Talk Cocktail

Early on in the pandemic, in the earliest days of the lockdown, we wondered this was going to change the world. Ironically, it was easier to look out and to try and figure out its impact on the world, rather than dig deeper and wonder how it might affect us.

In spite of the supposed transparency of the internet age, more and more we live in the age of complicity. Last month we saw it with the trove of documents and stories that came to light about UBER. Tim Miller’s recent book about Trump's enablers shows how it’s happened repeatedly in the White House, just as Michel Lewis showed us, several years ago, how it happened on Wall Street in the face of the 2008 financial crisis.

For 20 years in Hollywood, the complicity around the actions of Harvey Weinstein was airtight.What is it about Hollywood and Wall Street and politics that encourages and even condones such complicity in bad behavior?Long-time media journalist Ken Auletta tells the thirty-thousand-foot view in telling the story of Harvey Weinstein, his rise and fall, through the lens of his enablers and his victims in his new bookHollywood Ending: Harvey Weinstein and the Culture of Silence.

My conversation with Ken Auletta:

Modern Washington has always offered up an impressive roster of toadies. Yet the Trump administration seems to have offered up a unique period of bowing and scraping. Historically, sucking up takes a variety of forms, from pretty compliments to cloying flattery and outright treachery. 

But it doesn't stop there. The kind of sycophant we see from the GOP combines other attributes like hypocrisy, lying, and manipulation. 

Throughout history we’ve certainly seen our share of sycophants; from the courts of Caligula to Dickens’ Uriah Heep. 

We certainly get to see a lot of this in Mark Leibovich's new book Thank You For Your Servitude 

My conversation with Mark Leibovich:

We spend our life negotiating. At work, at home, with kids and with friends. Rich Cohen stories of his father Herbie, is the story of making all of this work for you, and what it looked like up close and personal. 

As Rich tells his story, it's not Geoffrey or Tobias Wolf seeing their father’s story through the lens of deception, but through a celebration of the power of imagination. 

Rich Cohen is the New York Times-bestselling author of Tough Jews, Monsters, Sweet and Low, The Sun & the Moon & the Rolling Stones, The Chicago Cubs, and The Last Pirate of New York. His latest is The Adventures of Herbie Cohen - World's Greatest Negotiator 

My conversation with Rich Cohen:

This is the stuff of Edie Meidav's new novel Another Love Discourse.  

When we talk about our dreams, it's usually in the context of limitless possibilities. It’s the one often private place where we are free from the constraints of reality. Seemingly limited only by our imagination, our dreams often hold the key to how we see our future.

But those dreams have a context. Our life experience, our social position, race, gender and status all shapes those dreams. It’s an interesting irony that the dreams that we think can move us to unlimited possibilities, can often hold us back. Our dreams both shape who we become, as we think we shape them.We explore this withKaren Cerulo and Janet Ruane in their book Dreams of a Lifetime - How Who We Are Shapes How We Imagine Our Future.

My conversation with Karen Cerulo and Janet Ruane :

It seems we live in a society where everyone wants to be protected. We don’t want to hear views we disagree with for fear that it might upset us, we don't’ want to go back to the office because we get stressed by a commute. We are afraid to let our kids go out and play unless they are supervised. We are anxious about money, about politics, about family…it’s no wonder there is an entire drug industry with provides for our every anxious moment.

We live emerged in first world problems that pale compared to the Greatest Generation, that fought a World War, lived through a Depression and did duck-and-cover drills in fear of nuclear annihilation.Just maybe the fault is not in our society but in ourselves. Maybe instead of trying to eliminate all that might make us anxious, suppose we just got better at dealing with it. Just Maybe coping has fewer side effects than medication? Maybe that is what we were trained to do, as man first stepped onto the savannah, and the lion came after him. He learned very quickly to cope with anxiety. That coping is still buried somewhere in our DNAThis is whereTracy Dennis-Tiwarytakes us in her new bookFuture Tense - Why Anxiety Is Good for You.

My conversation with Tracy Dennis-Tiwary:: 

In our lifetime and in the 246-year history of the republic, there was a time when great men walked astride the United States Senate. It was the crucible of democracy. Once referred to as the greatest deliberative body, and a cooling saucer to modulate the nation's passions, it now fails on all counts.

My conversation with Ira Shapiro: