Talk Cocktail

Winston Churchill, in talking about the former Soviet Union, described it as “a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma, but perhaps," he said, "there is key and that key is Russian national interest.”

After reading Adam Lashinsky’s new book Inside Apple: How America's Most Admired--and Secretive--Company Really Works, I feel we might say the same about Apple. A company that has been for so many journalist and business watchers, a puzzle difficult to solve. But Adam Lashinsky may have found the code. My conversation with Adam Lashinsky:

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In our society today, one is no longer the loneliest number. In fact, in many places living along has become a luxury. There are currently 32 million Americans living along or 1 in 7 adults. Twenty percent of all households are single person households. Yet there is a big difference between living alone and being alone.

The social alienation that Robert Putnam talked about in Bowling Alone, is not part of this trend. It simply reflects some profound changes in the nature of work, relationships, and social norms. Eric Klinenberg has captured the discussion about this in his new book Going Solo: The Extraordinary Rise and Surprising Appeal of Living Alone. My conversation with Eric Klinenberg:

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Politics in America has become, for better or worse, a part of our celebrity/entertainment complex. What we often forget is that inside this culture are not just politicians and Hollywood celebrities, but real people with real lives real, complex relationships and complicated and evolving marriages. Marriages that are like so many that we see every day, where the surface is like the iceberg; what we see represents only ten-percent of the reality, In fact, political marriage especially are like the proverbial snowflake, no two are ever alike.

NY Times correspondent, Jodi Kantor in her book The Obamas, takes a look inside the Obama family, the Obama marriage and the complexity of a modern professional marriage inside the White House. My conversation with Jodi Kantor:

Remember the movie,The Kings Speech,and the oldest daughter of the man who would become King? That young girl wold herself become Queen of England at the age of twenty-five and serve until this very day, almost 60 years, as the second longest reigning monarch of England.

It seems simple, yet this woman, Queen Elizabeth of England, has been in the public eye for 60 + years. Through generations, wars, twelve British governments, and the monumental changes of the 20th and then 2st centuries. And she has done it all with grace, composure, intelligence and even only one husband. Regardless of your view of the monarchy, what might we learn from this remarkable woman? Sally Bedell Smith, one of our preeminent biographers takes us inside the life of this woman, Elizabeth the Queen: The Life of a Modern Monarch. My conversation with Sally Bedell Smith:

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How would our society, our culture and even our politics be different if men...and even woman, could "openly" cheat. Professor Eric Anderson of the University of Winchester argues, in his new work The Monogamy Gap: Men, Love, and the Reality of Cheating, that the desire for sexual diversity is the inherent biological and physiological norm and that we should "encourage" our partners to cheat as a way of balancing the cognitive dissonance between the desire for intimacy and the desire for sexual adventure. He argues that the problem is not cheating, that the problem is monogamy. My very surprising conversation with Erica Anderson:

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The debate over artion rights has consumed our politics for decades. It seems that each time the freedom to choose seems like a settled issue, the nation becomes more divided. Why has this issues had such resiliency, why can’t the values of due process and privacy prevail, and why is this still even an issue of debate among young woman?

This story is all the more powerful through the lens of a woman who has been at the forefront of the movement. Her tireless efforts have put herself in danger, while fighting so hard for the rights of other woman. Merle Hoffman shares her story in her new memoir  Intimate Wars: The Life and Times of the Woman Who Brought Abortion from the Back Alley to the Board Room. My conversation with Merle Hoffman

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