Talk Cocktail

Jane Jacobs, in writing about the rise and fall of great cities, talks about a quality even meaner than urban ugliness or disorder.  That is, the idea of “pretend order,” achieved she says by ignoring or suppressing the real order that is struggling to exist and to be served.  This real order “is what make cities flourish and diversity sprout and makes them strange and unpredictable.” This, as Jacobs explains, is not a drawback, it is the point of cites.  A city that for a long time embodied this ethos, is Calcutta.  And while it may be changing and homogenizing today, esteemed author Amit Chaudhuri, captures its essence in his newest work Calcutta: Two Years in the CityMy conversation with Amit Chauduri:

Last week, during the Emmys, we heard a lot of talk about this being a golden age of television. Certainly with shows like Mad Men, Breaking Bad, The Wire and Newsroom, who could argue? However for children's television, the golden age may very well have been 25 years ago.Then, Nickelodeon changed the landscape of kid’s programming. From the Adventures of Pete and Pete and Clarissa Explains it All to Ren and Stimpy, Nickelodeon became the go to channel for kids from early morning to Nick at Nite. Today we have a whole generation that grew up on that programming.  Now, to better understand it all, Matthew Klickstein  gives us Slimed!: An Oral History of Nickelodeon's Golden Age. My conversation with Matthew Klickstein:

When we look at a tragedy like 9/11, we think of who and what we lost at that moment.  We forget that a future is also lost. That many of those killed that day may have changed and reshaped the future. Certainly Danny Lewin, who was on AA flight 11, the first plane to hit the towers, had the potential to do just that.  During his brief 31 years, Danny was a father, a soldier, a brilliant mathematician and an entrepreneur.  Along with his MIT professor, Tom Leighton, he would reshape the Internet into the robust system that was able to withstand the traffic and news of 9/11 itself.  What else he might have accomplished in his lifetime is a loss not just to his family, but to all of us.Molly Knight Raskin lets us all share Danny's story in No Better Time: The Brief, Remarkable Life of Danny Lewin, the Genius Who Transformed the InternetMy conversation with Molly Knight Raskin:

Throughout all of the second half of the 20th century and into the 21st, right up until this moment, many have worked hard to institute some measure of affordable health care and health care reform in America.  A country that, prior to the passage of the Affordable Care Act, was the only modern Western nation not to have done so.  It's no wonder that the forces allied against were powerful, well financed and prepared to do anything and say anything.  Those who would attack the law did so in the absence of political success. Instead, they would try and use the courts, the very courts that they always derided as activist. Except now they wanted to actively seek to overturn by judicial fiat, that which they could not do through political means.Law Professor Josh Blackman takes a broad look at the Constitutional and legal challenges to the Affordable Care Act and finds the case Unprecedented.My conversation with Josh Blackman:

In 1977, a 13 year old aspiring actress was invited to do a photoshoot with a famous film director.  What happened that day, still makes headlines around the world: Director Roman Polanski, then 43, gave Samantha Gailey then 13, a hefty helping of Champagne and Quaaludes, then raped her at the home of Jack Nicholson.After pleading guilty to unlawful sex with a minor, Polanski fled the country before his court date and made a home in France. Samantha Geimer, Now 50, and 36 years after the fact, has written a memoir of her experiences. The Girl: A Life in the Shadow of Roman Polanski.Lawrence Silver was Samantha’s lawyer, from the very beginning and now talks about the case. The facts remain the same, but the context has changed dramatically in the past 36 years.My conversation with Lawrence Silver:

This has been an  amazing week for sailing,  for Oracle team USA, for it’s crew and for Larry Ellison.In many ways Ellison is the true manifestation of what creative destruction and Silicon Valley is all about….dreams, passion, vision, innovation and the ability to execute on all of it.Many successful entrepreneurs possess some measure of these qualities.  But often the purpose and the playing field is small; an app, a piece of software, a new design.  All things of value.  But Larry Ellison wanted to play on a much grander scale.  He wasn't happy to just nudge the world, he wanted to change it, to shift it on it’s axis...just a bit.Yesterday’s victory was the culmination of that effort in the world of sailing.  It’s a story that is powerful and complex, and involved people like  Norbert Bajurin and Jimmy Spithill, who would share and complement and expand on Ellison's vision and passion.  It’s a story told with equal passion by Julian Guthrie.  Julian’s book The Billionaire and the Mechanic: How Larry Ellison and a Car Mechanic Teamed Up to Win Sailing's Greatest Race, The America's Cup, sets the stage for all that came before yesterday’s race.My conversation with Julian Guthrie:

Scott Fitzgerald wrote of Gatsby, “that if personality is an unbroken series of successful gestures, then there was something gorgeous about him, some heightened sensitivity to the promise of life, as if he were related to one of those intricate machines that register earthquakes ten thousand miles away. This responsiveness had nothing to do with that flabby impressionability which is dignified under the name of the 'creative temperament'--it was an extraordinary gift for hope, a romantic readiness such as I have never found in any other person.” What is it that gives someone those qualities?  Is it their bearing, their dress, the way they hold their hands or the words they use?  Clearly some people have it, and others don’t .  But can it be learned?Matthew Kohut explains how people can find power and influence beyond just their KLOUT score. That we can find that something that makes us into Compelling People: The Hidden Qualities That Make Us Influential. My conversation with Matthew Kohut:

When we look at the vast expanse of history, we find that their are periods when the world seemingly shifted on its axis: When change is dramatic, when our whole way of looking at and understanding events changes.  Perhaps the 60’s was such a period, perhaps we are in such a period today.  The impact of technology, globalization, deindustrialization social, cultural and economic change.  Only history will be able to give us that answer.What we are learning though, is that the period of time leading up to the Civil War, the war itself, and the reconstruction that followed, was such a period.  It gave rise to events that created tectonic shifts, and was populated by characters whose special quality secures their place in history.This is the period written about by Brenda Wineapple in Ecstatic Nation: Confidence, Crisis, and Compromise, 1848-1877. My conversation with Brenda Wineapple:

Since the dawn of the  age of nuclear weapons we have only imagined the complexity of systems that are involved in the use of those weapons.  Those of us that grew up during the cold war are all too familiar with the nuclear football that follows the President, launch codes, the hotline, fail safe mechanisms, and even the eccentricity of Col.  Jack Ripper.  

All have seemingly kept us safe. But today the cold war is over, US and Russian nuclear stockpiles have gone from over 60k weapons to less than 5k.  It all sounds pretty good.  

But as we worry anew about nuclear proliferation, about weapons in the hands of terrorists, it bring into bold relief that idea that these weapons are among the most complex machines built by man.  As such they can fail; accidents can happen, and weapons on a hair trigger alert are subject to technical failure.  

Is it pure dumb luck that we have not had an accident involving nuclear weapons?  In fact we have had many such accidents, perhaps over 1200 of them… the worst of which happened in Damascus, Arkansas, 33 years ago. 

Now investigative reporter Eric Schlosser, the author of Fast Food Nation and Reefer Madness, takes us inside our system of Command and Control.

My conversation with Eric Schlosser:

It’s been almost 50 years since Lyndon Johnson declared "war on poverty."  It’s been more than 50 years since JFK was moved by the poverty of Appalachia and Bobby Kennedy by the poverty of the South Bronx.Today's poverty may not be as dark or desperate, but it is more insidious.  While we focus on the growing gap between the one percent and the middle class, we often ignore those that have fallen out of the middle class, and sunk below the poverty level. That group is growing exponentially and it’s a blight on our nation. Certainly it’s not a part of the American exceptionalism the President spoke of last week.As the House is voting to drastically cut Food Stamps, journalist Sasha Abramsky delves deep into the issue in The American Way of Poverty: How the Other Half Still Lives.My conversation with Sasha Abramsky