a film director in his prime, to manage huge egos and diverse personalities and consistently get the best out of them?

Long time sports journalist Peter Richmond, tries in  Phil Jackson: Lord of the Rings,to pin down who Phil Jackson is and what has made him so successful.

My conversation with Peter Richmond:

A young Johnny, played by Marlon Brando in THE WILD ONES, is asked what he’s rebelling against? He answers  “what have you got?”  Rebellion and the youthful the desire to shapes one's identity, have long been a part of the adolescent experience.  

Today however we know so much more about it.  About what goes on inside the brain that shapes that rebellion and the quest for identity.  What we also understand, but perhaps as parents we don’t always practice, is the the kind of virtuous circle, or feedback loop that results when parents react to adolescent behavior.  What we know is that the behavior isn’t fixed.  That it’s profoundly influenced by action and reaction....in ways that have a lifetime impact.

Few understand this better than UCLA clinical professor of psychiatry and Mindsight Institute Executive Director, Dr. Daniel Siegel.  He's also the author of Brainstorm: The Power and Purpose of the Teenage Brain.

My conversation with Dr. Daniel Siegel:

The recent controversy surrounding Bill Keller’s column about Lisa Adams, and subject of illness and dying in general, brings into bold relief just how personal the subject is.  Dealing with death is little like marriage and fingerprints.  No two are ever alike.

We celebrate and mark weddings and deaths.  But what what are we marking, what we celebrating, really.  These are moments in time, the background and history,  joy and sorrow of which, may have gone on for years before, or may come years after.

Clearly to understand death, we must first understand the fullness life.   In some ways its counter intuitive. It runs counter to our uniquely American notion of being in the moment.  

Few understand all of as well as David Dow.  David is a death penalty appeals lawyer in the State of Texas.  As such, he has dealt with death on a regular basis. He has also dealt with his own personal experiences  which he shares with me in talking about his memoir, Things I've Learned from Dying: A Book About Life. 

My conversation with David Dow: